Impossible Scissors

Ever since the landmark University of California v. Bakke ruling, the US Supreme Court has gradually been chipping away at Affirmative Action statues and hiring practices. The trend continues with today's ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano, where white firefighters were denied promotion by the city of New Haven, Connecticut because an insufficient number of minorities had met the qualifications for promotion.

In writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy refuted the city of New Haven's argument that the promotion test at the center of the case could have left the city fire department open to a discrimination lawsuit. In the dissent of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she argues that nobody is entitled by rights to promotion. I really have to take issue with Justice Ginsburg here; if a government is not obligated to ensure that all people are judged based on personal achievement, then it has failed in its duty of protecting the inalienable rights of its citizens. There is no reason why the City of New Haven (or any other city, state, or federal agency) should deny merit-based promotions to qualified individuals on the basis of race alone.

In spite of the important legal precedents at play, the most prominent story is the role played by Supreme Court appointee Sonia Sotomayor. It's a unique situation when the Supreme Court rules on a decision made by a prospective member, and in this case Sonia Sotomayor emerged with some prominent dings in her armor. Not only was her decision overruled by the court she wants to join, but her appellate ruling was criticized by both sides for its cursory attempts to address the existing case law.

The Ricci ruling is an important victory towards creating a society that racks and stacks people by merit, and discredits New Haven's truly idiotic attempt to punish qualified people in the name of racial equality. While it's a setback for the career of Sonia Sotomayor, it's unlikely to deter at least 51 Senate Democrats from confirming her and preserving four reliable liberal votes on the Supreme Court.

While the world was largely stunned by the sudden passing of pop icon Michael Jackson, the reaction I picked up from many people I work with was best summed up as "little boys will be able to rest soundly tonight."

Nobody disputes that Michael Jackson was an insanely gifted singer, songwriter and dancer. Even after his reputation was tarnished by charges of child molestation, his music continued to be covered, parodied and imitated. Can anybody forget the South Park Halloween episode where Chef and a horde of zombies did the "Thriller" dance? Did anybody question why Alien Ant Farm covered "Smooth Criminal" or Chris Cornell sang "Billy Jean" long after Michael had receded from view?

At the same time, Michael Jackson's image could never recover from the child molestation charges. He was always eccentric as an adult, but the 1993 and 2003 allegations were too much for the public to stomach. While I suspect that Jacko did touch underage boys in inappropriate ways, the charges were never proven in a court of law.

Michael Jackson was so many contrasts in one package. He captured America's hearts as a poor black boy, but gradually morphed into a person who was wealthy, white and feminine. He publicly wanted to help disadvantaged children, yet little boys learned to fear him. And Martin Bashir's documentary on Michael Jackson really cut to the heart of the contradictions. Michael was a child celebrity who never got the chance to enjoy his childhood. To compensate, the adult Michael never really grew up. He had no sense for appropriate boundaries when dealing with underage boys because his heart was just like theirs. He was really a boy (albeit a scarred, pill-popping boy) until the day he died. As Jonah Goldberg succinctly put it, Michael Jackson's tragedy was not in the way he died, but in the way he lived. He was undone by the fame, fortune and celebrity which made him, and didn't have the chance to enjoy all that his talent had earned.

My last positive memory of the "King of Pop" came during the fourth grade, when my school put on a musical that concluded with all grades singing "Heal the World." Our music teacher even got one of the girls to dress like Michael Jackson. Lyrically, "Heal the World" is simple fluff and not a particularly complex song. But maybe the world needed a song that could convince them, with Michael's boylike naivete, that "there are people dying, but if you care enough for the living, make a better place for you and for me."

Let's remember those words, and pray that all of the scarring affecting everybody around Michael Jackson can heal.

I never thought I’d live to see the day when Iranians lined the streets and challenged the authority of the Supreme Leader. For all my life, Iran has been a hardline Shiite theocracy, descended from the revolution which brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power in 1979. While nobody knows how this standoff will end, the fact that it occurred at all is seemingly miraculous.

What is so different about this Iranian election which has led to so much hostility between the people and the government? For many commentators on the right, the creation of a democratic government in neighboring Iraq could be a factor. It’s an interesting question, but the direct link between Iraqi democracy and Iranian riots can’t be made.

For the Iranian people, there has always been a yearning for freedom and human rights. The rule of the Shah during the 50’s through the 70’s was in many ways a repression of the elections which brought Mohammed Mosaddeq to power. The revolt against the Shah was a popular uprising against his authoritarian government. But like The Who sang in “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” the new boss was the same as the old boss, and the rule of the Supreme Leader became a different flavor of the authoritarianism that the Iranians rejected in 1979.

While the Iranian people have a natural desire for the freedoms of liberal democracy, the actions of the Supreme Leader in reaction to Iraq’s invasion, occupation and rebirth have played a key role in fermenting the riots we see today. The Iranian leadership naturally feared that Iraq would be America’s staging grounds for an attack against Iran’s nuclear sites, and sought to sway the nascent Iraqi state by sponsoring Iraqi Shiite militants. They tied Israel’s hands by instigating another war with Lebanese Hezbollah. The election of a hardliner like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 was all but assured by Iran’s Guardian Council when selecting the presidential candidates. For the Guardian Council, they needed a hardliner like Ahmadinejad to project Iranian defiance towards the United States, Israel and the Iraqi factions who opposed a Shiite Islamic government.

The Ahmadinejad presidency bought the Guardian Council some time, but it alienated the Iranian people. It made Iran into an international pariah of Holocaust denial while turning its back on needed economic reforms at home. It’s hard to explain why the Guardian Council would allow a reformer like Mir Hossein Mousavi to run for president against Ahmadinejad in the first place if it wasn’t going to allow him to win under any circumstance. Perhaps elements of the Council want real reform. Perhaps they thought the Iranian people would accept the fraudulent election returns and abandon hope in the reformers. But the Iranian people took the election seriously, and they won’t settle for a fictitious vote tally.

Mir Houssein Mousavi is far from a perfect candidate in the eyes of the west; in many ways he’s still a revolutionary of 1979 vintage, trying to bring the country back in line with the revolution’s ideals. But he supports many needed reforms that would improve the basic liberties of the Iranian people, and it’s hard to see how he could be worse than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. For a Supreme Leader and Guardian Council who are afraid of a fundamental change in Iranian society, he’s probably the worst enemy they could have imagined.

It’s been said many a time that the only thing worse than being America’s enemy is being America’s friend. Implicit in that statement is America’s proclivity towards abandoning an ally when it’s been politically convenient to do so. There’s no more apparent case of this than the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings against Saddam Hussein in 1991. President George H.W. Bush told the Iraqis unequivocally that if they were tired of war, they should topple Saddam Hussein. The Iraqis lived up to their end of the bargain, but the administration was afraid of what it would cost to nation-build in post-Saddam Iraq. The US armed forces were ordered by their leaders to helplessly sit on the sidelines while the Republican Guards slaughtered the would-be revolutionaries.

Fast forward to 2009, and the protests of the Iranian people against the rigged election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are forcing me to recall the bitter memories of 1991. While many western observers hope that we’re witnessing a counter-revolution that rolls back much of Iran’s 1979 revolution, nobody is placing any bets as to how this is going to turn out. The lesson to be taken from recent revolts in Iraq, Serbia, Venezuela and elsewhere is that popular uprisings succeed when the regime’s armed forces choose to sit on the sidelines, or defect to the side of the revolutionaries. The Iraqi uprisings of 1991 were put down because the Iraqi Army and Republican Guards, in spite of the defections in the face of the American onslaught, were able to pull themselves together and reposition their forces to fight the rebels. The fall of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia can be tied to the Serbian army's refusal to back him in the face of election-related revolts. In order for Iran’s counter-revolution to succeed, they must convince the Revolutionary Guards and regular army to stand down and ignore President Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameni. At this point it’s too early to tell what will happen on this front. Thus far, the task of dispersing the protests has fallen upon militias and other instruments of the police state short of the Revolutionary Guards or Iranian Army.

President Obama has taken a lot of heat from conservatives who want him to openly support the revolutionaries. They are no doubt going through the flashbacks of 1991 Iraq, as well as Candidate Obama’s epic failure to condemn Russia’s brazen invasion of Georgia last August. I’m certainly sympathetic to their concerns. But an endorsement of the revolutionaries by an American president could de-legitimize their movement. It’s important to remember that the revolution against the Shah in 1979 was not launched out of religious zeal whipped up by Ayatollah Khomeini; it was a backlash against the authoritarian Shah and a perception of excessive American meddling in Iran’s affairs. The Ayatollah Khomeini cunningly harnessed Iranian nationalism and twisted it into support for his theocratic regime. If I were president, I would take a middle ground by expressing grave reservations about the election’s legitimacy, and calling for the UN to investigate.