Photography with the Left Eye

It’s election time (actually, it’s starting to seem like it is always election time). We are going through our ritual hazing of candidates, which was all about nannys a few years ago, and will morph to another form this election. But the bottom line is that any transgression is a sure sign of…something. Inability to lead? I don’t think so. Breaking the law? Possibly. Being human? Surely. I think the electorate needs some lessons in the notion of forgiveness and balance.

Now, there are some transgressions that I don’t readily forgive. Hypocrisy is chief among those. Two recent examples come to mind. Eliot Spitzer first. Now, I believe for the most part that sex work should not be criminal. So I don’t think that we should be prosecuting johns either. But Spitzer (who I otherwise admired) spent a good deal of his career prosecuting prostitution in various ways. Hypocrite! You don’t prosecute them and turn around and patronize them.

By the same token, Larry Craig. Hypocrite! Critic of gay rights, and closeted gay man, seeking sex in airport bathrooms (ewww!). Now, I think there was entrapment involved in his arrest (wasting cop time hanging out in airport bathrooms looking for gay sex….ewww!). But still.

A sort of American Gothic-y photo of A and H. In honor of the election.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about the Olympic torch debacle. The Chinese government has certainly been badly behaved with respect to Tibet, Burma, and several other countries. Its repression of internal dissent is shameful. So it is a good thing that we point that out. (and for those who might be inclined to say that the US does one or both, and shouldn’t I not have a double standard, please scroll down. I do not spare my own government)

I’m a bit ambivalent about over politicizing the games. I don’t know what that means.

But I would say to those who say that the Olympics should not be political: You are 10, or 50, or 80 years too late to say that. Best example (and one that I have not seen mentioned) is that the IOC prohibited what is now known as the Gay Games from being called the Gay Olympics. Stupid. And it doesn’t get any more political than that.

Jigme

I visited Eastern Europe last fall, and found it an amazing place. The history, even from my lifetime, is mind bending. And the kind of change that these countries have accommodated is dramatic. I visited Poland, Austria (marginally in Eastern Europe), Hungary, and the Czech Republic. It was easier being there than I expected. Especially language. Everyone spoke English, so, while I did my best to use a few words in their language (my high school German came back slowly in Austria; but try as I might, I found Hungarian impenetrable), it was really not necessary.

We were welcomed everywhere we went; even people who were not in the tourist trade were helpful and friendly (best story was a 20 something spontaneously translating for us in a Budapest Post Office).

Contrast that with the US. I have been corresponding with a makeup artist (who does lovely work) who is planning to visit San Francisco in May. She went to get a visa from the US embassy (you must do it in person)(we could just waltz into the Czech Republic without a visa). They hassled her. They said no. They were afraid she would stay in the US. So they sent her home. They probably made her cry.

I suppose she is a terrorist. Or she is going to sneak her 4,876 cousins in and overwhelm the welfare system. Or. We are just better then she is. And the likes of her. And pretty much everyone else.

Wouldn’t it be a little better (especially if we really think that the American way of like is so goddamn superior) if we made it easy for people to visit our country? To see it and go home and sing our praises? Maybe we would learn something from them too?

And…with the way the dollar is going, we could really use the foreign exchange. (Have you noticed that when GWB (see, fucking idiot, below) came into office, the Euro to Dollar ratio was about 0.8:1. Now it’s more like 1.4:1.) The dollar has lost half of its value in the last six years. How much value has our image lost?

This is Iona on the pipes. Her blog is linked on the right.