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Six: We’re the children of humanity. That makes them our parents in a sense.

Five: True, but parents have to die. It’s the only way children can come into their own.

–Battlestar Galactica, “Bastille Day”

When first I wrote about Caprica, I said it was “the story of two grieving fathers.”

I was wrong.

Oh, it’s an easy mistake to make. Daniel Greystone and Joseph Adama are two grieving fathers, both trying to find a way to hang on to their daughters — or perhaps, in Adama’s case, to free his daughter. Their initial contact, sealed by their mutual grief at the loss of their daughters and Adama’s wife in a terrorist attack, sets the stage for what is to come.

But Caprica is not about Daniel Greystone and Joseph Adama. Not really. No, Daniel and Joseph are merely players in a story being written by Zoe Greystone, with tremendous help from Lacey Rand, and with assistance from Clarice Willow, Amanda Greystone, and Tamara Adama. Two of those people — Zoe and Tamara — are dead. Three of them — Zoe, Lacey, and Tamara — are not yet adults.

And all of them are women.

It took some time for this to develop. Daniel did indeed try to save his daughter’s life by uploading her own creation — an avatar of herself, based on everything from brain scans to school records to internet logs — into a robot, a prototype Cylon, the only one he’s gotten to work. Daniel did indeed seek help from Joseph Adama, and his friends in the Ha’la’tha, the Tauron mafia, to steal technology from the Vergis Corporation, in order to try to get his daughter’s robot self working.

But Daniel wasn’t the prime mover in this drama. That was Zoe. She created her avatar, one that survived her death. Moreover, she created the program that allowed her to create the avatar. When the program was destroyed during Daniel’s attempt to upload her into a robot body, he was unable to duplicate her work. She was smarter than he was. She was the one who started the process that saved a part of her.

And when she realized that the transfer did work? That she was uploaded into a Cylon body? Well, she didn’t bother to mention it to the father of her creator — her sister, herself. Daniel had no claim on Zoe. Zoe was her own person. And throughout the series, she has hidden in plain sight, not so much as hinting that she exists, manipulating things behind the scenes — even luring a young technician working on her robot body into some cyber dates, not just because she thinks he’s cute — though she does — but in order to try to manipulate him into setting her robot self free, so she can escape Caprica and make it to Gemenon, where her human twin was heading before her human twin’s boyfriend blew up a train. The line she ultimately uses to snare the technician? It’s all about how trees should be coded in the virtual world.

Both Zoes’ friend, Lacey, is the only other person who knows Zoe’s avatar survives. And Lacey herself is not above manipulating the world to her whim. She is just a teenager, just a girl in a school, one with a headmaster who she mistrusts. But she knows the terrorist organization that Zoe orbited, and she’s slowly seducing a fellow teen, one deeper into the S.T.O. that she, into helping her to ship the Zoe robot to Gemenon. Is she attracted to him? Perhaps — but like Avatar Zoe, she’s using him, first and foremost.

Zoe and Lacey are the prime movers, but they are not the only ones. Amanda Greystone — Zoe’s mom, Daniel’s wife — is dancing on the razor’s edge between reality and unreality. Just like the rest of the Twelve Colonies, I suppose, only Amanda’s scars run deeper than just a love of virtual reality. It is Amanda’s sudden declaration at a memorial service that her daughter, Zoe, was a terrorist sympathizer — and perhaps, a terrorist — that causes a public uproar against her husband’s organization, and pushes him down a path where manufacturing more Cylons seems the only way to save his company.

Sister Clarice Willow, the headmaster of Zoe and Lacey’s school, is marvelously broken, possibly drug addicted, married into a group family that mistrusts her (save for two husbands) — and fanatically, hopelessly faithful that The One True God has a Plan. She is willing to manipulate Amanda to get the program Zoe was working on, because she believes that program is the key to eternal life for all people — the key to the very gates of heaven.

And Tamara Adama — she is lost in the virtual world, an imperfect copy of Joseph Adama’s daughter, created using the same program that created Zoe’s duplicate. She has ended up living her life in a videogame that resembles a cross between Grand Theft Auto and Worlds of Warcraft– only she’s the only character in the game who can’t die. And though she first entered the virtual world blindly, unsure of what she was or where she was, now she has become something more — something able to bend the rules of the game.

These are the leading characters of Caprica — these five women. Oh, the show does not condescend to men. Daniel is allowed his battle for his company and his search to figure out what makes the one working Cylon prototype work, when none of the others will. Joseph is allowed to try to salvage his relationship with his son, William, and to search for his daughter in the virtual world, where she is said to be. Sam Adama — Joseph’s brother — is allowed to be a Ha’la’tha enforcer who’s quietly showing his nephew the business, and coming home to a husband who worries about him. And these stories are real and deep and important.

But Daniel and Joseph are reacting to the world around them. Zoe, Lacey, Amanda, Clarice, Tamara? They’re acting. They’re the one calling the tune. Daniel and Joseph are dancing.

It’s rather bracing to see. Battlestar Galactica had its share of strong female characters — President Roslin, Kara Thrace, Athena, Three, Six — but this is something more. It’s sad, but it’s rather startling to see in the far-too-male world of science fiction television. And it’s incredibly welcome. Because these characters’ actions are believable, are entertaining, are contradictory and stupid and brilliant and right and wrong in just the way real humans behave. Caprica is not a show about fathers. And it is not merely a show about mothers and daughters and friends. It is a great show about mothers and daughters and friends — and fathers too.

Pro wrestling features athletes who are performers, and we all know that there are a lot of athletes and performers who are jerks. But Mick Foley isn’t one of them. The veteran wrestler is now donating half the proceeds from his latest book to survivors of rape in Sierra Leone (through Child Fund International). The other half is being donated to RAINN.

But Foley’s support of victims of rape and abuse isn’t stopping with money. He’s also donating his time as an online counselor for RAINN:

They have my first name when they sign in. There are times when the [screen] goes dead. Some women understandably may not want to talk to a man. But for the young lady I talked to, I think she appreciated my perspective. I told her I have four children, including a daughter about her age. She was very worried about what her parents might think. In those cases you have to continually reassure victims that they are victims. We let them know how brave it is for them to reach out for help.

It would be easy for Foley to live in comfort, to take the proceeds from his books and invest them in himself, to use his fame as a wrestler to make his life easy. Instead, he drives a 2002 minivan because it works (and because, he says, it helps teach his kids that nice things aren’t everything), and he donates his time and money to helping make the world a better place for victims of sexual abuse.

I don’t know about you, but I think Mick Foley has figured out what this whole life thing is supposed to be about.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t see anything beating this movie:

Glenn Greenwald is right. This pro-Iraq War column by Marty Peretz is not only wrong, but it contains an unbelievably racist statement:

There were moments–long moments–during the Iraq war when I had my doubts. Even deep doubts. Frankly, I couldn’t quite imagine any venture requiring trust with Arabs turning out especially well. This is, you will say, my prejudice. But some prejudices are built on real facts, and history generally proves me right. Go ahead, prove me wrong.

There are racist bigots who have argued that Jews cannot be trusted, because they’re inherently deceitful people. These racist bigots are rightly called anti-Semites, and they are despised by anyone with a functioning brain.

Marty Peretz just argued that Arabs can’t be trusted, because they’re inherently deceitful people. He’s a racist bigot, and he should be despised by anyone with a functioning brain.

This is not new. And it should not be ignored. Marty Peretz is a flaming racist douchebag. He views Arabs as less human than the rest of humanity. He is not merely prejudiced. He is proudly so.

His opinions are of no more merit than those of David Duke. And no decent human should think otherwise.

I still have no idea who this guy is, but the made Steven Colbert happy, and he’s Russian.

Via Chris Bodenner

Errol Louis of the New York Daily News has a very good point about the scandal surrounding New York Gov. David Paterson. Namely, that the focus of this case should not be on Paterson. Rather, says Louis, it should be about the person at the center of the controversy — no, not aide David Johnson, though Johnson’s actions should be neither forgiven nor forgotten. But rather on Johnson’s victim, the woman who he abused, a woman who was failed every step of the way:

Johnson’s ex-girlfriend told the NYPD and a Family Court referee that she was injured, afraid and subject to intimidation.

“He’s like a government official, and I have problems with even calling the police because the state troopers kept calling and harassing me to drop the charges, and I wouldn’t,” she told the referee in November.

After which, it appears, nobody lifted a finger to help the accuser. City cops, tasked with serving an order of protection on Johnson, proved unable to do so, even though the towering 6-foot-7 aide was by the governor’s side at every public appearance.

The governor’s schedule is public information. Anybody could have served the papers.

The judge does not appear to have passed along the report that men with guns from a state agency were supposedly harassing a victim who appeared in her court.

The state police appear to have acted more like a private intimidation force than a professional law enforcement agency. And members of Paterson’s immediate political staff - and, perhaps, the governor - may have known all of what was going on, but tried to spin or dissolve the complaint rather than face it head-on.

Bad business all around.

In a city where attacks between family members or intimate partners are an epidemic - the NYPD responds to some 650 domestic violence calls every day - it chills the blood to read about how one high-profile encounter was botched.

It does, and not just because this one woman was failed. It chills the blood because it begs the question, how many more victims of domestic violence are being failed?

Obviously, most victims of domestic abuse are not going to be harassed by the Governor of their state. But the other failures — the lack of follow-through, the judge who was silent, the general nonchalance about serving papers — these are failures that are systemic, and general. If city police can’t be bothered to serve papers on a man traveling with the Governor, whose schedule is public, how many other abusers is the NYPD failing to serve?

Moreover, this case is precisely why so many victims of domestic violence choose not to come forward. No, most women who are abused are not going to be visited by state troopers. But many will be pressured by family and friends who are eager to minimize the deeds of the abuser, and eager to get all the unpleasantness behind them. While this is a case of that writ large, Paterson’s actions in this are simply the actions of someone with power trying to get all the unpleasantness swept away, so that his friend can move on with his life — because hey, the guy just made a mistake. Why wreck his life, right?

MRA types are fond of saying that orders of protection are given freely and capriciously. And no doubt, cases can be found where that is true. But this case shows the reality of orders of protection — the fact that victims all too often struggle just to get that piece of paper that maybe, maybe, will help them avoid further abuse. Questionable orders of protection can be quashed. Abuse cannot be so easily undone. And so I’d much rather a system that makes a mistake that can be remedied than one that refuses to take domestic violence seriously. Unfortunately, the latter appears to be the system in place in New York.

Those of you who’ve been meandering around the interweb for a while will be familiar with the blogger Jon Swift, the mock-conservative who declared that he received his news through unbiased sources like Rush Limbaugh, and who said of the economic downturn, “At a time when Wall Street executives are being forced to give up their private planes, limousines, bathroom renovations and multimillion dollar bonuses, the idea that a homeless man has been allowed to hold on to his cellphone while others are making sacrifices is more than we can take.”

The writer behind Swift was Al Weisel. And sadly, Al Weisel has died:

Al was on his way to his father’s funeral in VA when he suffered 2 aortic aneurysms, a leaky aortic valve and an aortic artery dissection from his heart to his pelvis. He had 3 major surgeries within 24 hours and sometime during those surgeries also suffered a severe stroke.

I didn’t know Al personally, only through his writing. But his writing was superlative, the sort of satire his cognomen’s namesake would have heartily approved. My heart and thoughts are with the Weisel family, which is having to face far too much loss in too short a time.

If I lived in New York, I’d be giving serious consideration to voting for the Republican candidate in the next gubernatorial race. Not so much because the Republican’s bound to be a great candidate, but because there’s pretty strong evidence that New York’s Democratic governors don’t so much give a damn about women.

First, we had former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a rising star in the Democratic Party nationally who ended up having to resign when it turned out he was soliciting prostitutes the way some people order pizza. That might have been forgivable, had 1) Prostitution been legal, 2) Spitzer not made his mark as a prosecutor by going after prostitution, or 3) Spitzer not been caught moving enough money around to spend on prostitutes that it drew the attention of bank regulators.

Spitzer ultimately wasn’t prosecuted, but he was forced from office ignominiously, and in his place New Yorkers got Gov. David Paterson, who immediately announced that he had had affairs in his lifetime. Okay, well, that’s not good. But points for honesty. And surely, surely, Paterson would keep himself on the straight-and-narrow after seeing what happened to his predecessor.

Or, you know, he might decide instead to obstruct justice in a domestic violence case:

Gov. David A. Paterson personally directed two state employees to contact the woman who had accused his close aide of assaulting her, according to two people with direct knowledge of the governor’s actions.

Mr. Paterson instructed his press secretary, Marissa Shorenstein, to ask the woman to publicly describe the episode as nonviolent, according to a third person, who was briefed on the matter. That description would contradict the woman’s accounts to the police and in court.

Mr. Paterson also enlisted another state employee, Deneane Brown, a friend of both the governor and the accuser, to make contact with the woman before she was due in court to finalize an order of protection against the aide, David W. Johnson, the two people with direct knowledge said. Ms. Brown, an employee of the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, reached out to the woman on more than one occasion over a period of several days and arranged a phone call between the governor and the woman, Mr. Johnson’s companion.

After the calls from Ms. Brown and the conversation with the governor, the woman failed to appear for the court hearing on Feb. 8, and the case was dropped.

It was probably a minor issue, though. MRAs are always telling me that you can get an order of protection for any reason at all. I’m sure she was just mad that the stunning floral bouquet that her charming boyfriend gave her had only seventeen roses in it. I mean, surely, she didn’t have a good reason to get this order, right?

Mr. Johnson’s girlfriend had accused him of choking her, smashing her into a mirrored dresser and preventing her from calling for help during a Halloween altercation in the Bronx apartment they shared.

Oh. Um…well. That’s…a pretty damn good reason, actually.

So to recap: a woman is assaulted, goes to the police, and begins the work of getting an order of protection. The Governor of New York — the Governor of New York — uses his aides to put pressure on her to drop the case, because the assailant is on his staff.

Frankly, as someone who cares about women’s rights, I’d rather have the guy who just liked sex with prostitutes.

But of course, Paterson is blameless in this. I mean, he didn’t know that the attack was as severe as it was.

Mr. Paterson has stated that he was unaware of the details of the case until The Times reported them, and has said he did nothing improper.

See? He had no way of knowing that the case involved someone slamming someone’s face into a dresser. And no way of finding out. Which is why he immediately got mixed up in the case, because…uh…the woman was probably lying.

Okay, actually, that’s not a very good excuse.

Paterson has already announced he won’t stand for election in the fall. If today’s allegations are true, then that doesn’t go far enough. Like his predecessor, Paterson should resign, before the day is out. Paterson injected himself into a criminal case on the side of an assailant. At best, he did so recklessly, assuming that the — again — criminal case was not so serious as it really was. At worst, he did so with malice, seeking to get the exact result he did — a woman who, faced with pressure from the office of the governor, gave up on her criminal case because she saw more pain going forward with it than any relief justice could give her.

Either way, Paterson has demonstrated that he is unfit to serve as Governor of New York. Maybe Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch can do better than the two moral lightweights to precede him this term. He certainly can’t do much worse.

So those of us who find lulz in inept campaigns all shed a tear with the news today that former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., Joe-Tenn., would not run for Senate in New York, where he was gonna totally wow the kids with his younger, hipper Joe Lieberman-style campaign.

Alas, what could fill the void of Ford’s helicopter rides over Staten Island? What could — wait….

Do — do you hear that?

Th-that’s Mickey Kaus’s music!

Pioneering political blogger Mickey Kaus took out papers filed to run for U.S. Senate in California, he told LA Weekly. The Venice resident said he’ll run this year against Barbara Boxer for her seat.

Oh. My. GOD. This is going to be AWESOME. I wonder how the voters will respond to a candidate who I am told has been caught in flagrante delicto with several members of the species Capra aegagrus hircus. But I’m sure the voting public will show Mickey understanding. At the very least, as much understanding as he’s shown to homosexuals.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is very good at playing the sensible conservative. He’s got that aw-shucks, Minnesota nice attitude that makes him sound like the type of conservative who isn’t actually bent on destroying anyone below the upper middle class.

This is what makes him very dangerous.

Because in his heart, Pawlenty is no moderate. He’s a conservative — a radical one — who has never met a tax cut he didn’t like, or a spending cut he wasn’t willing to make, so long as they attach to the right people. (Oh, he was more than happy to cut the renter’s tax rebate program, so people who rent — disproportionately poor people — get less back in taxes. But that’s different. Those people are poor.)

Pawlenty is now running for President, and he is, one assumes, getting ready to move enough rightward to try to make teabaggers into T-Paw baggers. His first step? Kill the poor:

Emergency rooms should be able to turn patients away to cut costs, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) said last night

Appearing on Fox News’s “On the Record with Greta Van Sustren” last night, Pawlenty said the federal law that mandates ER treatment should be repealed.

“Well, for one thing you could do is change the federal law so that not every ER is required to treat everybody who comes in the door, even if they have a minor condition,” Pawlenty said. “They should be — if you have a minor condition, instead of being at the really expensive ER, you should be at the primary care clinic.”

So let’s say a guy with the condition I’m recovering from comes into the ER. He doesn’t have insurance. He’s presenting with some pain and swelling of a sensitive area, but that isn’t necessarily cancer; could be torsion. Could be a hydrocele. Could be all sorts of minor, non-life-threatening conditions. Does he stay, or does he go?

If he stays, he gets the ultrasound that proves it’s cancer, thus starting treatment that saves his life. If he goes, he does so knowing that he can’t afford the doctor. So he lets things get worse. And worse. And worse.

If he goes back — when his guts ache and his brain is foggy — the treatment regimen is now more expensive. And less likely to succeed. A surgery and treatment plan that would have had 99 percent success now gives odds closer to 50/50. If our patient survives, he’ll face crushing medical debt that can only be alleviated via bankruptcy. If he dies, he dies.

This is Tim Pawlenty’s bold medical proposal — let the uninsured suffer, and die, so that ERs don’t have to take in the poor. This is something, incidentally, not even hospitals are clamoring for — they’d just like Pawlenty to sign on to an extension of medical assistance, a bill Pawlenty vetoed because…well, it helps the poor, I guess.

Nobody should risk death because of a lack of health care. The system we have — in which the poor at least can go to an ER to get treated — is absolutely awful. Pawlenty wants to take that last snippet of a safety net, and whisk it away — leaving the uninsured to die in the process. That is not conservative. That is evil.