As a Matter of Fact, I Can Spare a Dime

I meant to write this around the holidays, but got busy as usual and relegated it to the pile of essays written only in my imagination. But the subject same up on a friend’s Facebook status today, so I figured I’d come back to it. His question: “If a homeless guy walks into Subway while you're buying a sandwich, and asks you to buy him some food, would you?”

My answer: Yes. I also tend to give dollar bills to the Street Sheet seller, the guy who’s usually outside the Safeway, and a fair number of other individuals I encounter who seem to be having a rough time of it. Everyone has their reasons for refusing beggars, and I’m not out to judge. Nor do I think that my own reasons for giving apply in every situation. But for me, none of the typical admonitions against giving to panhandlers holds up. Here's how my mind handles some of the common objections:

Giving to panhandlers isn’t right, I give to charities instead. If everyone who said this really followed through, we wouldn’t be seeing homeless shelters closing for lack of funds and food banks facing critical shortages and spikes in request for help. I’ve heard the same people make this, then turn around and complain about charities’ administrative costs. Each method of giving has its advantages and disadvantages. So why not do both?

If I give a money to every homeless person who asks, I’ll end up broke myself. How many people really ask you for change every day? Two? Three? Even when I took the el to and from downtown Chicago every day, I don’t think I ever had more than four people ask me for change in a single day. And I have “bleeding-heart sucker” stamped on my forehead. If it really will break you, only you can know that. But if you’re reading this on a computer at your home or office, chances are a buck won’t bankrupt you.

He’ll probably use it to buy alcohol or drugs. So what if he does? Desperation is desperation. My refusing him a dollar isn’t going to break his addiction. If I were unemployed, marginally housed, and reduced to begging, I’d want a drink, too.

Some of these people make more than $20 an hour doing this. The idea behind this objection is that most people asking you for money aren’t really needy; they’ve just found way to make a living that’s easier than working. There’s just one problem with that theory. Standing outside all day asking people for money isn’t easy. If given the choice between that and your current job, what would you pick? If you really think begging is a better gig that whatever you’ve got, why not try it out for an hour? And think about the fact that it’s a job with no sick days, no health insurance, no worker’s compensation. While you may find the occasional prankster who just wants to see what he can get away with, the likelihood that the person asking you for change is scamming you is pretty unlikely. A scam artist won’t beg, he’ll try to sell you something. Like the chance to invest with his hedge fund.

The only thing that dissuades me from giving is if my personal safety feels threatened. Being generous doesn’t mean risking your safety, or even your wallet. If I’m going to have to dig through my purse in on an empty or poorly lit street, I will say I’m sorry, I can’t help you tonight.

This, at the end of the day, is all that we owe anyone who asks us for money. Whatever your reasons for not giving, you haven’t done anything wrong if you refuse. But the least we can do is give an honest refusal. If you can’t look the person in the eye to refuse them, if have to just pretend you haven’t seen or heard them--why is that? If the answer is that you feel bad for saying no, there’s a way to rid yourself of that shame.

Have you no sense of decency, sir?

"Until this moment, Senator, I think I had never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness…. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

These were the words of army lawyer Joseph Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy on June 9, 1954.
They could just as easily be the words many Americans have today for Senator John McCain.

Whatever credit McCain earned through his decades of public service has run out. Everyone tiptoeing around, trying to show the deference due a senior statesman, should at this point, give up. The statesman is gone, and in his place is a gross caricature of America at its worst: a slandering bully, assigning guilt by association just as McCarthy did a half-century ago.

Who ruined more lives, McCarthy or Bill Ayers? McCarthy and his band of witchhunters destroyed hundreds of careers, damaged the army and the State Department for decades to come, and turned thousands of Americans into informants against their friends and colleagues. The Weather Underground damaged property but had few human casualties. The long lens of history has revealed McCarthy as a destructive force fueled by alcohol and bitterness. The same lens has given Ayers the chance to redeem himself as a contributor to the advancement of American intellectual discourse.

Senator Obama and Bill Ayers have crossed paths as neighbors, fellow educators, and yes, as fellow liberals. For Governor Palin to equate that with "palling around with terrorists"--and for McCain to stand by and encourage it--is as reprehensible as the smears against another promising Harvard Law graduate that prompted Joseph Welch's famous remarks.

Have you no sense of decency, Senator McCain?

Get a Grip Folks

About Barack Obama
Here's my question:

Have any of the people, including and especially Obama's supporters, who are shocked by his vote on the FISA bill or his stance on Iraq, actually READ HIS BOOK?

If not, maybe you should stop shouting, unplug the computer, and read The Audacity of Hope. It's a moving read, and he addresses the nuanced thought processes behind so many decisions that get splashed in the headlines as the ultimate indicators of a person's motives and character.

He writes about the need to sometimes vote for a bad bill or against a good one, in language very similar to his recent discussion of his FISA vote. He reaches into the history books to help readers understand the compromises that are inherent to lawmaking. Like you, and like Obama, I dislike the provisions of the bill that provide immunity to corporations who have violated the law. You can argue til you're blue in the face about whether or not it his vote was a good political decision. The point is whether or not as a legislator, in the circumstances of that particular vote, he made the right decision.

The positions he espouses on the Iraq debacle are no different now than when he wrote the book in 2006. And in my opinion, they are the most reasonable position a person can hold amidst this madness. I attended the Chicago rally in 2002, rode a bus to Washington to protest the invasion, pleaded with Rahm Emmanuel while he campaigned at my Lincoln Square train station. I was invigorated by the hundreds of thousands who marched alongside me. But like many, I grew disappointed with the anti-war movement's inability to come up with a better slogan than "Bring the Troops Home Now" once the war was underway. It is an overly simplistic slogan that ignores the actual situation, and we deserve a more sophisticated approach from a president who truly intends to end the war.

I am a progressive through and through, and if I'd voted for the candidate who agreed with me on every issue, I'd have voted for Dennis Kucinich. But good governance is not about who agress with me on every issue. What Obama represents, what have given him such strength, is his insistence on discussing the nuances of his positions. Of not boiling his votes and his words down to whatever our spoon-fed culture can digest. Before you start whining that your candidate has abandoned his values, ask yourself if you'd taken the time to understand those values in the first place.

As progressives, what we need most is a leader who challenges us, as a nation, to think. It is our collective inability to think that's gotten us in this mess. It's only through a lack of critical thinking that the working and middle classes vote time and again against their own interests. We need a leader who can't be summed up in sound bites. We need this far more than we need an ideologue. This is what we have in Barack Obama. Get behind that, and the rest will follow.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

I don’t want weigh in on the contested rules of the Democratic nomination. While we debate amongst ourselves about Florida, Michigan, and superdelegates—or automatic delegates, if you prefer—McCain is touring the country reminding people that Democrats want the terrorists to win and promising to be conservative enough to win back the love of talk radio. If Clinton and Obama are serious about making history, they should call a truce, agree to run together, and let the rest of the primary process determine who’s at the head of the ticket. That would be a change from politics as usual.

That said, I’m struck by the moral significance of the candidates’ positions on the power of superdelegates, as reported in a February 14 Associated Press article:

"My strong belief is that if we end up with the most states and the most pledged delegates, and the most voters in the country, then it would be problematic for political insiders to overturn the judgment of the voters," Obama said recently.

But Clinton said superdelegates should make up their own minds. She noted pointedly that Massachusetts Sens. John Kerry and Edward Kennedy have both endorsed Obama, yet she won the state handily on Feb. 5.

What’s not clear from the article is that Obama made his statement on February 11, before he pulled ahead of Clinton in the delegate count. In other words, he was willing to make that statement when sticking by it might mean conceding the nomination.

I don’t claim to possess the wisdom of Solomon, but my vote goes to the candidate who doesn’t want to cut the baby in half. Or cut the party in shreds, as the case may be.

Clinton's statement about Kerry and Kennedy is a red herring. They have the right to endorse Obama and to have voted for him in the Masachusetts primary. Under Obama’s philosophy, those activities should have nothing to do with what happens on the convention floor. Clinton’s statement takes for granted a system in which the votes of party bosses outweigh the votes of ordinary citizens. A system, as cynics will note, that works conveniently in her favor.

Perhaps Clinton’s statement is also one of principle. Perhaps she’ll stand by it even if the superdelegates “make up their own minds” to vote for Obama. Perhaps she honestly believes in a return to the machine politics that created the superdelegate system in the first place. I don’t know about anyone else, but I want the leader of the Democratic party to take a principled stand for democracy, not against it.

Socially Awkward

I want you to know I’m not as inarticulate as you think I am. I just have trouble talking to people. Or around people. I’m thirty-one years old and I’m just starting to realize that I have this problem. That the common denominator of all the things that stress me out – at work, in class, in social settings – is talking to people. It’s not that I don’t like people. I love people. I find them fascinating. And inspiring. Some of them. Many of them intimidate me. Some of them make me wish I were something else, like a dolphin. But for the most part, I love people. I just wish I could talk to them.

When I try to talk to someone, or worse, join a discussion, the wheels of my brain start turning faster than my tongue will move.

Anyway I just think, and some thoughts are profound and some are just pointless. Like Britney Spears gossip. Why is that in there? I don’t need that disrupting some insight I’m having about human interaction and the fragmentation of our society? Why can't I get the insightful and witty thoughts out through my mouth. All that comes out is mumbled gibberish.

This has to be a recent development. I used to be a talker. I have trophies to prove it. In debate, oral interpretation, and oratory. I almost went to Nationals in Oratory. (Christ that’s nerdy, but it’s true. I was in the final round, I got a plaque, it was a proud moment. And bittersweet.) It’s only in recent years that the thought of having to ask a question about a project makes my palms sweat. I was a director, a stage manager for god’s sake. I could communicate clearly, lead a group. So what happened?

Theory 1: 21st century media have shorted out my brain. I can no longer think in a linear fashion. Every thought is punctuated by a footnote, a hyperlink, a picture in a picture. The news crawl. There’s something neurological going on that makes my brain move faster than my mouth.

Theory 2: Smoking weed has shorted out my brain. I’m like the melty girl with the talking dog in the anti-drug commercials. Or the stoner comedy character who forgot to grow up. Marijuana has, as promised in Reefer Madness, damaged my brain and made me anti-social.

Theory 3: Anti-depressants have shorted out my brain. I’ve been on them since I was 18. I’ve tried to stop taking them a few times, but each time my whole life fell apart and I went back on. I asked my psychiatrist why they call these drugs non-addictive when the results of not taking them look a so much like withdrawal. He said the difference is that people don’t resort to anti-social behavior to get the anti-depressants. He has a point, but it doesn’t rule out the possibility that the drugs have fried my brain. .

Theory 4: Everybody feels socially awkward. Possibly for one of these reasons. Possibly for other reasons. But it’s perfectly normal

Theory 5: High school forensics trophies aside, I have always been this way. My boyfriend has told me straight out that I have the same social awkwardness as my father. I’m afraid he’s right. That would explain so many things.

And yet: my father has many interesting friends. They are all wonderful people, an eclectic mix of thinkers and artists and musicians and teachers. When I flew home for his 60th birthday party, I boasted that all of the interesting people in St. Louis would be there. I’ve always wanted to have friends like his. Some days, when I make connections between people, introduce interesting friends to each other, I feel like it could happen.

Ordinary

My biggest fear is that I am ordinary. Christ, even in that so-called confession I sound banal. Who isn’t afraid of being ordinary? Exciting, interesting people, that’s who. It’s all of us boring people who sit around worrying about how boring we are.

I was supposed to be, well, extraordinary. Not even supposed to be, but I WAS. An extraordinary child, and extraordinary student. I had extraordinary hair. I have this vague memory of a song sung by the land of make-believe puppets on Mr. Rogers that made use of the word play of ordinary / extra ordinary / extraordinary. Even as a pre-schooler I loved the word play but apparently failed to absorb the message.

For awhile, all I wanted to be was ordinary. When I was about twelve, I came home and announced that I didn’t want to get A’s anymore, that I wanted to get C’s like everyone else. My parents were mortified and probably couldn’t agree on whether I’d benefit more from pyschotherapy or from boarding school. But I was serious. I was tired of the relentless teasing, of being different. Of being accused of being a goody two shoes and having teachers like me no matter what I did. At heart, I was less of a goody two shoes than half the people accusing me, but I wasn’t cool enough for anyone to care.

I managed it for awhile. Nothing horrendous enough to make a good story, but I did spend junior high with a tough crowd. Got a few C’s and a D. Became sexually rebellious. But the burnouts I idolized were pretty boring. And they were assholes, too. They found stupid gross out racist dead baby jokes amusing but they didn’t get the shaggy dog stories I’d learned from my father. They didn’t get New Yorker cartoons, which I’d been giggling at since I taught myself to read. They didn’t even get the Matt Groening comics that I got in trouble for bringing to class. So I went back to my nerdy friends and lived happily ever after.

Except that twenty years later, I’m just another grown up nerd. Otherwise known as gainfully employed. Everyone I know has the same stories. Some people even have some gruesome family drama thrown in; the worst thing that happened in my house was cartoon violence. My father liked to threaten my mother with a water gun. She might have preferred a real one, which as a pacifist he’d be unlikely to actually fire—there was nothing she hated more than water on her face. She never learned to swim and showered with a washcloth over her eyes. The kind of details that are weird enough to be extraordinarily normal.

In my twenties, I thought I had some interesting stories to tell. Before I realized that every middle class smarty pants went backpacking in Europe and felt transformed by it and had crazy sexual adventures with itinerant musicians. Hell, nowadays kids backpack through southeast asia and Africa and roll their eyes at how people once thought Europe was eye-opening. Boring.

Tattoos? Grandmas compliment mine and tell me about the ones they just got. Piercings? The ones I still have look ridiculous on my flabby body. Shaved head? It grew back. Polyamory? Not what it was cracked up to be. Being really fucking smart? If I were really as fucking smart as I thought I was, I’d have done something extraordinary by now. I’m only smart enough that no one wants to play board games with me, and that I'm constantly aggravated by people who aren’t so smart--but not smart enough to write a novel or invent something useful or win a nobel prize. I can’t even win an ignoble prize. The best I do is the occasional random drawing at the office Christmas party.

Still, maybe there’s hope. Maybe I’ll become famous for being ordinary, be an inspiration to ordinary people everywh—shit! Another story that sounds way too familiar.

The Fruitcake of Fashion

Getting dressed is often the biggest challenge of my day. I drastically change sizes every few years, so only about one-third of what’s in my closet fits at any given moment. I can’t bear to discard anything, so I frequently put on clothes only to find an unacceptable stain or hole. Inexplicably, I take the offending item off and put it back in the closet. I have few pairs of pants, because I only like to buy them if they fit my five-foot-nothing frame without needing to be altered. To compensate, I have plenty of skirts, but if I’ve forgotten to shave my legs the short ones are ruled out.

The past week has added another hitch to my daily dilemma: office holiday parties. Not the kind where you bring your spouse to the country club, the kind where the whole department goes out for a long lunch in the middle of the day. My work intersects with multiple departments, so this year I was invited to five of them. And despite my inner cynic, I look forward to these things and the excuse to don some gay apparel.

And so as I was standing in my closet, trying to come up with yet another festive outfit, I had a horrific realization about that fashion equivalent of the fruitcake: the Christmas sweater. I’d always thought that people who wear them—usually women of a certain age—are just born with bad taste. Or succumb too easily to advertising messages. But I’m starting to think it could happen to any of us.

As a twenty-something, festive clothing meant black velvet and red satin. Usually a little cleavage. Maybe even some sparkle. Fun stuff. All of that is still in my closet, some of it fits, but none of it is remotely appropriate for lunch at the office. So this morning I found myself thinking, “If only I had something festive but not at all sexy. Like one of those Christmas sweaters.” Suddenly the room spun around I wondered what kind of sick person put that thought there. Is it inevitable? Does the ticking of the biological clock also reduce my December clothing choices to bah humbug or crazy cat lady?

At last, I found a groovy gauzy blouse in the back of my closet that happens to have a lot of red in it. Paired it with green cargo pants. Dressed and ready for party number five, with no embroidered elves in sight. At least not for a few more years.