Lunching with Neil Steinberg

I had the honor today to lunch with Neil Steinberg, the Sun-Times columnist, writer, blogger and seemingly all-around decent person.  I was the lucky S.O.B. who correctly guessed his every-Saturday query "Where IS This?" on June 28th, when he decided to change up the prize from one of his posters or books to lunch with him.  Not many people read my mindless schlock here, but figured I'd give his blog a plug.  Thanks for lunch Neil, it was a pleasure meeting you, and you've solidified me as a reader of yours for life.

Every goddamn day - June 28th

No Longer 'Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor'

Posted: 07/14/2014 2:55 pm EDT Updated: 07/14/2014 2:59 pm EDT

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"Give me your tired" and Republicans demand President Obama meet them at the border. Give me "your poor" and Republicans demand they be sent back immediately. Give me "your huddled masses" and Republicans demand there are not enough jobs for Americans already. Give me "yearning to breathe free" and Republicans demand President Obama be impeached because his policies have weakened border security and are too inviting. Give me "the wretched refuse of your teeming shore" and Republicans demand no thank you, they'll want to raise the minimum wage. Give me "send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me," and Republicans demand no immigration legislation, no pathways to citizenship, no back of the line. Give me "I lift my lamp beside the golden door," and Republicans demand to increase the National Guard and security cameras across the border with punishing signs "no longer give me yours."

Give me a surge of despairing women and children fleeing the misery of war and defying life-threatening odds and Republicans demand to purge them as welfare wannabes and maybe terrorists. Give me the dispiriting site of the crush of a humanitarian crisis at our border and Republicans demand to gag and curtain off Lady Liberty. Give me a president trying to dance in the middle and do right and Republicans demand recalcitrance. Give me hope and Republicans demand despair and fear. Give me a president that will not run for anything again and Republicans demand to poke a hole and drain his lame duck pond. Give me President Obama accusing Republicans of playing political theater and I give you President Obama playing political theater. Please, political elite class, no longer give me "your" inaction and divisive heartless sound bites.

This so-called "surge" of fifty thousand or so women and children are not in over-crowded refugee camps in Europe, Asia, Africa, or the Middle East. They are not trying to steal themselves into America. They are not a risk but are handing themselves over as victims displaced by war. Many are here to reconnect with their family already melted into the pot. There is no need for political finger-pointing to agitate one's political base over this crisis. Folks are already disgusted enough. This is happening at our border and although rare, this is not an unprecedented humanitarian border crisis for America.

Back in 1980, America managed another humanitarian border crisis. During the Mariel boat lift episode, well over 125,000 Cuban refugees that flooded Miami between a Fidel Castro and Cuban-American organized exodus were assimilated amongst the free and the brave. Many families were reunited for the first time. But crafty communist chameleon Fidel Castro slipped into the huddled masses many of Cuba's undesirables, their prisoners and mentally ill to free Cuba of this unwanted economic burden. Americans proudly lived up to Lady Liberty's ideal until discovery of Castro's ruse created such a political nightmare for President Carter that he had to turn off the "lamp at the golden door" to plug the dike to stop the leakage of "the wretched refuse of your teeming shore."

History also reminds us of "The Voyage of the Damned," where American's response was tragic, pathetic, and political. In 1939, the ship MS St. Louis carrying almost 1,000 huddled masses of "the wretched refuse" of German-Jews seeking asylum in the land of yearning to breathe free was turned away and had to return to a Europe being swallowed up by Nazism. Frantic anti-Semitism, especially from Southern Democrats, put pressure on President Roosevelt to lock the golden door.

Here is what needs to happen in our current crisis. Stop listening to wannabe-presidential-guy-in-2016 Texas Governor Rick Perry from ground zero trying to score points with some "constituency" as he explains this mess from his perspective, which sounds as though he must still be eating those painkillers that screwed up his shallow and foolish presidential run in 2012.

President Obama should go to the border "lifting the lamp beside the golden door." He should be photographed hugging the children and taking in the sorrowful sight of fleeing refugee children and mothers of war-torn Hispanic nations to remind the world that the man of drones and meta-data surveillance is compassionate and deserves his premature Nobel Peace Award. Why not hug the suffering, that's what politicians always do best.

As well, Senators and Congressmen throughout the land should be the first one on their block to go down to the border lifting up the lamp, hug the huddled masses and finally do some real work, spend time as relief volunteers, and while doing so, find commonality in their new found humanity to pass the best border and immigration reform legislation. They could even bring their bibles. No harm done. These are the images Americans need and deserve to see. No longer give me politics marketed in miserly, xenophobic, selfish, myopic, nihilistic and pettiness behavior. Pass the budget to pay the bills to keep the lamp lit to inspire our world.

Original posting on huffingtonpost.com

Post from summer of 2011

Copying this here since I'm deleting the blog this came from originally.

I just got a Nikon Coolpix S9100 and it's rekindling my interest in photography.  When I was younger I was very interested in landscape and abstract photography.  Nowadays I'm more interested in the much simpler daily snapshot sort of pictures.  It takes a lot less effort, that's for sure!  So I'm going to start posting some of the pictures I'm taking with my new camera as I get familiar and experiment with it.  It's a GREAT camera BTW, though a bit expensive for a point-and-shoot.

A great friend got me this appearance card signed by Ron Kittle!!  Showing how much detail the camera picks up.  Pretty impressive!

My son Daniel being silly.

My car - 2005 Honda Civic EX Special Edition.  I love it.

ATM that I use a lot.

Damage at the family house from the June 21, 2011 storm.  They had no power for two days.

Driving east on Ogden Ave. at La Grange Road in La Grange, IL

SCOTUS ruling on abortion clinics reminds us: Women fair game - Chicago Sun-Times

I have three very dear friends who have devoted their lives to religious endeavors, so I find myself biting my tongue a lot out of respect for their beliefs.  Every once in a while, I come across something that speaks to me more deeply than most.  I have neither the fortitude nor the capability (I tell myself) to express my thoughts and beliefs well, so periodically I gently borrow from others who do.  This is from Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times.  Here's a link to his blog where he posts entertaining and often enlightening pieces at least once per day, as well as his Sun-Times articles (which are equally entertaining and enlightening):   http://www.everygoddamnday.com/



SCOTUS ruling on abortion clinics reminds us: Women fair game - Chicago Sun-Times

SCOTUS ruling on abortion clinics reminds us: Women fair game

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By NEIL STEINBERG June 29, 2014 11:42AM

Police and federal marshals remove anti-abortion protesters from the driveway at a clinic in Wichita, Kansas, in 1974. | Sun-Times library

Updated: June 30, 2014 2:17AM

 

If only women got divorced, but not men, then they might, on their way to consult divorce lawyers, have to push through a gantlet of abuse from self-proclaimed advocates of the sanctity of marriage, urging them to cling to their marital vows, no matter how dismal a prospect that might be.

But men also get unhitched, thankfully, so society permits both sexes to breeze through the process unencumbered, or at least unencumbered by the unwelcome intrusion of strangers telling them what to do.

Only a woman can get an abortion, however, so the rules change. Women, even in the United States, even in 2014, represent a second class of citizen who can be harassed to a degree seldom directed toward men.

Don’t get mad at me for pointing it out.

There are many angles to approach this: ethical, social and of course legal, as the U.S. Supreme Court reminded us last week, when it unanimously rejected a Massachusetts law requiring a 35-foot buffer zone between the protesters who gather to confront, howl at and, yes, occasionally “counsel” women trying to enter clinics.

This is, it saddens me to say, the legally correct decision; we can’t have laws handcrafted to stop a certain kind of speech at a certain sort of place (which is why a similar law in Chicago might withstand scrutiny, since it affects all health care facilities, even though nobody is confronting patients heading to get their flu shots, at least not yet). That urge, if indulged, could unravel the First Amendment. A law aimed to prevent the Westboro Baptist Church from showing up at military funerals with their neon “GOD HATES FAGS” signs would end up stopping people from showing up at Bruce Rauner rallies with “RAUNER’S A FRAUD” signs, and we need more, not less, of those.

But law is only one facet, only a rough approximation of our values, a blurry mirror. Law often misses truth. It sure does if you read the SCOTUS ruling, with its fantasy of grandmotherly counselors leading confused teens away from the abortion abattoirs. The truth is, if women entering clinics only faced, in the words of the Pro-Life Action League, “this peaceful ministry consist[ing] of gently reaching out to women,” then such “buffer zone” laws as the one struck down would never have been enacted. Nobody is trying to squelch those chipper young Save the Children canvassers who invade Michigan Avenue every summer. They might annoy, but they don’t threaten the way anti-abortion protesters do routinely.

The implicit threat, conveyed by tone, volume, proximity and past attacks, carries a burden that the law doesn’t see. Like Westboro, they carefully choose a moment of vulnerability. We are so accustomed to these encounters, so inured with their talk of notional babies, we forget that, stripped of dogma, these are groups trying to press their religious beliefs upon the unwilling.

Men would never permit it. Take another process that requires a person to enter a place — say, buying a car. Let’s say my reading of the Bible led me to believe that buying new cars is sin, and I led bands of believers to try to persuade people not to buy cars.

How long do you think society would allow my co-religionists to cluster around the doors of dealerships, displaying huge placards of starving children in Africa and fish killed by pollution and other supposed fallout from the evils of new car ownership?

Answer: not long.

Critics of the Supreme Court ruling point out that the Supreme Court itself uses law to keep protesters far at bay.

“A painted line on the sidewalk is easy to enforce, but the prime objective of the First Amendment is not efficiency,” sniffed Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., secure in the knowledge that he can go about his business without having to pass through a mob, which is not something abortion clinic workers nor their patients can claim.

The powerful always see to themselves. The powerless, aka women, particularly young women entering abortion clinics, need society to have their backs. We allow this abuse to take place because abortion is a grotesque procedure we’d rather not think about. Maybe it’s time we did instead of yielding the field to religious fanatics. We wouldn’t allow it elsewhere. Wouldn’t allow temperance bands to block bar entrances, nor church groups to block football stadium gates, trying to “counsel” fans to go to church instead. We can’t look to law to solve this problem. Instead, we should ask: What can we do to change things? To stop living in a society where it can be sincerely suggested that women lack the ability to make moral choices for themselves? How can we thwart those who deny women their rights?

Email: nsteinberg@suntimes.com

Twitter: @NeilSteinberg