Across the Great Divide

Splendid Isolation.

She's just like a Penguin in Bondage, boy
Oh yeah, Oh yeah, Oh . . .

– Frank Zappa

I may be a little too isolated out here, or else I should get a television. Until yesterday I had managed to miss the unfolding Max Mosley Nazi bondage scandal.

No links to the released video here. Not worth the trip, unless you're into unimaginative scripts, cheap costumes, unconvincing readings and poorly framed shots — surrounded by other lurid promos from Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. Less excitement than watching video of somebody else's kid fishing for sunnies on a foggy day — and not catching any.

No, what you had in mind would've been much better than this sad little episode.

Mosley was probably not thinking about reputation management when he commissioned this set piece, but had he consulted PR professionals, they might've counseled the son of notorious Nazi sympathizers to go with a Penguin theme and hope none of the hookers belonged to PETA.

Meanwhile, an honest-to-god bondage story has been playing in this country, again involving supposedly willing women. (No one has found the girl whose calls alerted authorities to abuse at the Texas ranch where sex with underage girls has been elevated to a sacrament. An expert on the church believes she's been spirited to another Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) community, after being caught making one of the calls for help.)

Whether ritualized, tribalized, sacramentalized or simply carried out in the privacy of one's home, the practice of subjugating women to male authority follows a disturbingly similar pattern.

Well, he didn’t start out with the fundy stuff right away—I suppose you could call him a charismatic, because he believed in speaking in tongues, all that crap. It had nothing to do with religion at first; he never talked about it, then he became possessive, wanting me to be around all the time (he had no qualms about living together BTW), wanting me to quit my job, wanting me to quit school, not see friends, break off with my family, worrying about “seeing me in heaven,” etc., and he crossed a physical line, so I walked out. That cost me.

Isolation is key, because it allows the controller to distort the victim's sense of what's normal and to cut off paths of aid and escape. FLDS has been able to perpetuate these practices on a large scale, thanks to the cloaking of the First Amendment, the isolating expanses of the rural West and a mythology that feeds off persecution.

"Maybe our legislators have cunningly laid a snare to catch the innocent just because they believe in an unpopular religion," Jessop continued. "So it was on the days of Jesus Christ. So it was in the days of Joseph Smith. So it was in the Days of Warren Jeffs."

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann almost had it right when she spoke out at an EdWatch National Education Conference when she denounced:

Personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement. And that's why this is so dangerous.

Of course, she was talking "the gay and lesbian lifestyle."

Colorado Weekend: Big Gun Coming to Town.

I'm not trying to set up Joel for our next gun discussion, really I'm not.

After all, Minneapolis has a ripe current case that provides a provocative example of the ambiguities surrounding self-defense claims.

I'm just showing that out here in Colorado, where the buffalo roam, the varieties of gun news have a different tenor right now.

(The 32 buffalo were shot near my great grandmother's former homestead, a place the columnist called "the middle of a lot of central Colorado nothingness," which must make Denver the center of everythingness.)

*****

Some exciting news from where I sit. Dick Cheney's coming next week to the far left part of the state — a better description might be "to the right of Utah" — for Senate fund raiser for Bob Schaffer — a good description would be to the right of Mark Kennedy... or maybe near the center of nothingness.

I'm wondering if would be worth 150 bucks to get close to Cheney and really confuse the hell out of anyone checking out my political donations.

*****
My brother-in-law had Tombstone on when I went over for dinner. Damn, they ran a tight ship back then. Oh, sure there were murders and all. But they kept all traces of horse manure off the main street day and night, and the dirt stayed as smooth as my living room floor. Clothes were always clean, women were hot and well kept, except for the one doing the laudanum, and the good guys were are all pretty sensitive for the 21st century, let alone the 19th.

Even when there was bloodshed and Kurt Russell had blood up to his elbows, he could caress his dying brother's forehead and never leave a print! The bar and rooms, including the jail? Immaculate. The consumptive Doc Holliday? Pale, yes, but otherwise, Paul Verlaine with six guns. Three bad cowboys went to Boot Hill in curved glass-topped coffins that looked better than any piece of furniture I've ever owned.

Doc Holliday died in Glenwood Springs, the town where I grew up, and making the little hike up the mountain to see his tombstone was like going to Mall of America. (It's what you did when you had visitors and didn't know what to do with them.)

My grandfather's ranch (not the Colorado side of the family) was near Tombstone in Cochise county. I don't recall any woods like they rode through, but maybe life was better around there in the frontier days, and we don't realize how bad we have it.

Why Do Religious Conservatives Kill Their Kids?

On June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children, who ranged in age from six months to seven years, in a bathtub in her home. Prior to this, she had manifested symptoms of depression with psychosis, which were exacerbated in her postpartum periods. She had been hospitalized four times and was catatonic and mute during one admission. In statements made following the crime, she indicated that she believed that she was a bad mother and that she had concerns that her children would not grow up properly secondary to her shortcomings. She noted that she killed them to save them from eternal damnation.
— Psychiatry MMC

Here's a topic for study by some enterprising PhD student: Do more religious conservatives than liberals murder their children?

(You can spare me the comments about abortion. I'm talking about filicide here — and even more, our stupid tendency to explain differences in complex behaviors based on a generalized political affiliation.)

I was thinking about this even before George Will's latest column about how conservatives are more generous than liberals, which I'll take up in a separate post.

In Wisconsin this week, the home schooled daughter of a fundamentalist family died because her diabetes was left untreated. The mother says they are not crazy, religious people who belong to any organized faith. She just writes for an end-of-days ministry website on the side and actively proselytizes other women. Her sister-in-law, who called the sheriff, seemed to think there was a problem.

The aunt: "My sister-in-law, she’s very religious, she believes in faith instead of doctors ... and she called my mother-in-law today ... and she explained to us that she believes her daughter’s in a coma now and she’s relying on faith. ..."

The dispatcher got more information from the caller and asked if an ambulance should be sent.

The aunt: "Please. I mean, she’s refusing. She’s gonna fight it so ... We’ve been trying to get her to take her to the hospital for a week, a few days now so."

In Iowa, an embezzling banker bludgeoned his wife and four kids to death before killing himself. In communications left behind, he indicated he believed his family was in heaven.

And, not to leave anyone out, a Muslim cab driver in Canada strangled his 16-year-old daughter because she refused to submit to his control and demands she wear traditional Muslim garb.

I've looked for a study that examines the role of political and religious beliefs of parents who murder their children. Haven't found one. But golly, the circumstantial evidence doesn't look good, does it? And it stands to reason, when you decide to kill your kids with a baseball bat, the idea you're sending them to heaven might lets you swing just a little more freely.

Anyone offended yet? No, I'm not calling all religious fundamentalists child murderers. But if there's a pattern of behavior that could lead to prevention, wouldn't it be good to understand it?

Psychiatric researchers may not see much merit in testing my only half-serious hypothesis. The research already indicates that filicide is a multidimensional crime, and like most human behavior, is not likely to reduce down to red state/blue state simplification.

But it's hard to shake that whenever I see news of a suicide bomber or a murderous parent, God shows up pretty frequently in the story. John Kerry bumper stickers, not so much.

Blast from the Past.

Explosions like the one that killed four workers at a Georgia sugar refinery are preventable if plants take precautions to keep down dust. But OSHA has not moved to implement stricter regulations designed to prevent dust explosions.

Combustible dust was responsible for at least 281 explosions from 1980 to 2005 that killed a total of 119 people and injured 718 others, according to study conducted by the United States Chemical Safety Board after a rash of deadly dust incidents in 2003.

That dust-laden air can produce tremendous explosions is not exactly news.

One of the most traumatic events in Minneapolis history was the explosion of the Washburn A Mill that killed 18 workers.

On May 2, 1878, at 7:10 p.m., a spark ignited flour dust in the Washburn A Mill. The explosion that followed blew the mill’s concrete roof several hundred feet in the air and leveled the seven and a-half story limestone building. The nearby Humboldt and Diamond Mills also were flattened by the explosion, and one third of the city’s business district was destroyed by the fire. The explosion broke windows as far away as Summit Avenue in St. Paul, and limestone blocks landed in yards eight blocks from the milling district.

The old Nicollet Hotel at Nicollet and Washington had a giant millstone from the mill the explosion had allegedly been thrown nearby. The picture here is no doubt a dramatic, pre-PhotoShop recreation sold as a stereopticon image.

The 130-year-old disaster was an even bigger shock for  residents than the 2007 I-35W bridge collapse, because so many lived or worked near the milling district. They didn't just experience it through news reports. They heard or felt the blast.

People from Minneapolis and St. Paul poured into the streets. Many were convinced that the city had been struck by an earthquake; others believed that the world had ended.

The reaction of people in the mill town of Port Wentworth, Georgia, was similar.

An elderly couple nearby believed that they were under attack, as did Ashlie Myers, 21. “I thought somebody blew up the port,” Ms. Myers said. “Like a crash dummy, I was standing outside thinking I was going to die.”

They Trusted Big Government.

God isn't the only healer invoked by scam artists:

Over a period of six years, the Finleys persuaded 22 people to pay them a total of $989,898, prosecutors said. Many of the victims, who ranged in age from young adults to the elderly, depleted savings, insurance policies, and pension funds.

Stacey Finley, 34, persuaded her targets -- described by federal prosecutors as "solid, middle-class, educated citizens" -- that she was a CIA agent and could use her agency contacts to have medical scans conducted by satellite. Finley said the scans would reveal hidden medical problems, prosecutors said, and that CIA agents would then enter their homes and administer secret medications while they slept. Those treatments would supposedly prevent serious health problems and hereditary diseases.

[...]

Asked how so many people could be conned by such far-fetched claims, U.S. Attorney Donald Washington described Finley as "a cult-like, charismatic personality."

Iraqi Policewomen: It's Not About the Guns.

There's surely no shortage of guns today in Iraq, but the LA Times reports Iraqi policewomen are being ordered to turn their weapons in for redistribution to male colleagues. Looks like the Second Amendment isn't the only freedom that has failed to be imported by a democratic Iraq.

Critics say the move is the latest sign of the religious and cultural conservatism that has taken hold in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's ouster ushered in a government dominated by Shiite Muslims. Now, that tendency is hampering efforts to bring stability to Iraq by driving women from the force, said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. David Phillips, who has led the effort to recruit female officers.

"We nursed it along," he said last week, referring to the recruiting effort. "We saw this as: 'If we could get 50% of the brain power in this country that is not being utilized engaged, how much further along would we be?' "

[...]

Policewomen say the decree also will leave them unable to protect themselves at work or off duty. Scores of police employees, both officers and administrative workers, have been killed by insurgents.

[...]

U.S. trainers began recruiting women in early 2004 and were so swamped with applicants that they had to turn many away. By the end of that year, about 1,000 women had graduated. Since U.S. authorities handed over responsibility for police recruitment and training to Iraqi authorities in February 2006, Phillips said, the number of female recruits has dropped to virtually zero.

Meanwhile, a female ex-cop volunteering as a security guard shot the gunman attacking New Life Church members in Colorado Springs earlier in the week. She credited God with steadying her aim. However, the fatal shot was self-inflicted, police now say.

Let's try to get this straight. The God of Islam says no guns for girls. The God of Christianity says I'll only help  you wing the dude. And let's not not even get into what the God of the Conceal & Carry Orthodox Church is saying.

Getting Government Out of Our Lives.

At the risk of being exceedingly inappropriate, this is a bad sign: A shooter walks into a mall during the Christmas shopping season and kills eight people; only two are shoppers.

But this is not an "economy sucks so what's the use" story, despite the fact Robert A. Hawkins had recently lost his job at McDonald's. It is not a gun story or "assault rifle" story, despite the weapon he used. It's not a teens on antidepressants story, though some will play it that way. Nor is it about ethnic politics (Hawkins apparently had an Hispanic mother).

This gets us closer: "Like a lost pound puppy that nobody wanted" says a woman who tried to help Hawkins before he shot up an Omaha department store and killed those people before shooting himself.

Pound puppies get euthanized. Lost kid may have to do the job themselves.

Acquaintances said that Hawkins was a drug user and that he had a history of depression. In 2005 and 2006, according to court records, he underwent psychiatric evaluations, the reasons for which Landry would not disclose, citing privacy rules.

In May 2002, he was sent to a treatment center in Waynesville, Mo., after threatening his stepmother. Four months later, a Nebraska court decided Hawkins' problems were serious enough that he should be under state supervision and made him a ward of the state.

[...]

Under state law, Landry said, wards are released when all sides — parents, courts, social workers — agree it is time for them to go. Once Hawkins was set free, he was entirely on his own. He was no longer under state supervision, and was not released into anyone's custody.

Asked whether the state should have watched over Hawkins after he was released, Peterson said: "When our role is ended, we try to step out."

I'm not excusing Hawkins, and I'm not blaming the anti-nanny-state forces who may have helped put him on the street. I have empathy for his parents and his step-parents. This is very hard stuff, even for the most functional families.

Most of all, I feel for the citizens in the wrong place at the wrong time.

They now have government totally out of their lives.

Who Gets Busted for Funny Stuff at the Airport?

Andy at Eleventh Street South [cross-posted at MinnMon] interviews "Jeremy" who tells "Why I gave up public sex at the MSP airport." Triggered by a story about Finnish musicians, mnpACT blog comments on recent incidents at MSP airport where foreign visitors have been treated less than hospitably. The Strib story said:

He [a US Customs press officer] speculated that the Finns could have been singled out because they were arriving from Amsterdam, considered high risk for narcotics trafficking.

From the rest of the story, it sounded like there were suspicions the musicians, without a work permit, were in the state to earn big money playing Finnish folk songs.

Yesterday as I awaited a flight to Denver, I overheard parts of a fellow traveler's cell phone conversation. Usually, I try mightily to tune out these annoying intrusions, but my ears perked up when I heard:

About that marijuana thing... I don't think I want to do it... I have to stay focused...

Maybe the casually dressed business guy was meeting friends for some sort of Rocky Mountain high fun and wanted to stick to golf on the weekend.

Well, if he wants to do it in the background...

Seemed like he was saying — not all the words were making it to me — Roger can toke up, just not in the hotel. But then he started talking about "using the plane" and the DEA. It became clear he was talking about transporting a quantity of weed aboard a non-commercial aircraft.

The guy was sitting in first class when I boarded. I was tempted to lean over and whisper, good call on the marijuana thing.

Most days when I head through North Minneapolis, I see the young guys "waiting for the bus." On the other side of the divide in their business, the prosperous gentlemen fly first class.

From the Department of Lame Excuses.

He told officers he sweats profusely if he wears clothing while jogging. "I know what I did was wrong," he said in the report.

Multiple choice quiz. The above quote comes from a story about:

A. A city council member caught jogging in the community center after hours
B. A priest returning from a run around a high school track
C. A state representative running into a bird watcher in a wildlife sanctuary
D. A CEO found in cool-down mode with a comely employee on a public beach

The right answer. And shame on you for thinking all the answers could be correct.

Lady Bird, Fly Away Home.

For a good half of America, Lady Bird Johnson could just as well be Abigail Adams — a vaguely familiar name attached to some dead president.

She doesn't need a good word from me,  but that's never stopped me before.

If you weren't alive and looking through a windshield before Lady Bird Johnson took on the cause of beautifying America's highways, it's probably impossible to understand the impact she had on this country.

Lady Bird, who died yesterday, was Pres. Lyndon Johnson's first lady. I prefer to think of her as riding shotgun.

In an era when trash disposal meant "throw that thing out the window" and billboards were considered one of the Bill of Rights, Lady Bird Johnson got the entire country to change its behavior, give or take a half million Busch and Keystone drinkers.

Although her focus was primarily America's rural landscape, her injunction to let Vermont look like Vermont and Texas look like Texas should've been applied much more widely. Consequently, wildflowered roadsides and unclogged vistas bear her invisible mark, while our cities look more and more the same.

George W. and Laura are the new proto-Teaxns and Bill and Hill are the presidential power couple, but for actual impact on people's lives, I give you Lyndon and Lady Bird: the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Great Society, the War on Poverty, Medicare/Medicaid, the National Endowment for the Arts, Highway Beautification Act, Head Start...

We should be so lucky ever again.