Too busy/tired/unfocused to write lately (including a clever intro to this post), so pretend these are all long, thought-out, witty entries fulll of insightful links instead:
- Tim Tebow's Super Bowl ad: he totally has a right to his opinion, but it's BS for CBS to ok this ad from Focus on the Family having rejected other "advocacy" ads (including those from other religious organizations. And PS, Sarah Palin, SHUT UUUUUUUUUUP. You're hearby never allowed ever again to brag about "choosing life" for yourself until you can come up with another word for "choice," since that's exactly what you'd take away from other women.
- Scott Brown: not a referendum on anything other than who people in Massachusetts wanted repping them in the Senate. Having done GOTV calls in local elections, I know that "protest voters" do exist (people who vote for Republican city council candidates b/c they don't like Obama) - but most people are smarter than that.
- Obama's proposed spending freeze: bad idea. Pissing off your base while not saving that much money. Don't cave to the deficit hawks.
- Rehiring David Plouffe: good idea. Wish it could've happened sooner.
- "Burr's Brigade": actually, I probably will write more about this later. Further proof that conservatives would rather fetishize military service than lower themselves to take part in it.
- Super Bowl: Go Saints! And somehow Peter King will still find a way to talk about Brett Favre for the next two weeks.
- Speaking of football... Having watched far more broadcast TV than normal over the past three weekends, I am prepared to shoot my TV set and burn down Madison Avenue if the following commercials aren't immediately retired: the Toyota one with the emo couple who can't find their retarded dog (he's prob as sick of those damned squeaky toys as I am); the one where the husband whose wife blew their Chase reward points on a dress without his consent takes her on a ski vacation and she still acts like a brat (bonus points for sensationally annoying background music); the one where people would be incapable of writing garage band songs/designing ugly clothes/dancing on subway platforms/fighting in the street, etc., without their Blackberries (even though all you need is love); any commercial where Howie Long looks like he's going to chop me up and hide my body parts in his extra-roomy Chevy (seriously, what's with the pedophile smile?); the one for that local car dealership starring seemingly everyone the dealer knows wearing reject Halloween costumes plus some ostensibly cute little kid who can't speak English; that supremely irritating Bud commercial showing all the various ways people carry multiple beers, which only serves to remind me of Bank of America Stadium's per-person beer limit.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Blog For Choice Day: Trust Women
This year’s Blog for Choice focus is “Trust Women,” which, coincidentally, was the title of a post I wrote last May. In that post, I wrote:
“When anti-choicers raise the spectre of a woman carrying a baby for several months and then casually deciding that, meh, she's just not into it, they're more than disingenuous. They're sexist. They're coming from a place of deep distrust of women's ability to make decisions. I've got news for you: any pregnant woman who simply doesn't want to have a child will schedule that abortion ASAP. If a woman's getting an abortion at 21 weeks, or 24 weeks, there are almost always other issues at play - tragic, heart-wrenching circumstances that are not remotely the business of the president, my Congressman, the guy from the pro-life Catholic group or anyone else.”
When anti-choice demonstrators outside clinics yell at arriving patients that their children will look like them, they’re distrusting women. When lawmakers pass legislation requiring a woman wanting abortion to look at a sonogram, they’re distrusting women.
But here’s the kicker.
They don’t trust women who DO make the choice to have children, either.
Those of you out there who are mothers – how many times has someone (family member, random person at church, perfect stranger at the grocery store, etc.) critiqued the choices you’ve made relating to your pregnancy, your childbirth and your child-rearing? How many times has this “advice” made you feel like nothing you’re doing is right, and that you’re going to horribly scar your child for life?
Your choice to have natural childbirth is wrong. Having a C-section is wrong. Buying your two-year-old French fries is wrong. Feeding the same child an organic diet is wrong, too. You let your child watch too much TV, or not enough. Homeschooling is bad. Public schools are bad. You don’t have enough kids. You have too many kids. Etc., etc.
It may take a different form, but it all comes from the same place: this idea we still have in our culture that women are public property and so our choices are up for public debate. They most certainly are NOT.
Whether or not you identify as feminist, this is a feminist issue because it disproportionally affects women. Men certainly suffer from patriarchy-inspired peer pressure, but when was the last time you read about a father getting arrested for feeding his kid in public? A male former Cosmopolitan centerfold got elected to the US Senate this week, while Sarah Palin still gets told to get back in the kitchen.
This will only stop when women collectively stand up and tell the Greek Chorus of Ur Doin it Rong to mind its own damned business. And that will only happen when we stop being good little girls and give up the illusion that everything will be okay as long as we go along with the status quo.
Stop feeding the beast. It won’t be easy, because there are multiple billion-dollar industries devoted to convincing women that everything about us needs fixing, from our hair to the color of our genitals. It means that we have to stop tearing one another down, and that we have to shake the mortal fear of hearing ourselves called “bitch.”
Ultimately, if we want others to trust us, we have to start trusting one another. Most of all, we have to start trusting ourselves.
“When anti-choicers raise the spectre of a woman carrying a baby for several months and then casually deciding that, meh, she's just not into it, they're more than disingenuous. They're sexist. They're coming from a place of deep distrust of women's ability to make decisions. I've got news for you: any pregnant woman who simply doesn't want to have a child will schedule that abortion ASAP. If a woman's getting an abortion at 21 weeks, or 24 weeks, there are almost always other issues at play - tragic, heart-wrenching circumstances that are not remotely the business of the president, my Congressman, the guy from the pro-life Catholic group or anyone else.”
When anti-choice demonstrators outside clinics yell at arriving patients that their children will look like them, they’re distrusting women. When lawmakers pass legislation requiring a woman wanting abortion to look at a sonogram, they’re distrusting women.
But here’s the kicker.
They don’t trust women who DO make the choice to have children, either.
Those of you out there who are mothers – how many times has someone (family member, random person at church, perfect stranger at the grocery store, etc.) critiqued the choices you’ve made relating to your pregnancy, your childbirth and your child-rearing? How many times has this “advice” made you feel like nothing you’re doing is right, and that you’re going to horribly scar your child for life?
Your choice to have natural childbirth is wrong. Having a C-section is wrong. Buying your two-year-old French fries is wrong. Feeding the same child an organic diet is wrong, too. You let your child watch too much TV, or not enough. Homeschooling is bad. Public schools are bad. You don’t have enough kids. You have too many kids. Etc., etc.
It may take a different form, but it all comes from the same place: this idea we still have in our culture that women are public property and so our choices are up for public debate. They most certainly are NOT.
Whether or not you identify as feminist, this is a feminist issue because it disproportionally affects women. Men certainly suffer from patriarchy-inspired peer pressure, but when was the last time you read about a father getting arrested for feeding his kid in public? A male former Cosmopolitan centerfold got elected to the US Senate this week, while Sarah Palin still gets told to get back in the kitchen.
This will only stop when women collectively stand up and tell the Greek Chorus of Ur Doin it Rong to mind its own damned business. And that will only happen when we stop being good little girls and give up the illusion that everything will be okay as long as we go along with the status quo.
Stop feeding the beast. It won’t be easy, because there are multiple billion-dollar industries devoted to convincing women that everything about us needs fixing, from our hair to the color of our genitals. It means that we have to stop tearing one another down, and that we have to shake the mortal fear of hearing ourselves called “bitch.”
Ultimately, if we want others to trust us, we have to start trusting one another. Most of all, we have to start trusting ourselves.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Friends with money
There was a scene late in Monday’s season premier of “24” where ex-FBI agent Renee Walker is getting ready to go back under cover with a group of Russian gangsters she’d busted a few years previous, and our man Jack Bauer is trying to get her to go over the details of their fictional backstory. Renee, whose black eyeliner indicates that now she’s all edgy and stuff, snaps at Keifer that it doesn’t matter how detailed or well-rehearsed the story is. The gangsters will take one look at her and decide whether or not she’s legit.
I thought about that scene again this evening, listening to the news continue its freak-out over a) Scott “Cosmo” Brown’s 4-point victory in the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, and b) the Supreme Court’s ruling today striking down some restrictions on corporate campaign contributions. (At the moment, Keith Olbermann’s in the next room telling me that it’s “this century’s Dred Scott decision.” Really? C’mon Keith, chill the frak out.)
While money will always play a role in who wins an election (not only allowing a campaign to buy ads and other materials, but signaling relative strength), the choice of candidate and strength of the ground organization will continue to be a bigger factor.
Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate in the Massachusetts election, didn’t run TV ads until about a week and a half ago. Worse than that, it’s been widely reported that she took a laissez-faire approach to knocking on doors and shaking hands. Had she flexed her ground game, she might’ve learned that voters even in flaming liberal Massachusetts are worried about spending, and that national health care reform doesn’t particularly resonate with them since they already have a state mandate to buy coverage (an initiative of former Republican governor Mitt Romney).
Face time with voters is always what wins elections, and it always will. Want to counter the message put out by corporate propagandists? Prove them wrong with your record, and then recruit volunteers to tell your story. If you aren’t willing and able to do that, then you probably don’t deserve to win.
I say, bring on the corporate propaganda – but only on the condition that their lobbies aren’t allowed to hide behind PACs with innocuous-sounding names like “Concerned Americans for America” or crap like that. If Blue Cross wants to send out mailers opposing health care reform, they need to carry, in bright red 16-point font, “Brought to You by the People You’re Paying $1,000 a month.”
I thought about that scene again this evening, listening to the news continue its freak-out over a) Scott “Cosmo” Brown’s 4-point victory in the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, and b) the Supreme Court’s ruling today striking down some restrictions on corporate campaign contributions. (At the moment, Keith Olbermann’s in the next room telling me that it’s “this century’s Dred Scott decision.” Really? C’mon Keith, chill the frak out.)
While money will always play a role in who wins an election (not only allowing a campaign to buy ads and other materials, but signaling relative strength), the choice of candidate and strength of the ground organization will continue to be a bigger factor.
Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate in the Massachusetts election, didn’t run TV ads until about a week and a half ago. Worse than that, it’s been widely reported that she took a laissez-faire approach to knocking on doors and shaking hands. Had she flexed her ground game, she might’ve learned that voters even in flaming liberal Massachusetts are worried about spending, and that national health care reform doesn’t particularly resonate with them since they already have a state mandate to buy coverage (an initiative of former Republican governor Mitt Romney).
Face time with voters is always what wins elections, and it always will. Want to counter the message put out by corporate propagandists? Prove them wrong with your record, and then recruit volunteers to tell your story. If you aren’t willing and able to do that, then you probably don’t deserve to win.
I say, bring on the corporate propaganda – but only on the condition that their lobbies aren’t allowed to hide behind PACs with innocuous-sounding names like “Concerned Americans for America” or crap like that. If Blue Cross wants to send out mailers opposing health care reform, they need to carry, in bright red 16-point font, “Brought to You by the People You’re Paying $1,000 a month.”
"Let Bartlet be Bartlet"
I'm starting to think Aaron Sorkin is psychic... Back in the first season of "The West Wing," we got an episode about a president (a former college professor) mired in mediocrity after his first year in office; his administration had tried compromise on issues in order to walk the line in the middle of the road, and the result was a conventional wisdom that he was a disappointment (though he did succeed in nominating a Hispanic Supreme Court justice).
Saturday, January 16, 2010
"Sahara"
(The good one, not the sucky Matthew McConaughey one.)
Erik Nelson gives a shout-out to the 1943 Humphrey Bogart film "Sahara," imagining it in a double bill with "The Hurt Locker." It made me smile because I never hear "Sahara" talked about, ever, in discussions of great WWII films. It doesn't help that Bogart starred in a little film called "Casablanca" just a year earlier.
I first saw "Sahara" about seven years ago, when the guy I was dating at the time took me to have dinner with his godfather. He was kind of a scary guy (the godfather, not the BF), who made us sandwiches of scrambled eggs on bread rolls and took us down into his "office" to show off his (loaded) hand gun. But, on the plus side, he owned more movies on VHS than my local video store, and had pretty good taste. "Sahara" was good enough to make me forget that I was watching it in a threadbare house up in BFE with egg sandwiches and a loaded gun, on the very night that my Panthers won a big game against the NY Giants en route to their one and only Super Bowl.
So, it's a good movie and you should watch it, is all I'm saying.
Erik Nelson gives a shout-out to the 1943 Humphrey Bogart film "Sahara," imagining it in a double bill with "The Hurt Locker." It made me smile because I never hear "Sahara" talked about, ever, in discussions of great WWII films. It doesn't help that Bogart starred in a little film called "Casablanca" just a year earlier.
I first saw "Sahara" about seven years ago, when the guy I was dating at the time took me to have dinner with his godfather. He was kind of a scary guy (the godfather, not the BF), who made us sandwiches of scrambled eggs on bread rolls and took us down into his "office" to show off his (loaded) hand gun. But, on the plus side, he owned more movies on VHS than my local video store, and had pretty good taste. "Sahara" was good enough to make me forget that I was watching it in a threadbare house up in BFE with egg sandwiches and a loaded gun, on the very night that my Panthers won a big game against the NY Giants en route to their one and only Super Bowl.
So, it's a good movie and you should watch it, is all I'm saying.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Night Wars
No one awake this week could’ve missed the drama surrounding NBC’s decision to ditch Jay Leno’s (in my opinion) ill-conceived prime-time comedy hour, move Leno back to the 11:35 p.m. slot and bump Conan O’Brien’s “The Tonight Show” to starting after midnight, which would further bump late shows hosted by Jimmy Fallon and Carson Daly.
I don’t watch any of these shows. If I’m awake at 11 p.m., I watch “The Daily Show” and the first few minutes of “The Colbert Report.” But neither of them is really appointment TV, either, since I can watch them online the next day. I only watch Leno/Conan/Letterman et al if there’s a guest I really want to see… and even then, I’m going to watch it online.
And I’m not some digital native texting-mad millennial, either. I’ll be 30 in June. But, you know, it’s 2010 and I sit at a computer all day. I know that, if a Leno/Conan/Letterman et al monologue is particularly clever or controversial enough, my local radio morning show and Google News reader will alert me to – wait for it – watch it online. And there are a whole lot of me.
This basic fact seems to escape the brass at NBC. Not only did they clear their entire slate of week-night 10 p.m. dramas for Leno, they’re now ditching the guy who waited around to take the “Tonight” reins for a 60-year-old. So, Leno was a bust at 10, so now they’re going to put him back where he was a year ago? Because putting him back at 11:30 will magically make him funny? Hate to break it to you, NBC, but there’s a reason you’re fourth out of four major networks.
I’ve never really thought Conan O’Brien was funny, but it’s really shitty the way NBC has treated him, and I completely support him leaving for a better situation. O’Brien stayed at NBC for years, probably at the expense of other offers, for the chance to host “Tonight.” He’s only been in Carson’s seat a few months, and has nothing like the successful lead-in that Carson and Leno had (in part because of NBC’s idiotic decision to give up an hour of prime time to Leno). He really doesn’t deserve this.
I don’t watch any of these shows. If I’m awake at 11 p.m., I watch “The Daily Show” and the first few minutes of “The Colbert Report.” But neither of them is really appointment TV, either, since I can watch them online the next day. I only watch Leno/Conan/Letterman et al if there’s a guest I really want to see… and even then, I’m going to watch it online.
And I’m not some digital native texting-mad millennial, either. I’ll be 30 in June. But, you know, it’s 2010 and I sit at a computer all day. I know that, if a Leno/Conan/Letterman et al monologue is particularly clever or controversial enough, my local radio morning show and Google News reader will alert me to – wait for it – watch it online. And there are a whole lot of me.
This basic fact seems to escape the brass at NBC. Not only did they clear their entire slate of week-night 10 p.m. dramas for Leno, they’re now ditching the guy who waited around to take the “Tonight” reins for a 60-year-old. So, Leno was a bust at 10, so now they’re going to put him back where he was a year ago? Because putting him back at 11:30 will magically make him funny? Hate to break it to you, NBC, but there’s a reason you’re fourth out of four major networks.
I’ve never really thought Conan O’Brien was funny, but it’s really shitty the way NBC has treated him, and I completely support him leaving for a better situation. O’Brien stayed at NBC for years, probably at the expense of other offers, for the chance to host “Tonight.” He’s only been in Carson’s seat a few months, and has nothing like the successful lead-in that Carson and Leno had (in part because of NBC’s idiotic decision to give up an hour of prime time to Leno). He really doesn’t deserve this.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
...but seriously, folks
Look, I don't like Lane Kiffin, you don't like Lane Kiffin, everybody outside of Southern California doesn't like Lane Kiffin. But right now there are about 100,000 dead people in Haiti, and millions more homeless in what was already one of the poorest countries in the world. So, rock-painting, mattress-burning students at UT, get a little perspective, okay?
In related news, the owner of a sports apparel store in West Knoxville is asking people to bring him their Kiffin t-shirts (rather than burning or peeing on them) so he can donate them to the Haiti relief effort.
In related news, the owner of a sports apparel store in West Knoxville is asking people to bring him their Kiffin t-shirts (rather than burning or peeing on them) so he can donate them to the Haiti relief effort.
Lessons from Vietnam
I’m about 100 pages into David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest, the 1972 account of how the U.S. got involved in the war in Vietnam. But, while the focus is on the Kennedy and Johnson administrations’ foreign policy, it’s so much more than that. Even only a sixth of the way through the book, its lessons are obvious, and similar to one of the lessons Kennedy/Johnson Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara recounted in the documentary “The Fog of War” – namely, understand your enemy.
During the early 1960s, many in the Kennedy Administration were paralyzed by the possibility of being painted as pro-Communist. Further, they were so obsessed with the advancement of communism in Cuba and China that they tended to view the civil wars in Southeast Asia as a referendum on Western capitalism vs. emerging communism (maybe or maybe not backed by the USSR). They made their decisions based on that assumption, ignoring the basic concept of nationalism in Vietnam, Laos, etc.
Even McNamara admitted, long after ordering hundreds of thousands of Americans into Asia, that the U.S. misjudged the nature of the conflict – seeing Vietnam as a Soviet proxy rather than a nation fighting for independence from its colonial masters. I’ve never seen explored the racism inherent in U.S. policy from this period: the fact that western “experts” found it inconceivable that a population of nonwhite people could be willing and capable of fighting for their own freedom – oh, no, they simply must be Soviet props. And, 60,000 dead American soldiers later, we saw how that played out.
It’s not just academic for me, this decades-old war. In the wake of the Christmas Day attempted plane attack (which is apparently worse than the Richard Reid shoe-bombing attempt, the D.C. sniper, the anthrax mail attacks and even 9/11), I’ve been wondering about something I’ve been trying to articulate for at least a year, asking people who have far more foreign policy knowledge than I do – basically, I this really about us? Or are terror attacks on Westerners instead about extremists who use convenient targets to influence the establishment of Muslim theocracies in the Afghanistans, Saudi Arabias and Yemens of the world?
I absolutely believe that Al-Qaeda is evil and that we must keep fighting them. But… I’m not convinced that our foreign policy and military experts are truly looking at this conflict through our enemies’ eyes.
During the early 1960s, many in the Kennedy Administration were paralyzed by the possibility of being painted as pro-Communist. Further, they were so obsessed with the advancement of communism in Cuba and China that they tended to view the civil wars in Southeast Asia as a referendum on Western capitalism vs. emerging communism (maybe or maybe not backed by the USSR). They made their decisions based on that assumption, ignoring the basic concept of nationalism in Vietnam, Laos, etc.
Even McNamara admitted, long after ordering hundreds of thousands of Americans into Asia, that the U.S. misjudged the nature of the conflict – seeing Vietnam as a Soviet proxy rather than a nation fighting for independence from its colonial masters. I’ve never seen explored the racism inherent in U.S. policy from this period: the fact that western “experts” found it inconceivable that a population of nonwhite people could be willing and capable of fighting for their own freedom – oh, no, they simply must be Soviet props. And, 60,000 dead American soldiers later, we saw how that played out.
It’s not just academic for me, this decades-old war. In the wake of the Christmas Day attempted plane attack (which is apparently worse than the Richard Reid shoe-bombing attempt, the D.C. sniper, the anthrax mail attacks and even 9/11), I’ve been wondering about something I’ve been trying to articulate for at least a year, asking people who have far more foreign policy knowledge than I do – basically, I this really about us? Or are terror attacks on Westerners instead about extremists who use convenient targets to influence the establishment of Muslim theocracies in the Afghanistans, Saudi Arabias and Yemens of the world?
I absolutely believe that Al-Qaeda is evil and that we must keep fighting them. But… I’m not convinced that our foreign policy and military experts are truly looking at this conflict through our enemies’ eyes.
A perfect confluence of d-baggery
USC has hired Lane Kiffin to replace Pete Carroll as head coach.
The Lane Kiffin who won 5 games in a season and a half as head coach of the Oakland Raiders. The Lane Kiffin whom Tennessee made the highest-paid coach in college football, and who took the Vols to a 7-6 record and a slew of NCAA secondary violations. That Lane Kiffin.
Kiffin was an assistant to Carroll at USC during the Reggie Bush/OJ Mayo years, so it's not like USC has the best ethical track record either. So, program with no scruples meets coach with no scruples. Perfect. (Kiffin's also taking with him his father, defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin (who previously ditched the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and assistant/recruiting coordinator Ed Orgeron (who - tangent - recruited Michael Oher to play at Ole Miss).
Michael Rosenburg at SI.com ripped Kiffin and USC in his column today, while the New York Times tracked down a Tennessee recruit:
Brandon Willis, a defensive lineman from James F. Byrnes High School in Duncan, S.C., was on his way Tuesday to enroll at Tennessee when he heard that Kiffin had been hired at U.S.C., said his father, Gary Willis. He said Orgeron called him after Kiffin’s hiring was announced and said that U.S.C. was “a dream job” for him and the Kiffins. Willis said Orgeron told him that his son was being offered a scholarship to U.S.C.
“You can’t just follow guys like that,” Gary Willis said in a telephone interview. “That’s not what I’m teaching my son.”
Willis and his son were evaluating his 42 scholarship offers Tuesday, but were still bothered by Kiffin’s sudden departure.
“To sit down and tell people stuff and then turn around and do what you do, I don’t like the way it was done, but I can’t control it,” Willis said.
Yup.
The Lane Kiffin who won 5 games in a season and a half as head coach of the Oakland Raiders. The Lane Kiffin whom Tennessee made the highest-paid coach in college football, and who took the Vols to a 7-6 record and a slew of NCAA secondary violations. That Lane Kiffin.
Kiffin was an assistant to Carroll at USC during the Reggie Bush/OJ Mayo years, so it's not like USC has the best ethical track record either. So, program with no scruples meets coach with no scruples. Perfect. (Kiffin's also taking with him his father, defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin (who previously ditched the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and assistant/recruiting coordinator Ed Orgeron (who - tangent - recruited Michael Oher to play at Ole Miss).
Michael Rosenburg at SI.com ripped Kiffin and USC in his column today, while the New York Times tracked down a Tennessee recruit:
Brandon Willis, a defensive lineman from James F. Byrnes High School in Duncan, S.C., was on his way Tuesday to enroll at Tennessee when he heard that Kiffin had been hired at U.S.C., said his father, Gary Willis. He said Orgeron called him after Kiffin’s hiring was announced and said that U.S.C. was “a dream job” for him and the Kiffins. Willis said Orgeron told him that his son was being offered a scholarship to U.S.C.
“You can’t just follow guys like that,” Gary Willis said in a telephone interview. “That’s not what I’m teaching my son.”
Willis and his son were evaluating his 42 scholarship offers Tuesday, but were still bothered by Kiffin’s sudden departure.
“To sit down and tell people stuff and then turn around and do what you do, I don’t like the way it was done, but I can’t control it,” Willis said.
Yup.
Monday, January 11, 2010
The ugly truth
God bless George Will. Yesterday on the Sunday morning talk shows, a GOP talking point emerged: that Sen. Harry Reid’s racially charged comments about then-candidate Barack Obama are just exactly like that time that Sen. Trent Lott also stuck his foot in his mouth, and so therefore Reid should step down from his Senate Majority Leader post, as Lott did.
To which my favorite conservative-but-not-partisan pundit responded, “I don't think there's a scintilla of racism in what Harry Reid said.”
For the record, this is what Reid said, as reported in the new book Game Change: “[Reid] was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,’ as he said privately.”
Tacky. But the ugly truth is that Reid was right. Many whites (and not a few blacks, for that matter) still associate light skin and “talking white” as being better than dark skin or what Reid called “Negro dialect.” Now, thinking that white=good and black=inferior is racist. Noting the fact that some voters still think this way (and that therefore this candidate may have an advantage that other black candidates do not) isn’t racist. And that’s what Reid did. (I guess that’s too much subtlety for Liz Cheney to grasp.)
Contrast that to Trent Lott, who, at Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party in 2002, got carried away and said: "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.”
I don’t know if Lott is a bigot; I’ve never met the man. But I do know that when Thurmond ran for president in 1948, it was as a Dixiecrat. The Dixiecrats were Democrats from Southern states who broke away to form their own party after President Truman issued an executive order to integrate the military. Their slogan was “Segregation Forever!” Lott was probably just trying to make an old Senate colleague feel good, but in doing so he appeared to praise Thurmond’s old, discredited and failed white supremacist worldview. Lott’s sin was obliviousness that some of us take issue with our social liberation being referred to as “all these problems.”
At the time, I did think that Lott should step down from his leadership post in the Senate – not because he’s racist (again, not my place to say), but because someone that privilege-blind has no place directing policy for a nation as diverse as ours. Reid, on the other hand, at least is aware that race-based bigotry still exists in this country.
(Now, if Reid wants to step down as majority leader for any number of other reasons, that’s cool with me.)
To which my favorite conservative-but-not-partisan pundit responded, “I don't think there's a scintilla of racism in what Harry Reid said.”
For the record, this is what Reid said, as reported in the new book Game Change: “[Reid] was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,’ as he said privately.”
Tacky. But the ugly truth is that Reid was right. Many whites (and not a few blacks, for that matter) still associate light skin and “talking white” as being better than dark skin or what Reid called “Negro dialect.” Now, thinking that white=good and black=inferior is racist. Noting the fact that some voters still think this way (and that therefore this candidate may have an advantage that other black candidates do not) isn’t racist. And that’s what Reid did. (I guess that’s too much subtlety for Liz Cheney to grasp.)
Contrast that to Trent Lott, who, at Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party in 2002, got carried away and said: "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.”
I don’t know if Lott is a bigot; I’ve never met the man. But I do know that when Thurmond ran for president in 1948, it was as a Dixiecrat. The Dixiecrats were Democrats from Southern states who broke away to form their own party after President Truman issued an executive order to integrate the military. Their slogan was “Segregation Forever!” Lott was probably just trying to make an old Senate colleague feel good, but in doing so he appeared to praise Thurmond’s old, discredited and failed white supremacist worldview. Lott’s sin was obliviousness that some of us take issue with our social liberation being referred to as “all these problems.”
At the time, I did think that Lott should step down from his leadership post in the Senate – not because he’s racist (again, not my place to say), but because someone that privilege-blind has no place directing policy for a nation as diverse as ours. Reid, on the other hand, at least is aware that race-based bigotry still exists in this country.
(Now, if Reid wants to step down as majority leader for any number of other reasons, that’s cool with me.)
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Somebody save the romantic comedy!
Sometime early last year, I was home sick, and I caught the 1995 romantic comedy “French Kiss” on HBO. If memory serves, when “French Kiss” was released, it was a well-received, entertaining flick. Rewatching it, I couldn’t help but think that, if it were released today, “French Kiss” would win multiple Oscars. It’s that much better than pretty much every Hollywood rom-com released in recent memory.
Take, for instance, “Leap Year.” It doesn’t come out until tomorrow, but I kind of feel like I’ve already seen it. I heart Amy Adams to pieces, but every time the trailer comes on TV and Amy’s character flips out because her BF only bought her a giant pair of diamond earrings (what a jerk!), or that she will NOT die before getting engaged, I just want to hit something. Hard. And then go watch “It Happened One Night” again.
It doesn’t offend me, but it does bore the hell out of me. Things Hollywood is not allowed to do until further notice:
- drench its heroines in water/slime/cow poop/spaghetti sauce/something else gross;
- contrive situations where heroine and that guy she can’t stand (but whom she deep-down looooooves) have to pretend-kiss;
- give female rom-com leads jobs that no human being could possibly have and support oneself, e.g., real estate staging person, crossword puzzle writer, indie-weekly sex columnist, etc.
- weddings.
What sucks is that none of the things on that list are inherently awful; most of them date back to the golden age of screwball comedies 70 and 80 years ago. The problem is that the creativity isn’t there. We’ve seen these things so many times that any child can predict how the average rom-com will play. It’s a genre that’s crying out to be turned on its head.
The delicious challenge of writing stories is that one has to meet the expectations of the particular genre while somehow still catching the audience by surprise. And right now most TV sitcoms are doing that better than movies.
Take, for instance, “Leap Year.” It doesn’t come out until tomorrow, but I kind of feel like I’ve already seen it. I heart Amy Adams to pieces, but every time the trailer comes on TV and Amy’s character flips out because her BF only bought her a giant pair of diamond earrings (what a jerk!), or that she will NOT die before getting engaged, I just want to hit something. Hard. And then go watch “It Happened One Night” again.
It doesn’t offend me, but it does bore the hell out of me. Things Hollywood is not allowed to do until further notice:
- drench its heroines in water/slime/cow poop/spaghetti sauce/something else gross;
- contrive situations where heroine and that guy she can’t stand (but whom she deep-down looooooves) have to pretend-kiss;
- give female rom-com leads jobs that no human being could possibly have and support oneself, e.g., real estate staging person, crossword puzzle writer, indie-weekly sex columnist, etc.
- weddings.
What sucks is that none of the things on that list are inherently awful; most of them date back to the golden age of screwball comedies 70 and 80 years ago. The problem is that the creativity isn’t there. We’ve seen these things so many times that any child can predict how the average rom-com will play. It’s a genre that’s crying out to be turned on its head.
The delicious challenge of writing stories is that one has to meet the expectations of the particular genre while somehow still catching the audience by surprise. And right now most TV sitcoms are doing that better than movies.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
It’s Epiphany, y’all!
I’m late, but it’s still technically Jan. 6, which Christians celebrate as either the day that the Magi (or the Wise Men, as we called them in Sunday School) reached the manger where Jesus Christ was born, or, in the Eastern Church, the day he was baptized.
In my household, it was always the day that the Christmas decorations came down. It’s good timing , I think – it depresses me when people rip down their greenery and lights mere hours after Christmas Day has ended.
Read a whole lot more at my good friend Wikipedia.
In my household, it was always the day that the Christmas decorations came down. It’s good timing , I think – it depresses me when people rip down their greenery and lights mere hours after Christmas Day has ended.
Read a whole lot more at my good friend Wikipedia.
In defense of Lindsey Graham
A second county Republican organization has censured Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) for allegedly not being conservative enough.
I don't really buy it. Last year Graham was John McCain's most vocal surrogate on the campaign trail. While I've never really liked the guy, he's been willing to work on bipartisan efforts in the Senate. If memory serves, he was one of the earliest Republicans to announce support for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
I think what we're seeing here, together with the growing influence of the "tea party" faction in the GOP, is that, more and more, the country's political divide isn't so much Democrat vs. Republican, but moderate vs. extremist (on both ends of the spectrum).
Extreme liberals and conservatives have their place in shaping policy; when the poles move, the center moves with them. But it's the moderates that ultimately make the decisions in our system, whether by getting elected to the presidency or by being the "swing votes" in Congress and on the Supreme Court. Seriously, who has more influence in Congress right now - moderate Olympia Snowe of Maine, or Russ Feingold? No offense to Russ, but the Senate leadership generally knows how he's going to vote. Snowe, on the other hand, can get her way more often than not by dangling the possibility of her support.
That's why it's short-sighted for Republicans in South Carolina to trash Graham. He's a conservative, no doubt about it. But he's a conservative who's shown a willingness to work with others. (He also serves on some pretty high-powered committees.) All that adds up to a fair amount of clout, and if the S.C. GOP runs him off, they'll regret it.
I don't really buy it. Last year Graham was John McCain's most vocal surrogate on the campaign trail. While I've never really liked the guy, he's been willing to work on bipartisan efforts in the Senate. If memory serves, he was one of the earliest Republicans to announce support for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
I think what we're seeing here, together with the growing influence of the "tea party" faction in the GOP, is that, more and more, the country's political divide isn't so much Democrat vs. Republican, but moderate vs. extremist (on both ends of the spectrum).
Extreme liberals and conservatives have their place in shaping policy; when the poles move, the center moves with them. But it's the moderates that ultimately make the decisions in our system, whether by getting elected to the presidency or by being the "swing votes" in Congress and on the Supreme Court. Seriously, who has more influence in Congress right now - moderate Olympia Snowe of Maine, or Russ Feingold? No offense to Russ, but the Senate leadership generally knows how he's going to vote. Snowe, on the other hand, can get her way more often than not by dangling the possibility of her support.
That's why it's short-sighted for Republicans in South Carolina to trash Graham. He's a conservative, no doubt about it. But he's a conservative who's shown a willingness to work with others. (He also serves on some pretty high-powered committees.) All that adds up to a fair amount of clout, and if the S.C. GOP runs him off, they'll regret it.
Anti-choicers in Kentucky succeed only in pissing me off
Anti-choice protesters at a clinic in Louisville, Ky., have taken to wearing vests that mimic the ones worn by clinic escorts:
As if we need further evidence that anti-choicers A) think women are stupid, and B) are clinically incapable of minding their own business...
First of all, do these faux vest-wearers honestly think a patient coming to this clinic will mistake them for an actual clinic escort, become convinced that even the clinic's volunteers have turned against the clinic's mission and just get in the car and drive home? I suppose if you're one of those people who think women don't really understand what abortion is or are capable of making their own reproductive choices, then you'd think this is a viable strategy.
But what really chaps my ass about this is the anti-choicer's (in the video clip) apparent conviction that she knows exactly why the patient is going the clinic. Newsflash: clinics provide many, many services other than surgical abortion. That woman could've been coming in for a pap smear for all we know. But even if she were there for an abortion - as I've said 'til I'm blue in the face, every woman who gets an abortion does so for a different reason. Maybe there's a problem with the fetus, or with the pregnancy. Maybe she got pregnant from a rape, or by an abusive boyfriend or husband. Maybe she can't afford children. Maybe, sh*tbird, she just had a miscarriage, and is at the clinic to get a D&C to remove the dead fetus (just like the ones in the pictures you're waving in front of her face).
I don't know. You don't know. The anti-choicer yammering about what her baby will look like doesn't know. That's my point.
And yes, the assumption that the patient doesn't already have religious beliefs also pisses me off. As a Christian, I'm taught to witness to others with my own behavior - NOT ambushing them and trying to shame them into a relationship with Christ. ARGH.
(via Feministing)
As if we need further evidence that anti-choicers A) think women are stupid, and B) are clinically incapable of minding their own business...
First of all, do these faux vest-wearers honestly think a patient coming to this clinic will mistake them for an actual clinic escort, become convinced that even the clinic's volunteers have turned against the clinic's mission and just get in the car and drive home? I suppose if you're one of those people who think women don't really understand what abortion is or are capable of making their own reproductive choices, then you'd think this is a viable strategy.
But what really chaps my ass about this is the anti-choicer's (in the video clip) apparent conviction that she knows exactly why the patient is going the clinic. Newsflash: clinics provide many, many services other than surgical abortion. That woman could've been coming in for a pap smear for all we know. But even if she were there for an abortion - as I've said 'til I'm blue in the face, every woman who gets an abortion does so for a different reason. Maybe there's a problem with the fetus, or with the pregnancy. Maybe she got pregnant from a rape, or by an abusive boyfriend or husband. Maybe she can't afford children. Maybe, sh*tbird, she just had a miscarriage, and is at the clinic to get a D&C to remove the dead fetus (just like the ones in the pictures you're waving in front of her face).
I don't know. You don't know. The anti-choicer yammering about what her baby will look like doesn't know. That's my point.
And yes, the assumption that the patient doesn't already have religious beliefs also pisses me off. As a Christian, I'm taught to witness to others with my own behavior - NOT ambushing them and trying to shame them into a relationship with Christ. ARGH.
(via Feministing)
Monday, January 4, 2010
This year: hope vs. fear
I’ve been reading the late Ted Kennedy’s memoir True Compass, which I got for Christmas. I’m only up to the Watergate years at the moment, but it’s already been a fascinating read. Reading this reminded me of what I think was Kennedy’s only appearance on “The Daily Show” back in April 2006, where he was promoting another book.
In that interview, Kennedy contrasted what he called the Bush Administration’s “politics of fear” with the American narrative up to that point: emphasis on hope for the future. Watching that clip again, after reading Kennedy’s perception of what his older brothers represented in American politics, it’s evident what he saw in Barack Obama’s early candidacy. No, it’s not just the ability to give a stirring speech, as many of Obama’s detractors have dismissed him. I imagine that, in Obama, Kennedy saw a return to leaders who challenged Americans to act out our founding ideals in our policies, instead of just cynically appealing to the lowest common denominator.
In the last year, we’ve seen Obama the president – a leader who’s more deliberative and slow-moving than Obama the candidate appeared to some. Candidate Obama was lampooned as a naïve hope-monger. But anyone who paid attention to his stated positions during the campaign, on everything from taxes to health care to resolving the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, can’t be surprised by anything he’s done in office. (One glaring exception is LGBT civil rights, where the Obama Administration has worked in total opposition to campaign pledges.) That Obama is not the radical leftist his opponents painted him to be is why those opponents are reduced to questioning his birth certificate and calling him a Communist. (Really? What is this, 1953?)
Which brings me to this… In the last year, we’ve also seen the opposition party capitulate to un-elected radio personalities and the Facebook page of an unemployed ex-VP candidate. I would never suggest that a minority party just silently go along with the majority at the expense of its own principles, but that’s not what we’re seeing here. Olympia Snowe questioning why the Senate must vote on a health care reform bill before Christmas is productive opposition; Virginia Foxx calling reform more dangerous than Osama bin Laden is something else entirely. In other words, we can, and should, debate policy without resorting to inflammatory scare tactics.
Returning to the Kennedy book – one of the most striking things about Kennedy’s memoir are the cordial relationships he recounts between members of different political parties. It’s easy to say that those relationships are a relic of an age where governing was conducted out of the view of 24-hour news/commentary networks… but that isn’t really accurate. Bipartisan work does still happen in Congress. For instance, a mental-health parity bill going into effect in 2010 was co-sponsored by Democrat Patrick Kennedy and Republican Jim Ramstad in the House, and Sen. Kennedy and Republican Pete Domenici in the Senate, and was signed into law by President Bush. But that’s not as sexy as Michele Bachman’s latest screed, so our media doesn’t talk about it.
My hope for the upcoming year is that principled people on both sides of the aisle will continue to do the thankless work of hammering out laws that benefit Americans, even if it means they forgo sound bites on Fox News or MSNBC. I don’t think that this is a naïve hope; even in an election year, most of our elected representatives understand that Fox & Friends or Huffington Post don’t return them to office – voters in their districts do. And those voters, at the end of the day, really only care about results.
So, here’s believing that our national conversation can rise above “death panels” and “Republicans want you to die quickly,” and that we can push ourselves to make the hard decisions that will ultimately improve our quality of life.
In that interview, Kennedy contrasted what he called the Bush Administration’s “politics of fear” with the American narrative up to that point: emphasis on hope for the future. Watching that clip again, after reading Kennedy’s perception of what his older brothers represented in American politics, it’s evident what he saw in Barack Obama’s early candidacy. No, it’s not just the ability to give a stirring speech, as many of Obama’s detractors have dismissed him. I imagine that, in Obama, Kennedy saw a return to leaders who challenged Americans to act out our founding ideals in our policies, instead of just cynically appealing to the lowest common denominator.
In the last year, we’ve seen Obama the president – a leader who’s more deliberative and slow-moving than Obama the candidate appeared to some. Candidate Obama was lampooned as a naïve hope-monger. But anyone who paid attention to his stated positions during the campaign, on everything from taxes to health care to resolving the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, can’t be surprised by anything he’s done in office. (One glaring exception is LGBT civil rights, where the Obama Administration has worked in total opposition to campaign pledges.) That Obama is not the radical leftist his opponents painted him to be is why those opponents are reduced to questioning his birth certificate and calling him a Communist. (Really? What is this, 1953?)
Which brings me to this… In the last year, we’ve also seen the opposition party capitulate to un-elected radio personalities and the Facebook page of an unemployed ex-VP candidate. I would never suggest that a minority party just silently go along with the majority at the expense of its own principles, but that’s not what we’re seeing here. Olympia Snowe questioning why the Senate must vote on a health care reform bill before Christmas is productive opposition; Virginia Foxx calling reform more dangerous than Osama bin Laden is something else entirely. In other words, we can, and should, debate policy without resorting to inflammatory scare tactics.
Returning to the Kennedy book – one of the most striking things about Kennedy’s memoir are the cordial relationships he recounts between members of different political parties. It’s easy to say that those relationships are a relic of an age where governing was conducted out of the view of 24-hour news/commentary networks… but that isn’t really accurate. Bipartisan work does still happen in Congress. For instance, a mental-health parity bill going into effect in 2010 was co-sponsored by Democrat Patrick Kennedy and Republican Jim Ramstad in the House, and Sen. Kennedy and Republican Pete Domenici in the Senate, and was signed into law by President Bush. But that’s not as sexy as Michele Bachman’s latest screed, so our media doesn’t talk about it.
My hope for the upcoming year is that principled people on both sides of the aisle will continue to do the thankless work of hammering out laws that benefit Americans, even if it means they forgo sound bites on Fox News or MSNBC. I don’t think that this is a naïve hope; even in an election year, most of our elected representatives understand that Fox & Friends or Huffington Post don’t return them to office – voters in their districts do. And those voters, at the end of the day, really only care about results.
So, here’s believing that our national conversation can rise above “death panels” and “Republicans want you to die quickly,” and that we can push ourselves to make the hard decisions that will ultimately improve our quality of life.
Rush's "let them eat cake" moment
Over the weekend, radio personality Rush Limbaugh (on vacation in Hawaii) went to the hospital with chest pains. Believe it or not, I am glad he's okay (yes, really). Even though I detest the man and the way he earns a living, I'm not going to wish pain or death on anyone.
The problem, for me, came with Limbaugh's post-hospitalization press conference, where he declared that his treatment convinced him that "there's not one thing wrong" with American health care - the implication being that current health care reform efforts are needless. Well, no sh*t, Sherlock. The health care system works quite well for a gazillionaire who, by his own admission, happened to be in close proximity to a high-quality hospital at the time his chest pains hit.
But most of us aren't gazillionaires like Limbaugh. To my knowledge, no one has claimed that there are widescale problems with the quality of medical care in this country. The issue is access to that care, which most of us have only at great cost, or not at all.
Either Limbaugh is cynically spin-doctoring his own rarified experience to undermine the case for reform, or he's genuinely clueless about the true cost-based health care rationing that's already happening all over America. (According to one study, bankruptcies due to medical bills affect 2 million Americans each year.)
The problem, for me, came with Limbaugh's post-hospitalization press conference, where he declared that his treatment convinced him that "there's not one thing wrong" with American health care - the implication being that current health care reform efforts are needless. Well, no sh*t, Sherlock. The health care system works quite well for a gazillionaire who, by his own admission, happened to be in close proximity to a high-quality hospital at the time his chest pains hit.
But most of us aren't gazillionaires like Limbaugh. To my knowledge, no one has claimed that there are widescale problems with the quality of medical care in this country. The issue is access to that care, which most of us have only at great cost, or not at all.
Either Limbaugh is cynically spin-doctoring his own rarified experience to undermine the case for reform, or he's genuinely clueless about the true cost-based health care rationing that's already happening all over America. (According to one study, bankruptcies due to medical bills affect 2 million Americans each year.)
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