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Inappropriate Storytelling?Friday, Sept. 11, 2009 3:43 AMFormer California State Assemblyman Michael Duvall now says his talk of mistresses and sexual escapades was just 'inappropriate storytelling,' and that he was not having an affair. In most workplaces, that kind of 'storytelling' could be the grounds for a sexual harassment complaint. And it makes you wonder why a man who promoted himself as a family-values/traditional marriage advocate would think - even for an instant - that a meeting room in the state building would be an appropriate venue for that kind of talk. Duvall's home page for the State Assembly is in the process of being dismantled, with all of the data, including his biography, now absent. Eight years ago this morning, our country was attacked in what - in retrospect - seems to be so simple and direct an approach that it should never have happened. Hijackers? With nothing more than box cutters? No, surely it must have been more than that - there must have been some vast organization with global reach and backed by untold millions! And our leaders fed us scary bedtime stories that still have some people in this country jumping at shadows or anything remotely Muslim. Talking heads encouraged (and continue to do so) locking-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-is-gone patriotism, painting horrific vision of how 'they' are going to come 'here' and take the place over. I mean, talk about inappropriate storytelling. Isn't eight years of this horseshit enough? It's time to grow up, America. It's time to develop a national security policy based on reason rather than fears. It's time to forward a foreign policy that weakens terrorism not through military adventurism, but through weakening the conditions in which terrorism breeds: division, poverty, hunger, lack of education. We are a country that has sent men to the moon, probes into deep space, pioneered technologies that are revolutionizing how we communicate, and what happens to our economy echoes around the world ... but we can't do this? We're afraid to try, or afraid to fail? Why is this so? I'm not expecting a magic fix-it and the dawn of a new age of global peace and harmony, but poverty, hunger, economic disparity - these are challenges all people and all countries face. It's time to stop pretending our circumstances are unique, and stop wallowing in pity. At the very least, let's up our game here in America and set an example of what can be done. It's something America has excelled at, and there's no reason not to do so here.
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