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Truth

July 16, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

The ideals of truth and beauty are really only operational definitions.  Icon of beauty Marilyn Monroe would probably be considered fat today.

And, so long as we all agree to it, the truth is whatever we say it is, even if it’s not the least bit true.  We all agreed for a time that the world was flat.  So, even though it was wrong, it was still the truth, until it wasn’t anymore.

But starting with President Reagan and his set around 1980, our relationship to the truth has gone from operational to full flight from reality.  Now, the truth seems to be whatever we want to hear.  “We can cut our taxes and still afford the same quality of life,” and “I did not have sex with that woman” have led us not just down a slippery slope but over the precipice.

Today, apparently one can just make up and say anything in the service of victory.  Universal healthcare means death panels.  The President was born in Kenya.  The Chinese are drilling for oil off the coast of Cuba.  Weapons of Mass Destruction, Swift boats, McCain is a traitor, the oil companies are looking out for us, you’re holding your I-Phone wrong, the President caused the oil slick to get his energy bill passed.  The truth has become situational and is no longer fact based.

I think the problem is that there are no consequences.

So, let’s make some Truth laws.  How about if you buy an ad that is not just in error, but tells an unsubstantiated truth, you must purchase twice as many ads reporting the actual truth.  If your news organization reports unsubstantiated truth, you must devote twice as much time to reporting the corrected facts in your highest rated/read time/space.  And if politicians lie about their opposition or their own records during a campaign, then they must forfeit the race.  I know, I know, almost no offices would get filled that way.

Maybe we should all just start making up whatever works for us.

Paying unemployment benefits is an excellent way to stimulate the economy.  Moving gay couples into your neighborhood raises property values.  President Reagan proposed the largest peacetime tax increase in history. Openly gay people in the military have no effect on unit cohesion or morale.  Government deficit spending ended the Great Depression.

Oh wait, that’s all true.  I’ll try harder next time.


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Poor

July 13, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

The problem with poor people is that they just don’t have a good lobby in congress.

Why should law makers pass unemployment benefits for people who are not going to be able to contribute to their campaigns? And who wants to give healthcare to people who don’t have any money to begin with? Where are the Senator’s free trips and the Congressional golfing junkets? Missing are the lunches, the awards, the gifts.  How do the poor and the unemployed ever expect to get ahead if they don’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps and put together their own multi-million dollar PACs to fund educating Senators and Congressmen?

It is so irritating that elected officials are burdened with the needs of those who cannot take care of themselves.  Who is supposed to take care of our elected officials?

You need a majority to win, so why help minorities? And you need millions to buy advertising, hire campaign consultants, build war chests and acquire retirement property.  Why help poor people? Clearly they can’t help congress.  As if someone goes to all the trouble of getting elected to office, just to help people.

Senate candidate Sharron Angle points out that the unemployed in this country are just spoiled.  Senator Orrin Hatch reminds us that extending unemployment benefits, is just enabling their drug use.  It is no surprise that Senators and Congresswomen too numerous to mention individually think that making conglomerates like BP put aside money to pay for the damage they’ve caused through their reckless practices and fraudulent oil lease applications only provides money to the poor and unemployed.  This kind of “slush fund” “shakedown,” they tell us, deprives those elected to office of the vast pools of special interest money that make America what it is today.

Thank goodness the Non-Activist judges on the Supreme Court have used their royal powers for more than deciding national elections.  Their Highnesses have not only pointed out our old constitution is  “dead,” they have amended it to make sure that giant corporations and wealthy individuals can provide members of the US Senate and Congress with the unlimited contributions that might otherwise be wasted on the poor and unemployed.

Washington’s advice to the poor and unemployed in this country?

“Get a PAC or start drilling for oil.”

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Prayer

July 12, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

I am a man who has never yet had a single prayer answered.

I have had a wonderful life so far, and I look forward with excitement and anticipation to what’s next.  But none of those wonderful things so far have been anything I worked or prayed for.  Not one.

It challenges my faith.  I’m gay so I’m not even welcome to be a Christian, which has kind of spoiled any sort of institutional faith for me.  Still, I cannot look at the majesty and genius of creation without seeing some divine force behind it all.  I cannot look at the nature of life objectively and see this period of consciousness on this plane as finite.  Everything that science has discovered only makes me believe more.  In this way I do believe in God.  I do believe that there is more to life than my limited senses can perceive.

While I think faith is believing without need of proof, I find that life is filled with all the evidence I need.

And then there’s prayer.

The power of prayer is much spoken of.  “Ask and ye shall receive,” “pray without ceasing,” may God bless America from the likes of Abraham Lincoln, President Obama, Celine Dion, on and on.  I see people who’s lives have actually unfolded along the lines that they have endeavored.  By simply having faith, so many seem to have found their way to at least a portion of their heart’s desires.  I honestly think that prayers are answered.  My strong faith makes me believe that my prayers are heard.  That almost hurts more than if I did not believe at all.

But then there’s my experience of prayer.

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Minority Report

July 9, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

Depending on which poll you ask at least 60% of Americans are okay with the new Arizona second class status for Hispanic Americans law.

I know, blah, blah, it’s about the National Government’s failure to deal with the immigration “problem” blah, blah and NO racial profiling is allowed.  But we all know that no one involved with the writing or passage of that law is interested in chasing down wayward Canadians.

My point is the 60%.  The majority favors discriminating against the minority.

Duh.

That’s how they got to be the minority in the first place.

If you’d had a referendum on desegregation in Alabama in 1961, there would probably still be segregation and Jim Crow laws there and many other places — not all of them in the south.

Why is it that idiots like Lisa Lingle the divorcee Governor of Hawaii and the Governornator of my state, think that we should ask the majority whether or not they believe that the minority should share the same rights and privileges they enjoy?  We asked the majority in my state and they said no.  I am officially a second class citizen here.  Thanks Arnold.  Hope all your kids turn out to be gay.

It seems to me that if we want a different answer, we need to start asking a different question.

Do you believe in equal rights for all Americans? Period.

John McCain does not believe in equal rights for all Americans.  Arnold Schwarzenegger does not believe in equal rights for all Americans.  Barack Obama does not believe in equal rights for all Americans.  Hilary Clinton does not believe in equal rights for all Americans.  Try campaigning on that instead of “I’m morally opposed to gay marriage” as our current president did.

I honestly don’t care if other people believe I ought to have the right to get married.  That’s none of their business.  If you don’t believe in same sex marriage, then don’t marry someone of the same sex.

The real question is: Do you believe in equal rights for all American?  Not just the ones we like.  Not just the ones we agree with.  Do I really believe in equal rights for ALL Americans?

Do you?

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Fear Less

July 7, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

If I could send a message to myself from now, to when I was younger, the message would be simple.

“Be less afraid.”

A huge part of my life, maybe second only to sleep, has been wasted on fear.

All through school I was afraid of what was accumulating on my “permanent record.”  I was too afraid to really try when it came to colleges and afraid of not going to a good one.  I was afraid I wasn’t smart enough even to take the advance placement tests that would have skipped me past a lot of introductory coursework.

And dating? Don’t get me started.

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Independence Day – July 5th

July 5, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

No independence is won without a struggle.

The signing of the Declaration on the 4th was only the beginning of what it would take to bring those ideals to bear.  So, July 5th was really day one of this on-going struggle we’ve been in to make our dream of “freedom for all” a reality.

July 5th has always had an odd significance in my life.  After college I moved to New York, because I had no idea what else to do.  I loved New York.  Still do.  It was not as crazy about me.  July 5th was the day I moved home to my mom’s to regroup.  I’ll live in New York again when I’m rich.  I’m just too big a princess to do day to day in Manhattan otherwise.

The 5th has continued throughout my life to be a day of beginnings for me.  Today, I observe the 16th anniversary of the single most noteworthy beginning for me so far.

April that year, I had met someone when I was in Austin for a friend’s wedding.  It was something special.  It was love.  I said good-bye at the airport but I could not live with that for long.  We talked constantly on the phone.  His life in Austin was at loose ends and I could not wait.   Soon, he was in Los Angeles and I was, for the first and only time in my life, actually living with someone who was there, just because he wanted to be with me.

My first book was due out that summer.  I was writing the screenplay for the movie deal that I’d already made for the book.  And I was in love and living with someone who said he loved me.

It was at last, I thought, the moment when my life would finally begin.

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July 4th – The Power of Words

July 2, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

July 4th celebrates an idea.  I love that.  No battle was fought or lost and, aside from a possible quill sharpening incident, no blood was shed.  A group of men got together and set down principles they felt were worth standing for.  And, on the 4th, they signed their work and affirmed an idea.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

I think that’s the coolest thing ever.  A day set aside to celebrate an idea we believe in.  We became, that day, the world’s great experiment.  If we can pull this thing off, if we can live by this ideal, there’s hope for humanity.

Despite our belief and all the backyard barbecue, the goal we signed that day is yet to be attained.  We have made a lot of progress.  Women, who were not in the room that day, now have the vote and a lot more rights, though equality? Well, ask a woman.  Black Americans are no longer slaves and are moving toward a greater and more equal participation in our society.

There is progress and change.  That’s where the hope part comes in and is what I think this grand experiment is about.  Keeping things the way they were is not what we celebrate on July 4th.

I hope one day, that I might have equality and the same rights as all Americans.  I hope one day to be a citizen of this country.  Not just in words, I am that, but in deeds and in fact.

There’s the hope and the power of words.  Until then I can:

Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free.

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Second Amendment Remedies

June 30, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

So the activist judges on the Supreme Court, in service to their corporate overlords, this week advanced the causes of gun companies and the people who love them.

I say they haven’t gone far enough.  I would like to propose the formation of the Second Amendment Advancement Foundation for Equality (SAAFFE).  This organization would raise money to purchase weapons for inner city youth and other, similar, highly motivated gun owners.  Once armed, the formerly oppressed would be trained in weapons use so that they can exercise their rights more accurately.

Our foundation would then relocate these liberated and skilled SAAFFE gun owners to the towns and neighborhoods of such civil rights advocates as the five supreme court justices who freed them.  We believe SAAFFE gun recipients should live right next door to folks like Nevada Senate Candidate Sharon Angle who thinks we should use guns to get our way when voting doesn’t work out or Georgia Congressmen Paul Broun who told an open carry gun owners rally held respectfully on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing to “declare war against oppression and against socialism.”  And of course, we would be sure that SAAFFE gun recipients live in close proximity to all the officers, executives and spokespeople for the NRA so that they might set an example for our heavily armed youth and SAAFFE citizens.

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How to Get an Agent (or at least how I got one)

June 28, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

“How do I get an agent?”  It’s probably the number one question I get asked about writing and publishing.

There are a lot questions about publishing.  Like, how is it that these multi-national, multi-million dollar manufacturing concerns still, in the 21st century, do not advertise their products? Why are business decisions in publishing largely made by people hired for their aesthetic judgment and no business training? Why is there no Billboard-like public accounting of actual book sales? Why is it that no writers actually work at the publishers, as such, despite the fact that they generate all the product the company sells? (Imagine a car company that didn’t advertise, who kept sales a secret, whose business decisions were made by the administrative staff and no one who actually made cars worked there.)

Questions about publishing go on and on and my answer to most of them is:  I have no idea.

I do know however how to get, or rather how I got my first, literary agent representation.

I moved to Los Angeles in the mid-nineties after my life had been leveled by a homophobic co-worker at the ad agency where I’d worked in South Carolina.  With nothing to lose I thought, what the hell? I hadn’t actually intended to be in advertising anyway. What to do? Well, Thelma and Louise came out that summer and I already had a convertible.  I didn’t have anyone to ride with and I skipped their Grand Canyon detour.  I got behind the wheel and drove.  The 20 starts in Florence, South Carolina, merges with the 10 in Texas and ends at the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica on the west side of LA.

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The Good Word

June 25, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

I cried over a soccer game today.  I’m glad the US is still in the running for the cup, or whatever it’s called, but I would not presume to know enough about soccer to say more than that.  The fact that I call it soccer probably proves it.  Honestly, I don’t think my tears of joy had anything to do with their victory.

I just needed some good news.

The news business is about viewers and readers.  The bigger the audience, the higher the ad rates.  And nothing brings in the audience like dirty laundry.  The circus of the media has us obsessed with the worst in ourselves and skeptical of or, sadly, bored by the best that we can be.

Celebrity wannabes rush their sex tapes into production rather than hurrying to acting class.  Politicians use dirty tricks to obstruct progress and lies to catch the attention of the jaded electorate instead of trying to help people or fix a broken system.  Publishers are glutted with the memoirs of those with the dirtiest secrets, even if they have to make them up.  And the couches on the talk shows are crowded by those with something bad to say.  Producers, voters, publishers, agents and bookers choose the best known, not the best.  The only other big news of the US soccer team came when they got cheated out of a win.

Despite the fact that we live in an age of penicillin and everyday miracles, all we can see is that half empty glass. Our belief in scarcity fuels reckless oil exploration and now there’s an oil slick in the Gulf as big as our avarice.  Fear and greed keep us in the longest war in our history.  We exclude people from society and then relish in our disgust with their anti-social behavior.

Probably the only moment of national unity I have known in my adult life came the day after 9/11.  Is that what it takes to bring us together?

It’s the power of negative thinking and it’s ushered in the age of cynicism.

Go team USA! I sure could use a little more good news.

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