| Number 192 | February 14, 2003 |
|
This Week:
|
|
Greetings, I guess I’m in a story-telling mood these days. Last week I told a little story about one of our local TV newsmen and his odd idea of how to arrive at the truth about U.S. foreign policy. This week I dredge up an email I received five years ago from one of our state legislators here in Minnesota. I’ve been waiting for this particular representative to be in the news so I could share this amazing email with my readers. Finally! he’s doing something that the corporate press considers newsworthy, and I think the email I’m sharing this week indicates just how extreme one can be in Minnesota and still be elected to office multiple times. I don’t know why so many people are suddenly contacting me for their free e-mail subscription to the Notes, but...Welcome Aboard! Since I am hopelessly inept at anything that might be called “marketing,” I rely on word of mouth (or the written equivalent—“word of screen? word of page?”) to build the subscription list. Slowly but surely, Nygaard Notes is growing, thanks to all of you who forward the Notes to your friends, relatives, incarcerated community members, teachers, and so forth. Now, with the new web address—www.nygaardnotes.org—it’s even easier to refer people to the bits you want to share with the world. And, as always, a big thank-you to those of you who sent in financial contributions in the past couple of weeks. It means more than you know. Have I mentioned that I have a new website address? It’s http://www.nygaardnotes.org/. Nygaard |
|
From the New York Times (“All The News That’s Fit To Print”) of January 24th, in a report with a Paris dateline:
|
|
For those who have the time and patience, perhaps the best and most interesting analysis of the State of the Union speech presented by Mr. Bush on January 28 comes from the Institute for Public Accuracy. IPA issued a 32-page “Critical Analysis of Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address,” in which they publish the entire text of the speech, interspersed with comments from various activists, scholars, and think tanks. The document includes links to alternative viewpoints on many of the specific statements made by the President, ranging from the Center for Constitutional Rights, to Left Business Observer, to Food First, to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and many more. I wish this weren’t so unusual, this critical analysis of the words of the chief executive of the nation. It should be the basic task of the media, but they rarely do it. IPA has also published other critical analyses in addition to the one on the State of the Union speech. Find them all at http://www.accuracy.org/. |
|
Last week I talked about a prominent local newsman, Don Shelby, who had told an anti-war gathering that “six of the smartest people in the world” had convinced him that “oil is not an issue” in the planned U.S. attack on Iraq. A few days ago I heard from the audience member who raised the issue, and he said that, after the meeting had formally ended, he had asked Mr. Shelby for his email address. He then promptly the sent the newsman a rather impressive (he sent me a copy) 3,000 word summary from more than 10 different sources indicating that oil is, indeed, “an issue” for the U.S. in its drive to war. To date, he has not gotten a response from Mr. Shelby. |
|
I made the point in these pages a couple of weeks ago that the “real” agenda of the IC (Individualist and Competitive, aka “right wing”) gang in pushing tax cuts is to shrink government. The reason: Reduce government’s potential to limit the exercise of power by the propertied classes. One of the architects of the Bush tax cut plan frankly admitted this last week, which would have been front-page news if I ran the New York Times (“All The News That’s Fit To Print”). Alas, I don’t run that influential newspaper, so it didn’t surprise me that the comment, by the chief economic adviser to the “President,” was buried in the middle of a page-22 column called “Washington Talk” in the February 11th issue. The very good article—“Conservatives Now See Deficits As a Tool to Fight Spending”—was about the transformation of formerly “fiscally conservative” Republicans in the Congress who don’t like deficit spending but now see that “it plays a useful role in fighting off something they like even less—government spending.” It’s not really “spending” they don’t like, of course, as evidenced by their support of an almost-$400 billion military budget. What they don’t like is the wrong kind of spending, the kind that a publicly-accountable entity might do that would redistribute wealth and put limits on corporate power. So the phrase “government spending” always needs de-coding when seen in the press. Anyhow, back to the key quotation, which was found at the end of the eighth paragraph of a 16-paragraph article on page 22:
|
|
When it comes to such basic life needs and activities as employment, housing, trade, public accommodations, public services, transportation, and education, it is illegal under Minnesota law to discriminate “because of race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, disability, sexual orientation, or age.” Most Minnesotans, I believe, are proud of this law. Now, led by Republican state representative Arlon Lindner, a bill has been introduced (House File 341) the purpose of which is to have “sexual orientation removed as a protected class under the Human Rights Act and other statutory provisions.” According to the advocacy group OutFront Minnesota, “If [H.F. 341 is] approved, Minnesota would become the first state ever to extend, and then rescind, protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.” Not only would the bill remove “sexual orientation” from the state human rights law, it would also remove language acknowledging that gays and lesbians are historic victims of Nazi atrocities. This historical revisionism would “for the first time in any civilized country, reverse a condemnation of Nazi persecution and implicitly endorse Nazi extermination of gay people across Europe in the twentieth century,” again according to OutFront. While the exact numbers of sexual minorities persecuted by the Nazi regime is the subject of some debate, the reality of the persecution is denied only by small groups of heterosexual supremacists, often based on reactionary interpretations of Christian texts. More Than Homophobia Some people might say that this bill is motivated by homophobia, but I don’t like to use that word, myself, as it means simply a “fear” of anything that is not “standard” heterosexuality. I prefer the term “heterosexism” or, even better, heterosexual supremacy. While it is no doubt true that many het supremacists are also homophobic, I think that, in this context, hatred is a far more important issue than fear. It is hate that is behind the construction of an entire ideology that assumes that any “non-heterosexual” sexual expression is unnatural, abnormal, inferior, or sinful. The other problem with the word “homophobia” is the implication that the problem is simply an individual prejudice, based on an internal, emotional state of fear. Calling it “heterosexism” or heterosexual supremacy introduces the factor of power into the equation, raising it from the level of a personal prejudice to a social oppression, where it belongs. This distinction is crucial to understanding why anyone needs to be “protected” in the first place and, indeed, is crucial to understanding power in a society. Lindner’s bill may be the most extreme and obvious attack on the civil rights of Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual, Transgendered, and Intersex Minnesotans, but it isn’t the only one. The contracts of state workers—in limbo since their 15-day strike in October of 2001—are due for ratification by the state legislature this spring. Union leaders are conceding that the Republican-controlled legislature will not ratify unless they drop a provision that extends health-insurance benefits to same-sex domestic partners of state employees. A good place to start to take action to reverse this alarming attack would be to contact OutFront Minnesota, on the web at http://www.outfront.org/, or call (612) 822-0127 or (800) 800-0350. The Minnesota Family Council is leading the attack in Minnesota, based on what they call “Judeo-Christian principles.” (I’m not even sure what “Judeo-Christian” means, but I think this is an affront to many Jews and Christians, since these people twist whatever theology is handy into hateful caricatures.) To look at their anti-gay ideology and agenda, visit their website at http://www.mfc.org/. Click on “Issues You Care About,” then “Homosexuality.” Whatever state you’re in, you can find out about the laws affecting GLBTI people on the website of the Human Rights Campaign at http://www.hrc.org/stateaction/. Or call 202-628-4160. As always, if you do not have easy access to the internet, just go to your nearest public library; they’ll help you get to these websites. |
|
In an editorial in their February 11th issue, the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) said that state representative Arlon Lindner, author of the anti-gay legislation discussed above, “is a bit to the right even of the House Republican Caucus.” That’s putting it mildly. Let me tell you about the letter I got from Arlon Lindner a few years ago. On April Fool’s Day of 1998, I wrote an email to all the members of the Minnesota House Ways and Means Committee. I think that was the committee. I can’t remember all the details now, but it had to do with an important Health and Human Services (H & HS) spending bill that was being endangered by the attachment of an unrelated abortion amendment by anti-abortion extremists in the House. The tactic to which I was taking exception was the attaching of a very controversial amendment to a very important funding bill, which set up a situation in which House members would be forced to either A) Pass into law an abortion restriction that was not supported by the majority, or B) Refuse to pass the spending bill because of the abortion language, thereby eliminating health-care funding for many who needed it. It was a classic case of pitting one constituency (women) against another (low-income participants in state health-care programs). In my email, I said that I hoped that committee members would not succumb to this tactic. I added that I believed it was a dishonest maneuver by what I referred to as “anti-abortion zealots,” since being forced to vote on two unrelated things at once was not in the interest of democracy. Within a couple of hours, I received an official email from a committee members named Arlon Lindner, the very same one who is now referred to by the local newspaper as being “a bit to the right” of his colleagues. Here’s what his official communication said (I haven’t changed a word):
|