John Paul McCarty

Iran’s Disputed Election – The Big Picture

2009-06-16T03:15:31Z

This is an amazing set of pictures of the beautiful, brave people of Iran

Iran’s Disputed Election – The Big Picture – Boston.com

twittering the Iran Revolution

2009-06-15T17:36:48Z

It’s definitely an uprising. So far the revolution is in the minds of Iran’s inspired reformers and in social media, put to amazing new use. Given the strength of the two, the revolution may well become fact.

Iranian officials appeared to be ready, after uprisings elsewhere had been organized by phone texting, to block text messages as election “official results” began to be announced. They were not so prepared for twitter and facebook and the many modes by which users connect to the online world. Twitter use was not so effectively shut down.

As a news junkie who rarely turns on the TV, when I began to see reports of protests in Iran on twitter I did what I have done to see breaking news for most of my life. I turned on CNN. To my surprise CNN was not covering Iran. Not on CNNHN either. After past experiences with CNN wall-to-wall coverage, Like when John-John’s plane went down, I was prepared for excruciatingly repetitive coverage. Instead I got entirely forgettable old news.

New to twitter as I was, I had the good fortune to be following a few bloggers and reporters, and through their tweets became aware of increasing intensity in Iran’s protests. Before long I was additionally following their sources, provided in attributions as (RT) “retweets.” Soon I was following people on the ground, observing and participating in the protests.

I even became an unwitting participant in the uprising if only for a moment. I followed one link that implored followers to shut down Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s website. The link led me to a proxy server that attempted to refresh Khamenei’s site every 1 seconds, which would in effect create a denial of service attack when multiple users follow the link.

It was exciting to think of myself as being involved, but realized that there is too much that I don’t know about Iran and the current situation (though I have strong sympathies) to be an active participant from half a world away. I closed my browser window and left it to true stakeholders to decide if blocking the site was a wise move.

In all, it was a heady experience to be following real events in Iran even while our mainstream media outlets were virtually silent. By 2 a.m. when I needed sleep, I was still too keyed up to go to bed.

A couple of weeks ago I was still asking what twitter is for. Today I have a feeling it could change– and may already have changed the world.

Sonia Sotomayor’s Wise Latina Remarks

2009-05-30T03:33:36Z

The angry white males are raising Hell, fomenting hatred among the small-minded for the sake of their ratings and to stir up the worst of the Republican base. Guys like Rush and Newt demonstrate why white men get a bad rap. You can no more generalize about white men than other groups, especially in these days of the sensitive metrosexual. Still there are some dominant features amongst the dominant crowd.

As one who looks much like other white males, I’d have to admit to have shared in some of the benefits granted as a matter of course to my race and gender. In my own mind and amongst those uncomfortable with gay men, I also can empathize with others who feel or are treated as outsiders. As a gay man of a certain age, having come into adulthood as AIDS was becoming known, I know what it is to be among friends who have experienced the same discriminations as I have.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s statement:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,”

even taken out of context, does not trouble me. We who strive for legitimacy and integrity in a culture where straight white men are more frequently presumed to posess these qualities, develop our own myths to give us strength and help us see the value in our many diversities.

Our myths, our stories that convey what is transcendently true for us, may acknowledge what we don’t have that the dominant culture takes for granted, but more importantly, the stories are about what we’ve gained through our coming to terms with our unique gifts and attributes. For me, while I lack the easy self-assurance that I admire in other guys, there are compensations in a quality of empathy and self-awareness that can only be earned. A person who has been taught through many subtle messages that favor the white, the male, and the straight, that they are good, that they’re somehow complete, may not have the motivation to see the best in a diverse people, largely foreign to themselves.

I don’t know what is to be a wise Latina woman, but I find it not at all offensive, that she, among her sisters, would share a story about themselves, what they have learned and experienced that others likely will not have learned.

That people would get upset about the word “better” is ludicrous in this context of a shared myth. When we’re telling stories, hyperbole is just one of the many tools of the storyteller.

Put Sonia Sotomayor on the Bench of Nine, and she will begin to live in yet another myth and tell stories of fairness and justice and honoring precedent and above all, the Constitution.

What Nancy Pelosi Knew is the Wrong Question

2009-05-21T14:44:49Z

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has been under attack by Republicans and the right-wing media for the possibility that she knew that the Bush administration was torturing people. The mainstream media have abetted the right-wing tactic by making what Pelosi knew into multiple Headlines. What Ms. Pelosi knew is not the main issue. She could hardly even have been an accessory to the alleged crimes of torture as no one attributes to her the power either to approve or stop the torture. Yet somehow, through the perversity of the right-wing media and those who sell news rather than report news, Nancy Pelosi has become the main story.

Had Ms. Pelosi publicly objected to the content of the briefing she received, she had been warned that she would be sanctioned for breach of national security. She can not know how that would have played out. Would she have been arrested and isolated, would the right-wing news machine make her an enemy of the state in the minds of those who continued to support Bush and Cheney? Would she ever regain her credibility to oppose the policies she had been made aware of?

I don’t know if Ms. Pelosi is absolutely correct in her characterizations of the events of 6, 7, and 8 years ago. She was not allowed to document or share the information she received. I do know that she is not the villian in this story. Responsibility for the abuses of the Bush Administration falls precisely on those who made the policies, carried out the policies, sought to justify torture and sought justification for torture. These people are the villains. A leader in the minority party in the house at the time these policies were made and carried out was effectively silenced in the guise of keeping congress informed.

Josh Groban Recognizes Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington in Comments on MSNBC

2009-01-20T14:11:28Z

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

While the backing choruses at the “We Are One” concert on Jan. 18 were not acknowledged by the producers, Josh Groban was kind to give Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington a shout out in his comments yesterday on MSNBC.

Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington Sings for Barack Obama

2009-01-20T00:12:58Z

One hundred members of the 225-member group were invited to sing with Josh Groban and Heather Headley at the Lincoln Memorial for the historic “We Are One” concert. The performance of “My Country Tis of Thee” recalled and paid tribute to Marian Anderson’s concert opening with that song at the Memorial in 1939.

The appearance was among important firsts: the inclusion of the chorus and the invocation by openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson. The president-elect mentioned lgbt people as an identity group in his remarks as he had done at the beginning of his whistle-stop tour. It’s unfortunate that the producers and HBO did not include any identification of the group, but word has gotten out that our singers were there. Also many who were there are perplexed why Bishop Gene Robinson’s Invocation was not even broadcast.

Barack Obama’s “little” whistlestop speech in Philadelphia

2009-01-18T18:42:54Z

President-elect Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia this morning was a remarkable one, but not necessarily for what the talking head corps is remarking about.

Obama caught my attention early with the phrase,

It was these ideals that led us to declare independence, and craft our constitution, producing documents that were imperfect but had within them, like our nation itself, the capacity to be made more perfect.

I thought I heard the sound of a gauntlet crashing down on a cold stone floor somewhere. What will our strict constructionist, Federalist Society judges think when they hear that? Did the president-elect just declare that our founding documents are living documents, to be perfected, even as we seek to be perfected?

But Barack Obama arrived at the scene of this speech with moral authority absent from the arguments of the originalists. As the first African American president, he is the embodiment of the tension between the idealism and the compromises written into the texts. The accommodation of slavery until 1865 is quite arguably the strongest example of the constitution’s imperfection.

Constructionists and originalists can argue that there has always been a process to change the law and the constitution itself as needs changed. Language that acknowledges the slave trade, neither endorsing it or prohibiting it, was a compromise. The original intention there was to include accommodation enough to get the constitution passed by men who disagreed.

There will have been countless other disagreements and compromises ratified as well.

As one who muses but is not a constitutional scholar, I can only say that while understanding that the original text is flawed does not leave everything up to interpretation, is seems that to prohibit any interpretation of intent is foolish dogma.

That was Barack Obama’s opening, in a speech that seemed to try to do two things in particular: first to tie these moments to a great American history of overcoming adversity in the face of revolutionary change, and second, to call on all Americans to be better than we are, reminiscent of JFK’s inaugural remarks.

And yet while our problems may be new, what is required to overcome them is not. What is required is the same perseverance and idealism that our founders displayed. What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives – from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry – an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels.

We are not all made for independent thought and action. But most folks are capable of moving beyond their prejudices, even while never giving them up entirely, given a leader they believe in.

He called on us to form a more perfect union by “seeing ourselves in one another.” Providing a recitation of many of the identity groups to which we belong and which sometimes divide us. It was important for this gay man to hear his own identity group named, even as Obama called us to come together (which could also be read as “get over it.”)

As Obama began his speech with reference to the Declaration of Independence, he paraphrased it’s greatest, most enduring idea, saying, “we all are equal.” That would seem to be the “founding creed” in his closing.

For the American Revolution did not end when British guns fell silent. It was never something to be won only on a battlefield or fulfilled only in our founding documents. It was not simply a struggle to break free from empire and declare independence. The American Revolution was – and remains – an ongoing struggle “in the minds and hearts of the people” to live up to our founding creed.

So the American Revolution is ongoing — alive today — with a people still seeking change. Yes we can.

The original text of the speech can be read here.

Just Seat Sen. Roland Burris, Already

2009-01-07T04:30:12Z

Senator-designate Roland Burris showed up at the Capitol today, and as expected was turned away. Majority Leader Harry Reid should get his priorities straight and work on passing economic legislation and stop politicking. Relying on a rule that requires certification from state secretaries of state to deny Burris the seat does not pass constitutional muster and all interested parties know it. Time to tend to the people’s business. Repudiating Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich for his corrupt ways is not the Senate’s business. Let the courts and the Illinois legislature deal with him.

Giant Snowman Rises Again in Alaska, Mysteriously

2008-12-26T14:22:21Z

Story on ABC News
Video and Story on Anchorage Daily News

The libertine in me loves Snowzilla.

WhiteKnot.org – Getting and Making White Knots

2008-12-25T00:00:01Z

WhiteKnot.org – Getting and Making White Knots

From the WhiteKnot site:

The White Knot is the symbol for marriage equality.

It takes two traditional symbols of marriage—white and tying the knot—and combines them in a simple way to show support for the right of gays and lesbians to marry. All loving couples deserve the same legal rights, benefits, and respect that civil marriage bestows.

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John Paul McCarty

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