Voter ID bills: Aw, it's on.

Remember last week when the Legislature passed a law requiring voters to provide one of several forms of ID at the polls, and Gov. Perdue vetoed it? Similar measures are at various stages of passage and enaction in Wisconsin and Texas, and New Hampshire's governor vetoed one yesterday.

I'm not going to get into a debate about the motivation behind these bills, but I generally oppose them because they're a waste of money. In North Carolina, voting under another person's name or voting more than once is already a felony. In 2010, something like 23 cases of voter fraud were refered to authorities. The most conservative estimates for how much it would cost to issue IDs to the hundreds of thousands of voters who don't have them, train poll workers and enforce the new regulations - the most conservative estimate - was over $1 million. That's in a state that's getting ready to fire thousands of public school teachers and health care workers. For a few dozen instances per election.

Keep in mind that some of the same people who supported the voter ID bill here in N.C. also wanted to cut the early voting period by one week - because they say it's too expensive.

And even in states that do have serious problems with voter fraud, is requiring a piece of paper really going to magically fix them? I'm just remembering that time in college when two of my housemates succesfully used the same fake ID just minutes apart at the same restaurant. Gun rights advocates are constantly telling us that we need to do away with regulations because they don't work anyway. Well, um...

But the biggest argument used against voter ID requirements is that they depress minority turnout, amounting to a modern-day poll tax. Here's the thing... It seems, intuitively, like that should be true, but there isn't enough evidence to say definitively "Yes, this is so." The existing laws just haven't been around long enough to give us the data to work with. For instance, in the first presidential election after Georgia passed its ID law, minority turnout went up dramatically. But, of course, that was the 2008 election when turnout was up across the board.

Which is why I think it's a good thing that several Senators are asking the Justice Department to look at whether these laws really do threaten voting rights. There are enough of these laws on the books or in the works to justify federal-level interest, and the DoJ has resources that your average state legislature doesn't.

I hope that the Department will take this up. And I also hope that its results, whatever theyare, aren't politicized. (Hey, I can dream.) For my fellow progressives, that means this: if the Department of Justice in a Democratic administration finds conclusively that voter ID requirements do not discourage minority voters, then we stop insisting otherwise.

Newsweek's Zombie Royals Cover

It’s allowable that professional journalists would’ve done some sort of story to acknowledge that Princess Diana would’ve turned 50 this week, particularly in light of her oldest son’s wedding earlier this year and the renewed affection for the British monarchy that it brought about.

It’s impossible to believe that professional journalists thought it was a good idea to photoshop a picture of Diana and Kate Middleton, the late princess’s daughter-in-law, as if they were actually together in life. It’s just as gross for a national newsmagazine to publish a story speculating what Diana would be like today, including a graphic of her fake Facebook page.

What the hell was Newsweek thinking? This belongs in the Onion, or the National Enquirer, not an allegedly serious weekly newsmagazine.

And I'm sure Diana's family isn't at all hurt or traumatized by this. Geez...

Bev hauls the Legislature out of my uterus

It will be hard for me to say this more clearly than the Charlotte Observer already did in the op-ed calling the Legislature’s abortion-restriction bill “an insult to women.” So let me just give a big kudos to Gov. Bev Perdue for vetoing the bill today, her 10th veto this year of bills passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature. (Ten vetoes will happen when the governor is a moderate Democrat and the Legislature conservative Republicans.)

The bill, which the Observer describes as the first of its kind in the nation, would’ve required not just an ultrasound (following a 24-hour waiting period), but for a doctor to describe what the ultrasound is showing. The bill included eliminating state funds for Planned Parenthood as well.

Let’s be clear: this is not about preventing abortion. Because the best, most effective way to do that is to increase funding for Planned Parenthood and other programs that educate women and provide contraception. If people whose stomachs are turned by abortion were serious about keeping abortion from happening, they would do the exact opposite of what this Legislature, and others around the country, tried to do. They wouldn’t be trying to shut down the organizations that provide women, in particular poor women, birth control, basic health care (including pap smears and mammograms) and – Hello – prenatal care. (They also wouldn’t be axing education and health care if they were truly “pro-life,” but that’s a separate issue.)

The bill was indeed an insult to women. It comes from a place of deep distrust of any woman – college student, middle-aged mother, whomever – to make decisions about her own pregnancy and childbearing. And, though nearly anyone can agree that terminating a pregnancy is a tragedy, I am and always will be vehemently suspicious of letting the government get involved with that decision.

(I don’t understand conservatives on this issue. Y’all are convinced that Democrats want to take your God-given right to own an assault rifle – even though no one has tried since the assault weapons ban expired during the last administration – and you think every attempt to simultaneously lower taxes and the cost of health care is either socialism or Nazism or somewhere in between, but you’re totally ok with a bunch of guys elected to two-year terms encoding in state law what your highly trained doctor can and can’t say to you during a medical exam?)

Abortion restrictions of this type are insult to women.

This part may be difficult to read. I intended it to be.

Let’s take me, for example. If you read this blog, you probably know that I was raped not quite four years ago. Afterwards, when I went to the hospital, I was offered the “Plan B” pill – basically a high dose of the common birth control pill, administered in two doses several hours apart. Hell yes I took it, and if it hadn’t been offered I would’ve demanded it.

But let’s say I’m unfortunate enough to live in a state that bans Plan B, or maybe I didn’t go to the ER. Now, a few weeks after being raped, I’m pregnant. Now what?

Well, maybe I happen to live in one of the 90 percent of U.S. counties without an abortion provider. So I have to find a provider somewhere else. Maybe I have a car. Maybe not, and I have to hitch a ride from a friend. Maybe the doctor I find is in the next county, or maybe two or three hours away. Assuming I get the ride, there’s that 24-hour waiting period to consider. So now I’m getting a hotel room on top of the gas and food (for my friend, too, if I’m hitching that ride).

Maybe I have a job with paid time off. Or maybe I work hourly, in which case I’m not only losing money, but I most likely don’t have health insurance. Boy, I sure hope I had hundreds of dollars lying around. For not just one doctor’s visit, but at least two, assuming I don’t need any follow-up care.

In the doctor’s office, I’m already 99 percent sure I don’t want and can’t handle this baby. But before the doctor can perform the medical procedure I came here for, she has to perform an ultrasound. Now, if you’ve ever been pregnant at this stage, you know that an ultrasound isn’t the thing you see in the movies where the doctor squirts jelly on your stomach and views from the outside. It’s a wand placed inside your vagina far enough to view the uterus.

Keep in mind that hypothetical me was raped a few weeks ago. Nothing traumatic about that.

I can tell you from personal experience that, within weeks of what happened to me, I was most definitely NOT in the emotional shape to deal with something like the above scenario.

Ok, ok, lots of abortion opponents who like to think of themselves as reasonable create little loopholes in their ethics like “only in cases of rape or incest.” Go back through what I just wrote, only this time pretend it’s not about what could’ve happened to me. Pretend the same thing is happening to a teenager, or a single mom who’s the sole source of income for her family, or a woman who desperately wants her baby, but knows that having him will kill both of them.

As with anything in life, reproductive rights are far too complicated and personal to be handled by public legislation. Any government is woefully inadequate to deal with this, and therefore should trust women, families and their doctors to decide what’s best for them.

And, for what it’s worth… if you’re someone who’s ever thought, forwarded an email or bought a bumper sticker telling the government to get out of your gun cabinet, then you should absolutely respect my wish that the same government stay out of my uterus.

Bueller? Bueller?

When I started writing this blog almost four years ago (wow… does NOT seem that long ago…), I wanted to avoid the trend in opinion writing (not just on the Internet, but there’s certainly plenty here) of picking out something in the conventional wisdom and then taking the opposite opinion just for the hell of it. If you’re genuinely against the grain on a certain topic, hey, it’s a free country. But it was the whole contrary-for-the-sake-of-being-contrary thing that just seemed tedious to me. And I also didn’t want this blog to turn into “Look what this idiot wrote.” Frankly, that’s boring.

So it’s with total blogger integrity that I present this essay from The Atlantic and say that, while I appreciate the writer’s point of view, I disagree.

It’s been 25 years since “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” was released, which means that it’s been slightly less than 25 years since my mom persuaded my older sister and I to watch it, telling us that “that girl from ‘Dirty Dancing is in it.’” And the film’s continuing popularity seems to bug Alan Siegel, who thinks it’s an unrelatable, whitewashed fantasy with an unlikeable hero.

Well, yeah. First of all, if you’re expecting any studio comedy released in the 80s to explore race and class relations without any cringe-inducing moments, you’re in for disappointment. Why “FBDO” should be singled out for criticism – when it takes place in one of the whitest, most privileged places in the U.S. at that time – among all the other all-white, “greed is good” films of the era is kind of silly. Siegel should definitely not watch “Adventures in Babysitting” or “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

For me – not that I could articulate this as a school-aged middle-class kid – Ferris Bueller was less a hero to be emulated than a fantasy object. It’s escapism. Bueller is sort of the trickster character that shows up in myths and stories practically since people started telling stories. He doesn’t change; people around him do.

And even as that single-digit-aged kid, I could recognize the slightly absurd fantastic elements of the movie. At the end of the movie, Ferris’ girlfriend Sloan watches him scurry off, saying to herself, “He’s going to marry me.” You’re what, 17? Enjoy looking back on that moment, honey. If I could appreciate this sheltered, naïve moment of youthful idealism at an age when I thought the Muppet Babies were real, why can’t a real-live grown-up writer?

But I do appreciate what he’s trying to say. We should look critically at why Hollywood did, and to a large extent continues to, pitch affluent white guys as “universal” figures while neglecting equally entertaining stories about people who aren’t in that demographic. But I think we can do that without guilt-tripping the people who quote Ferris Bueller in their high school yearbooks.

Lighten up, honey. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story…

Movies are a fiction medium. Even those supposedly based on true events, even documentaries. The point of films is to tell a story. And when telling a story based on actual people and events, that necessarily means leaving things out, compressing time, combining characters and inventing totally fictional characters. Because the point of a film is to tell a story. If you want accuracy, go read a book.

I saw this played out (with varying degrees of success) with three movies this week: “The King’s Speech,” “The Social Network” and “Green Zone,” all released last year. The first two are explicitly based on real people and events, and the third a fictionalization of real events.

“The Social Network” is of course “the Facebook movie.” “The King’s Speech” interested me because, aside from the fact that it swept all the awards, I’m reading a book about the pre-World War I relationships between cousins Tsar Nicholas, Kaiser Wilhelm and King George V, so a film about George’s son (like him, a “spare” who ended up on the throne) rounded things out a bit.

One thing that struck me about “The Social Network” was how I kept forgetting that Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay and David Fincher directed it. Both Sorkin and Fincher have very noticeable styles that at times have overwhelmed their work. Yes, the film looks like it was shot with all the lights off and sounds as if someone were sitting on the mics the whole time, which is Fincher-y, but it’s not as aggressively Fincher-y as, say, “Se7en.” The only scene that struck me as “Oh, my hell, slow the f- down” Sorkin-y was the opening one.

Technique is sadly not as transparent in “Green Zone,” of which sherpas in Nepal could probably watch 30 seconds and say, “Oh, that’s Paul Greengrass. By the way, do you have any dramamine?” (Dear Hollywood: when I’m doing a crossword puzzle during the half-hour-long climactic chase/shootout because I’ve given up fracking trying to see anything, it’s time to put the shaky-cam on a tripod and set up some lights.)

But that’s not my main beef with “Green Zone.” It’s a well-made thriller (at least for the first half, which I’ll get to in a second), but I feel like it would work better if it were set in a fictional country and war. Because, set in Iraq in the weeks after the U.S. invasion in 2003, frankly, it’s kind of preposterous.

So we have a soldier, Matt Damon, who’s supposed to be securing the WMD left behind, which of course didn’t exist. The first half hour or so is brilliant, with engrossing scenes that really made me feel like I was there in the “fog of war.” There’s one scene where Matt’s convoy is trying to drive through a street crowded with Iraqis begging for water. First he tells some of the men to get out of their Humvee and clear a path; then, as the crowd grows more agitated, you can see the soldiers tense up: are they about to be shot at? Is one of these people going to set off a suicide bomb? Nothing happens, but you (as a viewer) get that heightened awareness that soldiers in combat feel.

There’s more tension in that two minutes than in the rest of the movie. After that the film moves from realism into garden-variety thriller territory.

*here be spoilers*

Chief Matt (his character did have a name, but c’mon, it’s Matt) knows from experience that the WMD intelligence is BS. So when an Iraqi man gives him a tip about a wanted general hiding nearby, he jumps on it, finding a notebook that lists the general’s safe-houses. It turns out that the general is the Pentagon’s confidential source on WMD, only the Pentagon official who handled him (Greg Kinnear) lied to the administration, and media, about what the general had to say (that there really weren’t any WMD). Matt has to find the general and get him to tell the truth (because then the war will end immediately…?), while Greg is using Army Special Forces to stalk the safe-houses and kill the general before he can be brought in from the cold.

The friendly Iraqi kills the general, a move that my 12-year-old nephew who wasn’t even watching the movie saw coming. (True story. Alex called me and said, “Aunt Sara, I was just playing Angry Birds when I had the overwhelming sensation that, somewhere, a character is going to disappear for a large chunk of time and then conveniently reappear when it’s time to shoot the bad-guy-who’s-secretly-a-good-guy.” And I said, “It’s okay, honey, Aunt Sara’s just watching a bad movie.) (That is not a true story.)

Here’s where the preposterousness comes in. If you accept that an Army officer serving in a war zone during active combat operations somehow has the free time to investigate the Pentagon’s WMD source (which I don’t); if you accept that the Army officer can find evidence of a wanted Baathist and not turn it over to his superiors and then face absolutely no consequences (which I don’t): in what universe does an Army officer e-mail confidential information to every news outlet on the planet (as Matt does at the end) and not get hauled off in handcuffs?

*end spoilers*

Personally, I think the story of how we got into the Iraq War needs to be told. I think we need to record and tell and tell again how bad intelligence and wishful thinking did such a disservice to the most professional military in the world by using them as political props. And that’s what bugged me about “Green Zone.” It’s not a movie, it’s an op-ed in search of a plot. And it’s cowardly because it couches valid criticism as a half-ass fictionalization. Frankly, pinning the real-life shenanigans that led us into that war on a fictional Pentagon official is a cop-out. If you want to tell this story, then tell this story.

And don’t turn a New York Times reporter into a Wall Street Journal reporter (with a fake URL: “twsj.com”… what was up with that, anyway?). Was that supposed to make it easier on anti-war audiences? Because the actual reporter who basically printed the Bush Administration’s talking points verbatim worked for none other than the alleged house organ of the left.

It’s odd that I hold films presented as a true story to a lesser standard than one that’s ostensibly fiction, but that’s based on real events. I suppose that I just assumed that “The Social Network” or “The King’s Speech” would do all of those things I mentioned in the first paragraph – compress events, omit those that don’t advance the narrative, etc.

Someone once told me that a fantasy or sci-fi story had to work even harder at creating verisimilitude because they are set in unreal environments. “Green Zone” failed on that point for me. If the filmmakers had picked a direction – either totally fictional or totally true to life – I think this could’ve been an excellent, and important, film.

The Jon Stewart School of Journalism

Remember when Jon Stewart went on “Crossfire” seven years ago or so and utterly dismantled its entire reason for being, and Tucker Carlson said Stewart should start a journalism school? (And Stewart responded, “You should go to one.”) Stewart’s appearance on Fox Sunday Morning and interview with Chris Wallace may not have had as many fireworks, but it was better in many respects, in part because Wallace let Stewart have his say. (At least online. The interview was heavily edited before it aired on TV.)

Part 1

Part 2

It’s a revealing interview, and required viewing for anyone who likes to understand where her news comes from. Whether you’re a “Daily Show” disciple or a Fox News devotee, this is a great discussion about some of the decisions that go into getting stories on the air.

Stewart and Fox viewers are on the same side in some ways, because both are disaffected with what they see when they turn on the news. And that news doesn’t have a liberal bias. It has, as Stewart says, a lazy, sensational bias. (Chuck Klosterman had a great essay about this in Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs.)

Case in point: the Nancy Pelosi press conference that all the 24-hour networks cut away from as soon as she announced that she wasn’t going to discuss Anthony Weiner (which he also talked about on his show Monday night). We can all agree that this is ridiculous and worthy of parody.

(But we’re the same people who turned up our noses when Jon Meacham tried to turn Newsweek into a more long-form analysis publication, so what do we know?)

Quickie: White House response

Following the announcement earlier today that 10 members of the House of Representatives will sue the president and Defense Secretary, and following previous House resolutions and a letter from the Speaker of the House, the White House now says it will respond with a report on the mission.

"The administration's report will include a legal analysis for the mission and address a June 3 House resolution that raised questions about the president's goal in Libya, how he hopes to achieve that goal, why he has not sought congressional authorization for involving U.S. troops abroad and how much the conflict will ultimately cost..."

Also...

"In a coincidence of scheduling, Obama and Boehner are set to play golf together for the first time Saturday, a day after Boehner's deadline for information from the administration and the day before he says it could be in violation of the War Powers Resolution."

And you wonder why this is such a fun hobby for me.

Obama, Libya, and that time that Dennis Kucinich and Howard Coble agreed on something

They say politics makes strange bedfellows, meaning that sometimes one’s political interests line up with those of the people opposed to you in other areas. Maybe I’m having a naïve day, but can’t it also be true that sometimes it’s one's principles – not just political considerations – that dovetail?

For a few weeks now, President Obama has been getting criticism from the right (no surprise) but also from the anti-war faction of the left for continuing the military’s involvement in Libya. The administration says that it’s not the U.S. military bombing Qaddafi, it’s NATO… but come on. Are U.S. military personnel, and U.S. funds, being used in Libya or aren’t they? Don’t split hairs.

Last week the House passed a resolution basically fussing at the White House for continuing in Libya without authorization from Congress (which earned them a thank-you note supposedly from Qaddafi). Yesterday, House Speaker John Boehner asked the White House to report to Congress by the end of this week what exactly the legal basis for the Libya action is.

And today, 10 House members – three Democrats and seven Republicans – filed a lawsuit (in what jurisdiction? I don’t know, and the media isn’t telling me.) against the president and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, apparently trying to get a judge to order and end to whatever it is we’re doing in Libya. I’m not sure how this will fly, practically speaking – a judge is going to tell the president of the United States what to do? – but it sure is an interesting legal conundrum.

At issue is the1973 War Powers Resolution, which basically states that the president can’t start a military action without Congressional approval. I am by no means an expert on this, but from what I understand, the president can still order an action in an emergency, but has to report to Congress regularly. And, if the action goes on longer than 60 days (with another 30 for winding down and withdrawal), Congress has to either pass an authorization or declare war.

(Or else… what? Roll the White House Rose Garden? No, just make the rest of the president’s term a living hell, to the extent that they can.)

Put that way, obviously President Obama is overstepping his authority by not going to Congress for an ok in Libya. The problem is that presidents of both parties have fought or outright ignored the War Powers Resolution since its inception. Congress had to override President Nixon’s veto to pass it in the first place. Separation of powers or no, presidents don’t like ceding any authority to a couple of hundred squabbling legislators up on the hill. (Even if those presidents are former Constitutional law professors.)

And Congress, of course, pushes back. I took a look at the last time Congress expressed disapproval of a president’s use of the military, the 2007 non-binding House Concurrent Resolution 63, which stated that it wasn’t in the country’s national interest to increase involvement in Iraq. (This was in response to President Bush’s “New Way Forward” policy, popularly known as the troop surge.) The Senate wasn’t able to bring HCR 63 to a vote, but the House passed it 246-182.

Now, to what I wrote earlier about principles… the 10 Representatives who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit are a mix of anti-war Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans, who here find themselves in agreement that it’s wrong, and dangerous, for a president to consolidate so much power at the expense of the representative arm of government – Congress. HCR 63 wasn’t exactly the same thing, but the basic principle is the same.

Of the 10 Congressmen in the lawsuit, eight voted for HCR 63; that is, disapproving of the troop surge. Reps. Coble and Jones were the only Republicans in North Carolina’s delegation to vote for HCR 63, and both are plaintiffs. I had to admit, the consistency surprised me. One doesn't expect Congresspeople to apply uniform principles in the same way years apart.

I bring this up because my suspicion is that this lawsuit will be seen by many as a purely political move, and that may be part of the motivation. But while the Republicans named as plaintiffs may have nothing to lose in suing the president, they certainly had plenty to lose back in 2007 by opposing a Republican president with HCR 63. So, no, I don’t think this is 100 percent about politics.

Obama has a political problem, though, but it’s with members of his own party. Obama’s bigger problem is historical. His opponents like to fantasize that Obama is Jimmy Carter, but he’s risking turning into Lyndon Johnson – a guy who’s so confident of his own capabilities, and at the same time so doubtful of anyone in Congress to think beyond their next Twitter update, that he steamrolls all over process to get his way with predictably disastrous results. Obama campaigned on not being that guy, and his supporters haven’t forgotten it.

The next few weeks will be a crucial period in his presidency. Up to now, the president has been masterful at sharing the nuts and bolts of governing, and therefore the blame if those policies don’t pan out. But this one’s all on him.

In today's news, Ohio is still pissed

Today the Ohio Governor John Kasich issued a proclamation making the members of the Dallas Mavericks "honorary Ohioans" after they won the NBA championship. Why on earth does Ohio care about a Texas team winning a championship? Because the Mavs beat the Miami Heat, now home to LeBron James, that's why.

Tjis is the kind of thing that would be funnily awesome (as opposed to awesomely funny) had it come from, say, the Onion, or an Ohio newspaper, or a fan club or something. Coming from the governor, it comes off as a little petty.

I missed "The Decision" original broadcast last summer because I was in the hospital that night (long story), but I did get to watch a lot of ESPN the next morning waiting for discharge. Personal opinion: James made a business decision, but the way he went about it (i.e. on national TV) was a slap in the face. So, in the spirit of not wanting to reward dishonorable behavior, I was kind of pulling for the Mavs.

Ohio, I get where you're coming from, but this is the last year you're going to be able to pull this off. If you're still officially high-fiving the teams that beat LeBron after this, I promise, he's not going to be the party that looks like a d-bag.

Also, it has to be said... distraction much?

In case you were wondering...

... why, in my senior thesis on how subcultural groups use various forms of communication to form a group identity, I focused on NASCAR fans, this really says it all.



Yes, this type of intense identification with the actual participants occurs in any sport. Compare the "I last won at Michigan" remark with football fans who talk about how "we" won last Sunday, for instance. But anyway, what you see here is an example of the involvement many NASCAR fans have with the outcome of any race, especially one in which one's particular driver is competing for a win.

It also illustrates the ignorance of people who say that auto racing is stupid because it's just cars going around in a circle. First of all, it's not a circle, it's an oval (or tri-oval, or road course). Moreover, auto racing that puts the driver, car builders and chiefs in control of the outcome is a 200-mph chess match, and that will never stop being awesome.

(For the record, I was just as disappointed, but a lot quieter. Which would not have been the case had the winner been, say, a Busch brother instead of someone I actually like.)

For Upright Citizens who Don't Read Good

Well, this is interesting.

Republicans in my state continue to focus on everything BUT jobs, taking up a bill today that would require public high schools to teach a semester-long course on, I guess you’d call it the philosophical underpinning of America’s government.

In the print version of this story (unfortunately not online), the News & Record quotes several supporters, including businessman David Steadman, who says this curriculum “…will fortify them [students] as they go out into the world and they become voters and responsible producers.” The paper also writes that “The measure is on the national agenda for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a national group of mainly Republican and ‘business-friendly’ legislators.”

Not in this article… the same concept appears to have the support of the N.C. Family Policy Council, who are way scarier than that bunch of fiscal conservatives at ALEC.

“If the citizens of America would be very protective and vigilant for those [founding] principles, we would not be in this mess,” Steadman is quoted as saying. It’s not clear exactly how he defines the principles of this country’s founders, or even the “Founding Fathers” themselves. (As I’ve written, we’re talking about hundreds of people living throughout the 13 colonies over a period of several decades. Which ones are you talking about, and at which points in their careers?)

It’s interesting because Steadman, et al., just unwittingly aligned themselves with James Loewen, the professor and author of Lies My Teacher Told Me and Lies Across America, whose pet issue is the failure of U.S. history education to prepare students to be informed citizens.

Lies My Teacher Told Me might be of particular interest to Steadman, as it focuses specifically on history textbooks commonly used in public high schools. One of them was the text used in my AP U.S. History class, though my teacher was sensible enough to supplement it with contemporary accounts, source documents and other books. Loewen found outright inaccuracies, but he also found history that was poorly explained, dumbed down, hero-ified, glossed over or ignored.

The funny thing is that when Loewen or other academics point out the danger in teaching students that the government is always right and that America never does anything it shouldn’t at home or abroad, right-wingers call them revisionists, or worse. And now that the Tea Party has suddenly rediscovered The Federalist, it’s suddenly okay to revise the curriculum.

I absolutely agree that Americans should understand how our government works and why it was built the way it was, if for no other reason than the importance of grasping that Medicare is a federal program. The Federalist, the collection of (essentially) Letters to the Editor that Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay wrote promoting ratification of the Constitution – and dropping the weak federal government that existed under the Articles of Confederation – should be required reading for every American.

(Hey, let’s start with Rep. Harold Brubaker, chief sponsor of the N.C. bill. Harold, I’d like 500 words on #51, particularly Mr. Madison’s statement, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”)

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family of history buffs, surrounded by books and discussion, taking countless trips to historic areas. I was fortunate enough to live in a state that – apologies to the guys sponsoring this bill – does in fact require civics, world and U.S. history (complete with an EOG test) in high school. And, in those classes at my public schools, I was deeply fortunate enough to have teachers who cared enough about the subject to require additional books – including, by my count twice, The Federalist (which I got again in college).

So, despite agreeing with Steadman and the rest in principle, I disagree here that the problem lies in the state-required curriculum. If there are schools and teachers who don’t have the resources to explain the history of the founding of our government, then give them funding – don’t require that they do more while you axe their budgets and fire 13,000 of them.

And, most importantly, don’t align yourselves with the people who think that hate crime statutes infringe on their free speech. Because this student of history learned a long time ago to look not just at what you say you support, but at who’s supporting you. You don’t want to look ideological, fine. Don’t be ideological.

And, Mr. Steadman? Please don’t lecture me about my “freedoms.” I had Mr. Surratt and Mrs. Sawyers.

Socratic NASCAR

I have started this post about five different times. Each time, I start out trying to be even-handed, fair and detached… and after a few hundred words I find myself typing some variation of, “If I had $150,000, I’d punch Kyle Busch in the face, too.”

Let’s have a Socratic dialogue (multi-logue?) between the many warring factions of my conscience:

Obviously, Richard Childress was wrong to put Kyle Busch in a headlock and punch him repeatedly following last weekend’s truck race. Physical violence is wrong.
Well, yeah. And that’s why NASCAR was right to fine Childress $150,000. For one, Childress is an owner and Busch a driver. They aren’t peers in this case.

Ah, power differential. Discussion of relative privilege in the garage. Fun!
Sort of. This is one of the reasons that, as much as I can’t stand Kyle Busch, I’m not in the “Let’s all high-five Richard Childress” camp. Do we really want to set a precedent that it’s okay (at least in fans’ eyes) for an owner to beat up another team’s driver? Sure, this time it was the driver a lot of fans despise and the owner a lot of fans respect, but what about next time?

Hey, now. Kyle Busch isn’t exactly “underprivileged.”
True. It seems, judging by various accounts, that what pushed Childress over the edge was what he saw as Busch’s mistreatment of Joey Coulter. It was Coulter’s eighth start in the Trucks Series –

Exactly! Kyle Busch has been driving full-time in the Cup Series for years, and he picks on an inexperienced kid.
Don’t interrupt.

Sorry.
As I was saying, Busch slammed Coulter’s truck after the race was over – I know you want to say something, but hold on – so, I think in Childress’ view he was defending someone who didn’t have the clout to defend himself. Just like the kid who finally whales on the schoolyard bully who’s been picking on the first-graders, he’s going to have to do his time in the principal’s office.

Can I talk now?
Go ahead.

Busch is supposedly on probation for that incident at Darlington where he ran Kevin Harvick’s car into the wall, also after the race. Why isn’t bumping Coulter his last strike?
Um, is my name Mike Helton? How do I know? My guess would be that Busch’s actions took place on the track, and therefore fall under the “boys, have at it” exemption. You may think Busch was being overly aggressive, or you may think that he was exercising the privileges that come with experience, as other drivers have done since this sport began. But NASCAR is clearly trying to move back to a time when drivers governed the on-track society and enforced mutually developed group norms.

I’m sorry, what?
Sorry. I wrote my undergrad thesis analyzing NASCAR fans as a subculture, and I’m still fascinated by how people form group identities, how they decide what’s “normal” within the group and how they handle “deviant” behavior –

Alrighty then…
Anyway, I guess my takeaway is that I’m glad Busch got his ass beat, while not being seriously injured. Apparently nothing else was getting through to him, so maybe this will. Pretty much every driver goes through a cocky punk stage, and Busch is has too much talent to keep making me hate him so much.

Say something nice about Kyle Busch.

Ok, I can handle this one. Yes, Busch is now the guy who got beat up by someone’s grandpa. But if he’d hit Childress back, well that definitely would’ve violated his probation, not to mention permanently black-flagged him for all but the most unrepentantly douchey fans. If that was a deliberate decision, it was a good one. I also like that he’s let NASCAR handle this without any public whining.

Weiner, Weiner (updated)

(This post is rated PG-13)

So, one of Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Twitter followers got an unexpected message this week: a picture from the Congressman’s Twitter-affiliated account that various media have described as “lewd,” apparently meaning “a cock shot of some sort.” Clothed, bare Brett Favre-style, we can’t be sure.

Rep. Weiner (whose name I long insisted was “WINE-er” but is, in fact, WEE-ner) obviously didn’t send it himself, because a) who the hell DOES that, and b) she wasn’t an intern, Craigslist hustler, or otherwise acquainted with the Congressman. But his public statements haven’t really had the effect of putting this to rest.

“My lawyers told me not to say that definitely isn’t me because somebody could’ve Photoshop’ed a pic of me” is not exactly a comforting statement. If Weiner’s PR people advised him to say that, then he needs to revisit their employment. Because, yeah, obviously someone could’ve altered a real photo of the guy. But crisis communication is all about managing a message news cycle by news cycle. You can say, “That’s not me,” and if it turns out that it WAS you at some point before some prankster got all Photoshop with it, most reasonable people won’t think that you lied to them.

And I have to believe that a Congressman is smart enough to know that. I don’t believe that Weiner randomly cock-shotted a Twitter fan. I do believe he was hacked. I also believe it’s likely the photo was doctored.

But I also believe that any Congressperson with a brain who didn’t already have a cock-shot or cock-shot-lite at hand would’ve dismissed this more easily. Weiner’s legalistic mumbo jumbo says to me that his PR people are indeed managing this cycle by cycle… and that the later revelations they’re preparing for are – at least in their view – pretty serious.

Or they’re just really bad at their jobs. Either way, not good.

UPDATE: Well, that didn't take long.

(Also, if you have Bill Clinton officiate at your wedding, aren't you kind of jinxing the whole thing?)