September 2003

Ah, a brand new month and a brand new “most idiotic statement I’ve read this week’ in the Chron’s letters to the editor:

Homelessness will end in San Francisco after we elect Newsom mayor on Nov. 4. Human lives are at stake.

There are some compelling reasons to support both Gavin Newsom and his “Care Not Cash” initiative, but come on. Isn’t this just a little bit of a stretch?

Moving on, there’s this bit of faulty logic:

Basic justice says everyone, no matter what their income, should have equal access to all parts of the city — every day, at all times of day. Muni is the most basic transportation system for city residents. Equal right to access throughout the city can’t be met unless Muni fares are kept low. Fares need to be cheap enough that they aren’t a burden to anyone, no matter how low their income is… The right to transportation is part of the right to life in a city.

People, please get the hell over it. San Francisco has one of the cheapest mass transit systems of any large city in America. The right to “equal access to all parts of the city” does not necessarily suggest that this access has to be provided at the individual convenience and whim of all 793,000 residents, nor is “right to access” necessarily synonymous with “right to transportation”. The fact that I have a right to visit North Carolina or New York City whenever I choose does not suggest that the airline must provide a seat of my choosing, day or night, at whatever price I’d prefer to pay…

It’s a quarter. Learn to cope. Most of us already have. And by the way, who is this “Basic Justice” character, and where can I read more of what he’s said?

Unrelated: here‘s one of those cases where male privilege definitely works to my advantage…

It’s 5:00 in the morning. I didn’t sleep much at all because it was hotter than hell all night long. I have to be at the hopsital at 6:00, and thus I also can’t eat or drink anything. And then I hear that Johnny Cash died last night. This is gonna be a great day, huh?

No matter how much some people want to rationalize it, claims that “CDs cost too much” or rants that “big corporations do not market sufficiently interesting music” do not make downloading copyrighted music without paying for it any less illegal or unethical…

I’ve done it, you’ve done it, and millions of other people have done it. And I agree that CDs cost too much and that major corporations do not market sufficiently interesting music. But let’s not delude ourselves into thinking we have the moral high ground here…

No one would really suggest that the fact that Safeway charges too much for ground beef and does not carry my favorite cereal would not be sufficient justification for my decision to steal a few cans of strained beets, now would they?

Not, of course, that I’d steal strained beets even if I was starving to death (in which case it still wouldn’t be justified)…

Hypocrites using religion as a justification for their irrational viewpoints? Hmmm. You don’t see that very often:

DeVeaux, who called her church the nation’s oldest black congregation and one of its largest, said its position bears no animus to homosexuals, and many of the leaders gathered heralded their own role in the civil rights movement.

“This is not about being anti-gay,” she said. “It’s about being for marriage as between a woman and a man. I would never, ever try to do anything negative against any segment of the population.”

Utter bullshit. As if writing discrimination into the Constitution were not “negative”. Rewrite that last sentence as “It’s about being for marriage as between a WHITE woman and a WHITE man.” See how it plays…

Assuming that Ms. Patricia DeVeaux has devoted her life to combating bigotry, one wonders why she is so firmly in favor of segregation and unequal protection under the law as long as it applies to a minority group of which she is not a member. It disturbs me that churches with a predominantly black following — every one of whom should know better — would engage in this sort of bigotry and prejudice…

It is the absolute height of hypocrisy that ranking officers of major black churches, including the very same Walter Fauntroy who was so closely aligned with Martin Luther King, have now found their own group of people to send to the back of the bus…

These particular “civil rights leaders” sound disturbingly like old Southern plantation owners who believed that keeping their slaves in bondage and managing their lives for them was the only humanitarian alternative. Note that one of the major aspects of control plantation owners exercised over their slaves was the decision over who they would or would not be allowed to marry…

I have very little respect for “religious leaders”, whose primary goal often seems to be the complete elimination of religious (or personal) freedom in America. I have over the years, however, managed to hold on to some level of respect for the black churches and their work to rebuild their communities and elminate bigotry. Suffice to say that respect is now waning…