no_hypocrisy
no_hypocrisy's JournalI've discovered that I'm a Sigma Female.
And damned happy that there's a niche where I fit.
In 1963, I was in Kindergarten.
The usual curriculum of playing, nap time, snack, puzzles.
And my Kindergarten teacher wanted to hold me back from going into the First Grade.
Now imagine: How underdeveloped do you have to be to be recommended to be held back and to repeat another year of Kindergarten? It wasn't because I was born past the cut-off date of September.
My mother confronted my teacher who discussed my situation with a Psychology 101 textbook on her lap. (It was her first year of teaching.) What made my teacher believe I was ill-suited for First Grade?
Well, for one thing, I couldn't skip. That's right, skip. I could walk, run, gallop, but I couldn't skip.
For another thing, I couldn't cut on the lines with scissors.
Mom (with her Masters in Child Development) pointed out that nobody taught me how to skip and it wasn't an innate skill you're born with. And as for the scissors, she didn't have them lying around the house as she had apprehensions that her curtains would be cut up. So, no experience, no problem.
My teacher dug in her heels and refused to let me go forward.
My mother appealed to the Principal, who was sympathetic but declared that he couldn't overrule his teachers. BUT, if my parents wanted to have my IQ tested and the score was adequate, he'd let that criteria determine my academic future.
So, I was hauled away to Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. And tested by a renowned psychiatrist. And I scored highly. Not genius, but highly.
My mother immediately gave the results to the Principal, who passed me.
I didn't learn this story until well into adulthood.
My mother was my best advocate.
It's occurred me to the "real reason" why Republicans are freaking over
Tim Walz & Minnesota's providing free tampons to girls in public schools.
For the same reason my father freaked out about me using tampons 55 years ago: rupturing the hymen.
That's right. Parents more concerned about their daughters losing their virginity to a cotton wad than their hygiene.
And fathers (yes, fathers) could never be certain if their daughters are having sex before marriage or whether they're using tampons.
Girls would prefer tampons if offered that option over bulky pads.
Again, it's about control over girls' and women's bodies down to the minutia.
I learned from observing my father:
Money does NOT buy happiness.
You may be able to pay your bills without the stress.
You may have enhanced social status.
You may be delusional that you're more likeable and smarter than when you weren't rich.
But you're the same asshole you were before the money showed up.
Pay heed Jr. and Eric.
In 2014, my siblings and I had a similar experience. Dad had undiagnosed dementia at age 91. It was obvious. He stopped paying his bills and refused our help when we offered to cut the checks and he refused again. He was a recording loop of whatever he heard of FOX News. He let his dog shit all over the place, including our mother's $40,000 Persian rugs. And he yelled at me when I tried to pick up the dried shit.
He shouldn't have been driving. He had a number of fender-benders. (He paid them off ironically, to avoid tickets and to be reported to the DMV.) I saw him pull out of the driveway and start driving in the wrong lane. The discussion of taking away his keys came up but we all agreed that he'd go out and buy another car.
One day, he stopped for gas. And stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake. He rear-ended a van in front of him. Maybe 5+ mph. But his car had no airbag and he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. His chest hit the steering column. And he refused the ambulance. He took a taxi home as his car was totaled.
Dad tried to sell his wrecked car ASAP to get rid of "the evidence". But he died a week later. Because he refused medical attention and didn't see any of his doctors, he was undiagnosed with a partial aortic tear, meaning the aorta had somewhat separated from his heart and he was having a slow bleed into his chest.
One week after the accident, he had a terrible backache (which he didn't tell any of us about). He made an appointment with his massage therapist. And you guessed it -- the massage hastened his demise. He got home, had trouble breathing, called 911, but it was too late.
Jr. and Eric may be worried about intervention as their father might erase them from his Will. Got news for you Chumpies. Our father disinherited ALL of us. We should have tried to do more. We had the clues. But we were worried about "retribution". Little did we know, Dad already had his retribution.
I take great offense at the term "childless unmarried cat ladies".
My BFF from college was literally a childless unmarried cat lady. A once brilliant mind who was a stockbroker, successful at almost everything she did. A wit.
She lived alone and loved it. She collected cool things to put around her house. An impressive library. Never missed an issue of The New Yorker.
And unfortunately, about two years ago, her sisters and I noticed little changes in her personality. She wasn't herself but we couldn't put our fingers on what was wrong. She was unemployed and wasn't in a hurry to get a new job. She was distracted. She repeated anecdotes several times, often about her four cats.
And she drank, which didn't help things. Her bills went unpaid including municipal property taxes. Her entire apartment was awash with papers. (Think Collyer Brothers.) She accused her sisters of breaking into her house and stealing things either she couldn't find or hid and forget where she put them.
The last straw came when she made an illegal left turn at a red light across four lanes of highway traffic. The police officer asked her for a reason for her choice. She answered that she had hungry cats waiting for her at home. And she was serious.
Her sisters coalesced and brought her to live with one of them. The cats went to another sister. My friend now has a 24/7 aide living with her as she tends to wander off if not watched. I can't talk to her as her memory is shot. She watches television but doesn't watch it. Her sisters are looking into an assisted living facility for her.
My friend is fortunate to have compassionate sisters. But every time I hear about childless unmarried cat ladies, I am tinged with anger. My friend didn't ask for this phase of her life. I'm certain that in the beginning, she did have moments where she realized what was happening and it scared the shit out of her.
Her grandmother had Alzheimer's and maybe this is hereditary. I have been restrained in asking her sisters if there has been a diagnosis yet.
And while I "miss" her, I know she faces greater challenges in the future.
They Forced Me To Marry This Man At 19
Raised in a Haredi Jewish community, Fraidy Reiss was arranged to be married to a man she had known for three months when she was just 19 years old. Her former husband displayed numerous alarming behaviors, including threats to her life and violence.
Through unwavering courage and sheer determination, she managed to get out of her toxic forced marriage. She now leads a survivor-led nonprofit organization called "Unchained At Last", dedicated to eradicating forced and child marriages within the United States.
On Edit: My father's mother was forced to marry my grandfather in 1904. Her brother sold her into marriage. My father's father had been engaged to another woman for more than 3-1/2 years and jilted her, making her damaged goods and ineligible for future prospects in marriage. My aunt was born 9 months later, the product of marital rape. Because that's how they did it in "The Old Country" notwithstanding they had been in the U.S. for more than 20 years.
Unchained At Last Organization
https://www.unchainedatlast.org/
IMO, this is what caught Trump's campaign off guard.
I believe they thought if Joe Biden stepped down, it would be due to a "failing" such as health, mental health, and/or dispiritedness. And they could add that to their campaign, Joe's weakness.
But instead, Joe Biden did step down, but for a higher calling, The Country. A selfless act in the spirit of patriotism.
Trump and his MAGA minions for years have tried to portray themselves as the "true Americans" and "patriots" while Democrats were traitors and the destruction of democracy.
And they are bewildered. Why would anyone give up that power if they didn't have to? (In their eyes, to save the country would not be a valid option.) They don't understand empathy, sympathy, benevolence, answering to a higher call. They just don't get it. And they can't respond. That's why Stephen Miller was crying; it was out of confusion and frustration. And it's not just Stephen Miller.
How do you criticize the equivalent of a saint?
Silencing the liberal voice in Media.
Midnight, Friday, August 31, 2001, NYC liberal/progressive radio station, WEVD went off the air.
WEVD was founded in 1927 to honor Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate for President. Originally a station that broadcast in several languages, e.g., Yiddish, Polish, etc. to give new immigrants access to the world around them.
The signal reached all five boroughs of New York City, northern New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester County.
By 1998, WEVD had several hosts who had liberal leanings and took listeners calling in. A lot of them were elderly folks who otherwise had no voice. They remembered the New Deal and the Great Society. The hosts discussed issues that were otherwise ignored by radio, television, cable, and newspaper entities. Local, Regional, State, and National. The station unabashedly called itself "Progressive Radio, 1050, WEVD".
Renowned columnists regularly appeared on various shows: Joe Conason, Gene Lyons, Sidney Zion, Wayne Barrett, Pete Hamill, Lars Erik Nelson, Michael Tomasky, Michael Isakoff, and more. None of these writers appeared on any other station. And politicians also made themselves available to the hosts. Authors came on shows to explain their new books. It was truly a rare moment in radio history.
And the station made money from its success.
Broadcast hours were generally M-F from 5:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. The other hours were filled with paid programs.
Example of topics discussed: Contract For America, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, James A. Traficant Jr., Dick Armey, Jack Abramoff, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, and more. Indepth analysis of government.
In 2001, WEVD was owned by the Jewish Forward. And without warning, the Forward announced that it was selling the station outright, the call sign, the frequency, everything. And selling it to the Disney Corporation, which had no intention of maintaining the format. To the contrary, 1050 would be the flagship station for the radio representation of sports, ESPN.
NYC was losing its ONLY commercial, non-conservative radio station, effective August 31, 2001. By this time, WABC had stopped hosting both liberal and conservative formats and WWOR had gone conservative as well. While NYC still had Pacifica WBAI and New York Public Radio, a station dedicated to bringing news, facts, and analysis like WEVD was lost.
On August 31, 2001, the last day of broadcasting, it was stunning. The long line of listeners to call in was heart-breaking. Some expressed grief, distress, disbelief. Others expressed their well wishes to the hosts. Others called just to say, "I'm calling now while there's still 'Radio Free America'". Even Robert Merrill, the famous Baritone, called in to say "goodbye" to host Bill Mazer.
Less than two weeks later, 9/11 happened. And our radio community was isolated. To make matters even more grim, WEVD's frequency of 1050 was simulcasting WABC's coverage of the crisis, with no less than Curtis Sliwa.
I maintained at the time, this wasn't solely a "business decision", that rather, it was a choice to silence the station. Up until 2001, The Forward wasn't putting WEVD up for sale. Like I said, the station was making money. But a corporation offered it more money to sell.
Knowing its imminent demise, I taped the last two weeks (including its last minutes on air) of WEVD. Alan Colmes, no less, bid farewell.
Since 2001, there were short-lived attempts to make another progressive/liberal/non-conservative station work in NYC. There was WLIB and WWRL, both of which hosted "Air America".
And I'm not kidding myself. If Trump gets in, the FCC will go after WBAI/Pacifica and de-fund public radio.
As the saying goes, I've seen this movie before.
You don't give up when it looks hopeless.
ON EDIT: This is to address those who are ready to abandon Joe Biden needlessly. They are afraid of losing the Election. Nothing is hopeless.Personal Story.
I was legally representing an indigent woman with a colleague pro bono (for free). We inherited the case from our colleague who died of brain cancer.
Her situation was not promising to say the least. She had five children ages 4 to 9. Child Protection removed them and gave them to a foster family.
And the foster family decided they wanted to adopt all of them immediately before we even got to court. And Child Protection thought this case would be beneficial to their interests. First, the caseworker would get $8,000 per child (that's $40,000) if the kids were adopted. Second, Child Protection is perpetually trying to prevent the State from cutting their budget for the next year. This situation would be golden for them and for the State. Saving young children from abuse and neglect from their parents -- and getting them adopted into a stereotypical upper middle class household.
Our client was a victim of domestic violence and abuse. Her husband was such a religious fanatic that he'd make Steve Bannon look like an atheist. His mission was to keep her pregnant and taking care of his children.
And Child Protection did everything to ensure that our client would not be reunited with her children, i.e., removed from foster care and returned to their mother. Our client needed therapy and counseling for domestic abuse and CP didn't even offer her seminars, etc.
WE had to do all the work. We helped her get a divorce, get job training with certification, got her to live with her supportive mother, and hired an expert witness who was the best trained in domestic violence.
This went on for 3-1/2 years. Our client could only see her children for two hours every other week. She was forbidden to bring them candy, cakes, cookies, etc. Obviously there was some alienation that took place over this period of time.
We went to court. And the judge had a hard time deciding whether our client truly abused/neglected the children. But he wanted to play it safe, and recommended termination of parental rights. We were unsettled, but continued by appealing the decision. We lost again.
Finally, the last chance: the guardianship hearing where there was a decent chance that the judge would permanently remove the children from our client, allowing for adoption. And it really didn't look good. The court appointed a psychologist to evaluate whether the children could return to their mother after 3-1/2 years apart. This "doctor" had the children write "Valentine's Day" notes to their mother, which would be given to her, right before her court-appointed evaluation with the children took place. One note stated, "Dear Mom, I demand to be adopted." As you can imagine, the interview went as well as Joe Biden's debate 10 days ago.
I spent one hour trying to calm our client down and another hour to calm myself down.
But my colleague and I hung in there. We wrote briefs to motions. We stayed in the office until 4:00 in the morning, only to return in less than three hours to fax a responding brief that was received in the interval.
We were admittedly rookies, the first time we EVER did a child protection defense case. We did hours of research and poured over four crowded cardboard boxes of evidence. And Child Protection sent its top prosecuting attorney in the state to ensure they would get the children. David v Goliath.
We had no idea how the guardianship judge was going to rule. He had cryptically asked for all children to wait at Child Protection a few blocks away from the courthouse while we waited for his decision.
And he returned the children to our client, their mother.
That was back in 2012. Our client is doing her best to raise the children, the majority now in their adult years.
And my point: no other law firm wanted this case. Even legal defense found it confusing and had poor representation. Every indication showed we were going to lose. The children would be adopted; their birth certificates would be altered to erase the name of their birth mother and replaced with the foster/adoptive parents. But it didn't happen.
You don't give up. Forget how hopeless the outcome will be. Don't give up.
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