Redefining Marriage

Jon Stewart smote Mike Huckabee. And it was a wonder.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 2

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

And since Jon Stewart smote Mike Huckabee in a way that Rachel Maddow did not and Neal Conan did not, I love him more than ever. But even from an atheistic liberal perspective, Mike Huckabee's arguments just seemed weak. Like when he said, "It's not that they have tried to say they're going to ban something as much as they are going to affirm what's always been." Way to play the semantic argument there, Mike. That is kind of like saying that every time women were denied the vote in different states until the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920, those men weren't banning women from voting; they were just affirming what had always been. Also, "Religious people don't have the right to burn others at the stake"? That's a convincing argument for whom? I mean, really now. "Oh, since I can't cause you bodily harm due to your heresy, you can't be privy to all the rights of those straight citizens. You understand, don't you? I mean, how fair would it be if you were allowed to do something that hurt no one when I can't commit murder?" I also liked the part where he blew right past the argument Jon Stewart made about polygamy in the Bible, and about how what constitutes as 'marriage' is continually in flux.

The other thing I really liked was the way Jon Stewart made clear that might doesn't make right. The thing about an equitable society, one in which all citizens are equal, is that the minority is subject to the same rights and restrictions as the majority. That institutionalized -isms, especially those perpetrated by law, are not acceptable simply because the majority of citizens finds that denying someone rights and privileges they themselves have is a grand idea. I stand by my assessment that if we as a society waited until the majority came around to the opinion that they should grant rights to the disenfranchised, we'd all be waiting much longer for progress in making those profound philosophical pronouncements of the founding fathers a reality.

"As Long As I Can Have The Panda..."

Several things come out of this conversation between Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly. One is that my crush on Jon Stewart continues unabated. I love this:

"The tradition in America is a progression of individual freedoms. You know what the tradition of America would say? Gay marriage is the next step in the progression. That's the tradition of America. You're misrepresenting the tradition."

What also crystalized for me is how there is often a game of 'chicken' in these matters. It is what bothers me about the cry of identity politics. And it is what bothers me about Bill O'Reilly's statement, "The problem with you is you see it through a prism-", to which Jon Stewart adroitly responded, "Of rational thought!" The problem with the prism statement is this: we all have our prisms. One of my English teachers in high school continually said, "Half of what you get out of a piece of literature is what the author put in it; the other half is what you bring to it". And it is true for many things in life, and not just literature. No one in this world is wholly and completely unbiased, objective, or rational. We all come to the table through our unique, and sometimes contradictory, prisms. The issue is not that we have them. The issue is the game we all play toward objectivity, and the meme that states objectivity is not only key but also obtainable. That position grants whomever claims that the other side is playing into identity politics or seeing the world through whatever prism perceived objectivity. They immediately get, even without meaning to, the high ground - because they were objective enough to recognize someone else's experience. This becomes a problem, especially with matters of gender and politics.

It becomes a problem with gender because men have, historically, been seen as the more unemotional, objective gender. Women were (and are) seen as emotional, irrational, and unable to reach that objectivity needed to truly and competently and rationally comprehend and debate matters of importance. One needs to look no farther than this election to see that. There were plenty of sniping about Hillary Clinton's menopause, but nary a hint that, at 47, Obama may suddenly be hit with a midlife crisis and decide that instead of being president of the United States, he would like to try his hand at raising Alpacas. This is a problem; that isn't to say that those who state identity politics may play a part in someone's candidate of choice is out and out wrong. But without an acknowledgement of one's own personal prism, the announcement that A likes C because of a mutual B comes across as something else entirely. The conversation shifts to A's defense or repudiation of B or the liking of C. This comes across in this interview. Bill O'Reilly obviously comes to the conversation through less than objective means. He has his own biases, his own experiences, and his own vision that color and influence how he perceives the world around him. But that is ignored; whitewashed. There is no problem with Bill O'Reilly; the problem lays wholly with Jon Stewart, and the fact that Jon Stewart sees it through a prism. The implicit statement is that since the problem is that Jon Stewart sees the situation through a prism, Bill O'Reilly and other right-thinking people do not. And it would be the same even if we cut out the word problem, if the statement were merely, "You see it through a prism", because that once again implies that Bill O'Reilly does not.

Identity politics and personal prisms can be discussed on an intellectual level; the idea of an objectiveless world, a world without any Truths with a capital T - or if there are, the inability to properly perceive them without any perversion - is one we need to seriously consider. But I question the importance, or even the relevance, of claiming someone comes to a stance based on identity politics or even declaring that someone comes to the table via a prism because that, to me, is like pointing out to someone that they have skin. We can (and should) discuss what that prism means and whether or not the opinions and stances taken through it are right or the correct course of action; the pros of preventative suntan lotion versus the corrective care of aloe, in keeping with the skin metaphor. But declaring that someone has one seems banal and mundane and more than a little condescending, even if that person is willing to admit their own prism in turn. Because that first person may have misidentified why A likes C.  It may not be because of a mutual B at all, but because C has Z. After all, Jon Stewart may not feel this way because he lives in Greenwich Village or because he's a 5'7" Jew, but because of some other reason. There are liberal-leaning people even in Alabama, and Bill seems to not consider that. At the very least, Jon Stewart's political leanings may be what keep him in Greenwich Village, instead of packing up and moving to Sarah Palin's so-called "real" America.

The complexity of identities and of what makes a prism are generally ignored in these conversations. It gets boiled down to the base and readily visible components of race or gender - or, in the case of Bill O'Reilly, geographical location. And that is as aggravating as it is understandable, because we live in a soundbite culture and identity and one's prism can largely be influenced by a product of unconscious and indescribable impulses. Because identity may be one of the keys to a person's decisions, but what goes into how that person identifies is remarkably complex. Take, for instance, the first hour of the 11/13 Talk of the Nation podcast, with Andrea Seabrook and Dawn Turner Trice; they discussed how many white Americans claimed to personally identify with Barack Obama. That is obviously a kind of identity politics, and it could come down to, if it were mostly white men saying it, gender. But the question of what kind of identity politics came into play in this sort of instance harkens to that idea of a more complex formation of identity than the usual emblems of this declaration usually do. And that is important. Is identity politics a catch-all? Are you engaged in identity politics if you identify with the philosophy of someone's tax plan? In many cases and in many situations, identity politics is used as a disparaging assessment of support; and if we are to truly give IP its due, we have to both acknowledge its historic negative uses and what wisdom it can generate, if properly used, in the future.

There were two other aspects of this interview that really caught my attention, and since this post has gotten burdensomely long for anyone reading, I'll highlight them quickly. One is this: "The right in this country has got this mythology pinned down that... ...being religious means you're good. It doesn't mean you're good. It just means you go to church." Right on, Jon Stewart. I have often been somewhat insulted by the injection of religion into the litmus test politicians must endure. In order to be elected to public office in this country, one must be religious - and outwardly so. Hell, Elizabeth Dole's reelection campaign put out an ad asserting that Kay Hagan took "Godless money", and insinuated that she was in the atheist interest group's pockets, and a potential atheist herself. Kay Hagan, being a Sunday School teacher, was dismissive of the ad and confirmed that she was not an atheist. But if she had been, she would have never had a chance in national politics. And that is rather disheartening to me. It is just one more way in which Barack Obama, a religious man who lists the Bible as the most influential book in his life, is so not a victory for the truly secular left and still represents the tight grip of religiosity in American political life. And while religiousness is not a bad thing, the idea that the absence of religiousness is bad is very much a negative aspect of American life.

The other thing is the title of this post. I find it to be rather representative of a couple of things: one, the ridiculousness of labels, especially ill-fitting ones; and two, the dismal state of education in our country. Bill needs to get back to school, or visit a zoo or something if he thinks that teddy bear was a panda.

Editing to add Keith Olbermann's response to the panda/teddy bear mix up, largely because he has cute and seemingly cuddly baby panda bears on video to demonstrate the difference (and who among us can resist adorable baby pandas?):

Yikes Is Right

I kind of love this video from The Daily Show; maybe I'm giving Americans too much credit, but I'm not sure that we need to be treated like kindergardeners in order to best understand the economic crisis. Props aren't always a bad thing; drawings aren't always a bad thing. I had a philosophy professor who used stick figures to better demonstrate her examples. It worked partially because she had as much fun making them and having us guess what they were as we did guessing what they were. And because there was never the feeling that she thought we were idiots. That cartoon, the domino demonstration, even PBS' attempt to explain the financial crunch, all make it seem like those on camera think that those of us sitting on our couches are somehow incredibly mentally deficient.

Which is why I have been enjoying NPR's Planet Money podcasts. These are people who do not talk down to me; that may be a product of their medium. Visuals do not translate well over audio communication, and so the opportunity to bring out the cartoons and the oversized dominoes is very much lessened. At the same time, these seem to be people assuming that those of us who are not economists and who may have had no clue about how an economy ran until about a month or so ago can at least grasp the very basic facts of the situation. And they explain everything in grown up words.

Bill Clinton On The Daily Show

Love him or hate him, Bill Clinton is definitely charismatic and intelligent. I especially like it when he's loose enough to poke fun at himself.

"If It Keeps Our Government From Socializing Healthcare, I'm All For It"

Jon Stewart is the love of my life.

The only thing that makes me more upset than the fact that the Republicans will still claim to be the party of small government are the letters flooding my local newspaper calling upon people to vote against Obama because he will make the United States a socialist nation. Yeah, because that is so different than what's happening now. I have to say, I hate people sometimes.

Fuck Anti-Intellectualism

I'm becoming ever-more foul-mouthed, and it would bother me more if there weren't so many reasons to be very, almost indescribably, angry. Anti-intellectualism has become a way of life. Anti-intellectualism goes to the core of the idea that you have to be likable and someone we'd all like to grab a beer with rather than some snooty guy who actually understands the basic principles of things like economic policy, global warming, and that pesky thing called The Constitution when running for president of the United States. And I hate it. There are some intellectuals who are elitist. There are some intellectuals who are divorced from reality. But there are just as many -if not more- people who are not intellectuals (one of whom that is coming to mind being the 43rd president of the United States) who are also divorced from reality. And now we've got McDonalds ads telling us to be less intellectual (and seeming to claim that all or most intellectual are pseudo-intellectuals any). Because apparently, being dumb and eating french fries is so much more freeing than actually contemplating global ramifications of our actions and knowing where Paraguay is -or even what Paraguay is:

This commercial and this one as well:

are products of a culture for whom thinking is apparently too hard, and something that should garner resentment if tried by others. We're living in a time in which Thomas Jefferson would have probably never made it to the White House (well, he wouldn't have made it for a variety of reasons, one of them being his crippling shyness and another being possible sex scandals, but let's ignore those for a second) because apparently being an excellent writer, admiring the French, and being not only a first class mind but a true Renaissance Man is a detriment when running for the highest office in the land.

I'm tired of it. Being an intellectual, being someone who is aware of the outside world and who is studied and learned, should be something we aspire to. It should not be the realm of just liberals. Liberals should not be attacked for being of the Ivies. We should be celebrating people who are smart enough and dedicated enough and talented enough and lucky enough to get such a chance as to go to an Ivy league school. And as Aaron Sorkin says (through Sam Seaborn), as today is his day, "...can you tell me what's wrong with the Ivy League? Should we be discouraging parents from hoping their kids get into Princeton and Yale and Dartmouth?" I want a president with gravitas. I want a president who can lead both by intellect and instinct, and I don't think we should have to choose between the two. I want a public that is proud of the brilliance of our public officials. I want a country where education and getting one is not something to be mocked. I want a world similar to Aaron Sorkin's, where being the smartest person in the room is an asset. I want the world to resemble Joss Whedon's, where intellect can take many forms rather than just the pure, straight up intellectual and where all those forms are acknowledged and praised and utilized.

But what I really want is for people to stop scoffing at the idea that being smart and being learned is something to take pride in. I want people to stop assuming that because you read a couple of books on a subject, you're just as much an authority as a person who wrote one of the books. We're a country of dichotomy. We believe that every single person is created equal; we also have people who are in positions of authority, intellectual and otherwise. We have to recognize that there isn't a contradiction there. That we have to keep striving for the land where all are equal, and we have to strive for the land where wanting to better oneself through education isn't a bad. We have two learned candidates right now; Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review. McCain read For Whom The Bell Tolls at age 12. He is a consummate reader and rereader. These two should be emphasizing that aspect of their candidacy, that they are both educated, smart, capable individuals; and the fact that is a strength and not a weakness.

I also see an anti-intellectual bent in this whole idea of "not blinking". Sarah Palin brought it up in her interview with Charlie Gibson:

 I want a president who will blink. Not in the face of danger or terror, or from making the hard choices. But I want a president who will assess which path to take, and then assess how successful that path was and whether or not it would be better to change course. I want a president who will do so willingly, instead of one -like the one we have now- who will do it obstinately and under duress. I want a president who will measure his actions and consider their continued trajectory. The idea that not blinking, that not 'flip flopping', that not reevaluating situations, is the greatest measure of a presidential candidate (or in this case, vice-presidential candidate) scares the daylights out of me. All of the great presidents reevaluated their situations and their beliefs. The Louisiana Purchase went against Jefferson's core principles about the federal government (and was very probably unconstitutional besides). Lincoln was forever reevaluating and reassessing his side's tactics in the Civil War. Great presidents do that, for the good of the nation. And it is utterly depressing to see one of the greatest skills, the skill to look beyond one's own beliefs and decide what will truly be helpful, being portrayed as an act of cowardice and vulnerability.

For the record, though, that second commercial with the men is a great deal funnier than the first. For one, it allows for the idea that these guys aren't idiots but would like to discuss football. And I did like the line at the end about the glasses: "I do need mine. They're very real". I still scowl at the idea that intellectuals don't know how to get down and discuss the sports or movie-movies (I enjoy doing both), but it does less to remove every vestige of intelligence than the ad featuring the women.

Why Does Maureen Dowd Still Have a Job?

The New York Times has got to fire Maureen Dowd. That bastion of liberal media has time and again pushed women and women's issues off to the side (or rather, to the Fashion and Style section), and that has to change as well. But they have really, really got to fire Maureen Dowd. This is a woman who, as Jesse Taylor of Pandagon.net writes, "honestly believes every woman in America has the God-given ability to be as stupid as she is, but are just less jaded". This is a woman who thinks it is a "nutty idea" to discuss some of what has been exposed in the primary season: the sexism of the political pundits, of the fact that the DNC didn't stand up to attacks on Hillary Clinton's voice, her "nut-cracking" ways, and the myriad of other remarks -some of which were made by Dowd herself. Dowd gave those remarks credence when she failed to elucidate how absolutely ridiculous statements like, "We are at war. Is this how she'll talk to Kim Jong-il?" after Clinton teared up on the campaign trail, and instead supported the idea that Clinton's tears were unbecoming a president and claimed there was something "Nixonian" about the whole affair. Really? Nixon? Kristen Schaal managed to say how ridiculous that whole tear-gate was in two sentences on The Daily Show: "Presidents aren't supposed to cry? Well, I suppose those are just freedom drops" as a picture of teary-eyed George W. Bush flashed on the screen.

Maureen Dowd seems impervious to the idea that she herself has managed to create some anger and some resentment in her columns, especially when she quotes from Amy Chozick's Wallstreet Journal article about how Obama is too skinny to win women Clinton supporters, and ignores the fact that Chozick apparently started a Yahoo! message thread in order to do "research" for that article. That is what I call having your fingers on the pulse of the Clinton Nation, because people who respond to questions like "Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his "no excess body fat?" definitely represent the majority of Clinton's constituents. And Dowd, along with many other Obama supporters and quite a few Clinton supporters, seems to be under the impression that Obama automatically deserves all of the votes with no complaints from the women voters who have felt bashed and bruised and marginalized by the treatment Hillary Clinton was subject to on the campaign trail. And I'm one of those Clinton supporters who would rather we all just fall in line and vote for Obama, because he matches up with Clinton on almost every single issue under the sun and because a McCain presidency would be a bit of a catastrophe regarding such trivial issues like environmental policy, economic policy, foreign policy, and -of course- women's rights. But not for one second do I think it is remotely appropriate to minimize what we've learned from this election cycle: that sexism and racism are and continue to be a large motivating force in American society, that sexism is allowed to reign free through the media outlets purportedly designated as "news-gathering organizations", that something ought to be done about it, and the people who feel burned by it should not be poo-pooed or told to suck it up and get in line.

Obama represents change; that is his line, his platform, and one of the reasons for his shining star. Because of that, it doesn't seem nutty to suggest Obama include the devastating affects of sexism in his rhetoric for change. It may not happen, but it doesn't seem 'nutty'. Nor does it seem nutty to expect to open up the New York Times opinion page and not find a woman comparing Obama to Mr. Darcy in an attempt, so it seems, to "explain" to all of those ungracious women voters who may still be angry, why they should -as Elizabeth Bennett does in regard to Darcy- take Obama to their hearts; to explain why Obama should be more popular with women voters, because he embodies the ever-elusive Romantic hero both in temperament and appearance, instead of focusing on -just reaching here- women as informed voters first and overly emotional fiction readers never.

But of course, that seems to be a pipe dream. And Dowd's seemingly strained understanding of Obama herself -is he really proud and haughty, or is that just an "ill-founded and mistaken premise"- is presented as a conundrum all women face. Plus, I have to say, I'm pretty sure she is presenting a version of Pride and Prejudice I myself have never read -a version where Darcy is almost universally acclaimed for his charisma, his charm, and his ability to ensorcell (™ Aaron Sorkin) crowds, and where only Elizabeth Bennett (in this case, women voters who preferred Clinton) just doesn't get it. And for all of those reasons, Dowd needs to either get a clue and fast, or write about those silly women and their silly emotional impulses elsewhere. And maybe the New York Times can get someone who actually seems to respect women; someone like Anna Quindlen.

Nestle Tollhouse

So does this clip from The Daily Show remind anyone of the debacle over Pheobe's grandmother's cookie recipe on Friends (3:29 in)?

Also, we're obsessing over cookie recipes as an issue in a presidential election? Really? It is now obvious why Hillary lost the primary: she doesn't have a wife to show up on The View or contribute recipes for sweets to national magazines. That, my friends, is the true test of a candidate's character; not his policies, but his wife's ability to fit the feminine mold and show off those toned arms and oatmeal butterscotch cookie recipes.

By the way, Jon Stewart is hilarious as usual.