Harassment

A long time ago, when harassing first gained national attention, we were all told it was pronounced “HAIR-uh-sing,” but now everyone goes with “hair-ASS-ing.” What’s in a word? Well, it seems there’s a whole lot in this word. Today’s times are confusing times and one of those times that I find most confusing is this latest flurry of men being accused of or charged with (or maybe just painted with) sexual harassment. Granted, we have the unsavory Bill Cosby and the unsavory trial and mistrial and retrial for his supposed date-rape-drug accusations. And now the unsavory stories about the unsavory Harvey Weinstein groping and propositioning quite a few women in show business with whom he came in contact (no pun intended). Both cases against these men seem to be irrefutable because of the testimony of so many of their accusers. But then, consider the ripple effect of the Weinstein allegations. Now there are all kinds of men from low level film producers to ex-presidents like George H. W. Bush (and even sitting presidents) who are being tagged as sexual abusers. I can’t even keep track of all the terms used to describe bad sexual behavior: predators, rapists, abusers, stalkers, assaulters, harassers. There must be more but I can’t think of them. My confusion is about the degree of harassment, not in the case of Cosby or Weinstein or the many Catholic priests who abused boys and girls in their care. Let’s consider a linear scale from zero to ten, zero being absolutely no sexual harassment or misconduct and ten being the charge of rape. A one on the scale might be a pat on a woman’s back or asking for a date several times after being turned down the first time. Both examples of a one are pretty innocuous yet both might be considered harassment. A two on the scale might be the telling of an off-color joke to a mixed group of fellow workers or students. How off-color must it be to move it to a three? You see where I’m going with this? The degree of harassment, the degree of illegality, is quite subjective. At what point on the scale do we go from a reprimand to a day in court? What sort of physical touching is allowable and what is not? For example, we have a man and a woman at her front door. It’s their first date. She kisses him on the cheek. He turns her head and kisses her on the mouth. She pushes him away. He pulls her to him and kisses her again. Her “no” is implicit in her push, so he’s guilty of harassment, right? Same two people in bed, naked, kissing and touching and moaning. He rolls to the top of her and is about to enter without knocking. She moans, “Nuh, nuh, nooo!” He enters anyway. He’s guilty of rape, right? You see why I’m confused? The scale is so very subjective and there are so many possibilities for false accusations and resulting grievous harm. Too much testimony involving “he said/she said.” How many accusers are looking for justice and how many for a payoff? If there are payoffs, does that mean the payer is guilty as charged or is he just trying to get rid of the accusation? And why are ninety-nine out of a hundred aimed at men and only one in a hundred at women? Aren’t women just as capable of telling an off-color joke to a male colleague or patting him on the ass? I’m not defending Cosby or Weinstein or Bill O’Reilly or any of the others now in the predator limelight. I’m just trying to disconfuse myself.

Memory and the Loss Thereof

Loss of memory is the least serious stage of senility, the simple loss of the names of friends, acquaintances, even relatives, the loss of names for people in the news or in history books or in current entertainment, names that we once knew and can now not quite get off the tips of our minds. Also the loss of vocabulary words we once knew and used. This is senility in its simplest form. Dementia and Alzheimer’s are more about the physical decay of our brains than of our memories. I think that when we reach what we consider very old age, we simply no longer need these names and words, so we dump them alongside the roadside like empty Coke cans. Once upon a time we needed these names and words to show the world we weren’t losing our marbles, so we memorized them, committed them to memory with a mnemonic trick or two: “Never assume because it makes an ass of you and me,” “Thirty days hath September . . .,” “HOMES equals the Great Lakes,” and so on. But finally there comes a time when we’re no longer ever going to get on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or have a reunion with friends, acquaintances, or relatives. They’re all dead. We no longer need the words because we’re no long communicating with anyone. They’re all dead. Old memories from our past we hang onto for the times we talk to ourselves, but the short-term stuff we let go because we no longer have anyone to share them with. They’re all dead. All the stuff we accumulated during our lives is no longer important to us, all the books we thought we wanted to keep forever, now superfluous, all the little knickknacks we purchased to put in shadow boxes or on shelves, now superfluous, all the papers and forms for our birth dates or home ownership, college transcripts and medical records, now superfluous. As we age, we wither like untended flowers in a garden we once cared for but no longer need. The flowers are all dead. Now that’s an image I’ll probably remember forever. But my forever is now more like fornever and isn’t nearly as long as it used to be.

The Handmaid's Tale

I’ve been bingeing on episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu. What a strange yet intriguing story. A long time ago we had 1984, George Orwell’s tale of a Big Brother dystopia. We called such a view an Orwellian society. Now we have Margaret Atwood’s version. I’d want to call it an Atwoodian society but that doesn’t sound right, so I’m revising both words—Orwellen and Atwooden. In 1984, Winston Smith lives in Oceania, watched night and day by the Party’s telescreens to guard against all thought crime, or any expressions of individuality. The Party is led by a mysterious figure known as Big Brother. The Party not only keeps all its citizens under an omnipresent eye, it also controls their thoughts with a kind of brainwashing doubletalk called Newspeak. For example, “2 + 2 = 5,” “Freedom is Slavery,” “Goodsex is chastity,” this last example meaning that intercourse, especially for women, shouldn’t be pleasurable but only for procreation. They even employed a system in which the past could be changed by simply changing it in all books and papers. Their belief: the past doesn’t exist except as we create it. Sort of like Donald Trump’s concept of fake news. Today, we seem to be embarking on our own brand of euphemistic doublespeak—IED (bomb), downsize (fire, as in disemploy), person of interest (suspect), pre-owned (used), terminate (kill or disemploy), to name only a few. But you get the drift.

Atwood must surely have been influenced by 1984 when she wrote The Handmaid’s Tale. The society that parallels Orwell's Oceania is known as Gilead. According to the leaders of this new society, God has chosen to punish mankind for our mistreatment of Earth by making all but a very few women sterile, with the likelihood that nearly all of mankind will soon be gone except for the few children born to the handmaids, those few women still able to become pregnant. Sharon, or Offred as she is now called in Gilead, is one of the few fertile women. She and the other handmaids are kept like prisoners, punished severely for any improprieties. One of them had her eye “plucked out” for not being religiously pious during one of the training periods. One of the Aunts (an older woman incapable of giving birth but an avowed follower of Gilead and its new society) regularly used a cattle prod to burn any misbehaving handmaids.

The female categories are all marked by the color of their apparel—green for the wives of party leaders, brown for the Aunts, gray for the Marthas (those who performed the housekeeping for party leaders), and red for the handmaids. Offred has been assigned to the household of commander Waterford and Mrs. Waterford, where she does menial household chores like shopping and once months engages in “The Ceremony,” Gilead’s solution for dispassionate intercourse. On the night of The Ceremony, the handmaid lies on a bed between the legs of the wife, who holds the handmaid’s arms while the husband performs the oh so very dispassionate insemination. All is for the welfare of the society, the procreation of children, and none for the pleasure of intercourse.

Much of the filming is done in shades of white and black, with most of the scenes dominated by red, gray, green, and brown. The story is told in the present with flashbacks to the time before the uprising of Gilead, back to Sharon and Luke’s marriage and their life with a daughter, back to the pre-Gilead lives of all the characters. It seems like they could never run out of plot strands with that many potential flashbacks, very similar to what we had with that other successful series, Lost. The most relevant thing about The Handmaid’s Tale is Elisabeth Moss as Offred, I remember her when she was the president’s daughter Zoe on The West Wing. Now she’s all grown up and one of the best actresses in the business. She recently won the Emmy for best female actress in a television drama, and The Handmaid’s Tale winning for best television dramatic series. And what I find most curious of all, she’s not particularly attractive, willing to show herself to the audience in full-facial close-ups without cosmetic magic, with all warts and blemishes showing. She did this same superior acting in Mad Men and both Sundance originals of Top of the Lake.

After I finish my binge, I’m going to read the novel to see what changes were made for the television version.

Hazing in Fraternities

On the last episode of Bull, Jason Bull signs on to help a young black prosecutor trying fifteen college students, pledges at one of the fraternities who either willfully or accidentally allowed one of their brothers to die during their “Hell Night” hazing. It draws an immediate parallel to what happened not long ago on the Penn State campus and again more recently on the LSU campus. I would have thought such barbaric practices were no longer allowed by national fraternities. But sadistic boys will be sadistic boys, so apparently they continue.

It took me back sixty-six years to the time when I was a 17-year-old who had pledged to one of the fraternities at my alma mater. I don’t need to say what my alma mater was or what fraternity I joined. But I would like to describe what my initiation was like, what was then called “Hell Week” even though it lasted only an agonizing 72 hours. The only element in the hazing on Bull that wasn’t a part of mine was the forced consumption of alcohol. Thank God for that. On the Bull episode, the sixteen pledges were all forced to drink dangerous amounts of alcohol and then swim in a nearby river. One of them didn’t make it back. The alcohol level of the Phi Delta Theta pledge who died in Louisiana recently was a lethal .495.

In the fall of 1951, I was a pledge at one of the fraternities on our campus. Sometime before the end of the year we were subjected to a senseless, brutal, sadistic, dangerous series of actions to “prove” to the brotherhood our worthiness to join them. First, each of us (twelve in my pledge class) had to make a wooden paddle for our pledge father, the paddle to be used on our posteriors whenever the father said “bend over.” The pain level of such paddling depended entirely on the degree of sadism in the paddler. Hell Week probably began on a Friday so that not too many classes would be missed, and then went on to midnight on Sunday.

I don’t remember in what order most of these indignities happened, but I do remember what happened on Sunday night. Along the way through Friday and Saturday, we were not allowed to sleep, were made to eat double or triple doses of Xlax, were made to take a pill that turned our urine blue, were paddled whenever anyone felt like we needed a swat or two, were required to memorize the Greek alphabet and be able to say it in less than ten seconds. Any stumbles or taking more than ten seconds resulted in more paddling. Sleep deprivation, like waterboarding, is a mainstay in torture techniques. I’m surprised our tormenters didn’t waterboard any of us, but maybe waterboarding didn’t come along until years later. By Sunday we were all so groggy we weren’t sure what we were doing or why. Sunday evening we were led to the basement dining hall, made to strip, made to apply peanut butter liberally to the insides of our buttocks, made to get on hands and knees and form a circle, each of us to put our noses into the butt crack of the one in front of us, then made to crawl in a circle, each of us a unit of that circle, each unit connected by nose to butt. I don’t remember how long that ignominy lasted. Not long, I’m sure, for even the most sadistic of our tormenters would grow bored after ten or fifteen minutes. Then we were forced to swallow two or three spoonfuls of a disgusting concoction our “brothers” mixed for us—eggs (shells and all), water, cereal of some kind, curry powder in huge amounts, and, probably, a bit of one or more of our brothers’ urine. If we gagged or vomited, we were made to keep eating until we managed to keep it down. To this day, any smell or taste of curry takes me back to that time in 1951. We were then allowed to put our underwear back on and then led outside where we were blindfolded and taken by cars on a long, circuitous trip to a riverbank (or so they had us believe). We got out of the cars, still blindfolded, and told to leap feet first into the river. I made the sorry mistake of diving headfirst. I landed on my stomach and face on the watered grass behind our fraternity house. I didn’t kill or injure myself, but I could have. The brotherhood, who had all gathered in a circle around the place where we were to dive, all had such a good laugh at this last indignity. And finally, Hell Week was over. I often wondered if all of them thought this hazing was all right or if some of them, like me, hated it but were too intimidated to say so. I should have quit the fraternity right then and there, but I was only seventeen and still too stupid, too spineless and without convictions. I remained in that fraternity throughout my college years but I never ever engaged in any of the “fun” activities of Hell Week for other pledge classes. I stayed as far away from that three days as I could.

The Black Card

In the midst of all the current unrest about race relations, mainly black and white relations, especially the brouhaha over blacks in the NFL choosing not to stand for the national anthem, I must point out that some blacks do more to hurt race relations than to help it. I’m talking about those in television who keep playing the black card because they want to show other blacks that they’re cool, they’re still in the street rappin’ “gangsta” black club. In one of my blogs, I’ve already mentioned Steve Harvey on Family Feud and his deliberate caricature of black speech patterns and physical mannerisms when he has a black family as one of the contestant groups. He falls into a broad black vernacular, rolls his eyes like Steppin Fetchit, and glad hands the young black males in intricate high-low-in-between fives. Young impressionable blacks will watch him do it and take it as acceptable, and he’s doing them a grave disservice by perpetuating those very stereotypes that most whites as well as most blacks object to. And now I see Jennifer Hudson on The Voice doing the same thing. One minute she’s this refined woman who sings like an angel and acts like an Oscar winner (which she is). And then she resorts to a stereotypical woman doing the Steve Harvey moves. Too many of the black NFL color commentators on television do the same. Too many in the music industry do the same, especially black rappers. They seem to want to continue a black fraternal order that bans whites but they also want to protest what they consider racial discrimination. Just look at the blacks who wouldn’t be caught dead playing the black card—Michael Strayhan, Mike Tiriko, Larry Fitzgerald, Michelle and Barack Obama, and the list could go on and on. I do believe that we should all cherish our racial and ethnic identities but that we shouldn’t display them when the outcome might be detrimental.

Wiley, I love you. This Sunday you did it again, humorously take a swipe at Trump and his adoring fan club. "Knowledge just ruins everything."

Mini Television Reviews

In the old days, when television was limited to only three channels (CBS, NBC, ABC), the various series almost all had a main season of about 28 episodes shown from early fall to late spring. Then we had the re-run season through the summer, during which the networks could also introduce a few new shows to see how they’d fare. All shows were pretty easy to keep track of. I mean, three networks with a limited number of shows that didn’t require half our waking hours for viewing? We actually had a life outside of television. Not so today.

There are now hundreds of channels all vying for our attention, and there are no longer any discernable seasons. A season for some may involve only ten or twelve episodes, and some, called mini-series, might have as few as three and as many as six episodes. Now, quite a few shows actually adhere to a schedule that begins in late fall and goes for a varying number of episodes before calling it quits for a while. And that’s sort of where we are now.

Although I don’t watch everything on the tube (Who could? You’d need to have a hundred pairs of eyes to come even close to seeing everything.), I watch what tickles my fancy and skip what doesn’t, even though many go on to successful runs without me. I think of The Last Ship, How to Get Away with Murder, NCIS: Los Angeles, The Black List, Empire, and This Is Us, to name only a few. I regret not watching This Is Us because most of the reviewers thought it was the best show of the year, but I missed the first half of Season One and decided I didn’t want to play catch up.

Now I’d like to write some mini-reviews of the new shows I like, the new shows I’ve rejected, and the new shows about which I haven’t yet decided.

The Good Doctor is an interesting examination of an autistic savant, in this case the young Dr. Shaun Murphy, played by Freddie Highmore. He’s been admitted to the San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital as a surgical resident, supported by his mentor Dr. Aaron Glassman and opposed by nearly everyone else on the staff. The first two episodes show him at his savanty genius best, saving several lives when others have misdiagnosed them. The only problem I have with this show and Freddie Highmore is that I can’t help but remember Highmore as the strange boy Norman Bates in The Bates Motel. So, part of me sees him as Norman, making me cringe at what a Norman Bates might do in a large hospital. But I hope soon to get over that disconcerting reminder. I’d rate this show four out of five stars.

The Orville, Seth McFarland’s send-up of the many Star Trek shows and all the Trekkie fans, is surprisingly good. It’s supposed to be a parody of Star Trek, laughing at all the technology and alien oddballs we first saw on the original series. But the laughs aren’t as slapstick as in normal parody, and the science fictional technology is more interesting than laughable (Warp Drives, teleportation, limb regeneration, black holes and worm holes). Four stars.

The Brave and Seal Team could pass as twins as both tackle the problems we face in our battles with ISIS, both shows almost exactly like what we saw in Zero Dark Thirty. Both were exciting, interesting, action-packed and worth watching. Both four stars.

Then there are the ones I’m not going to watch: Me, Myself, and I, Will and Grace, 9JKL, Young Sheldon, Better Things, and Law and Order: True Crime. Will and Grace isn’t nearly as funny as the original, relying pretty much on the same shtick as what we saw then, not so funny now. Young Sheldon is okay, but I think I get enough of Sheldon on Big Bang and don’t need a junior version.

Here are my undecideds: Wisdom of the Crowd, Ten Days in the Valley, The Gifted, Kevin (Probably) Saves the World, Liar, and The Deuce.

With the newbies and all the oldies I enjoy, I think I have enough to watch without spending half my waking hours viewing them (maybe only a quarter).

Gun Control

After what happened in Las Vegas last Monday, anything I say with even a hint of humor would be totally inappropriate. There’s enough negative news these days that I can easily find one to write about. Yeah, gun control.

We’re back to the battle of the guns and how to control them. The Second Amendment was first adopted at a time in our nation when we needed an armed citizenry to protect our borders. And now, 226 years later, we have a powerful military to shield us from invaders. Our Founding Fathers wrote this amendment so that our citizenry would have guns to protect themselves and our nation from invaders. Gun ownership now should depend on our legitimate uses of them and not on our need for national defense—hunting, target shooting, and the unlikely need for self-protection. Let’s face it, the odds are greater that we’ll be struck by lightning or crushed in an avalanche than by bumping into someone who wants to do us bodily harm. Does anyone need an AK47 for hunting or target shooting? What kind of game would we be hunting with a “nearly” full-automatic rifle? A herd of dinosaurs? A flight of pterodactyls? And what sort of target would we fire at to prove our marksmanship? A thousand beer bottles strewn over the ground a thousand yards ahead? A target with a diameter of a hundred feet for us to shred? As a precaution against personal danger, an AK47 would be too large to carry in one’s pocket. A hand gun would be more practical. And why would we need an inexpensive bump stock ($100 to $300) to turn a semi-automatic rifle into a killing machine capable of spraying out bullets at a rate of 9 per second? In the time Usain Bolt runs the hundred meter dash, a psychotic gunman could get off 90 shots. Slide Fire, one of the companies that make and sell bump stocks, says in its promotional literature, “The command and control behind the Slide Fire stock will create an exhilarating experience that keeps you smiling for days.” Whoa! Is that ever a scary image. Some whack job goes to the range and gets an “exhilarating experience” that has him “smiling for days.” Is that how Stephen Paddock felt up in that room high above the concert crowd, exhilarated and happy? He owned at least 47 guns and had more than twenty with him on Monday night. NRA members all over the country must be applauding that his rights of gun ownership weren’t infringed upon. I think the first step toward slowing and then halting mass murder would be to outlaw the weapons used in mass murders like what we saw in Las Vegas three days ago.