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Iran and Oppressed Women

The news last week reported that Country Joe McDonald died. He, along with his group the Fish, sang a song of my youth. The refrain from the Fixin’ to Die Rag:

And it’s 1, 2, 3,
What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn
Next stop is Vietnam
And it’s 5, 6, 7
Open up the pearly gates
Well, there ain’t no time to wonder why
Whoopee!
We’re all going to die.

Antiwar anthems recede. However, America’s hunger for conflict only temporarily diminishes, for we are country almost constantly at war. We can ask, as Country Joe might, “What are we fighting for this time?”

We have been given many answers. We need to stop Iran from having nuclear weapons, even though they have none, and even if they want them, they would not have them anytime soon.

We need to stop them from having ballistic missiles that could be fired to our homeland, even though they have no such missiles, and even if they want them, they would not have them anytime soon.

Perhaps we are in this war simply because Israel wants us to, although that has been denied, as could be expected, by our version of a supreme leader. He is, he maintains, no lapdog of Bibi.

Or maybe we are in this war because Trump was in a bad mood because his MacDonald potatoes were not fried in RFK-approved beef tallow.

Perhaps we are in this war because Trump wants attention diverted from Jeffrey Epstein.

Or perhaps it was because Hegseth needed a testosterone boost after he had completed his sets of pushups for the day.

And there were some brief comments, which have receded, that we were at war to increase the freedom of Iranians.

Some have bought into that last rationale. Women in particular are so poorly treated in Iran that it is appropriate, nay, downright noble, to bomb the country and then bomb it some more, people say.

Women, and others, have faced oppressive Iranian conditions. Made in 2007, Marjane Satrapi’s marvelous film of her graphic novel of the same title, Persepolis, takes on a new life. It illustrates how devastating it can be to live in a theocracy.

Nevertheless, Iran is not the only country that mistreats women. Should we bomb all of them? This got me poking around, and I quickly found that there are lists of which countries are the best and worst for women. A couple of these rankings are highly regarded. One of them is produced by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security (https://giwps.georgetown.edu/the-index/). It ranks 178 countries. On their world map, you can easily see that many of the low-ranked countries are clustered in the Mideast and Africa.

 According to the list, Denmark is the best place for women followed by other Northern European nations. Afghanistan is the worst. A few other rankings caught my eye. Iran is 128th. In other words, there are many countries worse than Iran, according to this Institute. The United States is #31. Israel, our ally in this latest war, is ranked #84, worse than Saudi Arabia that comes in at #63. India is #131. Iraq is #158.

As I indicated, this list, while respected, is not the only one. This may come as a shock, but women are mistreated in many ways. Analysts do not always agree on how to rank different kinds of mistreatment, so there is a subjective component to each list. How should educational opportunities for girls be weighed against trafficking of girls; equality of women’s salaries against rates of intimate partner violence; clothing restrictions against genital mutilations; and so on. The various rankings have similarities but are not precisely the same.

There is another list of interest that ranks the ten worst counties (10 of the worst countries for women’s rights | Concern Worldwide). In honor of March 17, it comes from Concern Worldwide, the largest Irish humanitarian group. It bears striking similarities to other listings: Afghanistan is in the bottom ten, as is Iraq. This is noteworthy. They are both countries that the United States has bombed…the technical term… the bejesus out of. That ordinance has not produced better conditions for women. That is not surprising. When we destroy a country’s infrastructure, kill its citizens, ravage its economy, and create refugees and homelessness, it is unlikely to lead to better lives for women…or anyone, for that matter. Chaos rarely leads to hope-filled progress. It more often leads to oppression. Indeed, it was barely news here that two weeks ago Yanar Mohammed, an Iraqi women’s rights activists, was killed outside her Baghdad home.

But surely our actions will lessen the oppression of women in Iran. Our bombs that fell on a school killing perhaps 150 girls means that there will be 150 fewer women to be oppressed in the glorious Iranian future that our bombs are sure to create.

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Neighborhood Astrology

A flier at my local branch of the public library announced that on Tuesday evening there would be an “Intro to Astrology with Kristina.”  It went on: “In this two-hour overview of modern astrology we will cover the natal chart, the elements, and the modes. We will understand through the elements & modes. We will introduce the planets and houses before applying this knowledge to a chart.” No fees. Materials provided. I went.

Kristina was tall and thin. I am not good at ages, but my guess is that she was fortyish. She wore hoop earrings but no other jewelry. She said that she had been interested in astrology all her life and had seriously studied it since she was nineteen. She was a “practicing astrologer” and “read charts.” She practiced online and with a smile said that she was a “global practitioner.” She referred often to “my teacher,” clearly someone important to her.

The flier warned us to come early because the class would be limited to sixteen. No problem. There were eight of us, all but one of whom seemed more knowledgeable about astrology than I was.

We started with basic information about a “natal chart.” Apparently, the location of the birth does not have to be more precise than a city or town, but the birth time, Kristina said, needed to be within seven minutes of the actual delivery. This concerned one of my classmates. She had two adopted children, one from Ethiopia and another from Bangladesh. Not only did she not know the seven-minute window when either was born, she did not even know the dates of their births. She had been told that she could pick a birthday, but now she worried that she had chosen “bad” ones for astrological purposes. I did not know what that meant.

We were told that everything was made of four things—water, fire, air, and earth. (I resisted bringing up atomic and subatomic particles.) Apparently, one of these substances predominates in each of us, and on a handout we were asked to write our thoughts on what it meant if a person was, for example, a fiery person. I could list traits for a fiery person and for an earthy person. I could not think of anyone, however, who I had ever thought of as a watery person. At first I wrote, “no idea” under watery. Then I wrote, “Perhaps goes with the flow—wishy washy.” I realized that a thin gruel was watery and perhaps a watery person was one of little substance. When we later discussed this, others referred to still waters running deep and another to thundering waves. I thought that if a watery person can evoke a calm that masks layers of thought or the turbulence of crashing breakers while to me it evokes someone without principles or nutritionless cream of wheat, the range of opinions made the label…well, useless.

My confusion increased when we discussed what it meant to be an airy person. I don’t remember ever labeling someone as airy, although “airhead” has been in my lexicon. For airy, what immediately came to mind was Tinkerbell, places such as Ireland and Iceland where Little People had burrowed into the folklore, and those late nineteenth century photographs that had gossamer-like creatures with diaphanous wings. However, one of my classmates said, “Flighty,” and Katrina said, “Yes, intellectual.” I intruded for one of the few times and said that I was confused: “Intellectual and flighty are antithetical.” Others looked at me in bewilderment; of course they meant the same thing. One classmate said, “My mother is flighty and an intellectual.” I thought that that was possible but not at the same time. Einstein was an intellectual. He may have been flighty at other times, but not when he was trying to unravel the deepest secrets of the universe. The instructor said you should figure out what watery and the other words meant to you. I asked if the terms were meant to be objective or subjective. If the words were merely subjective, there could not be meaningful communication between people about them. I did not get an answer.

We got another handout that listed the well-known astrological signs with their accompanying human traits. Nothing was said about how the characteristics had been determined and assigned. They came to us as self-evident assertions. We were asked to look at our signs and see what we recognized in ourselves, but I tried to look at all the signs. I noticed how the traits for each sign almost always contradicted themselves. Under Aries, for example, it said, “Initiating: Starts things but finds it difficult to see them through once routine replaces creativity.” That seemed consistent with another trait: “Spontaneous: Likes things to happen straight away and loses interest if there is any delay.” However, these were seemingly contradicted by “Focused: Not easily distracted from within by self-doubt and second thoughts, nor from without by the reactions of others.” Hmmm. Focused but loses interest easily.

I could recognize characteristics of mine in the Taurus description, but I could also recognize as many traits I have in every one of the signs. And none of the Taurine signs that fit me were immutably ever present. “Patient: Unconcerned with how long things to take to happen.” Sometimes yes, sometimes no. My last trait was supposedly “Stubborn.” I laughed to myself. Aren’t we all stubborn some of the time, but I know that I am not always rigid. Just the other day, I had lunch with a friend. When the check came, I reached for a credit card to split the payment, but Tony said, “You had to make a special effort to come [true], and I am going to pay.” I swallowed my stubbornness, put my wallet away, and let him pay. Now if that doesn’t belie stubbornness, I don’t know what does!

I was slow on the uptake, but I finally realized that I was being urged to think in stereotypes. A Gemini was adaptable and expressive. A Virgo was analytical and practical. I had no idea where the stereotyping came from, but I wondered if this is worse than the stereotyping that confronts us regularly–stereotypes based on nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, geography, age, education, politics, accent, hair style, and so on.

I also realized how much of the class was based on a common but basic flaw in human thinking. Too often when an idea is presented, we look for confirming evidence, and that is often easy to find. I could see some confirmation in myself for almost any astrological characteristic for any sign. (Exception: I am not stubborn. How many times would I have to tell you this for you to believe it?) But if we want to advance our knowledge, we must go beyond just confirmation and look for the disconfirming. None of that happened in this class.

But I wondered if this belief system is any more bizarre than others. People believe in transubstantiation and predestination. Others believe that the dictatorship of the proletariat will come. Some believe that the New York Jets will win a Super Bowl. Some believe that one sect comprises the righteous religious heirs of Muhammad while others believe in a different sect. And so on.

Finally, if I had more knowledge, I might know bad things done in the name of astrological beliefs. However, I know many horrible actions that have been done in the name of other belief systems. So, what is the harm if some believe in astrology?

And if I had not come to the class, I never would have heard a proclamation, said without any sense of irony, like this one from Katrina: “My Libra is in Venus (or perhaps my Venus is in Libra) so I pay close attention to balance.” Even after the class, I had no idea what this meant, but I had never met someone before who could say it with a straight face.

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Snippets

I enjoyed TV’s “Dark Winds” featuring Navajo Nation policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. The streaming show is based on Tony Hillerman’s novels, a few of which I have read and enjoyed. Hillerman said that he was indebted to British-born Australian novelist Arthur W. Upfield, a name unfamiliar to me. Upfield’s mysteries featured a “half-caste” Aboriginal-Australian detective who was found in his dead mother’s arms shortly after birth. Raised in a Christian orphanage, he is given the name Napoleon Bonaparte but nicknamed Bony. I decided to try Upfield. I could not find the first in the series at my libraries, The Barrakee Mystery (1929), but I did manage to get the second one, The Sands of Windee (1931). It was outstanding. I now understand Hillerman’s praise. Upfield and Bony should not be lost in the sands of time.

I miss some things from my previous neighborhood. At this time of year, the local movie theater played Oscar-Nominated Live Action Shorts and Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts in separate programs. I tried to see them before the awards and make my own judgments about which should win. The live action movies are always well made with excellent production values. The credits seem just as long as for a full-length movie. I wonder each year who the audience is for these shorts. I am not aware that such shorts are shown commercially, or at least not often enough to recoup the amount of money that it must take to make them. Almost uniformly the five or so films are interesting, often with innovative stories. There is, however, one problem with the programs. I used to see movie shorts as a kid, sometimes in a theater as an interlude between the double feature. More often, though, I saw them on TV as local stations tried to find content to fill out their airtime. Often they were, or at least meant to be, humorous, such as instructional videos by Robert Benchley or “The Fatal Glass of Beer,” featuring W.C. Fields. (Everyone should see “The Fatal Glass” at least several times in their life.) Humor, however, in the nominated live action shorts is in short supply. I guess to be nominated a film must be serious business. Although there might be a quirky film, most explored grief, tragedy, abortion restrictions, teenage suicide, and so on. Almost all were remarkably good in writing, directing, and acting. They were affecting—so much so, that I often had troubled sleep the night after I went to the theater. The animated shorts were often the reverse—mostly light and humorous but with an occasional dark one. One year, before the final animated short was shown, a theater manager came out and said that all children should be taken out of the auditorium. The film was too disturbing for the youngsters. He was right. It had graphic nudity and graphic violence. This year I have only seen one of the nominated films, a live action movie that was shown on Netflix entitled “Singers.” It was both dark and uplifting…an interesting combination.

There are movements to get rid of daylight savings time, although proposals differ. Some want to return to God’s time when at noon the sun is overhead. Others want to have permanent daylight savings time without the twice-yearly shift. (No more Spring forward, Fall back.)  But what we should really remember is what a wise person said: “The best way to save daylight is to use it.”

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Snippets

I am a victim. As a white male raised as a Protestant with a good deal of Anglo-Saxon ancestry, I might have thought I was in a privileged position. But no. According to Trump and Hegseth and those around them, DEI and wokeness have victimized me. This, however, is not the first time America has been turned upside down in order to proclaim white victimization. In Joy S. Kasson’s cultural and historical examination of William Cody and his Wild West Show that supposedly depicted the frontier, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (2000), she concludes that his performances inverted reality and made whites the victims in encounters with Indians. This view persisted in novels and later in some movies and radio and TV shows. Kasson says that, like some Civil War histories, the show honored individuals—it was Buffalo Bill to the rescue—and made (white) self-defense its theme.

A lawsuit that I have not followed closely maintains that social media harms and knowingly addicts children and must be changed or stopped. This may seem like a modern topic, but it is not. When I was a kid, something similar was said about comic books. Dr. Fredric Wertham led the charge denigrating comics. A well-regarded German-American psychiatrist who treated poor Black clients in Harlem and whose work was cited in Brown v. Board of Education, he became famous for his 1954 best seller, The Seduction of the Innocent. His book contended that comic books had deleterious effects on childhood development. He attacked comics with the pseudo-scientific gobbledygook of the Freudian: “You cannot understand present day juvenile delinquency if you do not take into account the pathogenic and pathoplastic influence of comic books, that is, the way in which they cause trouble or the form trouble takes.” Attention-seeking politicians held congressional hearings. Schools burned comic books. New York passed anti-comics legislation, which was vetoed by Governor Thomas Dewey on constitutional grounds. The anti-comics crusaders were early to the anti-DEI movement. Jeremy Dauber in American Comics: A History (2022)tells us: “To Wertham, Wonder Woman wasn’t a symbol of female empowerment, but precisely the opposite. Not because she was tied up so much, an argument with potential merit, but simply because she was strong, and thus ‘an undesirable ideal for girls: To be strong is to be unwomanly, and to have strong close associates who are female is automatically lesbian and horrific.’”

Similar attacks on the deleterious effect of modern culture on the youth of America preceded and succeeded the anti-comics crusade. Of course, it is the amusing, nostalgic premise of the Music Man. In “You Got Trouble,” it is not pool alone that is corrupting, but also the shameless music of ragtime and other media. Harold Hill asks the River Citians, “Is a crime novel hidden in the corn crib? Is he starting to memorize jokes from Cap’n Billy’s Whiz Bang?”

At almost the same time as the attack on comic books, similar things were said about how early TV was corrupting our youth and then a few years later, rock ‘n’ roll was vehemently condemned. As a comic book reader, an early TV watcher, and a listener to early rock, I am surprised I did not spend my life in jail, but it is still possible that I am going to hell.

(Tipper Gore’s Parents’ Music Resource Center did not seek to smash vinyl as did the earlier movement against rock. It sought to place labels on albums to indicate to parents that the records contained explicit lyrics. According to them, the goal was not to censor or ban, but to inform.)

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                                                                           SOTU

The moderator for the current events discussion group is a great politician. Only after flattering me about past presentations did he ask me to comment on the State of the Union Address. Ego stroked, I agreed. Only later did I realize that no one in their right mind would consent to watch the hour-and-forty-seven-minute State of the Union speech, the longest in recorded history. You had to wring hard to get a few dollops of news out of it, and the views about it are predictable.

There is little new to report. Even if you have seen only a glimpse of Trump in the last months, you had already heard, probably many times, what he said in his address to Congress. According to him, he has turned around the disastrous economy into something wonderful. The worst inflation ever that he inherited (from Biden, of course) is now just about nonexistent. Prices are falling. My attention lapsed for a moment, but he may have said that eggs in some stores are free and at most a dollar a dozen. In Oklahoma and maybe Ohio, but definitely not Oregon, if you buy two Snicker bars at the filling station, the gas is gratis. (Subsequent events make this even more unlikely.) Job creation is better than ever, and manufacturing has rebounded. GDP is astounding as are wages, and the stock market is at an all-time high. Crime, on the other hand, is as low as it was at the Creation more than six thousand years ago. We are respected around the world like never before. We are in a Golden Age, a Golden Age he said, but definitely not in the Age of Aquarius. We have ended discrimination against white Americans, especially white males, by abolishing DEI.

I don’t possibly have room even to summarize what fact-checkers had to say, but to put it kindly, most of the State of the Union was fact-and-evidence-challenged. A rule of thumb: Just because Trump says it does not make it wrong, but that is a good starting point.

And there’s more. The Supreme Court, in what Trump has called a really, really bad decision, struck down tariffs, but customs duties will be brought back, Trump said. To the surprise of many, he was restrained and did not launch the kinds of verbal attacks on the Justices that he did immediately after the tariff decision. Similarly, he did not mention the low IQs of Republicans who sometimes have not agreed with him.  He did not create demeaning nicknames for anyone.  He did, however, attack Democrats in an unprecedented way. He said: Stand if you agree that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” All Republicans got to their feet, but only a few Democrats did. He then went on to say that Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for their continuing sittingness and that they were crazy and managing to destroy the country–apparently the only time opponents were labeled demented at a State of the Union.

A State of the Union has often been an opportunity to spell out a president’s legislative priorities. There was little of that from Trump. He did propose a new retirement account and suggested that tech companies will be required to build their own power plants for AI data centers, but he did not suggest any legislation to accomplish this. He did, however, tell the legislators to stop insider congressional trading, his one policy position that seemed to have gotten bipartisan cheers. Nevertheless, there was no grand policy proposal. To the disappointment of Republicans, I’m sure, he didn’t even propose another tax cut. But he did lobby for the passage of the SAVE Act, a solution in search of a problem, that would strip states of powers to regulate elections. He said that the only way Democrats can win is to cheat. He seemed to be foreshadowing what may happen next fall: If Democrats win in the midterms, he will claim that they had to have cheated.

Perhaps the speech was as noteworthy for what was not said as much as for what was. There was no mention of ICE, Jeffrey Epstein, plans for Gaza, healthcare, social media, Melania the movie, the Board of Peace, not even the ballroom. There was almost nothing about what once consumed conservatives–our federal debt. However, he announced a new war on fraud under the generalship of JD Vance (not Musk this time) that could supposedly end federal debt. The speech, however, did raise the now standard conservative attack on transgender people, but without any explanation of how this makes life better for our populace. (And, of course, his brief comments on Iran were quickly outpaced by his war.)

This was not just a speech. There was also stagecraft. At the fifteen-minute mark, when attention had already lagged, Trump had the Olympic gold-medal winning men’s hockey team–which did have a thrilling victory–march into the congressional arena. The women’s hockey team, also thrilling victors, were not there. He certainly did not mention that the majority of America’s medals were won by women or that America failed to win the most medals.

Was this address successful? We might like to think our elections are about persuasion. Who has the better policies? Who has the better candidates? But, especially for midterms, when fewer people vote, it is about gerrymandering and about turning out the vote of your side and suppressing the vote of the other side.

While Trump may do things to suppress votes of Democrats, this speech is not one of them, and I doubt that it changed the energy levels of his supporters. Fewer people watched this year’s State of the Union than last year’s. There were no new notable quotable lines to act as battle cries. Instead, it was mostly well-worn, well-known Trumpian tropes. It was less than a week ago and is already largely forgotten. There is much more important news.

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Snippets

Once a month local high school kids come into my old folks home to chat with some of the residents. The students get some sort of public service credit. It’s nice; the old folks have an interaction with young kids they would not otherwise have. This month the students came in with Valentine cards they had drawn and were distributed to us. I thought that was sort of sweet until I opened mine and saw that the inscription started, “Dear Senior.”

I learned from Janice P. Nimura, Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back that after Admiral Matthew Perry “opened” Japan to the West, Japan concluded that it needed to modernize, which meant adopting more Western ways. The country ended its military rule by the Shoguns in 1868. Some new leaders concluded that part of the West’s strength was educated women. Three young Japanese girls were sent to the United States to be educated similarly to American girls. After ten years, they returned to Japan, and with much difficulty they helped establish some schools for girls. The book was an interesting read about a history I knew little about.

The local library has a program starting next month for eight sessions called “Postpartum Circle,” which “navigates the adjustment to parenthood.” Sounds valuable, but I am not sure it sends the right message by being held in the Teen Room.

I bought the on-sale cookies. When I saw that the package was already opened, I asked the spouse how they were. “Tasty,” she replied. “But not very satisfying. So you have to eat a lot of them.”

I wondered as I watched the winter Olympics whether if I had lived my life isolated at the equator whether I would believe that ice is water.

A billionaire stepped down from a position “saying he had exercised ‘terrible judgment’ in keeping contact with Epstein after the financier was convicted of a sex offense in 2008.” Many other people have been ostracized for having contact with Epstein after his conviction. If these people attended parties with young teenagers after 2008 or perhaps anytime (looking at you, Mr. President), ostracism may be appropriate, or perhaps it is appropriate even if they just knew of such parties. But otherwise? Who should be shunned? All people convicted of crimes? That happens too much now and makes offenders return to society, employment, and family almost impossible. Perhaps we should shun all sex offenders, but sex offenses cover a broad swath of behaviors, from a twenty-year-old having sex with a fifteen-year-old, to exposing oneself, to collecting pornographic pictures, to brutal rapes. Should all be shunned equally? Or is it that Jeffrey Epstein should have been shunned even if the one we now ostracize did not attend the parties or know of them? We need to make distinctions. Shunning everyone convicted of a crime who has served their sentence is not good for society.

“Crime and punishment grow out of the same stem.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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I Couldn’t Understand It, and It was Dirty and Un-American

The moderator of the current events discussion group at my residence put out a request for someone to speak about Bad Bunny. I volunteered. The spouse put together a PowerPoint that had images from the Super Bowl halftime show but started with the opening segment (from YouTube) during which the Puerto Rican rapper  emerged from a sugar cane field and walked past scenes of everyday Puerto Rican life. This opening, watched by 128 million people live and many more on YouTube since, brought a smile to the spouse and me. We lived our fifty-four years in Brooklyn in neighborhoods where whites were a minority. Our first NYC neighbors were many Native Americans and Puerto Ricans. We, like Bad Bunny, regularly passed coconut water stands and shaved ice carts. A fixture at our corner bodega was middle-aged men sitting outside on milk crates playing dominoes with Puerto Rican music on the speakers. In those high crime days when we were alert to possible danger, we knew that the players, recognizing us, would come to our assistance if there was ever a problem.

I confess, however, I did not understand what Bad Bunny was singing. That’s not just because he used Spanish. I seldom understand rappers in any language–including English. Nevertheless, I could tell from the visuals and the music that he was not giving us the usual halftime show of the Las Vegas-style entertainment of a performer’s greatest hits. It was instead an ambitious, thematic presentation comprising an homage to Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans, Latin America, love, family, and America. I have watched the show several times, and it is brilliant.

That sugar cane field set the tone for the rest of the thirteen minutes. Sugar is a crucial part of Puerto Rican history. When the United States took possession of Puerto Rico after the 1898 Spanish-American war, the sugar trust was one of the most powerful lobbies in this country. As part of the United States, Puerto Rico was not charged tariffs on its sugar, which allowed these American sugar companies, which everywhere exploited native workers, to expand on and dominate the island.

During the opening segment, Bad Bunny carried out of the sugar cane field an older version of a Puerto Rican flag, which some associate with the Puerto Rican independence movement. He went on to honor traditional love by giving an engagement ring to a man who immediately proposed to his girlfriend. A few moments later they got married at what was a real wedding. Apparently, the couple had asked Bad Bunny to attend their nuptials, and he responded by asking them to be married at the Super Bowl.

He also honored his own family. His mother’s name was on a jersey he wore, and his uncle’s number–when he played the game–was on the football Bad Bunny carried.

He made a personal reference when he gave a Grammy statue to a young boy. Bad Bunny recently won the most important Grammy award, given for Album of the Year, the only time an album in Spanish has won. (Its intriguing English title is “I Should Have Taken More Photos.”)

But he also referred to recent dark Puerto Rican periods when he climbed a utility pole and sang “The Blackout.” Two major hurricanes decimated the island in 2017, and power outages were widespread and lengthy. Major problems with the Puerto Rican grid continue.

Bad Bunny concluded with his only English by saying “God Bless America” and then listed every country in the Americas from Chile to Canada. A banner behind him said love could conquer hate and the football carried the message Together We Are America. (Earlier he addressed the camera—the camera work was superb throughout—and said that he was at the Super Bowl because he had believed in himself and encouraged us to believe in ourselves, too.)

There were some parts that might have seemed lewd to us old folks and other uptight people, especially in the gyrating dancing, but the choreography helped tie all the segments together. There are, however, lewder performances on TV all the time. In fact, while nothing was especially controversial in this halftime show, outrage, maybe some of it unforced, has spewed forth. Of course, our president and others have said that they could not understand him, as if they had wanted (or tried) to. These guys, unlike me, are indicating what I doubt: that on first hearing they understand rap songs in English.

Trump, while admitting that he failed to understand a word of it, reported that Bad Bunny’s halftime performance was “An affront to the greatness of the United States.” Surely a celebration of heterosexual love, marriage, family, and the culture of Puerto Rico, a part of America whose residents are American citizens, cannot be un-American. Instead, Trump (who never forgets a slight) may be remembering that Bad Bunny criticized him for the lack of humanitarian aid to the islands after the 2017 hurricanes. Moreover, Bad Bunny said he would not tour the U.S. last year because of a concern about ICE actions at his concerts. To make matters worse, Bad Bunny has been a strong supporter of LGBTQ+ rights, and a pride flag appeared in the halftime show.

Others have claimed that FCC action is necessary because of the sexually explicit lyrics, and many of Bad Bunny’s songs are, indeed, explicit. In this he is not different from other rappers who brag about their sexual prowess and encounters. (This is why I don’t rap . . . anymore.) But sources and Puerto Rican friends agree that Bad Bunny excised the sexually explicit from his songs or mumbled them so they could not be understood.

Bad Bunny has become a star not just because of sexual lyrics but also because of his musical social commentary that raises deep concerns about the problems of Puerto Rico. His guest artist, Ricky Martin, an openly gay Puerto Rican who had a number one hit at the turn of the century (“Livin’ La Vida Loca”), sang Bunny’s song titled in English “What Happened to Hawaii.” The song is a powerful, beautiful lament that cautions Puerto Rico not to become like the Pacific Island that has lost its Hawaiian culture. Part of the lyrics in English:

What Happened to Hawaii

This was a dream I had

[Verse 1]
She looks beautiful even when things sometimes go wrong.
In her eyes, a smile holds back her tears.
The foam of her shores looks like champagne.
It’s alcohol for her wounds, for dancing away the sadness.
It’s alcohol for her wounds, ’cause there’s so much to heal.
Deep in the green mountains, you can still breathe.
The clouds are closer, with God you can speak.
You hear the jíbaro crying, another one who’s left;
He didn’t want to leave to Orlando, but thе corrupt ones pushed him out.

[Pre-Chorus]
And no one knows for how long

[Chorus]
Thеy want to take my river and my beach too.
They want my neighborhood and my grandma to leave.
No, don’t let go of the flag nor forget the lelolai,
‘Cause I don’t want them to do to you what happened to Hawaii.

[Interlude]
Be careful, Luis, be careful

[Verse 2]
No one here wanted to leave, and those who left dream of returning.
If one day it’s my turn, it’s gonna hurt so much.
Another jíbara fighting, one who wouldn’t give up;
She didn’t want to leave either and on the island she stayed.

[Pre-Chorus]
And no one knows for how long

[Chorus]
They want to take my river and my beach too.
They want my neighborhood and your kids to leave.
No, don’t let go of the flag nor forget the lelolai.
‘Cause I don’t want them to do to you what happened to Hawaii.
No, don’t let go of the flag nor forget the lelolai.
‘Cause I don’t want them to do to you—

[Outro]
Lelolai, lelolai
Oh, lelolai, lelolai

Bad Bunny no doubt recognizes that while 3.2 million people live in Puerto Rico, that population has declined, and that more than 5 million people who were born on the islands, now live in one of the states.

The National Football League has also been criticized for bringing Bad Bunny to the Super Bowl. On the field, football may be a game, but for Roger Goodell, the head of the NFL, professional football is a business, and Bad Bunny was good for business.

The choice recognized the power and popularity of Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, Bad Bunny’s official name. He may be the most important musical artist today. After rising to prominence with his first record in 2016, he was the most streamed artist on Spotify, the music app, in 2020, 2021, and 2022. He was second and third in 2023 and 2024. He returned to number one last year with—wait for it–19.8 billion streams.

He was a good NFL choice because professional football wants to expand into Spanish-speaking countries, play games in Madrid and Rio de Janeiro, and, of course, make Spanish TV rights more valuable.

And the NFL recognizes the increasing importance of Spanish in this country. Forty-one million people in the United States speak Spanish as their first language and another twelve million speak it as their second language, which means one in six in this country are regular Spanish speakers.

The NFL made a sensible business decision with Bad Bunny. Bad Bunny responded with a brilliant show, a show maybe not for most of us old folks. But perhaps we can learn that there is more in life than choral music and American standards from previous generations, and there are younger people who know and appreciate things we do not.

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Snippets

At this time of year when I see a brace or a cast on a leg or a protective boot on a foot, I often comment to the misfortunate one, “Where were you skiing?” I almost always get a response, but I don’t remember anyone replying that the injury came on the slopes. Instead, someone was playing basketball or more embarrassingly, slipped off a curb. Still, I was surprised when I said “Skiing?” to the Columbia student with an extraordinarily large brace on his right leg. “No,” he replied, “Crew.” My face must have registered my puzzlement. I couldn’t imagine how one blew out a knee rowing. He continued, “I was lifting weights.”

In the slow sports seasons, I watch a few minutes of televised kennel shows. I am always surprised how many breeds of dogs are registered. I was aware of a Doberman Pinscher, but an Austrian Pinscher? How many kinds of terriers are there? Many of the dogs are beautiful, but some make me suppress a laugh, and I wonder if those breeds could be self-conscious about how they look. E.g., the Affenpinscher and the Puli. And some bring a creepy feeling, such as any hairless one. 

“The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.” Samuel Butler.

I wrote a month ago that the new year did not always start on January 1, but I have given little thought about when the day begins. For me, it is midnight, but I knew that it begins at sundown for Jewish people and for Muslims. Now I have learned from Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel that “Italians numbered the hours of the seventeenth century from one to twenty-four beginning at sunset, so that if [Galileo’s daughter] Suor Maria Celeste told her father she was ‘writing at the seventh hour,’ she meant she worked far into the night.”

“Every day cannot be a feast of lanterns.” Chinese Proverb.

Galileo may have been a mathematician, an astronomer, and a Catholic, but he also had a bit of the poet about him. Dava Sobel in Galileo’s Daughter says that he long described wine as “light held together by moisture.”

The furor over the half-time show because Bad Bunny’s songs are in Spanish seems feigned to me. I can’t be alone in not being able to understand rap lyrics no matter what language they are in.

As more and more powerful men are revealed from the Epstein files, I can’t help but think of the words from a wise man: “The sin is not in the sinning, but in being found out.”

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                                                                           DARKNESS and DAYLIGHT

It has a Victorian-era title page, which is not surprising because it lists a publication date of 1899. In differing fonts and sizes, it reads:

Darkness and Daylight in New York

Or

Lights and Shadows of New York Life

A Woman’s Pictorial Record of Gospel, Temperance, Mission, and Rescue Work “In His Name”

With Thrilling Personal Experiences by Day and Night in the Underworld of the Great Metropolis and Hundreds of Thrilling Anecdotes, Incidents, Humorous Stories, Touching Home Scenes, and Tales of Tender Pathos, Drawn from the Bright and Shady Sides of Life Among the Lowly

By Helen Campbell, City Missionary and Philanthropist

Contributions by Thomas W. Knox, Author and Journalist

Thomas Byrnes, Late Chief of New York Detective Bureau

Including an Account of Byrnes’s Thirty Years’ Experiences Written by Himself from his Private Diary

With an Introduction by Lyman Abbott, D.D.

Superbly Illustrated with Two Hundred Fifty Engravings from Special Photographs Taken from Life Expressly for this Work, Mostly by Flash-Light.

Chapter headings follow a similar pattern. For example:

“Up Slaughter Alley, or Life in a Tenement House—A Tour Through Homes of Misery, Want, and Woe—Drink’s Doings.”

“Night Mission Work—New York Streets After Dark—Rescue Work Among the Fallen and Depraved—Searching for the Lost—An All-Night’s Missionary’s Experience.”

“Lurking Place of Sin—Face to Face with Crime—Cellar Haunts and Underground Resorts of Criminals—The Touching Story of Jim, an Ex-Convict.”

I plucked the book, knowing nothing about it, from the shelves of an obscure library. Riffling through it, I immediately saw that it was superbly illustrated. I don’t know why photographs were not directly used, but the engravings made from them showing the lives and habitats of the “lowly” were outstanding. (The introduction made clear that the photographs often made by “Flashlight” were made through the use of magnesium flashes.)

I started reading the book and found that the 450 Helen Campbell pages clearly and fluidly written and presented a view of New York City life on the eve of the twentieth century seldom presented elsewhere.

I knew nothing about the author, and only after finishing the book did I look her up. She was born in 1839 and was raised in comfort. Her father practiced law in New York City for fifty years and was involved in banking.  She married when she was twenty but got divorced. (She sometimes used the name Helen Campbell and sometimes Helen Campbell Stuart.) As a young woman, she wrote successful children’s book but soon expanded her writing horizons to the new field of home economics and conducted important studies on the conditions of women wage earners. She was a prolific and influential author but had never entered my sight before.

She drew conclusions and insights startling to the modern eye. For example:

She asserted that the Irish form the larger portion of the poor class. “They retain all the most brutal characteristics of the Irish peasant at home, but without the redeeming light-heartedness … with no capacity for enjoyment save in drink. . . . With a little added intelligence they become Socialists, doing their heartiest to ruin the institutions by which they live.”  The ethnic references dotting the book made me think about today. Should I be shocked that we still have similar comments about Venezuelans, Mexicans, and Somalis now or should I take the half-full approach and think just as the ethnic stereotypes of the past have faded, so too will the ones today?

Campbell was not alone in her ethnic concerns. The contributor Thomas W. Knox, Author and Journalist, also had his ethnic observations. He wrote that a police captain told him that the Chinese live in conditions “that would be repugnant to an American . . . and they are not over particular on the subject of ventilation. But they wash themselves oftener than do the Italians, and they shave their heads and braid their queues with a care that everybody must commend.”

He switched ethnic groups and perhaps surprisingly gave some praise: “Pawnbrokers are not all Hebrews, though the pawnbroking business is generally thought to be entirely in Hebrew hands. But whatever they may be, they are good judges of values of articles offered to them; and the man that cheats a pawnbroker must get up very early in the morning.” (I learned that even then pawnbrokers were regulated as to interest, the length goods had to be held, and the necessity for public auctions for the sale of goods.)

Campbell also had comments about gender, including, “Why girls should be less susceptible of reformation it is hard to say, save that the special sins to which they are liable are weakening to both brain and body, and thus moral fibre is lacking in greater degree than with the boy.”

Knox also had comments on reform. For example, he said that detectives report that only four in one hundred criminals ever reform. “They attribute half the criminality in the land to laziness, and the other half to immoral reading and the temptations and instructions of successful criminals.” I know that reform is still hard, but I doubt that many would attribute today’s criminality to “immoral reading,” just as I doubt that such reading caused half the criminality back then.

One of Campbell’s comments, however, certainly resonates today: “Not the least surprising experience of one who has learned to know the slums in every aspect is the flat denial of most New Yorkers that they exist save in the slightest degree.” Whether we acknowledge slums or not, few of us seek to know about the life of the lowly.

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Who Are These ICE People Anyway?

Two related but separate federal agencies are the primary enforcers of our immigration laws. One is the Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP) whose diverse responsibilities include the collection of import duties and the regulation of international trade. It examines people and cargo at ports of entry for such concerns as smuggling and the curtailment of the spread of harmful pests. This agency also protects and patrols our Mexican and Canadian borders. It is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). CBP does not have primary responsibility for the enforcement of immigration laws within the country.

That falls to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), which is also part of DHS. ICE is headed by Acting Director Todd Lyons. ICE has not had a Senate-confirmed director since 2017.

ICE has two primary components: the Homeland Security Investigations Division, which is concerned with transnational crimes, and the Enforcement and Removal Operations Division, which enforces immigration laws within the country. While ICE does not patrol the border, increasingly the border patrol (CBP) has been enforcing immigration laws away from the border, including in Minneapolis.

Under the One Big Beautiful Bill, ICE became the largest, most well-funded law enforcement agency in American history.

Although for a hundred years states tried to regulate immigration, the Supreme Court in the 1870s held that immigration and naturalization were solely under federal jurisdiction. Although immigration is a federal responsibility, ICE seeks the help of states and cities in immigration enforcement. Some jurisdictions, however, are reluctant to provide that help and claim status as a “sanctuary” city. While there is no legal definition of a sanctuary city, the term usually refers to a locality that refuses to cooperate or limits its cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Moreover, the use of the term “sanctuary” is misleading. An undocumented person does not get sanctuary from immigration laws by residing in a sanctuary city. The undocumented can be deported wherever they are in this country.

ICE officials have sought local assistance in several different ways. ICE might ask cities and counties to tell ICE when the localities have encountered an undocumented immigrant. Sanctuary cities usually do not honor these requests. They don’t share their databases with the federal officials. Some localities even forbid the collection of information about immigration status.

ICE often asks to interview people in local jails. Non-sanctuary places may freely allow that. Sanctuary localities, however, may not permit it at all or allow it only if the inmates voluntarily sign a consent form informing them that they don’t have to talk to ICE and are waiving that right.

ICE also lodges requests, called administrative detainers, asking to be informed when an inmate that ICE believes is deportable is to be released from a state or local lockup. Sanctuary cities differ in their responses. Many will tell ICE about the release of someone who has been convicted of a violent offense but not otherwise. Some sanctuaries will not tell ICE about the release of any inmate.

Trump officials suggest that this non-cooperation is illegal. That is not true. No law requires states and cities to cooperate with ICE, and no law probably can require that. That conclusion is based on the 1997 Supreme Court case, Printz v. United States.

At that time a federal law required “local chief law enforcement officers” to perform background checks on prospective handgun purchasers. The Supreme Court concluded that requirement was unconstitutional given the established constitutional principle that state legislatures are not subject to federal direction. The Supreme Court extended that maxim to local law enforcement, which the Court held is also not subject to federal direction. The Constitution does not empower the federal government to compel state law enforcement officers to fulfill the national government’s federal tasks. Assuming these principles still apply, the federal government cannot commandeer localities to enforce immigration laws.

The administration and other right wingers say, however, that sanctuary cities are making their communities unsafe by not helping deportations. Conservative media often scroll names of deportees along with the heinous crimes they supposedly committed. Trump’s press secretary has averred that the sanctuary jurisdictions are endangering their citizens by giving a safe haven to dangerous criminals. Trumpian attacks on the sanctuary states and cities are, therefore, “focused on protecting American communities from criminal aliens.”

Are the ICE actions focused on dangerous criminals? A fact-checking organization says that the administration has not provided enough information to substantiate that claim. The fact checkers say that the percentage of those detained without a criminal conviction or charges doubled in 2025 to 40%. However, most of the convictions are not for violent felony offenses. The Cato Institute has looked at the records of ICE detainees and concluded that a mere 5% of them had violent felony convictions. The New York Times also concluded from similar data that 7% had violent felony convictions.

Are sanctuary cities endangering their citizenry? Sanctuary jurisdictions maintain that their lack of cooperation is not only legal but is good policy. They point out that in sanctuary cities local resources are properly allocated to local priorities, not to enforcing laws that are the responsibility of the federal government.  Sanctuary cities also maintain that they are safer because of their policies.

The jurisdictions highlight that deportation before a verdict or punishment, which often happens in non-sanctuary jurisdiction, deprives communities of the deterrence provided by the criminal justice system. Sending a person to his home country without serving a sentence here in the U.S. does not act as a deterrent to others.

The sanctuary jurisdictions also want undocumented people to feel comfortable cooperating with the local police. Without that cooperation crimes will not be reported and prosecuted. Undocumented immigrants won’t come forward to report crimes or become witnesses if, as a consequence, they will be deported.  Criminals, whether citizens or not, will go free, and the community will be more crime-ridden.

Furthermore, a city may be healthier, safer, and more community-friendly if undocumented people are reasonably comfortable interacting with government authorities — not just police, but also schools, hospitals, clinics, employment agencies, and housing authorities.

Sanctuary cities point to study after study showing that sanctuary cities are safer than other cities and that sanctuary cities have, on average, more vibrant economies than non-sanctuary jurisdictions. The Trump administration, as it often does, avoids or denies the accuracy of such studies.

Finally, is there sanctuary for the undocumented in churches and elsewhere? President Obama issued orders that protected immigrants in hospitals, churches, courtrooms, funerals, weddings, and schools. Trump reversed that order. That there was an order and that it was reversed tells us something. We may have an image of Quasimodo swinging on a Notre Dame bell rope with Esmeralda under his arm and crying “Sanctuary,” but there is no accepted American legal principle that people are free from deportation (or prosecution for crimes) because they are sheltered in a house of worship.