Crimes against women are crimes, too

Maurice Clemmons, the man suspected of murdering four Seattle-area police officers yesterday morning, was out on bail on a charge of raping a 12-year-old girl. Clemmons, a multiple-felon with a previous rape on his record (for which then-Governor Mike Huckabee granted him clemency in 2000), had a $15,000 bond.

In October, a short walk from my house, a man who had assaulted two different women murdered Sgt. Mickey Hutchens and wounded another officer when they responded to a call from his ex-wife. Monte Denard Evans had convictions for robbery, in addition to the assault charges for which he apparently served no time.

Is is time to finally admit that, if we start taking seriously violent crimes against women and girls, that MAYBE we'll protect the wider community (including law enforcement) as well?

True Colors

On the Saturday before Election Day last year, I volunteered at an early voting site in the northern part of the county. Being that we were there for three hours or so, the volunteer from the county Republican Party and I got to chatting. He was a pleasant elderly man, and I enjoyed talking with him despite our differences. At one point, he asked me why I didn’t support the McCain/Palin ticket since I was a woman myself.

He wasn’t being snarky; he genuinely didn’t understand why progressive women – feminists – weren’t falling in line behind then-Governor Palin. I told him that her gender was irrelevant to me, and that her stated positions were pretty much the polar opposite of mine. But I don’t think he really got it – how I could separate a candidate’s identity from her issues.

I was reminded of that conversation today when I heard this segment from Glenn Beck’s radio program, where the popular Beck jokes about the impossibility of a Palin/Beck ticket in 2012. Beck/Palin would be okay, he says, but:

"I was just thinking, what, I'm going to take a back seat to a chick?" Beck quipped, to laughter from the studio. "Go shoot a bear, make some stew, I'm hungry in here."

"So while she's considering it ... I just want her to know, I'm ruling it out. A Palin-Beck ticket, I'm absolutely ruling it out… I'm just saying, Beck-Palin, I'll consider. But Palin-Beck -- can you imagine what an administration with the two of us would be like? She'd be yapping or something, I'd say, 'I'm sorry, why am I hearing your voice? I'm not in the kitchen.' I mean, you'd have to live up to the evil conservative stereotypes, you'd have no choice but to do so."

Wow. I mean… wow. Before making this statement, Beck had made fun of Palin’s speech (the same folksiness that conservative pundits keep insisting to me is part of her charm). Then there’s the “make me a sammitch” BS, followed by some weak attempt to say that he doesn’t really think that about Palin, but those crazy liberals just think he thinks that.

Except that, before today, I never would’ve thought that of Beck. I would’ve assumed that, as the standard-bearer for the tea-party wing of the conservative party, that Beck would have an affinity for the politician who’s hugely popular among that contingent. It was surprising, and disturbing, to see that Beck apparently sees Palin as a “chick” first (a stereotyped one at that), and a political figure second. Given recent complaints from conservative talking heads that it’s the left wing who unfairly targets female conservatives, Beck’s comments are that much more bizarre. Whether Beck’s view represents a larger problem with tokenism in the Republican Party – rather than treating women and minorities as human beings – I can’t say.

Look, I disagree with Palin’s politics and worldview in nearly every way, and I think she needs to do some serious work before she’s qualified to hold national office. But she deserves far better than this. I hope she field-dresses that whiny little weasel.

The NFL is playing through the pain

If you know me, you know how much I love football. I love offensive linemen and blocking tight ends, and I love quarterbacks who are willing to scramble through the line to pick up a first down. I get irritated at sloppy tackling, and I hate watching a running back or a kick returner lose 20 yards trying to run around a gang of defenders instead of plowing through them.

So this is a problem when I think about how much the physical play that I consider to be “real” football takes a toll on the players themselves. Just this evening, for instance, I learned that Ben Roethlisberger will not start against the Ravens on Sunday night due to concussion-esque effects of an injury he sustained last week in the Steelers’ loss to Kansas City. Roethlisberger is possibly my favorite single current player, in large part because of his style of play. His absence in a division game with wildcard playoff-spot implications is devastating. At the same time, the decision will be better for his long-term health (and the team’s), so it’s ultimately the right thing.

After years of anecdotal evidence indicating severe consequences of those hard hits, the NFL is finally taking begrudging baby steps to address the seriousness of concussions. Sports Illustrated’s Will Carroll has been recommending that players use outside neurologists, as opposed to team doctors, for some time now. An NFL commission has now recommended the same thing. (This week, the commission’s co-chairs resigned; one of them is notorious for denying a link between repeated head injury and later cognitive problems, including dementia.)

The league could move to take the decision to start away from the players. It could make new rules to protect defenseless players (like popular quarterbacks), or maybe increase the penalties for helmet-to-helmet hits. None of that will keep a QB from sliding head-first into a crowd, as Roethlisberger did last Sunday.

When NASCAR addressed this issue a few years ago, the worry was that drivers would hide concussions in order to get around rules requiring them to sit out until they’d healed. There’s the same danger in any sport. After all, you’re talking about highly competitive people who are rightly petrified of being labeled injury-prone. When you’re weighing a handful of games, not to mention the attendant glory and salary bonuses, against the abstract risk of developing Alzheimer’s in your 40s, it’s easy to talk yourself into playing through the pain.

So changing the culture of the NFL in an effort to reduce concussions is an uphill battle. One doesn’t become an elite athlete by playing it safe. Athletes at any level succeed by convincing themselves that discomfort is part of the battle, whether it’s two-a-day practices in August or adding another 10 pounds to what you lifted in your last set. The people (like me) who don’t feel that this type of physical sacrifice is worth it simply don’t become the Roethlisbergers or the Lance Armstrongs or the Serena Williamses of the world.

And isn’t that why we love sports? It’s the spectacle of these super-humans pushing themselves to nearly impossible feats. Sports are the ultimate drama; as my hero Roland Barthes said of auto racing, “To stop is virtually to die.” But the physical toll that athletes sustain in the process of cheating death on the field ultimately endangers their real lives. Another Steeler, Mike Webster, shows us that – while an extreme case, Webster is hardly an isolated one.

Professional athletes make a calculated risk and are highly compensated for it. But the vast majority of athletes in this country will never get paid a dime for it. When sports commentators praise the Detroit Lions’ Matt Stafford for finishing a game with a mangled shoulder, or rip officials for supposedly giving Tom Brady special treatment, players at the high school level hear them, too. It matters.

So, what do we do with all this? Just stop playing or watching sports? Yuck, I hope not. What I would like to see is sports leagues and teams – from small town T-ball programs to the NFL – do a better job of explaining the impact of injury to their participants, and to stop abetting the instinct to play hurt. I’d like to see better, more holistic conditioning. Instead of making a pre-teen pitcher toss 200 softballs every day during the off-season, get her some yoga lessons. Send your star defensive end to ballet class. (Yes, I’m serious.) Do more on the front end with nutrition and rest, and de-emphasize the players-as-cannon-fodder model. Our athletes, and by extension, our sports, will be better off.

Quickie: Fox News discovers journalism

In light of some recent high-profile on-screen errors, such as implying that b-roll shot at one event is actually from a totally different one, the brass at Fox News issued a memo stating in no uncertain terms that there will be "zero tolerance" for future screw-ups.

All snark aside, the memo's statement that "It is more important to get it right than it is to get it on" should be standard operating procedure for any news organization.

Chris Matthews and Bishop Tobin

I'm not a big fan of Chris Matthews, but I love what he does in this interview with Bishop Tobin, the Rhode Island archbishop who's allegedly told Rep. Patrick Kennedy not to take communion because he supports keeping abortion legal:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

It occurred to me while watching this that I have no idea what Rep. Kennedy's personal views on reproductive freedom are. It's entirely possible that he is personally pro-life. But he took an oath to vote for legislation that represents good policy, and outlawing abortion has proven to be very bad policy. Matthews is exactly right - the archbishop has no business inserting himself into the complicated, sometimes murky business of crafting and passing legislation. Bishop Tobin admitted as much himself.

“The Blind Side”

I went with my parents and nephew last night to see “The Blind Side.” You may recall that the first trailer for “The Blind Side” raised my hackles, appearing to turn the story of a young black man into a feel-good story about a white woman. On the whole, though, I was pleasantly surprised. I really, really liked it.

I was expecting the film adaptation of Michael Lewis’s book to dumb down the football; it doesn’t. (There’s even a replay of the infamous Joe Theismann leg break that starts off the book – you’ve been warned.) The film does compress Michael Oher’s high school career and ends with him going to college, but that’s because the film chooses to focus less on Oher’s development as a football player and more on his extraordinary personal journey.

In a nutshell, Oher was an essentially homeless ward of the state with no educational background when he was accepted into a tony Christian private school along with a family friend. A wealthy white family first lets him crash on their couch, then starts buying him clothes, and then gradually welcomes Oher into their family, finally becoming his legal guardians.

The film actually tones down the more Dickensian aspects of Oher’s life before meeting the Tuohy family. We see him carrying his one change of clothes in a grocery bag everywhere he goes, spending the night in laundromats and scrounging popcorn left in the stands after a volleyball game. At times it seems emotionally manipulative, but the thing is, is all true (at least as told by the book – I have no idea how accurate that was).

And the film gives Oher more agency than I was expecting from that first trailer. Too often in these “magical negro” movies, where people of color only exist to help white people reach enlightenment, the black characters aren’t allowed to have their own opinions or anxieties. But, even though Oher doesn’t talk much, we do get to hear how isolated he feels in the nearly all-white, affluent school, and we do see his protectiveness of the people he cares about and his fear of being abandoned or used.

Unfortunately, every other black character is presented as being exotic, threatening, otherworldy. The character of a drug dealer in Oher’s old neighborhood, who’s meant to represent what Oher’s trying to escape, is a total cliché straight out of an after-school special… but as a symbol, that’s kind of what he’s supposed to do. We briefly glimpse Oher’s mother and a brother, and these peripheral bits have the effect of reminding us how totally Oher is apart from his blood family.

While the film adaptation (like the book) acknowledges the problem of racial privilege, it doesn’t go much beyond that. Mrs. Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) has to call out the ladies-who-lunch friends who worry about having a young black man around her teenaged daughter, and she admits the reality that so many men from Oher’s background – athletically gifted or not – too often get caught up in gang violence, sometimes fatally.

But the same questions that the book occasionally brings up go unanswered here. While the Tuohys’ charity is remarkable, even radical, and certainly altered the course of Michael Oher’s life, what about the institutional problems that disadvantaged him to begin with? What role do racism and poverty play there? The Tuohys are conservatives – did they change their opinions about the importance of government safety-net programs in alleviating these problems? Above all, if Michael Oher were a 150-pound piano prodigy, would this story end the same way?

My hope is that people seeing “The Blind Side” will be inspired to look further into these questions, and not just take the film at its well-made face value. So, as a film, I’d give “The Blind Side” somewhere between 2.5 and three stars. As a cultural artifact, it’s not quite there.

A grammar nerd nit-picks

Just now I clicked on a link that took me to a poll on the Fox News Web site, and I noticed (for the first time, really) their logo. I've long thought that their motto was "fair and balanced," (we can debate the veracity of that), but it turns out that it's actually "Fair & Balanced," with an ampersand.

And I quote, directly from my AP Stylebook: "The ampersand should not otherwise be used in place of and."

Philosophical inclinations aside, I simply can't place my trust in a news organization that can't follow basic rules of punctuation. Unless "Fair" and "Balanced" are the names of people who work within the Fox News organization, the use of the ampersand is just plain wrong.

N.C. GOP clubhouse: members only

My first thought when I read this morning that the N.C. Republican Party is considering closing its primary - a thought that popped into my head before I finished the first paragraph - was, "Oh, this is a very bad idea."

The rationale for closing the primary - allowing only registered Republicans to vote in primary elections - is that open primaries dilute the pool, meaning that the Republicans who win and go on to the general election aren't as conservative as they would be without the influence of unaffiliated voters, who tend to be more moderate. To which I say, "And this is a problem?"

Apparently is IS a problem for many actual Republicans, who think that many of the candidates they've nominated aren't true-believery enough, like that Commie John McCain (sarcasm alert). The problem is that, in this state, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by over 800,000 voters. And there are 1,3 million voters who are registered as unaffiliated - 22 percent of all registered voters. Altogether, registered Republicans are only 31 percent of voters in North Carolina.

As things stand now, a registered unaffiliated voter can vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary. This is a big part of the appeal to voters who want to register, but don't want to allign themselves with any particular party. They can tack toward one party or another from election to election without having to change registration. The open primaries make a place for a lot of people who would otherwise not get involved in politics at all.

And these free agents, who really do impact elections, are unaffiliated largely because they're allergic to partisan politics. So, telling them, "You can't vote in this primary election unless you stamp yourself with an 'R'" doesn't strike me as the best way to reach them.

Moreover, restricting your primary so that you produce candidates who are going to be more conservative than 70 percent of registered voters are comfortable having seems to me to be a perfect recipe for losing every election from now on. I suppose it depends on one's goals - is the N.C. GOP interested in finding and electing candidates that will truly represent the needs of a majority of constituents, or only in growing progressively more partisan?

Dan Savage on Carrie Prejean

Savage Love's Dan Savage, a gay husband and father, feels sorry for Carrie Prejean. He sees her as a flawed human being pushed into being a Christian icon by people with their own agenda, which is kind of how I feel about her:

"I thought Perez Hilton went too far when he labeled Prejean a bitch for her response to his question. But I quickly came around to Perez's position—she is bitch—after Prejean leapt into bed with Maggie Gallagher and the National Organization for Marriage... Anyway, back to Prejean: I thought Perez Hilton went too far when he labeled Prejean a bitch for her response to his question. But I quickly came around to Perez's position—she is bitch—after Prejean leapt into bed with Maggie Gallagher and the National Organization for Marriage... It seemed like a transparent effort on Prejean's part to cash in, to parlay her loss at the Miss USA pageant into a career as a spokesmodel for the religious right. Prejean's sudden passion for anti-gay politicking seemed insincere and opportunistic—she hadn't been publicly religious, politically active, or rabidly homophobic until after the pageant—and that's why she drew the scorn of mean-spirited bloggers everywhere.

And now we have proof that the person Prejean pretended to be after that pageant—the good Christian girl with a strong moral code who was chosen by God to stick it to the homos—doesn't jibe with the person she was before the pageant, i.e. a highly sexual and sexually active young woman with breast implants and a string of ex-boyfriends to her name... And honestly—now that this is all over—I feel kind of sorry for Prejean. She thought she was being attacked by All Gays and Lesbians Everywhere (AGLE) after one gay dude, Perez Hilton, called her name. And then Maggie and NOM and the conservative Christian movement offered her a chance to get back at the homos and make herself a huge pile of money in the process. The praised her, advised her, and pretended to be her friends. All she had to do was play the martyr and tell her story. But when her real story got out—when those pictures and videos got out—Maggie and NOM and her new friends dropped her. Perez abused her, Maggie used her, and now she's done."

Where no religious body seeks to impose its will

I'm getting seriously pissed off at the extent to which the Catholic Church has lately inserted itself into political issues. In the last few weeks, the church leadership has called out pro-choice Congressmen, publicly attempted to influence the issue of abortion coverage in health care reform legislation and threatened to cancel its contracts with Washington, D.C., if the district okays same-sex marriage.

First of all, since when do religious groups openly lobby political figures? I'm not talking about the passive-aggressive stuff we've seen for years now. I'm talking about a bishop telling Rep. Patrick Kennedy that he shouldn't be allowed to receive sacraments unless he starts voting the way the bishop wants him to. (Yes, out of all the pro-choice Catholics in Congress, Bishop Tobin goes after the one whose last name is guaranteed to grab headlines. Total coincidence, I'm sure.)

It wasn't even 50 years ago that Rep. Kennedy's uncle, running for president at the time, gave a speech to a group of nervous Protestant ministers about his views on the relationship between personal faith and public governance. You should really read the whole thing, but one section is particularly relevant, given recent events:

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote ... where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all."

My other objection is on purely moral grounds. I am so sick and frakking tired of alleged Christians who behave as though their top priority is making other people's lives as miserable as possible. So, Washington Diocese, you're going to stop sheltering the homeless and finding homes for orphans as long as two men can get partner benefits, really? You think THAT'S what Jesus wants you to do??? You're going to help trash legislation that would relieve suffering for the sick and poor because some woman somewhere is taking advantage of her Constitutionally protected right to control the timing and number of her pregnancies? That's your idea of social justice? (What would Jesus do? Not take his ball and go home, I'd bet.)

But what's the most disturbing is the church's implied threat that elected officials who don't vote exactly as they're told will be exiled from salvation - as if Bishop Tobin and his ilk have any say in the matter. I suppose this is my Protestant bias showing, but I have always believed and always will believe that no earthly bureacracy gets to dictate what my beliefs should be - that's between me and God. So, for Bishop Tobin to tell Kennedy or any other Catholic that receiving communion is contingent on casting Bishop Tobin-approved votes is not just a gross intrusion into government - it's also an abominable overstepping of bounds into Kennedy's personal relationship with God. Who the hell does he think he is?

I understand that the Catholic Church's official positions on many things are counter to mine - reproductive freedom and LGBT equality being two. And I don't expect them to keep their mouths shut. Bishop Tobin and any other minister can counsel and preach on their understanding of Scripture 'til the cows come home. But what they *don't* get to do is a) threaten people elected by the public to govern civic affairs, or b) threaten ANY member of the congregation with some Earth-bound litmus test.

It's Veterans Day, y'all!

At 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918, the war we now call World War I entered a cease-fire, or armistice (to be officially ended the next year with the Treaty of Versailles). President Wilson designated Nov. 11, 1919, as Armistice Day, and called for citizens to pause in their business for a few minutes at 11 a.m. Through the years, the day of remembrance moved from a year-to-year proclamation to an observance made in some states in late October, but since 1978, Veterans Day has been set at Nov. 11.

So, go hug a vet, will ya?

And, on a personal note, thanks to my Grandpa Butner, PawPaw Comer, my bad-ass step-dad and all of the millions of men and women who've sacrificed more than I'll ever comprehend. I just have no words.

Johnny Cash, American protest singer

Salon.com has a must-read about Johnny Cash's artistic activism on behalf of Native Americans, chiefly his 1964 album "Bitter Tears." Cash doesn't get enough credit for this kind of thing. Now that he's dead, dutifully memorialized in Hollywood film and celebrated by hipsters, it's easy to ignore the radicalism in songs like "Man in Black":

Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,
Why you never see bright colors on my back,
And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.
Well, there's a reason for the things that I have on.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he's a victim of the times.

I wear the black for those who never read,
Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
About the road to happiness through love and charity,
Why, you'd think He's talking straight to you and me.

Well, we're doin' mighty fine, I do suppose,
In our streak of lightnin' cars and fancy clothes,
But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back,
Up front there ought 'a be a Man In Black.

I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,
I wear the black in mournin' for the lives that could have been,
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.

And, I wear it for the thousands who have died,
Believen' that the Lord was on their side,
I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died,
Believen' that we all were on their side.

Well, there's things that never will be right I know,
And things need changin' everywhere you go,
But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
You'll never see me wear a suit of white.

Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything's OK,
But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
'Til things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black.

Still Whining

Carrie Prejean has a book out, and apparently a years-old sexting tape. And I really don’t care. But I DO care about defending myself.

Carrie, honey, you’re young and you’re going to make many more mistakes in your life. You got fired from your beauty queen job because you violated your contract. You’re still in the public eye because you choose to be. And, for the record, here’s how this particular leftist “attacked” you last May:

It's easy to defend people that you approve of. It's not easy for me to defend Carrie Prejean. I think her views on same-sex civil rights are elementary and based on a faulty interpretation of both scripture and law. I think she's letting herself be used by bigots who wouldn't give her the time of day if she weighed 300 pounds and had bushy eyebrows. But I also think that, as poor as her reasoning is, she has every right to her opinion. I also think that the nudie-picture/implant shaming of her is as sexist as when Laura Ingraham tried to shut down Meghan McCain by calling her "plus-sized." As Feministing wrote today, it's not okay to fight homophobia with misogyny.
So stop your whining. I never did anything to you.

Historic preservation vs. "property rights"

Last year, someone drove into my cousin Spring's mailbox. Shortly after it was replaced, Spring got a letter from her neighborhood association informing her that the numbers on her new mailbox did not fit the development's approved template. Seriously. Now, me personally, I don't like the idea of living in a place where they even HAVE approved templates for mailbox numbers, let alone where someone would go to the trouble of noticing the mailbox numbers and sending a multi-page letter to the offender. But Spring and her family knew when they bought a house in this particular neighborhood that there would be restrictions on what they could and couldn't do with their property, and the benefits outweighed the pain-in-the-ass factor.

Almost 30 years ago, Forsyth County named an 18th century home in Lewisville a local historic landmark, which meant that its owner could receive a substantial tax break in return for preserving the property. This isn't revolutionary. Certain places - such as extant historic landscapes, parks, etc. - belong to the public trust. This is something we as a society decided long ago. And it's fair that a property of public historic significance, but that is maintained by a private family, should be eligible for tax benefits in return.

But now the River John Conrad House's current owners, who bought the property in the late 90s, want to remove it from the list so that they can add a 6,000-square-foot addition, including a swimming pool. Not only would this radically alter the house, but construction of that size would destroy the property's archaeological record. And, in my view, it would also set a very dangerous precedent. If the current owners can successfully argue - decades later - that the act of historic restoration itself destroys the property's historic value - we're talking about standard practices such as replacing floorboards here - then why even HAVE the LHL designation in the first place?

I attended the September county commissioners meeting, where the board voted to ask the county's Historic Resources Commission to take a more detailed look. The board will hear the HRC's unanimous recommendation to keep the Conrad house of the LHL list tonight. Despite this recommendation from the board of local experts appointed to make these very sorts of recommendations, not to mention the State Historic Preservation Office's two cents, certain commissioners are just not hearing it. Two of them should arguably recuse themselves from the vote entirely given personal relationships with the petitioner.

I'm not going to call out certain allegedly moderate Democratic commissioners who are up for re-election next year, but who haven't changed their position on the de-list despite, literally, volumes of historic record, testimony from preservation experts and pleas from dozens of citizens. I'm just going to say that the "property rights" argument in favor of removing the Conrad house's status is horsesh*t. (Ask my cousin Spring's mailbox.)

Despite the common libertarian fantasy of no public standards whatsoever (or, as I call it, Somalia), our society has pretty much settled the idea that we give up a small amount of personal license for the good of the community. That's why I get nasty letters from the city when I let my grass grow too high. And that's why scuttling a decades-old policy that's helped build our community's unique character just because a commissioner whose name rhymes with Schmed Schmaplan has a buddy who wants to build a swimming pool is a REALLY bad idea.

Well, that didn't take long

It didn’t even take a full 24 hours for “Fox & Friends” to go there: should the military have special screenings for Muslim soldiers?

While he doesn’t challenge the BS assumption that the military and society at large have grown too “politically correct” (or that being aware of the sensitivities of non-white, able-bodied, hetero men is a negative), Geraldo at least mentions the fact that there are millions of Muslims in the military already. No one had the balls (or maybe the knowledge) to bring up Charles Whitman, the ex-Marine (and youngest-ever Eagle Scout) who killed 14 and wounded 32 in the 1966 University of Texas sniper attack. Should we have special screenings for white male Christians?

When I was reading about the alleged Fort Hood gunman this morning, what struck me was how familiar it all sounds: socially isolated, often under-employed man tries to attain some significance by getting a weapon and going out in a blaze of glory. From Lee Harvey Oswald to Whitman to Mark David Chapman to the man that shot up that gym in Pennsylvania this summer, it’s the same, sad story.

It’s going to take a lot more to convince me that one set of religious beliefs had anything to do with it.

A letter to Virginia Foxx

(Just sent... will let you know if I get a response)

Rep. Foxx,

I am incredibly bothered by the comparison you made today between health care reform and terrorism. It was offensive to people who lost loved ones in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and in the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as those that continue to fight terrorism in the military and law enforcement.

Anyone who has followed the debate over government-driven health insurance reform has concerns, particularly with the impact on our nation’s debt. But I think you and I have very different priorities.

I work at Guilford College, where my employer pays 75 percent of the cost of my health insurance. We’re in the process of re-bidding, and are looking at increases of between 3 and 25 percent. Aside from the substantial impact this increase will have on the college’s budget, which could reduce our ability to serve our core constituency, our students, higher-cost premiums will negatively affect employees.

For me, it's a pain, but it won't break me. For some of my co-workers, the additional expense will definitely be a hardship. I'm not just speculating here... I head up the staff association, and we're in the process of settling our winter service project. In the past, we've collected gifts, "angel tree" style, for staff members who need extra help around the holidays. These are employed, hard-working people who nevertheless couldn't afford to buy presents for their children, let alone paying heating bills, without assistance.

Last year, we collected money for a staff member who contracted an infection during her pregnancy that put her in a wheelchair, probably permanently. She couldn't afford to buy the wheelchair, though; we had a bake sale to raise money for her. She still comes to work every day in that same wheelchair.

Of course I’m concerned about increasing national debt to pay for health care reform. But I’m far more concerned about people who - no BS, no hyperbole - have to decide every month between paying the doctor or paying the light bill. They are not myths; I work with them every day.

Please reconsider your position.

I promise we're not all like this!

Question: why are people who think that government is somewhere between useless and evil so anxious to be part of it? In other words, if Rep. Virginia Foxx honestly thinks that health care reform is more dangerous for our country than this guy, why doesn't she run screaming out of the oh-so-scary House chamber back to her bunker? (Loan forgiveness for veterinary students! Horrors!)

Answer? She doesn't believe it. There are plenty of honest reasons to oppose this specific bill, but it's more fun to frighten her constituents with lies. For frak's sake, Virginia... if you have issues with the bill, then use your Constitutionally mandated authority to change it. Don't make everybody in northwest North Carolina look like an idiot.

Cautionary tale, meet victim-blaming

The blog Helpful Comments has compiled comments from an AOL news story about the girl who was gang-raped at a school dance last week. All I can say is, they have stronger stomachs than I do. She – a 15-year-old, by the way – was drinking. She was wearing a skirt. She was female in the presence of rapists. All of which are apparently mitigating factors in the minds of these commentors.

When I take a cleansing breath, I can give great benefit of the doubt to these commentors and assume that they’re not *actually* blaming the victim of a gang-rape that put her in the hospital, that instead they’re trying to dig out from this awful incident some sort of cautionary lesson.

Unfortunately, in the rape apologist’s scramble to find some way to find fault with the victim in order to assure him/herself that something like this would NEVER happen to them, or their daughter, or their sister, they ARE, in fact, blaming the victim. I can promise you that this young woman is revisiting every decision she made that night, second-guessing, asking herself, if I’d only done this, not done this, then I wouldn’t have been in the position for this thing to have happened to me. I can promise you that she’s feeling every iota of her part in what happened to her that night, and will for the rest of her life.

Every rape-prevention program in this country does the same thing – don’t walk alone at night, don’t dress provocatively, carry mace, etc. How about this… DON’T RAPE PEOPLE. It just seems so much simpler, no?