Least and most favorite

I hate, and love, the second half of May.

Memorial Day gives me an opportunity to honor one of the most enduring traditions weaving my family together: military service. My Mom, Dad, and step-Dad were all Marines (for those of you who don't know yet). Three out of five uncles served in foreign wars. My grandma was a nurse in the Army during World War II. And I have two cousins who are presently serving (one of whom is in the Marines, so we're more than a little worried about what his next deployment will be). And more friends than I can count have served or are serving.

In this, as in so many other things, we are a true blue-collar family. There's always someone in uniform, always someone willing to stand up and say "this is part of duty; this is part of what it is to be a citizen and part of what it is to be blessed with liberty." So, Memorial Day is always a special day for me.

And how could it not be, given my family's tradition (one so strong that there's a good chance I was conceived on a military base)? There is always sadness with it, of course. Candles are always lit for the fallen and prayers are always said. Even with that sadness, however, there is a quiet sense of joy, a security in the knowledge that - even if the Navy doesn't want me - I am part of a line that has stood up when called. It's not something I really know how to describe adequately, unfortunately.

Here's an attempt though.

About a year and a half ago, I was reading a copy of The American Scholar (the quarterly journal put out by Phi Beta Kappa), and I ran across an essay discussing the extent to which military service had declined in the privileged classes. There was a time when serving as an officer in the military was another part of noblesse oblige. If you were an American blue-blood, then you spent some time as an officer in one branch or another. Over time, however, (and most notably, in the last 50 years) that has all changed. The aristocratic classes no longer send their sons and daughters off to war; instead, the poor go off to fight and die. (This, incidentally, was one of the many things that played into my decision to apply for the Navy JAG Corps; by education, I am now one of the privileged class, and I have some obligations.)

My family, of course, was never part of that world. Yes, we always served, but we were the grunts. We were the PFCs and the corporals. We were, for lack of a better word, the cannon fodder and the folks who did the scut work. You would think that, as time went on and VA budgets continued to be cut so that service didn't really bring as many advantages as it used to, that the folks in my family would "wise up" and stop throwing themselves at the front lines.

But we never did.

No, my family isn't really all that special (outside of being phenomenally special to me); it's just another blue-collar family that believes in putting its money where its mouth is, just as so many other working class families do.

To all of you . . . thank you.

But May is a sad time too. My Grandpa died in May, on Mother's Day, after having managed to (through his illness and hospitalization) get all of Grandma's kids into town for Mother's Day (his last gift to the woman he loved more than breath).

Now, for a lot of people, losing a grandparent isn't that big of a deal. Yes, it's sad, but it doesn't tear your heart out, especially not in today's world where we scarcely see - much less really know - our extended families. For me, however, losing Grandpa was like losing a limb. For all of his flaws (and he really did have more than one can readily count), my Grandpa was a truly unique and special man. He was born into poverty, the son of a broken home, decades before divorce became the norm. After his father abandoned him, his mother, and his brother, Grandpa quit school - during 8th grade - so he could help put food on the table. It's an old tale, one so many of us have heard, of privation and sacrifice, but that moment of wandering behind the coal cart during the Depression to pick fuel off of the leavings on the street becomes so much more special when it's someone you know and love.

(My Grandpa, incidentally, is why I can't read Angela's Ashes without crying.)

He grew to manhood in a horrifyingly tough world, a place I don't know that I could survive, and like so many of his kin before him (Grandpa was, proudly and permanently, Irish-American Catholic), he fell prey to alcoholism. Demon rum, to use the old phrase, killed his ability to be a good husband and father, at least for a large portion of his marriage to my Grandma, but there was redemption (as there always is in any good Catholic story). Years after giving up the bottle, Grandpa found a way to make up for lost time, not with his own children, but with a wee, vociferous, spunky little mite who wouldn't stop sassing him for even a moment.

Yes, that mite was me.

My father had walked out too, and understanding what that was like, realizing how painful it was to wonder what you had done to produce such rejection, Grandpa did his level best to step into the void.

He could never be a Dad, but he did his level best to fill the "male authority" role. He packed lunches (complete with 'Nilla wafers) for my childhood best friend and I when we trekked off into the woods of darkest urban Wisconsin. He took me to restaurants and to movies, always being sure to explain why it was important to be a good tipper and to appreciate goood acting. He spent endless Sunday afternoons imparting his love of football (and more specifically of the Packers) to me, and explaining the strategy of the game (to this day, I can't call plays, but I can tell you exactly why it is a good or bad idea - from a strategic perspective - to pass or run or punt in a particular situation). He took me to Mass and explained why it mattered, more than anything, that - whatever you believed religiously - you hold your faith with your whole heart. And, on innumerable long walks (walking a few miles a day was how he kept healthy), he imparted the wisdom he had managed to accumulate and assured me that the boy who didn't have a crush on me back in sixth grade was just too stupid to recognize the best girl in the world when he saw her.

Ironically, Grandpa was one of the few in my family who didn't serve in the military. He tried to enlist in the Marines during WWII, but couldn't pass the physical (due to an injury to his arm). This, of course, doesn't make me love and miss him any less.

Today, I have recalled the service done for the nation by so many of my family and friends, and my heart has been filled with joy and gratitude. And I have remembered an old, somewhat broken-down, but always spirited man who taught me about life, the importance of family and faith, and the enduring beauty of love.

Thank you, Grandpa.

I love you, and I will never stop missing you.

Sometimes money isn't enough

He got the best justice money can buy. That's the way the old trope goes. According to the common wisdom, a person's ability to get away with murder (or other equally nasty acts) is directly moderated by their ability to pay for a top-notch lawyer.

And, to a certain extent, it's true. One of the more disturbing things that's hammered home during law school is the extent to which the outcome of a case can come down to good or bad lawyering. So often, as a law student, you read an appellate decision, only to realize that the bad guys won because they had better lawyers or the good guys lost because their lawyers didn't argue the right thing.

Sometimes, however, even money isn't enough.

Sometimes someone does something wrong, and even the best lawyers in the world can't get him off.

Sometimes someone is so manifestly guilty that conviction is a foregone conclusion, and personal wealth just stops being a factor.

I have to admit, I really love those moments. So, it was with a certain sense of glee that I read the news that Kenneth Lay and Jeff Skilling had been convicted for their misdeeds in the implosion of Enron. It's the sort of thing that helps me keep some faith in the system, some belief that - every so often - our adversarial system does what it's supposed to do.

It metes out justice.

I don't expect Lay and Skilling to see things that way. There is, I have come to realize, a certain mindset that tends to go along with criminality. There is a certain sense of justification, with the criminal feeling that - for whatever reason - he is above the normal social norms. Everyone else needs to play by the rules, according to his world-view, but he doesn't. And if he gets in trouble for doing what he feels he has the right to do, well, then that is a wrong committed against him by society, not the natural consequence of his own actions.

So, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Lay and Skilling spent their time in prison bemoaning their misfortune and feeling quite put upon by society.

You know what? I can live with that. And I imagine that those who were hurt by their malfeasance can live with it too.

Buh-bye Public Square

One of the glorious things about the Internet is the fact that, in many ways, it has become the new public square, open to all, with only the quality of the content of one's message determining whether or not it is heard. It is, in many ways, the most potent and pure distillation of Justice Holmes' "marketplace of ideas" that we've seen to date.

That marketplace, however, is now under threat, though it isn't entirely clear what the threat is or where it comes from.

According to the telecommunications companies, the threat comes from Congress and outfits like Microsoft and Google. They are currently campaigning to stop Congress from regulating the Internet in a manner they would deem offensive.

The Save the Internet coalition says that the problem originates with telecommunications companies who want to institute pay to play systems, allowing different levels of access to websites and content providers based on their means. Their campaign is trying to persuade Congress to institute "network neutrality" via regulation.

I know where I stand on this issue. Do you?

This question is far to important to allow it to go forward without input from every American who cares about the Internet. Go to the linked websites, research the issue, and act.

The public square matters, and it's put up or shut up time.

A nod to Joe

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone that I am not generally a fan of Joe Scarborough's. He is certainly not the most offensive member of the punditocracy, and it must be admitted that he has enough of a sense of fairness to have made a few positive comments about John Kerry after his speech at the 2004 DNC National Convention. That being given, Joe's show was - in the years I watched it - generally dominated by talking points that reflected the party line coming out of the White House.

Still, credit must be given where it's due. In recent weeks, Joe has come out strongly against the NSA's domestic wire-tapping program, most notably in a scathing report filed in response to revelations that the government had been tracing calls made by journalists at ABC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

That a pundit would speak out against this isn't surprising in and of itself, of course. But it is always more risky to rail publicly against members of your own party than against the opposition. So, my hat is off to him, and I hope he keeps the Administration's feet to the fire on this issue.

The Reward at the End

In many ways, law school is one of the most intellectually and emotionally brutalizing experiences a person can undergo. I have tried to articulate its contours to people who aren't law students or law school graduates, all to no avail. I simply could not reduce the experience to words in a manner capable of effectively conveying the full flavor of the experience.

My Mom used to have the same problem when I would ask her what boot camp was like. She would tell me little stories about her time at Parris Island, principally focusing on the little internal tricks she'd learned that made the treatment of the Drill Instructors bearable, but there was always a sense that she was a bit frustrated at the fact that she never could get me to truly understand it. After my first semester of law school, I went back home for a visit, and one of the first things I told her was that I finally got it. I finally understood why she used to throw up her hands and exasperation and say "I just can't make it clear unless you've been there." Law school, I had discovered, was the same way. No matter how hard I tried to articulate what it was really like, true understanding evaded people who hadn't been there.

Similarly, the reward at the end is virtually impossible to adequately explain. It wasn't something that hit when I finished my last exam. As happy as I was in that moment, it couldn't compare to that moment of pure bliss when my fingers finally closed around my diploma (a document I apparently held onto like a life-raft for the remainder of the day).

I was done. I had survived an experience that made me question my basic intelligence, an experience that made me wonder if I would ever be competent to practice any profession, an experience that had reduced me to tears more often than I care to remember.

At that moment, my feet felt as if they were treading on clouds. The full realization set in that I had made it through, and I was overwhelmed with a wonderfully warm certainty that I truly could do anything that I set my mind to.

That certainty will be there for the rest of my life, and any time I doubt, any time I wonder if I can make it through an experience, I will be able to look back on this experience and remind myself that, yes, in fact, I can. Law school beats you down for three years, but then it gives you that confidence, that faith in your own competence, and that reward somehow makes all of the nonsense more than worthwhile.

Comic books and feminism

There's been a bit of a dust-up in some feminist blogs about the cover (drawn by Frank Miller) of a recent issue of some DC Comics title or another (the illustration in question is of Wonder Woman).


Now, looking at the picture (shown at left), I really couldn't understand what the big deal was. Then again, both as a sometime comic book collector and a feminist, I never really bought into the "superhero comics objectify women" line of thought. Yes, women in comic books are generally depicted with unrealistic, hyper-sexualized proportions, but given the primary audience of comic books, I hardly think this sort of thing is surprising. I don't even think it's negative. Consider this, most comic book readers are pre-teen and teenaged boys. This is a period during which sex is the subject of fantasy and imaginings, and like most fantasies, visions of sex and the sexual at this age are quite unrealistic. (High-school "chick lit" is similarly unrealistic in its fantasies about love and the "perfect" man.)

Comic books are, by definition, fantasy and wish-fulfilling fantasy at that. The bumbling nerd gets bitten by a radioactive spider and is transformed into a paragon of strength, swiftness and agility (anyone who says this isn't wish-fulfillment has never been stuffed into a locker). And there are hundreds of other examples. The underdog always wins, despite the obstacles stacked against him. The bad-guy is always brought to account for his deeds. Granted, the morality plays in today's comic books aren't quite as cut and dried as all that, but the underlying themes are the continuing triumph of the misunderstood good guy over the evil maniac. And that's rather the point. The reader projects himself into the shoes of the hero, and does acts of derring-do that he would never be capable of in real life, and along the way, he gets the girl, and she isn't just any girl, she's the girl of adolescent fantasy.

Frankly, I don't see the harm in this. Then again, I recognize that the ability to fantasize is a healthy thing. It only crosses over into being harmful when one loses the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality. In any case, that doesn't seem to be what's at issue here.

The problem seems to be the manner in which some folks seem to see this as yet another example of the comic book industry objectifying women via seeing them as nothing but sexual objects. Now, I think that point might have more merit if women in comic books were generally hot and stupid. That, however, is not the case. Part of what makes comic book heroines the ideal, the fantasy, is that they are beautiful and they are tough and they are smart and they are self-confident. It's the total package that makes for the fantasy, in the same manner in which a straight woman fantasizes about a man, she sees someone who is gorgeous and intelligent and sensitive and tough.

Now, if you'd like to discuss the fact that so few comic books have a female lead character, well, that's another matter entirely.

Suck it up.

Among the things getting on my nerves these days are the folks who treat gas prices as if they are just another one of those market quirks, something we have to just suck it up and deal with. I get even more angry when someone takes a moment to point out that this is just what Americans deserve for getting too used to artificially depressed gas prices.

Now, I am the first to admit that I am not an economist, so I can't effectively analyze the veracity of these statements.

My problem, however, is not with their relative truth or falsehood. Rather, my issue is with the cavalier attitude they display, as if the massive jump in gas prices wasn't causing real, tangible suffering. The biggest reason it irks me is that, more often than not, such pronouncements come from folks who, thanks to their current occupation, are well off enough that a jump in gas prices isn't likely to hurt them in any appreciable way.

It makes me wonder if John and Jane Sixpack really matter in their world, because those are the folks (you know, "the folks," the ones O'Reilly is always claiming he stands up for) who are really getting battered by increasing gas prices and by the manner in which that increase has produced higher prices in other realms (anyone who doubts that need only look at their grocery bill).

Whether it's natural or not, whether it's to be expected or not, it's still hurting people, and it hit fast enough that even people who conserve energy and drive minimally as a matter of habit are feeling the pinch. Responding to that stress and worry by saying "suck it up" is not helpful.

"Mom, I don't quite know how to say this . . ."

That's a phrase no parent likes to hear, as it generally means trouble, especially if the speaker is a teenager. Even if the speaker is a younger child, as my daughter still is, that phrase is usually a warning that you're about to enter into dangerous ground, either intellectual or emotional.

My daughter and I were at a local comic book shop earlier today. They were having the grand opening of a new location, and I thought that it would be a good opportunity for my daughter to start collecting. We had previously purchased a couple of volumes of Leave it to Chance (a delightful title whose heroine is a very precocious, curious young girl) for her, and I thought it was time for her to start on her first superhero-themed title. I also thought the trip would give us a chance for her to buy her first issue for herself with her own money ("And I bought it myself" is always such a point of pride for kids at that age).

So, there we were, standing in front of one of the racks, and I was trying to nudge her gently away from Sonic the Hedgehog and toward one of Marvel's new "for kids" superhero titles, when she looked up at me and, with very solemn eyes, said "Mom, I don't quite know how to say this, but you know, I don't think girls are really allowed to read superhero books."

Needless to say, this floored me. I'd collected comics for years, including a number of superhero titles, pausing only when finances got to tight to allow for that kind of thing. And my Mom had been a huge reader of Spider-Man and Batman when she was a girl back in the 1960s, and she had begun collecting the titles again when I started reading comic books. So, the notion that superheroes would somehow be verboten to girls was utterly foreign to me, and I couldn't even begin to imagine where my daughter would have gotten the idea.

When I asked her what made her think girls weren't supposed to read superhero titles, she wasn't able to tell me where she's gotten the idea either.

So, with nothing specific to point at, I could only conclude that this was another one of those incidents where cultural conditioning on gender roles had produced what was, for me, an unexpected and dismaying result. I am all too aware of the fact that there are still many things that our culture shuts little boys off from, but having grown up with free access to comic books, Legos, and Star Wars action figures, I had naïvely presumed I wouldn't have to worry about my daughter thinking that there were "boy" toys and games that she just wouldn't be allowed access to. And as something of an optimist, I had always thought that we had gotten past sexism enough for my daughter to be free of any danger that her hobbies might lead her to question her essential femininity. Beyond that, I thought I had raised her to be strong-minded and independent enough that she would respond to that sort of notion in the same manner that she responds to the idea that boys are naturally better at science and math (an idea that, as a science nut, she's always found patently ridiculous).

Finding out that I was incorrect in so many of my basic presumptions shook me. And it makes me wonder how many other social messages she's receiving that I don't know about, that I haven't already prepared myself for.

This is one of the troubling and difficult things about trying to raise a strong, independent, intelligent girl. Every time you think you've prepared her for everything, society jumps in and hands you something else that you have to counter, some other disruptive aspect of the cultural discourse tells your daughter that there are just some things that aren't girly enough. And inevitably, those things always seem to creep in from the most unexpected direction.

This day, at least, had a happy ending. My daughter is still young enouogh to think I walk on water, so when I explained to her that both I and her Grandma would be in a spot of trouble if girls weren't supposed to read superhero comics, she immediately reassessed the messages she'd received and decided they were silly.

She found a youth superhero title that looked interesting to her, bought the first two issues (complete with bags and boards so she can keep them safe), and she's read them at least four times that I know of since we got home.

Out of Balance

We are, first and foremost, a nation of rights. At least, that is how we have always conceived of ourselves. The notion that certain natural rights exist, that there are intangible things everyone gets just by virtue of being born, has been enshrined in our collective mythos since our earliest history. At least since July 4, 1776, and likely before that. So strong was this commitment that our framing document simply could not . . . would not be ratified until certain of those natural rights were memorialized in written form. We were a budding nation of merchants and yeoman farmers - or that's how we saw ourselves - we were men of commerce, and as such, we saw a written instrument, a contract, as the single most effective means through which those natural rights could be protected and preserved.

Bumbling steps toward authortarianism aside (and there have been many in our history), it is fair to say that individual rights remain the most critical part of the American national consciousness. So strong is our commitment to the notion that interest groups with incredible longevity have repeatedly coalesced and maintained themselves around a single right.

Make no mistake, this commitment to individual rights is a truly beautiful thing, and it is largely responsible for the greatest glories of our history and for the continuing respect and admiration that - at least until recently - characterized international opinion regarding the United States.

No matter how well or poorly we executed the ideal, it remained the great but intangible center of our national identity. This mattered a great deal. Ideas have power far beyond their own weight. It was not the reality of America that inspired the French in 1789; it was the ideal embodied in our framing documents. It was not the reality of America that captured the consciousness of nationalist Ireland during the early to mid-19th century; it was the ideal embodied in our framing documents. Time and again, when a people struggled to implement a system of government capable of enshrining and protecting the primacy of individual rights, not based on station of birth but on mere being, it was America to which they turned. This happened because of the raw, overwhelmind potency of the idea lying at the core of our founding.

But, for all of that, we only got half of the equation.

For every right, there is a concommitant duty. For every power, there is a concommitant responsibility.

Yet, we have neglected obligation in favor of acquisition. We have neglected what we owe in favor of what we are due.

At least, that's been the way of it through most of American history. Granted, there have been exceptions, moments when the common weal truly seemed to take its rightful place alongside individual self-determination. But those moments were the exception rather than the rule.

We have spent most of our history in imbalance. We have generally placed our finger on one side of the scales, rather than trying to ensure that each dish is weighed evenly. This, I believe, is the fundamental issue lying at the core of our current problems.

But what is the solution? That question is far to weighty for any one person; an answer can only be discerned through collective effort, through honest and open discussion and interchange.

The two sides don't talk to each other any more; they talk past each other. And so, that interchange has been delayed and denied. It is this utter shutdown of discourse that we must counter before progress can be made in any other field of endeavor.

Before the scales can be balanced, we must recommit ourselves to honestly assessing the worth of the ideas to be placed on each side. Such an evaluation will only be possible if we can remember how to talk to and with one another.