The Supreme Court yesterday decided another affirmative action case, once more holding that discrimination no longer exists.
When I discuss these things with people, I find that often the whole idea of affirmative action is misunderstood.
Affirmative action began as a way to fix discrimination where it needed to be fixed. Imagine a factory in an area that is 50% minority. If the jobs in the factory required no experience, you’d expect 50% of the employees to be minorities, wouldn’t you? Just based on statistics. Well, of course that wasn’t always the case, especially in the ’60s and 70s when affirmative action began. You’d have these places with 10% minority workers.
So what would happen is that the factory would have to explain themselves. If, for instance, they could show that of the job applications they received, only 10% were from minorities then perhaps that could explain it. But that usually didn’t happen. And so the factory was made to have a policy of accepting minorities to get to where they should have been had there been no discrimination.
Note: this never required you to hire someone who was not qualified. Never. Yet people who scream about “reverse discrimination” always try to give anecdotal examples of where that happened.
Most of the recent cases involve colleges, where there is a different objective. Colleges want to have a diverse student body. They like to get students from all over the country and all over the world, with different religions and beliefs and backgrounds and races. They also look to get people with different experiences and people who were leaders in their community.
It’s how you get a real education. Real education comes from getting lots of different viewpoints and not being in a room where everyone thinks exactly the same. (As an aside, I taught a Constitutional Law class for a semester at Curry College in Massachusetts back in the ’90s — the entire class was full of rich, spoiled white kids and I couldn’t get a good debate going no matter what the issue. It was terrible.)
Lawsuits often come from white kids who got better SAT scores but yet didn’t get in while a minority student whose scores weren’t so good did.
Are SAT scores everything? Do they predict future success? No, and all educators know that. They are an indication, but that’s just one of many factors to consider when accepting students. (Some schools now don’t even consider SATs when accepting students.)
Yet people scream “reverse discrimination” and only look at race when a minority person gets in over a white person. (For all you know, the minority applicant was an Eagle Scout who was High School President, plays a musical instrument, knows three languages, but tests poorly.)
And now we get back to the main point again — qualifications. Even if the minority student is not as qualified as the white student, he or she is still qualified. They’ve met the minimum requirement to get in, and once in, they will have to take the same tests and do as well as every other student or they will fail.
Yes, it is true. I have represented some terrible people. That’s my job as a defense attorney.
Clearly, then, I support criminal activity. I mean, there is no other explanation. It certainly can’t be that I support the United States Constitution, especially the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th amendments.
The Republican Governor’s Association knows this is true. They are running ads against a Democrat in South Carolina who fought against the powerful District Attorneys and Attorneys General, who protected citizens against abuses by the police, who made sure that everyone’s Constitutional rights were not violated as they went through the system, and even helped some innocent people fight against unfair accusations.
So what do the ads say? “He supported violent criminals instead of South Carolina.”
So yes, it’s true. I am an anti-American person who doesn’t deserve any respect, because I am in favor of crime. I am lower than the people I represent. How dare I demand that we obey the Constitution.
Let’s hope this ad backfires on the GOP, as it should.
But then again, this is South Carolina, where they elected Mark Sanford after he had used government money to support his mistress. Violating the Ten Commandments? No big deal. Supporting the United States Constitution? What a terrible person!
Here, let’s see what you think. 
Imagine that instead of a rich, white rancher demanding that he doesn’t have to obey laws or pay taxes while surrounding himself with gun-toting supporters, it was a group of black and latino squatters in an inner-city housing development doing the same thing, guns at the side.
Who here thinks the right wing would be cheering them on as freedom-loving patriots?
Anyone?
Why does anyone take these traitors seriously?
It’s bad enough when they literally talk about secession when they don’t get their way. And when they encourage gun owners to break the law if they don’t like it. Or support right-wing zealots who talk about killing the President as if that were a patriotic thing to do. And then they support a rich rancher who gives the law a middle finger and literally says he does not acknowledge the existence of the United States. 
Quite often, many of these people fly the flag of the traitors who declared war against our country so they could keep humans in slavery, and they’re proud of that fact.
And then they proclaim, with a straight face, that they love America and are patriots.
Well, no. No, they don’t and no they aren’t. People who love America do not declare treason against it.
Don’t get me wrong — this isn’t just about free speech. They have every right to protest and speak out against government policies they don’t like. And hey, there’s even a place for peaceful protests and civil disobedience.
This is none of those things.
We need to speak up and tell these people that they do not represent the views of honest, patriotic Americans. And we need to call out these hypocrites who yelled “traitor” whenever anyone ever said anything bad about George W. Bush. (Ann Coulter even wrote a book on that topic, yet she remains completely silent about real actual examples done by people she happens to agree with.)
You know this is true: If people on the left were doing the things mentioned above, the right would be the first to call them traitors.
And this time, they’d be right.
Game of Thrones (“GOT”) is the most popular fantasy series today, and deservedly so. I enjoy the books and am thrilled that the TV series is so well done.
I am looking forward to tonight’s episode, but mostly wanted to post this meme I just made and also to share my George R.R. Martin story.
I met George R.R. Martin at a convention last fall where we were both guest authors. Well, him more than me. (If you don’t know about my novels, click here.) I had previously met him probably ten years ago at another convention — before the Game of Thrones TV show — but we never spoke at that time.
As it turned out, Martin’s room was right down the hall from mine and we kept ending up in the elevator together. He knew I wasn’t stalking him because most of those times, I was in the elevator before him.
The first time there were some other fans on the elevator who asked for a picture with him, and he obliged. They got off before our floor, so it was just us. We walked out and headed down the hall and the conversation went like this:
Martin: I do get tired of posing for pictures all the time.
Me: Well, you’re quite famous now.
Martin: I wasn’t unknown before.
Me: True, among us. But you were never a guest on Conan before.
Martin: True.
Around the third time we were on the elevator together, he pushed he button for our floor and then asked the others what floors they needed, and then after everyone left, he turned to me.
Martin: I always wanted to be an elevator operator. If the writing thing hadn’t worked out…
We both laughed and went on to our rooms.
The final time we ended up together, the conversation went like this:
Me: I finally figured out why you have a character named “Hodor.”
Martin: Oh?
Me: I was thinking about your comment about wanting to be an elevator operator. It’s clear to me now that “Hodor” is short for “Hold the door.”
Martin: (laughing) You don’t know how close to the truth you are!
So there you have it. If we ever learn why Hodor says “Hodor” (which, as readers know, is not his given name) and it has something to do with elevators, remember: You read it here first.
EDIT: Follow-up years later (with a special guest appearance by George RR Martin)
ventrellaquest.com 