Commentary

A 20/20 vision

2004 Best of Guest Columns (tie)

All I can do to cope with the fear of another Bush victory is entertain the political fantasies dancing in my head.


An endless capacity for fact-free fantasy allows President Bush to look at the daily disaster that he has created in Iraq and somehow remain optimistic. So, maybe a little fantasy will help me get through the state of angst that has seized me and won’t let go until, at the earliest, the evening of November 2.

Why do I need fantasy? Why am I taking this election so personally? Why is it that the anxiety level ratchets up with every turn in the polls, every debate, and every piece of news? It’s simple: There’s so much at stake.

If Bush wins this election, despite the disastrous mess he has made of the economy and the world, it will mark the death of accountability in America. It will demonstrate for all future candidates that, no matter how badly a president screws up, the incumbent’s remorseless application of fear, fear, and more fear will carry the day.

If we elect a president who talks endlessly of freedom, but works tirelessly to stifle the freedom to oppose his policies, we can expect more and more repression after the next terrorist attack in America. The starkest warning of this danger came from General Tommy Franks, who led the invasion of Iraq and later said in a magazine interview that another major terrorist attack could “cause our own population to question our own Constitution and begin to militarize our country to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty-producing event.”

If we choose this sadly inadequate man simply because we are afraid not to, it will prove conclusively that the American electorate simply does not read or pay attention. If we show that we’d prefer a president who seems like a good drinking buddy, over one who witnessed firsthand the evil of war and then spoke out against it, we will give the world a searing insight into our vacant souls. If we choose a leader who refuses to read, over one who can actually think critically, there’s not much hope for our republic.

In the face of these hideous realities, a few fantasies seem like a suitable option for maintaining my sanity.

* * *

It is election night. John Kerry has defeated Bush so convincingly that even the usual Republican dirty tricks at the polling place fail to change the result. This time, no legion of slimy Republican lawyers can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. It’s over. The frat-boy presidency is toast. Near tears, Bush thinks briefly about a military coup that overturns the election and restores him to power. But the election results near major American military posts have made it clear that there will be no armies marching to reinstall the AWOL president. In the limousine from the White House to the inauguration next January, he will have to sit, short and sullen and petulant, next to the tall and commanding new president.

Sitting with him in the residence at the White House, his silver-haired mother, Barbara, is not weepy. She is furious. Her useless son, who caused her endless embarrassment in his boozing days, has humiliated her once again. In the bitter recesses of her heart, where compassion chokes and grudges grow, she knows the horrible truth: For only the second time in the history of the republic, the first time since John Quincy Adams suffered a bitter defeat in the election of 1828, a woman enters the annals as both the wife and the mother of a rejected, one-term president. In fact, Abigail Adams had it easier: She saw her husband’s defeat, but a merciful death spared her the humiliation of watching her son lose, too. Unable to stifle her rage, Barbara Bush administers to her wayward child a ferocious tongue-lashing that makes the Leader of the Free World cringe.

* * *

It is 2006. Bush has lived through months of painful seclusion. He watched helplessly as President John F. Kerry led America to capture Osama bin Laden and put him on trial. He cringed sulked as Kerry skillfully ended America’s ill-conceived presence in Iraq — an achievement that cruelly eluded Bush. Now, the former president has decided to take the same route as John Quincy Adams by running for a seat in the House of Representatives. His friends in Crawford will surely not abandon him. In a defiantly folksy speech in May, admitting no errors during his presidency and still expressing confidence that weapons of mass destruction will soon be found in Iraq, Bush says he’s running for Congress.

On election night five months later, as Democrats regain control of both houses of Congress, in a landmark election that will permanently make the Republicans an impotent minority party, Bush loses his second straight election. It isn’t even close. His mother screams at him again.

* * *

It is a cold January day in 2021. America is focusing on the temporary stands outside the Capitol, for the inauguration of the third consecutive Democratic president. After eight solid years of serving under President John Edwards as the first African American vice president, and helping to broker the Amman accords that have finally brought peace to the Middle East, Barack Obama places his left hand on a worn Bible, raises his right hand, and faces Lani Guinier, the first African American Chief Justice of the United States. As Guinier leads him through the oath prescribed in the Constitution, Obama speaks the words loudly and crisply. “Congratulations, Mr. President,” Guinier says. “Thank you, Madame Chief Justice,” he says. Rather than give her the usual formal handshake, the new president draws the chief justice into a bear-like hug, then turns to the podium to deliver his inaugural address.

Obama brings to the presidency breathtaking intellectual and rhetorical gifts, plus a biography of cinematic sweep. In 1961, the year John F. Kennedy became president, Obama was born in Hawaii, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother from Kansas. Obama’s white grandparents had loved him deeply, but he learned, painfully, that his grandmother could still be afraid of a black panhandler. His Kenyan grandfather had been a Muslim and a tribal healer. Obama had struggled to live authentically as a young black man, had grown to maturity in Indonesia, New York, Cambridge and Chicago, had become the first African-American to become president of the Harvard Law Review, and had written about it all in a lyrical literary memoir. In 2004, he easily won a seat in the United States Senate, cruised to a second term in 2010, and joined the Edwards ticket in 2012. Finally, running on his own, Obama scored a landslide victory, carrying even parts of the South where a black president was once merely a nightmare. Left defeated, the aging Florida senator, Jeb Bush, in his last-hurrah run, had failed to salvage the dignity of the Bush family.

In the campaign of 2020, Obama had called for 20/20 vision. He often spoke of his grandfather the medicine man, and called for a national healing of the scars of racial hatred — the nation’s original sin. Choosing not to ignore the solidly Republican South, Obama had campaigned in backwoods bastions of racism where black men had been lynched for little more than lack of deference to their white neighbors. His near-miraculous ease with white southern crowds had won them over.

Now, in an inaugural speech that will be quoted in rhetoric classes for generations to come, President Obama is taking office in a time filled with bright promise, prosperity and peace. At this moment, to those listening to Obama, the long-ago disaster of Bush’s one-term presidency seems little more than an unpleasant dream.“

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Commentary

Fear(less) in Bogotá

BEST OF THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (SO FAR)

A transnational romance with a society shrouded in paranoia.


 

We are walking a rugged dirt trail up a steep forested mountain at 8,500 feet. With my sea-level lungs, I lag behind the group as my girlfriend, Anamaria, her father, and several friends jaunt ahead up the hill. Hoping that months at Bogotá’s altitude have acclimatized me a bit, I muster my energy and try to catch up with the rest.

“Hey!” I say in my best breathless Spanish.

The group pauses as I come up the path, and Anamaria’s father, Luis Alfonso, flashes his mischievous, toothy grin.

“Wait for the Gringo!” I gasp.

Before he can tease me with one of his trademark jokes, we are interrupted by the crack of a rifle shot.

The sound echoes and rumbles as we doubtfully consider the forest around us. The unstated question hangs in the air: Should we abandon our Sunday morning walk and head back down to the city? I’ve heard that there is a group of soldiers nearby, but I’m not reassured. Luis Alfonso scratches his chin. “If the army is shooting at things, that’s a sign of order. Let’s keep on going!” And off he goes, followed happily by Anamaria and our friends.

I can’t help but laugh. Gunshots are no more common in my experience of Bogotá than they were in the United States. But something tells me that interpreting gunshots as a sign of order and security is a distinctly Colombian behavior. It’s hard to decide if it constitutes denial or simply a kind of psychic self-preservation, but for some reason I’m completely happy to continue up the mountain, savoring the anticipation of a majestic view.

 

 

Clear and present paranoia

It can safely be said that Colombia holds a certain horror for people from the United States, if not the whole world. Non-Colombians can hardly be blamed for the negative impression, considering the information they get. One need look no further than Hollywood, which has produced such informative travelogues such as Collateral Damage (Schwarzenegger battles Colombian terrorists), XXX (Vin Diesel spends a scene or two battling Colombian guerillas), and Clear and Present Danger (Harrison Ford battles Colombian narcoterrorists). The world-famous Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar, although dead 10 years, also left us a rich legacy of imagery with which to envision Colombia: the corpses of politicians, judges, and journalists gunned down in the streets by $20 assassins, car bombs exploding right and left in Bogotá, half the government on the take and the other half brought to its knees by the power and caprice of a single criminal megalomaniac.

And that’s even without mentioning the 40-year-old civil conflict (or is it 60 years old? One hundred?), in which a tangle of leftist guerillas, right-wing paramilitaries, and government forces fight among themselves, killing and displacing thousands of civilians every year. Funded in large part by the appetite for cocaine in the United States and Europe, this once-revolutionary struggle has long since been drained of its ideology, and seems doomed to continue pointlessly for all time.

For this reason, Colombia (or “Columbia,” as it is often misspelled in the United States) is irresistible to foreign news media, who can count on the country’s “widespread violence” or “war-torn” nature to excite the audience. (Covering all bases, NPR host Tavis Smiley once even concluded a segment on the country with the phrase “war-, drug-, and assassin-torn Colombia.”) If the media isn’t hair-raising enough, one can read the State Department’s online travel advisory: the deceptively dispassionate tone puts a special shine on terms such as “extremely violent” and “risky.”

So it was difficult for me not to worry a reasonable amount in the weeks leading up to my move south to live with Anamaria. Even the most uninformed acquaintances, upon learning of my plans, would in solemn voices offer counsel along the lines of, “Whoa, man. Be careful down there.” It didn’t help when I emailed a journalist friend in Bogotá to ask for his perspective on safety in Colombia. In his reply, he reflected, “Well, I have been kidnapped, shot at (too many times to count), and nearly blown up by a car bomb, motorcycle bomb, and another smaller bomb. So, take that into consideration.” I was unclear how I could take his advice “into consideration” and still go, so I decided to ignore it. After all, I was moving to South America for love, and a little bit of danger just made buying the ticket more exciting.

Once the plane landed in Bogotá, though, my mind began to fizz with paranoia. I actually laughed out loud at myself but was unable to quell the rising tide of dark fantasies. What were my chances of getting kidnapped? And the friendly passengers around me … surely they were drug mules returning from New York? I found it hard to believe that I had somehow actually ended up in this country, which I surely would never have visited were it not for my unfortunate love for one of its citizens.

 

 

The charms of a Third World kaleidoscope

But after nine months in Bogotá, I am yet unkidnapped. My fears having gone unrealized, I am now a vocal proponent of the city. It’s a wonderful place. The same goes for Cartagena, for Montería and the Caribbean coast, and (from what I hear) even for Medellín, former home of the legendary Pablo Escobar. It turns out that large tracts of this country simply fail to live up to the Colombian rep.

Bogotá, for one thing, is an exciting, diverse, cosmopolitan, challenging city, a metropolis of 8 million, steadily sprawling across its high mountain plateau. It is less a cauldron of Latin American violence than a bewildering mix of contrasts. From the luxurious gated communities in the northern areas of the city, you can drive 40 minutes south to find poor barrios with mud streets and shacks made of corrugated tin.

The very streets reflect the spectrum defined by those two poles. Roads are shared by late-model luxury sedans and sport utility vehicles, tiny two-door economy cars, taxis both shining and crumbling, a swarm of mopeds and motorcycles, the occasional horse cart, and the pushcarts of “recyclers,” piled with cardboard and scrap metal. There is also a multitude of privately owned buses that screech to a stop any time pedestrians hail them. Musicians and street performers continually ply the buses and intersections. On any given bus ride, you may be treated (or subjected) to people playing guitars, pan pipes, drums, even full-size harps, or hawking candies, peanuts, pens and pencils, books, maps, or any other item that can be carried on to a bus. At intersections, jugglers, stilt-walkers, fire-eaters, and beggars of all ages perform and plead before cars stopped at traffic lights.

It was only a day or two before the last of my misconceptions evaporated, leaving only delight at this urban kaleidoscope. And the diversity goes beyond the experience of the streets. Colombia is a nation obsessed with its regional styles of music, food, and climate. To turn on the radio or choose a dance club is always to find something different: the accordion-laced laments of Vallenato, the ever-present Salsa, Rock en Español (Spanish rock), the stomping cowboy dance songs from the eastern plains, the African rhythms of the coastal north and west, and every kind of imported pop, hip hop, rock, and reggae.

There is a lot more growing in Colombia than cocaine. The country is, acre for acre, the most biodiverse nation on the planet, heir to a lush collection of distinct ecosystems and their unique flora and fauna. I can’t even visit the supermarket without lingering in the produce section, fascinated by stacks of bizarre fruits with a dizzying array of names and tastes: feijoia (something like a prehistoric kiwi), guanabana (tastes like coconut crossed with pineapple, looks like a spiky, green football), curuba (indescribable), granadilla, tomate de arbol, nispero, zapote … each of which is almost as unexotic here as an apple or a watermelon in the United States. These specimens are accompanied by great quantities of limes, mangoes, passionfruit, cantaloupes, bananas, and so on. You can order four or five of these fruits as fresh juice (made on the spot) in any halfway decent restaurant, confirming Colombia as the world’s most advanced civilization in terms of juice. A lack of fresh feijoa or guanabana juice in a restaurant is almost enough to make diners walk out.

 

The good life

So life is evidently very good here. But at a certain point, I started to wonder at the disconnect between the quality of life I was experiencing and the undeniable problems facing the country. I found that a few minutes skimming the newspaper headlines were enough to keep me more up to date on Colombia’s problems than most of my Colombian friends. For instance, on the night of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerillas’ 40th anniversary, the police intercepted a one-ton truck bomb intended to destroy a long tunnel beneath the mountains southeast of Bogotá. It was the kind of news that in the United States would have produced days of screaming headlines. But I have Colombian friends who have never heard of the incident, and are happy to leave it that way.

I don’t question their attitude openly. This is partly because it seems impolite for a foreigner to rub a country’s troubles in the face of its people. I also don’t want to be seen as the paranoid gringo. An American who is even minimally preoccupied with safety and security in Colombia may never escape the stereotype of his countrymen: lots of money, lots of fear, and little common sense. It is a stereotype reinforced by the U.S. embassy here, which warns its citizens not to frequent the popular restaurant and club areas of north Bogotá, for fear of the guerilla bombings that are surely to come.

Accordingly, I avoid harping on the subjects of war, drugs, or terror in Colombia. And this is easy to do, since Colombia’s narcoterrorists, guerillas, and cheap assassins are conspicuously absent from my daily life. Thus I participate in a kind of collective denial about violence and injustice here.

The evidence is there for those who want to see it. Families displaced by violence in the countryside beg at car windows in the streets of north Bogotá. And there are obvious and overwhelming differences in wealth and skin color between the powerful and the powerless in Colombia. While it may take a few society dinners to notice that many of the elite here are as white-skinned (if not as fair-haired) as any gringo, a single afternoon’s drive through downtown Bogotá is enough to see that strongly indigenous or African features correspond tightly to economic and social disadvantage. Even discounting racial factors, Colombia is deeply classist: breathtaking economic inequality is a hallmark of the country’s history, politics, and daily life. It almost makes you admit that the guerillas might have had a point when they started their rebellion.

 

Blissful denial

Although Colombia’s reputation in the world is certainly undeserved, there are also plenty of unsavory things most Colombians just don’t want to think about. On the inside walls of buses, which are decorated according to the driver’s idiosyncratic tastes, I have seen decals that read, “Here we don’t talk about the situation. Here we’re good, and getting better!” Perhaps this forced optimism is what happens after 40 years of intractable conflict. Perhaps it’s just pride.

Either way, it’s more than a facile attitude confined to the living rooms of posh Bogotá high-rises. Even taxi drivers complain about Colombia’s unfair reputation, and then rhapsodize about the fruit, the music, and the women. Denial here is not so much a deliberate self-deception as it is an expression of patriotism and a determination to enjoy life. In Colombia, I have learned that even a society fraught with social injustice and protracted civil war can for some be an excellent place to live. And Colombians are a people determined to exploit this fact to its fullest.

In spite of this pervasive positive spirit, however, it would be untrue to say nobody in Bogotá ever worries. Especially among the upper classes, fear expresses itself in the rituals of everyday life: 24-hour doormen who sit behind presumably bulletproof glass. Security personnel who peek into the purses and backpacks of shoppers entering upscale malls. Bomb-sniffing dogs at the entrance of underground parking garages. The mundane sight of military police armed with machine guns standing outside “important” residences. Most of all, fear generates myths and rumors. People in northern Bogotá are afraid of the southern side of their own city. The barrio known as Ciudad Bolívar, for instance, occupies a similar place in the imagination of Bogotá’s citizens as Colombia does in the minds of North Americans: an almost legendary place full of criminals and violence, which only a fool would enter. This might merely be urban folklore, told to frighten Colombian children. But in the case of Ciudad Bolívar, at least, I’m not interested in finding out.

Closer to home, the local variety of fear is usually once-removed. Rumors often circulate about friends-of-friends who have been robbed or attacked. (In the absence of an immediate guerilla threat here in Bogotá, common crime is the main stimulus for worry.) The hillside behind our well-off northern barrio of Rosales in particular draws local concern. A verdant forest crowned with spectacular ridges, its steep paths offer a perfect opportunity to exercise and escape the pollution of the city below. But mention that you enjoy this hill, and you will invariably hear stories about those who have been robbed, raped, or even killed on the mountain. For this reason, everyone agrees, you should only walk there “when it’s safe,” which tends to mean weekend mornings. Presumably that’s when the bad people sleep.

The potential dangers of mountainside walks have been the source of some tension in my pan-American romance, but I’m often reminded that it’s mainly my problem. Anamaria and her father, though deeply good-natured, are that stripe of defiant Bogotanians who consider any change of behavior on the grounds of safety a sign of paranoia and weakness. My repeated suggestions, for instance, that we at least stick together in a group while on the mountain, are often met with rolling eyes and the implication that this is tantamount to staying home and hiding in the closet. And although everyone agrees that we should hike the mountain “only when it’s safe,” this rarely translates into any actual change in behavior. After all, that would be giving in to fear.

To a certain degree, I’ve begun to adopt this attitude myself. If my options are either to be branded a scared gringo or simply to enjoy all that Bogotá and its people have to offer, I choose the latter. This is why, when Anamaria’s father creatively interprets the sound of a gunshot as a sign of safety and security, I’m pretty much content to continue up the mountain.

At the top, the path splits in several directions, and we follow it to the left along a pine-forested ridge that opens onto a lush gully to the right. Scrambling up some rocks, we arrive at our destination, hundreds of feet above the city. The ridge ends in a large knobby outcropping, topped by a small plateau from which we can see almost everything. A giant cross and a statue of the Virgin Mary stand here, gazing out over the unbelievable view: The Andean plateau of Bogotá stretches away to the distance, blanketed everywhere with buildings and roads, humming with the lives of 8 million people. For a moment, I can’t quite remember why everyone is so scared of Colombia.

STORY INDEX

TOPICS > COLOMBIA

Center for International Policy’s Colombia Program
URL: http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/index.htm

ReVista (Harvard Review of Latin America) issue on Colombia
URL: http://drclas.fas.harvard.edu/publications/revista/colombia/tcontents.html

El Tiempo (Colombian national newspaper — in Spanish)
URL: http://www.eltiempo.com.co

Semana (Colombian national magazine — in Spanish)
URL: http://www.semana.com.co

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Photo Essays

Faces in a rice paddy

Neither the landscape nor the people in North Vietnam appeared to have suffered through ten years of war.


Click here to enter the visual essay.

Neither the landscape nor the people in North Vietnam appeared to have suffered through ten years of war. The following images were taken during a month-long journey following the path of the Red River from Hanoi to Kan Cau, a Chinese border village.

The photographs illustrate a return to an extreme fundamental way of life. From the coal workers on the river bank to the land owners near Ninh Binh to the women selling produce in the Hanoi market to the colorful Hmong tribe in the far north, the Vietnamese have kept their heritage and pride using only what the land has to offer.

Artist Statement

As an artist, I aim to capture emotions portrayed in the human face. Born and raised in Israel, I have witnessed extensive suffering and tragic events since childhood. During my mandatory military service, I vowed to make peace my main objective in life.

I chose Vietnam for the diversity it provides. Fifty-four ethnic groups have maintained traditions, identities and peace after two decades of war. The Vietnamese have created a harmonious culture that has woven its ethnicity into a beautiful, multicolored, multi-cultural quilt.

Traditional customs relating to the essential needs of any individual and community are the strength and security within their quilt and their country. My goal is to produce work that inspires peace as the Vietnamese were an inspiration to me. Although, we are of many different cultures, races, religions and nationalities, there are elements that tie us together.

STORY INDEX

CONTRIBUTOR >

The writer and photographer
Uzi Ashkenazi, InTheFray.com Contributor

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Commentary

Rather troubling

Recent efforts to cover the “news” — even that which isn’t fit to print — have lent credence to, rather than drawn into question, political spin. Just ask CBS news anchor Dan Rather.


September was a bad month to be a liberal journalist. Yeah, I said it. I’m a liberal, and I’m a journalist. But that doesn’t mean I have any less of a beef with Dan Rather.

Who knows what Rather — CBS’s square-headed, monotone Franken-anchor — was thinking when he reported a story about President Bush’s National Guard service that was based on forged documents. He didn’t help matters when he continued to defend his reporting in the face of mounting evidence that the documents were bogus. Was he practicing the newly fashionable “advocate journalism,” or was he just lazy and gullible? I’m guessing it’s some from column A, some from column B. But we’ll never really know if Rather had nefarious intentions. What is clear is that he didn’t do journalism — or journalists — any favors.

Naturally, the Rather retraction got plenty of play on Fox News, where for weeks, everyone took turns scolding and shaming CBS, and speculating that the story had been planted by the Kerry campaign. (As if Fox — the research and publicity arm of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth — is somehow innocent of advocate journalism.)

To Sean Hannity and company, the Rather episode is just further proof of the lengths the liberal media will go to bring down the president. And it’s exactly what they need to justify their existence as a partisan news organization — Fox: the first line of defense against all the liberal wieners making stuff up about our fearless, decisive Commander-in-Chief.

As a corollary to the accidental favor he did for Fox News, Rather did the rest of the journalistic community a colossal disservice. It’s been a bad few weeks for the media, but in truth, it’s been a worse few years. Not only have we had the Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass business, but since the 2000 elections and September 11, mainstream news outlets have been all too focused on journalism’s dangerous new goal: balance. And Rather’s mistake is not likely to help reverse the trend.

In the effort to appear non-partisan, the mainstream media has abandoned analysis as an integral part of newsgathering, replacing it with a fragile, postmodern concept of “balance,” which assumes that no one is right and no one is wrong, so everyone should get their say. The result is that the media is no longer a filter, as it should be, but a conduit — a hands-off middleman between politics and the people, parroting each party’s talking points.

I’m not talking about the balance Fox News purports to provide, balancing the supposed liberal media with ultra-conservative rant. I’m talking about the impulse that has taken over the press to give equal time to the loony Left and the ridiculous Right, instead of just shooting straight.

Politicians are generally full of shit — our job as journalists should be to cut through it, not garnish it with a sprig of parsley and serve it to our readers. Sometimes the Left is right (Swift Boat Veterans), and sometimes the Right is right (Kerry changes his mind). The mainstream media needs to focus less on getting it balanced and more on getting it right.

The first step is regaining the public’s trust. And incidents like the Rather retraction aren’t helping.

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Commentary

One diagnosis doesn’t fit all

Thousands of parents grapple with their children’s ADHD. But as I sought help for my son, Grant, I sensed that the usual solutions — and the ADHD label — were inadequate.


Editor’s note: Last month InTheFray featured a visual essay entitled A good day for Grant,” which illuminated how seven-year-old Grant Lanham copes with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Since Sun-A Kim photographed Lanham and interviewed his parents and teachers, another chapter has been added to his story. Recently diagnosed with Asperger’s Disorder (Educational Autism), Grant, his parents, teachers, and classmates can now better explain his behavior, which often couldn’t be easily explained in terms of ADHD symptoms or alleviated with ADHD medication.

For instance, one photo in Kim’s essay (above) shows Grant putting his fingers in his ears to block out noise in the classroom. Before, Grant’s sensitivity to noise seemed to be a byproduct of his ADHD. But now the people in his life know better: Loud noises, which so frequently set Grant off at school and home, frequently stir up or scare people with Asperger’s Disorder. Equipped with this knowledge — and Grant’s new medical label — Grant’s parents and teachers are learning how to better control his environment to minimize the discomfort Grant experiences.

Geoff Lanham, Grant’s father and the coordinator for Project LIFE, shares his story, which was originally published in The GUIDE newsletter (Project LIFE, Columbia, Missouri, Autumn 2004).

The diagnosis didn’t match the behavior.

For a long time, I knew in my head and in my heart that there was something different about my youngest son, Grant. While the symptoms of ADHD were present, there were other behaviors that often alarmed me.

Grant began reading at the age of three. He was fascinated with dinosaurs and could tell you all about the diplodocus and triceratops. Grant often asked me for definitions of words that I had to look up in the dictionary. He was able to compute math problems that most six-year-old children couldn’t touch. Grant’s teachers always complimented him on his intelligence.

His conduct at home wasn’t really worrisome. Grant never got into much trouble. Although he always needed prompting to eat or to bathe, or do common household chores, he wasn’t much different than my other children.

Then why was there a problem?

At first I thought it was the divorce and new home — changes that would account for any six-year-old child’s behavioral problems. We also changed Grant’s ADHD medication — that itself was a living hell. When the dust settled from the divorce and the move, however, he was still acting out at school. On occasion, Grant had trouble with adults, but most of the aggression was directed toward his classmates. This behavior was unacceptable — to me and to his teachers.

When Grant was suspended from school for a lunchroom incident, I had the opportunity to discuss his problems with the vice-principal. After a long talk, we agreed that he needed further psychological testing. She recommended referral to the public school autism specialist.

Once again, we faced the arduous task of filling out paperwork. Both his mother and I answered questionnaires. For over two hours, we were questioned by the autism specialist. His teachers were questioned. No stone was left unturned.

Finally the day arrived. We found out why Grant behaved the way he did: He was diagnosed with Asperger’s Disorder (Educational Autism).

Having read about this disorder when my nephew was diagnosed with autism, I recognized many of the characteristics in my son. Back then, I hated to put another label on Grant, and discarded the notion that he might have autism.

Now I know better.

New labels, new solutions

Although Grant has another label attached to his resume, this one has been a relief. With insight into Asperger’s Disorder, we can help my son by anticipating problematic situations. Grant’s troubles seemed to happen in very noisy circumstances — in the gym or during recess — places where the decibel level makes the hardest of hearing plug their ears. The lunchroom was always difficult. Not only was noise bothersome, but certain smells also set him off. Grant would push or shove or throw things at fellow students. When I asked him why he did these things, Grant just said, “I don’t know Dad; I really don’t know.”

Now I know, and it’s getting easier to adapt his environment or to anticipate a challenge. For instance, children with Asperger’s Disorder are very sensitive to sound. Grant will cover his ears and get in the fetal position if a fire engine is within a couple of blocks — even when I can barely hear the fire engine. I cannot run the vacuum cleaner when Grant is in the house because he acts as if someone is running fingers on a chalkboard, and he screams as if in pain.

Certain smells set Grant off as well. Garlic, for instance.

Grant eats only particular foods. Try as I might to introduce new food, he always prefers the same old standby — hot dogs, yogurt, and chocolate milk. For a while, all he would eat for breakfast was chocolate chipped muffins. So I made them every morning. I’ve learned to choose my battles, and as long as Grant is eating, it’s better than fixing a meal that will sit on the dinner table, get cold, and end up in the garbage.

My son has discovered the wonderful world of Nintendo Gameboy. While it provides countless hours of entertainment (and a respite for me), I am weaning him from the toy. Grant loves to read, and we try to read whenever possible.

I play a game with him called “Let’s see who can stare the other down the longest.”  Children with Asperger’s have a difficult time maintaining eye contact; their eyes wander back and forth. With a lot of effort — the “stare down” game — we are making progress.

Children with Asperger’s often take things literally. If you say it is “raining cats and dogs,” don’t be surprised if a child looks at you in a puzzled manner. To him, it is just raining; there are no cats and dogs falling from the sky!

At school, we’ve adapted Grant’s routine. For instance, he has lunch in the assistant principal’s office. He has one recess instead of two. He is given advance warning of a fire drill. These simple steps improve Grant’s ability to get along with his peers.

As parents, we need to follow our instincts. We know what makes our children tick. I know that my son will struggle in the classroom. I know that he will shine as well. Grant has been fortunate. His teachers perceived his strengths and always encouraged him to be the best student possible. They knew in their hearts and minds that something was different about him. Together, we finally figured it out.

To quote Brenda Smith Miles, “Life is my son’s classroom and there is no summer break.”

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TOPICS> ASPERGER’S DISORDER >

Learn more about Asperger’s Disorder
URL: http://www.aspergers.com

URL: http://www.baltimorepsych.com/aspergers.htm

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Commentary

Our sons

Contrary to what some critics are saying, boys raised by feminists are growing up just fine.


(Illustration by Joe Sun)

Obscenity alert! Somebody call the Family Research Council! Dial up the Eagle Forum. Somebody step up to the plate on the side of decency. I thought when Virgin Atlantic Airways introduced the company’s newest VIP perk, urinals shaped like women’s open mouths, great numbers of organizations would be offended. But only the National Organization for Women stepped up.

Offended doesn’t even come close to describing what I felt when presented with the idea of young boys following their fathers into the men’s room to take a leak in a woman’s mouth. And it started me thinking about how often I’ve heard the theory that women’s rights advocates are ruining the country’s boys: the Feminization of Freddy, that sort of thing. Yet it took a feminist organization, NOW, to keep our sons and grandsons from being subjected to participatory misogynistic perversion.

Both my son, Adam Cox, and my son-in-law, Jake Nath, were disgusted by the Virgin Atlantic urinal. Both young men were raised by feminists, and it got me thinking about feminists and their sons.

I am from a continuum of feminists, the fifth of five daughters raised by a Southwest Kansas farmer and a teacher who were both avid women’s rights advocates. My mother came by her feminism naturally, and it was in part her strong political views that so attracted my father. My maternal grandmother worked for suffrage as a young woman, after moving west by covered wagon in 1891.

In 1912, when my grandmother was a 33 year-old, the Kansas legislature made their state the eighth to approve full women’s suffrage. My mother was only six years old on that day, but she remembered it well. The feeling in her farm home was less celebratory than resolved when grandfather brought news of the way Kansas legislators voted. “Well, of course, they did,” my mother recalled her mother announcing.

Frontier theorists would no doubt say that the rural West pioneered in women’s rights as a practical matter, a natural distancing from English society and the beginnings of America defining herself. I, too, see feminism as a practical matter — a meat and potatoes issue. I fear we live in a time when some are putting great effort, time and money behind redefining this country and what made it great, strong women included.

My grandmother raised nine children: teachers, merchants, farmers and soldiers. One of her sons flew 85 missions over enemy territory during World War II. Another son, also a pilot, didn’t make it home. Oh that my God-fearing suffragette grandmother, Sylvia Cave Johnson, was still alive and available for cable television. Woe be unto the self-righteous, Stepford-shill, who accused her of being incapable of raising sons.

In the past several years we’ve seen a glut of magazine articles, talk shows and books like The War on Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Boys  and The Decline of Males demonizing a simple term: feminism. How silly. Feminists are people who believe women deserve the same opportunities and compensation as men.

The anti-feminist deluge seemed to fall even harder in the wake of the Littleton High School tragedy, where on April 20, 1999, two teenagers committed the largest mass school killing in U.S. history. Everyone agreed that something was going wrong with today’s society, and many pundits placed blame squarely at feminists’ doors. Time after time I watched, listened or read that we activists were to blame for a breakdown in family values in general, and for the dehumanization of American boys in particular. Nevermind that none of the young men involved in school shootings, so-called “wildings” or other violent acts so widely publicized seemed to have been raised by feminists.

I contend it is just the opposite, that feminists gave their children strong values. My parents not only encouraged but also expected their daughters to see themselves as equal with men, to work to their potential and to facilitate others to do the same. And I believe the great majority of women’s rights activists of my generation, the meat and potatoes feminists, single or married, have done a spectacular job of raising their sons, sons who view the world far differently than those raised in strictly patriarchal households.  

There are lessons I believe we imparted both in word and action that will affect great change in society as our sons take their places in today’s workforce. We taught our daughters the same values, but we always knew that any significant change required males also working against prejudice and intolerance.

I believe feminists by their very nature imparted questioning minds to their sons, encouraging them to question stereotypes including those existing within our school system: jocks, nerds, freaks and snobs. They learned from us that name-calling is a critical part of alienation. We taught them to appreciate differences, not disdain them, to neither be nor seek victims.

We taught them to be discerning, to carefully evaluate influences, ranging from peer pressure to media input.

For feminists active in the business and political community, sons learned to interact with a myriad of individuals, from the powerful to the disenfranchised. They carried those experiences with them, and, I believe, profited as adults. I also think we imparted a sense of purpose in our sons, the knowledge that every life is part of something bigger and does make a difference.

Children of feminists know that every stand they take may not be popular. They may be subjected to ridicule or contempt as a result of their beliefs. But through the examples of their mothers, they know a worthy stand is worth the price.  

I can’t even imagine what my feminist grandmother would have thought had she lived to see a picture of a urinal shaped like a woman’s open mouth. But she wouldn’t have been surprised that it was feminists who got the project flushed.

STORY INDEX>

ORGANIZATIONS >

National Organization of Women
URL: http://www.now.org

Family Research Council
URL: http://www.frc.org

Eagle Forum
URL: http://www.eagleforum.org

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