Sunday, October 24, 2010

Reaching Across the Airwaves to Anita Hill




Virginia Thomas

I am so enjoying what must be at least a small uncomfortable moment for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Possibly even an intensely uncomfortable time, but he still keeps his job for life so what the hell. It is Clarence Thomas’s job for life to make me deeply unhappy. Even without careful research, I am fairly certain Thomas has never written nor voted for a single Supreme Court decision that I would support (BUSH v GORE and CITIZENS UNITED V FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION being two of the most egregious).
Thomas’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings in the Senate were almost as popular as the O.J. trial. I can’t remember now why I didn’t watch, but from the recounting below, it’s clear Thomas dodged a very large caliber bullet.
It's been 20 years since Anita Hill exposed Clarence Thomas as a sexual harasser during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Professor Hill described how the now Supreme Court justice subjected her to descriptions of pornography he had watched, and bragged about his own sexual prowess in graphic terms. On the very day of his swearing in, the Washington Post had amassed damning evidence that corroborated Hill's testimony, including eyewitness accounts about Thomas' porn consumption from the manager of his local video store. Jeffrey Toobin reported that the Washington Post decided to drop the story since Thomas had already been sworn in to the court.
I have to ask myself if I would still want Justice Ruth Ginsburg on the Court in the face of irrefutable evidence that she is obsessed with pornography. Yes, I’d overlook it. So I can understand why the right wing would stand by their man, family values notwithstanding, but it does bring a certain amount of satisfaction that this sordid business has been resurrected. By Virginia Thomas, his wife.
Thomas’s wife, then and still, is alleged to be a very savvy political operator, a well-known Tea Party activist. I have to marvel that she woke up one morning a week or so ago and decided to leave a voice mail message for Anita Hill, asking Ms. Hill to apologize to Clarence Thomas. 



The Associated Press relays the transcript of that message.
In a transcript of the message provided by ABC News, which said it listened to the recording, Thomas identified herself and then said, "I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day," Thomas said.


If this was a brilliant political strategy move, it must be deceptively clever. Fortunately for Virginia, she was on a very fast news cycle with elections looming. Unfortunately for Virginia, Thomas’s former girlfriend decided to jump on the news cycle too.
Just days after the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas left a surprise voice mail message for Anita Hill, Mr. Thomas’s former girlfriend is speaking out. In an article in The Washington Post, Lillian McEwen says that Mr. Thomas was “obsessed with porn” and frequently commented on the looks of other women while the two dated more than two decades ago.
“He was obsessed with porn,” Ms. McEwen told Post reporter Michael Fletcher. “He would talk about what he had seen in magazines and films, if there was something worth noting.”
Sounds like something from Desperate Housewives of Washington D.C. Maybe Clarence Thomas is making Virginia Thomas deeply unhappy as well.
                                                                  
Postscript:

Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, says the call she placed to Anita Hill in October "was probably a mistake on my part."




Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Somewhere in the World, There is a Duck Watching You

Human phobias are wonderfully curious.  A phobic disorder, manifesting in irrational, intense and persistent fear, can be disabling and completely not funny. But the objects of these irrational fears are so random, so numerous, and sometimes so bizarre, it’s hard to keep a straight face. Examples of actual, known phobias that qualify:



anthophobia                fear of flowers

chorophobia                fear of dancing

koumpounophobia     fear of buttons 

lachanophobia             fear of vegetables

xanthophobia               fear of the color yellow

 octophobia                   fear of the number 8

hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia     fear of long words


Honorable mention for completely batshit: 

barophobia                     fear of gravity
 

Irrational but not unreasonable:

Deipnophobia-                fear of dining with others or of dinner conversations

cyberphobia                    fear of computers      

albuminurophobia        fear of kidney disease
              
papaphobia                      fear of the Pope







So, Gary Larson's The Far Side taking creative license:

  • Anatidaephobia is the fear that somewhere in the world, there is a duck watching you. 
  • Luposlipaphobia - is the fear of being pursued by timber wolves around a kitchen table while wearing socks on a newly waxed floor.

One size fits all:

phobophobia                fear of phobias















Monday, October 18, 2010

Street Fighting; Politics in a Home Owners Association



I was quite genuinely surprised to find that filing a lawsuit could be such a satisfying experience. As a new board member of our neighborhood homeowners association, I was originally against such a threat to non-paying dues members. 

Our housing development is nearly thirty years old, but for the first twenty years or so, the members did not pay any dues. Then came the flood. Even though our CC&R's were entirely specific that the HOA was to maintain a large drainage area on our common land, and was to obtain liability insurance, the original twenty-six homeowners were not convinced. Shortly after my husband and I moved into the neighborhood, the poorly maintained and overgrown drainage system backed up and flooded a neighbor's house. The neighbor himself literally risk his life trying to unblock it on the dark and stormy night of the flood. Complete renovation was costly, as was appropriate insurance and professional maintenance, and annual HOA dues became a sudden reality.

One neighbor, who was a raging Democrat, instantly became a libertarian on the issue of HOA dues and for five years, refused to pay. Two other homeowners were deeply offended as well; they paid for a year or two and then stopped.  The board's treasurer was particularly unpopular with these delinquent  members. As a former manager of much larger HOA's, the treasurer persistently tried to convince the board to begin lawsuits for non-payment. As board members, we deliberated the fate of these three homeowners with great earnestness. Having given them many warnings, including a lawyer's demand letter, we reluctantly pulled the trigger. 

Upon starting a lawsuit, one's first realization is how bloody expensive it is to engage a lawyer. They seem like friends, they have your interests at heart, but they charge by the nanosecond. We began our legal education with the unrepentant libertarian. Much as I'm sure he would like to have fought on, he was also paying a lawyer and at some point discovered that he couldn't win but could loose his house. He struck a deal; game over. And now the true realization comes. Not only does the homeowner as defendant pay the dues, he pays all the legal fees it took to fight the case. Of course, we all know that from watching TV, but you don't really know it until you've accrued a frightening legal tab and experience the great satisfaction of seeing someone else pick up the bill.

Drumming for Plasticity

From Neuroscience for Kids
What is brain plasticity? Does it mean that our brains are made of plastic? Of course not. Plasticity, or neuroplasticity, is the lifelong ability of the brain to reorganize neural pathways based on new experiences.

We've all met people who do appear to have a brain made of plastic. Another explanation might be that there are some people who never have new experiences. As an aging person, I see it as my job and responsibility to have regular new experiences so that my neural pathways will keep reorganizing indefinitely. Learning a new language is supposed to be excellent for this purpose, but would require way too much reorganizing, I think. Taking drumming lessons is a lot more fun. 


I got enamored with drumming by chance. A drumming teacher brought drums to a meeting that had nothing to do with music or drumming, and gave us a lesson for free. Before learning anything more about drumming, I bought my first drum, an African djembe.

Group drumming classes vacillate between exhilarating and terrifying. When your hands have found the pattern, you can drum yourself into a happy trance. Your mind has to grasp the pattern first, but it must quickly become mindless because you must play faster than you can think. Should you get stuck in thinking, you're toast. In some classes, I do well and feel like a star, or maybe I just feel like a real musician. On a bad night, my confidence evaporates. My brain turns to plastic. 


Not Flirting With the Waiter

At my grandma age, most young men look like boys, and no matter how good-looking, they don’t stir a ruffle in my mind. There are exceptions. My husband and I were eating in a good Italian restaurant right outside of Yellowstone Park with a busy Friday night crowd. Our waiter had blond good looks, both hair and beard on the scruffy side with just the right amount of scruff; and being from South Africa, the English accent to give him an even greater edge. He was charming as well, and treated us as if we might be interesting people rather than one more dull tourist couple.
As there were not a lot of choices in the small resort town, we returned to the restaurant the following Sunday, when business was much slower. We were in a different waiter’s section, but the blond one came over to greet us and spread more charm. Presumably, he wasn’t performing for a tip this time. The entire staff was young, and as they weren’t that busy, I watched the interactions. The blond one was a talented flirt with all the pretty young women working there. He invariably moved into their personal space whenever he spoke to them, as if he had a special relationship with each of them. Most of the young women became transparently flustered by his attention, but in a seemingly pleasant way.
As he didn’t have that much to do in his own section, the blond one visited our table as much as our own waiter did. He wasn’t flirting with me, but after watching him operate, I became much too aware of his presence. Some grandma types love flirting with the waiter as they can’t be taken seriously and therefore have a free pass to say whatever comes to mind. Or maybe it’s just a lifelong extrovert thing with them, age not being a factor. I, on the other hand, was with great effort very consciously not flirting with the young waiter.