Recommended Reading: A Word or Two About Stephen J. Dubner

Just finished reading Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper, by Stephen J. Dubner. Prior to that I read his earlier book called Choosing My Religion: A Memoir of a Family Beyond Belief, a fascinating autobiography of (as Dubner puts it) "three noisy souls." 

I tried to get my dad to read the latter, and I think he gave it the good Boy Scout try but evidently gave up. (I asked him when we got together at Christmas if he'd finished it and he shrugged and said he lost interest. My dad is nothing if not consistent: he just isn't interested in religion, no matter how articulate, honest, funny, or intelligent the writing.)

For the record, "articulate, honest, funny, and intelligent" doesn't even begin to describe Dubner's writing. His pedigree is obviously first-rate (here's a link to his bio), so I'm not sure why my dad would snub him. Dubner could probably write about garbage disposals and still be engaging.

I love the way he writes. He's brutally, painfully, excruciatingly, honest. At times, reading Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper, I felt uncomfortable, embarrassed even, for Dubner. His behavior comes across as stalking to the reader, despite the fact that he insists he's not a stalker. The title of one of his chapters is, in fact, "I am Not a Stalker!" (The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.) Yet the very point of this book is to examine the cultural phenomenon of hero-worship. If the confessional nature of the book makes the writer--admittedly obsessed if not infatuated with his childhood hero, Pittsburgh Steeler running back Franco Harris--look foolish, so what? Dubner's a journalist. At their best, journalists report objectively on what they see. If they're being fair, if they're doing their job, the reporting can and should be brutal. Why should he be less brutal when he's the subject of his own reporting? 

At the end of my copy of the book, there's a section called P.S. that includes additional essays by the author. Several of these essays are those that were published in the New York Times Magazine having to do with various sports-related topics: John Unitas ("Steel-Town Quarterback"), football stadiums ("Stronger Than Steel: The Demise of Three River Stadium"), and so on. 

Reading these marvelous essays, one understands why Dubner's an award-winning sports writer. He's an amazing stylist. His metaphors are so fresh, so unusual, so fitting, one can only assume he spends hours conjuring them. His attention to detail boggles the mind. He must literally take notes on life. 

My new ambition is to write half as well as Dubner writes: to take personal risks, to be honest, to call it as I see it, to record life as I live it, to see if, perchance, I have anything left to say.

True or False: Black People Should Vote for Black Politicians

Apparently, that's what some (fortunately not all) blacks think.

Here's a woman who happens to disagree. Stacey Dash, an African-American actress, who did vote for Barack Obama in 2008 but who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, has a different idea about how to decide on a candidate: "I chose him [Romney] not by the color of his skin but the content of his character."

There's a thought. Why didn't someone else think of this?  Oh wait.

Some of her black brethren don't agree. Stacey's been the recipient of some pretty nasty tweets by the so-called tolerant left. 

Here's an interesting discussion on the issue, posted on the Huffington Post ("Black People for Obama: African-American Support for Obama Called Prejudice, Blind Loyalty," by Jesse Washington).

And here's a snippet of an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN.

Thoughts After Reading "A Thousand Splendid Suns"

OK, so I cried at the end, I admit. Hosseini finally got to me, a bit shamelessly, but I think Mariam deserved the attention she finally got, albeit belatedly. 

Reading this novel was a really strange experience for me. I found myself getting really annoyed with the author. When I got to the part where Mariam refused to see her father and tore up his letter without reading it, I actually got angry. This was after the scene where Mariam and Rasheed go to all the trouble of walking to a hotel and borrowing a phone to try and call Jalil (Mariam's father) to ask for financial help--to keep the family from starving--it's a big build-up, and you think, finally, maybe at last, these poor wretches will get some help, only to find out that Jalil is dead and gone, and that whole segment where the reader clings to a little hope for some sort of relief was for naught. 

Angry at the author for manipulating me into a false hope? 

I've never read a novel where I actually found myself wanting to pray for the protagonists. Pray for a character in fiction? How bizarre is that? Yet that's how I felt for Mariam and Laila when they were about to run away from Rasheed. You just knew this wasn't going to be easy in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. I walked away from the book, dreaded starting up again. And of course, I was right, it didn't go well for these women. 

Nothing, it seemed, would go right, especially for Mariam. 

Angry at the author because he seemed determined to make life as miserable for these women as he possibly could. Unrelenting sorrow, unrelenting humiliation. Like a cruel, sadistic puppeteer, he never let up. 

But perhaps that was his point. He pulled back the veil that shrouds western eyes from the cruelty of the Taliban, the indignities women especially but men as well experience in these horribly oppressive societies. 

Reading this novel made me so thankful for freedoms I barely think of as freedom: freedom to step outside my door, get in my car, run a quick errand, wear what I want, say what I think, watch and read and write and wear and eat and sleep when and where and what I want. 

Thankful for my beautiful America. 

I did cry at the end, for Mariam, a sad, wretched and, ultimately, heroic woman.

Not So Fast, Your Majesty?

The Chicago Tribune editorial board wrote the following in yesterday's paper: 

But in this country we don't change bad laws by presidential fiat. We change them by having Congress rewrite them or by starting from scratch. Obama doesn't want to reopen this law for fear that Republicans and some Democrats will substantially rewrite it. But that's what has to happen.

Nice to hear some objectivity from a mainstream paper. True, the Tribune's editorial philosophy leans conservative, but they did endorse Obama for president in 2008 and again 2012. So kudos to them for somehow managing to remain detached ideologically in both their endorsements and their analysis of policies.

Wish my paper (Los Angeles Times) would take a page from their playbook; its board members continue to insist, for example, that the Affordable Care Act is fine, just give it a few months, a year, max. Indeed, their guy can do no wrong. Here's what they wrote on the same day regarding Obama's "decree" that consumers should be allowed to keep their current insurance policies for another year: 

The move is a desperate attempt to fulfill a promise President Obama never should have made, and the legal authority for it is sketchy. What's more, it may not be possible at this point for insurers to revive policies they've already canceled. Worst of all, Obama merely punted to next year the fight over the law's insurance reforms, which he has done a remarkably poor job of explaining and selling. The only good thing about the delay is that it might stop Congress from making a more damaging change to the law.

A gentle rebuke, yes. But scrap (rewrite or repeal) the law? Nothing doing. The real bad guys in that scenario would be in Congress. Nope. Good, bad, or ugly, keep your cotton-picking hands off the ACA, thus saith the LAT.

Stop Digging. Start Over (Chicago Tribune editorial, November 15, 2013. 

His Highness Has Spoken!

So first, the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" was passed illegally. At least that's my understanding. Aren't bills supposed to originate in the House and then move to the Senate, not the other way around? 

And it was passed without a single Republican vote, with virtually no input from Republicans (not for want of trying--they were muscled out of the entire process).

Then Obama decided unilaterally to exempt certain special interest groups (labor unions among them) from the penalties of ObamaCare. 

Now Mr. Obama is acting unilaterally again, this time offering to extend for a year those insurance policies that had been cancelled because they didn't comply with the Affordable Care Act. A whole year? Golly gee! Thanks, Mr. Obama!



What's next, your majesty?