Fun with Politics (66)

Oh god, this must be the truest sign we are waiting too long in between primaries: Dr. Phil is commenting on the psychology of politics. Juts what we were waiting for.

However, I will be the last person to insinuate that McGraw is a stupid man, and I agree with him that the gloves have not yet come off, in spite of all the talk about the Clinton camp playing nasty. Everybody is still perfectly nice; if you don’t believe me, just wait until the Democrats finally pick a candidate, and the Repu’s know who they’re up against. They’re just waiting in the wings; they’re saving their energy for the real race.

I would, too.

 

So was McCain’s comment about initially voting against MLK-day as a national holiday a stupid move, or not? If he hadn’t brought it up, would anybody else have? Does anybody care? I think we all know that racial equality is not in his party’s top ten; we’d probably be surprised if it suddenly was.

 

I imagine there is a secret army of spin-doctors and speechwriters who put down a check mark whenever a candidate says or does something questionable. Once we are down to two candidates, and the massacre really gets under way, what are we going to hear about?

McCain is crazy and unstable; he has a temper and left his first wife to fend for herself. He’s a second Bush; nothing will change. He wants to stay in Iraq for another hundred years. Clinton is a bitch, her husband is a liability, she tells lies; Obama is too young, too inexperienced, we really don’t know him at all. He can’t bowl. He is not patriotic enough. Oh, and his former pastor is crazy.

 

Is that it, for now? They will have to come up with some better attacks during the coming months, if they want to keep the voters interested. Somebody, somewhere, already has a scandal waiting. Bring it on, I say.

 

 

 

 

 

Stop Yelling and Start Listening

It’s five in the afternoon; my daughter Isabella has finished her homework and I tell her to go play with her brother, quietly. I have some work to do, and I’d like them to stop yelling, singing, and throwing things for ten minutes so I can get my stuff done. Alas, my request falls on deaf ears; they have decided they need to play hide and seek right under my nose. This means my daughter hides, while shouting instructions to her brother; he finds her, after which they both scream with laughter.

I am left to wonder, why do my children make so much noise? Is there something wrong with their hearing, or do they just naturally have a higher tolerance for loud and intrusive sounds? And why does this happen when I am at a point in my life where I like things calm and peaceful?

I remember being told to ‘be quiet’ when I was a kid. My parents would interrupt me in the middle of a long, drawn out story about something terribly important that happened to me in school. “For god’s sake, stop!” they’d say, exasperated at my ability to talk, talk, and then talk some more. As a child, I didn’t understand it, but now that I have children of my own, I do.

Then it strikes me: parents regularly complain about the difficulty of talking with their teenagers. Is the fact that we tell our kids to be quiet when they’re younger partially responsible for that? Or do teenagers shut down regardless? I’m starting to think that if I want my children to communicate with me in ten years, we need to lay the groundwork now. So that means, don’t tell them to stop talking just because it’s inconvenient and I’m tired. Also, it doesn’t seem quite fair that we spend all this time teaching them how to talk, only to tell them to stop once they truly master their language.

Of course, there are different kinds of meaning to what our children say when they are very young. “I have a big head”, my son Mendel announced this morning. Okay, sure; he kind of does, in comparison to his scrawny body, so I don’t argue with him.  He looks like a lollipop. “Now I’m going to eat my breakfast,” he says, and “I want to watch Sesame Street.”

At the age of three, he mostly narrates his day by stating the obvious. That’s okay; it improves his vocabulary and nobody can disagree with him, which must be good for his self-esteem. He also tells us when things are funny, in case we miss things; and he has recently taught himself to tattle. This is not necessarily a bad thing; most of his tattling focuses on real or perceived crimes committed by his sister. We can do something about it, or we can ignore; he doesn’t seem to care. He only cares about the act of telling us things we might not otherwise notice.

My daughter’s verbal prowess takes a different approach. She doesn’t just tell; she interprets: “Well, this is what happened; you see, it wasn’t really my fault, well, anyway, I forgot.” The underlying meaning is: I know I did something bad, but I’m not going to tell you except for the fact that I’m innocent; let’s leave it at that. Please don’t ask me any more questions.

Paying attention to what she’s really saying is good practice for when she’s older; the built-in interpretation will always be there, as long as you know what to listen for. It’s all about being aware; about not treating what they’re saying as meaningless background noise. A challenge? Of course! Otherwise, everyone would be doing it.

 

 

Fun with Politics (65)

I’m predicting the incessant and tiresome talk about race is only going to get worse over the next months. I use the word ‘tiresome’, because, as a society, we continue to have such a hard time putting the race discussion in an effective context. Obviously, having a black presidential candidate is an issue; if it weren’t, no one would bring it up. And why shouldn’t it be? It’s a great thing, a key moment in American history, to have a black candidate who actually has a fighting chance to make it to the White House. It’s something we, as a nation, should be proud of, and it’s about time. Let’s not mince words; blacks have been treated like shit since being brought to this country. If you still have questions about that, it’s time you open a history book as well as today’s paper.

 

According to the latest polls, 76 % of those questioned think we are ready for a black president. By contrast, only 63 % thinks we are ready for a female president. Those numbers confirm what I’ve thought all along: as a society, America is more sexist than racist. Why is that, I wonder? Let’s look at it another way; 24% doesn’t want a black president, 37 % doesn’t think a female president is a good thing. Wait, that still sounds really bad; especially the 37%. Maybe, since we’re doing such a poor job of discussing race, we could temporarily focus on a discussion about gender. What are people afraid of? A female in the Oval Office, or this particular female? What would the numbers be if this were some other woman? And what is it that’s so special about men? Bush and Cheney are men, and we all know what they did to the country. The idea that there are still people out there (men and women) who think women aren’t as capable as men in any category, is mind-boggling.  I know feminism is still considered a dirty word. That, in and of itself, is reason enough to bring it back with a vengeance.