Discovering America

Not too many people in what Sarah Palin calls the "lamestream" media think the Occupy Wall Street protests can last, so long as they don't have a clear agenda, even though their agenda is perfectly clear; they're demonstrating against corporate hegemony and a concentration of wealth that benefits only a few of us.  Since the "lamestream" - er, mainstream media are part of that coporate culture, of course the media are going to say they don't know what they stand for.

Right now, the one thing keeping Occupy Wall Street from making further inroads is the inability of the young, socially liberal people behind the movement to rally others who are not so young or socially broadminded to the cause.  A recent protest in Lower Manhattan attracted  attention from some construction workers who did not harass the protesters, as happened in the antiwar demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s, but those same hard-hats did not join them either.  This was despite the fact that these construction workers are the same blue-collar workers the protesters in Occupy Wall Street are trying to reach.  And the reason for that can be boiled down to the federal holiday being observed today.

Columbus Day.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters are trying to create an America where exploitation not only isn't tolerated, it's not celebrated either.  Columbus, of course, is now viewed as a genocidal colonialist who was instrumental in ravaging the Western Hemisphere and destroying its indigenous cultures.  But blue-collar guys like those construction workers - many of whom, I'm sure, are Italian - think of the Columbus they learned about in grade school, the intrepid explorer who discovered new lands and whose actions led to the settling and founding of America.  And when you contemplate that, you understand why conservatives refer to abortion, school prayer, and Shari'a law, issues that have nothing to with economic well-being - to divide people and keep God-fearing white ethnic working stiffs from joining the rainbow coalition of Occupy Wall Street protesters they have much more in common with economically.

So it all comes down to an Italian navigator who's been celebrated on side and scorned on the other.

I know how to make the two sides reconcile their cultural differences.  Working-class whites should agree to let Columbus Day be abolished if the left and the black nationalists agree to give up Kwanzaa.

Speaking of holidays, I'd like to wish my Canadian neighbors a happy Thanksgiving.  Be thankful for your single-payer health care system.                  

Abortion and the Media

Representative Christopher Smith (R-NJ) was forced to reword his anti-abortion bill to avoid redefining rape. The bill as originally drafted would have limited taxpayer funding of abortions to cases of "forcible rape." That is, women impregnated in cases of statutory rape or women who are drugged into a state of mind that would render them unable to resist sexual contact would have been out of luck. Smith, in a rare show of moral ambiguity on this issue, backed down in response to public outcry.

This is a negligible upward blip in the fight for women's rights. This bill would still end tax breaks for health insurance plans that include coverage for abortions and abortion-related procedures, and it would ban women from using their health savings accounts for abortions. Of course, the bill has no chance of passing in the Senate, and the President would veto it anyway. But this ongoing attack on abortion rights - a sign that the misogynistic policies of the Reagan era, like the Reagan era itself, haven't really gone away - is enjoying new life thanks to a far-right Tea Party movement that was only supposed to be about taxes and spending. Well, this bill is called the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," so maybe Smith thought he could make it sound fiscally relevant.

I couldn't help but notice, by the way, that this legislation is getting no coverage by the mainstream media. No coverage when I've checked, anyway. Perhaps the press thinks this bill is too insignificant to cover in light of the ongoing crisis in Egypt. Not to mention the Giffords shooting, although reporting on that story has diminished somewhat, lest you start calling for gun control. (Breaking news: Her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, is going to command the last Endeavour space shuttle flight.) The truth is, the mainstream media don't want to cover issues affecting people's daily lives. If they did, you'd start seeing Lafayette Square in Washington fill up with protesters just like Tahrir Square in Cairo. And that might actually lead to progressive change in this country that threatens the established order of which the mainstream press is part.

But it would be a great story to cover.

By the way, the United States remains the only industrialized country where abortion is still an issue; other industrialized nations have long since settled it, one way or the other. I may have said this once before, but when a Japanese official pointed this out on American television, he was laughing.