Thanks to Candice’s fast wits in requesting tickets to the Daily Show using multiple emails, she was able to score us two tickets to the Daily Show, which is filmed in “Hell’s Kitchen” neighborhood of Manhattan. Since they generally overbooked to ensure full capacity, we waited outside through stormy weather beneath semi-leaky plastic weather tarps for 3 or 4 hours to ensure we got in.
After we got the door passes, we stopped off at a Subway and while were eating, Candice recognized Aasif Mandvi as he came in to get a sandwich. My angle wasn’t the best so I didn’t recognize him at all, but she assured me it was him, so again, thanks to her, I was able to shake hands with him and tell him that I enjoyed his work.
After exiting the Subway, Candice then suggested to check out Dewitt Clinton Park across the street. Suddenly, a film crew appeared. The director, a young man in casual attire, described how he wanted the scene to go with his group of extras. A cop was going to walk by and spray indiscriminate New Yorkers with the pepper spray. When the director and the “cop” had their back turned, I tried to sneak into the group of extras so that I could end up in the scene, but someone recognized me and told me to stand back. They did two takes of the cop walking by and spraying by-passers, and I noticed that the extras botched both takes, mostly reacting a second or two after being “pepper sprayed.”
Then they did a close up of the cop and for the first time I noticed he was Christopher Meloni, the lead cop in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. So not only did Candice score the tickets, helped me meet Aasif Mandvi, but she also helped me watch Christopher Meloni do a live scene for a Daily Show skit. Thank you, Candice!!
They must be concerned with trademark issues because he politely told someone next to me not to film him with his cell phone. They filmed an extended scene of him spraying every which way with two sprayers, one a stream spray and the other a mist spray. The way he just played around for a minute or two, you could tell most of it was going to be cut.
Finally, we got in to see the show. The studio seemed much smaller than it does on television, but I suppose that is from the way the cameras are panned. The show started with a short introduction by a local comedian for about five minutes to liven up the audience. Then Jon came in to take some questions from the audience, although like djinni rules, they asked that it please not be for an autograph or whatever because he would have to give one to everyone. Candice and I were on the second row center, so I thought I had the perfect seat until the camera rolled out right in front of me. Sure, there was a television screen off to the side of what was being taped, but I had to move my head to the left to actually see him.
The scene they shot right outside their studios was about the elderly Deputy Inspector Anthony Balogna pepper spraying multiple Occupy Wall Street protestors in a row, along with a shot of him spraying wildly at the camera. Since Jon did an extended skit about his nickname being “Tony Balony” involving everything that rhymes with “balony,” they must have naturally thought of Christopher Meloni.
After the show, we went to the theatre district in Times Square. I had become weary from the constant bombardment of advertisements, but there it’s actually quite nice. On the way there, we got to hear Radiohead playing a song from their Kid A album as we passed the Roseland Ballroom, between 7th and 8th Avenue, and also passed by David Letterman’s studio.
*****
Throughout the trip, I couldn’t help but compare everything to my last trip to Tokyo. Whereas everything in Tokyo from building and street architecture to convenience store products were new and interesting, New York at first seemed like a typical American city, only more. While Tokyo was clean and spacious, New York was dirty, stinky, crowded, and it seemed as if everything was tagged. Some stores were in hovels on the streets, selling close to nothing on their makeshift shelves.
No more was the difference between New York and Tokyo evident than the subway systems, which I feel compelled to talk about since I spent so much time lost in it. While Tokyo’s Subway of the Future is nothing less than an underground city, complete with its own shopping centers, New York’s subway is more like an amusement park trolly shoehorned into the city’s sewer system. You can often see the subway through rain grates on the streets above. When a subway passes you from below, it becomes pretty loud and the sidewalk vibrates a little. In Tokyo, the subways are much further down and no one above knows when one passes by. While Tokyo boasts huge clean corridors that have a modern look to them, New York has dirty, cramped and rough caverns of brick and steel that look centuries old. Some of the brick pillars are broken down into red stalagmites, as if someone has taken a sledge hammer to them, leaving only a steel rod core running from the floor to the ceiling.
The first train I got on shook violently enough to warrant a “Must Be At Least This Height to Ride” warning. Then the train made a sudden forced departure at one of its early stops, and we had to find an alternate route, which wasn’t easy. Only later did we find out that 90% of the time, these forced departures are due to someone committing suicide by jumping in front of the train. It started happening all the time after the economy crashed. It took a long time because they had to take the train off and go through and clean the rails and the wheels up and down. Definitely not the most considerate way to go.
The one time my binoculars came in useful was following a rat as it crawled across the bottom of the tracks as I waited for a train that, odds are, was taking us away from our intended destination. Another time I was studying the electronic map listing all the stops to figure out where I was going when I was told by a pedestrian that it was actually the wrong map.
But despite all the subway’s faults, even paying the fairs in wrong-way trips (as well as paying your way to go back through the entrance booth because the few information desks there are happen to be on the outside of the exit booths), mass transit is still cheaper than riding in a cab. Their rates are murder and they literally take you for a ride.
Dirty and stinky and trash-filled as the subway is — oh and I forgot to mention all the hobos singing songs for money in the corridors and the elderly Bible-beating black woman who promptly made me make a race out the door for a different car — New York’s subway is still what makes it what it is: a truly modern city where anyone can get from point A to point B in less than 30 minutes (provided they don’t get lost).
And at least on New York subways, people felt safe to mess around on their cell phones, which I hear you can’t do in Detroit because people will just come up and grab them out of your hand. New Yorkers are famous for being rude and willing to step right over you. One guy on a subway was told me sternly to move as he moving quickly through the car, but he came back and apologized, saying that he didn’t mean to be rude. But the part about willing to step over you is completely true. I think in the South people have an internal compass that steers them out of the path of oncoming people that New Yorkers simply don’t have.
Another thing I thought was really cool was that the subway runs above the streets in some parts of the city, and we ate in a restaurant underneath a highway and the subway. It’s a mark of engineering that makes the city more interesting, as well as a mark that everything in New York is compacted into something else. Most buildings use their basements and have multiple stories since space is so scarce and expensive.
As for the sites: The statue of liberty is a much lighter lime green than as typically seen on television. And the Brooklyn bridge is really not all that impressive at all. In fact the all but unknown Verrazano-Narrows Suspension Bridge, which looks like a grey sister of the Golden Gate Bridge, is far more fascinating.
Even discounting whatever alien language is used to tag New York’s buildings, I have never seen so many different languages spoken and written in the same place. I knew all the jokes about “Jew York,” but I didn’t know there was an entire quarter of Orthodox Jews, all dressed exactly alike, like in that scary introduction to the HBO show Weeds, only with long tassels attached to bald scalps hidden beneath black long-rimmed hats. There’s also the Mexican part of town and the Italian part of town. I joked that I heard more English in Japan, but I think having so many different ethnicities makes New York one of the few truly International Cities.
*****
The day after going to the Daily Show, I learned that the U.S. had for the first time in history admitted to the assassination of an American citizen without due process and most of the country cheered it. Awlaki is said to have been affiliated with 3 of the 9/11 hijackers, the Fort Hood shooter, and the “Christmas Day” bomber, but his role appears to be only that of an advisor. Many have tried to justify his assassination by saying that by fleeing the U.S., al-Alwaki gave up his right to citizenship, but as State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said several days ago: “Under U.S. law, there are seven criteria under which you can strip somebody of citizenship, and none of those applied in this case.” You can’t justify it by citing treason either, as Article 3 of the Constitution reads: “No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
Yet only Glenn Greenwald and Ron Paul really gave a dissenting voice to this new definition of presidential powers. I was surprised to find myself siding with Ron Paul against Bill Maher on this issue. But even Maher had to think twice about at the idea of a President Bachmann having the power to assassinate American citizens who are suddenly labelled “terrorist.” I was never a big believer in the “slippery slope” by this slope leads to a hole in the frozen lake of the American popularity contest.
Angelo points out that the Constitution actually reads: “No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.” Since the Constitution uses the word “person” and not “citizen,” the Bill of Rights expresses this as a human right, not a national right. All humans have these rights by their very nature. But this would mean we would have to arrest and try every terrorist foreign and domestic, and the term “war” would have to be retired, since it would be purely a police act. I would think in the world of high-tech terrorism, information would be key and so arrests and interrogations would be superior in result, so arrests should be the supreme goal of fighting terrorism. In the show 24, Jack’s constant challenge was always keeping the terrorist from committing suicide so that he could get information out of him.
The matter has some bearing as to whether the Founding Fathers would approve of a War on Nouns as opposed to a war on a specific group of people. Christopher Hitchens has tried to use Jefferson’s war on the Barbary Pirates as a precedent for the War on Terrorism, but the First Barbary War had actual naval battles. These drone strikes are assassinations done far away from a battlefield. The best way to combat al-Qaida-style terrorist cells is through intelligence work, and arresting and interrogating people are an important part of that process. If he was really connected to three incredibly famous terrorist acts, then he must be a fountain of information.
To me it seems a great disservice to all the victims of mob violence since, unlike foreign terrorists, organized crime is so deeply rooted in society that they can buy off the police and politicians (like Rudolf Murdoch’s son), tamper with juries, keeps the mob boss unconnected to his orders, and even cause economic disasters (like how Japan’s “Lost Decade” was helped by the Yakuza), yet we don’t just break the law to kill the top guy. Instead the police are forced to find some technically like tax evasion for Al Capone. If we can spare a Seal Team to kill Bin Laden (and an unarmed woman), then what’s wrong with sending a team down to fetch back an American traitor?
Cheney has come out and demanded an apology from Obama, which as Glenn Greenwald points out, is not unreasonable. Cheney explains: “They, in effect, said that we had walked away from our ideals, or taken policy contrary to our ideals, when we had enhanced interrogation techniques. Now they clearly have moved in the direction of taking robust action when they think it is justified.” As Bryan Lambert says, “When Dick Cheney tells you you’ve done the right thing, that is a sign that you need to seriously re-evaluate your moral priorities.”
Here’s the “scholar” of the Republicans, Newt Gingrich, on the controversy: “They got due process. The president signed an order to kill them. That was due process.”
The far more popular outcry from the Left has been against the death penalty case of Troy Davis. Everyone on the Left, including most of my favorite bloggers, have taken up his cause. This includes: Glenn Greenwald, Matt Bors, Tom Tomorrow, Arianna Huffington, Alan Colmes, Michael Moore, the “Libertarian” Bobb Barr, Roger Ebert, Alec Baldwin, Wil “Wesley Crusher” Wheaton, Jimmy Carter, and Pope Benedict. But from the articles that I’ve read about him, the mountain of evidence of witness tampering doesn’t hold up. What is indisputed but never mentioned by my favorite liberal bloggers is that Troy Davis, not wearing his round-eyed “You wouldn’t lethally inject a man with glasses” spectacles, was with Daryl Collins at not one but two different shootings in the same night in 1989. The first shooting was at a pool party at someone who mocked them while driving by, resulting in a bullet in the jaw, and the second was against a cop who was trying to help a homeless man from being pistol whipped over an argument over alcohol at 1 in the morning. Mark MacPhail, who was working as a security guard for Burger King, was shot twice: once through the heart and a finishing blow to the face. Although the two men carried the same type of gun and the murder weapon was never recovered, the details I’m familiar with make me think Troy Davis is the more likely of the two to have killed MacPhail. But even if he isn’t, he was present at one attempted murder headshot and decided the night wasn’t over yet.
Other details listed in this conservative article also provide some pretty damning arguments, although I can not vouch for its truthfulness, or even who authored it, since both Erick Erickson and Curt from Flopping Aces claim to have written it.
Even Amnesty International, who I think started the whole thing, doesn’t actually have an opinion as to his guilt but admits the whole point of focusing on the “catastrophic flaw in the U.S. death penalty machine.” This is seems a bit insincere when posting Troy Davis’ mug with the look of “Don’t kill me” on it all over the web. Even assuming there was witness tampering as has been alleged, it still seems more likely to me that they framed a guilty man, and regardless there is no denying he took part in an at least one attempted murder.
But even worse, MacPhail’s mother has been getting threatening phone calls over the case. So Representative John Lewis’ statement that “Today, we are all Troy Anthony Davis. Tonight, a little piece of all of us will die” does not really resound with me since I don’t think he’s the best test case to use to try and fight corporal punishment. Neither al-Alwaki nor Troy Davis should be executed if they were only accessories to murder, but unlike al-Alwaki, Troy Davis did get due process, and if I’m wrong about which of the two pulled the trigger, I wouldn’t make it a national cause like a presidentially-approved assassination of an American citizen should be.
Aside from Troy Davis, there’s the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas for the death of his three daughters in a fire that consumed their home on December 23rd, 1991. This case has been used to constantly attack Rick Perry for allowing an innocent man to be executed, usually along with a quote from some right-wing buffoon praising Perry since “It takes balls to execute an innocent man.” Early investigators found evidence that an accelerant was used to start the fire, but a second investigation found shoddy science had been used and proved that the cracked glass that was supposed to prove quick heating could have occurred by quick cooling. But his wife came out saying that he confessed that he killed the girls because she had threatened him with divorce and another witness overheard him telling the corpse of his oldest daughter that she was not the one who was supposed to die. Again, this is not the prima fica case I would be using to attack the death penalty.
Although DNA tests overturning court verdicts and the cost of putting people to death compared to surprisingly cheaper alternative of feeding them for life has made me very sympathetic to the anti-death penalty view, watching Law and Order has given me some respect for allowing the prosecution to use the death penalty as a part of deal-making, so part of me wants the death penalty to technically exist yet never actually be used.
*****
While Candice and I were eating at the Subway where we ran into Aasif Mandvi, CNN did a report about how Occupy Wall Street had mixed messages, a narrative echoed through the mainstream that appears designed to enlist dismissal of the cause.
Looking at the schedule offered by Occupy Wall Street, the criticism has some merit. Among other causes, one of the marches for one of the days I was there was “SlutWalk,” which was to protest blaming rape violence on women’s dress by marching scantily dressed or topless. Early on, many were protesting the execution of Troy Davis, and even then I was worried it could be distraction. But that at least was topical, whereas pro-sex, anti-rape statements were as divisive and off-topic as it got. Neither had anything to do with Wall Street.
But while the pet causes of the individuals who have amassed on Wall Street may be varied, they are all progressive causes that do not contradict each other, and scheduling different events at least gives the protestors something to do. The Tea Party was originally against the bank bailout but now does anything it can for the banks, wanting to repeal the Frank-Dodd reform bill that didn’t go far enough. Progressives may take the side of the guilty in order fight against the death penalty, but conservatives take the side of anything that goes against Obama, and overall they want to go back to the way things were before the crash. But I suppose it’s typical for conservatives to always desire to go backwards in time.
Try and find a sign this sophisticated among the Tea Party crowd…
As Angelo has pointed out, the idea that this country is one monolithic set of principles that has lasted for over 200 years is just a fantasy. There’s a drastic difference between pre-civil war and post-civil war America, and most countries in the modern era are based at least formally associated with the philosophy of John Locke. Any attempt to return to the romantic “golden age” past is just a cover for radical right-wing change. Just look at the Tea Party. They profess to want to want to go back to the Constitution, minus about half the Amendments. But only the Amendments they want. Hence, it’s not a “return” but a complete revision. Constitutionalists who in the past derided the “sliding slope” and moral relativism now seem to believe that taking away Amendments is more pro-Constitution b/c it’s going back to the original Constitution!! The original constitution that says you can make Amendments. Following that logic, taking away the Second Amendment would be part of that, but even though Obama just loosened drug laws, the NRA just announced it was a secret plot to make gun users complacent so he could ban guns in his second term. So pretty much the NRA is no longer about gun rights but a Republican political group.
Angelo suggests that if we take the Second Amendment within the context of the original constitution, it’s really giving rights to the states vs. the federal government and that states should be allowed to institute restrictions. I believe gun laws should be handled on the county or parish level.
The Tea Party also wants to go back to the time when only property owners can vote, since the moment everyone is losing their homes seems like the best time to start denying voting rights based on having property. That’s pre-Andrew motherfucking Jackson.
What’s the logic behind it? It stops young people from not being able to vote. The Tea Party knows they are a small group of Baby Boomers, so they have to stop ALL new vote registration. The typical excuse is that you need “skin in the game.” People don’t care about things they don’t own. Hence, if you don’t own property, you don’t have a financial incentive to care about what happens in the country. As Angelo points out: “So… if you take away voting rights, how is that going to make them “care” more about the U.S.?”
*****
Candice and I went down to Wall Street on Friday. There were no protestors there at the time, but it was still cordoned off, with cops swarming the place everywhere. The fence didn’t divide the street evenly at all. Everyone who wanted to walk through was shoehorned into a very confined area which made taking pictures difficult, while vast unused space around Wall Street’s buildings lay bare, holding only bored police men. Yet the protestors had not caused any damage to any of Wall Street’s buildings and the only protestor there at the time was a single man holding a sign up comparing bankers to Nazis.
Federal Hall National Memorial on Wall Street was built in 1842 as the New York Customs House, on the site of the old Federal Hall, to act as a sub-Treasury building. This was the location where George Washington was inaugerated as the first president of the United States. A statue of Washington stands outside the monument. Looking at the picture of the Founding Fathers on the side of the monument, one has to wonder how they would feel about how the country they founded “for the people by the people” was now having police cardon off the people into Orwellian-named “Free Speech Zones” so that the Masters of Wall Street would not have to be bothered by such ruckus.
If you have any doubt that the traders on Wall Street has absolutely no concern for those outside their little bubble, one only has to look at this video of their reaction to an earlier protest. People who believe they are being falsely accused typically either ignore the protestors or try to defend themselves. Instead, these Wall Street plutocrats came out smiling at the protestors while drinking champagne, purposely embracing the cariacture that the protestors had of them.
The message couldn’t be clearer: “Yes, we destroyed the economy, took the bailouts, used it to give ourselves bonuses. We know you’re angry about being screwed so we’re going to take this champagne that your tax dollars bought for us and drink it right in front of you, and if you don’t like it, you can go fuck yourselves.”
This is what Alessio Rastani, a Wall Street banker, told the BBC: “For most traders, it’s not about – we don’t really care that much how they’re going to fix the economy, how they’re going to fix the whole situation. Our job is to make money from it.” Rastani, who also claimed “Goldman Sachs rules the world,” said, “Personally, I’ve been dreaming of this moment for three years… I go to bed every night and I dream of another recession. When the market crashes… if you know what to do, if you have the right plan set up, you can make a lot of money from this.”
The occupation camp was actually not on Wall Street itself but at Liberty Square, about a block away. They day after the pepper spraying incident, the protest moved to the police station to remind them that they are there to serve and protect. Even two journalists from Fox News recently got pepper sprayed and hit with a baton, so you can guess how judicious the NYPD is being with their crowd control gear.
I went there Saturday morning to see what it was like. I had thought that they were only protesting during the daylight hours, but when I got there I found sleeping bags among propped up umbrellas wet from last night’s showers. Despite the direction on Occupy Wall Street’s main poster to “bring tent,” the police were not allowing any tents to be put up in the square or anywhere else. Everyone looked wet, tired and worn out. One woman who had suffered a seizure was being taken away on a stretcher. The movement turned out to be a lot more hard core than I thought.
After talking to a few people, I learned that many of them had come from all across the country. Many of them were homeless. Others were young progressives. Most of them had a story to tell about being laid off or losing their home. All of them believed what they were doing was important.
There was electricity so one group was able to plug their laptop in order to make updates. Along the west side, everyone had laid down the signs in a line for people to read while they weren’t being held up. I forgot to bring my camera that morning but was able to find some pictures on the internet.
One sign I didn’t see read: “I am 20K in debt and am paying out of pocket for my current tuition while I start paying back loans with two part time jobs.”
Another read: “I am a 28 year old female with debt that had to give up her apartment + pet because I have no money and I owe over $30,000.”
As Ezra Klein points out: “These are not rants against the system. They’re not anarchist manifestos. They’re not calls for a revolution. They’re small stories of people who played by the rules, did what they were told, and now have nothing to show for it. Or, worse, they have tens of thousands in debt to show for it.”
The common mantra for Occupy Wall Street has become “We are the 99%.” As Politifact shows, the “mega-rich” pay only 15% in taxes while the middle class pays between 15% to 25% and are then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot. Last year, the 400 richest taxpayers saw their incomes grow by 400% and their tax rates fall by 40%. Six banks have assets that equal 60% of our GDP. Meanwhile, the number of Americans living below the poverty line has grown to 15%, the highest percentage in 18 years and the highest number of people in the 52 years the Census Bureau has kept statistics. The jobs crisis actually began a year into Bush’s first term. Even the nonpartisan CBO is saying: “Spend money now!”
Republicans instead ignore the obvious problem with the economy — weak demand — and continue to work the same narrative they used for 8 years before the crisis: too many regulations, too many unemployment benefits, and not enough privitization. But a study from the Ecoomic Policy Institute shows that regulations aren’t to blame for the economy, and another study from Berekley shows that unemployment benefits do not weaken job search efforts. Also: privitizing things makes it cost more. Why is it that 9/11 changed everything but the 2008 crash changed nothing?
People like Greenspan don’t care when their predictions don’t come true. They actually find it “regrettable” when the disastrously high interest rates they predict don’t happen and lament that the free markets they hold so dear aren’t “discipling the government.” They just repeat obvious lies to themselves like that the stimulus “created zero jobs.” They’re so antagonistic to the government that Ron Paul actually criticized Rick Perry for creating 170,000 jobs because they were government jobs! To see what a world where Ron Paul is president, one only has to look at his former campaign manager, who was uninsured at died of pneumonia at 49, leaving his family $400,000 in debt. It doesn’t matter that Democratic presidents have created more private sector jobs and increased the debt less than Republicans.
There is some worry that the Occupy Wall Street movement will become just another DNC recruiting tool the way the Tea Party became a rebranding campaign for the Republicans, but given this harsh response to MoveOn.Org, that possibility seems pleasantly unlikely.
Following the debt ceiling debate, politics became really depressing for me. It seemed like destiny that while people in Greece for rioting over entitlements they couldn’t afford, the only people bringing civil unrest over austerity measures in the face of the worst Recession in 80 years were people whining about birth certificates and how the country with the lowest taxes in the world and had just decreased taxes to a 50-year low was crippling the country with overtaxation. Even though I see the same arguments every night on MSNBC, I’m glad to see there are still rebels on the Left who are willing to take on a corrupt government that’s subserviant to Wall Street even when there’s a Democratic president in office. It gives me faith that maybe we aren’t all a bunch of compromise-taking centrists who respond to Republican obstination with more concessions. As for those who act condescendingly towards Occupy Wall Street with the typical accusations of class warfare and cariactures of lazy potheads, the perfect response comes in the form of a tweet I read from one of the protestors: “Why is it easier for you to believe that 150 million people are lazy and stupid than 400 people are greedy and malicious?”
