Ok, this is BS: NASCAR fines two “star” drivers for the nebulous offense of running down The Body, but we’re not allowed to know who. Sure, it’s perfectly legal. NASCAR is a private membership club, after all. But it’s also a private membership club with a multi-million dollar TV contract that expects me as a fan to devote my time and money to following it. So, I don’t feel out of place wanting to know which drivers were fined for speaking their minds.
It’s times like this when I’m reminded of the question in my nephew’s boxed set of dinnertime conversation starters, something to the effect of “what would you do if you won the lottery?” For the purposes of this question, I’m assuming I win an absolute shit ton. Of course I’d do all of the things most of us would do – paying off mortgages, creating a charitable foundation, etc. But, in my fantasy, I have tens of millions left over to start my very own stock car racing league: Sara’s Association of Super Stock Car Auto Racing, or, SASSCAR.
My rules are simple. We only race at tracks that I can drive to in one day from my home in Winston-Salem, or that I otherwise deem awesome – Bristol, Martinsville, North Wilkesboro, Rockingham, Indy, Talladega, Charlotte, Darlington, Daytona and, just for the hell of it, Bowman Gray. There will be dirt tracks. There will be open qualifying – no guarantees. There will also be a $5 million purse for the winner of each race. (I told you, I won a shit ton.) I don’t particularly care if it’s on TV. Tickets max out at $40.
My only restriction? Drivers can’t have major team backing. You build that car yourself or with people you know, or you don’t drive. Okay, one more rule – I don’t want anybody to get hurt, so you have to wear a fire suit, full helmet and HANS device. But, after that, anything goes.
I will also personally pay off anyone who wrecks either Kyle Busch or Jimmie Johnson on the last lap, but that’s off the record.
C’mon… tell me you wouldn’t go for this.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
NASCAR is boring and we don't know why
There was actual drama last Sunday when Juan Pablo Montoya wrecked himself at the very end of the Brickyard 400, only to see teammate Jaime McMurray win. The best of times - car owner Chip Ganassi saw his cars win this year's Daytona 500, Indy 500 and Brickyard; McMurray is now only the third driver (with Dale Jarrett and Jimmie Johnson*) to win both the Daytona 500 and Brickyard - not bad for a guy who wasn't sure he'd have a ride this year. But the Ganassi car that should've won was Montoya, who dominated all day. Bittersweet. Not even the fact that Montoya's frusrated oversteering also took out Dale Jr. could make me angry at him, given the amount of shit he had to be feeling.
It's rare anymore that I'm biting my nails during the final laps. NASCAR's gotten kind of boring, and no one can really say why. Jalopnik gives it a shot, but there's still something missing. I have my own complaints. Sure, my driver has struggled to adjust to the "car or tommorrow," and wins are definitely interesting, but even that's not the whole story.
- My feelings about Jimmie Johnson aside (for the record, I hate him), it's just not very exciting when the same driver wins four championships in a row. If the Colts won four Super Bowls in a row, how many NFL fans would stop caring as much? If the Yankees won four World Series in a row, how would MLB fans react? Zzzzzzzz...
- Homogenization in general. Fans often complain that drivers are too stifled by their corporate sponsors, and that's probably a factor. But don't we WANT our drivers and their crews to be compensated? A million-dollar purse is a hell of a stake, too. Don't we LIKE being able to see flag-to-flag coverage of every race? That doesn't happen unless people with deep pockets believe in our sport. The downside is that sponsors seek out drivers that look good in commercials, regardless of their talent on the track. Ward Burton doesn't have a ride. Sterling Marlin doesn't have a ride. My hard-core crush Elliott Sadler is barely hanging on.
- Homogenization of the tracks themselves bores the hell out of me. I usually tune out this time of year because it seems like every race takes place at a flat 1.5- to two-mile flat track and zzzzzzzz..... Sorry. There's a reason Bristol sells out every race. Though the "car of tomorrow" has sapped some of Bristol's action, it's still a compelling race because of the track's small size and historic cachet. I understand the economic reality of a track owner wanting to build a track that attracts events other than NASCAR, but damn.
- Can we talk about the "car of tomorrow"? Safety=good. But the car sucks.
- Can we admit that NASCAR's steady move over the past 10 years away from tracks in the rural South was a mistake? Who the hell wants to spend Labor Day in BFE, California? And North Wilkesboro's just sitting there. Rockingham in February didn't bother anyone for decades - why did it suddenly become a problem?
- The gap between the haves and have-nots has grown, despite NASCAR's efforts to reduce costs through standardization of parts. The teams with resources can still buy more parts, do more testing and attract talent like Chad Knauss, who I don't think actually sleeps.
So, what to do about all of this? Maybe tracks should cut their ticket prices in half. Maybe hotels should stop requiring visitors to stay for a whole weekend. (Going to a Panthers game takes 12 hours out of my Sunday, max. Going to a race on the other side of the same city would suck up my entire weekend.) Maybe NASCAR should let teams take off the gloves, really, and build the cars however they want.
I've always believed that, attempts to brand the Daytona 500 as the "Super Bowl" aside, NASCAR most closely resembles pro golf. Hear me out. You have a series of events, for which members of a professional association must qualify in order to compete.
Why not embrace that? We already think of Daytona, Talladega, Bristol and the Brickyard as the marquee races. Why not formally declare that certain races are "majors," and that only those races are part of the points pool that determines the champion? A driver could still do the other races for money. There would be less pressure for a cash-strapped team to run every race, to drive that hauler to frakking Las Vegas only to go out on the fifth lap. And then the drivers, crews, et al, wouldn't be on the road nearly 40 weeks out of every year.
While we're at it, can we get some consistency in rules and penalties? This season has been a little better, because NASCAR is more laissez-faire when dealing with everyone. But when you have penalties that destroy one driver's championship hopes (um, a fine for cursing???) while being pretty much meaningless for another driver, it hurts the sport's credibility. Which brings me to that Jimmie Johnson asterisk up in the first paragraph.
Johnson "won" his Daytona 500 in a car so illegal it got his crew chief suspended for six races. Yet, thanks to a quirk in NASCAR rules, Johnson was allowed to race in the illegal car - and won. And nobody seemed to have a problem with this. It's like, if Ray Lewis came out of the locker room with a baseball bat and kneecapped Ben Roethlisberger in front of 70,000 people, and were still allowed to play the game, and the Ravens won, and Sportscenter was all "Yay, Ray Lewis! What a trouper he is!" You would shoot your TV, right? Welcome to my world.
It's rare anymore that I'm biting my nails during the final laps. NASCAR's gotten kind of boring, and no one can really say why. Jalopnik gives it a shot, but there's still something missing. I have my own complaints. Sure, my driver has struggled to adjust to the "car or tommorrow," and wins are definitely interesting, but even that's not the whole story.
- My feelings about Jimmie Johnson aside (for the record, I hate him), it's just not very exciting when the same driver wins four championships in a row. If the Colts won four Super Bowls in a row, how many NFL fans would stop caring as much? If the Yankees won four World Series in a row, how would MLB fans react? Zzzzzzzz...
- Homogenization in general. Fans often complain that drivers are too stifled by their corporate sponsors, and that's probably a factor. But don't we WANT our drivers and their crews to be compensated? A million-dollar purse is a hell of a stake, too. Don't we LIKE being able to see flag-to-flag coverage of every race? That doesn't happen unless people with deep pockets believe in our sport. The downside is that sponsors seek out drivers that look good in commercials, regardless of their talent on the track. Ward Burton doesn't have a ride. Sterling Marlin doesn't have a ride. My hard-core crush Elliott Sadler is barely hanging on.
- Homogenization of the tracks themselves bores the hell out of me. I usually tune out this time of year because it seems like every race takes place at a flat 1.5- to two-mile flat track and zzzzzzzz..... Sorry. There's a reason Bristol sells out every race. Though the "car of tomorrow" has sapped some of Bristol's action, it's still a compelling race because of the track's small size and historic cachet. I understand the economic reality of a track owner wanting to build a track that attracts events other than NASCAR, but damn.
- Can we talk about the "car of tomorrow"? Safety=good. But the car sucks.
- Can we admit that NASCAR's steady move over the past 10 years away from tracks in the rural South was a mistake? Who the hell wants to spend Labor Day in BFE, California? And North Wilkesboro's just sitting there. Rockingham in February didn't bother anyone for decades - why did it suddenly become a problem?
- The gap between the haves and have-nots has grown, despite NASCAR's efforts to reduce costs through standardization of parts. The teams with resources can still buy more parts, do more testing and attract talent like Chad Knauss, who I don't think actually sleeps.
So, what to do about all of this? Maybe tracks should cut their ticket prices in half. Maybe hotels should stop requiring visitors to stay for a whole weekend. (Going to a Panthers game takes 12 hours out of my Sunday, max. Going to a race on the other side of the same city would suck up my entire weekend.) Maybe NASCAR should let teams take off the gloves, really, and build the cars however they want.
I've always believed that, attempts to brand the Daytona 500 as the "Super Bowl" aside, NASCAR most closely resembles pro golf. Hear me out. You have a series of events, for which members of a professional association must qualify in order to compete.
Why not embrace that? We already think of Daytona, Talladega, Bristol and the Brickyard as the marquee races. Why not formally declare that certain races are "majors," and that only those races are part of the points pool that determines the champion? A driver could still do the other races for money. There would be less pressure for a cash-strapped team to run every race, to drive that hauler to frakking Las Vegas only to go out on the fifth lap. And then the drivers, crews, et al, wouldn't be on the road nearly 40 weeks out of every year.
While we're at it, can we get some consistency in rules and penalties? This season has been a little better, because NASCAR is more laissez-faire when dealing with everyone. But when you have penalties that destroy one driver's championship hopes (um, a fine for cursing???) while being pretty much meaningless for another driver, it hurts the sport's credibility. Which brings me to that Jimmie Johnson asterisk up in the first paragraph.
Johnson "won" his Daytona 500 in a car so illegal it got his crew chief suspended for six races. Yet, thanks to a quirk in NASCAR rules, Johnson was allowed to race in the illegal car - and won. And nobody seemed to have a problem with this. It's like, if Ray Lewis came out of the locker room with a baseball bat and kneecapped Ben Roethlisberger in front of 70,000 people, and were still allowed to play the game, and the Ravens won, and Sportscenter was all "Yay, Ray Lewis! What a trouper he is!" You would shoot your TV, right? Welcome to my world.
Someone wrote this, and evidently meant it
It's hard to believe that there's still anyone out there who's trying to come up with a way to discredit Shirley Sherrod. It must suck to have so much invested in the notion that a black federal official could admit discriminating against a white farmer, only to have the facts emerge that a) she wasn't a federal official at the time, b) she didn't actually treat him differently than anyone else, c) that the farmer in question has fiercely defended her and that, d) aw, shit, her father was murdered by the KKK.
The only way Sherrod could be more sympathetic right now is if someone discovered her hobby rescuing baby seals or something. But that doesn't stop Jeffrey Lord at The American Spectator from trying, and failing dismally, to find dirt on her. Some people just don't know when to quit.
Lord bases this entire piece on his mistaken understanding of the word "lynching." In her now famous speech at an NAACP gathering, Sherrod mentioned that, in addition to her father's murder, a relative was beaten to death by a county sheriff and two other men, in a civil rights case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Lord expends gallons of Internet ink saying that Sherrod exagerrated by calling the murder a lynching, with the implication that she can't be trusted on anything else. He even calls it a "debacle."
More problems with vocabulary. It's not a "debacle" if you're the only one who's upset, especially if you're, you know, completely bass-ackwards wrong.
A lynching is any extra-legal mob killing. Lord may be of the opinion that a lynching is only the classic rope-over-the-tree-branch like he's seen in the movies. The problem is that, for many Americans, lynching isn't something that only happens in the movies. It's very recent history that happened to people they knew or were related to, the threat of which hung over them as well.
I'm so sick and tired of this. In a recent post about Roman Polanski, I asked that people who've never experienced sexual assault stop intellectualizing about it and telling actual survivors how they should feel. Well, at our next White People Convention, I'm going to propose the following resolution: We will hereby stop telling black people how they should feel about racism and the history of racism in this country. We will stop thinking that we get to decide whether someone else's feelings are legit.
We will STFU and listen for a change. That would be nice.
And, by the way, just from a PR perspective... trying to downplay someone's family trauma by saying that her relative's vicious murder wasn't THAT bad is kind of a dick move. "What's the big deal? He was only handcuffed and kicked to death!" What a frakking asshole.
The only way Sherrod could be more sympathetic right now is if someone discovered her hobby rescuing baby seals or something. But that doesn't stop Jeffrey Lord at The American Spectator from trying, and failing dismally, to find dirt on her. Some people just don't know when to quit.
Lord bases this entire piece on his mistaken understanding of the word "lynching." In her now famous speech at an NAACP gathering, Sherrod mentioned that, in addition to her father's murder, a relative was beaten to death by a county sheriff and two other men, in a civil rights case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Lord expends gallons of Internet ink saying that Sherrod exagerrated by calling the murder a lynching, with the implication that she can't be trusted on anything else. He even calls it a "debacle."
More problems with vocabulary. It's not a "debacle" if you're the only one who's upset, especially if you're, you know, completely bass-ackwards wrong.
A lynching is any extra-legal mob killing. Lord may be of the opinion that a lynching is only the classic rope-over-the-tree-branch like he's seen in the movies. The problem is that, for many Americans, lynching isn't something that only happens in the movies. It's very recent history that happened to people they knew or were related to, the threat of which hung over them as well.
I'm so sick and tired of this. In a recent post about Roman Polanski, I asked that people who've never experienced sexual assault stop intellectualizing about it and telling actual survivors how they should feel. Well, at our next White People Convention, I'm going to propose the following resolution: We will hereby stop telling black people how they should feel about racism and the history of racism in this country. We will stop thinking that we get to decide whether someone else's feelings are legit.
We will STFU and listen for a change. That would be nice.
And, by the way, just from a PR perspective... trying to downplay someone's family trauma by saying that her relative's vicious murder wasn't THAT bad is kind of a dick move. "What's the big deal? He was only handcuffed and kicked to death!" What a frakking asshole.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Who REALLY benefits from racism?
I feel like I've been so inundated with news stories that involve racism on some level (actual, alleged, utterly made up, etc.) every day for the last week or so, coming so quickly that I can't even process all of them.
There was the NAACP resolution calling on the Tea Party to distance itself from white supremacist language and imagery of some of its supporters, followed by the Tea Party Express head's farcical letter which pretty much proved the NAACP's point, and finally the Tea Party at large pushing the letter-writer out. There was the resoltion of the federal investigation of alleged voter intimidation by a member of the New Black Panther Party in 2008, followed by predictable freak-out by some on the right that the investigation didn't go far enough. Then today we have the news cycle-driven resignation of Shirley Sherrod from the USDA.
Andrew Breitbart (the guy who promoted the heavily manipulated ACORN pimp video) unearthed a video of Sherrod at an undated NAACP meeting appearing to brag about shorting a white farmer who was facing foreclosure. A certain "news" organization that perpetually pisses me off with its total inability to perform anything resembling actual journalism repeatedly aired the video and a series of screaming blonde heads decrying Sherrod's abuse of power. Sherrod was forced to resign.
(And - for the record - if Sherrod had in fact been admitting to discriminating against whites in her role as a federal offocial, she absolutely would have no business in her job. But that's not what happened. Not even close.)
I have a hard time respecting any "news" organization that takes any tip from a private citizen and publishes it in whole without asking basic questions like I was taught to do for my frakking 8th grade school paper. Questions like - does this information accurately reflect what was said, done, etc.? Does the person bringing this story to me have an ax to grind? Are we being fair?
For one thing, it might be relevant to mention that the incident Sherrod refers to happened in 1986, or, 23 years before she went to work for the USDA. So, what we're looking at here is most definitely NOT a federal official abusing her authority. I think it's fair to ask what Sherrod's track record has been with respect to discrimination during her time at the USDA, but I would think that would be pretty easy to determine if some enterprising reporter were willing to spend more time in dusty file rooms than calling around trying to find another underinformed talking head to fill another 10 miuntes of air time.
CNN did something crazy - they went and found the white farmer Sherrod was talking about and asked him for his side of the story. Radical, I know. He says that Sherrod's efforts saved his farm. "'I don't know what brought up the racist mess,' Roger Spooner told CNN's 'Rick's List.' 'They just want to stir up some trouble, it sounds to me in my opinion.'"
The moral of the story (and what Sherrod intented in recounting it to the NAACP) is that, while her initial reaction to a white man asking her for help was to blow him off, she realized that she was wrong. It took a great deal of courage to admit that to herself, not to mention to other people. It may surprise white people to know that black people don't universally love and trust us. And you know what? It doesn't really matter what Sherrod, or anyone else, feels in their heart. It matters what we DO.
And what too many in the media and in Washington did today was to fall for the false equivalency that one possibly racist black person (be it Sherrod or the NBPP guy arrested for standing while black in front of a polling place) magically cancels out the institutional racism that, yes, still exists and impacts black people every moment of every day.
In doing so, they ignored Sherrod's entire point - class divides us far more than race. The power elite in this country would love nothing more than for poor people of every race to continue distrusting one another, because that prevents the New Deal coalition from coming back together and demanding a government that serves working people, not the wealthiest five percent of our country. Poor whites have far more in common with poor blacks and Latinos than with those most-privileged whites, and there are people in our country working very hard to make sure we never figure that out.
And that's why, despite their feigned protestations to the contrary, those same people don't WANT a post-racial society. It's racism, and the suspicion of racism, that allows them to stay in power.
There was the NAACP resolution calling on the Tea Party to distance itself from white supremacist language and imagery of some of its supporters, followed by the Tea Party Express head's farcical letter which pretty much proved the NAACP's point, and finally the Tea Party at large pushing the letter-writer out. There was the resoltion of the federal investigation of alleged voter intimidation by a member of the New Black Panther Party in 2008, followed by predictable freak-out by some on the right that the investigation didn't go far enough. Then today we have the news cycle-driven resignation of Shirley Sherrod from the USDA.
Andrew Breitbart (the guy who promoted the heavily manipulated ACORN pimp video) unearthed a video of Sherrod at an undated NAACP meeting appearing to brag about shorting a white farmer who was facing foreclosure. A certain "news" organization that perpetually pisses me off with its total inability to perform anything resembling actual journalism repeatedly aired the video and a series of screaming blonde heads decrying Sherrod's abuse of power. Sherrod was forced to resign.
(And - for the record - if Sherrod had in fact been admitting to discriminating against whites in her role as a federal offocial, she absolutely would have no business in her job. But that's not what happened. Not even close.)
I have a hard time respecting any "news" organization that takes any tip from a private citizen and publishes it in whole without asking basic questions like I was taught to do for my frakking 8th grade school paper. Questions like - does this information accurately reflect what was said, done, etc.? Does the person bringing this story to me have an ax to grind? Are we being fair?
For one thing, it might be relevant to mention that the incident Sherrod refers to happened in 1986, or, 23 years before she went to work for the USDA. So, what we're looking at here is most definitely NOT a federal official abusing her authority. I think it's fair to ask what Sherrod's track record has been with respect to discrimination during her time at the USDA, but I would think that would be pretty easy to determine if some enterprising reporter were willing to spend more time in dusty file rooms than calling around trying to find another underinformed talking head to fill another 10 miuntes of air time.
CNN did something crazy - they went and found the white farmer Sherrod was talking about and asked him for his side of the story. Radical, I know. He says that Sherrod's efforts saved his farm. "'I don't know what brought up the racist mess,' Roger Spooner told CNN's 'Rick's List.' 'They just want to stir up some trouble, it sounds to me in my opinion.'"
The moral of the story (and what Sherrod intented in recounting it to the NAACP) is that, while her initial reaction to a white man asking her for help was to blow him off, she realized that she was wrong. It took a great deal of courage to admit that to herself, not to mention to other people. It may surprise white people to know that black people don't universally love and trust us. And you know what? It doesn't really matter what Sherrod, or anyone else, feels in their heart. It matters what we DO.
And what too many in the media and in Washington did today was to fall for the false equivalency that one possibly racist black person (be it Sherrod or the NBPP guy arrested for standing while black in front of a polling place) magically cancels out the institutional racism that, yes, still exists and impacts black people every moment of every day.
In doing so, they ignored Sherrod's entire point - class divides us far more than race. The power elite in this country would love nothing more than for poor people of every race to continue distrusting one another, because that prevents the New Deal coalition from coming back together and demanding a government that serves working people, not the wealthiest five percent of our country. Poor whites have far more in common with poor blacks and Latinos than with those most-privileged whites, and there are people in our country working very hard to make sure we never figure that out.
And that's why, despite their feigned protestations to the contrary, those same people don't WANT a post-racial society. It's racism, and the suspicion of racism, that allows them to stay in power.
Terrorists and Illegals and Sex, Oh My!
See, this is my problem with Fox News. They take a story about a legitimate issue - Afghan soldiers coming to the U.S. to get military training, then going AWOL instead of back home to fight the Taliban - which has also been reported in places like the New York Times and ABC News, and they turn into some salacious all-capital-letters claptrap that reads like an Onion parody of a Fox News story.
A "network of Mexican-American women"? Check. "some of whom may be illegal immigrants"? Check. Teaching the AWOL Afghans "how to move around the U.S. without any documentation"? A colorful dehumanizing acronym? Check and check. How often do you get a terrorism angle, an illegal immigrant angle AND the implication of sex between different brown people all in one story? It's like How to Frighten a Bigot Bingo.
And that is my problem with Fox News. It's got nothing to do with any political slant they may have. It's got everything to do with the sloppy and ignorant slant they most definitely have. If something catches on fire anywhere on the planet, Fox News will totally be all over it, until five minutes later when something catches on fire somewhere else.
Where did this news about the shadowy network of "Mexican" barflies spiriting away foreign soldiers, complete with juicy details about the nightlife surrounding Lackland Air Force Base and, of course, the tidbit that the women are known as "BMWs," come from? Sources. Always sources. Anonymous frakking sources. Who are they? We don't know because Fox won't tell us. (Let's hope it's not the same guy whose BS trashing of Sarah Palin Fox so gleefully broke in 2008. You know, the one that didn't exist.)
And then there's the total lack of context, another Fox hallmark that makes me want to throw things. How many Afghan soldiers have deserted, supposedly helped by the BMWs? Forty-six. In eight years. That's less than six a year.
If you know that, say, 17,000 British troops have gone AWOL since 2003, then this story stops being "ZOMG! Scary AWOL Afghans at large in the heartland, guided by their mysterious Latina henchwomen!" and becomes "Wow, clearly we need better security," or maybe even "Why are we fighting for this country if the people who live there won't?"... and we can't have that, can we?
For what it's worth, the Times story reports 17 defectors in the last eight months, vs. Fox's 46 in eight years. The Air Force says that all but four have been accounted for: four already in custody, awaiting deportation; eight in Canada (six of whom have requested asylum); and one granted legal status here in the U.S.
So can we calm the hell down now?
A "network of Mexican-American women"? Check. "some of whom may be illegal immigrants"? Check. Teaching the AWOL Afghans "how to move around the U.S. without any documentation"? A colorful dehumanizing acronym? Check and check. How often do you get a terrorism angle, an illegal immigrant angle AND the implication of sex between different brown people all in one story? It's like How to Frighten a Bigot Bingo.
And that is my problem with Fox News. It's got nothing to do with any political slant they may have. It's got everything to do with the sloppy and ignorant slant they most definitely have. If something catches on fire anywhere on the planet, Fox News will totally be all over it, until five minutes later when something catches on fire somewhere else.
Where did this news about the shadowy network of "Mexican" barflies spiriting away foreign soldiers, complete with juicy details about the nightlife surrounding Lackland Air Force Base and, of course, the tidbit that the women are known as "BMWs," come from? Sources. Always sources. Anonymous frakking sources. Who are they? We don't know because Fox won't tell us. (Let's hope it's not the same guy whose BS trashing of Sarah Palin Fox so gleefully broke in 2008. You know, the one that didn't exist.)
And then there's the total lack of context, another Fox hallmark that makes me want to throw things. How many Afghan soldiers have deserted, supposedly helped by the BMWs? Forty-six. In eight years. That's less than six a year.
If you know that, say, 17,000 British troops have gone AWOL since 2003, then this story stops being "ZOMG! Scary AWOL Afghans at large in the heartland, guided by their mysterious Latina henchwomen!" and becomes "Wow, clearly we need better security," or maybe even "Why are we fighting for this country if the people who live there won't?"... and we can't have that, can we?
For what it's worth, the Times story reports 17 defectors in the last eight months, vs. Fox's 46 in eight years. The Air Force says that all but four have been accounted for: four already in custody, awaiting deportation; eight in Canada (six of whom have requested asylum); and one granted legal status here in the U.S.
So can we calm the hell down now?
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Screw you, Richard Cohen
Sometimes I feel like, when looking at a particular issue, trying to figure out what you think about it, there's a tendency to react to what's right in front of you. Maybe it's a product of 24-hour news culture, I don't know. But the 'net is full of it. This person wrote this. This person said this on "The View," and here's what I think about it right this second. It seems like our discourse has become distressingly context-free.
Which is why I think The Washington Post's Richard Cohen, in his post this week entitled "Thank you, Switzerland, for freeing Polanski," which begins with the line "The Swiss got it right," is full of it. Shit, that is, not context.
Roman Polanski is a film genius, blah blah blah. He pled guilty to unlawful sexual conduct before I was born, blah blah blah, and then fled the U.S. on the eve on his sentencing. Polanski's supporters point out that the judge in the case was most likely going to throw out the plea agreement and send Polanski to prison (judges aren't bound by plea deals, by the way), and that this was motivated by the judge's desire for publicity. And, yes, the now adult that Polanski admitted to drugging and repeatedly raping when she was 13 has said that she doesn't care if he's ever imprisoned.
Cohen recaps all of that. But I don't particularly care.
I have very little regard for the argument that the U.S.'s belated attempt to extradict Polanski is some sort of miscarriage of justice. Because here's that context I was talking about:
1 - There are people in the legal system who think that serving 40 days in a psych ward is a suitable max sentence for drugging and raping a 13 year old girl.
2 - Most rapists won't even be made to serve that much time.
THAT is the miscarriage of justice, you asshat Cohen and Polanski's various celebrity apologists. RAINN estimates that there are 17.7 million female and 2.78 million male victims of rape or sexual assault in the U.S. Two-thirds of rapes were committed by someone the victim knew. Only six percent of them will ever go to jail. SIX PERCENT! Meaning that 94 percent of rapists are still walking free. Most of them don't live in Swiss chalets or have Polanski's army of apologists, but they're still walking free.
Most victims of sexual assault and rape accept that our attackers won't face legal punishment for various reasons. But the very least we ask as that those of you who - no offense - really don't know what you're talking about stop frakking intellectualizing this deeply traumatic thing that happened to us. If you don't have the perspective to understand this, the best thing you can do is not talk right now.
Which is why I think The Washington Post's Richard Cohen, in his post this week entitled "Thank you, Switzerland, for freeing Polanski," which begins with the line "The Swiss got it right," is full of it. Shit, that is, not context.
Roman Polanski is a film genius, blah blah blah. He pled guilty to unlawful sexual conduct before I was born, blah blah blah, and then fled the U.S. on the eve on his sentencing. Polanski's supporters point out that the judge in the case was most likely going to throw out the plea agreement and send Polanski to prison (judges aren't bound by plea deals, by the way), and that this was motivated by the judge's desire for publicity. And, yes, the now adult that Polanski admitted to drugging and repeatedly raping when she was 13 has said that she doesn't care if he's ever imprisoned.
Cohen recaps all of that. But I don't particularly care.
I have very little regard for the argument that the U.S.'s belated attempt to extradict Polanski is some sort of miscarriage of justice. Because here's that context I was talking about:
1 - There are people in the legal system who think that serving 40 days in a psych ward is a suitable max sentence for drugging and raping a 13 year old girl.
2 - Most rapists won't even be made to serve that much time.
THAT is the miscarriage of justice, you asshat Cohen and Polanski's various celebrity apologists. RAINN estimates that there are 17.7 million female and 2.78 million male victims of rape or sexual assault in the U.S. Two-thirds of rapes were committed by someone the victim knew. Only six percent of them will ever go to jail. SIX PERCENT! Meaning that 94 percent of rapists are still walking free. Most of them don't live in Swiss chalets or have Polanski's army of apologists, but they're still walking free.
Most victims of sexual assault and rape accept that our attackers won't face legal punishment for various reasons. But the very least we ask as that those of you who - no offense - really don't know what you're talking about stop frakking intellectualizing this deeply traumatic thing that happened to us. If you don't have the perspective to understand this, the best thing you can do is not talk right now.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Not a Mama, not a grizzly, but I can still growl
Am I the only one who thinks this new web video from Sarah Palin's SarahPAC is just a little condescending?
Titled "Mama Grizzlies," the video has Palin talking in voice over about how this election year will see a "mom awakening," over footage of women at protests, rallies, and otherwise getting involved in the political process. Unless I missed it, the video doesn't show the various women that Palin has endorsed for office, such as Nikki Haley in South Carolina and Carly Fiorina in California.
And - again, unless I missed it - nowhere do we see any non-white women. We also don't see women like Hillary Clinton (our country's third female Secretary of State out of the last four), or our own Governor Bev Perdue, or our female Senator Kay Hagan (who defeated Senator Elizabeth Dole), or our Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, who could well join Hagan in the Senate this year (which I think would make N.C. the only other state besides Maine with two female senators). For that matter, we don't see Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe. We don't see Condi Rice or Madeleine Albright. We don't see Sandra Day O'Connor. We sure as hell don't see Barbara Jordan.
That's what I meant by condescending. Women have *always* been involved in politics, even before we were allowed to vote. To me, this video's sole purpose is to make those few women (some of whom may not in fact have children!) who have never bothered to do their part as citizens feel better about their previous lack of involvement. It's just as annoying as the messages some of the "new left" was putting out circa 2006, which too often tipped into anti-Bush rage. But the problem is that frustration - well-informed or not - is not a substitute for competence.
It's not in any way feminist to suggest that women are automatically better at governing than anyone else, as if we have special woman powers that get super-activated if and when we procreate.
I think it's awesome that more people in general are paying attention to their government, because we need as many voices as possible if we're going to develop fair and effective policy. It's true that there are people who, because of the financial crisis, the wars, fascination with the president's skin tone, whatever, are looking at politics for the first time. That should absolutely be encouraged. But some of those people - because they are new to this - are ignorant of some pretty critical facts. That's not an insult, it's just a product of becoming aware of something you never really followed before.
And what those people - women AND men - need is not some cheering section assuring them that *they're* not the problem, that their outrage is sufficient. What they need is someone who thinks enough of their intelligence and dignity to say, "Welcome to the party! Here's a briefing book."
Titled "Mama Grizzlies," the video has Palin talking in voice over about how this election year will see a "mom awakening," over footage of women at protests, rallies, and otherwise getting involved in the political process. Unless I missed it, the video doesn't show the various women that Palin has endorsed for office, such as Nikki Haley in South Carolina and Carly Fiorina in California.
And - again, unless I missed it - nowhere do we see any non-white women. We also don't see women like Hillary Clinton (our country's third female Secretary of State out of the last four), or our own Governor Bev Perdue, or our female Senator Kay Hagan (who defeated Senator Elizabeth Dole), or our Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, who could well join Hagan in the Senate this year (which I think would make N.C. the only other state besides Maine with two female senators). For that matter, we don't see Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe. We don't see Condi Rice or Madeleine Albright. We don't see Sandra Day O'Connor. We sure as hell don't see Barbara Jordan.
That's what I meant by condescending. Women have *always* been involved in politics, even before we were allowed to vote. To me, this video's sole purpose is to make those few women (some of whom may not in fact have children!) who have never bothered to do their part as citizens feel better about their previous lack of involvement. It's just as annoying as the messages some of the "new left" was putting out circa 2006, which too often tipped into anti-Bush rage. But the problem is that frustration - well-informed or not - is not a substitute for competence.
It's not in any way feminist to suggest that women are automatically better at governing than anyone else, as if we have special woman powers that get super-activated if and when we procreate.
I think it's awesome that more people in general are paying attention to their government, because we need as many voices as possible if we're going to develop fair and effective policy. It's true that there are people who, because of the financial crisis, the wars, fascination with the president's skin tone, whatever, are looking at politics for the first time. That should absolutely be encouraged. But some of those people - because they are new to this - are ignorant of some pretty critical facts. That's not an insult, it's just a product of becoming aware of something you never really followed before.
And what those people - women AND men - need is not some cheering section assuring them that *they're* not the problem, that their outrage is sufficient. What they need is someone who thinks enough of their intelligence and dignity to say, "Welcome to the party! Here's a briefing book."
Friday, July 2, 2010
His term is up in January
Oh, Michael Steele. Where do you find whatever it is you're smoking?
Yesterday at a GOP fundraiser in Connecticut, Steele had this to say about the war in Afghanistan: It's "a war of Obama's choosing," and "“This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in,” and, my personal favorite*, "has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?”
That is SO weird. Because I have a pretty clear memory of standing in my parents' kitchen with my mom and my sisters on a Sunday in October just weeks after 9/11, watching President Bush pre-empt the NFL schedule with an Oval Office (if memory serves) address announcing that we were in the process of beginning to bomb the hell out of the Taliban in order to get to Osama bin Laden and the other terrorists who attacked our country. Who knew that Bush was - according to Steele - actually being remote controlled by an obscure state legislator in Illinois?
**PROFANITY ALERT**
Seriously, what the purple fuck is Michael Steele on??? Afghanistan was a war of Obama's choosing? He chose to go to war seven fucking years before he was even fucking elected president? I get that, as GOP party chairman, Steele has to draw bright lines between his party and the president's, even when the actual differences aren't that large. But is a war that arguably has more right-wing than left-wing commitment really the place to do that? What, did he get bored calling Obama a Communist? When Bill fucking Kristol thinks you've gone off the rails, you should probably take a moment to reassess.
**End profanity. It's safe to uncover your children's ears.**
Personally, I have serious questions about what the U.S. could possibly accomplish in Afghanistan at this point, but I believe, unapologetically, that going there after 9/11 was the right thing to do. I wonder what would've happened had we not ignored this particular war for so long, but I also understand that we can't rewrite history, as much as we'd like to. And that's what Steele is doing here.
I have another memory. It's of the first time I drove to the VA cemetary in Salisbury, as I hope to do again Monday. It was Memorial Day in 2006, to visit a friend from high school killed by an IED in March of that year near Asadabad, Afghanistan. He voluntarily switched to another company that was getting ready to deploy, because he wanted to go to Afghanistan. The war was happening then, and American men and women were fighting and dying there. For Michael Steele to gloss over that in a sadly failed attempt to score political points against the president who's just trying to wrap up a war he inherited - that just pisses me off.
*This was my favorite Steele remark because of this (at about the 4.30 mark). There's a lot wrong with the Democratic Party, but to my knowledge our chair has never ripped off a damn movie in a speech.
Yesterday at a GOP fundraiser in Connecticut, Steele had this to say about the war in Afghanistan: It's "a war of Obama's choosing," and "“This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in,” and, my personal favorite*, "has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?”
That is SO weird. Because I have a pretty clear memory of standing in my parents' kitchen with my mom and my sisters on a Sunday in October just weeks after 9/11, watching President Bush pre-empt the NFL schedule with an Oval Office (if memory serves) address announcing that we were in the process of beginning to bomb the hell out of the Taliban in order to get to Osama bin Laden and the other terrorists who attacked our country. Who knew that Bush was - according to Steele - actually being remote controlled by an obscure state legislator in Illinois?
**PROFANITY ALERT**
Seriously, what the purple fuck is Michael Steele on??? Afghanistan was a war of Obama's choosing? He chose to go to war seven fucking years before he was even fucking elected president? I get that, as GOP party chairman, Steele has to draw bright lines between his party and the president's, even when the actual differences aren't that large. But is a war that arguably has more right-wing than left-wing commitment really the place to do that? What, did he get bored calling Obama a Communist? When Bill fucking Kristol thinks you've gone off the rails, you should probably take a moment to reassess.
**End profanity. It's safe to uncover your children's ears.**
Personally, I have serious questions about what the U.S. could possibly accomplish in Afghanistan at this point, but I believe, unapologetically, that going there after 9/11 was the right thing to do. I wonder what would've happened had we not ignored this particular war for so long, but I also understand that we can't rewrite history, as much as we'd like to. And that's what Steele is doing here.
I have another memory. It's of the first time I drove to the VA cemetary in Salisbury, as I hope to do again Monday. It was Memorial Day in 2006, to visit a friend from high school killed by an IED in March of that year near Asadabad, Afghanistan. He voluntarily switched to another company that was getting ready to deploy, because he wanted to go to Afghanistan. The war was happening then, and American men and women were fighting and dying there. For Michael Steele to gloss over that in a sadly failed attempt to score political points against the president who's just trying to wrap up a war he inherited - that just pisses me off.
*This was my favorite Steele remark because of this (at about the 4.30 mark). There's a lot wrong with the Democratic Party, but to my knowledge our chair has never ripped off a damn movie in a speech.
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