I'm back! I have not posted anything for about two weeks. It's not that there have been no peace issues to write about. I've been “off line” for about two weeks due to surgery on my left wrist.
It is very difficult to type with your hand in a splint and I was trying to keep up with my “day job."
I am relieved to be back to writing about waging peace.
Lots of interesting things going on. Here's one in particular:
Did you notice the story on “Women for Tedisco”? Apparently there is a bevy of females that are supporting Jim Tedisco for Congress and they've organized themselves into a legitimate group. A rival paper had a story and a big photo of Jim and the women who support him. Everybody was all smiles.
Two things make this interesting:
[1] This is the same Jim Tedisco who gleefully put himself into the national spotlight (both on television and in print media) when Gov. Sptizer was caught in a prostitution ring by telling the country he was ready to start impeachment proceedings against the governor if he would not resign post-haste, but was eerily silent when it came out that Congressman John Sweeney was abusing his wife, thus sending the message that it's not OK to cheat on your spouse but it is OK to slap them around.
No problem. I'm not a real big fan of the now Senator Gillibrand, but at least she had the moral coherency and class during Spitzer's crisis to say that if the allegations were true, her fellow Democrat should resign. So it looks to me like you have a group of women supporting a candidate who is not opposed to violence against women by virtue of his silence on the matter when he had a great opportunity to very publicly speak out against it and really be non-partisan in the process. (Before I get some irate rebuttal about how Tedisco has supported legislation against domestic violence, etc. -- let me remind you that Spitzer did the same thing on the prostitution issue.)
[2] The second is the whole notion of “Women for Tedisco.” What? I thought this kind of thing went out in the 60's. Can you imagine if there had been a group of supporters for Gillibrand calling them selves “Men for Gillibrand.” Next time you want a real good yuk from a group, tell them you want to start a “men's auxiliary” for some organization.
Number one above leads me to speculate that you can sometimes tell more about a candidate by what they do not say, than by the words the emanate from their mouths.
Come to think of it, I rarely hear or see the word “peace” in any of Tedisco's communications, verbal or written.
