Sunday, December 04, 2016

My dad, 1919- 2012

My dad, Leonard Lasken, died at 93, shortly after the 2012 Obama/Romney presidential election.   It had been a long slow descent into grief and Parkinson’s for him, ever since my mom died four years earlier.   He told me that one thing that kept him going was that he wanted to “see what’s going to happen.”  He didn't live long enough to see Trump happen, but he wouldn't have been surprised.

A lifelong Democrat, he had recently come to reject both parties, and I felt, as we watched the primary and then the presidential debates together, that the electoral process itself had come to represent corruption to him. He used expressions like “six of one, half a dozen of the other,” to describe the policy differences we heard during the Obama/Romney debates. My dad lived long enough to see the Democratic Party betray him, and the Republican Party shut him out as much as it ever had.

After serving as a naval officer in World War II, my dad got his pharmacy degree from the University of Minnesota, after which we moved to L.A. in 1948, in time for my third birthday.

My dad came politically of age during this period. He was hired as a pharmacist by Thrifty Drug Stores (currently reincarnated as Rite Aide) the only pharmacy chain in L.A., at the time, that would hire Jewish pharmacists. We rented a house in South Central (then all white), which my dad struggled to afford on his pharmacist pay of $1.98 per hour. He became an activist in the Retail Clerks Union (which represented pharmacists as well as clerks), running for (and losing) the union presidency, with both support and later opposition from legendary union powerhouse Joseph DeSilva. My dad’s political heroes then included Jimmie Hoffa, the godfather-like head of the Teamster's Union.  He flung our copy of Time Magazine into the trash when its cover featured Hoffa’s face with a caption about corruption.

At this time my parents experimented with the Communist Party. I recall a backyard barbecue and the showing in someone’s living room of a beautiful Russian cartoon. I was enrolled in a communist affiliated pre-school. I had no idea what communism was, of course. To my dad, the party probably represented a rebellion against his father (I expressed my rebellion later by joining the GOP during Watergate). My grandfather was the retired owner of a successful liquor store and pharmacy in North Dakota, where he had fled after a pogram killed his father in Ukraine. He was a founding member of the Brentwood Country Club in L.A. (he and my grandmother had not been permitted into the Bismarck Country Club), but my parents made us live in near poverty out of, I guess, idealism. I've been suspicious of idealism ever since.

My parents' fling with communism faltered when my dad objected to the party’s practice of putting people in the position of martyr, then hanging them out to dry. The end was confirmed when his local group rejected my dad's application for party membership because, they said, he was “too bourgeois.”

How right they were! Leonard had noticed, as a Thrifty pharmacist, that Thrifty was no longer thrifty, as it had been when it started in the 1920’s. By the 1950's, retail prescription prices were routinely marked-up to exorbitant levels above wholesale- for rich and poor alike- in a tacit monopoly maintained by all the pharmacy chains and most of the independents. My dad hooked up with a membership discount store in Torrance to start one of the first real discount pharmacies in the state, instantly undercutting just about every pharmacy in L.A. County. With this success he was able to secure the pharmacy concession for the White Front Discount Department Stores (White Front began in the 1920's as a single store in a black neighborhood started by a white man named Blackman).  When my dad joined White Front it comprised ten successful stores.  White Front was later purchased by Interstate Department Stores (owner of the late Toy's 'R Us) which expanded to thirty White Front stores up and down the state.  My dad's contract forced him to open a pharmacy in every location, but not all were profitable.  The situation started to look bad, but then White Front went bankrupt (from over-expanding) giving my dad a way out.  He relocated the profitable stores to independent locations and sold them to the pharmacist/managers (several are in business today). To my relief, and to the amazement of many around him, my dad landed on his feet, a hallmark of his life.

When he went into business, my dad's life and politics changed. He told the family that he was making money by following his social conscience- he believed that people should not face extortion over life-saving medicine- and his political heroes changed accordingly. He liked his first Republican, Nelson Rockefeller, whom he saw as a levelheaded, business savvy guy. The vagaries of Nixon kept my dad a Democrat, but things started changing when Bill Clinton ushered in the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, which my dad correctly predicted would decimate American manufacturing.  Leonard was opposed as well to the Democratic deregulation of Wall Street that ended up in the economic collapse of 2008. The Democrats, for my dad, became the slightly lesser of two evils, as opposed to the force for good he had previously supported.

We rather liked Mitt Romney. He seemed to have some of the business sense of a Rockefeller, and hopefully good sense in general. But we shared our dismay that the Republican party had loaded Romney with so much useless baggage that he could not win. In essence, Romney had no choice but to put up and shut up regarding the Tea Party agenda as expressed then by Senator Rick Santorum, e.g. that abortion doctors should be charged with murder; that homosexuality is a sin hated by God; that contraception reduces sex to "mere pleasure."  This left Obama with an easy road to victory. All the Democrats had to do was make a fuss about the Santorum platform- viscerally unpopular throughout Obama’s base and far beyond (most voters are in favor of pleasure)- and Obama would never have to answer the difficult questions (e.g. Why have you done nothing about Wall Street, which, with help from both parties, caused the Great Recession? Since you have done nothing about Wall Street, do you believe, as Republicans do, that we do not need regulation? What is the purpose of your drone strikes? When a drone killed forty people in a wedding party in Pakistan, and not one militant was killed, why did you say nothing? Are you trying to start a war?).

My dad and I marveled together at the clever tricks of party operatives on both sides, placing social issues like gay marriage right next to unrelated economic ideas, blurring the distinctions between voters and robbing them of a voice.

My dad wanted to see what is going to happen to the world, but he had to die not seeing what he most wanted to see: the salvaging of the American democratic process from the end-game we are now witnessing, a manipulated game mediated by short-term thinkers for short-term goals.  If there are long term goals, we don't know what they are, or whose they are.  My dad opposed this darkness, and taught me to do the same.

Rest in peace, Dad. We’ll keep up the fight.

Friday, October 21, 2016

Lasken op-ed in the Orange County Register

Prop. 58: A Trojan Horse to stop English instruction

By Doug Lasken

Re-posted from the Orange County Register- https://www.ocregister.com/2016/10/20/guest-commentary-prop-58-is-a-trojan-horse-to-stop-english-instruction/"[The link will only work cut-and-pasted into a browser]

Public memory is short when it comes to complex education policy, such as that concerning bilingual education.  That is why the backers of Proposition 58, which would gut key provisions of California’s landmark Prop. 227 (1998) feel free to re-write pre-227 history.  

I was there and this is the true history.

Prior to passage of 227, native Spanish speaking students in California were placed in classes where the only language of instruction permitted was Spanish. Prop. 58 supporters deny this, but I taught in such classes for Los Angeles Unified and it is true.  The district Bilingual Master Plan decreed that all textbooks for native Spanish speakers must be in Spanish and the language of instruction must be Spanish only.  If the teacher was not fluent in Spanish, an aide, usually without a college degree, taught the academic subjects- math, social studies, history- in Spanish.  Thirty minutes per day was set aside for English as a Second Language (ESL), but this was conversational only: No phonics, spelling, grammar or advanced English vocabulary could be used or taught.  The only way for Spanish-speaking students to study English was to pass an extremely difficult test in Spanish.  Most kids could not pass this test until middle or high school, if ever.  The result: the majority of Spanish speaking kids received almost no English instruction.

LAUSD had its own flourishes: Native Spanish speaking parents were advised not to speak English with their children because it would confuse them.  At one staff development we heard about “research” showing that people acquire languages better the older they are.  Yes, you read that right.

No wonder then, as a high school teacher several years later, I encountered Hispanic teenagers who asked me why they had not been taught English in elementary or middle school.  I had to explain that 227 had come too late for them.  

The forces behind the misnamed "bilingual education" policies included the textbook publishing lobby, which procured vast fortunes printing Spanish textbooks, and lobbies within teachers unions on behalf of Spanish speaking teachers who made $5,000 a year extra.  The system was also a job creator for administrators, with hundreds of positions like “bilingual coordinator.” 


It is disingenuous of Prop. 58 author State Senator Ricardo Lara to say that Prop. 227 prohibited “multilingual education”.  On the contrary, 227 mandated study of more than one’s native language.  Lara also throws the phrase “English only” at 227, one of the great slanders from “bilingual” supporters.  227 had nothing to do with “English Only.”

Voters should read the text of Prop. 58 carefully.   It starts on a soothing note: “(Prop. 58) preserves the requirement that public schools ensure students become proficient in English.”   

A problem soon appears: “(Prop. 58) requires that school districts provide students with limited English proficiency the option to be taught English nearly all in English.”  Under 227, learning English is not an “option,” but a right.  This significant and unsettling change is followed up with calls for dual-immersion programs (though they are already allowed by 227), and for parents’ right to pick how their children learn English (also provided in 227). 

Because of the distortions of 227 from Prop. 58’s author and the lack of clear need for any of its provisions, voters should be wary of this proposition.  On November 8, vote No on Prop. 58.

Doug Lasken is a retired Los Angeles Unified teacher, current debate coach and freelancer.  Reach him at doug.lasken@gmail.com.

Sunday, June 05, 2016

Poem on demand

I told my writing group
I average one poem per year
because of inspiration
or lack of it
(or lack of perspiration?)

But doesn't a poem need to be written
right here, right now?

Of course it does-
It always does
when the heart asks
“Where is my universe?

Saturday, January 09, 2016

Richard Nixon: Bad actor or bad actor?


I came home from school recently laughing about a kid on my debate team whose response, each time his spar opponent made a claim, was: "Honestly, I don't understand what my opponent is saying."  One of the things coaches have to teach students is how to dissemble.  

There's an important life lesson in the need to dissemble, whether in a game or in life.  We claim that we loathe liars, but in fact we expect people to lie, and lie well.  Take President Richard Nixon, for example.  Why is he the poster-child for bad president?  In policy, he wasn't much different from his predecessors or successors, of either party.  He waged war on about the same level of barbarity as they did. His opening to China is hailed by everyone as a good thing.  His economic moves were not the worst or the best.  How does his record merit particular scorn?

Yes, Nixon had an enemies list and supervised a break-in at the Watergate Hotel to get dirt on his Democratic rivals, but this pales in contrast to the National Security Administration's Obama-sanctioned ability to read at will everyone's private correspondence.  Imagine this speech from Richard Nixon:

"My fellow Americans, tonight I am proposing a new department of the federal government, the National Security Administration, whose job will be to monitor every electronic communication of every American, no warrant or other evidence of probable cause or due process required.  Only in this way can we keep America safe."

Anyone who was of age during Nixon's term as president knows exactly what would have happened had he said such words: Riots in the streets.

Yet this hypothetical speech is exactly what President Obama said repeatedly- in so many words- after the Snowden story broke.  Why is the nation so calm?  Because Obama is a good liar. If he says something keeps the nation safe, people believe him.  Nixon looked and sounded like a liar, so words that already carried significant negative weight fell through the floor when he said them. 

It's ironic that Nixon did acting and debate in school, because he must have known the basics of melodramatic presentation: 

A person who is telling the truth will look you straight in the eye, speak clearly and give you a smile that fills you with warmth, and a truly villainous liar will do the same.  

The melodramatic liar, while looking you in the eyes briefly, will frequently glance to the right or left- looking "shifty," like a schemer whose machinations might creep up on you.  Liars sweat profusely and appear uncomfortable.

Nixon played the melodramatic liar, with shifty eyes, bumbling with words as if he were juggling so many stories he couldn't keep them straight.  When he debated John F. Kennedy on black-and-white TV, his "five o'clock shadow" looked like a gangster's. His upper lip and brow sweated under the hot lights and he had to continuously mop them with a handkerchief. One of his nervous slips was: "We have to get rid of the farmer...er, the subsidies...."  Kennedy was suave and confident throughout.  He did not appear to sweat.

Nixon was a skilled and successful speaker in his youth and early career.  What happened to him later? He faced a tough transition in life from a background of blue-collar religious zealotry to the academic and industrial elites.  Something about that transition may have scared him, perhaps a conflict between rebellion and a desire to assimilate, and it may be that this pressure ruined his acting.

Whatever the cause, Nixon sounded like a liar, so the actual words he said didn't really matter- they were lies, while Kennedy sounded like he was telling the truth, and his words didn't matter, and they were deemed truth.

Thus derives our everlasting scorn of Richard Nixon, who played Snidely Whiplash to the American electorate, tying the widow to the railroad tracks. Barak Obama is trying to play the guy who unties her.  He's got the acting down tight; now he'd better hurry up and untie her.


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