Americans can sometimes seem to be quite a contradictory group. Or at least, certain segments of the population are.  For instance, the segment that purports to represent the Moral Majority seems to have as much trouble as other political parties in knowing when to keep their pants zipped. Those same Americans who brandished guns and American flags after 9/11, bragging that those terrorists had met their match when they took on America, seem to be some of the same people squealing with fear over the idea of some Gitmo detainees being brought to America. We’re apparently that scared of them despite the fact that we are the most heavily armed nation in the world.

But I think the contradictions really start to make me nuts when politicians, who receive health care through a government run program, tell the general public that there is no way the government can run a health care program.  Yet I don’t hear these politicians requesting to bow out of their government health insurance program in favor of a tax credit or voucher program for themselves and their families. They’d have a lot more respect from me if they did. As it is, they seem to represent insurance companies and not the average uninsured American for whom a tax credit is meaningless because they make so little money they could never afford the insurance premium for themselves and their families.
People tell me that health insurance is a complicated issue and I simply don’t understand what a costly disaster it would be to provide health care for all Americans. Usually the people telling me this have health insurance through their employers and have never had to face the choice between a medical visit or groceries because they couldn’t afford both.
I just don’t think the basic issue of health care coverage is all that complicated. For goodness sakes, France has figured it out. England, Sweden, Norway… the list goes on and on. And just about every country on that list enjoys a standard of healthy living that puts us to shame when we look at statistics on everything from infant and maternal mortality to elder care.
We hear a lot from politicians and others about the nightmare of a government run health insurance program. The DMV is usually used as a classic example of the kind of service one could expect. First of all, the DMV is a state run agency. And secondly, the last few times I’ve been there, I haven’t had time to even read one story in my magazine before my number was called. So service there wasn’t all that bad.
We trust the federal government to handle nuclear weapons and our entire national defense yet somehow are supposed to believe that same government couldn’t handle a health insurance program. Does that make any sense to anyone? The federal government runs a little program called the IRS. Ever heard of it? Try cheating on your taxes or not paying them at all. Find out just how efficient the feds can be when they want.
The other argument made is that in a government run health care system, you would have to wait months for an appointment. Well, guess what folks. If you’re sick and don’t have health care, you’re don’t have to wait for an appointment because you can’t afford one. I’d rather be in the wait line.
Government funded health care may not be the ideal solution, but I have yet to see an ideal solution proposed. Meanwhile, it beats heck out of waiting until you have to go to the emergency room and have you leg amputated due to uncontrolled diabetes because you couldn’t afford the cost of a doctor’s visit.
The bottom line is that it seems to be the people with private health insurance who are the most vocal about not needing a government program for the millions of working Americans who make too much to quality for Medicaid and two little to buy insurance on their own. Until all those senators and representatives who now receive health care insurance through the federal government voluntarily give it up and accept a voucher or tax credit instead, they have no credibility with me. And they shouldn’t have any with you either.

I can’t imagine ever again living in a place where I can’t look up in the sky and see an eagle circling overhead.

Cameron Diaz was on the Daily Show promoting her new movie. She mentioned that while sitting in the waiting room for her call to go on, she was very hungry and the only thing the Daily Show puts out is little bite sized candy bars. Apparently overcome by her hunger, she ate one. She then came on the show and went on at some length about how “buzzed” she was and how she couldn’t ever imagine eating more than one little bar because it got her so “high” and “crazed”.
And I wanted to reach through the TV screen, grab her scrawny little size zero body and shake her until the candy bar popped back out… at which point I would have happily eaten and and a few more to boot.

To be quite honest, given the hysterical coverage the cable networks have given to Michael Jackson’s death, I for one am shocked that he didn’t rise from the dead after three days to come back to save us all.

Steven Baldwin has left a show titled “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here”. Leaving aside for the moment the obvious issue of the fact that the people on this show barely qualify as human beings, let alone celebrities… or, really, why would they be on the show?… let’s look at Steven Baldwin’s reason for leaving. He’s been bitten by a mosquito that laid eggs in his arm.  Oh how I wish that the reason he was leaving was that he was bitten by an the bug of good taste and self respect instead. But apparently not even the mosquitoes in his jungle have any self-respect.

...because the worse TV shows ever are on the tube. I saw an ad for one that apparently involves Donald Trump and the word Raw in the title. NO ONE SHOULD EVER WATCH A TV SHOW WITH DONALD TRUMP IN IT, LET ALONE ONE IN WHICH THE WORD RAW APPEARS IN THE TITLE.  Please, just take my word for this. Even that thing living on his head is keeping its eyes closed during the taping.

Farrah Fawcett and I were born on the same day in the same year. I think, all things considered, I will now stop being jealous of her hair… and body… and smile… and teeth… sigh. She’ll still be more beautiful than me in heaven… should I actually ever get there. I wonder if I can request a different quadrant from where she’ll be staying.

It occurs to me that Father’s Day came and went without any acknowledgement on my part to the many dads I know. This is probably because I have now lost all the dad figures in my life. For the first time ever, I didn’t even have an uncle to call.

So I spent Father’s Day wondering whom I’d call to wish a Happy Father’s Day if I could call anyone I wanted. Much to my horror, the name that kept coming to mind was Dick Cheney.
Yes, that Dick Cheney. The man who seems to exist in a world of permanent darkness where everything that goes bump in the night is something that will hurt you. Trust me when I tell you that I thought he would have been way far down on any list I’d ever come up with for praise.
But Dick Cheney did something that shows the power love for your child carries. Because there can be no other reason in the world that he came out in support of the right of gay people to marry. He looked at the woman who had once been his little girl and knew instinctively that she wasn’t evil, wasn’t out to destroy society as we know it, didn’t want to corrupt the world, and didn’t have perverted morals. She just loved someone society tried to tell her she shouldn’t.
Cheney is the master of dark reasoning and dark decisions so it is not surprising that there might be some who view his championing of this cause with cynicism. But I can’t for the life of me imagine what this position gains him in his particular circle that isn’t far outweighed by what he loses.
In the end, Dick Cheney was faced with what most people eventually are forced to face… someone they know, love and respect who comes out of the closet and acknowledges their homosexuality. For most of us, this is the moment when we have to confront some of our most deeply held beliefs, misconceptions, misunderstandings and feelings. It’s never easy. But if Dick Cheney can offer his daughter love and acceptance, then I think those on the right who condemn homosexuality as evil incarnate should pause for a moment and wonder if perhaps they shouldn’t have at least a little inkling of doubt.
As I’ve followed the sad debacle of the Anchorage Assembly allowing unlimited debate from some very questionable sources on the issue of gay rights, two things strike me. One is that those who claim their opposition is based on their Christian beliefs are always quoting everyone but Jesus to justify their position. They quote the Old Testament and then the quote every book they can from the New Testament but they never can find a place where Jesus’ own words condemn homosexuals.
The other thing that struck me is that we are having a debate on whether to allow a minority their rights. I find myself wondering how I would feel if the Anchorage Assembly chose to have a public debate on whether to give me my rights. I thought the purpose of the constitution was to protect minority rights from the majority. It frightens me to think that these rights can now be voted away. Women and blacks would still be waiting for the vote if this had been allowed in the past.
Mostly, though, I’ve wondered what Dick Cheney would say to the Anchorage Assembly about whether or not he thought his daughter had a right to be protected from discrimination in housing, health care and employment. I have this image of Cheney, with that look of perpetual pessimism on his face, patiently explaining that his daughter is a good woman with a wonderful partner and an even more amazing child, his grandchild, and how this family deserves to have its rights protected and respected.
That’s not apt to happen, of course. Instead, the Anchorage Assembly will continue the circus it began without apparently any clear plan on how to proceed once the marching band started playing. And the gay people of Anchorage will watch as hate washes away their hopes for equality.
Here are words I never thought would come out of my mouth… where’s Dick Cheney when we need him?

Why is it that when Christians want to justify hate, they quote everyone but Jesus? They quote the Old Testament, they quote everyone in the New Testament who claims to be speaking for what Jesus wanted. But they can never quite find the Jesus quote that justifies their hate.
Why is that?

I have tried all week to shake the image but I can’t. Am I the only one who was slightly freaked by the intensity of the stare and the movements of our president as he took that fly out? Man, I’d hate to be caught in his crosshairs!

Staring at a blank word document on a computer screen, deadline just hours away, mind as blank as the word doc on the screen.
Oh My God! I’ll never have a creative idea again! The scam is up! It’s over! My mind has finally fallen into the abyss and can think of nothing more than getting back to a game of computer bridge.

I work with a lot of really miserable, crappy fathers who do everything from beating their kids to having sex with their daughters. This has made me very conscious of the good fathers in my midst.  There are many of them. They are the ones who do their best to provide for their family, are there for their kids when the need arises and don’t run from their families at the first sign that there might be some rough weather ahead.
And believe it or not, if I had to choose a father of the year for this year, it would be Dick Cheney. Yes, that Dick Cheney, the original Dark Lord of all good science fiction writing. I choose him because, when push came to shove, he looked at his gay daughter and saw the person who was there, the daughter he clearly loves, and publicly said that she should have the right to marry the person she loves. For the uber conservative that he represents, this is tantamount to treason. But he stood up for his child despite what it might cost him in his public life and for that he deserves kudos… and trust me when I tell you, that is not a statement I ever thought I’d make in this lifetime unless I was heavily drugged and I’m not.

As I continue to follow the debate over the gay rights’ ordinance in front of the Anchorage Assembly, I find it hard to imagine how I’d feel if the citizens of this city were engaged in a debate over my right to live equally with other Americans and have my rights equally protected. I always thought that part of being an American meant that people didn’t get to vote on whether or not any group of people had the right to their rights. I guess I was wrong.

Going to Wasilla for a book signing the day my column comes out in the paper and has a not very flattering take on the Palins.

I spent this past week with a couple of my heroes. Both are Alaskan women who make it clear that being an Alaskan woman means being independent, strong, inquisitive and intellectually restless until the day you die.

Charlotte, my friend in Homer, is closing in on 90 years old. She and I nursed together in Barrow. Then she moved to a cabin in Homer where she had to ski to her mailbox long after the age at which I can barely walk to mine. As her body aged and betrayed her with its limitations, it looked as though she might end her days in California.
But no one checked with Charlotte when the discussion of her staying in California happened. Or, if they did, they didn’t hear the steel in her voice when she said she was coming back to Alaska, coming back to Homer, coming back to the place she loves above all else. So she pulled herself together, did the physical therapy required with a vengeance, and today sits in an assisted living apartment in Homer where she can see Alaska from her window.
If you go to visit her, I’d suggest you not walk slowly for her sake. She will just yell at you to walk faster because she has a beer waiting for her at lunch and she doesn’t want it to get warm.
On Saturday I went to a memorial service for my friend from Bird TLC, Barbara Doak. We released an eagle in her honor and people spoke of what she meant to them. This quintessentially Alaskan woman, like my friend Charlotte, raised her children as a single mom when the world portrayed family life only as an Ozzie and Harriet episode. Barbara lived life on her own terms, staying young and nimble in mind even as her body grew old. Her children were there – three children, three PhD’s – each proof of the intellectual curiosity that comes from a mother who thought that algae in a pond was more fascinating than the pabulum on TV and passed that searching curiosity on to her children.
It was as I basked in the glow that these women cast that our governor decided to pick a fight with David Letterman over a tasteless joke he made that would have been forgotten as soon as it was said except for her seemingly insane decision to make a big deal out of it.
Now before you start typing those e-mails to me, let me assure you that I do not care for tasteless jokes about sex among any combination of peoples, let alone teenage girls. But I must also add that I do not normally turn to late night television to see my standards of taste upheld. David Letterman is an acquired taste and continues on late night TV because he doesn’t mainstream well.  If he did, he’d be competing at 10 PM against Jay Leno this fall.
Once again I found my governor on the receiving end of endless commentary and debate between such national media stalwarts as Entertainment Tonight, Extra and Access Hollywood.  Her children, who she claims to go all momma bearish trying to protect, are again tossed about on the waves of celebrity gossip and call in talk show hot lines thanks to the attention she brought to them.
If Palin really wants to protect her children, she needs to start by taking them out of the equation and out of the debate. When you have your 18-year-old crisscrossing the country carrying a baby and speaking out for abstinence only sex education, you make her fair game for pundits, jokesters and late night hosts looking for a cheap laugh. As for her 14 year old, I’m betting most Americans had forgotten her name until Palin brought it up again in this little tawdry dust up. You can’t use your children to get a headline and then declare them off limits when there is a response. 
It seems to me that any credibility Palin gets as a national political figure is destroyed every time she is the subject of an E Weekend news update. If you have any doubt about that, check out what happened to Bill Clinton’s credibility post Monica Lewinski. He had none.