Category Archives: Politics

Musings on political matters

My Appearance on KUER’s Radio West

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On Thursday (June 10, 2010) I appeared on KUER’s Radio West show, hosted by Doug Fabrizio. For those who don’t know, KUER is the University of Utah’s public radio station. Because I don’t live in Utah, I haven’t listened to the show except by accident when I am visiting. In researching the show, however, I see that it is highly regarded and covers a potpourri of subjects, many of which would be very interesting to me. I see it is possible to stream the shows live on a computer or download podcasts of past shows.

[Left: Doug Fabrizio, host of KUER's Radio West]

The subject of the show I was on was the documentary film “8: The Mormon Proposition,” which debuted at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The primary interviewee was Reed Cowan, the maker of the film. I think the main reason KUER asked me to be on the show was to get a more moderate Mormon view of the fallout of Prop 8 in California. Some of my conservative Mormon friends may question the use of “moderate” to describe me – they no doubt consider me to be a liberal. On the other hand, many former Mormons and gay activists probably consider me to be on the conservative, or at least moderate, end of the spectrum. It reminds me of when I was a kid and used to think of Chicago as being “back east,” never realizing that Bostonians thought of it as being “out west.”

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“Is Marriage a Right?”

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A Panel at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government

I mentioned in my last blog entry that my plan was to spend the second week of my Utah stay attending the NGS annual conference in Salt Lake City. I had even paid my registration fee for the event. However, shortly before I left for Utah, I was asked if I could participate on a panel at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government that would address the topic, “Is Marriage a Right?” It would require me to miss most of the NGS conference.

[Right: Harvard Kennedy School's Littauer Building]

Nevertheless, this seemed to be a great opportunity to return to Cambridge and speak on a subject I feel passionately about and Kennedy School students are likely to be heavily represented among future leaders of governments. I agreed to go.

The panel was co-sponsored by four of the Kennedy School “caucuses” (affinity groups) – Mormon, LGBT, California and Massachusetts. It would bring together students from a church that supports laws prohibiting same-sex marriage (Mormon), a group that is directly affected such laws (gays and lesbians), a state where same-sex marriage is legal (Massachusetts) and a state where it is not (California).

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World War II, My Father and the 107th SeaBees

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“The War” and “Band of Brothers”

Dawn and I have been watching Ken Burns’ excellent new PBS documentary about World War II called simply “The War.” Burns and his co-director, Lynn Novick, have been working on the project for six years and the result is a 14 ½ hour, seven part series of images that are memorable, moving and graphic.

In this documentary we’re reminded again that that war is basically a young man’s game—young men under the control of a few old men. It takes the kind of disregard of danger that only the young have to staff a war machine. As one of the talking heads featured in “The War” said about his enlistment, “And then suddenly you could be a pilot or a submariner or an artilleryman or any damn thing, but it was something exciting and it was something adult. It has nothing to do with patriotism. It has nothing to do, really, with who the enemy is. It’s the opportunity to be somebody more exciting than the kid you are.”

The documentary also points up the inevitability of screw-ups in every war—ill-suited leaders, inadequate intelligence, ill-equipped troops.

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Tragedy in the Twenty-First Century

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It started as a typical September morning—the sun had just risen on what promised to be a warm California day. I was dressed in workout clothes—black Above-the-Rim shorts, a charcoal Nike t-shirt, white K-Swiss tennis shoes—almost ready to leave for the gym. I backed my car out of our detached garage, wheeled it around and eased up to the front porch to finish loading my lawyer clothes—suit, white shirt, tie, belt, dress shoes and sox. I was planning to drive to 24-Hour Fitness in Orange and work out. Then I would shower, change, and head down to my office in Center Tower, Costa Mesa and my law practice at Latham & Watkins. I had a federal copyright lawsuit that was occupying large chunks of my time and I needed to review some deposition transcripts.

Suddenly Dawn came running out of the house. Thinking I was leaving, she began waving her arms frantically. My first thought was that something terrible had happened—perhaps an injury to a family member.

I pushed a button and the window slid down. “Matt just called,” she said, the concern apparent in her voice. Instantly the thought flashed through my mind—had something happened to Quade, our five-week old grandson? It had been twenty-three years since we lost our daughter, Elise, to sudden infant death syndrome, but I still carried an anxiety about the safety of children that would surface at the least hint of danger.

“They’ve blown up the World Trade Center in Washington. I’m going to turn on the TV.” With that, Dawn ran back into the house.

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