St. Jing-Tao-Wow Day Special Feature – Interview With Nate Peele

It’s St. Jing-Tao-Wow Eve and I wanted to do something very special to commemorate the occasion. As it stands, it looks like I’ll be absent from Blogtopia for much of the day. It’s all good, though, because a major champion of this holiday, Nate Peele of That’s Right Nate,  very kindly agreed to do an interview for this blog. This is an opportunity for us to reach out to a rather exotic ethnic group to Long Islanders – a White Anglo Saxon Protestant. There are WASPs living here, but they’re few and far between and located in North Shore communities where the roads are named after their ancestors. Mostly, you don’t run into them. On the local level, I know more people from Nigeria (4) or Bangladesh (lots) than I do White Anglo Saxon Protestants. So, it seemed like a good idea to learn about this group of Americans before they’re all gone. Here, then, is our interview:

Q.First of all, I'd like to thank you for virtually sitting down with
me today, Nate. Here on Long Island you don't meet so many WASPs. It's my hope that this opportunity to learn about your culture and your people will help us all to understand each other a little better.

A. No blog has done more than Thatsrightnate.com to try and bridge understanding between WASPs and non-WASPs.  I think we have a lot more in common that you'd think.  If you could ever be admitted into our clubs and organizations I think you'd see that.

Q.Now, as well as being a WASP, you're a male, so are you angry? Very angry? Do you currently own any assault weapons or explosives?

A. LOL, no I've barely even begun researching my manifesto.  I think a lot of the whole white male anger thing is overblown by the media.  A lot of this is because WASPs are very quickly disappearing from local media markets.  You have two anchors and one of them needs to be a woman and one needs to be a minority.  Most television stations go with the black male and white female anchor team so you don't hear our viewpoints much. 

Q.Thank you for clearing that up. Now, about St. Jing-Tao-Wow Day -This is a new holiday, suggested by Lou Dobbs and promoted by you, correct? And all that had something to do with ethnic holidays and the St. Patrick's Day parade. There are quite a few ethnic parades in New York now, especially if you count the Gay Pride parade, but no WASP parade as far as I know.  I see you come from Illinois. There have been some WASP parades there, particularly in Skokie if I recall correctly. Did you attend or participate in those? How do WASP parades differ from, say, the Puerto Rican Day parade, if at all?

A. Wow, there are a lot of questions that you're asking there.  There are no WASP parades.  The problem is we hate walking.  That's why when we build a new suburb or subdivision we don't bother putting in sidewalks.  We also hate bumper to bumper traffic.  We're not really a parade people.   We do picnics though and we quite enjoy them.

Q. What kind of food is your people's soul food? If we wanted to go
out for some WASP, what sort of  restaurant or fast food place should we look for?

A. It’s funny because most WASP foods are white.  We're big consumers of marshmallow fluff, mayonnaise, white bread, and mashed potato flakes.  We also love Fresca, but its hard to get anymore.  As a culture I would say that our main contribution to food though is that we are able to take from other cultures and adapt them.  Olive Garden, Panda Express, and Taco Bell are great examples of ethnic cuisine that we've transformed.

Q. Is there one particular person that you'd say is the epitome of a
WASP cultural icon? African-Americans have MLK, Jr. and now, President Obama, Irish-Americans still have John F. Kennedy plates on their walls, Jews have Paul Newman (he was a nice looking man with a social conscience who stayed married for about a hundred years to a woman who wasn't a pretty as he was) and Italians have Frank Sinatra. So who is absolutely IT for White Anglo Saxon Protestants?

A. Wow, I had no idea Paul Newman was Jewish.  In entertainment we have a few that really stand out.  Pat Boone did a lot to make black culture accessible to us without frightening.  As actors go, I've really been fond of Jack Webb who was also quite a musician in his own right.  In terms of a social figure like Martin Luther King, I'd have to hold up Henry Ford who united the car manufacturers against the workers.

Q. This comes from someone else. She wants to know if you have any native dances. I said that according to my research that would be line dancing, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. We're here to learn.

A. Line dancing is a good answer, but it does have ethnic moves in it.  The dance form that I think is purely ours is called the overbite.  It is actually a dance used by WASP males to court our females.  We also do it at a lot of weddings.  The nice thing is it is a versatile dance that can be done to most popular music.

Q. How do you feel about having a president who is not one of your
people? That's only happened one other time, I believe, and at least
JFK was pale. Do you think your best days are over?

A. Not at all.  One of the things that we have come to believe in is that minorities and women should be allowed into our most exclusive organizations.  The key is limiting their membership.  My hope is that my grandchildren will never have to listen to anybody say that all the Presidents have been white males because he can just point to Obama's picture and remind people we had a black President too.  I hope that in the next 40 or so years we will even have a woman President.

Q. Is there anything you'd like to tell us about the experience and
struggles of being a White Anglo Saxon Protestant in America?
Something that you'd like the rest of us to understand.

A. First, we are the largest minority group in this country.  We're not going anywhere either.  Without us there wouldn't be dinner theatre, golf pants, lawn ornaments, or jazzercise.  I really think we need a WASP history month.  Last year on my blog I tried to designate white males of distinction who had done something  to truly stand out.  You'd be surprised how few students even study the lives of people like Robert C. Baker who in my mind was the Thomas Edison of poultry.   He not only invented turkey ham, but also the chicken nugget.  Our textbooks and liberal teachers would rather spend their time on Pocahontas or George Washington Carver, but I think if you asked most people they'd rather have chicken nuggets than a peanut butter sandwich any day of the week and you also have what the nugget did for the whole honey mustard industry.

Q. If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?

A. I'd definitely be an ash.  Thanks for interviewing me.  Have a joyous Saint Jing-Tao-Wow Day!  I'm going to take my daughter out to Olive Garden to celebrate.

I’d just like to thank Nate again, for helping us out. I feel like I learned quite a lot from that and I hope others did as well.  I’d also like to wish all of you a happy, safe and healthy St. Jing-Tao-Wow Day. I look forward to getting back here tomorrow night and learning about the different ways that people have celebrated.

Stevie Ray’s Bad Day(s)

Today, we spent the afternoon taking Stevie Ray Cat to the vet. That’s Stevie in the photo, before he had a big icky thing hanging off his face. He’s the most senior of our three cats at just about thirteen.

He has a tumor that wasn’t supposed to be anything to worry about but it turned nasty, naturally, on Sunday morning. The good news is that there is a highly recommended animal hospital that’s open for appointments on Sunday. The bad news is that it’s at least a 45 minute drive away. He hasn’t needed anything more than routine care since he was a couple of years old, and he has a home visit vet for that. So, he doesn’t get out much.

Stevie is normally a very reserved fellow, so I hate having to have him poked and prodded, but he seemed to like the vet OK and was a perfect gentleman about the whole thing. No scratching, hissing or anything.  He just wanted us to stay very close in case anything went awry. They let us take him home tonight, but he’s scheduled for surgery in the morning.  He’s ready to go, I guess. He’s sleeping in the cat carrier right now. He loves it. I  suppose that means it’ll be part of the living room furnishings from now on. Of course, he doesn’t know that there’s one of those awful cones in his future. It’s going to be a difficult week or so all around.

I better make this an early night. We’re due at the animal hospital at 7 am. Which is at least 45 minutes away.

UPDATE: Stevie is home and purring like mad. We won’t know about the pathology for a couple of days, but right now he’s feeling OK.  He’s a little unsteady on his pins, but that didn’t keep him from having a bit of late supper and now he’s relaxing as close to Mr. Yenta as possible. He thanks everyone for their expressions of concern and we’ll let you know about the lab report when we get it.

Fred Barnes Makes Case for Single Payer

I never thought I’d be saying thanks to Fred Barnes, but, hey, life is full of surprises. I’d pretty much given up on single payer health insurance for the foreseeable future, but Fred Barnes has given me new hope in his article, The Liberal Dream Agenda.

Health care. President Obama is fond of saying his plan allows people to choose between the health insurance they get through their employer and a government program currently limited to federal workers. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? It's not. Rather, it's the path to a single-payer health care system--the kind Obama has said he prefers but isn't actually proposing.

His program would have the distinct advantage of not having to make a profit. So it would always be able to offer greater benefits at lower cost (with taxpayers taking up the slack when it lost money). Businesses would have an incentive to increase co-pays and trim benefits and, in effect, encourage employees to switch plans. And if employer-paid benefits are taxed, as administration officials have suggested, the incentive steering workers to the government program will be irresistible.
(Emphasis mine)

This is exactly what we’ve been saying like forever. A layer of profit in between the health care provider and consumer is just driving costs up with no real benefit to society as a whole. Now, no liberal that I know of wants to see employer-paid benefits taxed. That would be a huge hit for employees who get benefits now, and one that most us couldn’t afford, but if it were a single payer system, with all of us paying into it through progressive taxation, that’d be peachy.

"There won't be any private sector [in health insurance]," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell says, should government-financed insurance be available to everyone. "It's a fast track to single payer." There's an additional fear. The stimulus bill set aside $1.1 billion to research and compare medical treatments and drugs, raising the prospect that government programs would pay for some treatments and medicines but not others and thus open the door to rationing.

“…a fast track to single payer.” Your mouth to God’s ears, Senator. Now, about that rationing. Does he mean a situation like my friend (and boss) ran into a week or so ago? Her doctor thought she should have an MRI before he went on to treat a painful condition she’s developed. It’s in the area of the neck and doctors like to be sure before messing with the neck or spine. Things can go wrong if you’re just kind of guessing and we have these amazing tests now and everything.  Her insurance company said “No” to the MRI. She can fight it and she might win. But for now, no MRI. And she chose the insurance plan, of the ones we offer, that comes with higher co-pays for her, because it covers more and is accepted by more health care providers. That plan costs our organization over $1600 per month for a family plan. Less, of course, for singles and for couples, but still not affordable by middle class people. And that’s the group rate. So, it seems to me that what we’re doing is paying outrageous sums of money for something that, in effect, is not one bit better than rationed care.

It’s not every day that you find such a compelling case for a liberal agenda item at the Weekly Standard, but this makes up for a lot.

Election in El Salvador

Image by LShave via Flickr

El Salvador just had a bit of revolution – by election.  After all the years of war, death squads, repression and oppression, the people went to the polls and voted for change – and got it. It’s something that’s going around the world.

Angela, my friend and colleague, just returned from working as an international observer of the electoral process there. She and her family came here from El Salvador years ago, not to make a fortune, but just for some freedom and maybe some safety. Like most people who make such a move, it wasn’t their country they wanted to leave, but rather a terrible government. I don’t know how old Angela is, but I know she’s older than I am. She almost didn’t go to El Salvador because her husband’s been very sick and she didn’t want to leave him alone. He knew she wanted to go and he wanted her to do it, too. He and her sisters conspired to have him stay with them and be taken care of so Angela could go and go she did.

She said there were attempts to steal the election, but enough were uncovered so that they didn’t work. People were brought in from neighboring countries to vote illegally but were discovered and sent packing.

She also said that she was told, and it some cases shown, that if the election had gone differently, there was going to be an armed revolution. And she seems sure that the transition will take place. When it was all over, after days and nights of working hard, she said, “Wonderful. Now we can get some sleep.” She was told no, now it was time to celebrate! Which they did. For all that, she came back glowing and happy. It’s a good thing to get your country back, even if you don’t live there anymore.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Historic power shift in El Salvador - former FMLN wins elections (isiria.wordpress.com)
• Latin America Continues Its March To The Left (plastic.com)
• Elections in El Salvador Invoke Rivalries of Civil War Years (nytimes.com)

Can YouTube Save Your Bacon?

Image via CrunchBase

On the same day that Newsday reported that Long Island’s unemployment rate is at its highest level since 1992 it also carried a story two local teenagers who are  raking in the cash via YouTube. Apparently YouTube can work as a cottage industry if you can give the people what they want. And what they want is not necessarily porn. Go know.

Eric Stiffler, 18, and Mac Guttenberg, 14, each have their own YouTube Channel and are in the user/partner program, where ads are shown under the videos and they get better than 50% of the revenue. This is bringing in a couple of grand a month. Beats the hell out of mowing lawns. Or unemployment.

Eric’s Channel
Mac’s Channel

WTF, Chuck?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Enigma4Ever at Watergate Summer comments on Chuck Todd’s clueless sounding question at the president’s prime time presser Tuesday night. She was so impressed she gave him the coveted Dumbass of the Week award. Way to go, Chuck.  It was a very bad question. If you’ve wiped it from your memory it went like this:

Todd: Some have compared this financial crisis to a war and in times of war past Presidents have called for some form of sacrifice. Some of your programs whether main street or Wall Street have actually cushioned the blow for those that were irresponsible during this economic period of prosperity, supposed prosperity that you were talking about. Why, given this new era of responsibility that you're asking for why haven't you asked for something specific that the public should be sacrificing to participate in this economic recovery?

The president answered sensibly that there was plenty of sacrifice out there in that the American people are pretty screwed right now. I’m paraphrasing there, of course. But Chuck didn’t cover himself with glory at Prime Time Presser I either. Juan Cole summed that exchange with, “What the hell?”

Question: Thank you, Mr. President. In your opening remarks, you talked about that, if your plan works the way you want it to work, it's going to increase consumer spending. But isn't consumer spending, or overspending, how we got into this mess? And if people get money back into their pockets, do you not want them saving it or paying down debt first before they start spending money into the economy?
Obama: Well, first of all, I don't think it's accurate to say that consumer spending got us into this mess. What got us into this mess initially were banks taking exorbitant, wild risks with other people's monies based on shaky assets and because of the enormous leverage, where they had $1 worth of assets and they were betting $30 on that $1, what we had was a crisis in the financial system.'

So, that’s two out of two for Mr. Todd. This is disappointing for those people who spend most of their weekday evenings watching MSNBC. Whoever (cough, cough) they might be. We they kind of thought of Chuck Todd as the home team. Plus, while he might not always have been right about everything he did always seem to be a beacon of sanity among the ensemble of personalities there. Kind of like Barney Miller was at the 12th precinct. Personally I think that both of the questions sound kind of Brokawesque. These are memes Brokaw had flogged when he was more in the spotlight. Chuck, please step away from the Brokaw, come out of the bubble and find out what regular people are dealing with. Otherwise you’re on a course for an Epic Fail and no one wants that, right?

 

Musings on the Internets and the Intranets

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

First is something I’m wondering about Facebook. I joined it a while back, but I wasn’t really active on it. I joined it because I needed to log in to get some particular links and such to post on a band’s website, so I used the e-mail address from the band’s domain. I get that in my gmail account, with my regular e-mail. A month or so ago I got a couple of Facebook friend requests from people I know and it turns out that just about everyone I ever knew is on it. So, I’ve been more active on Facebook recently. And now I’m getting a whole bunch of spam, all of which is being sent to the e-mail address I used to sign up on Facebook. I’m not saying there’s a connection. I’m just saying the timing is, shall we say, suspect.

Another thing I’m mulling over is intranets. Some people at work want one. The thing is, getting one done seems to be expensive. I suggested that we could consider using Google Apps. As a non-profit we could even qualify for the free version. With funding getting cut in every direction, that seems like a good price. There are concerns about security with Google Apps, though. I’m not sure that the concerns are valid, but we need to maintain a very high standard of confidentiality with our data, so I’m not about to go to the mat with that.

The problem is that no one at work is proficient with intranet technology and due to previous funding cuts, our MIS person also has had to take other, unrelated duties as well as keeping our network, everyone’s computer and all other office machinery functional. Her plate is more than full.  Besides configuring and maintaining a web server there’s also the prospect of keeping the apps that make it useful up and running. Databases, scripts, all that. It’s a lot to do. So, is it worth a bunch of money to have an intranet, when money is tight? Or is it worth overburdening someone who already has more than one job to do? We’re an organization of only 70 – 75 people, located in three offices covering two counties. What exactly could having an intranet do for us? Any thoughts, anyone?