From Krakow to Winston-Salem with the ‘Devil’ in His Heart

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Here’s an interesting first-person account of a Polish exchange student who ended up with a host family of fundamentalist Christians in Winston-Salem.  The situation was a little awkward, to say the least.

"When I got out of the plane in Greensboro in the US state of North
Carolina, I would never have expected my host family to welcome me at
the airport, wielding a Bible, and saying, ‘Child, our Lord sent you
half-way around the world to bring you to us.’ At that moment I just
wanted to turn round and run back to the plane.

Things began to
go wrong as soon as I arrived in my new home in Winston-Salem, where I
was to spend my year abroad. For example, every Monday my host family
would gather around the kitchen table to talk about sex. My host
parents hadn’t had sex for the last 17 years because — so they told me
— they were devoting their lives to God. They also wanted to know
whether I drank alcohol. I admitted that I liked beer and wine. They
told me I had the devil in my heart.

My host parents treated me
like a five-year-old. They gave me lollipops. They woke me every Sunday
morning at 6:15 a.m., saying ‘Michael, it’s time to go to church.’ I
hated that sentence. When I didn’t want to go to church one morning,
because I had hardly slept, they didn’t allow me to have any coffee.

One
day I was talking to my host parents about my mother, who is separated
from my father. They were appalled — my mother’s heart was just as
possessed by the devil as mine, they exclaimed. God wanted her to stay
with her husband, they said.

The kid bailed after six months and ended his year abroad with a young family who enjoyed spending his time with very much.  I don’t care what your belief system is, inviting a child to live with you and then informing him at every turn that he and his family are screwed up is no way to treat a guest.

Found via Connecting the Dots.

You Can Call Me Turd Blossom

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As I‘ve written before my most important familial role is not being "dad" or "husband", but being the expunger, er plunger, of the household floaters.  For those of you who don’t know what a floater is, just think of that stuff that you find in the toilet bowl when the previous user has left a deposit, followed it with about 1/2 roll of toilet paper, pulled the flush handle and then dropped the lid before witnessing that the deposit has not been processed properly.  Or in the real world think of it as the stuff you find in the toilet bowl after the previous user has left a deposit plus 1/2 roll of toilet paper and dropped the lid despite seeing that the deposit has not been processed properly.

I dubbed myself "The Turd Man of Alcatraz" because I thought it accurately conveyed my feeling of being imprisoned with a bunch of toilet defilers, but when you get right down to it that’s not really a good nickname.  I mean it’s just too long.  I suppose you could shorten it to "Turd Man" but that makes me sound like some sort of demented super hero.  So I was elated when I found this Wikipedia entry listing the nicknames used by President Bush.  It ends up he calls Karl Rove  "Turd Blossom".

My friends, "Turd Blossom" is the perfect nickname for me.  I think it conveys a bit of the Zen-like feeling I get when I’ve held my breath for 90 seconds as I vigorously plunge the offending turd bowl.  Some might argue that I’m close to passing out, but I think I’ve entered an altered state of consciousness peculiar to we chronic turd plungers.   Kind of like the mad hatters of the 19th century.

Yesterday I continued my role as "Turd Blossom" by having to plunge two bowls before 8 a.m.  I’d have hit the trifecta if I’d gotten up before Celeste, because she found a pile of dog poop in front of our back door. Apparently the dog hadn’t done all his business when we let him out before going to bed the night before.  The result is this weekend I’m going to hold the first monthly Turd Blossom Academy class on proper butt wiping technique.  The class title is, "Save a Tree: Why You Don’t Need 3 Feet of Toilet Paper for Each Pass of Your Pooter".  Next month it will be, "Why We Use Soap: The Joys of Dysentery". Class fees start at $50 per person, but we offer sibling discounts. 

All the News That’s Fit to Skew

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PBS’s Frontline had a story about a conservative mayor in Spokane, WA named Jim West who was found to be participating in online chats (and more) on Gay.com.  The mayor was also linked to a sheriff’s deputy who’d been found to have been abusing boys when he was a Scout leader in the late 70s.  The mayor had also been a deputy at the time, was the pedophile ‘s partner on the force, and was his Scout co-leader.  The combination of close ties to a child molester and his participation on a gay website attracted the interest of the Spokane Spokesman Review, which had been tipped off about his online activities and probable screen name and decided to try and find out if the mayor was trolling for boys online.

The newspaper hired an outside firm to investigate. To make a long story short the firm’s representative created a false identity, engaged the person they suspected of being the mayor in conversation, and tried to smoke him out.  The interesting thing is that the fake persona was originally said to be 17, legally underage, and the mayor never made any overtly sexual gestures or comments to "him".  Then the firm had their persona turn 18 and that’s when the mayor seemed to become interested sexually.  He arranged a meeting at a golf course with the fake persona, showed up and waited for 20 minutes (he was photographed by the paper) and then left when the fake persona didn’t show.

In the interviews with Frontline the editor and reporter from the Spokesman Review acknowledge that the pedophile angle didn’t play out in their story (they never found proof of any abuse by West) and they also say that at that point they decided it was a non-story, because even though it might be scandalous that a conservative mayor who had been identified as anti-gay in the past was himself engaging in gay activities, it was really his private business.  But then the mayor suggested to the fake persona that he could get him an unpaid internship with the city and the paper decided that they did indeed have a story since the mayor was abusing his office to provide jobs to young men he met online. 

They ran the story, and despite havng no proof that he had been involved in molesting children at any time, they used the headline: "West tied to sex abuse in 70s, using office to lure young men". The mayor’s career was effectively over and he was outed as either bi-sexual or gay.  Not long after the story broke a college student who’d chatted with West came forward to say that West had gotten him a spot on a commission because of West found him attractive and had told him that it was the only way he could see him (I’m paraphrasing).

All of this happened in 2005, and after refusing to resign West was recalled and voted out in December of that year.  He had a recurrence of colon cancer during the scandal and ended up dying in July, 2006.

Here’s my issue with this whole thing; can we really believe that the paper would have run with this story about abuse of office if it hadn’t involved gay men?  We’re not talking influencing mega-contracts with the city, or high-powered, high-paying jobs.  We’re talking about internships.  And let’s be real about how internships and committee assignments are generally made in the real world; first choice is given to personal connections of the people in power or their benefactors.  So this story probably would have been found on page "B4" if it wasn’t for the gay angle, and I think it’s disingenuous to say otherwise.

Using the sex abuse allegation in the headline was particularly egregious.  In fact that whole angle disappears in follow up stories, but the cat was already out of the bag.  It’s this kind of reporting that lends credence to the belief many people have that the media is biased.  Of course media people are biased, they’re human beings after all, but a media operation that is striving to be objective should avoid giving weight to a story merely because it is sensational. 

And of course in order to remain objective a media operation should try to constrain the inherent, human bias of its members.  That’s why it’s truly disturbing to find a memo from the VP of News at Fox that says, among other things, "And let’s be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents, who must be thrilled at the prospect of a Dem-controlled Congress".  In other words the leader of the news operation is mandating they operate by his own bias and saying he wants his people to find him stories that fit his world view. (I know, I know, it’s Fox and what else do you expect.  But as long as they’re pretending to be a news operation and not an entertainment channel we have to treat them as, ahem, newspeople).

In the end that’s what the Spokesman Review did; it started with a premise and when the story ended up not fitting its premise it shoe-horned the square story into its premise’s round hole. Sure the mayor made some mistakes, but had he been doling out internships to pretty 18-22 year old women I don’t think it would have gotten him recalled.  Hell it probably would have won him re-election.

Unfortunately stories that don’t feature titillation, scandal or blood (if it bleeds it leads!) don’t sell newspapers, and objective reporting doesn’t win you a rabid, loyal audience.  As they lay dying the newspapers and traditional networks probably feel that producing crap like this is the only way to stay in business.  Unfortunately I think we’ll see more of this as they struggle to survive. Hopefully we’ll see the growth of a new branch of the fourth estate, one free of the vagaries of quarterly reports to investors, that will wear the mantle of true journalism.  If we don’t I think we’re damned to a lifetime of dumbass blatherers flinging "facts" at us like monkeys hurling poop at zoo visitors.  It’s kind of entertaining until the poop hits you squarely in the face.

Mommy Lushes?

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Only in America could someone right a book about setting up play dates for their kids and then tipping a few back while the little monsters tear the house down.  According to this article in Reveries that’s just what Christie Mellor has done with her book The Three-Martini Playdate.  Here’s a small taste:

Christie’s book actually is one of a number of titles “over the last
few years that urge parents to ease up” by mixing a little alcohol with
their childrearing. Some say this is a healthy thing, “a small break”
from all the “runs to soccer and ballet classes, fundraisers and
homework projects … the almost sadistically stressful world of modern
parenting.”

and

But Christie Mellor says the alcoholism issue misses the point, that
she really only meant the momtinis as "a metaphor for having more fun
in your life … It’s not just about drinking and cutting loose," she
says. "It’s about giving your children the tools to be self sufficient
… Because if you haven’t changed your general attitude, then you just
end up being a really busy drunk."

Somehow I just can’t picture my grandmothers or mother indulging in this kind of silliness.  I mean my grandmothers were non-drinkers and my mom didn’t start drinking alcohol until she was well into her 30s, but even if they did drink and did decide to have a martini during play date they sure wouldn’t make a big deal about it.  Has this generation been so Oprah-fied that we have to create drinking metaphors to tell us how to give our "children the tools to be self sufficient"?

When I was a kid being self sufficient meant you were banned from the house until it was time to eat either lunch or dinner and then if you didn’t show up on time you were in big trouble.  That’s when we kids took the opportunity to discover the wonders of fighting, which I guess in today’s parlance would be called "dispute resolution", seeing who had the most guts by taking whatever outlandish dare we came up with at that moment, finding out how far we could get from our homes without getting into trouble, finding and hiding the neighbors stash of Playboys that he foolishly put in his curbside trashcan, etc.  Our parents didn’t need metaphors to teach us self sufficiency and I suspect today’s mothers don’t either; they’re just looking for a reason to get lit while managing their kids’ schedules.  Of course micro-managing their kids’ lives is a great tool for teaching self sufficiency.

Winston-Salem Journal Staff Feeling the Pain

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Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor of the Winston-Salem Journal, writes today about the staff cuts the paper made last Friday.  They cut their film reviewer, NFL beat reporter, outdoors columnist and two scanning technicians (people who prepared photos for publication).  He does a good job of explaining why the cuts were made and I think the tone of his post reflects the atmosphere that people in the newspaper business are working in these days.

Yesterday I heard from someone who was upset with the cuts, thought they were "gutless" and wondered why Ken hadn’t written about them.  I don’t know Ken personally, although we’ve exchanged email and I’ve read his blog from the beginning, but I can tell you that I don’t think he made the decision lightly.  I’ve yet to meet the person who liked laying off their employees and I’m willing to bet he lost a lot of sleep over it.

Unfortunately I think the Journal’s story is representative of many more stories we’ll be hearing soon from newspapers across the country.  The bloodletting in this industry is just beginning for managers in newsrooms of papers large and small, and I just hope they figure out how to "re-purpose" their people into new media where all the ad revenue is going before they have to "un-purpose" them completely.

I’ve only had to let someone go twice in my life; once because the business was tanking and once for cause.  The first instance still haunts me to this day because it truly was my responsibility, it was my company after all, and he had done nothing wrong.  I still feel guilty about it seven years later although I feel marginally better knowing that his next job landed him a minority stake in a business that has been very successful.  The second instance left my memory as soon as it happened (the guy was an amoral schmuck), although I wondered about my hiring abilities for a while. So if Ken is anything like most managers I’ve known he probably considers Friday one of his worst days in the business.  Hopefully he won’t have too many more like it.

The Web’s Usefulness Knows No End; Where My Kids Won’t Be Going to College

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Here’s a link to a little Google mashup that shows you where the top 10 most expensive colleges are in the United States.  I’m going to use this sites to steer my children away from these particular institutions, but despite what you might think it’s not only because of the money.

While I was in school I spent quite a bit of time on the campus of the most expensive school, George Washington University, and from that experience I learned a couple of important lessons:

  • When drinking is involved, the idiotic behavior of the students is directly proportional to the amount of money the drinkers’ parents are spending on their education.  It was only at GWU that I witnessed people flinging themselves off of fire escapes into the kind-of-waiting arms of their even-more-drunk brethren.  I never saw equally stupid behavior at my state-school with one tenth the tuition, George Mason University.
  • I also spent a little time at the number two school on the list, the University of Richmond.  I had a distinct dislike for those guys because the Spiders routinely knocked GMU out of the CAA tournament when Richmond was still in the conference.  On top of that they were some snotty SOBs even before they started drinking and the aforementioned rule kicked in.  In short, lesson #2 is that money doesn’t buy class.

Okay, okay, it’s more than a little about the money.  I’m not sure I want to, or even can, swing the equivalent of a car payment x 8 for my childrens’ education.  Unless they get themselves a heckuva scholarship it just ain’t happening.  But that’s okay because my main goals are to get them to 18 still healthy (I’m talking about them), educated well enough that someone will let them into their school, and sane enough to appreciate it (I’m talking about me).  I’m not too terribly picky about where they go, as long as they go…right away.  None of this "I need to discover myself" BS, because if they want to discover themselves they can do it on their own nickel in their own roach infested hell-hole.  I’m pretty sure that’s when they’ll "discover" higher education is where it’s at.

After kid #3 gets his papers I have a plan.  I’ve informed Celeste but she doesn’t think I’m serious, but I have a feeling when kid #1 gets ready to graduate (hopefully in the same swift five years it took his dad) and we’re looking the possibility of a boomerang kid square in the eyes she’ll buy into my plan.  It’s really quite simple in its brilliance: we’ll sell the house, buy an RV using the proceeds and some of the money we saved by not sending our kids to one of America’s expensive and vastly overrated learning institutions, and then we’ll tour the States.  We’ll coordinate with the kids for holidays and just show up.  Heck we might even swing by and visit between the holidays, but the roost will be moving and I seriously doubt any sane 22 year old would want to fly back to it.  We’ll keep the trailer until the kids get married and start creating their own private agony known as parenthood and then we’ll buy a house that requires zero upkeep (i.e. has no yard) near them so we can spoil the little brats, er grandkids, and send them home with their parents.

So we’ll get away for a while, recover some remnant of our pre-kids souls, and actually begin to speak in full sentences again.  We’ll recharge our batteries and ready ourselves to unleash life’s greatest reward: grandparents’ revenge.

Teapots, Earmarks and Foxx

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ABC’s Nightline did a piece on anonymous Congressional spending earmarks and about halfway through the piece they have an interview with our recently re-elected Congresswoman Virginia Foxx about an earmark she had inserted in a bill for a Teapot Museum in Sparta, NC.  Here’s some highlights from her comments:

  • She says that people are only making fun of the project because it’s called the "Teapot Museum" and really it’s an art museum.  (Ed. Note: Teapots are art?)
  • She also says that since this is the way the game is played (anonymous earmarks inserted in spending bills) that’s how she’s going to play it.
  • She says that she’s not embarassed about asking for the funding and if the rules were different she would gladly ask for the money in a more transparent manner.

Uh huh.  Here’s my reaction to that:

  • You didn’t have to insert it as an earmark. You could have publicly inserted the request for funding in the bill, but you chose not to.
  • Two (or more) wrongs don’t make a right.
  • Nice principles.  "I’m going to play fast and loose with taxpayer dollars because everyone else is."
  • Didn’t notice you standing on the House floor screaming for reform, but maybe I missed it.

Finally, it looks like the ABC interview was conducted at the recording studio of Triad Today either before or after her debate with Roger Sharpe.  Isn’t that the same debate from which she asked the Winston-Salem Journal to be banned?  Just asking.

I Knew Him When He Was Just Bill

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An old friend and brother in the Iota Xi chapter of Sigma Chi (George Mason U) is making a name for himself.  Bill "Will" Carter used to be Sen. John Warner’s press secretary and completely changed careers a few years back when he went to New York to try his hand at acting.  He’s in California now and is starting to get some juicy roles, including a role in Running with Scissors in a scene opposite Annette Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow.

There’s a nice article on Bill in the latest Mason Spirit alumni magazine, and it is absolutely awesome to see Bill making it after such a big gamble.  Still, he’ll always be "Billy from Appomattox" to me.

Blue Cross Could Have Sent Some Vaseline Too

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Remember the truism that nothing is certain but death and taxes?  I think that needs to be revised to state "nothing is certain but death, taxes and massive annual rate hikes from your health insurer".  Actually that last could probably be better stated as an "annual screwing from your health insurer".

We recieved a letter from our health insurer, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina (BCBSNC), that begins as follows:

Dear Valued Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Member:

Thank you for choosing Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) for your health insurance needs. We value your continued membership and want to let you know about some upcoming changes to your Blue Advantage premiums and benefits.

Most Blue Advantage subscribers will have a premium adjustment in 2007.   This will be your guaranteed premium until January 1, 2008, unless you switch plans, add dependents or purchase additional coverage.

Blue Advantage is the most popular individual insurance plan in North Carolina and currently serves more than 315,000 members. Your Blue Advantage premium adjustment is based on the health care costs of all Blue Advantage members and is impacted by factors such as where you live, your benefit design, your gender and your age. For example, if you had a birthday in the past year that put you in a new age-bracket category, it may have had an effect on your January 1, 2007 premium adjustment.  Your individual claims do not have an impact on your annual premium changes.

Here’s the thing: our premiums were about $595 a month this year, which was up about 10% over the year before.  This is a 35% increase from ’06 to ’07!  Celeste and I both turned 40 this year and so I went to the BCBSNC rate quote website and found that if I compared rates for us at the age of 38 and 40, the quote for age 40 was about 8% higher.  So where in the heck did the rest of the increase come from?

What kills me is that there are NO factors that say anything about our personal health choices.  Why can’t we get credit for exercise?  Why can’t we get credit for a healthy diet?  Why can’t we get credit for our general health?  They can lump us in with the rest of the people who are individually insured, essentially treating us as a group health plan, but they give us no control over how we might control costs.  This is BS!

Here’s something else that just pisses me off about this: BCBSNC is a non-profit that has been accused in the past of making too much profit and in fact they made a concerted PR push last year to point out that they were reducing their profits.  They were sensitive enough about it that they sued an advocacy group called ProCare over the group’s disclosure of what BCBSNC said were confidential business sources.  Of course that doesn’t mean that ProCare was wrong and one of the documents in dispute detailed how BCBSNC spent $478,000 to sponsor the US Open.  And my old employer, Atlantic Information Services, had a piece in ’05 about how states, including North Carolina, are going after the "Blues" for reserves that are too high.  The point is that non-profits have reasons for existing that go beyond profits which is why they get their special status and treatment from our friends in government, and I can tell you that if the non-profits I worked with spent money the way BCBSNC seems to they’d be in a heap of trouble.

We can change our coverage options (higher premium, higher co-pays, etc.) to bring down our monthly premiums, and we might end up doing that, but we’re also going to seriously consider a Medical Savings Account.  We’ve been looking at MSAs for a while, but we were kind of scared off by the "newness" of them.  I also remember reading about UnitedHealthcare getting ready to offer individual health coverage in NC (right now BCBSNC has a monopoly in the state) and we’re going to check them out as well. BCBSNC has given us a lot of motivation to look at ALL of our alternatives. 

Here’s my final observation about these jokers and another truism in the realm of business communications: any letter that begins with "we value your continued membership" is the setup for a royal screwing and out of kindness should be accompanied by a small package of personal lubricant.

By the way, this experience just gives me further evidence that Dr. Feld is right about the need for true competition and free market reforms in the healthcare marketplace.