Confessions of a Straight Right-Winger

Dear Friends;

Today is my birthday. I’m 62. A proud father and grandfather. Happily married for almost forty years.

But I have a confession I must make publicly. I’m secretly a Right-Wing Republican. And I’m a Christian fundamentalist. And I’m straight.

I had planned to take this secret to my grave but I couldn’t. Lately, so many gay rights-hating, Iraq war-loving, global warming-denying, red-blooded Christian right-wingers like me have been outed that I began to realize that I was one of the few straight ones left. I decided it was important for history to record the truth: that a man can understand that gays have simply made a bad lifestyle choice and should be cured, can understand that George Bush has yet to be wrong on any issues, can understand that Al Gore invented both the Internet AND Global Warming, and still be heterosexual.

I know how shocking this might seem to anyone whose favorite source of news is Fox, but it is true.

For years I was in the closet. I couldn’t pretend to be secretly gay – no one would believe me – so I pretended to be a Democrat. Straight Democrats are very believable. Especially if they are white middle-aged men. I made all the right moves:

· I joined MoveOn.org.

· I got on the e-mail list of the Daily Kos.

· I wore a Kucinich ’08 button.

· I wrote lengthy e-mails praising the Dixie Chicks.

· I recycled some stuff.

· I passed out DVDs of Michael Moore’s movies.

· I bought a solar powered product. (Okay, it was a digital watch. But it was solar powered!)

· I subscribed to the online edition of the New York Times and the Washington Post to save paper.

· I complained when my neighbor got a Hummer (from GM, not from his girlfriend.)

· I complained that President Bush has the worst economic policies since the Weimar Republic, even though I’m still proudly spending the $300 tax rebate that George gave to me in 2001. (That man knows how to give away money!)

· I made fun of a brilliant global warming debunker: Senator James Inhofe.

· I hid my collection of Ann Coulter erotica.

The entire charade was tough, very tough. It even put a strain on my marriage: my wife is a Democrat and I had to pretend to agree with her. (About politics, that is. Get real.) I even pretended to agree with her assertion that “George Bush is the worst president in American History.” despite knowing the truth: historians must go back no further than Franklin Pierce to find a president who was (probably) worse than W. But I love my wife and I didn’t want her to know my secret. Until today.

My friends, I am a homophobic right-wing bible thumper and I am straight. There are no skeletons in my closet. No hidden gay affairs with my chief of staff, like Rep Dave Dreier (CA). No drug-laden affairs with gay prostitutes, like Reverend Ted Haggard. No sexually charged e-mails sent to teen-aged boys like Rep Mark Foley (FL.) No attempts to pick up men in public bathrooms like Senator Larry Craig (ID.) No sham marriages such as Michael Huffington had with Arianna when he ran for Governor of California and was endorsed by every Conservative commentator in the country. And I was never a gay porn model who became a right-wing White House reporter, like Jeff Gannon.

I was never arrested for any sort of perversion after spending years loudly supporting homophobic legislation, like so many of my heroes. Clearly, as a right-wing fundamentalist I am a failure. I am such a dud that I cannot understand why it is morally wrong for a man to lie and say, “I did not have sex with that woman.” but morally acceptable for a man to lie and say, “I did not have sex with that man.” I’m just not as smart as most right-wingers. And so I have stayed in the closet.

But now it is time to confess publicly. My friends, I am not gay. I never have been gay. I am a straight white ultra-conservative who believes that my interpretation of the Bible is perfect. I may be one of the very few left in the country but I’m standing tall with my brothers. I’m proud to take this stance. I have always taken a wide stance when surrounded by real men.

Copyright 2007 Jacob Arthur

www.jacobarthur.blogspot.com jacobarthur@gmail.com

Weddings, Births, and Anniversaries

My wife and I had a Big Formal Wedding coming up in about six months. normally I forget about events until Sharon reminds me to bring my tux to the cleaners, but this one was different: she wanted to show off. She decided that we should dress up and dance at the BF Wedding – and by ‘dress up’ she meant wearing the clothes we wore to our son Seth’s Bar Mitzvah in 1987.

In 1987, when we were… younger. Oh, my.

There were two problems with her plans. First, I have always been a hopelessly inept dancer. I was born with a genetic disability: I am missing the gene that allows a man to dance and not look like a trained bear. (The good news is that I am allowed to use handicapped parking.)

The other, more obvious problem is that Sharon really wanted to wear clothing that fit us twenty years earlier. I weigh less now than then but a lot of poundage has shifted to my stomach. It’s another one of those genetic handicap/trained bear issues: my old pants may be tight but I could hibernate very successfully.

Regardless of the odds, when she decided we would dance I decided to lose some more weight. I already eat less than is reasonable for Man or Bear and had no interest in cutting my intake any further, so I decided to increase my exercise intensity. I changed a route I was taking about three times each week, from two miles on flat ground to three miles over some decent hills. And I always exercise my upper body as I walk. It’s a very intense workout for someone with all those ursine issues.

In the hot summer sun I like to take off my shirt and walk along in my gym shorts. No one is going to mistake me for, say, Leo DiCaprio but what do I care? Leo may be skinny but I can swim. For years it was easy. I walked along a quiet trail behind my house and rarely encountered anyone, and then I would simply ignore my usual modesty. I was having too much fun walking and sweating in the sun and besides, most of the people I passed didn’t look any better than I did.

However, changing my route changed a lot of things. The new route goes along a nature trail for about 1 mile, but for two miles it passes through a wealthy neighborhood. Houses in the $2 - $6 M range, a few worth more. Big lawns with circular driveways. Three and four-car garages with Italian sorts cars. It’s not a neighborhood that sees a lot of sweaty grandpas walking around with their shirts off, unless Gramps is the pool boy.

I guess it was only a matter of time before I got stopped. By a patrol car. This by itself is amazing. San Jose is the safest big city in the country and we have a tiny police force. Years can go by between the times I spot a patrol car, and then it is usually someone going home. But some cop saw me – perhaps on his way to arrest Paris Hilton – and he decided we should chat.

“Excuse me, sir; it’s illegal to walk in public without your shirt on.” Hmmm… I could see the problem if La Hilton was the person walking along topless, but not me. I played along.

“I didn’t know that, officer.”

“You’ve got to be covered up unless you’re at poolside.” What obscure police manuals has this cop been studying? And why wasn’t he studying something about actual criminals?

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s a decency thing. Gotta do it.” Of course! I was indecent! Can you imagine the long-term emotional damage that could occur to some virginal sixteen-year old girl if, upon seeing a shirtless Grandpa, she fell into a swoon? And California is overrun with swoon-prone virginal sixteen-year olds.

You’ll be shocked to learn that the sight of my indecently exposed chest has never caused a single teenaged girl to swoon, or even to feel dizzy. It has caused several to giggle uncontrollably but I don’t think that counts. Regardless, the cop was babbling uncontrollably and he was not giggling and he was wearing a gun, so I put my shirt on. My raggy white droopy muscle shirt. A shirt I bought seven years ago because it provides maximum exposure to the air and allows me to avoid overheating while exercising. A shirt that exposes most of my chest, including the gray hair and the scar from open heart surgery. A shirt that often rides up over my grandpa-sized belly (which I tend to discuss far more often than is healthy.) A shirt so pathetic that if Leo DiCaprio saw me wearing it he would ask if I had just escaped from Darfur.

I said, “How’s that, officer?”

The cop said, “That’s better.”

Better than what? I started to say “You have low standards.” but then I decided not to push my luck. I didn’t have any money on me and Officer Krupke could have locked me up as an indigent. A topless indigent.

Five minutes later I realized that I would probably never see him again and that if I did all he could do was make me cover up a second time. I took off my droopy muscle shirt and looked for some 16-year old virgins to horrify. Never found any.

This happened almost a month ago and I’m still hoping to see that cop again. I want to try my Sharon Stone line on him: “What are you going to do? Arrest me for sweating?”

Anyway, by now you may have forgotten (I almost did) that the purpose of the intensified exercise campaign was to help me lose weight and fit into my ancient tuxedo pants for the Big Formal Wedding. But then two things happened. First, I tried on the ancient tuxedo pants and found that they fit perfectly. Apparently the combination of exercising and horrifying virgins worked. And then we received the invitation.

The ceremony was held in a dog park in San Francisco. We were all asked to bring our dogs. Our English Bulldog had a great time and I didn’t have to dance. Didn’t have to wear my old tuxedo, either. Instead, I wore my raggy white droopy muscle shirt.

The Liars

An old letter to a friend, still timely.

Nov. 2, 2004

It’s two days before the election and I cannot wait for it to be over. The problem, of course, is that it may not be over until early spring. The early voting has started and so have the abuses. CNN reports that Democratic polling place volunteers are helping confused voters to select Kerry, regardless of whom they really want to choose. The newspaper reports that Republican precinct captains are challenging great blocs of newly registered voters, guaranteeing that thousands of Democrats will be disenfranchised. This proves something I have believed for years: the most significant difference between Democratic politicians and Republican politicians is that this generation of Republicans has smarter thieves. Today’s Democrats are too inept even to steal intelligently.

The wholesale lying in this campaign had been annoying for months, until it soared past scandalous and reached blissful heights of hilarity. Democrats have spent four years calling Bush stupid, despite the inconvenient fact that he graduated from both Harvard and Yale, and brilliantly outfought the intellectually “superior” Al Gore. Republicans have spent months and tens of millions of dollars calling Kerry a coward and making fun of his war injuries despite the inconvenient fact that he was a war hero who bravely saved several men’s lives while under enemy fire. While George Bush was hiding

How did we reach a point where we will be forced to choose between such second-rate candidates? Kerry was a mediocre senator with nothing impressive to show for a 20-year run except some nicely tailored french suits. Bush was a bad governor in an imitation cowboy suit who became the most unsuccessful American president since Jefferson Davis. And if we don’t want to vote for either of them, we can always select Ralph Nader, a well-spoken lunatic in a Goodwill suit, who apparently lives in an abandoned van under a bridge.

And Nader, God help us, is the only honest guy in the race.

Lying seems to have become endemic in our society. Not the social white lies that we all tell occasionally, but gross distortions of truth that can gravely wound others. Bill Clinton looked into the camera and lied about sex and Democrats forgave him (I still forgive him. Can’t lie.) The Swift Boat Veterans looked in the camera and lied about John Kerry, and Republicans applauded them. And who are our most popular political commentators? Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly. A drug addict, a bully, and a pervert. Three chicken hawks who laugh off-camera about the lies they tell on-camera. And their conservative fans forgive them, just as Democrats forgave Clinton. Has the entire nation joined Joe McCarthy in having no sense of decency?

As you can guess, I’m a Kerry supporter. I held my nose when I voted last week (absentee) but I’ll take a solid mediocrity over a colossal failure any day. This year I voted straight Democratic for national offices and straight Republican for state offices, and for the same reason: California Democrats have governed as ineffectively and as dishonestly as have national Republicans.

I’ll guess that you are supporting Bush. Some of my best friends do. But please make me a promise: when you vote for Bush, please hold your nose. I promise you will feel better.

J

Happy Birthdays

On Birthdays

My wife is fourteen months older than I am. Apparently this has not been a serious impediment to our relationship: we have been married since 1978. This is notable only because in two days she will turn 50. The poor girl has been depressed since the day she turned 49. So depressed, in fact, that I have been forced to abandon my favorite decennial ritual (okay, my only decennial ritual): every ten years I harass her mercilessly from the day of her birthday (September 10^th) until the day of mine (November 4^th). It started when Sharon turned thirty and I had eight full weeks during which I remained 28. I told everyone I knew that she was in her thirties and I was in my mid-twenties. It was great fun (for me.)

The joke was even funnier (for me) when she turned forty and I told everyone that I was in my mid-thirties. However, this year I think I will cut off the humor. Or else she will cut it off (for me.)

Last July, my wife celebrated my birthday early by taking me to Cash Creek, a huge Indian casino in a tiny town about 100 years east of San Francisco. She planned the trip with a friend whose husband Derrick was born on November 6^th - two days after I was. Why celebrate in July? Joan Rivers and Don Rickles were appearing and the girls were worried that if they waited until November, Rickles might croak.

I am the wrong person to bring to a casino. I do not drink, I do not gamble, and I do not smoke. I also have no tolerance for sallow-cheeked dull-eyed gamblers who wander about casinos with pathetic cups of coins clutched between their grimy hands. The losers have beaten-puppy faces, and the winners obsessively stalk their next slot machine or black jack table with an insane “Bambi Returns” look in their eyes (“Bambi! Stop! You’re safe! Why are you running back into the forest fire?” “I just want to see if I can get out alive again.”)

My wife loves the slots but I don’t get it. She says, “It’s okay as long as I get away without losing too much.” I say, “Would you jog through Central Park at midnight to see if you can get away without giving too much money to the muggers? Isn’t that the same thing? You win by not getting beaten up too badly?”

Anyway, I gritted my teeth, promised myself to not be too judgmental (fat chance!) and drove to Cash Creek. Joan Rivers was brilliant, but judging by his performance Rickles apparently croaked several years ago. After the show the four of us went to the coffee shop and struck up a conversation with the couple at the next table. They were twins of our friends: a Jewish woman from New York married to a black guy from Chicago. What were the chances? Within thirty seconds we were talking comfortably.

Reuben was a large man, still trim and muscular, with a shaved head and a goatee. Interesting. I said, “Reuben, how do you like your hairdo? It looks like a lot of work.” He said it was easy; he just had more territory to shave. I said, “I’ve always thought that a shaved head is a great look, but only on tall, slender, black athletes. You know, NBA stars. You guys can carry it off. We can’t.”

Reuben looked at me and smiled slightly, a tolerant father gazing fondly at his dimwitted son. He said that he never thought about it that way. He said that he didn’t have much hair left, that what little hair he still had was a sad looking gray, and that it had become scraggly and unmanageable. It didn’t look good no matter how he styled it; it just looked tired. He said he had shaved it off to solve the problem and he liked his new look a lot, but so far no one had mistaken him for Michael Jordon. Apparently Reuben and Derrick weren’t the only men at the table with something in common.

Two nights later I shaved my head and started a goatee. It’s been eight weeks now and I like my new look a lot, but so far no one has mistaken me for Michael Jordon.

Have a happy birthday, whenever yours comes.

I am the father of Anna Nicole's baby

February 14, 2007

Dear Friends

Yes, it is true. I am the biological father of Dannielynn Hope, the daughter of Anna Nicole Smith. I know that other imposters have been coming out of thin air, pretending to be the father, but they are all liars. Posturing bloodsuckers. I’m the real thing.

Several years ago Anna Nicole began coming to me at night, shortly after my wife would fall asleep. I didn’t even know Anna Nicole lived in San Jose, but she must have, because she came pretty often. To my house, that is. She would slip into my bedroom quietly, and I would know something was up when my hands started shaking, or at least my right hand would shake, and then the entire bed would shake, and then there she would be! Anna Nicole Smith!! In the flesh! In fact, she was… fleshy! She told me she was tired of having sex with frail skinny 89-year old men and now she wanted to have sex with a younger man. A sturdy, slightly paunchy 60-year old man. A man still sharp enough to remember to take his pills on time. A man who could still drive at night! A brave man with the courage not to have the hair on his back removed. A Jewish man!!! And the sturdy, more-than-slightly-paunchy, sharp-memoried, night driving, hairy backed Jewish man she wanted was me. ME!!! Believe me, that woman knew how to pick her sex gods.

At first all she wanted was sex, mindless silent sex, but then she wanted more. I would massage her until my right hand got tired, but it wasn’t enough. One night while the bed (and my hand) were shaking particularly violently she told me she wanted to have my baby. I tried to stop her. I said, “Anna Nicole – I’m a heart patient! I take 11 pills a day! My sperm count must be lower than your I. Q.!”

She didn’t care. She wanted me, and she wanted my sperm, or what was left of it. I was exhausted and my hand hurt so much that I couldn’t say no. I let her have her way with me.

Nine months later, little Dannielynn Hope was born. The hell with DNA testing: she has a hairy back. She’s mine. Next week my wife and I plan to fly to Bermuda, deport all the fake fathers, and take charge of the baby’s affairs. I’ll write again as soon as we finish refurnishing the house down there. Only the best for my daughter.

Come visit me! We will have lots of room!

Jake

PS: Despite what you may have heard on Fox News, Britney Spears did not shave her head to look more like me. Her new tattoos are a different story.

© Jay Wiener 2007

Rain

Rain

It’s raining gently. The hard storm hasn’t started yet but I can sense it coming: everything outside Sharon’s window is gray. The sky, the rain, the streets, even the houses and cars are drained of color. It’s a perfect afternoon for my wife to nap as she recovers from her latest surgery – she gets exhausted from the effort of propelling herself in her wheelchair and in this weather, she can sleep soundly for hours.

The rainy season started a week or two ago. Before then it was cold – very cold. San Jose is famous for warm, dry weather, but we have a winter, of sorts. Autumn days are relatively warm – forties and fifties – but starting late in November we freeze over almost every night, so that each morning when I go outside to get the newspaper the entire neighborhood is frosted over with a delicious, sugar cane white, Krispy Kreme Glaze. I love those bright, chilly, confectionary mornings; they give me the perfect opportunity to think, “Screw Dr. Atkins” before I eat breakfast.

But now it is raining, and the Northern California rainy season can seem eternal. A few drab, sunless days of greasy gray skies, then a day or a month of alternating drizzle and damp, drizzle and damp. It rarely rains very hard, although for years I’ve heard the weather reporters talk about “wild downpours”, “monstrous storms”, and even “squalls that flooded the entire Bay Area”. Regardless of hyperbolic reporters, in our little valley we rarely have a serious storm. The rain simply drips down, like grandpa just before his prostate surgery.

As a child, I loved the rain. I enjoyed the soothing rainsounds that came from roofs and drain spouts and windows, but I secretly loved the rare winter days when I was alone in the house and could sit by the living room window during a rainstorm, or when, during the summer, I could sprawl on the front porch swing and watch a storm. I’d sit motionlessly and watch the rain beat against soggy houses and ancient pavement, as if the bay to the north and the ocean to the south had somehow joined forces and were trying to hammer the slender peninsula on which we lived back under water.

I could sit like that for hours, watching our quiet street. I’d see unhappy cats sheltering themselves under parked cars, timid automobiles hesitantly traveling along the dark uneven road, and an occasional desperate neighbor dashing between house and car, all acting as if water – never more than a few hundred yards away from any point on our peninsula - had suddenly become the enemy. I’d slowly become a part of the rainstorm, breathing damp sea-fragrant air, and reveling as a delicious chill slowly covered my body. I especially loved intense summer storms when the wind would blow light sprays of cool sweet mist onto my face and the hard rain would race to the ground and then splash high from the street, until a thick foam of water flowed in every direction, and ultimately to the sea.

Somewhere, I learned that what my friends and I called ‘sewers’ were really storm drains that led to the bay, completing the cycle of water. Rain fell from the skies, onto the roofs, down to the ground, through the storm drains, into the bay, and then flew up again in leaping waves that the winds would whip high into the sky so that fresh rain could fall onto the peninsula again. Understanding that cycle, understanding in my gut that water moves from one part of the world to another in a meaningful pattern, was a watershed event. It helped me to understand that life works in cycles, as it should. As it must, for better or worse.

My wife is going through a particularly difficult cycle in her life. It has lasted for several years and we do not know when it will end. Surgery, recovery, decline. Surgery, recovery, decline. Her problems are not life threatening but they are crippling. She has spent most of the last three years in a wheelchair and will never walk properly – the bones in her feet have deteriorated due to a rare medical condition. Her biggest problem, long term, may not be walking; it may be adjusting to the unfair restraints life has put on her. However, we have a strong marriage, two sons and a daughter-in-law with whom we are very close, a grandson, extended family – Sharon has much in her life from which to draw strength.

I write this because Sharon (and I) are luckier than the woman in the next bed. She lost a 33-year old son in Iraq last year, she just had surgery on a badly broken leg, and she is dieing of cancer. Her daughter-in-law lives in another state; there are no children, no other family. Her life will end shattered, with no resolution.

Yesterday she told me that as a child she loved the warm spring rains. She and her sister and their dog would run into their yard and dance until they were completely soaked, then howl with laughter as their mother dried them off. Yesterday was a long time ago.

In her tiny closet, on the breast of the blouse she wore to the hospital, is an American flag pin. She still wears it but says she feels betrayed and deserted by her country. She gazes out the window and cries gray tears. I hold her hand as we chat but she has trouble following my voice. It is drowned by the sound of the approaching storm.

Rattlesnakes and other pets

I killed a baby rattlesnake on the hiking trail a few weeks ago. I stomped it to death, kicked the carcass to the side of the trail, and then continued on.

A lead paragraph with a hook. It has Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. The Why is not stated; it is implicit but obvious. Rather, it should be obvious, but it is not - at least in here in California. Many people do not understand why I killed the rattler. The baby rattler.

The rattler was born early – we have had a warm winter – and when I saw it motionless in the middle of the trail I crushed it without hesitation. A few years ago I waited too long before stomping a rattler and my adrenalin kicked in. I shook so much that I nearly missed the beast. A bad idea.

This one was almost a foot long, with a tiny red nubbin where its rattle was beginning to grow. It was the fourth one I’ve killed, I think. When I can kill a rattler, I do remorselessly. And without remorse.

I encountered my first one more than 25 years ago, while coaching my son’s soccer team. Eric and his teammates were 4 or 5 years old and easily distracted by just about anything. During the middle of practice they suddenly stopped and gathered in an excited circle looking at something on the ground. I chugged upfield and found them surrounding a small snake of some sort. Only eight or ten inches long, it had coiled its tiny body into a defensive striking position. Eric, ever fearless, bent over to get a closer look. The little snake instantly struck at him. It missed, thank G-d, and I immediately jumped on it with both size fourteens. I didn’t think a tiny snake could be very dangerous but I didn’t want to go through all the aggravation of filling out reports, etc, if it bit some poor kid. I didn’t want to face some frantic mom, either. Especially Eric’s mom.

It turned out that killing the snake was a very good idea: the bite of a baby rattler is far more dangerous than the bite of a full-grown adult. Some scientists claim that the youthful venom is more pure than the adult; others say that the combination of toxins within the venom is more deadly; no one knows for sure. I just know that if an adult rattler bites your leg, you can lose your leg. If a baby rattler bites you – anywhere - you can die.

Since then, I have seen rattlesnakes many times and if they were small enough I have stomped them. I found a two-footer (still small) in my yard once, but generally encounter them on hiking trails. Children use these trails, so killing the young rattlers is imperative: if the snake is in the wrong place and if it is small enough for me to kill safely, it is gone. If it is large enough to survive my boot landing on its head, I’ll leave it alone. I’m no Pat Tillman.

One night I told the story about the baby rattler I had killed a few weeks earlier and received an amazing range of reactions. Some people understood that killing a dangerous animal lurking by a popular trail is a necessary job; some people felt that I was remarkably brave (as if a four-ounce snake could bite through sturdy hiking boots); some thought I was a murderer.

“Why did you have to kill it?”

“Why couldn’t you find some way to move it off the hiking
trail?”

“Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?”

(And my favorite) “Why couldn’t you put up a sign to warn
the other hikers?”

I explained the problem again – that the baby was a rattler, not a puppy, that the venom from a young rattler could easily kill a child, and that I had left my magic marker and construction paper in my other backpack. However, one couple simply didn’t get it.

“Why didn’t you pick up a stick and push it to the side of the trail?”
”Because it could come back ten minutes later and bite someone’s kid.”

“Why couldn’t you pick it up with two sticks and carry it into the bushes?”

“Because if I dropped it, it might kill me. And I didn’t happen to have two sticks.”

“Why didn’t you just watch it until it crawled away on its own?”

“Because it might have slept in the sun for two days. Or until some little kid came along and decided to play with it.”

“Wasn’t there SOMETHING you could have done besides killing it?”

“Yes, I could have brought it to your house and let you decide what to do with it.”

Okay. I made that last one up. But you get the idea. People in California are crazy about animals. You can’t kill them no matter how much damage they do. You can eat animals if you buy the meat at Safeway after someone else has killed them, but if you kill them yourself, even in self defense, you are a murderer. Butchers are good guys; hunters are deranged killers.

Full disclosure: In general, I do not eat meat. I’ve been to slaughterhouses, I’ve seen how domestic animals spend their last few days and I will not associate myself with torture. Domesticated animals are treated barbarously so that we can have a barbeque. Sorry, I won’t join in. On the other hand, I eat meat brought down by ethical hunters. One minute the animal is standing in the forest, the next minute it is dead. It is ethical; it is nature’s way. (It is not ethical to stick the poor animal’s stuffed head on a wall, but that is another story.)

California's general revulsion to killing animals in public, as opposed to in secluded slaughterhouses, extends to ridiculous lengths. For example, it is very unpopular to shoot a California mountain lion even if one is sauntering down the street in a crowded neighborhood. I’m serious. Mountain lions roam the hills that cover the State and occasionally one ends up in someone’s yard. The cat will be confused when it first enters a populated area, and then quickly learn that it is a lot easier to stalk someone’s fat torpid beagle than it is to stalk a wary doe. So the lion will hang around until Animal Control comes to remove it by any means necessary.

And then the Animal Rights Lovers get agitated. Save the mountain lion! It was here before us!!! We are living on its territory!!!!! If it kills a few pets, that is the Law of Nature! Do you disagree? That’s speciesism!

Yes, the magnificent mountain lions were here before us and yes, we have criss-crossed their territory with roads and housing developments and parking lots and yes, we should try to protect them, but if one gets caught, say, up a tree in a shopping mall, it will have to be removed. Usually, this means killing it, which is a pity, but far superior to allowing it to run free and dine on a toddler. Mountain lions are important, but I prefer toddlers. Call me a speciesist.

Dear Reader, I am confident that you agree. However, a significant portion of Californians do NOT agree. Whenever a frightened Animal Control officer is forced to shoot some poor lost bear or mountain lion, strangely dressed flower children suddenly transport themselves from 1973 and somehow land in the middle of the controversy. Or more precisely, they create a controversy.

“Why couldn’t the officer sedate the animal?”

“Why couldn’t the officer shoot it with a tranquilizing dart?”

“Why couldn’t the officer just capture it in a cage and return it to the forest?”

“Why couldn’t the officer just follow it until it returned to the mountains?”

I’ve read countless newspaper articles that patiently explain why these ideas are at best impractical and very likely dangerous to animal control officers, who may be just a few yards from a frightened and confused predator with long canine teeth that could slice a human into deli meat before a tranquilizing dart could take effect. This doesn’t matter. The flower children (who tend to be pretty long in the tooth themselves) are not concerned for the welfare of the ranger. They care about the big pussy cat.

Two big pussy cats and one small cuddly brown bear were taken down on the San Francisco Peninsula during the last year or so. Some crazy woman has visited all three sites to offer up Indian prayers for the souls of the dead animals. She chants for hours (or at least until the TV crews come) and doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that she is a white woman who speaks only English, not a single Native American language.

If she were a solo crank she would just be funny, in part because when she chants she sounds a little like Gilbert Gottfried, but she has admirers. Lots of admirers. Masochistic admirers who are convinced that California hasn’t done enough lately to humiliate itself on the national stage. Hypocritical admirers who eat rare steak or raw sushi while asking how any hunter could kill an animal. Left-wing whacko admirers who would be horrified to know that someone was writing about them and comparing them to the Right-wing whackos who kept Terry Schiavo’s corpse alive for fifteen years. Lots of admirers.

Apparently some of her admirers are on the San Jose City Council, as it is more interested in protecting the lives of wild coyotes than the lives of children. I’m serious. About two miles from my house is a little gated community – The Villas of Almaden - with perhaps a hundred acres of undeveloped hills. The natural beauty is the main drawing card: the hills are full of wild oak stands, rock formations, and wildlife. Rabbits and squirrels hide in every corner, and there are twenty or so half-tame deer. The houses are small (1,500 – 2,300 square feet) and poorly constructed. However, this is Northern California. The Villas have the hills and the wild oak and the deer, and a kid in a uniform who sits in a guard house at a gate at the entrance, studying to become a toll collector or something while ignoring anyone who drives in, so the flimsy little houses are worth $1 - $3 million dollars, despite a little problem.

The problem is that a pack of coyotes has moved in along with Bambi and the bunny rabbits. The Villas of Almaden is an islet of undeveloped land completely surrounded by tract homes, miles from the nearest undeveloped area, but the coyotes apparently followed a dry stream bed down from the hills, crossed a few streets, followed a culvert, then jumped a fence to get inside. Now, they are eating whatever they can catch – rabbits and small pets are high on their list – and they have stalked children more than once.

The obvious solution is to hire a professional to trap and/or shoot them. Animals that hunt in packs do not belong in cute gated communities. Killing animals for sport is immoral, but protecting children and house pets from attacks by coyotes (or rattlers) is extremely moral. The solution seems extremely simple. Kill the varmints!

Obvious. But astonishing numbers of Californians disagree. The general opinion is that the coyotes were here first, we invaded their territory, and now we have to learn to live with them. When I point out that the Villas were built about 20 years before the coyotes settled in, and so the animals have invaded human territory, not vice versa, I am looked at as if I simply don’t get the big picture. When I ask people what to do about the occasional child who is stalked, the answer is some variation of “Parents have to protect their children.” When I respond that the best way to protect the children is to kill a few coyotes, I am looked at as if I am a mass murderer. Which I would be, if 15 coyotes roamed freely near my house and I owned a gun.

Needless to say, the people who live in the Almaden Villas have no illusions about the cute puppy dogs trotting around with their furry bunk buddies. They decided to hire a pro to trap or kill the coyotes humanely. However, discharging guns and setting traps are illegal within city limits. Even humane traps. The residents needed a permit from the City Council to take either action.

Again, this doesn’t seem controversial. Any 12-year old could see the logic. Unfortunately the San Jose City Council isn’t that smart. They heard the appeal from the homeowners, discussed it, and turned them down. They wanted time to study the issue, and they recommended that the homeowners use that time to educate themselves on how to make the environment “less attractive to coyotes”.

Speaking as a man who does not hunt, a high-powered rifle is the perfect way to make the environment less attractive to coyotes. However, no one on the Council asked me. That’s too bad, because had they asked I would have suggested that the Council members let their children stay in the Villas until the problem was resolved. At the very least, the homeowners could use a few CouncilKids as bait.

The Council’s action became a big local story, with heated debate on both sides. (As if to prove to the world that Californians don’t get it, the local newspaper ran a poll to see if people believed that leg traps should be used to capture the coyotes threatening the children. Out of 963 people who voted, 704 said NO!) http://forums.prospero.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=kr-mercurynews&msg=1042.1&ctx=0

In most cities, a community of multi-million dollar houses would have some political clout with the city council, but not in San Jose. In San Jose, it is hard to find a house that is not worth a million dollars. In San Jose, people casually spend $1 million to buy a shed unfit for cockroaches then tear it down and build a monstrous $3 million edifice that is just barely fit for cockroaches.

You may notice that I’m agitated. That is because my friends Fred and Gloria live in the Villas of Almaden and they have grandchildren. And apparently many Californians think a pack of wild coyotes is more valuable to the world than Fred’s grandchildren. And they also think that the welfare of a small stray rattlesnake is as important as the life of a child ambling down a nature trail. I think these people are Left-Wing idiots. Call me a speciesist. Please.