Technology Gap

I want to shed some "lyte" on technology today.  I was coming out of the library (yes I read actual books printed on paper!) and saw a 3 year old child strolling by talking on a Bluetooth.  Now, it wasn't actually operating, he was just holding it to his head, babbling away.  No doubt he was imitating either mom or dad, or both.  

And I started thinking about my own kids and this whole new generation that has grown up connected to technology in a way that previous generations never had.  Cell phones, video games, personal computers, are pervasive in our culture now.  I watch as kids tweet, IM, text, and interact on MySpace, all simultaneously.  I can't blog and listen to music at the same time.

Then I see the differences on how we approach technology.  Give a kid a new phone, and they will just start using it.  Same with a new computer program or a website.  My generation is locked into using that relic of the past, the no-longer-relevant owner's manual.  We want to read about how to operate something before we actually operate it.  My children just dive right in and figure it out on the fly.  We are much more tentative, afraid of making a mistake.

Now, there are all sorts of doomsayers out there, warning us that this plugged-in generation has no people skills, no understanding of one on one relationships.  But I beg to differ.  When I pick my kids up from their high school, I am struck by how much hugging is going on.

Yes, I said hugging.  They hug each other hello, and they hug each other goodbye.  I have yet to see two guys hugging as a greeting, but the girls hug and the opposite sexes hug.  This behavior crosses all the social caste lines.  Jocks hug. Geeks hug.  Skaters hug.  Even Goths hug.  When I was in high school, you were allowed to hug your boyfriend, but hug everybody?  Eeewww!!!

So while we have on the one hand, a very technically savvy generation, they also are very physically demonstrative as well.  Some will say these two behaviors have combined in the practice of "sexting", sending pictures of oneself in sexually provocative poses, but so far my kids texts revolve around the same stuff we passed notes about.  Who likes whom, what are are you doing right now, I hate this class, the same pedestrian, self-absorbed minutiae that all teenagers of all generations find so fascinating.  

Hey, maybe that gap isn't so wide after all....

Getting Your Goat

I want to shed some "lyte" on scapegoating today.  Scapegoating is punishing someone, usually weaker than you, for sins that you have committed.  It comes from the biblical tradition of designating a goat to be sacrificed for a community's sins.  In the midst of this swine flu scare, Republicans are blaming illegal immigrants.

Just when I think the Republicans and the rabid right can't get any crazier, they one up me.  People are suggesting that immigrants are being infected and sent into our country from Mexico to spread the disease.

The truth is that more than likely this disease came into America with a bunch of students who were in Mexico for spring break.  I doubt an illegal immigrant, suffering from the flu, could hike across the desert in a desperate attempt to infect Americans.

Again the Republicans and the rabid right are casting about for something, anything to get angry about.  Let's not do anything to solve the problem.  Let's strip funding for pandemics out of the stimulus bill, by labeling it (pun so totally intended) "pork".  Let's filibuster the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services.  And now let's blame illegal immigration for a virus.

I don't want to give them any ideas, but next they'll be targeting another favorite scapegoat, homosexuals.  They'll be saying that the virus was God's judgement on Mexico.  Did they legalize gay marriage?  Oh no!  Watch out Iowa and Vermont!    

Snipe Hunt

I am shedding a little "lyte" on reinvention today.  Before I go any further, I want to pat myself on the back.  This is my 50th blog!!  Yay me!  Okay, back to reinvention.  The Republican party is searching for a theme, an organizing mantra to coalesce themselves for 2010.  The theme they have chosen?  Drum roll please, check and balances.

Hmmm, funny that a Congress and White House controlled by one party didn't bother them at all when they were that one party.  I know, irony was written off the party platform in the 80s but still, suddenly they are all afire about checks and balances.

I think the single party in charge is a good idea for now.  Especially when the one party in charge is the one with actual ideas and thoughts.  Plus we need an apples to apples comparison of how the country fares under one party versus another.

This is what the Republicans are worried about.  If they don't make significant gains in 2010, we will have a crystal clear picture of what life is like under Democratic control and I have a sneaking suspicion it will be better than life under the Republicans.

I am going to use my feelings to make the comparison.  Republicans are all about feelings, just say no to facts and reality.  So here goes.  Thanks to the Republicans, we now know what real economic turmoil feels like.  Thanks to Republicans, we now know what terrorist attacks on our own soil feels like.  Thanks to Republicans, we now know what a shrinking of our civil liberties feels like.  Thanks to Republicans, we now know how watching a major US city drown on national TV feels like.  Thanks to Republicans,  we now know what prosecuting two wars ineptly feels like.  

Now the Democratic party has just started, but already we can feel the difference.  I know I sleep better at night, knowing there are grown ups in charge.  People are being put in charge of agencies based on their competency, not their voting habits.  You have a sense of things getting done, wrongs being righted.  I am not alone, polls show that a greater number of Americans feel that the country is headed in the right direction since 2004.

So, the Republicans think that checks and balances are what we need.  But so far they have only shown that they are capable of obstruction, not construction.  I suggest they get a few more ideas, that are based on reality and facts.  I think they need more time in the wilderness, searching for that all important clue.  I just hope they recognize it when they see it. 

Reality Check

Today I am shedding "lyte" on reality.  We are all atwitter about torture.  What to do?  A truth commission, an independent prosecutor, a tribunal?  What should we do!?  And not to sound insensitive, but I am kind of over torture.  I know we did it.  I know it is wrong and illegal.  But I don't think anyone is going to pay for it.

Yes, part of me would love to see orange jumpsuits and perp walks.  But I am going to date myself here, does anyone remember Iran-Contra?  We had the bastards cold; selling arms to the axis of evil, we are holding your people hostage, Iranians and then using the money to support a group of people in Nicaragua that were considered terrorists in their own country.  And all without the Congress's knowledge, support or permission.  What happened?  14 administration personnel were charged with crimes, 11 were convicted, and all were pardoned.  Ollie North got up there and said he did it because he loved his country and he would do it again.  He got a radio show.

So what do think is going to happen if we haul Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bybee, and company in front of judge or committee.  "I only did it because I loved my country."  "Our homeland had been attacked, we did only what we thought was necessary."  "Go ahead and imprison me, I'm still a patriot."  Yada, yada, yada.  The rabid right will enshrine these thugs as martyrs and we will all waste valuable time and energy and money on re-energizing their base.

President Obama knows this, so does Senator Harry Reid.  That's why they are putting the brakes on this, letting all the information be disseminated first.  Let the winds of public opinion blow and howl.  But don't act too hastily.  We have had a couple of years to get used to the idea that we were the bad guys, letting the truth come out would be cathartic.  Just don't start the subpoenas yet.

If there are trials, let them happen on an international level.  Put it out Nuremberg style, and let the world decide.  This would take it beyond our petty, partisan bickering and associate these thugs with the Nazis.  "I was only following orders."  Perfect.  But it won't happen.  This is our mess and we get to clean it up.

  

Mommy & Me

So today I am shedding a little "lyte" on Take Your Child To Work Day.  Many of you are unaware of this invention.  It's origins are with the feminist movement and it started as Take Your Daughter To Work Day to encourage girls to focus on their futures and careers as opposed to daydreaming about their wedding days.  It has morphed to include boys now because, well, it was just so sexist to only invite girls, never mind that boys are encouraged practically in uteri to focus on their careers.  But I digress.

What most parents don't want to admit is that one of perks to working outside the home is that it is outside the home.  People go to work to get away from their kids.  There!  I said it.  But it is true that many working mothers secretly are relieved when their little darlings are tucked away safely at daycare or with a nanny and they are free to be themselves and not "Mommy".

Being "Mommy" full time is incredibly hard and fantastically thankless.  I should know, I stayed home and it was one of the most difficult things I did.  One day I was a dedicated career professional, the next I was a fat, neurotic breast feeding machine.  I am not kidding, I had twins, so I had someone attached to me pretty much 24/7.  I felt like those chimpanzees you see on Animal Planet, climbing the trees with a baby chimp latched on.

Now, I could rhapsodize that it was all worth it.  It was, but that doesn't make the day to day drudgery any less.  I read a quote once, "The days are long, but the years are short."  It is so true when you are home full time with your kids.  The day seems endless, and when you are the only grown up in the room for most of it, you go a little crazy.

Before I had the twins, I used to see moms at the mall by my office, and I would be so jealous.  There they were, casually strolling with their little bundle of joy, no deadlines, no boss, no pressure.  Just mommy and me, eating lunch and shopping for cute little outfits at Baby Gap.  My Mother of Twins club urged me to take the twins to the mall when they were about 3 months old.  I had never sweated so much in my life.  And try maneuvering a stroller more than 5 feet long into a changing room.  Or breast feeding one baby while the other one lays screaming in the stroller; with old ladies in the food court tsk-tsking you and asking why you don't go into the bathroom and "take care of that."  I told them to take their lunch into a bathroom stall.

Some days I would fantasize about work.  Understand that I worked in collections.  That's how bad it would get.  Once the twins were weaned, I worked part time and loved it.  Conversations with grown ups!  Work that you could start and actually finish!  Performance reviews!  Lunch breaks where you could eat your food uninterrupted!  Heaven...

So thanks a lot feminists.  Now one day a year we are guilted into taking our kids to the one place that gives us break from them.  Next I will have take my husband with me to the hairdresser.      

Wheel of Misfortune

Today I am shedding some "lyte" on whining. I hate whining, just ask my kids.  But I find it even more repellent in adults.  In Conde Nast's "Portfolio" there is a classic example of whining titled "Confessions of a TARP Wife".  I am warning you, if you read it, your blood pressure will rise and you will have to stifle a strong desire to hunt this woman down and beat her senseless.  I think she must have realized that would be the reaction of most readers, so she doesn't give her name, her byline is Anonymous.

She laments not the loss of her lifestyle so much as the necessity of having to camoflage it.  She still buys her friends presents at Bergdorf Goddman, but she has them sent to their homes instead of the carrying the bags on the street.  The poor thing had to downsize her husband's birthday party.  She refers to all this as a "complex algorithm".  What's that red stain on my shirt?  My heart, bleeding for this unfortunate victim of the economic downturn.

Never mind that her husband helped create it.  I guess I should be thankful that she is at least self-aware enough to recognize that her "problems" are of a different tenor than the rest of us.  But apparently she isn't smart enough to shut the f*@k up about it.  Excuse me for sounding bitter, but her bemoaning her lack of cooking skills and having to stay in and watch "Law and Order" strikes me as a stunning example of the very attitudes that got into this mess in the first place.

Maybe it has escaped her attention that there are people who are dying because of this meltdown.  The CFO of Freddie Mac was found dead this morning, an apparent suicide.  Every week there is another story of a family found dead, usually due to a murder/suicide that had its roots in true monetary distress.  These are real problems, not buying a new spring wardrobe is not.  I think even Marie Antoinette had more empathy than this person.

I could hope that she will use some of her husband's TARP money to buy a clue.  But I doubt it.  The kind of entitlement that you would have to possess to think about writing such a tone deaf article, let alone actually publish it, could easily withstand any onslaught of mere empathy.  No, once again, I will have to rely on the old karmic wheel.  I just want it to roll over her, stop, reverse, and roll over her again.     

Chillax

I want to shed some "lyte" on trust.  The left is in an uproar since President Obama announced that the people who participated in the torture outlined in the recently released memos would not be subject to prosecution.  He has also expressed reluctance to investigating and prosecuting those who oversaw the torture program.

I can understand the left's dismay. We want heads to roll, we want perp walks, we want orange jumpsuits.  After all, these guys actually broke the law.  But, they were told by Bush's Justice Department and the White House Council that what they were doing was legal.  So what is an already busy President to do?

Wait.  The Congress is already investigating and the results aren't in yet.  Obama is taking a stance that he wants us to "move on" and focus on our future.  That is a savvy way to appease the Republicans and the rabid right that no witch hunts will happen with his blessing.  If the results of the congressional investigations show that laws were broken, and if the public outcry becomes deafening, then Obama can "cave" to the pressure and appoint a special prosecutor without any blowback from the right.

President Obama has shown again and again that he is usually about 5 or 6 steps ahead of the rest of us.   Remember during the elections and we were all worried that he was going to be chewed up and spit out by the Republican "swift boat" style of attacks?  Remind me of how that ended up, oh yeah, he stayed above it all and gained in popularity.  Remember during the pirate hostage crisis and the rabid right was saying how soft he was because he didn't come out on TV and say things like, "Dead or alive"?  Then he authorized sniper attacks and the hostage was freed.

I know that during the past eight years we got used to having a President that wasn't as smart as us, but things are different now.  So as the college kids say, "Chillax."  He's got this.