A Pilgrim’s Digression

It’s a grim time to be an Obama supporter. It seems as if we have had weeks and weeks of bad news, despite his recent win in Mississippi and his win in the Texas caucus.

If you really want to punish yourself, tune in to Fox News some evening around six o’clock and listen to the pundits inveigh on Obama’s troubles. From six to ten, from Brit Hume to Bill O’Reilly to Sean Hannity, all you will hear, hour after hour, are repeated playings of the “greatest hits” of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

I listened to Fox News on XM last night for about three hours, as I drove to Washington to start my work week. It was incredibly disheartening. Despite Dick Morris’s assertion on Hannity and Colmes that Obama will be the Democratic nominee, baggage and all, the continous bloviating about what he “needs” to do to address the Wright controversy is like listening to fingernails on a chalk board.

On O’Reilly’s program, the host talked about almost nothing else but Wright. About twenty minutes into the program, he did a brief story about an “out of control” judge who released several sex offenders, but overall it was “All Wright, All the Time.” And what really irritated me is that of all the pundits O’Reilly brought on to talk about the issue, including Karl Rove, none of them said anything new or different. The only ones who offered any kind of contrasting point of view to O’Reilly were two African-American pastors whom he kept interrupting.

As both pastors pointed out, what is happening here with the Wright “scandal” is a classic Republican tactic called guilt by association. It’s an easy way to trip up a candidate for political office: examine the candidate’s friends and business contacts and then demand explanations for why he or she associates with such scurrilous characters. For that matter, Republicans have had the same tactic used against them.

One of the criticisms of Rev. Wright is that he claimed that 9/11 was a punishment for America’s sins, specifically the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Remember Pat Robertson? How many times have Republicans been made to disavow and apologize for his idiotic statements, such as 9/11 was a punishment for America’s sins, specifically homosexuality.

Because both sides have suffered from this political tactic does not make it right, however. Like everyone, I am anxious to hear Obama’s remarks today on the Wright controversy and on race generally. I don’t believe he has a lot to answer for, though. As he said last week, as humans we often have contacts, friendships, even relatives whose views can be embarrassing or controversial. Politically, he should have distanced himself from Wright a long time ago, but we have to remember that candidates are people, too, and sometimes just because it is expedient to jettison a friend for sake of propriety, for sentimental reasons we don’t always do it.

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This is a good reason not to fold laundry, don’t you think?  Not that I need a good reason.  Any will do.

I did a little independent research into Time Capsule and Time Machine at the Apple website.  In the very last paragraph of an article on slow backups, I read the following line: “Using virus scanning software can make Time Machine backups very slow. If you use Norton Antivirus 10 AutoProtect or a similar product, try turning it off during backups.”

I use Norton Antivirus and Autoprotect.  I turned them both off.  Do you think my backup speed suddenly, miraculously improved?

My only remaining question is, do I have to keep Autoprotect off all the time, since Time Machine will be making backups hourly and daily?  I am assuming “yes.”

I may have to eat my words about Time Capsule being one of the best products I have ever purchased from Apple. So far, it has been only a source of frustration and wasted time on the phone with technical support. I am having the worst experience of my life with an Apple product and Apple support.

Last night when I got in from Washington, I set up my laptop in the office and hooked it up via Ethernet directly to the Time Capsule. I turned off the Airport card. I started Time Machine working, backing up my hard drive. And I went to bed. That was around ten o’clock, or ten thirty. When I got up this morning, I went to check and see how much had been backed up in the night.

2.03 GB of 103 GB.

What!?

Needless to say, I spent a lot of time on the phone with technical support. Nothing they could tell me was of any use.

“Make sure you aren’t actually using the computer during the initial back-up…”

“Make sure you start the initial back-up at night…”

Finally, the advice I got was simply, “Delete the old backup file and try again.”

I kept asking, is it my network settings? Do you want to check anything there?

“No, no,” the representative says. “There should be no problem. This should work, it just takes a really, really long time.”

“How long? Like weeks? I could back up to my iPod faster than this!”

Anyway, I gave it another go. Three hours later, just under 1 GB had been transferred.

I called again.

After going through the same round of questions, and helpful suggestions, and reminders about how long the initial backup takes, finally the rep says, “OK, I am going to transfer you to a product specialist. But the wait time is really long. You might want to put your phone on speaker phone, if you have it.”

Some time later, I look at my phone and see that I have been on the phone, most of it on hold, for 58 minutes. I hang up.

What the hell is wrong with this product? Right now, I am ready to chuck it in the garbage as a shiny, but useless piece of crap.

More later. I am trying another backup, this time wirelessly. There is a USB port on the Time Capsule, but it says it is for a printer, so it may not work to transfer data. My next step is to buy a USB cable that can connect to my computer and give that a try. Right now, I feel like smashing the thing, though.

Currently, the backup has been running for half an hour and has transferred only about 248 MB. Thats megabytes. I’d get better transfer speeds if I connected via dial-up.

Sex scandals are a peculiarly American phenomenon. The French certainly don’t get bent out of shape when their aged and unattractive President plants one in the belly of a pretty young thing. Mitterand’s mistress and illegitimate daughter stood beside his wife at his funeral in 1996.

That’s not to say that the French have a correct view of human sexuality and Americans are prudes and hypocrites. It’s only to say that only in America do we treat our leaders to a formal tar and feathering for letting their evil, one-eyed imp escape their pants.

Sometimes they deserve it because of their hypocrisy. Sometimes they don’t deserve it, but they take a public flogging anyway, just because their political opponents seize the opportunity. And we all know that the media is in the business of scandal, either reporting it or rooting it out if it isn’t readily apparent.

Now for some thoughts about the Spitzer case.

I am not sympathetic to him. He had a wife and three daughters, and he should have thought about the consequences for them if his dalliances became public knowledge. I am indifferent on the subject of prostitution itself, leaning towards a very liberal attitude that it should be legalized and regulated.

On the other hand, applying some cold, European-style Reason to the scandal can address a lot of the issues that people have with Sputzer’s behavior. First of all, I’ve read so many men (and even a few women, like Dr. Laura) saying that “obviously” his wife wasn’t meeting his needs in the bedroom. If a woman sexually satisfies her husband, even when she doesn’t feel like it, he won’t cheat.

First of all, no one knows what the Spitzer’s married sex life was like. There were no cameras in their bedroom, at least as far as I know. Second, there are plenty of men who have sex with their wives as well as their mistresses, or prostitutes. But maybe there were certain acts Mrs. Spitzer wouldn’t perform for her husband–thus the hooker’s comment that Mr. Spitzer wanted “unsafe” sex (I happen to think that probably just meant he wanted sex without a condom). But we don’t know, and anyway, it’s wrong (but very American) to blame the wife for the husband’s cheating.

Furthermore, there is always an implied assumption that married men don’t have good sex lives, anyway. Married sex (or lack of it) is a prime subject in a stand-up comedian’s routine. True or not, it’s usually the wife who gets the blame for that, too. To my mind, it’s just another excuse, or rationalization of bad behavior.

To apply more Reason to the story, everyone assumes that Spitzer somehow “wronged” his wife by cheating. That assumes his wife did not know about his frequenting of prostitutes. Again, the example of other powerful husband and wife teams suggests that more often than not, the woman does know. The Clintons anyone? Hillary Clinton is the most cheated on wife in the world. At some point, she must have stopped being surprised, shocked, and hurt.

I don’t know what Silda Spitzer did, or did not know. But I know it has been reported that she was advising him to fight, and especially to NOT resign as governor. I found that a little suspicious. Why would she care about his career at that point?

Since when does a wronged woman’s first priority become the defense of her cheating husband’s job? I can think of many things a wife might say to her husband upon finding out he has been buying prostitutes, but I can’t imagine one of them being: “Now you go out there and fight. Don’t you quit your job over this!” Is that how a woman who is genuinely hurt reacts? Again, I don’t know. I am just trying to look at this scandal reasonably.

So, it seems at least reasonable to me that Silda Spitzer, like the wives of probably countless wealthy, powerful men, knew about his prostitutes, but had rationalized them as the price she must pay for familial, economic, and social security.

In the end, we might be surprised to learn that Spitzer had no secrets from his wife.

Now, the money issue. Everyone is shocked at the price he paid for his whores. The total for ten years of sexual services is something like $80,000. Now, the first time I heard that amount, the first thing I thought was: “Eighty thousand isn’t very much, over ten years.” I am no mathematician, but I think it comes out to around $700.00 a month, probably less than the car payment on Spitzer’s Lexus (he probably buys cars outright, though).

I am not trying to excuse his behavior. At the very least, he grievously shamed himself in front of his teenage daughters, no matter what his relationship with his wife. I just think that people are falling into the trap of assuming that the same rules apply to rich people as to ordinary people.

Ordinary people don’t usually have “marriages of convenience” in which the husband can pay for prostitutes and his wife can go shopping as much as she wants. Thus it never crosses the mind of an ordinary person that this might be a possible lifestyle for a wealthy person. Is it a valid lifestyle?

I don’t know. I do know that our American media forces a rigid morality on our politicians that can possibly trap them in loveless marriages. Divorce is almost as bad as infidelity, when it comes to destroying a political career. Ask Rudy Giuliani. Ask the Clinton’s. What would have happened to her political career in 1998, or before, if Hillary had divorced Bill? Do you think those practical, negative consequences never once crossed her mind in all the years with him, through all the affairs?

As far as the money that exchanged hands is concerned, I am certain it did not make a dent in Spitzer’s bank account. It seems like an outrageous expense to us that he spent over four thousand dollars for a couple hours with a woman, but Spitzer is a multimillionaire!  There were probably days in his life when he spent more than $4000.00 just on ordinary expenses.

Jed Clampett used to pull a roll of bills out of his pocket that would choke a horse; he called it his “walking around money.” The rich are different than you and me; they have more money (to dryly quote both Fitzgerald and Hemingway).

As a sort of P.S., a couple articles contributed to my thoughts on this subject. Check out Bill Maher’s Spitzer’s trysts and Alan Dershowitz’s The Entrapment of Eliot.

This question is probably going to elicit lengthy responses from my few readers.  But I want to keep the question itself short and simple: had she divorced her husband after one of his numerous affairs, would Hillary Clinton’s political future be better, or worse, today?  Explain your answer.

Obama is losing his cool. Yesterday, when asked to respond to Geraldine Ferraro’s remark that Obama wouldn’t be winning today if he were white or a woman, Obama responded that her statement was “ridiculous, wrong-headed, and divisive.” At one point, he seemed to be struggling for the right word, maybe thinking about saying the other “R” word–”racist”–but finally settling on “ridiculous.”

For the first time since I’ve been paying attention to him, though, Obama was not believable. He didn’t seem outraged, but he was trying to seem outraged, or at least upset. He looked grimly at the camera as he settled on the word “ridiculous” for Ferraro’s remarks. He seemed emotionless, for the most part, which I suppose is how one looks when one is trying to feign a certain feeling. Obama isn’t used to feigning anything.

In the past, when confronted with broadsides or racist remarks by the Clinton campaign, he has kept on smiling. “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming,” is the advice Dori (in the voice of Ellen DeGeneres) gives to Nemo in the famous children’s movie, and that’s good advice for Obama, too. Don’t look back at the sharks behind you.

But I can also understand the need to take advantage of every slip of the tongue by one’s opponents or her supporters. However, it just looks bad for someone who once seemed so cool and teflon-tough that he didn’t need to respond to the ignorant attacks of his opponent.

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So it isn’t a flashy, new laptop with all of Apple’s latest hardware and software innovations. At first glance, it isn’t even an Apple product that would attract my attention as something I either need or want to buy.

But the Apple Time Capsule has turned out to be one of the best purchases I have made from Apple in some time.

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When was the last time you stopped to think about the way the Internet has changed the way in which you acquire information?

I had a moment like that today. I was struck by the vast difference between the way I find things out now and the way I discovered information even twelve or fifteen years ago.

When I entered Graduate School in 1996, “Research Skills” meant going to the library, searching the card catalog for books (the card catalog was a DOS program with a command line interface). If I wanted magazine, newspaper, or professional journal articles, I had to use those red, paper-bound copies of the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, or its equivalent for scholarly articles.

Of course there was an Internet, but I didn’t have it at home. No one I knew had home Internet access. I could access the Internet through the computers at school, but my professors were still highly dubious about the use of Internet sources in student papers. One exception was Listservs. My professors thought listservs were the greatest thing. Every class I took, the professor required us to sign up for email from a scholarly listserv. One professor even required us to post to the Listserv once or twice a semester.

I had a school email account in 1996, but it was only accessible via a UNIX program called PINE. From home, I could connect my PC’s modem to the phone line, dial up the school server, and access my email account–but again, it was accessible only through a UNIX-based command line interface.

Today, things are a little different.

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In terms of the primaries yesterday, I will keep my comments brief. I feel a little depressed this morning about Obama’s losses, and about the fact that he couldn’t wrap up the nomination last night. Not only that, the next major primary is more than a month away, when Pennsylvania votes. That seems like an eternity in which Clinton can only gain momentum while chipping away at Obama’s lead. Anyway, I don’t have much hope for Obama in Pennsylvania, either. I know my Pennsylvania relatives are probably going to vote for Clinton.

I don’t want to be pessimistic, but I think that by not scoring the knock out he needed yesterday, Obama may have lost the nomination. As the Washington Post points out, he now has to fight a two-front campaign against both Clinton and McCain through the summer. It’s going to be costly, and I only see things getting tougher for him because of it.

Whether Clinton can catch up to him in the delegate count seems like a moot point since Super Delegates are going to decide the nomination anyway. The question now is whether Clinton’s victories staunches the flow of Super Delegates to Obama. If she retains her lead in Super Delegates, it won’t matter how many more states Obama wins.

I know party insiders say that the Super Delegates will vote according to the “will” of the voters, but that will is entirely open to their individual interpretation. Some Super Delegates may decide that because Clinton has won the “important” states, such as New York, Ohio, California, then the will of the voters is that she be the nominee.

I don’t like the nomination being in the hands of a few hundred party insiders. I think that is un-democratic and a nineteenth-century, back-room politics way of choosing a nominee.

To be optimistic, if Obama can increase his lead in smaller, upcoming primaries caucuses, such as in Mississippi and Wyoming, I think he makes it harder and harder for the Super Delegates to choose Clinton. He has already won more primaries, more of the popular vote, and more of the regular delegate count than Clinton. But that isn’t enough. Any other year and any other candidate but Clinton, and Obama would be the de facto nominee at this point.

I really can’t predict how this is going to end. However, my gut feeling is that Clinton is going to be the nominee now, and that prospect really puts a damper on my mood. It may be true that Democrats don’t really care who is the nominee, and if it is Clinton they will coalesce around her in the general campaign. I’m not there yet, and I may never get there.

The best news for Obama may be that whenever Clinton starts to feel like she has a strong hand, she overplays it. She has a strong hand now, and she is feeling confident enough to suggest that she and Obama split the ticket (with her as the Presidential nominee, of course). Hopefully that suggestion will come across to voters as unbridled arrogance, coming from someone who has won only three contests since January, compared to Obama’s twelve.

One thing is for certain, if Obama by some miracle manages to pull this off and becomes the party’s nominee, he is going to be much stronger and battle-hardened when he goes up against McCain in the fall.