This is the first in a series of blogger.com entries that will be posted when I have the time and/or jolly well feel like it. So there.

Like a lot of people, I have opinions. A _lot_ of opinions. You'll see some of them here. I also write prose, poetry, original songs and song parodies. You'll get those, too. If I've seen/heard a movie, live show, recording or TV thing I just have to rave about or rank on, that gets in here as well. Anyone wishing to comment can write me back through the blog. The most literate, thoughtful or interesting responses (the last is both a superlative and a pejorative) will be posted here with appropriate replies.

I'm posting a representative sample of my thought here to start off with. Some of it will necessarily be dated; I'll post new stuff as I come up with it.

The Other Drug Wars
Written April 2001, but still amazingly topical today

Have you noticed that there are a lot more commercials for prescription drugs on TV lately? You know the ones - they can run a full minute (or, without any specifics as to what the drug is supposed to be for, 15 or 20 seconds - see below) and spend nearly half that time issuing legally required statements: the side effects of the drug on display, warnings against pregnant women using it, etc. And almost all of them refer you to a Website and/or print ad containing even more information -- you know, the ones in your favorite magazines that consist of one or two pages of the ad itself and the same number of pages or more containing detailed clinical information about the drug.

The recent inundation of the airwaves with this type of commercial is no accident. Progressive journals such as Mother Jones (http://www.motherjones.com) have noted the trend. It is a direct result of recent loosening of federal government restrictions on prescription-drug ads (as compared to over-the-counter, or OTC, drugs, which have always had fewer restrictions). And the major manufacturers of prescription drugs -- the giant pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, Pharmacia & Upjohn, and Eli Lilly & Co., hereinafter “pharmcos” -- are seizing the opportunity to make an unprecedented push to make sure consumers get to know their brand-name drugs -- and ask their doctors for them by name.

A bit of explanation is needed for the reader to understand why this is different from all other consumer-product advertising...and more potentially dangerous. For the longest time, due to Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, any prescription drug ad that made any claims at all that the drug would do anything at all - even telling you what affliction it was intended to treat -- was required to contain the aforementioned detailed clinical information. While this was not such a problem for print ads, this made TV ads impractical unless the ad were annoyingly vague as to what the drug was for. (Remember those early TV ads for the allergy-relief drug Claritin? For all the viewer knew or could tell, it was a contact-lens cleaner to judge by what was said in the ad. The regulations then in force were the reason for the ad’s vagueness.)

So the pharmcos have been lobbying in Washington for years to get the restrictions on TV ads for prescription drugs eliminated or at least loosened. Why they would spend so much time and money working to accomplish this is easily understandable. No matter how much money any company, in any industry, spends on print ads, billboards, direct mail and so forth, the results pale beside the reach and immediacy of television. This is also why political campaigns eat up so much money these days: the largest part of the campaign budget has to be spent on TV ads, especially in campaigns where the candidate lacks name recognition.

And in pharmaceuticals as in politics, name recognition is the name of the game. When a prescription drug is developed and patented by a particular company, under U.S. law that company enjoys a 10-year period of exclusivity in the manufacturing of the drug - a legal monopoly. No one else is permitted to sell a generic equivalent of a patented drug until after the 10-year period has expired. This gives the pharmcos, from their point of view, a fairly short window to exploit their invention free of competition.

Also, the pharmcos face one additional hurdle that other consumer products don’t: The consumer cannot buy their product directly. It must be prescribed by a licensed M.D. and the written prescription brought or faxed to a pharmacy before it can actually be sold to the consumer -- that is, the doctor’s patient. So what the pharmcos have to do is get the consumer to ask the doctor, when they go in to see her, to prescribe a particular brand-name, patented drug...or at least ask her whether she thinks the drug might be effective for the problem being treated.

It should also be noted that the doctors themselves are also bombarded with sales efforts on behalf of these drugs by the pharmcos: ads in leading medical journals, drug samples for dispensing in the doctor’s office, phone calls and visits from sales reps and so on. Their mission is to get their drug, rather than another pharmco’s -- or a cheaper generic equivalent, where one exists -- into the patient’s body...and more money into their coffers.

So the physician is faced with a dilemma. Usually the most effective, cutting-edge drugs are the newer ones, still under patent and therefore hideously expensive. (Anyone who has bought prescription drugs lately knows that this is not hyperbole; Viagra, one recent example, costs upward of ten dollars *per pill!*) The doctor can prescribe a cheaper, usually older generic that may take longer to take effect, and/or not be as effective...or the newer drug that will cost the patient more money (or the patient’s insurance provider; usually both, these days, under “co-payment” schemes that are common today). Which does she give precedence to: the patient’s physical well-being or his financial status?

Most often, the decision is left up to the patient, who usually lacks the doctor’s more detailed knowledge of both the human physiology being treated and the drugs in question. If the patient absolutely demands either the newer, brand-name drug or the cheaper alternative, most doctors will prescribe them what they demand -- regardless of whether it is actually the best medical choice in this case. Given the litigious society in which we live, they can hardly be blamed for not wanting to substitute their own judgment for the patient’s...even if theirs is supposed to be better by virtue of a medical degree and clinical experience.

These facts make the pharmcos’ multi-billion-dollar attempt to influence the critical intermediary juncture of doctor and patient through television a very real danger to the health of millions. No doctor’s professional judgment should be subverted by the marketing departments of pharmcos and their advertising agencies. Given the current control of both Congress and the White House by big-business-friendly Republicans, however, change in these new policies is highly unlikely.

Conservatives will argue that the pharmcos are legitimate businesses and do not deserve to have avoidable hindrances placed on their lawful operation and promotion of their products that others do not have. But the same argument could be made against tobacco companies, and while the federal officials in charge of regulating that industry may buy the logic, the state attorneys general who lodged billion-dollar lawsuits against the tobacco companies to recoup medical costs generated by smoking don’t buy it -- and neither do the courts. Tobacco and guns are regulated by a federal agency all their own, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), for good reason: these products are unique in that they kill their users or other living beings when used as intended.

While most prescription drugs are not necessarily that lethal, some can be if prescribed or used wrongly, and others can cause needless discomfort and suffering, to say nothing of miscarriages and birth defects in pregnant women. Admittedly, pharmcos’ need to stay competitive is greater than ever in the current environment of corporate gigantism that produces mega-mergers like Pharmacia & Upjohn and Glaxo SmithKline. Nonetheless, their greed should not be allowed to outweigh concern for the health and well-being of the patients who use their products -- or the professional security of doctors who prescribe them. To both doctor and patient, the old warning still applies, more strongly now than ever: caveat emptor ("let the buyer beware")!

Reagan on Rushmore? NOT!
Letter to AOL Message Board, March 1999

[Note: CBS News’ partner website for America Online had a story a few years back about some conservative activists ginning up a movement to add Ronald Reagan’s face to the four Presidential likenesses on the Mount Rushmore National Memorial -- aided and abetted by certain Republican members of Congress. This letter was a response to said article.]

I don't care if we're talking about Reagan, Franklin D. Roosevelt or ANY president, Democrat, Republican or otherwise -- Mount Rushmore should NOT be altered. Here are several reasons why not:

1) Look at the sculptor's (Gutzon Borglum) mission statement, from the CBS/AOL web story: He had envisioned his creation as a "commemoration of the foundation, preservation, and continental expansion of the United States." By that criterion, the ONLY 20th century president other than FDR who belongs on Rushmore is the one who's already there - FDR’s cousin Teddy. And don't you right-wingers dare try passing that old chestnut, "Reagan preserved the nation by winning the Cold War!" The Cold War ended because the Soviet empire collapsed under its own longstanding internal pressures and follies, not because of anything Ronnie-boy did.

2) It's an international icon and historic monument, recognized the world over as a symbol of America. You wouldn't put another statue next to Liberty on that island in New York Harbor, would you? Or next to Abe's throne in the Lincoln Memorial? Or build a theme park on a Civil War battlefield? (Unless you’re Disney, of course...) You DON'T mess with Rushmore, either.

3) It sets a horrible precedent. If we say it's okay to add Reagan, then sooner or later every two-bit pol and pundit will want his or her favorite President added as well. The four who are there had national consensus on their side as to their individual greatness and worthiness to be so enshrined; neither Reagan nor any other 20th-century President (besides TR) can say that.

And there's only so much of Rushmore to sculpt. When we run out of mountain, will we start sculpting the neigboring peaks? Or dump more rock on the side to expand the original? We humans spend way too much time and money messing up the environment as it is.

4) Rushmore is one individual artist's creative statement. You don't start adding faces to Rushmore without his permission (or his family's, as he is dead) any more than you would add another figure to the Pieta, tack on a movement to Beethoven's Ninth, colorize CITIZEN KANE (Orson Welles himself, before his death, said, "Keep Ted Turner and his damn Crayolas away from my movie!"), or write a sequel to GONE WITH THE WIND -- oops, we did that last one already, didn't we?

5) Reagan already has plenty of memorials, starting with Reagan National Airport in Washington -- too many damn memorials, for my taste. This is just the ultimate in an unending series of efforts by conservatives to apotheosize their idol.

And from a personal perspective, if any other 20th century President is to be so honored, I would sooner see FDR up there than deficit-ballooning, Iran-contra-lying, arms-for-hostages-trading, religious-right-favoring, environment-despoiling old Ron. Saving the world from Nazism and the Depression beats the living daylights out of invading Grenada and saving American culture for bible-thumpers any day of the week, in my book.

I wrote this a few weeks ago, inspired by hearing the legendary Oscar Brand on a bill at a college campus folk festival on Long Island. This week the Port Authority of NY & NJ, which owns the land on which the late lamented World Trade Center sat, announced that it has ruled out building anything new on the site higher than 50 stories. Looks like this song is needed more than I thought... (Print it with the chords in a monospaced font so they line up right. Sing it anywhere you like...please.)

ONE FLOOR HIGHER
Music and lyrics by Matt G. Leger

(Key of D or capo 2 from C and transpose)

Chorus: D G D
Build them one floor higher than they e-ver stood be-fore;
A D
Build them one floor higher -- let them once more sky-ward soar!
D D7 G
Let the whole world see we are not a-fraid, but free;
Em A
Like the phoe-nix from the smoke and ash and fire,
G D A D
Let the tow-ers rise a-gain, only one floor higher!

D G D
For so man-y years they were land-marks on our isle;
A D
Now in lower Man-hattan they are dig-ging out the pile.
D D7 G
Those who did this think they have beat-en us with fear;
E A
Let us prove them wrong, though the price paid has been dear.

All the men of means say it can’t be done again --
It would cost too much, twice as much as way back when.
We could not have built this great country thinking so;
Lots of folks I know would be glad to kick in dough!
Chorus

Could we only ask those who died that awful day,
I would bet you cash that I know what they would say.
“If our memories you would truly pay respect,
Give us back the place we gave our lives to protect!”

Some say it’s a grave to rebuild would desecrate;
Let a monument stand to honor their sad fate
In a plaza broad, with each name engraved in stone
And new towers behind so they’ll never be alone.
Chorus

For one hundred ten mighty stories they did rise;
Let the new ones stand full as tall and more in size.
With the flags of each of the nations who lost souls
Flying proud and high on a gleaming ring of poles.

They were more than steel, more than concrete, glass and tin;
All our city’s pride through the frame was woven in.
They can’t take our hope or our spirit, let them see --
Put our World Trade Center back the way it used to be!
Final Chorus

Music and lyrics ©2002 by Matt G. Leger. Distribution and nonprofit public performance freely permitted as long as this credit is maintained. Recording or performing for profit requires permission and payment of royalties per ASCAP/BMI standards. Any such profits from this song will be donated to the September 11th Victims' Relief Fund (www.september11th.org).

Term Limits: The "Stop Me Before I Vote Again!" Movement
March 3, 1999

Cokie Roberts of ABC-TV's Sunday morning panel-discussion show THIS WEEK (who just happens to be a homegirl of mine, being the daughter of former Louisiana Rep. Lindy Boggs [D]) also writes a weekly syndicated opinion column with her husband, Steven V. Roberts. Usually they strike a pretty centrist tone between them, but last week they struck blood with a column that prompted a reply from the other side of the issue.

The Robertses wrote a column last week on term limits that appeared in the New York Daily News. It noted that several U.S. Representatives who had signed pledges or made promises to limit themselves to two terms or less appear now to be reneging on those pledges, or at least considering doing so, feeling they had not completed what they came to Washington to do. The Robertses took this among other recent events as indicative of the waning influence of the term limits movement, and bid it "good riddance," calling it "the single worst idea to infect American politics in recent memory." Of course, given her parentage, Cokie cannot be expected to approach this subject with total objectivity; but she did make some valid points, including Republicans' hypocrisy in having denounced their Democratic colleagues for taking advantage of incumbency and then doing likewise themselves.

This week, the Daily News printed a rebuttal to the Robertses from Paul Jacob, national director of U.S. Term Limits, the nationwide group that has spearheaded the drive to eliminate what it sees as corrupting careerism on the part of politicians at all levels of government. Career politicians, Jacob and his supporters maintain, lose more touch with the people they were sent to represent the longer they stay in office, especially in Washington. Jacob asserts that the Robertses are, not to put too fine a point on things, full of it; that the term-limits movement, far from being moribund, is supported by a majority of Americans.

Jacob asserts that the only ones who oppose term limits are the lawmakers who "come to Washington to drain the swamp [and] decide it makes a great hot tub," their staffs, lobbyists and the political and media elite. He claims that term-limited lawmakers "work harder because they're on a deadline" and "aren't beholden to the leadership or special interests because a career in Congress simply isn't their goal."

The Robertses, for their part, point out that representation in the House, unlike the Senate, is proportional by population and thus "the only way a small state like Colorado can stand up to a big state is to acquire seniority and important committee assignments." With term limits, this does not happen, so "the big states will always win." They also remind us that experience is the only thing that can inure members to the tidal wave of pressure from lobbyists and interest groups, and experience can only come with time and tenure.

But the term-limits movement has a more fundamental problem: It is based on a faulty assumption, namely that voters are essentially sheep, to be led around by the nose by whomever has the most money to put campaign ads on TV and send out direct-mail literature. One must assume that the members of the movement are not excluding themselves, as presumably they vote along with the rest for the same old incumbents because they can't or won't take the time and trouble to learn about the challengers and make an informed choice.

The term-limits movement is born out of understandable frustration that the system designed by the Founding Fathers centuries ago no longer seems to be working, that incumbents with money, connections and power cannot be dislodged by the usual process of term limits, called elections. But if they hate these incumbents so much, presumably they vote to remove them, yes? And yet the rascals keep getting re-elected. Who is voting to keep them in, if not the term-limits backers? This is why I like to call term limits the "Stop Me Before I Vote Again!" movement, after Larry Talbot's famous plea in the old Wolfman movies, "Stop me before I kill again!" He can't stop himself once the full moon arises, and to hear term-limit backers tell it, they can't stop themselves either.

Perhaps the sheep assumption has some truth -- but only some. In this age of cable and satellite television and radio saturated with political analysis and call-in talk shows, and the Internet, with its plethora of Websites and fora for just about every shade in the political spectrum, such an assumption does not bear close scrutiny. All one has to do is check out these media briefly to see hundreds of engaged, enthusiastic voters, inquiring, reading and voicing their opinions. Or just ask any Representative or Senator about his or her daily flood of mail, phone calls, faxes and e-mail.

I submit that the real problem is not that people are voting for the "same old same old," but that too few people are voting at all. Voter turnout in 1998's elections continued the decline established over the past couple of decades or more, even with an increase in registrations. Leger's Second Law of Politics states: Low turnout always - ALWAYS - favors the noisy minority. This is why the religious right has been able to attain clout far out of proportion to its actual numbers: because the more sensible two-thirds of the American electorate largely stays away from the polls in droves. No better than one-third of the total number of eligible voters even bothers to register (despite the motor-voter law having made the process easier by allowing registration at DMV offices), and even fewer of those who do register actually vote on Election Day.

This means that policies and offices that affect our daily affairs are being decided by a minority of a minority. This is the kind of environment that allows those who are able to command the advantages of incumbency to retain power -- and places challengers with limited funding and next to no name recognition at a decided disadvantage.

For a cautionary example of what this movement can do carried to its logical extreme, ask the citizens of Virginia, whose state constitution contains one of the most stringent term limits anywhere. Virginia governors may not succeed themselves; this causes the Old Dominion to face upheaval every four years as a new governor must be elected and choose his (no women yet, though they did have the nation's first black governor, Democrat L. Douglas Wilder) cabinet and administration officials. It also causes each governor to leave much of the work he planned to do in office unfinished and sit out at least one full term before he can run again, assuming he is able and has the energy to do so. Most do not. Thus, every single governor of Virginia is a lame duck from the git-go.

Robbing voters of their freedom to re-elect incumbents who prove themselves truly honest and effective, elected officials of their ability to earn the seniority that enables real effectiveness, and legislative bodies of the institutional memory that enables efficiency and prevents repeating of prior mistakes is not the answer to the problems our government faces. Term limits subverts a well-designed process in place for two-and-a-quarter centuries in favor of taking the easy way out.

David Broder, the syndicated columnist who makes his home at The Washington Post, has over the past decade put forth a number of spirited and cogent refutations of the term-limiters’ arguments as expressed in the same paper by his opposite number on the right, George Will, during the Congressional consideration of a Constitutional amendment for term limits on Congress a few years back. Their respective columns can be found at this URL:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/termlimits/opinion.htm

As Broder puts it, “For more than 200 years we have changed people in office through elections. Why, in this generation, has that become such a burden that we must find some automatic, no-brains, no-bother way to do the job?"

The real answer, aside from serious reform of campaign finance, is to find some way to break through the massive voter apathy and disillusionment with the political process and get more fannies into the voting booths. When more people put their ceaseless complaints about the way things are being run into action with their fingers on voting levers, then real change will be seen -- and only then.

Defending Harlan Ellison
Written August 2001

Harlan Ellison: either one of these two words alone can conjure up instant awareness of who is being described in any reasonably well-read member of the science fiction and fantasy community. It is virtually a brand name -- one of the best-known and most successful in this branding-obsessed era of ours. Just say "Harlan" and fans will smile knowingly or grit their teeth; say "Ellison" and editors, writers and other pros will likewise either grin or grimace. Yes, I'm speaking of the notorious enfant terrible of the SF world (and if you call him an SF writer he may well spit in your face; he hates being pigeonholed, and has written much else outside the genre). He is as talented and engaging and funny a raconteur in person as he is a master storyteller on paper; one of my friends says of him that he can make attempted murder sound cute. His very name makes lots of otherwise confident, self-assured adults quake in their shoes...particularly if accompanied by the news that his actual presence is shortly to follow.

He has been writing for over four decades and has produced and sold more than 1,700 discrete pieces of work, ranging from novels, short stories, novellas, teleplays and screenplays to essays, reviews, commentaries and informational articles. For the better part of my life (I was born in 1963 and my earliest recollection of reading his work was in my early teens) he has at various times made me laugh, cry, gasp in wonder, gape in sheer astonishment (usually at his incredible skill and quite often at his equally massive store of chutzpah). And on more than one occasion he's made me want to purchase round-trip airline tickets to Los Angeles for the sole express purpose of kicking his bony old ass all up and down Ventura Boulevard. (I have told him this in more condensed version in person, by the way, to his very face and shook his hand. He doesn't say anything *about* someone that he would not say *to* them, and I concur.)

But always, *always*, with whatever he has written, whether it is a foreword for someone else's book or a column for a magazine, whether it is a speech before a group or a TV show based on his teleplay, above all else he has made me think. And this insistence of his that I, and anyone else reading or hearing his words, do just that -- bloody well *think* about what he is saying rather than just passively absorbing, look at what is really happening in this weary world of ours and ignore the propaganda, refuse to fall for the okeydoke (the old carny term he uses for a con job), discount the hype and blow off the bullshit -- is what makes him precious, valuable, irreplaceable enough as a professional to forgive his self-admitted failings, foibles and transgressions as a person, of which there are many and due to which his enemies are legion. His demand that his readers make use of their God-given cognitive ability -- not only use it, in fact, but push it beyond its normal accustomed exertion, challenge themselves and their beliefs, societally-pounded-in teachings and assumptions -- is what I admire most about him. I believe this is why I get off way, way more on his nonfiction than I do on his fiction, as excellent as the latter is. (Do I really need to go on about the Hugos and the Nebulas and the Writer's Guild awards and Mystery Writers of America Edgars and other awards, honors and plaudits he has earned for his fiction? I didn't think so.)

Is there anyone left on the face of the planet who doesn't know that he wrote the STAR TREK episode "City on the Edge of Forever," far and away the most popular episode (not only of the original series, but among all 300+ episodes of it and its three sequelae *combined*) in poll after poll? Or of how he was forced to watch his brainchild mutilated in rewrite after hamfisted rewrite and others, including the sainted late Gene Roddenberry hisownself, usurp credit for its success? Is there anyone who has not marveled at his book "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," so popular it has inspired a computer game? Even channel-surfing TV viewers ran into him on the Sci-Fi Channel in its early days when he provided a regular commentary segment to one of its shows; he also has done the same for the Galaxy Online website. And then, of course, there is BABYLON 5, J. Michael Straczynski's five-year masterpiece of future war and peace that is now considered a STAR TREK-caliber watershed for televised SF, for which Harlan served as creative consultant and even acted a cameo role in an episode.

Everyone who knows anything about Harlan has a story about him they have heard or witnessed. Some are funny and some are appalling. He does not have the least little bit of gladness in his heart for suffering fools, and will tell them off in no uncertain terms if they impinge on him. He's almost like Estelle Getty's character Sophia in the classic sitcom THE GOLDEN GIRLS, with her stroke having shut down the part of her brain that censors what she says. I say "almost" because unlike her, Harlan has not to my knowledge had a stroke (though he did have quadruple-bypass surgery a few years back) and does possess at least some ability to restrain himself, as shown by his forbearance to speak publicly on the STAR TREK matter for decades until the 1990s when he published his original script for "City" in book form, with scads of documentation of both his adversaries' claims and evidence against them.

Even those he calls friends have suffered his insults, his anger and his ridicule, mostly jokingly (ask Peter David, another fine writer and FOH [Friend of Harlan], what I mean) but sometimes not (STAR TREK and BABYLON 5 actor Walter Koenig swore fulsome oaths never to speak to Harlan again at one point). He is fandom's own combination of George Carlin, H. L. Mencken and Don Rickles, the misanthropic "Mr. Warmth" of the con circuit. And yet this is not entirely sarcasm; the man does possess genuine warmth for the right people, ones he deems deserving. He raised money to help George Alec Effinger, yet another fine writer and a onetime friend of mine, after George's New Orleans home burned down and he was sent to the hospital with catastrophic treatment needs. He did the same for the family of the late author Manly Wade Wellman, holding an auction at the 1986 Atlanta World SF Convention, Confederation. He is as gentle as a lamb on Prozac with young children, as I have personally witnessed.

And he gives of himself and his time selflessly to causes in which he believes, such as the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, set up to pay legal fees for comic-book creatives, publishers and dealers facing community persecution for the content of their wares. (You haven't lived until you've seen him do the country-preacher "Sea of Green" routine he uses to coax donations from crowds.) He famously rounded up talents such as the late A.E. van Vogt and Norman Spinrad to form "The Committee" to generate fan and pro letters to NBC when he was told STAR TREK was in danger of being cancelled in its second season (this turned out to be of questionable truth, but read his "City" book for that story). He himself is now plaintiff in a lawsuit against media behemoth AOL Time Warner and other commercial entities and individuals for posting his work and that of many other well-known authors on the Internet without permission or compensation, in violation of copyright law, and this (along with raising money to pay for same) is his latest crusade.

Harlan is a person of extremes, and brings up reactions in kind from those who encounter him. People either love him to death or wish for his death (the latter usually as slow and painful as possible); there is no in-between. Conversely, he will fly cross-country on a moment's notice to succor a friend in need; but if you are foolish enough to make an enemy of him, look the hell out! He reports in his “City” book that one person told him the real reason Gene Roddenberry had been cremated was for fear too many people would come to piss on the Great Bird’s grave. It may well be advisable to do the same for Harlan when he croaks (may that day be long in coming!), for the same reason. He admits to holding grudges, as David Weber writes of a character in his Honor Harrington books, until they die and then having them stuffed and mounted to hold onto them still longer. He tells a story of how, each year on the anniversary of the publication of a magazine column that trashed Harlan undeservedly, he sent its author a postcard bearing the words, "I haven't forgotten -- Ellison," year after year up until the man died of cancer.

Let it be stipulated that Harlan is at best mercurial, shifting like a fresh-off-the-assembly-line Ferrari from Nobel Peace Prize-level kindness to thermonuclear hostility. Stipulated that he is, as one poster to the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written wrote, "qualified to teach a Ph.D-level course in being an asshole." But dammit to hell, he's *our* asshole, and as far as I am concerned, anyone who messes with him messes with me -- and I'm far from the only one who feels that way about this éminence grise of what Ellison contemporary, colleague and friend David Gerrold calls "the literature of amazement." (Yes, I know I'm using a lot of French. I'm a full-blooded Cajun by birth, so I'm entitled. Phbbth.) Who can get under your skin despite your love for them better than family? And Harlan is unquestionably part of the family we call SF, however much he may reject the label.

Sometimes I wonder whether, at 67 years of age, Harlan ever has moments when he feels he is beating his now-white-haired head against a wall to no purpose and wants to hang it up, quit fighting the good fight, just say “to hell with it” and enjoy a well-earned retirement. (I wished him a hundred years more life and many more writings, and he said, "Oh, God, don't wish that on me..." in mock despair.) I want him to know, should he somehow read this (he disdains the Internet profoundly and will not even use a computer to write; his trusty old typewriter still works just fine, thank you) that millions of us out here are cheering him on as he takes on the Man, turns on the world and rails against entropy itself -- and that I hope he will choose and be able to keep on doing so for a good long time to come. And here is my explanation as to why.

Some have speculated that Harlan actually enjoys being the bête noire of fandom, that he actually makes pissing people off his personal hobby, that he somehow derives pleasure or satisfaction from his curmudgeonly reputation. I cannot tell you whether he would confirm or deny this as I have not asked him. But as he and Joe Straczynski showed in BABYLON 5, real people are not cardboard cutouts, all one thing or all the other, white-hat-wearing good guys or mustache-twirling villains. "Yeh, yeh, even Hitler loved Eva Braun and his mother," I hear you saying; but to compare Harlan's occasional petty behavior to such villainy is to both trivialize the Holocaust and do him an injustice (and being a Jew by birth, Harlan will be the first and most forceful to point this out to you). People get a reputation for being "good" or "evil" based on the choices they make at various points in their lives; as Harlan said in a public appearance recently, we are all who and what and where we are right now by our own choosing, whether we realize it or not. Maybe he does hit the "bad" end of the scale more often than is good for him or others; but at heart, Harlan is on the side of the angels by philosophy. He does have a code of ethics; it may not be comprehensible in spots to some, and he may fall short of it frequently (as he has the grace to own up to), but it is relentlessly consistent and he adheres to it as faithfully as any fallible human being can.

And more to the point, we need someone like Harlan to be the "bad cop" to the "good cop" of other, more gently-tempered celebrities and professionals. Even if he were, as his critics allege, a cruel, vicious, tact-bereft, perpetually pissed-off loose cannon, perhaps at times it takes one such to speak truth to power in the face of the intimidation and resources power can marshal. As we enter the new millennium, the state of the world in which we live argues vigorously -- nay, cries out for the kind of man who is willing to go Don Quixote and stand up in public to point out that the emperor is bare-assed naked. One who doesn't care what the penalty may be for saying so, because he knows it goddamned well needs to be said by *someone* before the emperor carries all the rest of us down the toilet with him.

Every day that Harlan Ellison continues to write is one more day that a truly egregious SF film will not garner millions for a movie studio and its minions without having its wrongnesses, technical, dramatic and otherwise, laid bare (as director Peter Hyams learned to his chagrin after Harlan eviscerated his film OUTLAND). Every day that he appears somewhere to speak is one more day that injustice to the early creators of our best-loved comic-book heroes and their present-day inheritors will not go unremarked. Every day that he grants an interview to or writes commentary for the press is one more day the pompous and the petty, the dishonest and the dastardly of the publishing and entertainment industries must dread the striking of his well-honed rhetorical lance. In short, every day more that this man draws breath, the genre we cherish is improved; though he may loathe thinking of himself as a part of the genre, he is nonetheless a tireless paladin for it. Or perhaps not so much for SF per se as for excellence in any genre, demanding that we as paying customers settle for nothing less.

Read his essays, currently being reprinted in a new hardcover series called EDGEWORKS, and you will see what I mean. Read his scathing two-volume critique reprised therein of the industry that has helped keep a roof over his head and food on his table for over 40 years, THE GLASS TEAT and THE OTHER GLASS TEAT. Attend an Ellison lecture if you are fortunate to live close to a venue where he is giving one. Check out his panels at conventions such as I-Con on Long Island or the Worldcons. Count how many times he makes you mad with something he says that you identify with--and note carefully and honestly whether it is because he's wrong...or because deep down in your heart of hearts, you know he's right and you hate him for it. Tally also how often he tells stories of kindnesses people have done for him, and his extravagant repayments thereof. And note how many times he makes you laugh till your head hurts and your lungs gasp desperately for oxygen, and how many times he tells you something new and worth knowing that you had never known or even conceived of.

In other words, if you are going to pass judgment on Harlan Ellison, do it on the man, not the myth. As Spider Robinson wrote of the late Robert Heinlein, inferring anything about a person from her fiction is a mug's game; it is in a fiction writer's job description to get into the head of someone different from her in temperament, experience or belief and report back what she finds. Read Harlan's fiction, certainly, and enjoy it, savor it, see how it's done by someone who honest-to-Ghu knows *how*. But if you would truly know him, and you are not one of those favored to be among his personal circle or even ones outside it of whom he is fond, read his nonfiction, hear his speeches, talk to the man one-on-one (it is possible; I have done it myself and survived the experience). Contrary to popular belief, he does not bite your head off unprovoked if you approach him. He will tell you "No" firmly if you delay him from doing his business with "just one more thing..."; he has written than people who say that to you 90% of the time are looking to do nothing worthwhile with the time they are attempting to steal from you, and he is right, and I should have remembered this if I did not want him to say it to me as he did. If you know his rules going in, the onus is yours for breaking them.

Along with Heinlein, the late Dr. Isaac Asimov and Robinson, Harlan is part of my personal pantheon of literary Grand Masters, and admittedly this colors my observations. But I have made an honest effort to cite fact as well as opinion, personal experience rather than hearsay, and documented statements rather than rumor in this polemic. Beyond that, I enjoin you again: look at the work, talk to the man and get as much factual data as you can before you write him off as a bitter old crank or a mean-assed rat bastard. For myself, he has bettered my ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, beauty from ugliness and quality from crapola...and for that I thanked him when I met him, and I thank him again here; I will owe him that debt to the end of my days, for it cannot be repaid. Maybe he will never choose me to enter his circle of friends, and that is his right...but I'd settle for just being allowed to hang with him some evening when he's really on a roll.

TO THE TERRORISTS
Written the week of September 11th, 2001 in New York, NY

You think you can take our strength from us
By striking at our heart
You are wrong

You think you can fill us with terror
Keep us from living our lives and doing what is right
You are wrong

You think you can divide us
Turn us one against another
You are wrong

You think you can hide
Kill and maim and destroy with impunity
By the tens of thousands
And never be discovered
You are wrong

You think we are decadent and weak
And will not retaliate against you
A nation destined for the dustbin of history
You are wrong

You think you will gain Paradise
For your killing of innocents
By some perversion of true faith
That feeds your crazed hate
You are wrong

This is the nation that won freedom from King George the Third
This is the nation that fought the largest, longest, bloodiest Civil War anywhere
This is the nation that brought the world out of the Great Depression
This is the nation that saved the world from Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolf Hitler
This is the nation that won the Cold War
And is still here to tell of it

This is the city that erected the Empire State Building
And the Chrysler Building
And the World Trade Center
And two Madison Square Gardens
This is the city that built Yankee Stadium
And Shea Stadium

The man who ran the Manhattan Project
And built the Pentagon
Was an American

We will stand fast
We will come back
We will rebuild
We will survive
We will find all of you who plotted this
And all the ones who helped you
And we will make you pay
And we will make sure this never happens again
Ever, to anyone

We are the single richest nation on the planet
We are Earth’s sole remaining superpower
We are the one nation you do NOT want angry at you

We are the United States of America
And we are coming for you
And it is YOU who will know the true meaning of terror.

Matt G. Leger ©2001

ON THE PASSAGE OF THE McCAIN-FEINGOLD ACT:
Conservatives argue that there is no campaign-finance crisis, just as they argued a few years ago that there was no health-care crisis. Not only is the amount of money in politics not a problem, they say, but we don’t spend enough on politics. Newt Gingrich is fond of pointing out that we, as a nation, spend less on politics than we do on potato chips and chewing gum. A Cato Institute fellow, writing in the New York Daily News, says there is not either too much money in politics -- that the total spent last year amounts to less than one dollar per citizen.

Which would be a fine and legitimate argument, except that it is based on two faulty assumptions: (a) that every American contributes these dollars, and (b) that every American benefits from them. While it may be true that almost every American contributes to the corporate money via their purchases of goods and services, only a minority of consumers are even aware that the companies do something politically with the money after it leaves their hands, let alone what that something may be. And of course, only those who share the beliefs of the political groups in question are contributing those groups’ dollars, since groups that receive public funding (such as the Boy Scouts) are either prohibited from or severely limited in political advocacy by federal law.

It can be, and is, argued that every American benefits from a broadening of political discourse, which is what the issue ads and other “message” activities that soft money finances supposedly do. If you limit or ban spending on issue ads on the premise that it is wrong for any one person or group to spend too much to advocate a certain candidate or position, then logically that same premise demands that talk show hosts on radio and the companies that sponsor them should also be limited in what they can spend to promote their views, or have their shows banned.

But there is one key difference between talk show hosts and the parties and groups that receive the money from soft money donors: The talk show hosts are not demanding access to our government officials -- they are simply speaking to the people at large and depending on them to contact the officials and demand policy creation or change. The soft money donors, on the other hand, are expecting something more direct in return for their money: that they themselves be allowed to get in the faces of our elected officials and influence them to create or change policy, for the direct and specific benefit of the companies, industries or constituencies they represent. In the case of the Republican 105th Congress’ efforts to rewrite environmental and occupational safety laws two years ago, it actually happened that industry lobbyists were invited into the back rooms of Congress and allowed to help with the rewriting -- to the detriment of workers and the environment in almost every case.

Given that there are usually other groups whose needs and goals are in diametric opposition to those of the donors’ groups -- labor vs. management, pro-choice vs. pro-life, polluters vs. environmentalists -- it cannot be argued that their effect is anything like as democratic as that of talk show hosts, who are broadcasting to far broader and more diverse assemblages of people. The spending of soft money is one of the clearest examples available of quid pro quo; it essentially causes our government to be for sale to the highest bidder, instead of being driven by the vote of the people as it was designed to be.

In the end, what soft money does under the current system is give the wealthy few power to drive the public policy that governs the lives of the many -- and all too often, to negate the votes of the many against the making of policy to benefit the few. The amount of money spent is entirely beside the point. The problem is not how much is being spent, but rather who is gaining disproportionate (and sometimes improper, in the case of foreign interests) influence from spending it. Reform of the current system is thus not only legitimate, but imperative; methods can be debated by honest people, but something must be done...and done with dispatch.