Is it “Me, too”, or “He, too”?

One day, during the weeks leading up to my retirement from Manhattan Criminal Court, I was leaving the building when I noticed a clusterfuck of sorts in a hallway, off to one side. A ring of court officers was blocking someone in their midst from public view, and I craned my neck to see who it was, before the court officers shooed me away. Despite the rudeness of these glorified mall cops, the best thing about working at the fabled 100 Centre Street address is that you get to witness a veritable parade of disgraced celebrities file by, on their way to jail or exoneration. This particular celebrity straightened out, as though sniffing the air, locked eyes with me, then gave me the once -over. It was Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood mogul of multiple- sexual-harassment-accusations fame. I was amazed not only that someone in such deep shit, someone literally ringed by his captors, could still be spirited enough to feel like checking out strange women at the very site where his infamy was being trumpeted, but also that he'd be staring at someone like me, someone way past the age when men stop ogling women, and way below the beauty standards of the Hollywood babes he supposedly harassed. In the end, he was found guilty of a total of five felonies in California and New York,and sentenced to serve a total of 39 years in both places. After our little encounter in Manhattan Criminal Court, I have to suspect this guy's a dog and probably guilty as charged. I'm assuming not all men are like that, but the species still poses a mystery for me. I find men amusing, I love their company, but I've never been able to sustain a long-term relationship with one-- I think they demand too much and give back too little. I even have difficulty getting along with my own brother. Being a woman, I do know more about women, which makes me question the wholesale legitimacy of the "me, too" movement. Successful men too often fall prey to ambitious women who feel they are owed privileges in exchange for sex. And when these women are not rewarded for putting out, they accuse the guys of sexual harrassment. Also, women often cry sexual harassment to escape blame mostly in situations where they have screwed up and are about to suffer the consequences. This gives feminism a bad name, but it happens because the social pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme. As a society, we are now more than willing to see women --ALL women--as helpless victims and ALL men as ruthless predators. Sexual harassment has become the ultimate no-no. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo committed all kinds of misdeeds, yet it was his sexual harassment of female underlings that finally got him driven from office. These days, it's easier to get away with murder than with grabbing someone's ass, because when it comes down to he-said versus she-said, we automatically believe the woman's version of events. Fortunately, some awareness of this venomous trend is beginning to emerge; one female lawyer with offices in San Francisco and New York has made a career of defending men wrongly accused of sexual harrassment by women. I know about this because I tried to hire her (but she was too busy). My son had been falsely accused by some bitch who was nasty, incompetent, and about to get fired, and who tried to smear him as a way to save her own job. She claimed he had touched her inappropiately when nobody was looking. The truth is that she'd been trying to pressure my son onto picking up her slack at work, she was doing it in a disparaging, hateful manner, and he complained about it to the Human Resources Department. So she accused him of sexual harassment. Meanwhile, for whoever thinks I'm making this up, know that there are written reports of her nastiness on file somewhere. Before attacking my son, she'd accumulated an official track record as a problem employee, the kind who, in government agencies, gets transferred from place to place before finally being let go. This is standard government practice,it takes a lot to get fired from public employment of any kind, but now her agency was finally giving up after affording her countless opportunities to straighten out. Her latest supervisor had been readying the paperwork to fire her for incompetence, laziness,and general goofing off when she accused my son of sexual harassment. Her timing was deliberate. Firing her after she'd launched a sexual harassment complaint would have been seen as retaliatory, so the termination process was halted pending an internal investigation. We lived through tense moments between the start and end of this inquiry; we realized that a false accusation could stay on my son's record and ruin the rest of his life, and that all too often, reality has nothing to do with the truth. It's more the luck of the draw, like: are the work site investigators male or female? If female, are they predisposed against men? Are they more interested in being fair than in collecting male scalps for their own careers? Will they find it easier and safer to decide against one man than to buck the overall trend of the times, which heavily favors women? "Just be yourself during the interview", recommended my brother the lawyer."Once they get a measure of your character, they'll realize that the accusations ar made up". Truer words were never spoken; my son was victimized not only because he'd spoken up for himself against a woman, but because he was an easy target. He is kind and guileless; I have never seen him be snarky or disrespectful to ANYONE. I've never heard him say anything even mildly teasing or suggestive to a woman. Even if all that were false, I wouldn't care. To me, my son is not just a man; he is a person I carried for 9 months and took 12 hours to bring into the world. Forget "me, too", there can be no stronger allegiance, and most Latinas will agree. I notice that most "me tooers" are white women. Conversely, most Latinos are mama's boys. They place mom on a pedestal and she returns the favor by staying fiercely loyal. I'm happy to report that in the end, the truth did set my son free, and that most of his coworkers--of both sexes--rushed to testify as character witnesses in his defense. Best of all, his accuser was fired, and as long as that episode remains on her record, as long as she can't obtain job references in order to move on and wreak havoc someplace else, she'll have been neutralized. And she'll be unable to victimize another poor, unwitting man, at least for some time to come.

Israel and the US vs. Palestine: Latinos, call it for what it is

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SCAM LIKELY

I never dreamed that my relationship with the telephone would become so complicated.But it has, and as a result, I barely use my phone anymore. It's partially my own fault. I hate the tyranny of service contracts of any kind, the unwelcome surprise of extra charges, the cutting of service if I don't pay by a certain date. So I have a pay-as-you go arrangement, which I've managed, tenaciously, almost desperately, to retain through the various mergers and acquisitions of the company that issued it. Of course, the corporate world hates this type of freewheeling arrangement, they want to hold you by the short hairs in every possible aspect of your life. Thus, they "grandfather" in the older, more liberal agreements for their original users while eliminating them as an option for more recent subscribers. Meaning that only if you've had pay-as-you-go for some time can you continue to use it--albeit, with new limitations. In my case, they took away my caller ID, and that's how I found out that nowadays, people generally avoid unidentified callers. If they can't see a name on the little screen,they just don't answer their phones. So if I want to talk to a human being, not a recording, I can't use my no-name cell phone. I must resort to my landline, which features,not my real name, but one of my more ridiculous screen names as caller ID. Don't ask. I don't know how it got there or how to change it, and as long as it functions as caller ID, I don't care. I can resign myself to the situation because I'm also on its receiving end--as are millions of telephone users, at least in the United States. These days, I mostly use my phone for texting, not speaking, because it allows for more time control and filtering of unwanted calls. I don't answer my phone unless the caller ID reveals a person or a company I recognize. As far as I'm concerned,all else can go fuck themselves because these days, nobody calls to help you or give you anything. On the contrary,it seems everyone has their hand out. But God forbid you should call anywhere for aid or information on some service or item you've acquired --you probably won't get a human being on the line, and the proffered websites will be next to useless. Narrow in scope, some won't even include spaces for written complaints or online chats with LIVE customer reps. In general, you'll only experience "live" calls if they are intended to make you part with your money. Everybody who calls you wants something, and the sales schemes are as aggressive as they are ingenious. The caller ID often shows what looks like a "real" person's name, intended to make you wonder if it's somebody you know but maybe forgot about--and trick you into answering the phone. Pitches come under the guise of offering you something useful "for free"-- but only, as it turns out, if you'll buy this or that. I once had a caller promise me valuable news about my labor union's new, improved benefits. She was a fast talker and I couldn't get a word in edgewise. She roped me into scheduling a phone video conference with a "specialist", while deflecting all my questions about who she was and what she represented. It was only after receiving a text confirmation that I detected, in small print, a company name I didn't recognize, and I looked it up online. It was a supplemental insurance company--they wanted to sell me INSURANCE, using my labor union for cover! (I'd like to know who, in my labor union, approved such a scam.) Of course, I cancelled the video conference. I've also received pirate phone calls in Chinese (again, don't ask) and some rapacious calls even come from people I know, or know about. Dentists and audiologists call to corral me into appointments I do not need. Bank "advisors" call to sell me new credit cards or investment schemes. A physician's office once called me to propose a "concierge" service, whereby I'd pay them a monthly amount whether I saw the doctor or not.Most recently, I got a phone call urging me to reschedule a doctor's appointment that I never made to get checked for a mysterious progressive ailment I didn't know I had. Thankfully, my caller ID labels some of these annoying phone calls as "Scam Likely", so I can head them off at the pass. I hope that's one service that won't ever get lost in the shuffle. My advice: Save your breath. Don't answer your phone if there's no caller ID or if you don't recognize the name it presents.

A Rarity in this Country

Many months have gone by since the Murdaugh murder trial sent shivers of schadenfreude through the United States' collective spine. Murdaugh lost that one bigtime, and it should be noted that nowadays, his lawyers are asking for a new trial, hoping to get their notorious client off on the second go-round. Maybe they will, it remains to be seen, and I'll be sure to disseminate the information in this space when I find out. But I really doubt that a second trial,if it ever happens, will be as sensational as the first. That one kept me glued to my TV screen, hoping the rare thrill of watching an American oligarch called to account would never end. My attorney brother and I, a retiree from the criminal justice system, armchair-quarterbacked thr whole process, texting joyfully back and forth. It was better than the Superbowl! For those of you who have been living abroad, or under a rock, I recount: Last winter, South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh was convicted of killing his wife Maggie and their 22-year-old son Paul on June 7,2021. Both were slaughtered in the darkness of their hunting lodge stables,with multiple gunshots to their head,chests and wrists. The patriarch claimed to have "found" their mutilated bodies-- until cell phone data placed him at the crime scene the very instant before their horrible deaths. However,his motive was hard to formulate, because... who in his right mind would butcher his own family? Prosecutors alleged that his business-related woes made him crazy (he'd been fired by his law firm for embezzlement). But I suspect that's just part of it: the guy stood, as they say down in Florida, up to his ass in alligators. His wife and son had become inconvenient. His wife was contemplating a costly divorce and little Paul had stirred up serious trouble by causing a female friend's death in a boating accident (he'd been drunk while steering the ill-fated boat). Now the boy was under indictment and facing a civil trial for wrongful death. Initially, Dad tried to smokescreen the mess by attempting to manipulate others involved in the tragedy, but the community reacted with indignation. No doubt this came as a surprise to him; generations of political and legal dominance in South Carolina had empowered his family to get away with just about anything. However, little Paul was still indulging in the type of behavior that had gotten him into serious trouble to begin with. Still drinking and boating with his buddies--his father must've felt he was impossible to control. Easier to kill him. At that time, the Murdaughs were also suspect in two other murders: that of their longtime housekeeper,who'd stumbled upon evidence of Alex Murdaugh's opioid drug addiction, and a gay male villager rumored to be "dating" Buster, the Murdaugh's older, allegedly straight son. Both of these unfortunate individuals had damning information on the Murdaughs, so it 's believed that the Murdaughs did something about it--even though both of these murders remain unsolved. Good thing that on March 2,2023, the dynasty got nailed on OTHER charges: Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of four counts of murder and weapons possession and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without parole. The judge closed by telling Murdaugh that the ghosts of his murdered wife and son would visit him every night in jail. The prosecution wasted no time singing its own praises. They paraded their staff before the cameras. They congratulated each other before the microphones. This was a big deal, indeed. "This is how it's done right here in South Carolina,y'all", they intoned. "Here,justice will prevail no matter who you are or what you have, or what yo' daddy's last name wuz". Too bad it took about a century for South Carolina justice to catch up to this family, who once exercised almost Gothic control of the area. But let's not dwell on that. Let's just celebrate that it was finally done,and that those betting Alex Murdaugh would get off scott free lost their bets. The Murdaugh conviction was nothing short of a miracle; it's easy to become cynical in this country, where justice applied effectively to the rich and powerful is a rarity. Take Donald Trump, another wealthy white patriarch repeatedly accused of crimes, not against individuals, but against the ENTIRE United States. Yet, despite the bipartisan uproar, the public indignation and even all the recently uncovered evidence of his wrongdoing (some of it from his own mouth) Trump still walks free--and one has to ask, for how long?

Stinkbombs in the Piñata

Many years ago, when my son was a 4th grader, I decided to celebrate his birthday in school. It was easier, with a ready-made guest list (his classmates, a captive audience), plenty of space in the school gym, and no worries about cleaning. I only had to buy a cake and candles, and, for entertainment,throw in a piñata.At the time, he was attending private school in a serene enclave north of NYC. The invasion of Puerto Ricans from the Bronx hadn't started yet--so nobody in the school knew from Piñatas. They had never seen or heard of such an object. They marveled at the prospect, overcome with the joyous anticipation of breaking up the thing and getting showered by candy. It was up to me to stuff the Piñata with goodies, so I did. But while I wasn't looking, my son snuck in several stinkbombs. The following day, a general uproar ensued when unsuspecting kids got enveloped in a cloud of putrid smells. School administrators shuttered the gym for two days, and my son's teacher almost got fired. Thank God I wasn't there, and I must note that in the end, nothing of consequence happened. But such is life. Stinkbombs in a piñata. Sometimes, the nastiest things come in pretty wrappings.

This is the case with the United States Supreme Court, an august group of individuals in lofty black robes. They're supposed to spout wisdom from those distinguished mouths, be a beacon of justice and fairness while lesser institutions descend into mudslinging partisanship.Instead, this Court, where rabid conservatives reign Supreme, amuses itself throwing stinkbomb decisions at a population that mostly hates its rulings. Last year, the court practically outlawed abortion in large parts of the US. This year, it weakened gun control,refused to secure access to water for the Navajo Nation, weakened labor unions' right to strike, and promoted discrimination against gays. Most recently, the court outlawed affirmative action, the practice of using race as a determining criteria for minority students in college admissions. Now race will become only one of several factors in the process of judging candidates for admission. So, is that a bad thing? Depends on who you ask, and how. Personally, I believe there are some stinkbombs in the Affirmative Action piñata. Of course, liberal black and white activists-- I haven't seen or heard too many Latinos- have set up a prodigious howl. This move, they say, will surely eliminate impoverished minorities' access to higher education. But the American public is curiously faceted on the subject. According to surveys,the majority opposes the Supreme Court being able to rule on Affirmative Action, yet it disagrees with the concept of race as a determining factor in college admissions. Moreover,this whole thing has come about because another minority, Asian students,sued Harvard University, alleging that it had used Affirmative Action to discriminate against them and favor black and brown students. It has also been said that Affirmative action doesn't really help impoverished minorities, who cannot afford college anyway. Instead, it favors middle and upper class minorities, who really don't need it because they have the advantages of affluence. Maybe the real objection is to eliminating Affirmative Action as a quick and easy way to expand minority elites. Because,you see, this ruling affects only a handful of elite institutions, the Harvards,Yales and Princetons that privileged kids compete for in large numbers. You certainly don't need Affirmative Action to get into community college, or most state-funded universities, or even run-of-the-mill private schools. All you need is a decent grade point average and the means to pay for tuition that is usually too high, even at the humblest schools. We need tuition reform for everyone more than Affirmative Action for the few. Some steps in that direction have already been taken: the Federal Government issues undergraduate grants based not on race, but on income. And they're fairly easy to obtain (you can even get help filling out the application). Finally, as a former civil servant, I've witnessed the results of the kind of tacit Affirmative Action that's practiced in government offices. Through it, and the cronyism it engenders, too many unqualified individuals manage to gain supervisory positions. This, to the detriment and disillusion of genuinely qualified employees.

El Precio de Tu “Fama”

De nuevo me entristeces, Juan Guillermo. No me sé ningún tango que le cuadre a la situación, sólo me viene a la mente un antiguo pasodoble ("Donde estás corazoooooon, n'oigo tu palpitaaar, es tan grande el dolooooor, que no puedo llorar...". De hecho, "es tan grande el dolor", que debo expresarlo aquí en español, sin el filtro de lo aprendido). Alma mía, te quise a pesar de tus rabiosos conceptos políticos de extrema derecha, tan opuestos a los míos--idiotas y torcidas que somos las mujeres. ¿Y dónde estás, corazón? Me enteré que andas por otros planetas. Hace tiempo que te había perdido la pista pero tu imagen resurgió, ahora con la estridencia de algo feo y equivocado. Y digo "imagen" por que estos días, solamente te veo por televisión en las noticias--de pasada, entre otras caras. Pero ahí estás.Y si alguna vez te creíste demasiado importante para mí, esto ya te coloca decididamente fuera de mi alcance. Tengo, sin embargo, el amargo consuelo de mi despecho. Me alegra ver que estás metiendo la pata en grande...¡y en público! Me pregunto cómo te irá en el falso mundillo de Washington, donde hacen caso solamente a quienes puedan ofrecer algo a cambio. Y tú no tienes nada concreto que ofrecer-- ni dinero, ni posición, ni influencia. Vienes de Nueva York, donde bastan la simpatía y la buena pinta para abrir puertas, y las dos cosas te sobran, cariño. Pero eres demasiado directo para un ambiente de hipocresía, eres todo inocencia en bruto: peleas con los puños y no la cabeza, boconeas sin base, sin pensar, no disimulas tus ansias de llamar la atención, tu desesperación por ser famoso. Y me imagino que en Washington te creerán burdo, primitivo. El caso es que te has colocado de asesor de un político tan deshonesto, que varios miembros de su propio partido están pidiendo su renuncia. El tipo es un gordo prieto y afeminado, repulsivo, descarado. Logró ganar su elección a base de mentiras que se han descubierto desde su victoria: mentiras sobre quién es, donde estudió, donde trabajó, de dónde sacó tanto dinero para su campaña, cómo se convirtió en millonario de la noche a la mañana. Se dice que es aliado secreto de oligarcas rusos, y que es un estafador. Cuentan cómo se lanzó a recaudar fondos para costear la cura del perro enfermo de un soldado veterano. El gordo terminó robándose lo recaudado, y el pobre perro murió sin atención médica. El tipo también es un desfachatado de proporciones olímpicas. Cuando vivía en Brazil, se disfrazaba de mujer y participaba en bailes, cabarets y concursos para transformistas-- hay fotos que aparentan comprobarlo. Antes de hacerse congresista, aspiraba al título de Miss Brazil Marica (Miss Gay Brazil). Por ladrón, lo están investigando varias entidades gubernamentales (incluyendo el Gobierno de Brazil, donde alegan que se robó una chequera y gastó lo que no era suyo). Con todo, el tipo no quiere renunciar. Van a tener que acusarlo formalmente de algún crimen para sacarlo pataleando de la Cámara de Representantes de los E.U. Y mira tú, ESO es lo que estàs defendiendo ante el mundo, vida mía, sólo que no hay defensa posible, pues todo lo que dicen sobre tu estrafalario cliente està resultando cierto. Lo único que te queda es insultar a quienes lo acusan, y correrle detrás a ese gordo--uno más de su séquito de charlatanes--por los pasillos del Capitolio. ¿No te da vergüenza? ¿No te da asco? ¿No te preocupa tu reputación? Parece que no. Lástima que pese a tus esfuerzos, los medios informativos mayormente te ignoran, mencionándote sólo para burlarse. En las plataformas sociales del Internet, la gente se pregunta si en verdad existes, o si eres un invento más del gordo descarado. Ya ves, esa fama que buscas a cualquier precio de todo modos te elude. Y en algún momento, el gordo te abandonará, si puede rodearse de gente mejor conectada (de hecho, ya lo está haciendo). O si lo botan del Congreso. Ya ni te usa de vocero, pues prefiere acapararse el resplandor de la notoriedad. No creo que vaya a servir de vehículo para tu propia fama. Ahora estoy viendo que tú también estás gordísimo, tan bello que eras, y me pregunto si es por infelicidad, depresión o angustia. Si tuvieras algo de conciencia y mejor criterio, podría creerlo. Pero sabiendo lo que sé, lo tengo que dudar

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So, tell us… what race are we?

Last night, the dolce far niente of my retirement was interrupted by a telephone pollster from the NYS Deparment of Health and the Siena College Research Institute. The guy said I'd been selected "randomly" for a survey, but was a little too vague about how the gathered information would be used.At first, I was sorely tempted to beg off, then decided that for 10 minutes of my time, I could be a good sport. And the interview unfolded pleasantly enough, covering my opinions on everything from the legal drinking age to breastfeeding in public. However, things came to a screeching halt when he asked me my race. I told him I really didn't know and I was not joking: you see, I'm whiter than some folks, not as white as others. My son (photo above) claims that, like critters in the bush, I have "protective coloring" because of my light hair, skin and eyes.He says I can almost "pass" for white; although of course, I'm not. My son subscribes to American absolutist notions of race because he grew up in the States, and because he cannot be mistaken for anything but brown. It's true that race is not totally a social construct--there are visual considerations as well. Some people are unmistakably white, black or Oriental. In between, there's a whole range of skin shades: race is a spectrum, a continuum from pale to tan and black. And to date, there aren't enough little boxes on paper to check off and identify everyone's place on that spectrum. But really,it should depend on the mirror: you are what you look like, end of story. At least, that's how most Latinos think. For us, a black woman can have white children and viceversa. Or you can be white and have black siblings. None of that one-drop rule that blacks in this country so fervently espouse. American blacks think that if you look white but your great-great grandmother came from Mozambique, you're black. Latinos believe that with time and intermarriage, families can "evolve" into whiteness--regardless of where their ancestors came from. "It's racism with an escape hatch!", exulted a black friend when I explained it to him. Another black friend views such notions of racial fluidity as insulting,heretical. She claims that on employment and government forms, the denomination "other" really means "other niggers". The issue is that in the US, determining race is not that simple. It is a process fraught with sociopolitical meaning, because assigned race is a form of currency that places top value on whiteness. So naturally, everyone wants to be white, and "established" whites become the arbiters of racial assignation. Whites decide who's white. It's a way of neutering competition from nonwhites trying to share in race-based social privilege. Race thus becomes a matter of perception: it depends on who you're talking to and what they think you are. Race in the US is also a matter of geography, where the racial goalposts keep moving according to where you're standing. For example, in Miami, (where my fellow Cubans adamantly insist on their whiteness) I' m definitely white, but in NYC, maybe not so much. So who's White in America? It's a matter of shifting opinions rooted in historical convenience. Greeks and Italians, for example, weren't considered white until late last century. Even so, their whiteness was assigned begrudgingly and given a separate status to appease WASPy sensitivities. Greeks and Italians became "ethnic" whites (a euphemism for "Inconclusively White", if you ask me). They stumbled upon that dubious distinction because at some point, whites decided to officially expand the notion of whiteness so they wouldn't be outnumbered by the surge of other races within the US. Of course, it's impossible to convey even half of all this during a 10-minute interview with a pollster. After all, these ideas are not my own, I adopted them because they make almost lyrical sense to me. They can be found in Critical Race Theory and in the book "Whiteness of a Different Color" by Matthew Frye Jacobson (Harvard Press). And though I swallowed that book whole, ideologically speaking, and though I do recommend it, I note it has been relegated to curiosity status by a literary establishment that likely prefers more familiar American notions of race and caste. But back to the survey: While I kept trying to dodge the issue of my own race, the pollster kept trying to wear me down, asking different versions of the same question: : "Well, so what are you?" I finally gave up and told him that I'm white--only because the survey didn't include any other options that might better accommodate reality. There was no "other" category, for example, and no "brown"--and "Hispanic", as we all should know, is not a race, but an ethnic denomination spanning people of many different colors who speak the same language and are culturally similar(NOT identical). And though I know that enlightening Americans (no pun intended) will take more than modifying sections on race within official paperwork, doing just that might be a good start towards expanding public consciousness about race over time.