Mark Morford2013-05-21T13:19:49-04:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=mark-morfordCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Mark MorfordGood old fashioned elbow grease.Bubblegum and the Date Rape Cocktailtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30483172013-04-10T13:36:06-04:002013-04-10T13:31:56-04:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/
Did you hear? After years and ridiculous politicking and inexplicable delays, a federal judge just ordered Sebelius' FDA to finally allow emergency contraception (Plan B, et al) to be made available over the counter for women and girls of all ages.
It's true. And it's sort of a big deal. Barring an appeal, girls under 17 can soon get emergency contraception without a prescription, without their parent's permission, without any sort of pinched howling from the religious right who would far prefer to snuff out all young women for daring to have an active uterus in the first place.
It must be hereby noted: The stuffy FDA first recommended such contraception be made available over-the-counter to all ages back in 2011, years after such drugs have been proven safe, years after they've been readily available to women in smarter countries all over the world. Women's groups in the U.S. have been clamoring for easy availability for over a decade; but, being America, the powers that be fretted and delayed due almost exclusively to the flat-out ignorance and hysteria of the religious right.
Finally, along came Brooklyn judge Edward Korman, who ruled in favor of unrestricted access, because he clearly wants more 11-year-old girls to have irresponsible sex, doesn't give a damn for teen health or morality, and wants lots of teens to contract STDs during drunken date-rape parties during which they watch "Teen Mom" marathons and huff glue. He's also probably a closet pedophile.
Or, you know, maybe not. Maybe none of those things is the slightest bit true and Korman is actually a highly intelligent Reagan appointee who, based on his two decisions on the matter, has studied the case thoroughly and found zero moral or legal justification for Sebelius to block such safe drugs from being made immediately available to all ages. Sort of amazing, really.
Can you guess the immediate reaction? Can you guess the sort of reply Korman's piercing decision prompted from right-wing anti-choice groups?
I bet you can't. I bet you can't even come close to conjuring such a pitch-perfect line as uttered by one Karen Brauer, president of something called Pharmacists for Life, which I'm guessing is basically three very unhappy humans living in a barn somewhere in Ohio who never see sunlight, feel joy or suck wine from a lover's tongue.
"When these [drugs] are right out there with the bubble gum, they're going to be part of the date rape cocktail," Brauer actually said, aloud, with a straight face, as lightning did not strike her dead on the spot.
Isn't that fantastic? Isn't that just the sort of perfectly dumb, weirdly fantasy-projecting sort of statement you've come to expect from fundamentalist Christians who understand sexuality about as well as littleneck clams understand quantum physics?
But wait! Not so fast, snarky pro-sex columnist. Before we get too cocky, we must remember, it was Obama who supported Sebelius' widely panned decision to override her own agency's recommendation in 2011, and it was Obama himself who first uttered something about Plan B being sold in the vicinity of bubblegum. Stupidly.
And while it took a goofball of Brauer's caliber to add the part about date rape, we must remember, the judge specifically scolded Sebelius -- not the religious right -- for messing with women's rights for obvious and foul political reasons.
This much we know: Sebelius' decision came about a year before the 2012 election, so it seems obvious Obama was trying to deprive the competition of an easy weapon. By all accounts, it was a decidedly cowardly choice, given Obama's otherwise relatively stellar track record with regard to women's rights.
Meanwhile! Shooting straight through Camp Obama and all anti-sex, right-wing, alarmist parents' groups comes a small but shocking blast of factual awesomeness that merely proves just how politically motivated and/or sexually pathetic both groups really are.
Remember all the hysteria about Generation Facebook having riskier and more frequent sex at younger and younger ages? All the panic that 12-year-olds are making homemade porn on their iPhones and SnapChatting photos of their genitals to each other in the mall?
A lie. A myth. Inane, world-class sensationalism. Just as you suspected.
"We are seeing teens waiting longer to have sex, using contraceptives more frequently when they start having sex, and being less likely to become pregnant than their peers of past decades."
Did you catch all that? That's a quote from one Lawrence Finer, lead author of a new study just published in the May issue of the journal Pediatrics, which basically declares that most alarmist beliefs about modern teen sex are essentially full of crap. To reiterate: On the whole, teens in every age bracket are using more protection, being more careful, having sex less than anytime since around 1990, and getting pregnant less frequently. I blame the Internet.
What to make of it all? For once, an (older, white, Republican, male) judge rightly stepped in and slapped everyone's BS upside the head, and suddenly...
Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate, and the creator of the new Mark Morford's Apothecary iOS app. He's also a well-known ERYT yoga instructor in San Francisco. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...]]>Your Evolution Is Totally Gaytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29596782013-03-27T13:11:00-04:002013-03-27T13:07:24-04:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/
And that writing says one thing: Idiots and fools, cretins and political roadkill are ye who do not get over your uptight sexual fears and ignorance of God, pronto.
The hottest story of all right now? Aside from the "leery," "reluctant," dully conservative Supreme Court whimpering toward a half-baked, non-sweeping decision on Prop 8 and DOMA that no one will really like? Speed.
Which is to say, everyone's amazed at the breathtaking, almost impossible-to-believe quickness at which the gay marriage issue has "evolved," not just for politicos desperate for the love of younger voters who don't give a damn for the ludicrous "culture wars" of their elders, but for the entire culture, how quickly gay marriage has skyrocketed to a majority of public support in a short handful of years, so fast that no one can really answer why.
What's your theory? How do you explain the staggering shift in support, from around a mere 42 percent in 2009 to a upwards of 57 percent (a whalloping 81 percent if you're under 30) today?
Is it because lots of meek, "undecided" homophobes finally realized the world wasn't collapsing and their own unhappy marriages weren't affected in the slightest? Did they finally see that, hey look, lots of gays have been married for years now across multiple states and countries, and the sky didn't fall, Jesus didn't wreak havoc and Pat Robertson really is a bit of a goddamn lunatic?
Or is it because of pop culture itself, the tipping point finally reached as enough celebs, athletes, military personnel, musicians, "It Gets Better" videographers, even President Obama himself basically shrugged off the issue en masse, declaring it no longer a big deal, thus instantly making anyone who doesn't support it (Hi, Boehner), even more of a stiff, nasty old relic than they were even a week ago?
Death! Do not forget death. As I not-so-humbly predicted in a column just a few years back, death is a key deciding factor in the gay marriage debate, as the older, panicky generations die off and are replaced by Obama's younger, mixed-everything rainbow coalition. Gay marriage has always been a generational issue. But even I didn't predict how quickly the shift would happen.
It's not easy to quantify, but it's safe to say the Grim Reaper has casually eliminated (and continues to eliminate) enormous numbers of aging, right-wing homophobes, huge chunks of the "Greatest Generation" who, it turns out, weren't all that great when it came to women or blacks or gays or sexual freedom or equality or religious tolerance, but who totally kicked ass in WWII. So there's that.
Was it Obama who first used the savvy "my position on gay marriage is evolving" line, back in 2010 (even though he fully supported gay marriage as Illinois senate candidate in 1996)? Might've been; sounds like him. And it's a good one, too. So good that it's been filched by every politician looking to sound even remotely thoughtful, since. So good that if one more politician utters it, it's going to turn obnoxious and suspicious and will appear as complete, obvious bulls--t.
Which, of course, it totally is. Bulls--t. A lie. A joke. An opportunistic political ruse. How do we know? Because the same law of "evolved" consciousness has been ignored and rejected and stomped into a hateful, bloody pulp everywhere else. I mean, obviously.
Behold! Here are 20 massacred children in Newtown, followed by huge national support for universal background checks and a complete ban on assault weapons. Here is widespread disgust for the National Rifle Association, for our national fetish for ultra-violence, for our global standing as the most childishly gun-obsessed, pseudo-cowboy country in the world. Curious how not a single pro-gun politician has suddenly declared his position "evolved" enough to fight the NRA, no?
Look here! A mountain of irrefutable evidence of (and widespread belief in) global warming's increasing havoc and destruction, coupled to enormous public support for congress to so something serious about it. And yet, not a single congressperson has come forth to announce her position has "evolved" enough to passionately advocate for real environmental legislation. Wonders.
Here is the much-lauded "rise of women!" Here was Obama's irrefutable victory with the fairer sex in the 2012 election, and yet apparently the good news still hasn't reached pallid hateswamps like North Dakota, where the (old, white, male, Republican) Governor Jack Dalrymple just signed into law a batch of the most restrictive, hostile anti-choice regulations in the country, laws that should send a deep shudder of fear into the freedom-loving womb of every sexually charged woman in the entire state.
Women are increasingly in charge, Governor Dalrymple. Didn't you hear? Even the Secret Service is now run by a woman. Better "evolve" your repulsive misogyny soon.
Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate, and the creator of the new Mark Morford's Apothecary iOS app. He's also a well-known ERYT yoga instructor in San Francisco. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...]]>A Republican Discovers His Hearttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29109182013-03-20T12:49:25-04:002013-05-20T05:12:02-04:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/
Which is to say, it behooves not just you or me, but all of humanity to acknowledge when a powerful, long-irrational public figure has a personal breakthrough that leads to less fear, more kindness, more understanding, even more -- dare I say it without either of us cringing and rolling our eyes? -- love.
It happens all the time; it doesn't happen nearly enough.
So it went with Sen. Rob Portman, classic rigid Republican from Ohio, rated very near zero on all scales of goodness and love WRT civil liberties, social issues, the environment, women's rights, gay rights et al, according to various watchdog groups that keep track of such things (NARAL, FAIR, ACLU, etc). Portman's views on the issues of the day still bode quite ill and ugly for modern culture as a whole.
Until now. Until, I'm guessing, just this once.
In case you missed it, Portman took what some consider to be a radical, even brave step into the cultural fray when he very publicly reversed his stance on gay marriage, not when it was particularly safe to do so, not when he stood no chance of re-election anyway, not because he was just arrested with a gay meth dealer in an airport bathroom stall, but simply because his own son came out as gay.
Bingo. After years of deep homophobia and toeing the heartless party line, the mildly thoughtful senator finally snapped to the fact that his kid deserved as much right to be as in love, legally married, miserable and undersexed as anyone else.
Is it not a nice thing? A little bit brave? Should such a public turnabout by one of the GOP's "rising stars" (and currently the only active Repub in Congress to publicly support gay marriage) be cause for celebration and stunned headlines throughout the land? Of course it should. Even Obama patted Portman on the ego. Good job, Rob. Way to wake the hell up. Tell your friends.
Of course, we must hereby put "brave" in quotes, with a truckload of caveats, simply for the fact it took a politician until his own child came out for him to realize how abhorrent and reprehensible is the GOP's Bible-stupid stance on homosexuality. You're a public servant, Rob. Shouldn't you be equally concerned about everyone else's gay kids? Like, 20 years ago?
It is brave, I suppose, to risk the wrath of all the extremist knuckle-draggers in your own party. It's always brave to admit that you've been dead wrong for pretty much your entire life about what millions of other people already knew. But, really now. You know when you suddenly wake up to the fact that, say, shooting large animals with high-powered rifles for sport is moronic and sort of horrible? It's that kind of brave. Which is to say, also sort of foregone. A given.
But you know what? It's easy to be cynical. It's easy to be more than a little snide and disparaging, especially when confronted with yet another longtime Republican homophobe who's had a change of heart, even if all he's doing is realizing he didn't really have one before. Welcome to basic human decency, senator. What took you so long?
As Politico's Roger Simon < A HREF="https://twitter.com/politicoroger" target="_blank">tweeted: "Does this mean Portman has to have a black child before he'll support civil rights?" Or further: Does this mean someone he loves must be raped before he'll reconsider his anti-choice stance, or someone dear to him has to be shot with an assault weapon before he'll support a simple ban? Is this really the reactionary, emotionally stunted way most conservatives operate?
Be careful of your answer. Do not get too cocky. I've known plenty of very smart libs and progressive who've had (or could sure use) similar breakthroughs over a wide variety of issues that keep them mean and judgmental, not about homosexuality per se, but certainly about convictions just as troubling to their families, hearts, worldviews. Republicans certainly have no lock on the needful personal epiphany market. Hold too tightly to any ideology, and watch your soul shrivel.
Then again, my friends' personal lockdowns aren't ruining millions of lives; they aren't lying about the Bible, aren't souring the flavor of the species as a whole, and aren't getting kids beaten up, hated or killed. So, you know, relative.
By the way, isn't it interesting how you never see a Portman-type scenario in reverse? How you will never hear an intelligent progressive step up to a microphone and say, "Ladies and gentlemen, after years of fighting for liberal causes, I've come to the conclusion, after my daughter revealed she's a born-again Christian, that I've had it all wrong. I now believe women are far inferior to men, and the church should make all the decisions about their horrible vaginas. Also, more guns will solve the problem of all the guns, homosexuality is a disease, and black people should never be allowed anywhere near a public drinking fountain. Thank you." True heart openings are always toward the progressive; true thoughtfulness never constricts.
Perhaps this is the ugly downside of Portman's epiphany, and why it made headlines at all: because of the stark contrast to the norm. Because the right's intolerance is still so heartless and cruel. Because so many conservatives still react in the exact opposite manner when their kid -- or any kid -- comes out.
Which is to say, they will not welcome their gay child. They will not offer compassion, understanding or love. Many gay children are instead shunned, abused, beaten, rejected and kicked out of the house. The parents will refuse to attend the gay wedding, refuse to allow the gay partner into the home, will never speak to their godless pervert kid ever again.
Don't think it happens much anymore? You are wrong. It happens far more than you think. And it's behavior completely exclusive to the conservative right.
But maybe that's changing? Cracking open, just a little? After all...
Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate, and the creator of the NEW Mark Morford's Apothecary iPhone app. He's also a well-known ERYT yoga instructor in San Francisco. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...]]>37 Percent of People Completely Losttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28641422013-03-13T12:41:36-04:002013-05-13T05:12:01-04:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/actual clouds. A shockingly sad 18 percent, to this very day, believe the president is a Muslim. Aren't they cute? And Floridian?
Do you believe in angels? Forty-five percent of Americans do. In fact, roughly 48 percent - Republicans and Democrats alike - believe in some form of creationism. A hilariously large percent of terrified right-wingers are convinced Obama is soon going to take away all their guns, so when the Newtown shooting happened and 20 young children were massacred due to America's fetish for, obsession with and addiction to firearms, violence and fear, they bought more bullets. Because obviously.
In sum and all averaged out, it's safe to say about 37 percent of Americans are just are not very bright. Or rather, quite shockingly dumb. Perhaps beyond reach. Perhaps beyond hope or redemption. Perhaps beyond caring about anything they have to say in the public sphere ever again. Sorry, Kansas.
Did you frown at that last paragraph? Was it a terribly elitist and unkind thing to say? Sort of. Probably. But I'm not sure it matters, because none of those people are reading this column right now, or any column for that matter, because reading anything even remotely complex or analytical is something only 42 percent of the population enjoy doing on a regular basis, which is why most TV shows, all reality shows, many major media blogs and all of Fox News is scripted for a 5th-grade education/attention span. OMG LOL kittens! 19 babies having a worse day than you. WTF is up with Justin Timberlake's hair?!?
It is this bizarre, circular, catch-22 kind of question, asked almost exclusively by intellectual liberals because intellectual conservatives don't actually exist, given how higher education leads to more developed critical thinking (you already know the vast majority of university professors and scientists identify as Democrat/progressive, right?) which leads straight to a more nimble, open-minded perspective. In short: The smarter you are, the less rigid/more liberal you become.
Until you get old. Or rich. And scared. And you forget. And you clamp down, seize up, fossilize. And the GOP grabs you like a mold.
Oh right! The question: How to reach the not-very-bright hordes, when they simply refuse to be reached by logic, fact, or modern mode? How to communicate obvious and vital truths (conservation, global warming, public health, sexuality, basic nutrition, religion as parable/myth, the general awfulness of Mumford & Sons) the lack of understanding of which keep the country straggling and embarrassing, the laughingstock of the civilized world?
And who are these people, exactly? And are they all really in Kentucky and Florida and Mississippi? Are they all in the Tea Party? Is failing education to blame? A dumbed-down media? Reality TV? In the wealthiest and most egomaniacal superpower in the world, why is the chasm so wide?
There is no easy answer, but there is a great deal of irony. It is a wicked conundrum that you and I can debate the definition of elitism, whether or not it's fair to criticize those who believe that, say, gay marriage means kids will be indoctrinated into homosexuality, or that evolution is still a theory, or that Jesus literally flew up out of a cave and into the sky, when the discussion itself is, by nature, elitist, exclusionary, requiring fluid, abstract thinking the very people we're discussing simply do not possess, and therefore cannot participate in.
Discussion of elitism is elitist. Intelligence can talk itself blue about what to do about all the dumb; the dumb will never hear it.
It's a fact even recognized by Louisiana's own Gov. Bobby Jindal, who had the nerve to defy his own state's (and his own party's) famously low IQ by saying, after the last election, "The GOP must stop being the stupid party. It's time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults."
Of course he's right. But where would that leave their base? And who will tell the megachurches? And does Jindal not know Louisiana is where they teach that the existence of the Loch Ness monster is evidence that evolution is a lie?
Brings to mind a stunning study about facts and truths. Have you ever heard it? It goes something like: Here is hard evidence, scientific evidence, irrefutable proof that something is or is not true. Here is dinosaur bone, for example, which we know beyond a doubt is between 60 and 70 million years old. Amazing! Obviously!
But then comes the impossible snag: If you are hard-coded to believe otherwise, if your TV network or your ideology, your pastor or your lack of education tell you differently, you will still not believe it. No matter what. No matter how many facts, figures, common senses slap you upside the obvious. You will think there is conspiracy, collusion, trickery afoot. The Bible says that bone is only eight thousand years old. Science is elitist. Liberals hate God. The end.
It is not enough to say people believe what they want to believe. They will also believe it in the face of irrefutable counter-evidence and millennia of fundamental proof.
This! This is what stuns and stupefies liberals and progressives of every intellectual stripe. We cannot understand. We cannot compute. We think, "Well, if more people just had the facts, just heard a reasonable and cogent argument or read up on the real science, surely they would change their minds? Surely they would see the error in their thinking?"
Oh, liberals. All those smarts, and still so naïve.
Here is the body of Jesus! We found it! In a cave in a hole deep in an iron-gated alcove beneath the Vatican!...
Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate. He's also a well-known E-RYT yoga instructor in San Francisco. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...]]>I'll Kill You for This Columntag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28149262013-03-05T21:38:04-05:002013-05-05T05:12:01-04:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/all levels, from military to government, police to drug cartel and back again, impossible to distinguish between each, and therefore rightfully fearing all.
It's a ridiculously privileged position I and nearly all other columnists, journalists and bloggers in the West inhabit, despite the vicious media downturn, despite slashed budgets and the total lack of benefits, despite busted unions and gutted newspapers and the Internet making it almost impossible to have a stable, long-term career in journalism anymore.
But comparatively speaking? I live a charmed, wildly blessed media life. Because here I read about Mexican journalist Marcela Turati, who just won the Louis Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism (file under: obscure but highly respectable) for her reporting on the Mexican drug war currently ravaging her country and who, in her acceptance speech, spoke of the 80 or so of her fellow journalists who have gone missing or been brutally murdered in the past handful of years.
Repeat: 80. Repeat: Not Syria. Not China. Not Iraq. Mexico.
Turati included a harrowing "generic" example of how the typical story appears in regional papers: Reporter gets abducted right in front of a police station, in broad daylight, dragged away and massacred right in front of his daughter on their way to school. Reporter harassed and family threatened, car burned, home shot up, reporter soon "disappears" for daring to write about the drug wars in a way apparently savagely displeasing to the overlords who currently run the place. Reporter's body is found days later, tortured and slashed, with a gruesome warning note. And so on.
I try, for even a moment, to imagine what that must be like, to write in daily fear of harassment and death over... what? Revealing harsh truths everyone already knows? Exposing realities few in the world seem to care about anymore? Identifying sources and naming names of those involved in payoffs and the corruption (read: most of them)?
I've won a few wonderful awards and accolades for my work so far. I've been, in turns, hugely proud and quickly humbled, honored beyond belief, thrilled when someone tells me my work has inspired change or induced a profound realization. In my line, this is all you can really ask for.
I've also been reviled by the Christian right, called the anti-Christ more times than I can count; I've been verbally spat upon by extreme right-wing knuckle draggers, threatened with lawsuit by Mormonism and Scientology, had the head of SF's Catholic archdiocese complain, multiple times, to Chronicle HQ about my ongoing and enthusiastic condemnation of the church. High badges of honor, all.
And yes, I've even had a couple straight-up death threats, but they came from neck-deep in the heartland muck, from sub-humans who are, I'm convinced, far too terrified to come anywhere near San Francisco lest they turn instantly liberal or gay. So it's never been a serious concern.
But then again, I've never been involved in the kind of reportage that has you dodging bullets while interviewing surviving family members of a decapitated police captain, or that has you hiding out in a cave to write your report on the Chinese military beating monks in Tibet, all for little pay, for the sheer need to get the story out to a numb and wary world that doesn't really want to hear it much anymore.
On one hand, I suppose it's morbidly reassuring to learn that in the age of Facebook boredom, hashtag overload and infantile meme gluttony, the written word can still wield that kind of power, can still induce corrupt governments and narco thugs alike to murder the lowly, underpaid reporter merely for daring to reveal the truth to a wary and exhausted readership.
Of course, I also realize it's nothing new. War zones and deadly hotspots the world over are famously attractive to thrill-seeking writers and photojournalists exactly for their high-adrenaline, death-wish risks. But it's one thing to knowingly incite the fundamentalist clods in Iraq or Pakistan, quite another to face death in a fast-developing first world democracy, a land of ravishing beauty and fine arts, intellectual power and tremendous urban development.
This is, perhaps, the most harrowing aspect of the killing of journalists in Mexico (now second only to Iraq as the most dangerous place in the world to be a reporter): We are not that far removed. Despite America's "maturity," despite all our supposed First Amendment protections and moral righteousness, we are but a few small steps away from Mexico's brutish violence and ingrained political dishonesty.
We get it. We feel it, breathing down our necks. We are certainly not lacking in corrupt civic leaders, in slimy, on-the-make politicians, in rabid cults of hate and violence, all coupled to a decaying educational system and a wild love of numbing out, dumbing down, racing to the moral, reality-TV bottom.
It also begets a strange and tragic irony: I recall a study not long ago from an American Ph.D. student who examined terrorists the world over and found something rather surprising.
All those sophisticated, calculating, evil masterminds orchestrating vast, intricate networks of educated rebels in the art of fear and violence? They don't really exist. There are no smarmy, highly-educated James Bond villains, no evil Die Hard-type Russian masterminds trying to hack the mainframe of international conglomerates, no evil genius sitting in a leather armchair, arming nukes while stroking a hairless cat on his lap.
There is no Scarface. There is no Tony Soprano. There was no Wild West. With rare exception, the romantic American notion of shrewd drug kingpin, sly mastermind terrorist, suave nightclub gangster is pure violence porn, just dumb Hollywood fantasy.
Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate. He's also a well-known E-RYT yoga instructor in San Francisco. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...]]>Shut Up for One Tiny Secondtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27693602013-02-27T16:48:56-05:002013-04-29T05:12:01-04:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/
She said, in a surprised and exasperated voice, in that tone you normally reserve for discovering you have obscenely bad breath or a third nipple or maybe a clump of shiny black hairs sticking out of your nose for the past week and no one bothered to tell you, she said, "Oh my God! Do you know what I just realized? I talk way too much."
This was no small discovery. This was no inconsequential awakening. My friend -- who was, by the way, wholly correct -- was not one normally prone to sudden bouts of self-awareness, much less a startling, quasi-spiritual confession that something was seriously amiss in how she was interacting with the world, and she needs to do something about it.
She was stunned. I was stunned. She said she just recently grasped, to her horror, that she never really heard a single thing anyone else said, never really connected to a conversation, never really listened for anything except a pause in the conversation so she could jump back in and fill it with an opinion she'd been manically forming while others were talking.
I tried to act surprised.
"It's true!" she said. It was like she just awoke from a dream and now, everywhere she looked, examples. Whenever she left a business meeting, she had no idea what her colleagues had suggested because when she wasn't dominating the conversation, she was up in her own ego, formulating her next comment, trying to impress everyone with her incessant stream of overwhelming ideas, terrified of shutting up for a moment, lest she become irrelevant or someone else steal the attention.
Close friendships, her children, her husband, her sister? The same. She was never one to ask how you're doing or what was going on in your life with anything resembling genuine interest or concern. She never leaned in, never held eye contact for long, never softly touched your elbow or held your hand in empathy.
When she did ask, it was cursory and throwaway, which you understood immediately because as soon as you'd begin to answer, her eyes would usually glaze over and her gaze would wander and you might as well say "and then the zombies ate the babies and Jesus exploded in giant banana pudding wappa wappa boom," for all the attention she was paying.
Yes indeed, she was one of those people. One with a self-absorption habit so deeply ingrained, so woven into the fabric of her personality, it seemed inextricable, impossible to know who she was without it. If she wasn't so funny and amiable in general, generous with her time and (despite the rabid solipsism) kind of heart, she'd have no friends at all.
But here's the impressive part. Her epiphany extended to a potent realization many who suffer the same affliction never attain: She understood that her manic need for chatter was preventing her from authentic, heartful connection with anyone or anything; all the white noise was blocking all sorts of love and compassion, not to mention a sense of deeper self or divine wow. Maybe, she said, this was why she was so unhappy, so lost, so endlessly needy and never fulfilled! Maybe this was the root of the problem! All energy in, nothing offered out. Could it be?
Oh, hell yes. I was impressed. For one thing, no one really led her to this awakening. No teacher, guru, book, YouTube video, Zen workshop slapped her awake or pinched the ass of her consciousness. She just sort of snapped to it. Maybe it was cumulative? Maybe her endless complaints of feeling stressed and unloved had finally cracked her open? Maybe it was the toxic stew of anger and loneliness? Impossible to say.
And really, it doesn't matter. Because most amazing of all is what she decided to do next: She said she was going to a meditation retreat, one of those introductory, three-day vipassana (insight meditation) weekends up at Spirit Rock I'd recommended to her, long ago, during one of her bouts of lamenting her love life, her job, her body and her marriage and her everything. She looked at me, sidelong and sweet, as I suggested it, like you do a mental patient. Not a chance.
But now, a radical shift. An unexpected opening. She didn't really know a thing about vipassana (or any form of meditation, for that matter), except the little I'd told her. She had no spiritual practice or exposure of any kind, no idea what she was in for. But it felt right, she said, something she had to do. "Perfect," I said.
I was, as I say, impressed. With her nerve. With her resolve to actually go in, sit still and really look. This, in the modern age, is no small feat. This is a brave and often terrifying thing. Most people cannot handle any kind of inward-focused quiet for half an hour, much less three days, cannot sit still and hold silence and watch the demons, the voices, the memories and the panic rise up like a whiny little army that stabs at your ego like a piñata.
I had no idea if she'd make it, if she'd survive, or if she'd bolt for the door in the first hour and go slam some tequila and wonder what the hell she was thinking. But to recognize the need? To commit energy to the possibility? To actually sign up for the weekend and tell me about it, excitedly? Halfway there already.
Is it not a mega trend? Not the way of the modern world? We all know someone...
Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate. He's also a well-known E-RYT yoga instructor in San Francisco. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...]]>You and Your Terrifying Orange Juicetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26739192013-02-15T15:48:09-05:002013-04-17T05:12:01-04:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/
I imagine if I lived in a different part of the country, had a few unruly kids and cared only for the price/convenience matrix most of the country lives by, I would, like millions of Americans, buy giant tubs of "All Natural" and "Grove-Made" and "Sunshine-Licked" and whatever else the misleading label claimed, thinking it fine, good enough, hey, the kids like it and who has the time to worry about juice?
I most certainly would not know that something like Simply Orange, which sounds so chaste and humble, is actually a creepy, Frankenstein-ian creation of the Coca-Cola corporation, and the manufacture of Simply Orange is one of the most ginormous, technologically-advanced, hyperindustrial processes you can imagine, and that this anything-but-simple process is sort of terrifying and miraculous and sad, all at once. Thanks, BusinessWeek, for enlightening/depressing me all over again. You rock.
This much we know: Few humans on earth fully grasp the scale and scope of America's dystopian industrial food production systems anymore, much less how those mega-systems are bleeding over to the rest of the world and changing not only what and how we eat, but how we think about food -- or rather, don't think about food, as the manufacturers and government bodies surely prefer.
Thoughtful books, awesome documentaries and Michelle Obama aside, only a fraction of Americans still have any idea where, how, and via whom our heavily-processed, factory-sanitized food hits the store, much less how harmful or degenerative most of those ingredients and processes are, which is exactly how venomous industrial farming leviathans like ConAgra, Cargill and Monsanto want it. Same as it ever was? Yes. Only much, much worse.
Here in Medialand, facts and figures prance on by via terrifying headlines, giving the finger to your better sense. Example: Did you know the meat industry still consumes a staggering 80 percent of all antibiotics in America? Or that industrial farms injected nearly 30 million pounds of it into your meat in 2011 alone? It's like the federal deficit, deep space or the sheer quantity of hate the Koch brothers have for everything you love: "Brain unable to process, just hope we don't die." That's all you get.
Nevertheless, the "America's heartland" myth prevails. Witness, please, the hilarious Funny or Die spoof of that saccharine "So God Made a Farmer" Dodge pickup truck commercial that ran during the Super Bowl. Try to count all the levels of shameless, sepia-toned bulls--t pandering in the original. Behold how the beloved family farm (which still exists, but barely) is but a crumb to be swallowed by heavily subsidized Big Agra, all to better help the Coca-Colas of the land make their factory-churned, algorithmic juice.
The wisdom is simple enough: You should not, common sense says, be able to buy a bottle of "fresh" orange juice all year round, in either Los Angeles or Alabama or Chicago, and have it taste exactly the same everywhere. Such bizarre uniformity is deeply antithetical to the gorgeous mess that is human existence, with its endless variables and dissimilar locales, not to mention those pesky things called "seasons."
Of course, we're way past that now. The fast food industry, population growth, industrial farming, and the wonders of chemistry have all colluded to convince us that sameness and uniformity are not merely safe and desirable (and profitable), but that to question those quasi-religious qualities is downright un-American.
Just ask conservatives, or the church, or the NRA, or even Starbucks or Yum! Brands: Anything existing outside the comfortable and numb, the factory-produced and the corporation-owned is to be suspect and should probably be deported, burned at the stake or shot, just for good measure. Now shut up and enjoy your Whopper.
Besides, let's face facts: There might be no way to feed 7 billion rapacious humans without factory farming, genetic engineering, billions of tons of pesticides, inventing violently-unnatural ways to maximize yield, strip out nutrition and engineer our experiences just so things like orange juice look, taste, feel, pour exactly the same everywhere. This is the argument. It's quite persuasive. It might also be partly true. Sort of.
But then again, not really. Here's the rub: Deep down, we know that sameness equals death. Conformity numbs the soul. Forced consistency kills the spirit, ingenuity, snuffs the very spark of why we are here.
Witness shopping malls. Witness those lifeless slabs of big-box stores every 15 miles off the freeway. Witness cruise ships and chain restaurants and the soul-numbing hell of Disneyland. Spend a significant amount of time in any of these places and watch your anima shrivel into karmic gristle.
It's not enough to say that we are not the same. That we are not here to look, act, eat, screw like everyone else. That it's all just an ugly illusion, foisted upon us by pale old men in ugly robes and shiny suits, seeking control, power and money.
You must go wider, see the staggering machinations and industrial practices involved in making places and products look, taste, feel the same.
Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate. He's also a well-known E-RYT yoga instructor in San Francisco. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...]]>2013: The Year Women Abolish Godtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26267632013-02-13T16:35:40-05:002013-04-15T05:12:01-04:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/
This much we know: Here in the stumbling, fumbling first world, where minorities have suddenly become the majority, gay marriage is increasingly no big deal, sexually awake women are surging into leadership roles like never before and the scales of influence have tipped away from frightened white males, organized religion is somehow looking even more dangerously, even cruelly out of touch and hostile to all that is beautiful, positive and worthwhile in the world.
I know! Hard to believe. It was pretty far gone to begin with. But still.
Much has already been written -- some of it by me -- about how older white males (AKA the classic institutional patriarchies) are flailing and failing to find a coherent identity in the new era, as traditional male roles collapse, labor forces evolve and women increasingly become the prime movers of the information age.
Even more has been written -- lots of it by me -- about how Obama's stunning victory in 2012 was propelled in large part by women of all ages and demographics who are in full support of the Democratic Party's intrinsic belief in the social safety net, Planned Parenthood, free contraception, abortion counseling and services, health care, college loan reform, support for single mothers, and so on.
What you don't hear as much about, however, is how 89 percent of Catholics in America support birth control. How 99 percent of all sexually active women in America have used contraception at some point in their (obviously slutty, godless) lives. How church attendance among the young is in sharp decline while non-denominational spirituality is surging. How even most practicing Christians don't agree in the slightest with extremist groups like the Tea Party, Fox News, evangelicals or hate groups like the Family Research Council.
Result: It's becoming abundantly clear just how awesomely wide has become the chasm between religious groups and the rainbow-hued, female-charged, Obamafied modern era. I know! It's been pretty wide for ages. But now the span is more like a goddamn galaxy.
It all comes to mind as I read how the Obama administration just offered further concessions to faith-based groups who refuse, for all the usual antediluvian, anti-choice reasons, to provide free contraception to women, as required by the ACA. They can opt out, Obama says. Now, easier than ever.
Isn't that nice? Isn't that generous and fair, considering how no one of any nimble intelligence believes birth control is a sin, Timothy Dolan is admirable, or women are dangerous, lesser-than temptresses to be feared and locked down?
Oh yes, Cardinal Timothy Dolan. That guy. The same guy who handed out huge cash buyouts to rapist priests when he was Archbishop. The guy who remains the harshest, most outspoken opponent of women's right, gay rights, the ACA's contraception rule, sunlight, joy, music made after 1750 and sexual freedoms in the land. The man who (presumably) fully endorses the Vatican's recent hateful crackdown on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (AKA American nuns) who dared -- dared! -- to care more about social justice than bashing gays and protesting abortion. He's a real prince, that guy.
But here's the interesting part: To me, the Obama administration's latest compromise, while certainly more than generous to religious groups (and scowling Dolan) who don't really deserve such attention, considering how many tax breaks and federal moneys they already get from the government, will only serve to amplify the generational/ideological chasm even more. To the groups' own detriment.
Put another way: Religious groups and faith-based clinics refuse to provide contraception and basic counseling for women? The same women who voted for Obama en masse? The same "Lena Dunham generation" who own their sexuality like never before, who Rush calls "sluts" and the church calls whores, who already mistrust, even detest much of what these exclusionary, anti-everything groups stand for? Knock yourself out, boys. You are writing your own epitaph.
It all points to the most intriguing possibility of all: Two millennia into the church's brutish rule of guilt, shame, abuse and fear of anything with an active vagina, we might finally be at a point where organized religion is hammering the final nails into its own coffin. Or perhaps refusing to remove all those it put there 2,000 years ago. Whichever.
This appears to be the general rule: When your misogynistic ideology stagnates for generations, when you refuse to adapt even the slightest bit to the heat and pulse of the times, when your notions of love, sex and God are so constricted, joyless and exclusionary as to repel an entire generation, you die. It's just a matter of time.
While the church has been brilliant, even masterful at keeping itself intact and alive all these centuries -- usually through fear, guilt, money ($2 billion, if not much more, in sexual abuse settlements, and counting), oppression and preying upon the lesser-educated and minitories, eventually, the tides turn. Or rather, turn back.
In short: Women will win. There is zero doubt. America's multicultural, pro-gay, pro-women future is here, and it could all spell doom for church and its dour influence. Maybe forevermore. Hey, the divine feminine had the lead for 10,000 years before Christ, before the church forcibly stripped the fiery goddess of her chthonic power and turned her into a ruinous Eve, a dumb virgin, or a repentant whore. She's sort of overdue to bust out again. Don't you think?
I know, it ain't over yet. The GOP's relentless war on women...
Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate. He's also a well-known E-RYT yoga instructor in San Francisco. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...]]>Godless Liberal Sickos Win Againtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25816522013-01-30T16:23:25-05:002013-04-01T05:12:01-04:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/everything.
It does not matter. Let the reactions come, the paranoia ensue, the bitter ashes of past injustices dissipate into the wind. For lo, a raft of hard-fought -- and fairly radical -- cultural changes hath finally come, and the changes are good and the changes are righteous and the changes, as MLK knew and your Republican friends are loathe to admit, are toward the progressive and the just. You know, just like always.
Perhaps you've heard? Perhaps you've noticed? The infamous "culture wars" officially declared in the Reagan era and then hissed forth through the years by everyone from George W. Bush to Rick Warren, the Tea Party to groupthink megachurches, Rush Limbaugh's giant mouth to Bill O'Reilly's sad little book, Palin and Bachmann and Karl Rove, too, all ultimately landing with an inglorious splat on poor Rick "please don't Google my last name" Santorum's head, the culture wars of yore are essentially over.
And the Republicans lost.
The culture wars! What a silly idea. What a ridiculous and lopsided fight. All about gay marriage, women's rights, pornography, censorship, "elitist" higher education, support for the arts, for science, immigration, the environment, legal marijuana, gays in the military, a black president, self-determined spirituality versus the deep poison that is organized religion.
The culture wars! Been around for ages, but most recently determined to mean constricted, God-fearing, red state "family values" versus "immoral" '60-style open-mindedness, all spinning off the timeless argument that the moral fabric of this great nation would surely be shredded to bits if too many Americans were allowed to have a free abortion after enjoying joyful sodomy in church with their college-educated gay husband's blasphemous public sculpture that looks like a freedom-loving handgun shaped like a recreational vagina. Or something.
Evidence of the GOP's glorious, ongoing loss? Everywhere and palpable. Gay marriage, to the vast majority of the nation and certainly to nearly everyone under 30, is a foregone and no-big-deal conclusion. Gays are now allowed to serve openly in the military and attend military academies (though not, of course, in the NFL), and now we hear that women have just been given the OK to serve in combat, too, which of course means we are all doomed -- because as everyone knows, women are too weak and easy to rape, and gays just want to have sex with the enemy.
But never mind that now, because even the numbly prejudiced Boy Scouts are, at the behest of at least a few very powerful, wealthy donors/members, reconsidering their hateful ban on gays. Can you hear that? It's the avidly bigoted South, losing cultural traction by the second.
Would you look at immigration reform? Suddenly back on the table like a Frankenstein monster getting struck by a miracle bolt of lightning, all due to the fact that the GOP just realized if they don't try to make nice with the new multicultural majority that spanked them so hard in the 2012 election, they'll vanish faster than an ice shelf in Greenland.
On it goes. From environmental awareness to legal pot to abortion rights, movement is toward the progressive -- or at the very least, away from the regressive (not quite the same thing, but in this climate, you take what you can get). Even many leading Republicans don't want to discuss the classic cultural issues that defined them for so long, recognizing them as toxic to their future, realizing that the younger generations simply don't believe in the harsh institutions and repressive dogmas of yore.
They know the nation has changed. Immigrants and women dominate anew, rural values are metamorphosing, gay culture is here to stay, the gun debate is back in play thanks to far too many dead children, the church is sour and impotent, you don't fuck with Planned Parenthood, the arts are still thriving (well mostly), sexuality is more unfettered and experimental, for better and worse.
Do not misunderstand. It is far from a complete or perfect victory. Many battles remain, many ugly shards will slice at the veins of the culture for years to come.
Women may be succeeding like never before, but many steadfastly backwards states (hi, Mississippi) and even U.S. congressmen are so antagonistic to women's rights they might as well be Saudi Arabia. Gays may be gaining in every category, but hate crimes persist and the church's nasty homophobia is more entrenched than the Vatican's secret fetish dungeon.
While the Catholic church has lost nearly all sway over American social mores (praise Jesus), its stranglehold on the uneducated third world is as oppressive and misogynistic as any time in 500 years. Backwards, anti-science thought persists throughout huge chunks of America. Even Marco Rubio, Florida's hotshot Republican and one of the "Gang of Eight" who designed the new, bipartisan immigration reform proposal, recently mouthed various idiocies about evolution and the "real" age of the Earth. You stay intellectual, Florida.
Oh, and the reason the younger generation care so much about the environment? It's not because they're all liberal tree huggers. It's because they have no choice; to this very day, no major nation has taken significant steps to prevent global warming and the ensuing catastrophe. Climate change is here. Mother Nature is furious. The culture war over the environment is insipid and irrelevant, blasted away by extreme hurricanes and death.
And of course, the South, despite flickers of progress in various college towns...
Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate. He's also a well-known E-RYT yoga instructor in San Francisco. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...]]>Four More Years, oh Thank Godtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25299802013-01-23T12:44:04-05:002013-03-25T05:12:01-04:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/
That's right: ridiculous, bordering on gratuitous, hell, let's just say it outright: fawning unfettered gaspingly unhinged heaps of unbridled, open-throated gratitude.
That's right, gratitude. For what? For Obama, of course. For the general wonder of another four years of this guy who is tremendously flawed and makes some infuriatingly weak decisions and for some reason refuses to unleash any serious, go-for-the-throat whoop-ass on the GOP, but who nevertheless will go down as the finest and most unfalteringly intelligent president we could have hoped for in this here generation, and maybe the next.
Grateful is exactly the right sentiment, too. Because I think we've forgotten. I think we on the left, despite the heartfelt surge right up to the election itself, we sort of let our attentions wander, let our relentless cynicism and single-issue annoyances get in the way, let all the various reasons Obama failed to live up to his impossible 2008 hype block us from seeing the larger picture at play.
So let's be clear. I don't just mean the easy and the obvious kind of gratitude, like giving thanks for how Obama was the first president in history to mention gay marriage in an inauguration speech, or that he (finally) acknowledged climate change as a deadly serious issue, or that he champions women's rights and immigrant equality like few before him.
It's not even that he's the first president since Roosevelt and his National Firearms Act of 1934 to take on the nation's hissing cult of gun fetishists so directly, the ghosts of 20 massacred schoolchildren at his back (not to mention the more than 1100 others who have been gunned down since Sandy Hook), the pinched, blood-red faces of bloated white guys from the NRA all wishing him dead.
There is another reason. The deeper reason. No less obvious but easily forgotten as we barrel down the tracks of the 21st century like a runaway train hoping to someday crash straight into God.
It's simple gratitude for knowing cooler heads will almost always prevail. It's the deep thanks that can only come from realizing the pilot can land this thing no matter what. It is the profound pleasure in understanding you are in confident and capable hands for four more years, as opposed to clammy and trigger-happy, dishonest and dead like a neoconservative fish.
Is that too simplistic? Too lacking in all the complaints you can so easily list about Obama's various botched issues and congressional battles, his failure to support universal bike lanes or dolphin rights, his ridiculous support of "clean" coal and drone warfare? I don't think it is. I don't think the wide view is the slightest bit useless. In fact, it's downright essential. Complain all you want that the water is murky and the temperature's uncertain; at least we're in the right pool.
Put it this way: How many times have you, have I, have we all collectively said, felt, or muttered under our breath, maybe at dinner, maybe sitting next to conservative or hyper-Christian family members over the holidays -- oh dear God, can you imagine if McCain were president right now? What a disaster? How many snarling reactions, how raging the warmongering, how sour and dank the complexion of the nation?
Perhaps you said: "McCain would never have ended Bush's failed Iraq war, on time and under budget. McCain would never have invested $150 billion over 10 years in alterative energy, reformed Wall Street (a little), pushed major health care reform, championed gay marriage, nailed Osama bin Laden, defended Planned Parenthood, reformed student loan programs, so on and etcetera." The list is long, and also sort of amazing.
It's an odd fact of our cynical modern context: Obama has been one of the most productive and successful first-term presidents in history. But it goes largely unnoticed, overshadowed by relentless economic gloom and an acidic GOP filled such hatred for the president they'd rather the nation -- their own constituents included -- get cancer than Obama succeed. Don't believe it? You haven't been paying attention.
But now, the good news: This same sentiment will only gain strength and power all the way through 2016. You will, I predict (and fully encourage) see this or that headline related to war, or Wall Street, or abortion rights, or foreign policy, or immigration, or the equality of women, or NRA lizards, and you will drop to your knees and offer thanks to whichever deity you choose that Mitt Romney isn't winking at Boehner as he gives the nation that numb, blank-faced look, as Ann Romney gallops up onto the White House lawn on one of her million-dollar show horses to discuss the the dire lack of quality stemware in the Hamptons. Or whatever.
What do you think? Do you think you will say such a thing a hundred times? A thousand? Hell, I said it at least two dozen times during the vast, sprawling, sort of boring inauguration speech alone.
Boring! What? See how easily that slipped out? Hard to believe, but we're now at a point where Obama's articulation and facile intelligence are becoming sort of yawningly common. We are hereby spoiled rotten. We do not know how good we have it. Do you remember Bush's speeches? I don't either. Blocked out entirely. Sort of like blocking out rampant childhood sexual abuse. By a midget clown.
Make no mistake. Despite the overdue tone of aggression and fresh fight Obama poured into that inauguration speech, large doses of hard realism and heavy sighing will still be required, going forward.
For example: Do Obama's more serious gun control measures have a chance in the weak-kneed Senate and Repub-smeared House? Probably not. But it (almost) doesn't matter. In the wake of the Newtown massacre, Obama stepped up, delivered a number of serious changes to our ridiculous gun laws that the vast majority of the nation demanded. The president did exactly the right and promised thing in the face of nasty and impossible resistance. The GOP sneers at the idea? Congress hasn't the nerve to pass his initiatives? Write your whiny, isolationist congressman. Mostly in the South.
Which leads us straight to perhaps the largest gratitude offering of all....
Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate. He's also a well-known E-RYT yoga instructor in San Francisco. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...]]>Moderation Is for Hippiestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24400632013-01-09T13:15:59-05:002013-03-11T05:12:01-04:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/
Don't you think? Have you noticed? No one believes in it anymore. Fewer still actually practice it. Anyone on any side of a given debate or social issue shun it like it reality TV shuns good taste.
Even the planet itself agrees: Extremism is in. Extremism is the new black, which is also the new blood red, which is also the new, merciless way to deny anything bad or dangerous might be happening as a direct result of our unchecked growth or God-drunk ideology.
Where do you want to look? Popular culture? Here Comes Honey Boo Boo just earned record ratings by going to new extremes of trashiness, mental incompetence and borderline child abuse. Sports? Extremes of machismo, scandal and homophobia abound. Violence? Please. A 20-year-old massacres 20 elementary school children with a rifle he swiped from his mom, and what's the response? Let's arm up even more! Meanwhile, the top-selling video games are screamingly juvenile, ultra-violent first-person shooters for 10-year-old males who never go outside and twitch themselves to sleep.
Extreme postures, extreme politics, dogmas, piercings, sex, degradations, styles, sounds, wealth, resource annihilation, antagonism -- for millions, the message is clear: Radical positions and hardcore reactions are the only thing that "work" anymore, that shock or inspire feeling or action, that get you noticed, make you money or get you your own embarrassingly awful TV show.
Is it the slightest bit true? Not at all. But you'd never know it, given how jaded we've become, believing the world is detonating all around us. Accelerated tech, exploding populations, uncertain futures. Who has time for nuance and thoughtfulness? Who has time to make careful, heartfelt distinctions over a glass of wine and a soft caress? The gays are coming to eat all the white Christian babies!
The message rages forth: We cannot slow down. We cannot scale back, cut down, stop driving or birthing or purchasing. Zero growth? Don't be ridiculous. "More" is the only true American maxim. Have you seen the photos of the Alberta tar sands? Do you know to what appalling extremes we now must go to feed our energy needs? How deep we have to drill, how much we must frack and tear and pulverize, how much money and power are at stake?
What about food? There is a reason you do not ever see footage shot inside America's nauseating industrial slaughterhouses. There is a reason you will never go anywhere near the toxic clouds of factory exhaust and pig feces floating over entire Midwestern farm towns like a middle finger from the devil. Industrial agriculture is, arguably, both a salvation and a surefire sign of doom.
Extreme opinions? We're drowning in them. While not necessarily new, wildly lopsided stances, hate speech, arguments that lack all nuance, thought, subtlety or respect -- not to mention humor or kindness -- have become ingrained and commonplace. Can you name the single worst invention of the last ten years? Nope, not Facebook. Not Lady Gaga. It's anonymous commenting. Look below. You'll see.
Do you know what awful thing sucks the very life-force from the entire universe? Your new iPhone 5! Oh wait, I mean your new Galaxy S III! How do I know? Because this one guy over at Engadget or maybe Slashdot or Gizmodo just switched from one to the other, and he wrote 2,500 words explaining why Apple sucks and Android rules because, um, the camera takes slightly better backwards pictures and, uh, its 4,000 miraculous technologies can do two things slightly differently than Apple's 4,000 miraculous technologies. Chew on that, haters!
But of course, that all pales in comparison to the grand champion of extreme, hostile posturing, the GOP, who shamelessly take untenable positions on everything from the economy to God, rape to calling the president a Nazi. Science is a hoax! Gays are repulsive in the eyes of God! Rich people should never be taxed! You win, GOP. No one is better at taking the messy, wondrous tapestry of the human experiment and stabbing it with the ice pick of monochromatic fear. Well done. You've changed the conversation. For the worse.
Meanwhile, the earth is responding in kind, matching and then easily surpassing us, one extreme example at a time. Forget Hurricane Sandy -- did you read that it was just 95 degrees in Australia? At midnight? Have you heard that the heat wave now underway down under is so dangerous, Australia's bureau of meteorology actually had to add an entirely new color to the heat map -- a dark, ominous purple? When they finally add black, it's all over.
Extreme weather is the new normal, in direct response to our extreme gluttony and unchecked growth. 2012, to the surprise of no one with an even passing respect for science, was by far the hottest on record in the contiguous United States.
Will it ever result in serious environmental legislation? Don't be naive. Carbon dioxide emissions set another record high in 2012. Would you like to know the title of an actual presentation by Brad Werner, a respected, albeit mildly radical complex systems researcher from University of California, San Diego, speaking at the huge American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco? He called it "Is Earth f-cked?" Hey, in this climate, who has time for subtlety?
Maybe the problem is tragically shifting definitions? Maybe it's the bizarre falsity, spurred largely by these same extremist right-wing politicians, that "moderation" has come to mean a sort of mealy wimpishness, a lack of willingness to "be tough on crime" or stomp out terrorism or waste more billions on our bloated, absurdly disproportionate military?
Too broad? Fine. Take it down to the human level...
Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate. He's also a well-known E-RYT yoga instructor in San Francisco. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...]]>The Good, Hard Spanking of 2012tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.23937052013-01-07T14:35:13-05:002013-03-09T05:12:01-05:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/ Bet on the Nazi socialist Kenyan
Is it not refreshing? Is it not all kinds of wonderful to be reminded that all the spittle-flecked hate and hissing resentment in the world still can't defeat intelligence, wisdom, flawed but honest integrity?
Behold: The GOP's relentless, shameless four-year onslaught of racism, birtherism, isolationism and gross antipathy, during which they called the president everything from a communist to a Nazi to a fundamentalist Muslim, failed to rally sufficient numbers of the undereducated and the paranoid to nosedive the nation back into a sinkhole of conservative bile. It was easily the most methodical, relentless personal attack in modern political history, and it failed ugly. Hugs all around.
White men can't jump
Did you feel it? The tipping point? The grand flip from white male-dominated, paranoid n' reactionary cultural stasis to female-empowered, minority-voiced, messier-than-thou, barely controlled chaos? The 2012 election ushered in nothing short of a new phase, era, chapter in the increasingly weird American experiment, one in which the old, scared white guys of the world, while far from being completely sidelined, are at least no longer assured of their unimpeded dominance and political authority. Not only do the Mitt Romneys of America no longer hold all the reins, they never will again. A wobbly, rainbow-coalition future beats an uptight, monochromatic past any day.
Global warming gives you the finger
The adorably ignorant cluster of global warming deniers is now even tinier, more ignorant, and less worth giving a moment's irritated glance than ever. Hurricane Sandy wasn't a wake-up call, she was a mission statement, an attack plan, an overt strategy for Mother Nature's violent reclamation of our despoiled world, given how we apparently can't seem to take care of her properly. Since we've waited far too long to take major action to heal the planet, Mother Nature will do what she does best: devastate our overblown egos and rinse the place clean. No one is actually ready.
Guns hate everyone
We are the most violence-obsessed first-world nation on earth. We are the most paranoid, fearful, antagonistic, excessively armed, drowning in insidious cultural images of firearms and gun fetishism, endless bogus cowboy mythology, the notion that guns are somehow noble or worthy of anything but revulsion and sadness. Gun lovers and hunters can argue to their heart's content that weapons designed solely to kill other living things can be used safely and for fun, and usually are. This is like saying that most of the time, land mines don't explode and mutilate/kill countless innocents. Until they do. Enough of this.
Apocalypse now or never
Keep your snide, anti New-Age quips to yourself. No one of any real mystical intelligence believed the world was going to end in a fiery zombie cataclysm on December 21. But a new era of reinvigorated thought and radical spirit? A more ripe moment than we've ever encountered before to witness and fully honor/celebrate our shared humanity? The feeling that a drastically accelerated culture and endlessly magical technologies are conspiring with a decline in the heartless institutions of the past -- military, church, corporation -- to make it more possible than ever to leap into a new and self-defined consciousness? Now that's an apocalypse worth caring about. Don't believe any of it? Your loss.
50 shades of horrible writing
The big lesson of the worst-written, most mega bestselling soft-core S&M porn books of all time? Nope, not that we're a kinkier bunch than anyone imagined. It's that a huge majority of middle-aged American housewives are dramatically undersexed and apparently suffer horribly insufficient access to quality porn (not to mention quality literature), so awful that they're willing to suffer the most abominable sentences and cheesy smut scenes since your mom fantasized that Fabio was giving her a shuddering orgasm in the laundry room with a large vacuum cleaner attachment. Somewhere, Anais Nin is cringing.
Deep space has got your back
Think you have a basic grip on reality? On the scale and scope of life, more or less and with sufficient whisky and sex and sleep? Think again, tiny biped. Allow 2012's finest and most jaw-dropping astronomy photos whip your tremulous cranium into a frothy frappucino of awe and disbelief, as you realize, to the best of your meek ability, just how remote, humbling and yet awesomely grand it all is. Gaze into the wonder that is the Hubble Extreme Deep Field and watch your precious ego shatter like a tiny porcelain doll against the vast, pulsing slab of cosmic consciousness. Upshot: You do not know what you think you know. Isn't that wonderful?
You do not know what you think you know
Behold, the most timeless and overarching lesson of all...
Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate. He's also a well-known E-RYT yoga instructor in San Francisco. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...]]>Your Own Personal 2012 Apocalypsetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.22815312012-12-19T10:48:49-05:002013-02-18T05:12:01-05:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/
Think again, skeptic. The famed 2012 apocalypse of eerie Mayan lore is nigh, and you and eye-rolling cynicism, your new iPad mini and your snooty, hifalutin' position of living in one of the most privileged countries, bodies, nationalities, income levels, hair styles and jaded first-world comfort zones on the planet, you are all in for a hell of a ride.
I am not here to convince you. I am not here to point up the endless parade of forces, events and energies all conspiring to upend everything you think you know, kick the ass of your karma and make you pay a little bit of attention for a change.
I am merely here to remind you: "apocalypse" can mean many things, most of them not at all what you think.
Anyone with any serious training in such matters agrees: that beloved, grisly zombie apocalypse thing? The traditional doomsday cataclysm scenario with the epic earthquakes, exploding stars and fiery, unhinged doom that inhales oceans, swallows nations and spits out the bloody bones of ditzy virgins and false gods? Not what the 2012 prophecy is really all about. Sorry.
Nor is it about some sort of childish Christian Rapture hootenanny, where hordes of baffled true believers in bad jeans and worse marriages get whisked off to the fluffy, sex-free clouds in giant minivans that smell like stale Doritos and closeted homosexuality. I know! You wish.
But you know what? It's not about some sort of New Age grand awakening, either. This too is merely a swell and tantalizing myth, so deeply beloved by so many here on the left coast, those with a mystical twinkle in the eye, a sloppy OM tattoo on their sacrum and really awful websites stuck somewhere in 1997.
Bad news, Marin county: We are not on the cusp of some sort of collective consciousness shift, whereby those who are already vibrating at some higher-pitched thrum are somehow "ready" to transcend this ugly plane and plop over into another happier, shinier dimension with better coffee and longer orgasms, and then sigh a patronizing sigh back at the rest of us because they were "enlightened" enough to have the right kind of crystals and the right meditation apps on their iPhone.
Do not misunderstand. I love (and even believe in, to a degree) the whole "we're living in a special age" kind of thinking, all the divine, wide-eyed chatter about technological Singularities and grand, collective Ascensions, the great Kali Yuga, not to mention the deeper note that the Mayan calendar discussion was never about predicting doom per se, but merely measures the end (and beginning) of some vast cycles of time, one of them 26,000 years long, another 225 million, and a few more in between, all of them indicating a kind of freshly fertile karmic ground, a ripe opportunity for seriously transformative thinking unlike anything we've allowed in before.
But you gotta put it in perspective: The world is always changing, upheaving, undergoing some form of apocalypse and cataclysm. It's always the end of the world as we know it, because we don't actually know a single goddamn thing. Just ask the Buddha. Or Kali.
So, you know, forget cataclysm. Think more about pressing a big re-set button as we pass through accelerated time compressions, energy cycles and great contractions/expansions of consciousness. Nice, right? Feels good to think so. Is sweet to imagine. Cherry pick some signs and journey with enough peyote or ayahuasca, and you just might get there. Almost.
But here's what I've gleaned: Apocalypse can also be far more subtle than that, more interesting, more messy, perhaps even more personally charged. And as with any sort of collective vibrational hump day, it is what you make of it.
Which is another way of saying, perhaps apocalypse means the time is more ripe than ever to entertain a certain kind of raw, yelping willingness to become less convinced you think you know what it's all about, to harness the opportunity afforded by this accelerated culture to really get it on with our inherent shared humanity. What, you got something better? More selfishness and isolationism and guns? Tried that. Failed.
But don't just take it from me. Did you witness that last election? Did you note the fantastic paradigm shift that stupefied the pundits and stunned the history books? How we went from stagnant, white male-controlled stasis to a multicultural, multi-racial, women-empowered, powerhouse mushball electorate indicating, well, who the hell knows what?
Verily, it's about time. The old paradigms crumble. The old truths fall away. The church itself has less power than in the past 2000 years as fewer and fewer in the world with real educations and awakened souls are gullible enough to fall for that melodramatic, patriarchal "sinner" BS anymore.
How about Hurricane Sandy, where we as a nation slammed headlong into the balled-up fist of global warming, the undeniable fact that the earth is changing more quickly, more exponentially, than any time since the dinosaurs, that brutal, unpredictable weather is now the norm, that resources are dwindling, populations are more demanding and there's only so much we can do about it anymore except adapt, and quickly?
On it goes. Would you like to attempt to measure the effects of modern technology and the Internet itself on everything from socioeconomics to medicine, emotional connections to political upheaval? Can you even fathom?
Nothing in the history of the modern world, save for perhaps the discovery that the world is round, the earth is not the center of the galaxy and you can drink red wine with any goddamn foodstuff you like has changed the basic functioning of society so rapidly, with so many unforeseeable and as-yet-unknowable side effects.
This much we know: Technology is happening so fast even technology can't keep up. Accelerated consciousness? You're soaking in it.
Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate. He's also a well-known E-RYT yoga instructor in San Francisco. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...]]>No Twinkies Please, We're Dyingtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.21692352012-11-28T18:17:06-05:002013-01-28T05:12:01-05:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/
Jesus Christ, quit whining about Twinkies already. Stop anonymous commenting about your little pet-peeve-social-issue-tech-glitch-culture-itch-fashion-bitch. You do not have it so bad. You have never, comparatively speaking, and with the proper sort of lens in place, had it so bad.
Don't you understand the planet is ever at peril? Surely you're aware that we've had 332 straight months that were warmer than average, and even the notoriously heartless World Bank is a nervous wreck about it?
Surely you know diseases and wars are ravaging Africa, that factory pollution in China is causing cancer rates to skyrocket, that it is just slightly pathetic that American teenage girls hate on each other so violently on Facebook, when a 14-year-old girl in Afghanistan just got shot in the face for suggesting that teenage girls are actually human in the first place?
You gotta keep it in check. Should there be a note of shame attached to any CEO bitching about health care reform by threatening to add eight cents to the price of barely edible chain pizzas? Maybe. Should anyone feel a little stupid spending two hours writing raging diatribes about how the iPad Mini does not having a retina display? Probably. Are you upset that someone who has better taste than you dared to suggest that Twilight is unwatchable swill best tolerated while completely smashed drunk? Hush now. First World problems are no problems at all.
Or are they? See, there is a strange relativity clause in American culture whereby we, being a comparatively isolated social and ideological landmass, being wildly solipsistic, being all up in our own s--t every single day because we think we're the noblest and greatest country that ever was, when, historically speaking, we're really more like 137th, think we have serious troubles. Life-threatening troubles. Dead-serious troubles.
And in some ways, we do. Our economy is struggling. People are going without jobs for a long periods of time. Health care is still a mess. Old white guys are running more scared than ever. Obesity is a plague. Young, insipidly kowtowing Republicans still claim they don't know how old the Earth actually is. Black Friday is now Black Thursday Evening, beginning right after Thanksgiving dinner, where you gave thanks for not getting trampled to death by rabid shoppers at Walmart trying to save 20 bucks on a crappy $69 Blu-Ray player that will quickly find its way into a local landfill you have no idea exists but which is right now poisoning the groundwater and giving your kids cancer because we have no concept of what's really going on, and never really did, and that's just the way the PTB at monoliths like Walmart like it. See? Now that's a problem.
Do you ever pause to collect yourself, widen your personal lens, compare your ills to the horrors of the world? Do you ever take a deep breath and realize it's not really so bad, that life is a messy chaotic funhouse of beautiful, nonsensical madness it's just all kinds of freakish joy that we get to enjoy the various polarities, horrors and orgasms of it all for such a short ride in the first place?
Do you express any fundamental awe every morning that you are fed, clothed, warm and you have instant and immediate access to clean water, good coffee, endless love, happy dogs, fine cameras, good porn, free books, decent pens, excellent stemware, stretch denim and reading this very column on wildly advanced technology that's pretty much indistinguishable from magic?
Of course you do. Anyone with a functioning soul knows that reality checks are always helpful things, that in moments of giving thanks and bowing before giant platters of meat, stuffing, wine and excess everything, slapping awake one's tired and spoiled-rotten perspective is essential to understanding just how good you've got it.
So let us be clear: The silly outcry over the potential end of Twinkies? Amusing and ironic. Genuine rage and tears over the possible end of one of humanity's most disgusting foods? Disturbing and sad. These are not real problems. These are only irritating little beach balls of white noise to toss about and squeal. These are tiny intellectual cysts, spiritual rashes on the pinkie toe of your id. You know, just like most problems.
Count your blessings, they say. But that doesn't feel quite right anymore. In the end days of 2012, in the age of a priori cynicism and myopia, we must modify the maxim: Understand that you have blessings in the first place, work toward cultivating more, and lick the hell out of the ones you have like a divine sucker made of sunlight and flowerspit and God. Better?
Oh, and it wouldn't kill you to give a bunch of them away. For free. Blessings are sort of infinite that way.
Not that I want you to feel guilty. This is not about shaming ourselves into silence for caring too much about seemingly mundane, pointless effluvia. Far from it.
Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate. He's also a well-known E-RYT yoga instructor in San Francisco. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...]]>Twilight of the Old White Guystag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.21261292012-11-13T21:01:20-05:002013-01-13T05:12:01-05:00Mark Morfordhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/
But across the board and down the line, the take on Obama's astonishing, historic re-election is the same: American is more wildly, unexpectedly diverse than ever, and those diverse voices -- Latino, gay, black, immigrant, female, et al. -- somehow coalesced into a potent, vociferous, albeit hotly unstable coalition to vote more powerfully and more passionately than any time in our short history, mostly because they never really existed as a functioning coalition in our short history, until now.
This is what the Republican punditry and even many old-timer Dems are coming to terms with: America is no longer a nifty, sepia-toned melting pot kept anodyne and marginal by the rich, starchy bleach of the white ruling class.
Is it not the most astonishing thing? The country is not getting any whiter, older white bigoted people are helpfully dying off, and we now have a messy and nearly incomprehensible Catherine wheel of assorted nonwhite minorities (and women) all spinning, dancing and surging into the limelight -- not to mention the cross-breeds, the already mixed, the racially unidentifiable who are, say, a quarter black, a quarter Chinese, a quarter Indian, a third polyamorous and a tenth Cuban kinky hipster lesbian schoolteacher, with a no-religious-affiliation kicker. Sweet.
This is your new American majority, each and every one of whom terrifies and the old guard, the rich white guys, Ted Nugent, Bill O'Reilly, and the way it used to be. And this is why the Republican party threw every repulsive weapon it had at Obama to try and avert the inevitable; deep down, they sensed their own imminent obsolescence, even if they didn't quite believe it was possible.
And oh, they tried everything. Racism. Birtherism. Sexism. Abortion, birth control, "legitimate rape" and irresponsible "sluts." Religious intolerance, homophobia, xenophobia, Socialism, Communism, Nazis, Kenya, monkeys, Big Bird, gun rights, tax laws, welfare, elitism, oil shortages, health care reform that would secretly herd up and kill the elderly. Just for starters.
Nothing worked. Check that: It all worked. Just not as well as it used to. As one distraught fundamentalist Christian activist said, "It wasn't that our message didn't out. We got the message out. But our message was rejected."
Is this a good thing? This is, of course, a very good thing. On the other hand, it's also all flavors of potential bedlam, with every group and region now demanding its own representation, its own voice, its own right to stir things up and be heard. Or maybe they just want what the white menfolk have had all along: a more honest chance, and a game that's not rigged against them from the start. I know! The nerve!
So here we have Obama's 2012 America, a riot of color and noise, melodrama and fierce clamoring for attention. Can it all possibly hold together? Not a chance. Does it have to hold together lest we implode and melt down even further? Without a doubt.
This is why the reaction to Rainbow Bright America has been, to say the least, exhilarating, and strange, and all over the map. Say what you will about unhappy white males running the joint for the last 200 (or 2,000) years. At least they were consistent. Consistently intolerant, patriarchal, oppressive, ruthlessly capitalistic and just a little bit sad? Of course. What the hell do you want from paranoid, monochromatic Christians, enlightenment?
One point everyone agrees on: The channels must open. We must broaden the social lens, appeal to the wider spectrum, understand there is no longer a single religion, voice, sex, color, attitude, or even standardized marriage format that rules the land. Sure, we've always been diverse. But we've never been completely guided by it.
Is part of the answer to become more multicultural, multilingual, open-ended? It would seem to go without saying. It would seem we should begin, quite directly, with education, and immediately require Spanish, Latin, passing fluency in German, maybe a little Chinese, just in case. Don't you think?
Praise Jesus, we no longer have a single dominant religion. Even Christmas, which used to be relatively charming and quaint and even a tiny bit sacred, was sold to Wal-Mart for scrap something like 30 years ago; everyone knows we have no major holidays left that aren't owned by corporations that openly hate you.
Hence, would it kill us to learn a little about, say, Diwali, India's breathtaking festival of lights? How about Dia de Los Muertos, and Samhain, and Buddha's birthday? How about teaching kids a little about Christian mysticism, goddess lore, a hint of Wicca, toss in a few of the 3 million Hindu gods? Why not?
You disagree? Oh right, like hammering them with uptight Christian doctrine for all these years has worked so well. Do you want to see the election results again? Shall we talk teen pregnancy rates, divorce rates, just who it was who sent out the most racist, hateful, intolerant Tweets after the election? Didn't think so.
I know a little of what I speak. As a not wildly young, indo-European white guy myself, I can testify that it is both scary and oddly refreshing to slide so dramatically into the cultural minority. And we're certainly not all bad -- far from it. Of course, I'm nowhere near as endangered and obsolete as, say, the Catholic Church, who is right now trying - quite miserably -- to wrap its crusty, blood-caked talons around the throat of giddy gay marriage and choke it to death.
(Oh, by the way? This is how you know. This is how you understand you are on the right side of history, culture, love. When the pope and his armies of flying monkeys shake and fume so violently over a new definition of love that their eyeballs curdle, you know you're doing something very right indeed.)
