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The Cruelty of the Bonsai

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The Cruelty of the Bonsai

 

By Michael Boyajian

 

My wife Jeri and I were at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden many years ago with friends who introduced us to a woman who appeared to be a matriarch of sorts to the gardens.   She inquired of all those present if whether we agreed that the practice of Bonsai upon trees was a form of cruelty.

GATEMOUTH: so you really want an apology huh? Well don’t hold your breath.

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As the years have gone by I have come to a simple conclusion: people blog for different reasons; some of which aren’t healthy. This conclusion in itself isn’t profound, but it has been arrived at in some very hard ways, with some inner pain and through a lot of disappointing revelations. 

Recently, many people have called me to reiterate something(s) said to me years ago: “Ignore the fools who perpetually attack you on the blogs”. And in my last column I really felt I had finally gotten some kinda closure of sorts; but I was wrong: so let me try one more time. 

When I was invited to be one of the original members of Room Eight’s writer’s colony, I was apprehensive. This was primarily because I saw the way the “silly people” (I don’t want to go profane here /as yet) had behaved, on the blog then called “Politicker”.

Helen A Bucket (Doubting Thomas)

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A reader writes:

“I'm not going to defend Helen's comment, but I will defend her right to freedom of speech & no American should be 'shamed' just because they have an opinion. How would any of like to be the scorn of the media because we said something others didn't like (which is often with most of us).”

Helen Thomas was an opinion columnist. Everyday, people try to "shame" opinion writers because they have an opinion. To restrict our ability to do so would be to impinge upon our own freedom of speech.

I’m pretty much a free speech absolutist. I will defend to the death your right to use the N-word, and my right to (usually) condemn you for doing so.

Thomas said something shameful–I reserve the right to shame her.

The Gateway Weekend Wrap (Don’t Have a Kaus Edition)

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Given that I, as of late, have taken to imitating his format (now widespread, but he pretty much invented it), and I have a similar tendency to dwell upon the flaws of liberalism from within, I would like to be more sympathetic to Kaus' pathetic cry for attention. However, it seems to me that Kaus long ago lost his way, to the point where's he's more neo-con than neo-lib. His obsessive focus on illegal immigrants is virtually a textbook betrayal of the neo-liberal idea. Query: how does someone with no followers end up on the first page of the STYLE section? Mickey Kaus Seeks to Correct the Flaws of Liberalism – NYTimes.com www.nytimes.com

Perhaps New York Wants Solar Too Much

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A while back I wrote a post about how permits and inspections by multiple agencies meant that installing a solar system took a year, even though the actual installation only took one day. I wouldn’t have posted it if I didn’t think I was done with the city, but it turned out I wasn’t. My installer had to do yet another round of surveys and inspections, associated with yet another subsidy, which ran another four months. What I found is that it isn’t just the permits and inspections that are uncoordinated and overlapping, but the subsidies as well. Once I added them all up, I felt less like a civic-minded environmentalist and more like someone who perhaps ought to be working for Goldman Sachs.

Issue of the Decade

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“This, in my opinion, is the public issue of this decade,” according to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as quoted by Bloomberg News. “Things that used to be sacred cows, that used to be the third rail, no longer are. They’ve been replaced by the unaffordability, absolute unaffordability.” He is referring to public employee pensions and retirement benefits, and I agree, unfortunately, that it will be the issue of the decade, and the morality of it will vary from place to place.

In some places, such as New Jersey, public employees have contributed a great deal to their own pensions, and it is the employer (former taxpayers) who didn't put in the required amount, to get more spending with less in taxes. In California and some other states, the public retirees do not get Social Security. Even in those places, however, the unions are guilty for cutting deals with the politicians to get undeserved, retroactive pension enhancements and collectively engaging in schemes to inflate pension payments relative to pay earned on the job. At the other extreme, with public service recipients and taxpayers nearly blameless, is New York City. And everywhere, Generation Greed has the same solution — solve the issue of the decade, caused by older generations making themselves better off at the expense of the future, by making younger generations worse off while avoiding politically difficult conflict by not asking those older generations to give anything back.

Apologies Are In Order (You Betcha!)

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From: Ben Smith (bsmith@politico.com)

TO: GATEMOUTH (gatemouthnyc@hotmail.com

CC: Rock Hackshaw (rockhackshaw@hothead.com)

Hi guys,

We checked the IP addresses from which Gatemouth and JP post, and they are in fact different. JP's is actually in another state.

best,
Ben

—
Ben Smith
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/
benpolitico@gmail.com

—–Original Message—–
From: GATEMOUTH [gatemouthnyc@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thu 6/3/2010 6:05 PM
To: benpolitico@gmail.com; gur@r8ny.com
Cc: rockhackshaw@hothead.com