How Change Communities Sabotage Themselves
Summary: Change communities sabotage themselves by falling out over trifles. The felt need of many in change communities to engage in sterile recrimination among themselves over tone and language undermines the will to cohesion on which critical mass depends. Without critical mass, the change we seek cannot happen. Call it the Austria-hungry complex, where the hatred Austria-Hungary’s squabbling nationalities bore each other prior to World War I exceeded their hatred of Vienna, and helped keep the Danubian monarchy alive into the closing days of that conflict. Where hypersensitive, hyperventilating umbrage-takers and fight-pickers hijack a movement, no critical mass is possible, and what could have been a successful community-based movement or bloc fragments and dissolves. The enemies of progress prosper when change communities fall apart. Is it any wonder that a lot of queerfolk prefer to avoid such frivolous controversies, and to tend their own private gardens?
-----------------------
By: Paul S. Marchand
A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. Mark 6:4
No man is a hero to his mishpokhe. -Yiddish proverb
Change communities (i.e. groups or coalitions of like-minded individuals seeking to alter established dispensations) often sabotage themselves by falling out over trifles, descending into purposeless backbiting and infighting. Like-minded people flee from consensus and seek discord. Where no discord exists, it will be fabricated.
In almost any Usenet discussion thread, including threads on Facebook, the progress by which consensus breaks down can be easily detected just by reading the posts in the discussion thread. Commentor A will post or comment. Commentor B will take exception to the tone or content of A’s comment and the flame war will be well and truly underway. No matter how uncontroversial or anodyne A’s comment may have been, ineluctably there will be someone to take offense, and sadly, it is the hypersensitive umbrage-takers or fight-pickers who often wind up hijacking comment or Usenet discussion threads, indeed, entire movements.
Such tendencies particularly show up when there may be matters of public or political interest under discussion. The briefest visit to the discussion threads of the Los Angeles Times or the Desert Sun will disclose the inevitable tendency of comment threads to veer toward angry denunciations of the President, or toward off-topic personal attacks on other commentors on the thread. Moreover, the degree of emotional capital certain commentors will invest in their posts is often in inverse proportion to the relevancy or importance of the original news item. When, to cite a recent example, a comment thread on the use of Wikipedia in schools degenerated into exchanges of threats of violence, it was not difficult to conclude that way too much emotional capital was in play.
Yet, my disappointment is not with the inevitable inability of participants in a Usenet discussion thread to stay focused on the original matter under discussion, any more than it is a function of my deep suspicion of any invocation of Godwin’s law, which postulates that as the length of any Usenet discussion group increases, the probability of comparisons involving Hitler or Nazis approaches one.
Rather, my disappointment is more in the way like-minded people flee from consensus and eagerly set up barriers to joint action by engaging in self-sabotaging infighting that inevitably breaks the consensus, undermines collegiality, and destroys friendships. Moreover, many participants in any kind of consensus or movement group find the courage of conviction somewhat difficult to muster, and their want of such courage often manifests itself in the form of prim little attacks upon the tone and manner in which others express their views.
Indeed, “I agree with you, but I don’t like your tone,” has become the bane of just about any effort to organize joint action. No sooner will a more zealous and intrepid soul venture an opinion than do more timid souls emerge to find fault, and to attempt to police others’ tone. In fine, it is hard to muster any kind of commitment or conviction when fellow members of the change community are busily taking one to task over “tone.”
A sentiment often attributed to Edmund Burke holds that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good persons to do nothing. (Originally, Burke is said to have used the word “men” in its all-inclusive and traditional signification. I changed it to “persons” precisely because I know that if I were to use the word “men” someone, somewhere would take umbrage and spin out of my word choice of whole lengthy attack on my sexist male chauvinist, piggery, flaming me in the process to a well done crisp, and utterly losing sight of the issue under discussion.) The corollary here is that evil triumphs when good people fight among one another over tone, word choice, or irrelevant, overwhelm-the-main-event sideshows.
So, if I sound a little despairing, it is because I am. Former Dean Alan Jones of San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral once observed that we live in an age in which everything is permitted, but nothing is forgiven. We certainly live in an age in which paragons of dust jacket erudition or would-be punctuation police either react viscerally to summaries and blurbs or flyspeck written material looking for words or phrases to which they can then take histrionic exception, flaming the author to a well done crisp.
Yet what comes of unproductive flame wars and testy exchanges? In many communities, civic minded citizens attempt to coalesce, as Gandhi once counseled, to be the change they seek. Yet, such efforts often fail because group cohesion often takes second place to gratifying the felt need of specific individuals to be seen to be right (which is apparently more important to them than doing right), score points, and police the tone or thinking of other participants in the effort. When, to cite a recent example, a commentor spins an entire rant out of the use of the phrase “make an honest man out of him” in remarks about marriage, where it is often said that to marry someone is “to make an honest man [or woman] of him [or her],” you can tell that the commentor has either missed the author’s point, or that the commentor is deliberately spoiling for a fight. Given the prevalence of hypersensitive, hyperventilating commentary on the Internet, it’s hard to give such commentors the benefit of even the slightest doubt. Does such a commentor have a legitimate point, or is the commentor merely trying to hijack the discussion, creating a sideshow the commentor apparently hopes will overwhelm the main event?
Too often, change communities founder on the rock of their unwillingness to muster the will to cohesion upon which success and positive change depend. Call it the Austria-Hungary effect, thanks to which the Danubian Habsburg monarchy was able to hold itself together into the closing days of the Great War because the minority nationalities of the Monarchy hated each other more than they hated the Habsburgs.
Scripture tells us in Mark’s Gospel that “a prophet is not without honor, but in his own country.” Jesus having been Jewish, he might with a wry smile have agreed with the later Yiddish proverb “no man is a hero to his Mishpokhe (family).” Any movement, even if ultimately successful, ultimately falls prey to its own internal contradictions. When the internal contradictions arise before a change community can reach a critical mass of self-sustaining, long-term cohesiveness, the change community dissolves.
In the marriage-equality community, our movement --at least our movement in part of the Coachella Valley -- seems to have Balkanized end fragmented. An earlier post on this blog called forth just the sort of tone-based, often primitively personal, criticism that tends to reinforce the negative reputation which some parts of the queer community have for backbiting and recrimination. As Bernard Shaw once said of the Irish, put one queer on a spit and you can always find another queer to turn him.
If we are to ensure meaningful, positive change in our community, we will need to coalesce into a broad-based community movement whose members understand the importance of vigorous, zealous advocacy, organization, and action. Unfortunately, the recent flurry of flame wars and testy exchanges among those who should be at the forefront of being the change we seek engenders skepticism about the ability of the queer nation to stay focused on our long-term goal of full first-class citizenship. Is it any wonder that so many queerfolk prefer to tend their own private gardens rather than be caught up in the recrimination and backbiting that seems to emerge when we try to coalesce for change?
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City. He does not live in Palm Springs. The views herein are his own and not anybody else’s, and he expects to be roundly attacked by hypersensitive umbrage-takers. Given what has happened of late, Mr. Marchand finds himself increasingly emotionally constipated, and has difficulty giving a shit. This post is an adaptation of an earlier post originally published under the headline “Austria-hungary All over Again: Why Cathedral City Endures Bad Government.” The views herein are his own, and not necessarily those of anybody else, particularly not angry flame-warriors in Palm Springs. They are not intended as legal advice.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Sunday, June 16, 2013
WAITING FOR THE OTHER SHOE TO DROP
Will Marriage Equality turn Queer Boys into Victorians?
Summary: If the Supreme Court finds that queerfolk have the right to marry, it will fundamentally alter the dynamic of America’s queer nation. Will sex continue to be a way gay dudes can share pleasant recreation together without necessarily entering into an institutionalized, legally-significant, relationship, or will two gay men sacking out together necessarily become a precursor to marriage? Will I have to make an honest man of the dude I may have had sex with last night? If the court rules in favor of marriage, we will find ourselves entering a curious and uncharted country composed in equal measure of anticipation and apprehension, an unexplored country in which we have no precedent to guide us, where we must make up new rules as we go along. It will be an uncertain and delicate time for the happy-go-lucky, the sexually adventurous, or the commitment-phobic.
By: Paul S. Marchand
“Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.”
-Variously attributed so-called conventional wisdom
“After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”
-Star Trek: The Original Series, “Amok Time.” Teleplay by Theodore Sturgeon
"a beginning is a delicate time."
-Frank Herbert, Dune.
As the queer nation counts down toward the so-called Day of Decision when the Supreme Court announces its rulings in Hollingsworth v. Perry and U.S. v. Windsor, the two marriage cases, we find ourselves in a curious and uncharted country composed in equal measure of anticipation and apprehension, an unexplored country with neither precedent nor rules to guide us.
An old and dear friend --- a straight ally from the time many of us were more afraid of dying than were contemplating the possibility of marriage --- recently asked me a question I almost wish he had not asked. After having fought for so long for marriage, what will we do if the Court decides in our favor? Is it possible that the worst outcome might be “yes?”
Perhaps we should be careful what we ask for. If the Court finds that queerfolk have as much right to marry as do our straight neighbors, it is not unreasonable to foresee that we may find ourselves facing societal encouragement or even pressure to marry. If I take an appealing dude to bed, do I then have to make an honest man out of him? Or do he and I get a certain number of mulligans, a sort of free zone in which my dude and I may explore our personal and sexual compatibility without having to contemplate making honest men of one another?
The coming of marital liberty to the queer nation may well radically alter how gay men interact intimately with one another. While asking the fraught question of whether sex must necessarily open up a conversation about marriage may seem a bit much, a favorable decision in Hollingsworth nonetheless puts the issue front and center.
Now we should acknowledge that among our straight neighbors, there is a great deal of shared intimacy outside or even in spite of the existence of pretty much unrestricted access to marriage. Yet, for us, the sheer novelty of marital liberty may have the effect of raising a whole new set of potentially perverse and Victorian expectations with respect to congruency between sexual intimacy and marriage. Will we be able to continue to speak a language of sexual intimacy unconstrained by the need to institutionalize it? Will sex continue to be, as it has been for many of us, a pleasant form of recreation to be shared with a partner with whom we may not have a desire to form an institutionalized, legally significant, relationship, or will man-to-man intimacy necessarily become a precursor to marriage?
Not having the faculty of marriage has, to some extent, had a remarkably liberating effect upon our discourse. Queer pundit Andrew Sullivan has suggested -- and perhaps with some justice -- that one of the most distinctive marks of differencing between the gay community (and I address specifically that part of the LGBTQ community consisting of gay men) and our straight neighbors is our substantially greater degree of candor concerning things sexual. Because heretofore the faculty of marriage has been denied us, we have not felt ourselves constrained from discussing sex and sexuality more openly than do our married, straight neighbors. Will we find that saying “I do” in a marriage ceremony leads to saying “I mustn’t” when it comes to talking about sexual intimacy in a gay context?
I cannot know what awaits us if the Supreme Court decides that Ruth and Naomi or Jonathan and David are constitutionally entitled to the same liberty of marital contract enjoyed by their straight neighbors. But I do know that if the Day of Decision has the effect of lifting the ban, whether here in California or throughout the nation, our queer lives will never be the same.
It may not work to be commitment-phobic in whatever brave new world awaits us; confirmed bachelors take note. We may find ourselves living in a beginning, and as Frank Herbert observed in Dune, "a beginning is a delicate time."
After a time, we may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California. He served two terms on the city Council there, and was one of the first attorneys in California to litigate a marriage case, back two decades ago when he was slimmer and better looking than he is now. The matters discussed herein represent his own views, and are not intended as legal advice.
Summary: If the Supreme Court finds that queerfolk have the right to marry, it will fundamentally alter the dynamic of America’s queer nation. Will sex continue to be a way gay dudes can share pleasant recreation together without necessarily entering into an institutionalized, legally-significant, relationship, or will two gay men sacking out together necessarily become a precursor to marriage? Will I have to make an honest man of the dude I may have had sex with last night? If the court rules in favor of marriage, we will find ourselves entering a curious and uncharted country composed in equal measure of anticipation and apprehension, an unexplored country in which we have no precedent to guide us, where we must make up new rules as we go along. It will be an uncertain and delicate time for the happy-go-lucky, the sexually adventurous, or the commitment-phobic.
By: Paul S. Marchand
“Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.”
-Variously attributed so-called conventional wisdom
“After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”
-Star Trek: The Original Series, “Amok Time.” Teleplay by Theodore Sturgeon
"a beginning is a delicate time."
-Frank Herbert, Dune.
As the queer nation counts down toward the so-called Day of Decision when the Supreme Court announces its rulings in Hollingsworth v. Perry and U.S. v. Windsor, the two marriage cases, we find ourselves in a curious and uncharted country composed in equal measure of anticipation and apprehension, an unexplored country with neither precedent nor rules to guide us.
An old and dear friend --- a straight ally from the time many of us were more afraid of dying than were contemplating the possibility of marriage --- recently asked me a question I almost wish he had not asked. After having fought for so long for marriage, what will we do if the Court decides in our favor? Is it possible that the worst outcome might be “yes?”
Perhaps we should be careful what we ask for. If the Court finds that queerfolk have as much right to marry as do our straight neighbors, it is not unreasonable to foresee that we may find ourselves facing societal encouragement or even pressure to marry. If I take an appealing dude to bed, do I then have to make an honest man out of him? Or do he and I get a certain number of mulligans, a sort of free zone in which my dude and I may explore our personal and sexual compatibility without having to contemplate making honest men of one another?
The coming of marital liberty to the queer nation may well radically alter how gay men interact intimately with one another. While asking the fraught question of whether sex must necessarily open up a conversation about marriage may seem a bit much, a favorable decision in Hollingsworth nonetheless puts the issue front and center.
Now we should acknowledge that among our straight neighbors, there is a great deal of shared intimacy outside or even in spite of the existence of pretty much unrestricted access to marriage. Yet, for us, the sheer novelty of marital liberty may have the effect of raising a whole new set of potentially perverse and Victorian expectations with respect to congruency between sexual intimacy and marriage. Will we be able to continue to speak a language of sexual intimacy unconstrained by the need to institutionalize it? Will sex continue to be, as it has been for many of us, a pleasant form of recreation to be shared with a partner with whom we may not have a desire to form an institutionalized, legally significant, relationship, or will man-to-man intimacy necessarily become a precursor to marriage?
Not having the faculty of marriage has, to some extent, had a remarkably liberating effect upon our discourse. Queer pundit Andrew Sullivan has suggested -- and perhaps with some justice -- that one of the most distinctive marks of differencing between the gay community (and I address specifically that part of the LGBTQ community consisting of gay men) and our straight neighbors is our substantially greater degree of candor concerning things sexual. Because heretofore the faculty of marriage has been denied us, we have not felt ourselves constrained from discussing sex and sexuality more openly than do our married, straight neighbors. Will we find that saying “I do” in a marriage ceremony leads to saying “I mustn’t” when it comes to talking about sexual intimacy in a gay context?
I cannot know what awaits us if the Supreme Court decides that Ruth and Naomi or Jonathan and David are constitutionally entitled to the same liberty of marital contract enjoyed by their straight neighbors. But I do know that if the Day of Decision has the effect of lifting the ban, whether here in California or throughout the nation, our queer lives will never be the same.
It may not work to be commitment-phobic in whatever brave new world awaits us; confirmed bachelors take note. We may find ourselves living in a beginning, and as Frank Herbert observed in Dune, "a beginning is a delicate time."
After a time, we may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California. He served two terms on the city Council there, and was one of the first attorneys in California to litigate a marriage case, back two decades ago when he was slimmer and better looking than he is now. The matters discussed herein represent his own views, and are not intended as legal advice.
Monday, May 27, 2013
BENDING OUR AMERICAN ARC TOWARD JUSTICE
A Meditation for Memorial Day
SUMMARY: Memorial Day began after the Civil War as a commemoration of those who had fallen in America’s greatest struggle for social justice. Though we have engrafted additional layers of meaning onto Memorial Day, that original subtext is still very much at the heart of our commemoration of those who have died in this country’s service. If we are to do right by those who have laid the costliest of sacrifice on the altar of freedom, we must ensure that the arc of America’s moral universe continues to bend toward justice and toward a more perfect and inclusive Union, and those who have borne the burden of battle are not treated as a disposable commodity (and left to take their own lives at a frightening rate) by a society that has become as habituated to endless war as the residents of some of our inner cities have become habituated to gang violence.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Of all the various holidays that festoon our American calendar, two specifically force us to confront the reality of war and sacrifice. Veterans Day (or Armistice Day as it is still called in some quarters) should rightly turn our minds toward those who have fought in our wars, facing foreign shot, foreign shell, and foreign steel on our behalf. Veterans Day is a time to think about the moral and social debt we owe to those who have gone to war and returned.
By contrast, Memorial Day is a time to commemorate those who have fallen in this country’s service. It is time to give thanks for their service, but also a time to think carefully and critically about larger questions of war, peace, and the limbo in which societies often find themselves between the two, as we have found ourselves since the end of World War II.
On Memorial Day, I find myself ineluctably drawn back to words spoken more than half a century ago at West Point by Douglas MacArthur as he accepted the Sylvanus Thayer award. Addressing the Corps of Cadets, MacArthur spoke of hearing in his dreams “the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.”
For most of us now living, America has been at war or involved in military operations for more years than she has been at peace. The soundtrack of the greater part of our lives has been “that strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.”
Now Memorial Day began as Decoration Day, a commemoration of the Union’s Civil War dead. Though the passage of nearly a century and a half has led to considerable accretions of symbolism and meaning onto Memorial Day, it began, and remains still, a commemoration of the greatest struggle for social justice in American history.
For if the Civil War began as merely a fight to preserve the Union, it ineluctably evolved into a far larger moral confrontation as Americans realized that the Union could not be saved except by overthrowing once and for all the Peculiar Institution of chattel slavery. If the Union were to be saved, it could have no more truck with the proposition that it is ever permissible for one human being to own another.
Since then, the arc of our moral universe, however long, has bent, however slowly, toward justice. Starting with the abolition of slavery itself, America has engaged, over and over again, in a series of often agonizing internal struggles over who and who is not a part of our American body politic.
It has taken more than a century to rid ourselves of the grosser inequities and iniquities of the Peculiar Institution. Even now, with an African-American president in the White House, racial insecurities continue to bedevil our political discourse.
It has taken more than a century to accept the basic proposition that women ought to be entitled to all of the badges and incidents of first-class citizenship. Women’s suffrage means little if women can legitimately discriminated against in hiring and compensation or be denied access to basic reproductive autonomy or contraception.
We are still involved today in a great struggle over whether America’s queerfolk should even be allowed to exist, let alone enjoy first-class citizenship as out people in the Commonwealth.
Yet, the arc continues to bend toward justice; it continues to bend toward a more perfect Union and a more inclusive commonwealth, even if some in our society find themselves apoplectic at such a prospect. But a society that cannot find room for people of color, for women, for the queer, and for all who are in some way Other, is a society that has yet to do right by those whose final resting places are to be found in our national cemeteries, who in this country’s service laid down what Abraham Lincoln so movingly called “so costly a sacrifice on the altar of freedom.” We must make it right, especially for those whose sacrifice winds up being long deferred, whose fatal forfeit comes up for payment long after the battle is over.
Still, making it right has to involve more than trite, anodyne, talismanic invocations of “thank you for your service.” Every time I hear such an expression, I think I want to scream. “Thank you for your service” is emotional kitsch; it sounds like something we might say to a doorman or a skycap, while proffering some sort of miniscule gratuity. “Thank you for your service” reflects a dangerous societal view of our service members as being in some way a disposable commodity. Perhaps the sheer length of our military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has deadened us to the reality of war. We have forgotten General Sherman’s warning that “war is hell... its glory is all moonshine.”
Indeed, our tendency to treat those who have borne the battle as disposable commodities in a grimly reductionist economic analysis may be at least partly responsible for the epidemic of suicides among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. A 2010 study by the Department of Veterans Affairs, released earlier this year, indicated that veterans were taking their own lives at the staggering rate of 22 a day. Such a number ought to shock us. For these are the casualties of the invisible wounds of war, the emotional wounds that kill slowly. If we were to consider death by suicide as combat related, the number of Iraq and Afghanistan war dead would easily double. Yet what can we say to the returning veteran who comes home feeling an anguish so deep no tears will come, a pain so overwhelming that there are no words to describe it?
Doing right by those who have borne the battle must involve more than trite forms of words. If Dostoyevsky was right to observe that we can judge a society by entering its prisons, we may equally judge a society by the extent of its compassion toward those who fight its wars. By that measure, we are still falling short. We have become inured to the idea of a constant state of military hostilities, and we have built around our civilian souls a Chinese wall by which we may hope to insulate ourselves from those equally ongoing realities of war, injury, and death.
Yet the more strongly we build that Chinese wall, the more we harden ourselves and wall ourselves off from the capacity for compassion and empathy. Sadly, many of us appear to have become as hardened and indifferent to the sufferings of our servicemembers as residents of high crime inner-city neighborhoods become habituated to gang violence. Our wars are bereaving us of some important part of our humanity, if only we knew exactly of what we were being bereft.
On this Memorial Day, as we recall the sacrifice of those who fell for us, we should remember two things. First, let us remember that America is always at her greatest when she seeks purposely after justice. Second, let us remember that from the earliest days of our history, those who have died for America have been of every sort and condition of human being.
Male and female they died for us.
Old and young they died for us.
Straight and queer they died for us.
From every creed and confession they died for us.
From every tongue and nation they died for us.
From every race and region they died for us.
And in the equality of their resting place, we have only one word for them: American.
Requiescant omnes in pace, et lux aeternam luceat super omnes. Amen.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served for two terms as a member of the city council. The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any entity or organization with which he is associated. They are not intended to constitute, and should not be construed as, legal advice, though effective Monday, white shoes may be worn without risk of committing a fashion felony. This post is an adapted republication of one published at Memorial Day, 2012.
SUMMARY: Memorial Day began after the Civil War as a commemoration of those who had fallen in America’s greatest struggle for social justice. Though we have engrafted additional layers of meaning onto Memorial Day, that original subtext is still very much at the heart of our commemoration of those who have died in this country’s service. If we are to do right by those who have laid the costliest of sacrifice on the altar of freedom, we must ensure that the arc of America’s moral universe continues to bend toward justice and toward a more perfect and inclusive Union, and those who have borne the burden of battle are not treated as a disposable commodity (and left to take their own lives at a frightening rate) by a society that has become as habituated to endless war as the residents of some of our inner cities have become habituated to gang violence.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Of all the various holidays that festoon our American calendar, two specifically force us to confront the reality of war and sacrifice. Veterans Day (or Armistice Day as it is still called in some quarters) should rightly turn our minds toward those who have fought in our wars, facing foreign shot, foreign shell, and foreign steel on our behalf. Veterans Day is a time to think about the moral and social debt we owe to those who have gone to war and returned.
By contrast, Memorial Day is a time to commemorate those who have fallen in this country’s service. It is time to give thanks for their service, but also a time to think carefully and critically about larger questions of war, peace, and the limbo in which societies often find themselves between the two, as we have found ourselves since the end of World War II.
On Memorial Day, I find myself ineluctably drawn back to words spoken more than half a century ago at West Point by Douglas MacArthur as he accepted the Sylvanus Thayer award. Addressing the Corps of Cadets, MacArthur spoke of hearing in his dreams “the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.”
For most of us now living, America has been at war or involved in military operations for more years than she has been at peace. The soundtrack of the greater part of our lives has been “that strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.”
Now Memorial Day began as Decoration Day, a commemoration of the Union’s Civil War dead. Though the passage of nearly a century and a half has led to considerable accretions of symbolism and meaning onto Memorial Day, it began, and remains still, a commemoration of the greatest struggle for social justice in American history.
For if the Civil War began as merely a fight to preserve the Union, it ineluctably evolved into a far larger moral confrontation as Americans realized that the Union could not be saved except by overthrowing once and for all the Peculiar Institution of chattel slavery. If the Union were to be saved, it could have no more truck with the proposition that it is ever permissible for one human being to own another.
Since then, the arc of our moral universe, however long, has bent, however slowly, toward justice. Starting with the abolition of slavery itself, America has engaged, over and over again, in a series of often agonizing internal struggles over who and who is not a part of our American body politic.
It has taken more than a century to rid ourselves of the grosser inequities and iniquities of the Peculiar Institution. Even now, with an African-American president in the White House, racial insecurities continue to bedevil our political discourse.
It has taken more than a century to accept the basic proposition that women ought to be entitled to all of the badges and incidents of first-class citizenship. Women’s suffrage means little if women can legitimately discriminated against in hiring and compensation or be denied access to basic reproductive autonomy or contraception.
We are still involved today in a great struggle over whether America’s queerfolk should even be allowed to exist, let alone enjoy first-class citizenship as out people in the Commonwealth.
Yet, the arc continues to bend toward justice; it continues to bend toward a more perfect Union and a more inclusive commonwealth, even if some in our society find themselves apoplectic at such a prospect. But a society that cannot find room for people of color, for women, for the queer, and for all who are in some way Other, is a society that has yet to do right by those whose final resting places are to be found in our national cemeteries, who in this country’s service laid down what Abraham Lincoln so movingly called “so costly a sacrifice on the altar of freedom.” We must make it right, especially for those whose sacrifice winds up being long deferred, whose fatal forfeit comes up for payment long after the battle is over.
Still, making it right has to involve more than trite, anodyne, talismanic invocations of “thank you for your service.” Every time I hear such an expression, I think I want to scream. “Thank you for your service” is emotional kitsch; it sounds like something we might say to a doorman or a skycap, while proffering some sort of miniscule gratuity. “Thank you for your service” reflects a dangerous societal view of our service members as being in some way a disposable commodity. Perhaps the sheer length of our military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has deadened us to the reality of war. We have forgotten General Sherman’s warning that “war is hell... its glory is all moonshine.”
Indeed, our tendency to treat those who have borne the battle as disposable commodities in a grimly reductionist economic analysis may be at least partly responsible for the epidemic of suicides among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. A 2010 study by the Department of Veterans Affairs, released earlier this year, indicated that veterans were taking their own lives at the staggering rate of 22 a day. Such a number ought to shock us. For these are the casualties of the invisible wounds of war, the emotional wounds that kill slowly. If we were to consider death by suicide as combat related, the number of Iraq and Afghanistan war dead would easily double. Yet what can we say to the returning veteran who comes home feeling an anguish so deep no tears will come, a pain so overwhelming that there are no words to describe it?
Doing right by those who have borne the battle must involve more than trite forms of words. If Dostoyevsky was right to observe that we can judge a society by entering its prisons, we may equally judge a society by the extent of its compassion toward those who fight its wars. By that measure, we are still falling short. We have become inured to the idea of a constant state of military hostilities, and we have built around our civilian souls a Chinese wall by which we may hope to insulate ourselves from those equally ongoing realities of war, injury, and death.
Yet the more strongly we build that Chinese wall, the more we harden ourselves and wall ourselves off from the capacity for compassion and empathy. Sadly, many of us appear to have become as hardened and indifferent to the sufferings of our servicemembers as residents of high crime inner-city neighborhoods become habituated to gang violence. Our wars are bereaving us of some important part of our humanity, if only we knew exactly of what we were being bereft.
On this Memorial Day, as we recall the sacrifice of those who fell for us, we should remember two things. First, let us remember that America is always at her greatest when she seeks purposely after justice. Second, let us remember that from the earliest days of our history, those who have died for America have been of every sort and condition of human being.
Male and female they died for us.
Old and young they died for us.
Straight and queer they died for us.
From every creed and confession they died for us.
From every tongue and nation they died for us.
From every race and region they died for us.
And in the equality of their resting place, we have only one word for them: American.
Requiescant omnes in pace, et lux aeternam luceat super omnes. Amen.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served for two terms as a member of the city council. The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any entity or organization with which he is associated. They are not intended to constitute, and should not be construed as, legal advice, though effective Monday, white shoes may be worn without risk of committing a fashion felony. This post is an adapted republication of one published at Memorial Day, 2012.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
A VACATION FROM FACEBOOK:
SOME SPIRITUAL PROPHYLAXIS
Summary: “While Eeyore frets ...... and Piglet hesitates
... and Rabbit calculates
... and Owl pontificates
...Pooh just is.”
-- Benjamin Hoff, the Tao of Pooh
Undertaking the spiritual prophylaxis of temporarily deactivating a Facebook account represents an effort to try to reconnect with the Divine Tao of a universe that has a kind of order to it which passeth all understanding. Retreating from the digital noise of Facebook offers a kind of Benedictine/Cistercian vehicle for reconnecting, for getting away from so much of the sadness I detect in Facebook, the sadness so deep that no tears will come. Among the fretting, the hesitating, the calculating, and the pontificating, perhaps this is an opportunity just to be.
By: Paul S. Marchand
I deactivated my Facebook account today, hopefully as a spiritual prophylaxis. I have not decided when to reactivate it, if ever. Sometimes, the temptation to engage in sterile, often testy exchanges on Facebook becomes a positive danger as we find ourselves drawn into what Buddhist thought sometimes calls the Vortex of Becoming, a place where sometimes the sadness is so deep that no tears will come.
Sadly, Facebook tends to facilitate a conversational culture in which thought takes a backseat to visceral reaction, and in which fact gives way to unconsidered opinion. Of course, Facebook does have its upsides; I find it possible to be in touch with old friends with whom I had fallen out of touch, or to make rich and fruitful new friendships with people I have never actually met.
Nonetheless, there are times when the back-and-forth on Facebook reminds me how useful it is sometimes just to be. My mind goes back to a marvelous quotation from Benjamin Hoff’s the Tao of Pooh: ““While Eeyore frets ... and Piglet hesitates ... and Rabbit calculates ... and Owl pontificates ...Pooh just is.” Sometimes it is important that we just are. At the risk of seeming to traffic in heresy, it seems to me that the universe has a Tao, a way of being, in balance with God’s divine economy, a kind of order to it which passeth all understanding.
Yet, watching --- and sometimes being drawn deeply myself --- into the squabbling of my Facebook friends, gleefully shredding the Tao of the universe, I can’t help but feel a certain sense of appeal in the Benedictine and Cistercian ideal of the spiritual retreat. In the face of Facebook noise, I find myself hauntingly attracted to the more ancient Christian ideal of holy silence.
It may very well be a good thing in this season of Pentecost to attend silently upon what the Holy Spirit may be trying to impart to us, to make a more meaningful effort to be in better harmony with the Divine Tao. So, I’ve turned off Facebook for a while. At some point I will no doubt return, but when I do, hopefully I will be in a better position to confine the temptations of Facebook in carefully locked little box, to be opened only with care and under very careful conditions.
"Acquire a peaceful spirit, and around you thousands will be saved." -St. Seraphim Sarovskiy
Ideally, as some fret and others hesitate and others calculate and others pontificate, I can just be. Lord, in your mercy, hear my prayer.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, California. The views contained herein are his own, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Throwing Good Players out of the Dugout
The President’s Disappointing Dismissal of Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller.
Summary: The forced resignation of Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller leaves us wondering about the extent to which the Obama administration is prepared to go to bat for its servants. We’ve seen this before, with Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod. It appears that all Republicans have to do to rid themselves of dedicated public servants whom they have targeted is to yell “boo!” The administration’s disturbing willingness to throw good people as sacrificial lambs to right-wing coyotes is craven at best and cowardly at worst, and is not sitting well with an otherwise-supportive Democratic base. We support the President and want him to succeed; we think he has done a very good job, even if he has been too self-effacing, but we do take exception to throwing dedicated and honorable members of his team out of the dugout because the right does not want them there.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Van Jones, Shirley Sherrod, Steven Miller. All of them were relatively senior Obama administration officials who were forced out by the White House when Republican ideologues yelled “boo!”
I consider myself a strong supporter of the President, and I consider that he has done a far better job than the Obamanators on the right would ever give him credit for. Nonetheless, I can, and do, fault the President for being too willing to throw loyal public servants under the metaphorical bus.
The White House should have resisted the organized campaign from the right to force Van Jones out of the administration. Its failure to stand up for Mr. Jones against such orchestrated assaults from the likes of Glenn Beck and the right-wing blogosphere not only set a dangerous precedent but also gave pause to supporters of the administration who had hoped for a greater degree of testicular fortitude from the White House.
When the late, unlamented, Andrew Breitbart took out after Shirley Sherrod, the administration and even the NAACP engaged in a disappointing set of cowardly panic behaviors. As we now know, Ms. Sherrod was canned by text message sent to her cell phone while she was driving home from work. Way to stay classy, Department of Agriculture.
Now, in the so-called IRS scandal, triggered by what appears to have been a decision from mid-level managers to undertake heightened scrutiny of income tax exemption applications for right-wing groups, the Obama administration has once again thrown a sacrificial lamb to Republican coyotes, giving acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller the bum’s rush to the door. His dismissal was craven, cowardly, and classless.
Sacking Steven Miller accomplished nothing constructive. What it did accomplish was to again embolden Republicans to set their sights on any senior Obama administration official who may appear to represent an easy and viable target. Can Treasury Secretary Jack Lew be far behind?
The disturbing conclusion we may draw from these three examples is that the Obama administration seems curiously unwilling or unable to mount a spirited defense of loyal public servants who have given generously of their time, toil, talent, and frequently, treasure to serve in government. It certainly appears as if every time the right yells “boo!” the administration jumps.
For the administration to continue to sacrifice good people on the altar of trying to find some kind of unattainable common ground with the right is poor policy. It conveys to the nation, to say nothing of the Democratic base, that the Republicans and their fellow travelers can get whatever they want simply by bullying this administration into surrender. For while the victories of this administration have been manifold, the administration has been curiously reticent in educating the American public about the extent of President Obama’s accomplishments, and far too ready to try to meet the President’s political adversaries halfway.
To the extent that the administration is seen as being willing to let loyal servants twist slowly in the wind, it will harm its standing not only with the Democratic base, but also with swing voters who expect more balls from the White House.
Firing Van Jones was a mistake.
Firing Shirley Sherrod was a mistake.
Firing Steven Miller was a mistake.
In each case, the administration rushed to judgment and reacted like a flustered, frightened schoolgirl swooning over the lascivious oglings of the overprivileged, testosterone-addled jocks on the lacrosse team.
Put simply, the administration needs to show a more Churchillian degree of fortitude. Riffing on Earl St. Vincent’s famous dictum “I do not say Napoleon cannot come to England, I merely say he cannot come by sea,” Churchill is reputed to have declared that he did not say the Nazis could not come to the Island of Britain, he merely said they could come neither by air nor by sea. Such fortitude defied the worst that Adolf Hitler could throw at the British in their Island, and ought to be a model for the way in which the Obama administration faces its political enemies.
I do not propose to fall into the trap of some of my fellow progressives who spend far too much time lambasting the President because he has not established utopia in a day, but I do feel that I must criticize this administration for its lack of spunk and gumption, and for its disturbing willingness to allow its political adversaries to decide who gets to be on the President’s team.
As much as we don’t let Red Sox Nation decide the Yankee lineup, the administration should take a similar line against Congressional Republicans and the right-wing blogosphere.
Mr. President, we your supporters urge you not to let the other team decide who gets to be in your dugout.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is a Democrat and an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, California. He is corresponding secretary and 56 Assembly District Vice Chair of the Riverside County Democratic Central Committee. The views set forth herein are his own, and not necessarily the views of the Democratic Party or any other entity, and they are most certainly not to be taken as legal advice.
Summary: The forced resignation of Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller leaves us wondering about the extent to which the Obama administration is prepared to go to bat for its servants. We’ve seen this before, with Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod. It appears that all Republicans have to do to rid themselves of dedicated public servants whom they have targeted is to yell “boo!” The administration’s disturbing willingness to throw good people as sacrificial lambs to right-wing coyotes is craven at best and cowardly at worst, and is not sitting well with an otherwise-supportive Democratic base. We support the President and want him to succeed; we think he has done a very good job, even if he has been too self-effacing, but we do take exception to throwing dedicated and honorable members of his team out of the dugout because the right does not want them there.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Van Jones, Shirley Sherrod, Steven Miller. All of them were relatively senior Obama administration officials who were forced out by the White House when Republican ideologues yelled “boo!”
I consider myself a strong supporter of the President, and I consider that he has done a far better job than the Obamanators on the right would ever give him credit for. Nonetheless, I can, and do, fault the President for being too willing to throw loyal public servants under the metaphorical bus.
The White House should have resisted the organized campaign from the right to force Van Jones out of the administration. Its failure to stand up for Mr. Jones against such orchestrated assaults from the likes of Glenn Beck and the right-wing blogosphere not only set a dangerous precedent but also gave pause to supporters of the administration who had hoped for a greater degree of testicular fortitude from the White House.
When the late, unlamented, Andrew Breitbart took out after Shirley Sherrod, the administration and even the NAACP engaged in a disappointing set of cowardly panic behaviors. As we now know, Ms. Sherrod was canned by text message sent to her cell phone while she was driving home from work. Way to stay classy, Department of Agriculture.
Now, in the so-called IRS scandal, triggered by what appears to have been a decision from mid-level managers to undertake heightened scrutiny of income tax exemption applications for right-wing groups, the Obama administration has once again thrown a sacrificial lamb to Republican coyotes, giving acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller the bum’s rush to the door. His dismissal was craven, cowardly, and classless.
Sacking Steven Miller accomplished nothing constructive. What it did accomplish was to again embolden Republicans to set their sights on any senior Obama administration official who may appear to represent an easy and viable target. Can Treasury Secretary Jack Lew be far behind?
The disturbing conclusion we may draw from these three examples is that the Obama administration seems curiously unwilling or unable to mount a spirited defense of loyal public servants who have given generously of their time, toil, talent, and frequently, treasure to serve in government. It certainly appears as if every time the right yells “boo!” the administration jumps.
For the administration to continue to sacrifice good people on the altar of trying to find some kind of unattainable common ground with the right is poor policy. It conveys to the nation, to say nothing of the Democratic base, that the Republicans and their fellow travelers can get whatever they want simply by bullying this administration into surrender. For while the victories of this administration have been manifold, the administration has been curiously reticent in educating the American public about the extent of President Obama’s accomplishments, and far too ready to try to meet the President’s political adversaries halfway.
To the extent that the administration is seen as being willing to let loyal servants twist slowly in the wind, it will harm its standing not only with the Democratic base, but also with swing voters who expect more balls from the White House.
Firing Van Jones was a mistake.
Firing Shirley Sherrod was a mistake.
Firing Steven Miller was a mistake.
In each case, the administration rushed to judgment and reacted like a flustered, frightened schoolgirl swooning over the lascivious oglings of the overprivileged, testosterone-addled jocks on the lacrosse team.
Put simply, the administration needs to show a more Churchillian degree of fortitude. Riffing on Earl St. Vincent’s famous dictum “I do not say Napoleon cannot come to England, I merely say he cannot come by sea,” Churchill is reputed to have declared that he did not say the Nazis could not come to the Island of Britain, he merely said they could come neither by air nor by sea. Such fortitude defied the worst that Adolf Hitler could throw at the British in their Island, and ought to be a model for the way in which the Obama administration faces its political enemies.
I do not propose to fall into the trap of some of my fellow progressives who spend far too much time lambasting the President because he has not established utopia in a day, but I do feel that I must criticize this administration for its lack of spunk and gumption, and for its disturbing willingness to allow its political adversaries to decide who gets to be on the President’s team.
As much as we don’t let Red Sox Nation decide the Yankee lineup, the administration should take a similar line against Congressional Republicans and the right-wing blogosphere.
Mr. President, we your supporters urge you not to let the other team decide who gets to be in your dugout.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is a Democrat and an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, California. He is corresponding secretary and 56 Assembly District Vice Chair of the Riverside County Democratic Central Committee. The views set forth herein are his own, and not necessarily the views of the Democratic Party or any other entity, and they are most certainly not to be taken as legal advice.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
THE HATCHET JOB CONTINUES
The Desert Sun’s Tamara Sone’s Reckless Disregard for the Truth
Summary: The Desert Sun’s vendetta against Greg Pettis continues. Its headline writers betray the fundamentally slanted nature of the paper’s coverage, and its de facto alliance with Cathedral City’s increasingly unpopular mayor. Moreover, Tamara Sone, the author of this latest monstrosity, again sips from the fountain of lies that has come from one of Cathedral City’s former council members. Finally, and most offensive to me personally, were the untruths and innuendo Sone saw fit to lob in my general direction, by making claims about me that can be documented as untrue. Obviously, our local Gannett organ has decided upon a war of extermination against Greg Pettis. This latest effort from Tamara Sone is not responsible journalism; it is an acid concentrate of despicable nastiness.
And so the Desert Sun’s rabid pursuit of councilmember Greg Pettis continues. In a piece rushed into publication this evening, headlined “Greg Pettis got special deal on bad check,” Tamara Sone of our local Gannett organ has pushed forward with another hatchet job.
Having confronted strong pushback from community members and readers angered by its prior reckless disregard for the truth, the Desert Sun has made it abundantly clear that it will stop at nothing to phabricate a phony scandal destroy Greg Pettis. Ethics be damned; integrity be damned; truth be damned.
First, let’s start with the headline, which is clearly intended to convey both an editorial bias and an unmistakable impression that Mr. Pettis has been guilty of some form of illegality. The only inference a reasonable reader could draw is that Tamara Sone and their corporate masters, acting as some sort of Star Chamber, have tried, convicted, and now seek to extract their pound of flesh from, Greg Pettis. The Desert Sun has never been known for maintaining even a pretense of objectivity in its headlines or its coverage, and this latest monstrosity certainly leaves readers scratching their heads and wondering whether the watershed decision in New York Times v. Sullivan was correctly decided.
Second, let’s take a look once again at how Sone ran as quickly as the coyote runs to the henhouse to solicit more questionable “factual” assertions from former councilmember Bud England, whose reputation for being an uncritical and reliable political water-carrier for incumbent Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa is so well known in Cathedral City Has as to go virtually without saying. We know that Mr. England played fast and loose with the truth in Sone’s prior story, and it was perhaps too much to expect that having been put on very public notice of England’s credibility issues, Sone would have been more circumspect in relying so heavily on so compromised a source.
Third, Tamara Sone has been recklessly disregardful of the truth. That’s right, as I rather expected her to do, she outright lied in her story. In her breathless, mendacious opus, she included the following language: “Former council member Paul Marchand did not return a phone call from The Desert Sun or an email with questions about the loan. However, he posted on his Facebook page: ‘I am not aware of any provision of so-called special loans having been made during my tenure.’”
Sone’s representations were untrue, and were known to her to be untrue at the time they were offered to the public for the public’s consumption.
The true facts were that at 12:48 PM on May 7, Sone left a voicemail message for me indicating that she had “some questions.” The nature of her proposed questions was not specified, and I was naturally somewhat reluctant to engage in an open-ended conversation with a reporter about whose integrity I entertained, and entertain, the gravest doubt; I was not disposed to put up with ambush questions.
In fact, just five minutes later, at 12:53 PM, Sone sent an e-mail to me reading as follows:
“Hi Mr. Marchand, I am working on a follow-up story to the Pettis package that ran on April 28 and I have a couple of questions. When you were on council, did council have to approve special loans that were granted council members? If not, why?
Were you ever told when a council member had taken a loan?
Do you feel that council should be advised of any loans members take? Why or why not? Thank you for your assistance.
Regards, Tamara Sone.”
It was evident from the very short lapse of time between Sone’s voicemail and her e-mail to me that her apparent intent was to cover in an e-mail the ground she had planned to cover in a voicemail.
At approximately 4:10 PM, I responded to the e-mail and also posted its contents, and my response thereto, on Facebook. I did so because it was reasonably foreseeable to me that Sone might take some or all of my remarks out of context.
So that readers may know the totality of my response (in red), is appended hereto:
Ms. Sone:
Please find my reply to your latest round of interogatories.
In limine, let me point out that these are observations based on my time on the City Council, and may not reflect current practices and/or policies and procedures. My responses are in italic. (and also in red in this post) This is also the first time you have contacted me on this matter.
I am working on a follow-up story to the Pettis package that ran on April 28 and I have a couple of questions.
I’m glad you are. Hopefully this one will be more balanced and fair than the last one.
When you were on council, did council have to approve special loans that were granted council members?
I am not aware of any provision of so-called special loans having been made during my tenure.
If not, why?
Come on, Tamara. That’s a foolish question which assumes facts not in evidence. Sounds like you are in “solution looking for a problem” mode here. If there was no policy, it was in all likelihood because the eventuality that would have required a policy to be formulated had never occurred. Your question is non sequitur, and makes about as much sense as asking why we never had a policy on rebuilding Noah’s Ark. Never having had a Noachian deluge, we never needed to consider building an Ark. I’ll make the point again. Policy formation is usually event or occurrence driven. If there was no event to trigger the consideration of a policy therefor, why would we have wasted taxpayer time and resources developing a solution for a problem that had yet to arise. We had more important things to do.
Were you ever told when a council member had taken a loan?
Assumes a fact not in evidence. Since I was not aware of such an occurrence taking place, your question is plainly intended to secure a result you are desirous of hearing, and reflects confirmation bias And no, I don't have a husband to have stopped beating, either.
Do you feel that council should be advised of any loans members take? Why or why not?
Tamara, you should be aware that you are trenching on an intersection between a duty of disclosure and constitutionally guaranteed rights of privacy. Disclosing private personnel matters is a grave breach of ethics and law, though I do know that the mayor and former Councilmember England did in fact traffic in such private information, attempting to use it against me (you want more, you’ll need to call me, I won’t commit such information to writing). It appears that you are pressing a particular agenda here, of trying to impose a de facto duty which may not exist in law. Let me point out to you, as I did in my blog, that we have only one Legislature in California, and had it chosen to legislate in this matter, it would have done so. It is not the function of The Desert Sun to try to impose duties that, should it see fit to do so, would be emphatically within the province of the Legislature. I detect an agendum here.
Thank you for your assistance.
You are welcome.
(Closing citation omitted for brevity).
In her article, Sone pulls the classic dishonest reporter trick of implying that I was in some way concealing things from her. Anytime a reporter includes such noxious language as “telephone calls were not returned,” or, even worse, “telephone calls were not immediately returned,” and fails to include a disclaimer about imminent deadlines, you know that the reporter is deliberately trying to cast the interviewee in the worst possible light.
Certainly, in this case, no other conclusion is possible. Sone was not working under any particular deadline; while this may be a hatchet story whose publication is of great interest to DeRosa and her supporters, it is certainly not time sensitive, and Sone’s characteristically snarky reference is both a lie of omission and a malign masterpiece of deliberate and offensive innuendo.
I don’t mind being lied to nearly so much as I mind being lied about, and what is abundantly clear is that having been spanked in this blog, Tamara Sone is spoiling for payback. Not only is she looking to impugn my own integrity, but she is certainly carrying political water for one of the most sociopathic mayors ever to disgrace the history of Cathedral City.
If the last article constituted journalistic malpractice, this one is nothing more than an acid concentrate of sheer despicable journalistic nastiness.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, California. The views contained herein are his own, and are not to be construed as constituting legal advice. Any attempt to retaliate against him will call forth appropriate litigation.
Summary: The Desert Sun’s vendetta against Greg Pettis continues. Its headline writers betray the fundamentally slanted nature of the paper’s coverage, and its de facto alliance with Cathedral City’s increasingly unpopular mayor. Moreover, Tamara Sone, the author of this latest monstrosity, again sips from the fountain of lies that has come from one of Cathedral City’s former council members. Finally, and most offensive to me personally, were the untruths and innuendo Sone saw fit to lob in my general direction, by making claims about me that can be documented as untrue. Obviously, our local Gannett organ has decided upon a war of extermination against Greg Pettis. This latest effort from Tamara Sone is not responsible journalism; it is an acid concentrate of despicable nastiness.
And so the Desert Sun’s rabid pursuit of councilmember Greg Pettis continues. In a piece rushed into publication this evening, headlined “Greg Pettis got special deal on bad check,” Tamara Sone of our local Gannett organ has pushed forward with another hatchet job.
Having confronted strong pushback from community members and readers angered by its prior reckless disregard for the truth, the Desert Sun has made it abundantly clear that it will stop at nothing to phabricate a phony scandal destroy Greg Pettis. Ethics be damned; integrity be damned; truth be damned.
First, let’s start with the headline, which is clearly intended to convey both an editorial bias and an unmistakable impression that Mr. Pettis has been guilty of some form of illegality. The only inference a reasonable reader could draw is that Tamara Sone and their corporate masters, acting as some sort of Star Chamber, have tried, convicted, and now seek to extract their pound of flesh from, Greg Pettis. The Desert Sun has never been known for maintaining even a pretense of objectivity in its headlines or its coverage, and this latest monstrosity certainly leaves readers scratching their heads and wondering whether the watershed decision in New York Times v. Sullivan was correctly decided.
Second, let’s take a look once again at how Sone ran as quickly as the coyote runs to the henhouse to solicit more questionable “factual” assertions from former councilmember Bud England, whose reputation for being an uncritical and reliable political water-carrier for incumbent Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa is so well known in Cathedral City Has as to go virtually without saying. We know that Mr. England played fast and loose with the truth in Sone’s prior story, and it was perhaps too much to expect that having been put on very public notice of England’s credibility issues, Sone would have been more circumspect in relying so heavily on so compromised a source.
Third, Tamara Sone has been recklessly disregardful of the truth. That’s right, as I rather expected her to do, she outright lied in her story. In her breathless, mendacious opus, she included the following language: “Former council member Paul Marchand did not return a phone call from The Desert Sun or an email with questions about the loan. However, he posted on his Facebook page: ‘I am not aware of any provision of so-called special loans having been made during my tenure.’”
Sone’s representations were untrue, and were known to her to be untrue at the time they were offered to the public for the public’s consumption.
The true facts were that at 12:48 PM on May 7, Sone left a voicemail message for me indicating that she had “some questions.” The nature of her proposed questions was not specified, and I was naturally somewhat reluctant to engage in an open-ended conversation with a reporter about whose integrity I entertained, and entertain, the gravest doubt; I was not disposed to put up with ambush questions.
In fact, just five minutes later, at 12:53 PM, Sone sent an e-mail to me reading as follows:
“Hi Mr. Marchand, I am working on a follow-up story to the Pettis package that ran on April 28 and I have a couple of questions. When you were on council, did council have to approve special loans that were granted council members? If not, why?
Were you ever told when a council member had taken a loan?
Do you feel that council should be advised of any loans members take? Why or why not? Thank you for your assistance.
Regards, Tamara Sone.”
It was evident from the very short lapse of time between Sone’s voicemail and her e-mail to me that her apparent intent was to cover in an e-mail the ground she had planned to cover in a voicemail.
At approximately 4:10 PM, I responded to the e-mail and also posted its contents, and my response thereto, on Facebook. I did so because it was reasonably foreseeable to me that Sone might take some or all of my remarks out of context.
So that readers may know the totality of my response (in red), is appended hereto:
Ms. Sone:
Please find my reply to your latest round of interogatories.
In limine, let me point out that these are observations based on my time on the City Council, and may not reflect current practices and/or policies and procedures. My responses are in italic. (and also in red in this post) This is also the first time you have contacted me on this matter.
I am working on a follow-up story to the Pettis package that ran on April 28 and I have a couple of questions.
I’m glad you are. Hopefully this one will be more balanced and fair than the last one.
When you were on council, did council have to approve special loans that were granted council members?
I am not aware of any provision of so-called special loans having been made during my tenure.
If not, why?
Come on, Tamara. That’s a foolish question which assumes facts not in evidence. Sounds like you are in “solution looking for a problem” mode here. If there was no policy, it was in all likelihood because the eventuality that would have required a policy to be formulated had never occurred. Your question is non sequitur, and makes about as much sense as asking why we never had a policy on rebuilding Noah’s Ark. Never having had a Noachian deluge, we never needed to consider building an Ark. I’ll make the point again. Policy formation is usually event or occurrence driven. If there was no event to trigger the consideration of a policy therefor, why would we have wasted taxpayer time and resources developing a solution for a problem that had yet to arise. We had more important things to do.
Were you ever told when a council member had taken a loan?
Assumes a fact not in evidence. Since I was not aware of such an occurrence taking place, your question is plainly intended to secure a result you are desirous of hearing, and reflects confirmation bias And no, I don't have a husband to have stopped beating, either.
Do you feel that council should be advised of any loans members take? Why or why not?
Tamara, you should be aware that you are trenching on an intersection between a duty of disclosure and constitutionally guaranteed rights of privacy. Disclosing private personnel matters is a grave breach of ethics and law, though I do know that the mayor and former Councilmember England did in fact traffic in such private information, attempting to use it against me (you want more, you’ll need to call me, I won’t commit such information to writing). It appears that you are pressing a particular agenda here, of trying to impose a de facto duty which may not exist in law. Let me point out to you, as I did in my blog, that we have only one Legislature in California, and had it chosen to legislate in this matter, it would have done so. It is not the function of The Desert Sun to try to impose duties that, should it see fit to do so, would be emphatically within the province of the Legislature. I detect an agendum here.
Thank you for your assistance.
You are welcome.
(Closing citation omitted for brevity).
In her article, Sone pulls the classic dishonest reporter trick of implying that I was in some way concealing things from her. Anytime a reporter includes such noxious language as “telephone calls were not returned,” or, even worse, “telephone calls were not immediately returned,” and fails to include a disclaimer about imminent deadlines, you know that the reporter is deliberately trying to cast the interviewee in the worst possible light.
Certainly, in this case, no other conclusion is possible. Sone was not working under any particular deadline; while this may be a hatchet story whose publication is of great interest to DeRosa and her supporters, it is certainly not time sensitive, and Sone’s characteristically snarky reference is both a lie of omission and a malign masterpiece of deliberate and offensive innuendo.
I don’t mind being lied to nearly so much as I mind being lied about, and what is abundantly clear is that having been spanked in this blog, Tamara Sone is spoiling for payback. Not only is she looking to impugn my own integrity, but she is certainly carrying political water for one of the most sociopathic mayors ever to disgrace the history of Cathedral City.
If the last article constituted journalistic malpractice, this one is nothing more than an acid concentrate of sheer despicable journalistic nastiness.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, California. The views contained herein are his own, and are not to be construed as constituting legal advice. Any attempt to retaliate against him will call forth appropriate litigation.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
THE DESERT SUN’S RABID PURSUIT OF GREG PETTIS:
A Question of Class, Ethics, Homophobia, and Defending the Established Order
Summary: The Desert Sun has been guilty of classism and homophobia in its obsessive pursuit of Cathedral city councilmember Greg Pettis. The Desert Sun seeks to impose a precondition of private wealth for public service, a precondition that is both undemocratic and un-American. The Desert Sun editorial board has never forgiven Greg Pettis for being a highly effective queer Democrat in public office, and has actively sought to interfere with his political campaigning and to fabricate the appearance of wrongdoing at every opportunity. If Mr. Pettis had been an affluent Republican, the Desert Sun would have been curiously silent. But, because the Desert Sun believes politics should be the pursuit of the white, the well-off, and the straight, it will eagerly attempt to discredit and defame any office holder who does not meet its own criteria. Its apparent obsession with doing whatever harm it can to Greg Pettis has led it into tawdry political alliances with the incumbent mayor of Cathedral City, and its carrying of her water, and its unashamed willingness to traffic in verifiable lies on her behalf, has been unethical and unacceptable. If anyone should be run out of office, is the mayor of Cathedral city.
By: Paul S. Marchand
My friend and sometime colleague Greg Pettis recently became president of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). Having served on SCAG policy committees, I can attest that being president of SCAG is no easy job. It represents real achievement, and is a testament to the regard in which Mr. Pettis is held by his peers and colleagues, and I congratulate him on his achievement.
Over at the Desert Sun, our local Gannett organ, institutional hatred of Greg Pettis seems to have blinded that newspaper to the value added Greg brings the Coachella Valley. In a series of slanted articles and sanctimonious, self-righteous editorials, the Desert Sun has sought --- with, at best, limited success --- to minimize his achievements, and worse, to fabricate some sort of scandal out of Mr. Pettis’s travel expenses, by which it hopes to see him driven from office.
Of course, this is par for the course for the Desert Sun. In past campaigns, Desert Sun resources and personnel were made available under the table to Mr. Pettis’s political opponents, and the Desert Sun unblushingly sought to paint Mr. Pettis in the worst possible light. Indeed, to borrow an old phrase from Lyndon Johnson: if Greg Pettis were seen walking on the waters of the Salton Sea, the Desert Sun would rush to print with a hyperventilating editorial lambasting Greg for his inability to swim, and talk radio bloviator Steve Kelly would no doubt echo such sentiments.
Of course, the gravamen of the Desert Sun’s monomaniacal, nay, rabid, years-long pursuit of Mr. Pettis is that public service ought to be the preserve of white, wealthy, heterosexual Republicans, to which no middle or working class queer person, especially not queer Democrats, should apply.
Indeed, the Desert Sun’s conduct raises disturbing questions about class, ethics, homophobia, and what the Sun apparently sees as its mission to defend established conservative political dispensations in the Coachella Valley.
For many years, there has existed a view, prevalent in politically conservative circles, that persons in public office should subsidize their public service from private means. While such a view might have been unexceptionable in 18th century England, where members of Parliament were not compensated, and where public service or public office were accompanied by a de facto means test, the emergent democracy of the United States soon rejected at the federal level the idea that private wealth should be a prerequisite to public service.
Now, the Desert Sun impliedly calls, with dog whistles and code phrases, for the reimposition of just such a de facto means test for local elective office. The Desert Sun has been careful to avoid specifically accusing Greg Pettis of any crime, but its nudge-nudge, wink-wink suggestion has been that because Mr. Pettis has done public work and been compensated from the public fisc, he must necessarily be guilty of some kind of nameless transgression. Presumably, had Mr. Pettis applied private personal wealth to public service, the classist Desert Sun would have had no trouble with such a thing.
The Desert Sun’s suggestion in this matter is unacceptable, unethical, and un-American. If the Desert Sun believes Mr. Pettis has been guilty of a crime, then its editors ought to have the testicular fortitude --the balls-- to come right out with their suggestion. If the Desert Sun does not believe Mr. Pettis has been guilty of any criminal wrongdoing, then they need to acknowledge that reality forthrightly and concurrently acknowledge that they are in effect trying to act as a de facto legislator, seeking to impose their own particular rules and norms upon local public office holders.
Given the Desert Sun’s reputation for trying to play kingmaker, it is certainly reasonable to suppose that the newspaper has succumbed to the arrogance of influence in trying to dictate what is and is not appropriate behavior on the part of our public officials. Unfortunately for the Desert Sun, we already have a legislature; it sits in Sacramento, and is not answerable to Greg Burton or any of the other self-important dependable conservative water carriers at the Desert Sun.
If anyone has been guilty of anything, it has been Desert Sun. Not only has the Desert Sun been guilty of classism, it has also been guilty of political homophobia. Greg Pettis makes no secret of being an out gay man. He was the first out gay man to have run and won as an out gay men in the Coachella Valley. I was the second. I know that the Desert Sun has always had a preferential option for non-queer candidates and officeholders, and has always been very ready to condemn and attack queerfolk in public office for the slightest transgressions, whether real or existing only in the hyperventilated minds of the Desert Sun’s editorial staff.
Let us remember that as recently as the end of the last century, the Desert Sun still got its editorial knickers in a swivet over a drag queen night at the local minor-league ballpark, wringing its metaphorical hands over whether the impressionable children of our Valley should be “exposed to such conduct.” (While comparisons are always odious, it should be noted that the L.A. Times of 1997 would not even have thought drag queens at a local ballpark newsworthy, and would certainly not have wasted print or bandwidth obsessing over whether children should be “exposed to such conduct.”)
A newspaper that could get itself so wrought up over drag queens in 1997 still has much work to do in 2013 if the idea of queerfolk serving in public office seems to excite in its personnel such a sense of panic that Desert Sun reporters and administrative personnel gave their time and effort to Mr. Pettis’s opponents in the primary campaign of 2008, when one reporter actually boosted confidential information from the Pettis campaign and provided it to Pettis’s opponents, and when other personnel of the Desert Sun were deeply involved in the creation and maintenance of an anti-Pettis political website.
Clearly, in the eyes of the Desert Sun and the conservative fellow travelers who call the shots there, Greg Pettis has been guilty of the unpardonable sin of being a highly effective queer Democrat in local public office. Apparently the Desert Sun has no problem with queerfolk as long as we are nothing more than harmless, affluent exotics, tastefully redecorating midcentury houses and giving fabulous benefit functions for worthy causes, but when a middle-class homosexual has the temerity to undertake public service, and to undertake it well, being held in sufficient esteem by his peers to be made president of SCAG, then the Desert Sun’s amour propre has been offended, and its sense of offense leads it into tawdry political alliances with Kathleen Joan DeRosa, the most dangerously sociopathic mayor in the corporate history of Cathedral City.
Indeed, so blatant has been the Desert Sun’s obvious bias, prejudice, corruption, and interest in its slanted reporting and hatchet piece editorializing that thread comments supporting Greg Pettis have heavily outnumbered those condemning him, and the wave of outrage both DeRosa and the Desert Sun evidently hope will sweep him from office does not seem to be materializing. Instead, the Desert Sun’s pursuit of Greg Pettis seems to have accomplished nothing more than a hardening, extension, and escalation of community contempt for both it and the power-hungry mayor who so evidently set this latest pursuit in train. If anyone deserves to be run out of public office for this latest nonsense, it is Kathleen Joan DeRosa.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, where he served two terms as member of the city Council. He is familiar with the workings of such regional bodies as SCAG and the Coachella Valley Association of Governments. The views contained herein are his own, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.
Summary: The Desert Sun has been guilty of classism and homophobia in its obsessive pursuit of Cathedral city councilmember Greg Pettis. The Desert Sun seeks to impose a precondition of private wealth for public service, a precondition that is both undemocratic and un-American. The Desert Sun editorial board has never forgiven Greg Pettis for being a highly effective queer Democrat in public office, and has actively sought to interfere with his political campaigning and to fabricate the appearance of wrongdoing at every opportunity. If Mr. Pettis had been an affluent Republican, the Desert Sun would have been curiously silent. But, because the Desert Sun believes politics should be the pursuit of the white, the well-off, and the straight, it will eagerly attempt to discredit and defame any office holder who does not meet its own criteria. Its apparent obsession with doing whatever harm it can to Greg Pettis has led it into tawdry political alliances with the incumbent mayor of Cathedral City, and its carrying of her water, and its unashamed willingness to traffic in verifiable lies on her behalf, has been unethical and unacceptable. If anyone should be run out of office, is the mayor of Cathedral city.
By: Paul S. Marchand
My friend and sometime colleague Greg Pettis recently became president of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). Having served on SCAG policy committees, I can attest that being president of SCAG is no easy job. It represents real achievement, and is a testament to the regard in which Mr. Pettis is held by his peers and colleagues, and I congratulate him on his achievement.
Over at the Desert Sun, our local Gannett organ, institutional hatred of Greg Pettis seems to have blinded that newspaper to the value added Greg brings the Coachella Valley. In a series of slanted articles and sanctimonious, self-righteous editorials, the Desert Sun has sought --- with, at best, limited success --- to minimize his achievements, and worse, to fabricate some sort of scandal out of Mr. Pettis’s travel expenses, by which it hopes to see him driven from office.
Of course, this is par for the course for the Desert Sun. In past campaigns, Desert Sun resources and personnel were made available under the table to Mr. Pettis’s political opponents, and the Desert Sun unblushingly sought to paint Mr. Pettis in the worst possible light. Indeed, to borrow an old phrase from Lyndon Johnson: if Greg Pettis were seen walking on the waters of the Salton Sea, the Desert Sun would rush to print with a hyperventilating editorial lambasting Greg for his inability to swim, and talk radio bloviator Steve Kelly would no doubt echo such sentiments.
Of course, the gravamen of the Desert Sun’s monomaniacal, nay, rabid, years-long pursuit of Mr. Pettis is that public service ought to be the preserve of white, wealthy, heterosexual Republicans, to which no middle or working class queer person, especially not queer Democrats, should apply.
Indeed, the Desert Sun’s conduct raises disturbing questions about class, ethics, homophobia, and what the Sun apparently sees as its mission to defend established conservative political dispensations in the Coachella Valley.
For many years, there has existed a view, prevalent in politically conservative circles, that persons in public office should subsidize their public service from private means. While such a view might have been unexceptionable in 18th century England, where members of Parliament were not compensated, and where public service or public office were accompanied by a de facto means test, the emergent democracy of the United States soon rejected at the federal level the idea that private wealth should be a prerequisite to public service.
Now, the Desert Sun impliedly calls, with dog whistles and code phrases, for the reimposition of just such a de facto means test for local elective office. The Desert Sun has been careful to avoid specifically accusing Greg Pettis of any crime, but its nudge-nudge, wink-wink suggestion has been that because Mr. Pettis has done public work and been compensated from the public fisc, he must necessarily be guilty of some kind of nameless transgression. Presumably, had Mr. Pettis applied private personal wealth to public service, the classist Desert Sun would have had no trouble with such a thing.
The Desert Sun’s suggestion in this matter is unacceptable, unethical, and un-American. If the Desert Sun believes Mr. Pettis has been guilty of a crime, then its editors ought to have the testicular fortitude --the balls-- to come right out with their suggestion. If the Desert Sun does not believe Mr. Pettis has been guilty of any criminal wrongdoing, then they need to acknowledge that reality forthrightly and concurrently acknowledge that they are in effect trying to act as a de facto legislator, seeking to impose their own particular rules and norms upon local public office holders.
Given the Desert Sun’s reputation for trying to play kingmaker, it is certainly reasonable to suppose that the newspaper has succumbed to the arrogance of influence in trying to dictate what is and is not appropriate behavior on the part of our public officials. Unfortunately for the Desert Sun, we already have a legislature; it sits in Sacramento, and is not answerable to Greg Burton or any of the other self-important dependable conservative water carriers at the Desert Sun.
If anyone has been guilty of anything, it has been Desert Sun. Not only has the Desert Sun been guilty of classism, it has also been guilty of political homophobia. Greg Pettis makes no secret of being an out gay man. He was the first out gay man to have run and won as an out gay men in the Coachella Valley. I was the second. I know that the Desert Sun has always had a preferential option for non-queer candidates and officeholders, and has always been very ready to condemn and attack queerfolk in public office for the slightest transgressions, whether real or existing only in the hyperventilated minds of the Desert Sun’s editorial staff.
Let us remember that as recently as the end of the last century, the Desert Sun still got its editorial knickers in a swivet over a drag queen night at the local minor-league ballpark, wringing its metaphorical hands over whether the impressionable children of our Valley should be “exposed to such conduct.” (While comparisons are always odious, it should be noted that the L.A. Times of 1997 would not even have thought drag queens at a local ballpark newsworthy, and would certainly not have wasted print or bandwidth obsessing over whether children should be “exposed to such conduct.”)
A newspaper that could get itself so wrought up over drag queens in 1997 still has much work to do in 2013 if the idea of queerfolk serving in public office seems to excite in its personnel such a sense of panic that Desert Sun reporters and administrative personnel gave their time and effort to Mr. Pettis’s opponents in the primary campaign of 2008, when one reporter actually boosted confidential information from the Pettis campaign and provided it to Pettis’s opponents, and when other personnel of the Desert Sun were deeply involved in the creation and maintenance of an anti-Pettis political website.
Clearly, in the eyes of the Desert Sun and the conservative fellow travelers who call the shots there, Greg Pettis has been guilty of the unpardonable sin of being a highly effective queer Democrat in local public office. Apparently the Desert Sun has no problem with queerfolk as long as we are nothing more than harmless, affluent exotics, tastefully redecorating midcentury houses and giving fabulous benefit functions for worthy causes, but when a middle-class homosexual has the temerity to undertake public service, and to undertake it well, being held in sufficient esteem by his peers to be made president of SCAG, then the Desert Sun’s amour propre has been offended, and its sense of offense leads it into tawdry political alliances with Kathleen Joan DeRosa, the most dangerously sociopathic mayor in the corporate history of Cathedral City.
Indeed, so blatant has been the Desert Sun’s obvious bias, prejudice, corruption, and interest in its slanted reporting and hatchet piece editorializing that thread comments supporting Greg Pettis have heavily outnumbered those condemning him, and the wave of outrage both DeRosa and the Desert Sun evidently hope will sweep him from office does not seem to be materializing. Instead, the Desert Sun’s pursuit of Greg Pettis seems to have accomplished nothing more than a hardening, extension, and escalation of community contempt for both it and the power-hungry mayor who so evidently set this latest pursuit in train. If anyone deserves to be run out of public office for this latest nonsense, it is Kathleen Joan DeRosa.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, where he served two terms as member of the city Council. He is familiar with the workings of such regional bodies as SCAG and the Coachella Valley Association of Governments. The views contained herein are his own, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.
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