The Despicable Critters - David Loftus

It’s been an awful month for horses.

Personally, I am not especially sentimental about equine quadrupeds. Growing up a lower middle class city kid, I was never around one, and I have ridden a horse only twice in my lifetime (both very tame and well-trained critters who probably required no direction from me). I can appreciate their beauty and respect my wife’s more informed opinion that, in personality, horses have a lot in common with dogs.

But I am against needless suffering on the part of any living creatures. And two incidents over the past week and a half illustrate -- through infliction of superfluous, ghastly, and ultimately mortal pain on sweet innocent animals -- the far-too-common hatefulness and murderous inconsideration of our “noble” species.

Yesterday, eight horses (one just a week old and another about to give birth) burned to death in a barn fire in Ohio that authorities believe was deliberately set as an anti-gay hate crime. Last week, six racehorses burned to death on a freeway in Colorado because a passing driver flicked a burning cigarette butt -- inadvertently, one hopes, though that didn't make a difference to the horses -- into their trailer.

In one case, these simple and gentle creatures suffered agonizing deaths because some person or persons indulged his (and you pretty much have to assume the masculine pronoun applies in this case) pig-ignorant fears and insecurities, spray-painted “fags are freaks” and “burn in hell” on the barn walls, and set fire to the interior after walking right past the stalled (which is to say trapped) animals. What better illustration could one have of the inhumanity and despicable irrationality of homophobia? Couldn’t the arsonist(s) at least have let the horses out of their stalls and the barn door first?

In the other, a motorist indulged his or her filthy addiction and unconcern for others by “merely” littering on a federal highway … with the result that, again, innocent and sweet creatures died in massive pain and agony. The only thing worse is when a despairing, indebted, and separated or divorced father takes a gun or a match to his children as well as himself. (And yes, that happened across town this week, too.) I hope the law catches up with the malefactors in both of the horse incidents and somehow makes them see -- really see -- the consequences of their actions.

When a human being behaves abominably, we often automatically call him an "animal," but it's hard to think of an act an animal might commit like these two incidents. Saying an animal was behaving as thoughtlessly and murderously as a human would be the worse insult.

We all make mental calculations about when to abide by laws and when not to -- from littering and walking against the light to driving after a few drinks -- but some “simple and harmless” offenses, it turns out, can have far deadlier effects than others. Better to observe the letter and spirit of the law as best you can, as much as you can.

Measuring Happiness Across the Globe - David Loftus

This week’s news included the results of the latest Gallup Poll of global well-being. As widely reported, the study that supposedly measures how happy various countries are put Denmark on top, and Sweden and Canada just behind. The U.S. came in at a sobering 12th place, behind such possibly surprising contenders as Australia (4th), Finland (5th), Venezuela (6th), and Israel (7th).

Now, I have nothing against the notion that the average person in Denmark or even Venezuela is happier than the average American. I only question the survey here as an exercise in critical thinking -- a devil’s advocate response, as it were. As with any poll, the relevant question to ask is: By what criteria did the pollsters measure what they were looking for? I wondered whether average income, state of the local economy, aspects of the education system, or the activity of the entertainment industries in these various nations factored in.

It turns out this is just self-reporting by a mass of individuals across 124 countries. People from Ireland to Burkina Faso, 1,000 in each nation, were asked in person or by telephone to rate their own lives today, and what they expected it to be five years from now, on a scale of 1 to 10. If they decided they had at least a 7 today and an 8 in the future, the survey termed them “thriving”; lower numbers could be “struggling” or “suffering.”

That’s all. The best discussion of the results I’ve run across was by Miami Herald columnist Frida Ghitis. She noted that while wealth, democratic government, warm and sunny weather, religion, and peace and security all tend to correlate with happiness among individuals, these variables often appear to work at cross-purposes on a national level. For instance, many Latin American countries (not very wealthy, and often sporting high rates of crime) rated high in satisfaction. So, too, did the United Arab Emirates and Qatar (highly undemocratic, but very wealthy and inclined to shower their largesse on their tiny populations). China is surging out of poverty but only 12 percent surveyed qualified as “thriving.” (Less surprisingly, restless Egypt and Libya reported 12 percent and 14 percent, respectively.)

For the record, here are the top and bottom 10s:

Countries where the most citizens reported to be “thriving”

1. Denmark (72%)

2. Sweden (69%)

3. Canada (69%)

4. Australia (65%)

5. Finland (64%)

6. Venezuela (64%)

7. Israel (63%)

8. New Zealand (63%)

9. Netherlands (62%)

10. Ireland (62%)

[ 12.  U.S.A.  (59%) ]

Bottom 10: Countries where the fewest citizens reported to be “thriving”

Chad (1%)
Central African Republic (2%)
Haiti (2%)
Burkina Faso (2%)
Cambodia (3%)
Niger (3%)
Tajikistan (3%)
Tanzania (4%)
Mali (4%)
Comoros (4%)

If you want to see the entire Gallup Poll list, go here.


What it comes down to is self-perception, and how each individual, each collection of people, assesses what makes them happy. Americans take their peace, security, and democracy for granted, and tend to obsess about the wealth they haven’t yet gotten, or the things they feel they’ve lost, such as community, or investment value.

I suspect much of what influences these self-perceptions across the planet relates to the general messages that viewers in each country pick up from their news media and entertainment. Go almost anywhere else in the world, and you’ll encounter dozens, hundreds, thousands of people who want to come to the U.S., because they see wealth, health, beauty, and clean streets and homes in the movies and television programs we export to them. When we watch the very same programs here, we focus on the crimes, violence, duplicity, and fear in the shows (and in the news stories).

Religion, sunlight, music, and other things may inspire South Americans to overlook their poverty and crime. What surprises me is that so many Central and West African countries saw themselves at the bottom: Chad (the worst), Central African Republic (2nd worst), Burkina Faso (4th), Mali (9th). I’ve been to Mali, and though it is indeed one of the poorest nations in the world, the people seemed very full of life and happy. Maybe television and movies have shown them a lot more of what the rest of the world has, and they lack.

If there were some objective way to measure general happiness from country to country, I’m sure the results would look very different from this (or any other) year’s Gallup Poll. Maybe the U.S. would rate much higher, maybe it would lower. But I can guarantee you that how we view ourselves (or how any other nation’s people see their own situation) is far from an accurate, truthful, or objective assessment.

Invasion of the Wee Beasties (with help from inconsiderate carriers): a few thoughts about germs - David Loftus

The past week’s news of a germs study which suggests we get exposed to bacteria and viruses from places we might not have thought of -- like ATMs and TV remote controls -- shows that technology has brought us closer together in unhealthy ways while maintaining our innocence of the fact. (I’ve provided a lot of links below, but I wasn’t able to find this particular news story on a Web search of either the local newspaper’s site or Google News. But I know I read it in my local daily in the last few days.)

We have all witnessed the ease with which strangers can turn abusive and obscene on the Internet -- in public comments and on discussion lists -- because they can’t see their audience and their “listeners” can’t frown on them in person or pummel them physically. Now, a recent study indicates that fecal matter, E. coli, and other nasty critters hang out in considerable numbers on ATM buttons, remotes, and other locations and implements -- another gift from unseen strangers. News stories in recent years have found similar mother lodes of germs on the handles of grocery carts and inside musical instruments.

Most of it goes back to hand washing: too many people simply don’t do it regularly, or at all. I’ve seen this myself. Every time I go to a public men’s room, I observe that roughly a third to a half of the other males don’t wash their hands at all, and some engage only in the curious non-disinfecting exercise of dipping their hands under running water for a moment without using any soap … as if hand washing were a public ritual that does no good at all but people feel they have to at least pay it lip service, so to speak. I commented on this on my Facebook page in late December and got a relative firestorm of 23 comments in a day and a half. (One friend who did not comment asked me in person later, half-seriously, not to write about such things, it had so unnerved her.)

I was like everyone else when I was younger. I didn’t wash my hands at all, because I didn’t regard my private parts as particularly dirty, or I did my bathroom business without touching them. But it’s not really so much about twiddly bits and creases on one’s person; it’s that you pass through a physical space where hundreds of other people have tarried, some of whom carry disease and touch the seats, fixtures, and handles with their germy fingers. Plus, microscopic bits of human waste are floating in the air, ready to attach themselves to you: if you can smell ’em, they’re there.

After too many winters of catching whatever cold or ’flu virus everyone else has, and too many occasions on which I and/or my wife got sick after taking an air flight because we spent hours in a metal tube with hundreds of other folks -- some of whom inevitably carried germs, I’ve become more sensitive about other people’s contagiousness. Since I don’t drive, in the isolated and familiar environment of a private vehicle, every day I hear strangers coughing, sneezing, and sniffling on buses, light-rail trains, and streetcars … and I know some of them are coughing into their hands and then grabbing poles, seat backs, and hanging straps. It’s not a pleasant thought. More and more, I keep my gloves on or lean against a wall -- even balance without any support while the train rolls -- so I don’t have to touch any surfaces on mass transit.

Have I sufficiently depressed and demoralized you yet? Some further thoughts: The “five-second rule” of dropped food is no good. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is growing. (Maybe the human race could still be wiped out by a plague instead of nuclear war or global warming.) And hands-free faucets may spread more germs than taps you turn on and off with your hands!

On the other hand, we don’t build up germ resistance in our systems without regular exposure to wee beasties. And as much as 90 percent of the cells in our bodies are in fact bacteria, good as well as bad. So there is such a thing as being too careful. (Not to mention paranoid.)

Cannibalism or Homosexuality? Whattaya Asking Me For? - David Loftus

Several nights ago I found myself in a conversation of the sort one usually has at a bar in college or in one’s twenties. I’m not that young anymore and most of the time I only go to bars with my wife, so I don’t often run into this sort of thing these days. But a little bar-hopping comes with my work: as an actor, it’s useful to schmooze and network in order to find out what projects are developing in town, and to remind people I’m active and available. And there tend to be a lot more actors and filmmakers in their 20s and 30s at these events than in my age group.

A guy I know slightly pulled a friend and me over from our conversation to ask us a question his circle had been discussing: Would you sooner experiment with homosexuality or cannibalism? My friend—a young woman—unhesitatingly responded homosexuality. The questioner turned to the rest and said, you see? I gather he was arguing either that females are more open to bisexual experiences or they’re more squeamish about the notion of eating human flesh, while (young, hetero) males tend to be more nervous about homosexual contact … to an extent that they’re more likely to consider eating human flesh as an alternative.

I told them I was not particularly bothered by either. For political or eco-ethical reasons I’ve pretty much given up eating meat aside from fish and shellfish, but in the past I’ve eaten beef tongue and heart, rabbit, steak tartare, LOTS of raw oysters, gazelle meat, and other exotic flesh. So long as no laws had been broken in the procurement and preparation, I wouldn’t necessarily balk at eating cat, dog, or human. (On the other hand, human dignity and civil rights are essential parts of the equation: When one of those “Bodies” exhibitions came to town, featuring actual human figures preserved by rubberization processes after donation by the Chinese government, which could not satisfactorily verify their provenance—prior permission given? deceased with no family? executed prisoners?—I deliberately chose not to attend … despite, and even because of, intense curiosity.)

As for homosexual contact, I can remember the notion bothering me a lot more—in a sense, it was unimaginable—when I was younger, but much of that concern faded steadily away after I was 30 and 40 … ironically, during the period it became less likely ever to happen because I’m happily married. In any case, I found the premise of “experimentation” rather stupid. Either I’d feel like doing it, or I wouldn’t.

The discussion brought back to me a couple of notices I’d read in the Hollywood press over the years. I should say up front that I’m recalling these from memory and I can’t verify their accuracy absolutely; they’re small enough that they might not even be recorded anywhere on the Internet, but the names and the basic scenarios have stayed in my memory.

I remember reading that Will Smith was reported as having considered a script which called for him to kiss another man. Worried about what to do, he had gone to Denzel Washington for advice and Washington, as I recall, told Smith in no uncertain terms to turn down the role—it could adversely affect his image. I felt ashamed of both of them, as actors and as men: afraid to step on a bridge that Michael York had easily crossed back in 1972 with “Cabaret.”

In contrast, an interviewer once asked Jeremy Irons if he had ever had sex with a man. His response went something like: regrettably, no, he had never had that opportunity. That struck me as a classy way to deal with such parlor-game subjects.