Double Standards, And Their Absence

I'm not going to go into Senator Harry Reid's comments regarding the electability of then-Senator Barack Obama. But what I am going to talk about is the "double standard" talk emanating from some members of the GOP.

There is no damned double standard. Why? Well, for one, in order for it to truly be a double standard, the parties would have to be on equal footing. Guess what? They're not.

There is a long-standing tradition within the GOP to use dog-whistles, in their ads and in their robocalls. Like the Willie Horton ad, used against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election. Like the poll calls in 2000 asking South Carolina voters if they would be less likely to vote for John McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate African-American child, based partially on the fact McCain and his wife had adopted a little girl from Bangladesh. Ronald Reagan used the specter of the "welfare queen" in order to win the support of white America.

Then there is this: the person Harry Reid is being most compared to on an individual level within the GOP camp is Trent Lott. Lott, who said that had Strom Thurman been elected president, the country would be in a better place, that we wouldn't have all the problems we have now. Some nice remarks for an elder statesman's birthday? Perhaps. But the question becomes, better for whom? For the African-Americans who were left out of Thurman's America? No. It would not be better for them at all.

And that's what it comes down to - policy decisions and reaching out to a minority community. I'm not going to say that the Dems don't house racists. I'm not going to say that the GOP is totally bad on issues of race and the Dems are totally wonderful. What I am going to say is that the GOP has continually made a home for itself in the high places, and have perpetually attacked policies that are designed to help minorities in our nation. Sometimes, out of a sense of political theory, but just as often it seems that it happens out of bad faith.

So, they don't get the benefit of the doubt when one of their members runs his mouth. So, they don't get the cushion that comes with having an amiable history with the community in question. So, they get hammered harder because there is no trust there. There is no sense that these guys are trying to do right, that they've stumbled and fallen because they're idiots and not because they just don't care.

That's why there is no double standard. Because, in general, the GOP and the Democratic Party start from two entirely different ledges. And to wipe that clean in an effort to win some scant political support is from the preschool pool of political wisdom.

Monday Reading List

Insurance Company Revokes Depressed Woman's Benefits Over Facebook Photos:

When it comes to disability, able-bodied people tend to have an idea of what disability “looks like.” This results in proclamations about who is really disabled and who is really faking it (presumably, for all of the awesome government benefits that are inadequate to live on, and the fun social stigma). And for the person being proclaimed a faker, that frequently means not only the hurt of having their identity and lived experience dismissed, but also the denial of accommodations that they need.

Great, now Demi Moore's Torso Is Missing:

In all of the chatter surrounding the Demi Moore W cover controversy, many people have insisted that her vanished hip is part of a perfectly natural pose. They were correct. The photo shows the natural standing pose... of a runway model in her mid-twenties. It appears that Moore's head, legs, and arms were superimposed on the hips and torso of model Anja Rubik.

Why Anti-Feminism is Illogical, Unnecessary, Evil, and Incredibly Unsexy (quote taken from second page):

The point of feminism is not to alienate men, but for women to focus on our own concerns and needs, to establish our own values. These may or may not coincide with the already established values of our dominant culture, just as our concerns and needs may or may not fold neatly into a relationship. The point is to work on making decisions based on choices that are really choices instead of following a script--in other words, it means learning to laugh at what we find funny instead of just following along with the laugh track and to make trouble when trouble is necessary.

And, because I absolutely adore Hillary Clinton,
Her Brilliant Career:

She is a rock star. Students camped out in line for hours to get tickets to the event, which sold out in minutes. When she first appeared onstage the audience leaped to their feet, and the applause was deafening. "They weren't cheering Bob Gates," said a fellow in uniform sitting next to me. And despite the gravity of the occasion, a young woman bellowed at the top of her lungs, "I love you, Hilllllary!!!!," as if she were at a Lady Gaga concert. Seeming to acknowledge her superstar status, Clinton made a crack at the very end of the proceedings, saying that Gates had served most of his 43 years in public service "in secret" (referring to his CIA days). "And I have no secrets." The crowd roared with laughter.

On princesses, Ruthie-style (who is, actually, pretty much an accurate representation of one of my little sisters):

Jay Smooth on Caramel

Just because:


Plus, the face he makes when looking back at the drug spot/candy store is all sorts of funny.

"That's All The Money I'm Gonna Save When I Never Go To The Movies Again"

In case anyone had any doubts, I still friggin' love Jay Smooth:



You know, videos about child rape aren't really supposed to make me this happy. But hearing Jay Smooth's passionate articulation of the ins and outs of the whole Roman Polanski saga/scandal makes me insanely happy. Because he is so right. And so wonderful while being right - especially with his bit about the switch from "victim" to "accuser"/"survivor" and how Roman Polanski's not facing the law isn't as much a problem for him as it is for the survivor.

There are so many examples of straight up awesomeness that it really makes sense to just watch the entire video; but in case anyone is interested in my favorite bit of absolute awesomeness, it is this part:

Point number 2:
Let's be clear about why he got to plead to that vague, ambiguous thing. If you watch that documentary that came out last year, which was a very slanted pro-Polanski documentary, even in that film they make it clear that this plea bargain was set up by the family and their attorneys, because they saw no other way to protect this girl from the trauma of a trial that would take away her anonymity and subject her to an endless media frenzy. They did not set up that plea bargain because they had any doubts about being able to prove her original charges. They set up the plea bargain because they saw a system that could not adequately protect this child, so they felt they had no other choice but to compromise and settle for something less than justice.

Bold is all mine. Seriously though, chills down the spine to hear it laid out so clearly.

"Real" Women

I love Stuff Mom Never Told You, one of the three podcasts I listen to from How Stuff Works. Not as much as I love Stuff You Should Know, where Josh and Chuck's banter makes my workday so much more fun and interesting than it would be sans banter, but I still love it all the same. It's cool to have two girls discuss girl stuff, like why it is important to talk about dating violence, burlesque, women changing (or not) their names after they get married, and so on and so forth. Molly and Cristen are usually calm and even-handed, even when I would prefer it if they weren't, and truth be told, I can handle that because it reminds me not everyone wants to hear the rantings of a feminist about women's issues. That's what I listen to RH Reality Check with Amanda Marcotte for.

With all that being said, though, there is a problem with how they talked about women's bodies in their recent (otherwise fabulous) podcast about women's magazines. And it was in this way - the way they talked about 'real women':

CRISTEN: There was a huge, you know, outpouring of praise for Glamour for showing a real, real woman's body with actual, not - they didn't photoshop out her belly flap, she actually had a little, a little thigh fat, and it reflected more of a normal woman's body than, say, Kate Moss.

...

CRISTEN: Oh, yeah, it was very positive. They were saying, 'Oh, thank you so much, Glamour, for actually, you know, showing a real woman's body. We can actually relate to this'. And Lizzie Miller got all this wonderful attention and Vogue has also promised to, like, start showing more 'plus-size' models in their magazines as well.'

...

CRISTEN: If there was such a huge outpouring of love for a single photo, Molly, in Glamour, what does that say about women's magazines and where we are today? I mean, if it was such a breath of fresh air to actually see some semblance of a real woman's body, what kind of messages are we getting from these magazines?

...

MOLLY: I remember this one time [17 Magazine] put in this chubby model - not, she wasn't chubby, she looked real, but they got just as many letters, they said, from people who didn't like seeing someone who looks like that in a magazine as people saying, 'Thank you, that looks like me'.

Four 'reals' and one 'normal' in the course of the first 4 minutes and 34 seconds of the podcast to describe women's bodies.

That is not good. It isn't good, because it's not like Kate Moss isn't a real woman. She is. She is a flesh and blood woman. She isn't an automaton. She isn't a cyborg (I don't think...). She counts as really being a human being and really being a woman.

Delineating which women's bodies count as real and normal and should be shown because they are real and normal and which women's bodies are fake is just as much as a problem and only showing women like Kate Moss as THE type of body that is acceptable for women. Women come in a profound amount of shapes and sizes. Women should be shown to come in a profound amount of shapes and sizes, without one body counting as good and real and worthy of attention and one being sick and bad and not normal.

I'm not saying this because I look like Kate Moss. I'm not saying this because I look like Lizzie Miller. I'm saying this because women as a group can't make progress by delegitimizing another woman's body. Every time we talk about how one body type isn't 'real', isn't 'normal', doesn't make up a 'real woman', we are implying that the women who are that body type are fake, are freaks, aren't women. That is the problem with the title, "Real Women Have Curves". Yes, a lot of women have curves. Yes, more women with curves being given prominent roles in various forms of media would be good. No, there is no such thing as a 'fake woman'. Women with curves? Women. Women who are more angular? Still women. Trans women? Also still women. Just women. Not 'real women', because there are no 'fake woman', no 'false women', no women-who-just-don't-count women. And every time we talk in those terms, we alienate those women who aren't immediately enveloped by whatever stipulation we've placed on womanhood.

This is the same problem I have with articles like a recent one linked on Feministing, called 10 Ways to Teach Kids About Sexism. Number 1?

Take direct action: make a small bonfire of Bratz dolls. As their creepy baby doll- faces, collagen'ed lips, wisp-thin waists and fishnet tights begin to melt into a toxic blob, encourage your daughters and her friends to clap and chant "Burn the freaks!"

Yes, the best way to lead your daughter and her friends to body acceptance is to make freakish other bodies. It's not to explain that most people don't have lips like Bratz Dolls (Tina Thompson, basketball player extraordinaire, excluded). It isn't to explain that no, a preteen cannot be dressing like the Bratz dolls dress, for X,Y&Z reasons. It isn't to make your daughter and her friends feel comfortable in their own skin and with their own bodies by continually stressing how bodies other than Bratz bodies and Kate Moss' body and so on and so forth are also beautiful. It is to create an Us-vs-Them dichotomy, a 'normal' body and the body of the 'freak'. And that, if we come across a 'freak', we can and should see them as subpar. And maybe try to roast marshmallows over them.

Tip number 5?

Explain to them that though many young women idolise Victoria Beckham and want to be as thin as her no man in the known world finds her attractive.

Except, one assumes, her husband. Who married her and has three children with her. And here's the problem with this (as well as the Bratz example and the constant pickings on Kate Moss): we're still teaching girls (because even though the article's heading talks about teaching 'kids' about sexism, apparently only girls need to know) that being attractive should be an end goal, and that there are certain body types that are prohibited from being attractive. If Lizzie Miller is a 'real woman', then Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham are not. If I'm allowed to have men attracted to me, then Victoria Beckham, with her body and hair oh-so very different than mine, loses out. It can't be that attractiveness is all relative, that Victoria Beckham is beautiful and I am too; it can't be that there is a guy who will like me and think I'm pretty and Victoria gets Becks to do the same for her.

There is an end game, and some women count and some women do not. That does nothing to lessen the sexist lessons. All it does is supply new sexist lessons; all it does is change up some of the victims of these various sexist practices. And though I know (or hope) that Cristen and Molly - two cool girls who have taught me how to make my own lip gloss - don't mean for the take away of the 'real women' description to have an inherent 'as opposed to those other not-real women we've been exposed to in magazines for years and years', it is still there. And we need for it not to be.

All Things Equal...

A long while ago, my friend posted a link in the comments section of this post, saying, "I think men and women are equally likely to be harassed. And women are only slightly more likely to be stalked." And he may be correct, in the definition of harassment the report he cited used. But I was talking about street harassment, the kind I detailed before, and the kind that has seemingly ignited a firestorm of posts from places like Racialicious and Feministe and The Angry Black Woman (twice) and Blog of Champions, as well as those that were linked in my previous piece. What I'm saying is, street harassment, otherwise known as cat calling, is a problem. And it is a problem that isn't unique to women (in that it can and does happen to men as well) but its effects are unique to women. What I'm saying here is that even if the amount of cat calling was theoretically 50/50 - if that was completely equal - the issue would still present a unique problem for women men don't typically face.

This same friend brought up the emerging market of sexually objectifying men on posters and in advertisements our junior year of college, and I argued my point - with various pictures of Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom and my poster of Josh Hartnett (I never said I wasn't hypocritical) - that just because women are starting to do it too in greater numbers doesn't mean that it's right. That it is equally wrong to do turn men into sexual objects as it is to turn women into sexual objects. But right there? I missed my winning argument completely (even if it wouldn't have been the argument that won him over), the argument I would have felt strong and confident in making, because what I should have said is that men and women aren't treated equally, aren't seen as equals, aren't valued in the same ways in the same spaces. And yes, men shouldn't be reduced to muscular arms and flat, tan stomachs and shouldn't begin to enter the world of debasement women have been living in for such a long time, that reaching equality at the lowest common denominator is no way to reach equality. But that men - white men, I should specify - are still generally seen first and foremost as people. Therefore, being reduced to an object is still a terrible thing, but its cultural impact is not the same if the same image is with a woman. Because, as much as I wish all things were equal, women are still primarily seen as bodies first. It is a function of not being seen or treated as equals, the differing levels of impact. A ubiquitousness of semi-nude guys on posters is a problem, partially because it turns the guy into an object and partially because it creates a negative body image for many men and can lead to eating disorders, which is never good. But women are still generally reduced to objects for consumption. The most important thing isn't whether or not the woman in question is good at X,Y or Z. It is whether or not she is attractive. Take, for instance, Jessica Lange - who's arms are too flabby for the San Francisco Chronicle. This isn't something that was said of, say, Philip Seymour Hoffman, was it? I don't think so. Meanwhile, Peter Bart of Variety compares two female directors by saying,

Jane Campion, 55, made a quintessentially romantic picture in “Bright Star,” but in person she is cerebral, somewhat severe, leans toward post-hippie attire and seems perplexed by the rigors of the award circuit. Kathryn Bigelow, 57, is tall, model thin, a one-time art student whose gracious manner belies her proclivity for tense, even violent films – “The Hurt Locker” is her contender.

As Melissa Silverstein of Women & Hollywood (who gets a h/t for this) asks, "Would anyone EVER think to write this about a male director?" I'm guessing, "no". I'm guessing, and it may be a stretch, that when the nominated (or in the running for being nominated) male directors are compared, their looks and attire aren't really given much thought and weight. And that's where the big deal lies. Because although the trite phrase is "clothes make the man", clothes - and looks - define the woman. Are there men whose looks (and weight) are criticized? Yes. Are there women who are generally left alone about their looks? I don't know of any off of the top of my head, but I'm sure there must be. However. The exception of a few men who have to deal with this shit and the few women who don't doesn't disprove the rule. And the rule is, women have to deal with more shit when it comes to people policing their bodies.

Which brings us back to street harassment. My friend's report seems to be looking at conventional harassment - like what I do when I constantly pull him out of the line up to spark a huge blog post. It probably gets to the point of harassment at times. Street harassment is the little "hey baby"s women get throughout the day. The wolf whistles, the "Where's your boyfriend at?"s the "Smile"s, and on and on and on. Cat calling. I read the report, and didn't see any indication this kind of "low level" harassment is included in the numbers. But. Suppose it were. Suppose men have to deal with women groping their crotches on the subway and asking where their girlfriends are on the street, or shouting out, "Damn, honey, you're looking good" when they're wearing their grimiest clothing because they're just running out to pick up a pizza. Even with that being equal, men still have more power, both physical and in terms of their place in society. Thea Lim explains it incredibly well in the comments on the Racialicious piece I linked above, saying,

It’s like any number of racial slurs that white folks call POCs – there is no racial slur for white folks that is an equivalent. Because white folks are the dominant culture, and the point of a slur is to “put people in their place.” If your place is top of the food chain, nothing that a person below you says can cause the same hurt, as you can cause to them.
On its most basic level, what street harassment from men to women does is remind women of their place. It reminds them that – as Ndidi so eloquently pointed out – you can be an accomplished, intelligent and complex person, but to the world at large women are only valued based on their eff-ability.
I teach freshmen and had a problem with a student who persisted in making approving comments of the way I dressed. I spoke to several different people about this, and almost all the men I spoke to said something along the lines of “Tell him it’s flattering but inappropriate.”
They all assumed that any woman must be flattered to be told she is attractive.
It is NOT flattering. It is dehumanising and – whether or not the men realise it – it is profoundly deflating. You are reminded over and over and you have absolutely no value to the world – beyond the sexual pleasure you might bring to a man.
There’s no quick quip, no reversal of this situation that can establish that.
Think of it this way: could you make a movie that would show white folks how it feels to be a man of colour facing racism, simply by portraying a universe where white folks don’t have power?
I don’t think you can – as long as we live in a world where skin colour and gender is a determinant of power, you could make 100 films flipping the binary and it wouldn’t illustrate anything to anyone – who didn’t already get it.

That's really the problem. Men are starting from a place where their worth is, for the most part, established. Their place on the chain of deciding who is fuckable and who is not is not is not suspect. Their control of the public space is tantamount. And yes, cat calling may seem like it is at times just delivering complements - at high volume - to women walking down the street. But the question becomes why did the cat caller think s/he had the right (or responsibility) to give his approval to the callee in question in the first place? It is because his/her perceived right to the callee's attention is more important than the callee's right to be left the hell alone and to be treated as a human being and not a fuckable body. The fact that the cat caller's right ever supersedes the callee's right to exist without being called out to is a problem in and of itself. The fact that it is not recognized as a problem, and that it is a large scale one facing a multitude of women, is even more troubling.

For men, street harassment may be prevalent, and it should be fought against for the same reason treating men as sex objects on posters and magazines should be fought against - because equality in negative treatment isn't the equality we're fighting to achieve. But street harassment for men doesn't carry with it the same "private sphere - public sphere" baggage, doesn't carry the same weight that being consistently being seen as a sexual (or sexualized) object does for women. And again, there are women for whom cat calling doesn't happen. There are women who are barred from the sexualized object camp. And there are men who are treated as such often and who are perceived to be more sexual plaything than human being. But for the most part, even if the rate of cat calling is equal (and I really don't believe that it is), the fact that the rest of society is not equal means there is disparate impact amongst men and women. And that needs to be acknowledged if we want a fuller, more nuanced look at what happens and why.

Also, for your viewing pleasure, two videos about street harassment:

I love them both.

Unplanned Children & Guilt

"My doctor told me there is nothing you will ever regret about having the baby, but he was like, 'You may regret not having the baby.'"

I am the product of an unplanned, unexpected, and - in the beginning - unwanted pregnancy.

I've known this for, oh, more or less forever. I've also had the suspicion, though not confirmed, that an abortion talk happened somewhere in that early period when my mother was still freaking out and desperately wanting her sporty two door convertible. My parents are both ardently pro-choice, so it would be strange if there weren't the barest minimum of a conversation about it.

This hasn't had much of an impact on my life. At least, not the negative kind. Because even though I am the product of an unplanned, unexpected, and initially unwanted pregnancy, I was (and am) a beloved child. I am also a wanted child, and it has always been easy for me to recognize that the two issues - unwanted pregnancy versus wanted and valued child - are separate and very different.

That doesn't mean, however, that my parents don't have regrets, regrets directly relating to me, and my being born. My mother, for instance, still can't get over her loss of the sporty two door. My impending birth was also the reason she missed the funeral of her favorite aunt, and then I didn't even have the common decency to be born that day. No, I waited until my due date, because I'm generally punctual but not excessively early. I'm pretty sure they regretted having me that time I got a D in English and then burned my report card in an effort to destroy the evidence. I'm also fairly certain the time I didn't come home or call was another one of those "regret ever having her" times in my parents' lives. There were other moments of regret. Trips they couldn't take, money they didn't have, time they no longer had to work on their relationship. And although I know I'm not the center of the universe and that my parents would have in all probability found other things to fight passionately about if I didn't exist, I'm sure there were many times when they were fighting about me one or both of them wondered if their lives - their (potentially not legal) marriage - would have been better off if instead of having sex they just watched some television that fateful night.

This isn't to say that my parents don't take a certain amount of pleasure in being parents. They do. They revel in it. And because my parents weren't ready to be parents, our relationship has a weird, slightly dysfunctional, side to it where we are and have been friends as much as I'm their daughter for most of my life. As a side note, this whole side to my relationship with them is one of the reasons I never rebelled.

So, even though I have a ridiculously good - if dysfunctional - relationship with my parents, even though (Ds in English aside), I have (generally) been a rather low stress venture for both of my parents in terms of parenting, even though my parents love me and respect me and, almost more importantly, really like me, they have still had regrets. Some big, and some small. Some more long term, and some that were more like flashes. Because part of life is regretting the path(s) not taken.

This is why I find the response Kourtney Kardashian recounted her doctor as saying, the one at the top of the post, as being so entirely disingenuous. Because it simplifies life. It makes it seems as though children never cause regret, and as though abortion always does. That isn't true. Children, even wanted, planned for children, come with frustrations and pains and - yes - regret. As much as children bring light and life and joy and love and wonderment and fulfillment, they bring a lot of the negative stuff as well.

More than pushing birth, though, claiming that going through a pregnancy will result in no regrets is harmful because it creates an environment where the women who do experience regret are shamed for that completely natural feeling. It creates an environment where women keep those feelings bottled up, don't talk about it because it is so unnatural, because to talk about it is to be a bad mother. And that is the last thing a doctor should be pressing upon any woman. Because it contributes to a view that motherhood is an inherently pleasurable act, an act all women gain fulfillment from and enjoy doing. An act that in no way at times makes them want to rip their hair out or wonder when they get to go shopping for their own clothing, when they get to take care of themselves and get their two door in the midst of bottles and surly teenagers and mini vans.

We need to recognize that most decisions carry with them a bittersweet realization of the path unchosen. And if that bittersweetness comes when we order a chocolate-mint chocolate chip ice cream cone and then lust after the vanilla-mint chocolate chip ice cream in a cup, then it comes in conjunction with more important decisions. We need to fully recognize the effects of parenthood. We need to talk about them, air out those particular facets of life, and still remain positive that for a lot of people - most people - children are well worth any of the regret they bring. That is an adult conversation. The other one is stuff of fairy tales.

"Better Check That Calendar On The Fridge To Find Out If Its YOUR Birthday!"

It has been a long time since I posted a Sarah Haskins video. I'm a terrible person. But here's the latest one, which I (of course) love:


Crankosaur had a great post about this very thing a long while ago, and I think that between the two, both she and Sarah Haskins sum just about everything up.

How Awesome Is This?

NPR has made available free 12 song samplers for each of the two music festivals taking up residence in Newport, Rhode Island (which may or may not have changed its name recently from the long, cumbersome, and obscure "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" to the more well-known and shorter "Rhode Island").

If you have iTunes, I highly recommend downloading them. If you don't have iTunes, I highly recommend getting iTunes and then downloading them.

Police & Perception

When I was younger, possibly 14, possibly 12, possible as young as 11 or as old as 17 (time and I have a tendency to not get along very well), my father instructed me to always drive to the nearest police station if I were pulled over later in the evening or not on a main road. There had been a rash of sexual assaults reported, many committed by men who were dressing up as police officers in order to more easily gain power over their victims. But some were actual police officers, who already had more power over their victims. So, my father told me to not forget these instances, to always drive to the nearest police station in the event I was pulled over late at night or not on a main road, and to do so if I felt unsafe in any way even if I was on a highway at noon.

They also had me watch movies like The Thin Blue Line when I was young, in order to start conversations about how the police weren't the ultimate authority, that the badge and the uniform doesn't mean perfection, doesn't mean absolute fidelity to the law, doesn't mean that when there is fidelity to the law that it isn't applied differently to different people. This is also the reason my first episode of Homicide when I was about 8 or 9 was "Black and Blue", an episode that wholly revolves around the police department covering when one of its own kills someone and one officer, Pembleton, fighting against the cover up while also delivering a confession to the murder by the murdered boy's friend.

Over the years, through the stories they told about their (black) friends and their (white) friends, that application differential became increasingly clear.

Because of all of this, I don't truly understand the hoopla that accompanied President Obama's remarks regarding the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. during his press conference, especially since he made it clear that he didn't "know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that". Especially since he quickly shifted the conversation to a larger one about why those who have been directly affected by situations in which race did play a negative role - and those, like me, who only have tangential evidence for how race does play a negative role - have made the assumption that race did play a negative role here, in this situation.

The best break down I can give, myself, is that I don't think the arrest was one of racial profiling. I don't think the officers - any of them - went into the situation thinking, "Let's arrest a black guy today". I don't even think the woman who called the cops thought that because there were two black men trying to enter a house in the afternoon, it was suspicious. I can give the benefit of the doubt and say that if two white guys she didn't recognize were trying to enter the house to the other side of her, she'd have called the cops as well. I've had the cops called on me when I was trying to break into my house in the afternoon, because I have good neighbors. Over the years, my neighbors have become accustomed to my breaking into my own house and now call to confirm that it was me.

But I do think the race of Professor Gates influenced the dynamic of the ensuing conversation - or, at the very least, I can see where his race would. And I can see where it would because of the excellent write up Latoya Peterson gives in the thread during the conversation ensuing from her post on Gates' arrest. When she says (in comment 102, for anyone interested),

I’m a black woman. I’ve never even been *close* to being in trouble with the law. It just doesn’t happen for me. Plus I grew up in MoCo, I have a great “white” voice and learned to mimic the type of assumptions and entitlement that my white peers (and a few upper class blacks) just knew.

However.

Every last one of my black and latino male friends has been arrested. They may not have been incarcerated. But they have all been arrested. I’ve seen maybe seven or so of these altercations begin. And in each occasion, the tone of the interaction is set by the officer. It’s normally the officer that initiates contact.

And for the life of me, I can’t reconcile these experiences.

I don’t understand why I’m at an out of control party with my white friends, who had a pile of cocaine in the bathroom, and the police come and barely look around, but when I’m sitting on a park bench with my black friend, the *park* police want to come by and harass him for littering since they spotted a cup underneath the bench. (One that was there before we arrived.)

I don’t understand why if the Salvadorean children I baby sat for were threatened with a knife by a white boy in the neighborhood, that the Officer who arrived berates us and their mother, then takes his hat off respectfully when approaching the grandparents of the white boy with the knife.

I don’t understand why I can watch the police get called to my building and watch the man making a ruckus get immediately escorted out, but when I call the police because there are two white guys down the hall screaming curses at a woman who isn’t answering the door, the police want to have a conversation and help solve his problem.

I say this as a person who was mentored by a Montgomery County Police Lieutenant.

I also understand that the very way we talk about race and racial dynamics - how on first pass, instead of writing,

But I do think the race of Professor Gates influenced the dynamic of the ensuing conversation - or, at the very least, I can see where his race would.

I wrote,

But I do think the race of Professor Gates changed the dynamic of the ensuing conversation - or, at the very least, I can see where his race would.

influences how we categorize events at hand. The difference may not seem all that grand, but for me, the difference is huge. In the original sentence, my original thought was that it was the fact that Gates was black that changed a neutral conversation.

But that isn't wholly correct. Race changes the conversation, period. If it were a white professor being questioned about whether or not he lived in this particular house on this particular street, the conversation would still be influenced by race. Depending on the individuals in question, maybe not much. And it might be that Crowley really did act stupidly for reasons wholly separate from race.

There is a part of this that didn't occur to me until I was reading what adelheide said on Ginmar's write-up of her impression of this particular incident:

The part that startles me is that the arresting officer is supposedly an expert on racial profilling and trains other officers how to not to do it. And yet he was completely baffled as to why Prof. Gates was upset about being confronted in his home. I would assume (dangerous word there) that someone trained to not racially profile people would understand that black people have a different experience with the police.

The fact that Sgt. Crowley "had been selected to be a police academy instructor on how to avoid racial profiling" seems to be used as shorthand, along with the fact that he gave mouth-to-mouth to Reggie Lewis, that he isn't a racist. And while that is probably true, I hadn't truly thought about what his being an instructor on how to avoid racial profiling meant in the opposite direction, what it meant for what Crowley himself should have potentially seen brewing in the context of the police's visitation.

These situations are incredibly complex, but there is a reason why many minorities think that Gates' race negatively influenced the arresting officer's actions - and there is a reason why many whites don't think race influenced the decision. It is easier to believe individual actions matter when your individual actions are spun positively, when you are met not with suspicion but with respect. When you aren't pulled over for driving while black, when you aren't questioned on park benches for litter that isn't yours, when these same situations keep happening to everyone you know. It is death by a thousand minute injustices; and those of us who don't have those continuing and continual experiences, for those of us who only occasionally deal with an asshole cop, it is easy to fathom that the way to handle these situations is to be polite, to be unfailingly gracious, to be thankful that a cop has come to your home to make sure you are supposed to be in it. And it could be easier to overrespond to an incident, to one incident after the dozens or hundreds or thousands that came before, incidents that involved you directly or friends or family or acquaintances, and believe that this particular incident has everything to do with your race - when it might only have something to do with your race, and unconsciously at that.

Women, Rip Van Winkle, & Domestic Violence

A good friend of mine had up a link on his Facebook feed, advising people to read the fourth panel:Which reads: "Well, I wrote a little song about women, called 'Women are Special (They will not stop until we are dead". I had a problem with it at this point, and in the course of calling him for other reasons, pretty much expressed my distaste with the sentiment expressed in that one box. Because, hey, women are half of the population and if you seriously think maligning 50% of the population is a good idea, then there's a bit of an issue. He responded that most of the women in his life had wronged him at some point in some way, and I told him that most of the people in his life had wronged him at some point in some way - that's what happens when you have an insane amount of friends; some of them are going to not be so great, and sometimes even the great people screw up. He also mentioned the "Boys Are Stupid" Flair permeating Facebook as a reason why his link wasn't so bad. And here's where the "equal opportunity" insult falls flat on its face. Because the "Boys Are Stupid" flair is bad:

But it doesn't take into account certain inequities in life. There is a Gavin de Becker quote that says, "At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them". Now, I'm not saying every woman is afraid of men, or that every man is afraid of being laughed at by women, or that some women aren't afraid of looking foolish in front of men or that some men will not experience the very real fear that a woman in their life is not only capable of killing or abusing them, but that it is also a probable outcome of their situation. What de Becker's quote does highlight, though, is the patently ridiculous and hurtful sentiment expressed in the above comic strip. Because domestic abuse is a very real, very large issue. Because:

Battering on women is the most under reported crime in America.

Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States; more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. "Violence Against Women, A Majority Staff Report," Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 102nd Congress, October 1992, p.3.

Three to four million women in the United States are beaten in their homes each year by their husbands, ex-husbands, or male lovers. "Women and Violence," Hearings before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, August 29 and December 11, 1990, Senate Hearing 101-939, pt. 1, p. 12.

One woman is beaten by her husband or partner every 15 seconds in the United States. Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1991.

About 1 out of 4 women are likely to be abused by a partner in her lifetime. Sara Glazer, "Violence, Against Women" CO Researcher, Congressional Quarterly, Inc., Volume 3, Number 8, February, 1993, p. 171.

Approximately 95% of the victims of domestic violence are women. Statistics, National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, Ruth Peachey, M.D. 1988.
...
Domestic violence is not only physical and sexual violence but also psychological. Psychological violence means intense and repetitive degradation, creating isolation, and controlling the actions or behaviors of the spouse through intimidation or manipulation to the detriment of the individual. "Five Year State Master Plan for the Prevention of and Service for Domestic Violence." Utah State Department of Human Services, January 1994.

Those statistics and figures make the assertion that it is women who will not stop until the men are dead laughable. And yet, the image of women sucking out the souls of men, as the comic continues on:

is a cultural staple. The shrewish woman is a staple on sit-coms, and in movies and in how we frame relationships. And it has been, for years and years, and centuries upon centuries. In stories like Rip Van Winkle, our sympathies are directed toward Rip:

I have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor and an obedient henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstances might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation, and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.

Certain it is that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who, as usual with the amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle."

It isn't until we have been assured of the Dame's shrewish ways and Rip's goodliness that we are told in sympathetic terms what may account for Dame Van Winkle's irritability - though it isn't framed as such. According to Hawthorne, "The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable work", and his children looked ragged and like beggar children. And yet, still, we are told that he would do all the odd chores around the other wives' homes their "less obliging husbands would not do for them", possibly because those less obliging husbands were actually making the money necessary for their wives and children to not have to scrimp and save. And at the end of the tale, Rip awakens from his twenty year nap and finds his wife has died in his absence; this is seen as a major plus for Rip, as "he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle." Published in 1819, the perceived dynamic between men and women seems to have changed very little. Men endure wifely 'nagging', with little attention paid to whether or not that wife has a valid concern or not.

And what makes this even more insidious is that the same cultural norms play out when we are discussing the other, distorted aspects of male-female relationships. It comes down to the women. In domestic violence cases, one of the questions that invariably gets asked is "What did she do?", the implication being that if only the woman in question was a little less shrewish, a little less demonic, a little less harpish, she wouldn't have gotten hit. Again, this isn't the question that comes up for everyone; not everyone asks this question. Not everyone thinks this thought. But it is still a prevalent thought, in articles and message boards - especially in high profile cases. This same thing can be found when we discuss rape victims, when we tell women that to wear certain outfits and to go certain places and to act in certain ways is to open the door to sexual assault.

To assert that men are in general the victims of women and their soul-sucking ways is ludicrous. To assert that 'women', as a monolithic group, are threats to men and want them dead is also ludicrous. Because it just reinforces the notion of that mean woman married to the harried man. It attempts to give men, all men, regardless of whether or not they are married to nice, non-soul-sucking women, victim-status. It attempts to strip all women, whether or not they are nice, non-soul-sucking women, of their very humanity - literally, by turning them into demons. And it also reinforces the notion of men and women not as partners, not working in tandem, but as being in a constant struggle, as a war. I don't know about anyone else, but when I'm in a relationship, I prefer not to categorize that relationship as being a tug-of-war, a constant battle, a situation in which I am the perpetual victim. I would prefer to think of it - and portray it as - a give-and-take, a loving and dynamic duo. And for those who would categorize their relationships the other way, well, maybe they should just not be in a relationship.

Depression Cooking With Clara

This woman is adorable:

She is 91 years old, and her grandson started taping her for the family and decided to turn those into webisodes. She's also got a blog, a facebook page, a website, and there's a DVD and a cookbook coming. I love her.

"Do You Wanna Go Count Our Gold?"

This, in my humble opinion, may be the funniest Sarah Haskins video, ever. Even better than the one about vampires - or yogurt!

I gasped too when they cut to Angelina Jolie during Jennifer Aniston's presentation, but it wasn't for the "OHMYGOD" emotional fireworks of it so much as it was that I just thought it was (a) completely unnecessary and (b) diminished these two accomplished and, I suspect, three-dimensional women - one presenting an Oscar and one who had already won an Oscar and was nominated for another - to one lone characteristic, that being two women in a perpetual Cold War over a guy. And yes, that guy is Brad Pitt, but really now. It has been I don't know how many years, but at least a couple; I would think the story over these two would die down. But then, I guess I'm ignoring the impulse to think of women in relation to men, and both Jolie and Aniston seem to always be connected due to their relationship with one man in particular.

I find this particularly odd because nothing ever extremely exciting has ever truly gone down. I mean, if Jennifer Aniston went insane one day early on and tried to take out Angelina Jolie, I could see everyone waiting with bated breath for the continued bloodbath. But aside from the somewhat sensationalist way Jolie's relationship with Brad began, there is seemingly no "there" there. Of course, maybe I'm ignoring the main component of this whole thing, that being that this particular strain of media really and truly can't imagine 3 adults actually not having Jerry Springeresque moments when they are *gasp* in the same room. After all, these are people who have regularly seen celebrities assault paparazzi with fists and canned food. Maybe the reason why there is still so much blasted attention on this whole nonissue is the fact that Aniston never went after Pitt or Jolie with a steak knife, and Jolie never drop kicked Aniston into a wall. Perhaps what the Access Hollywoods and the Entertainment Tonights are waiting for is a release from what they see as an unbearable tension. The fact that Aniston and Jolie may actually not really give that much of a damn about it all anymore, or at the very least actually having other aspects of their lives that are more important, doesn't even seem to cross any of these people's minds. Which is why it is important that we have people like Sarah Haskins to highlight the truly ridiculousness of it all.

Ashlee Simpson Kind of... ...Rocks

I know, I'm kind of shocked too (though in the interest of full disclosure, I do have to say that I have some songs from her debut album on my iPod - like Pieces of Me; hey, I never claimed to be cool).  Why does she rock? Well, for this:

How can we expect teenage girls to love and respect themselves in an environment where we criticize a size 2 figure?

Right on, Ashlee! Right there, she took a single incident, that being Fox's interest in Jessica Simpson's weight, and turned it into a societal issue. I'm kind of in awe of her right now, especially for the bolded part:

I am completely disgusted by the headlines concerning my sister's weight. A week after the inauguration and with such a feeling of hope in the air for our country, I find it completely embarrassing and belittling to all women to read about a woman's weight or figure as a headline on Fox News.

All women come in different shapes, sizes, and forms and just because you're a celebrity, there shouldn't be a different standard.

That woman deserves major kudos and a "This Is What A Feminist Looks Like" t-shirt. Maybe she'll go after the destructive nature of photoshopping celebrity covers next!

Fringe and The Exceptional Female

I have an odd relationship with the show Fringe; I don't find it to be particularly good - or compelling. I have no real reason to like it, having never seen a full episode of either Felicity or Alias. I never watched much Dawson's Creek, so Joshua Jackson isn't as big a draw as it is for others. The dialogue is, at times, painful. The names given to the various nefarious institutions and individuals by the FBI ("The Pattern", "The Observer") are often unimaginative - and also painful. And yet, something keeps pulling me back in. I actually want to see the new episode. Not live, of course; but via Hulu, the show is palatable. It is my new guilty pleasure (my last one was Bedford Diaries, but that was pretty much summed up by the name Milo Ventimiglia). And when the main character, Olivia Dunham, was captured after a rather poor escape/fight attempt, I was prepared for it to become my former guilty pleasure. I anticipated an episode of Olivia in captivity and enduring valiantly various procedures, with her friends and colleagues desperately trying to track her down to save her at some point later on in the episode. But the show - and Olivia - surprised me. She escaped; and not far into the episode, but before the end of the teaser. She escaped, and she had the foresight to grab some evidence from the facility and bury it as well. She orchestrated her own rescue, before many people even knew anything was wrong in the first place.

That was pretty amazing to see; and the show does manage to have aspects that make it pretty good, from the "woman as main character" part of it. Olivia is confident; she is good at her job; she doesn't allow any negative perceptions of her devotion, her skill, or her person to go unchallenged. And she frequently proves that no matter what aspect of her the person in question deems unlikable or unprofessional, her methods work. She works. And she is tough; unlike the eponymous character Sarah Connor of The Sarah Connor Chronicles (played by Lena Headey), Anna Torv actually looks tough. She's still a twig, but she is intense; she looks like she could take anyone down that tried to stand in her way. She had a relationship with her partner, but that does not detract from her good standing in the FBI. And her closest companion even in the period of time before we are shown is a man. And there seems to be no sexual component to their relationship.

And yet, I am still hesitant to place Fringe as a show in the "feminist friendly" airspace of television. I wish that I could. There are so few shows and movies that actually qualify. And the show does manage to pass that famous Rule; Olivia speaks to Astrid and Nina really only about the cases in question and rarely even touches upon her personal life with anyone except her friend Charlie. But here is really one of the places this show utterly fails. There are only two other women present in the show who are even recurring characters. This last episode introduced us to Olivia's sister (who will presumably be staying for longer than the one episode); but in the whole of the FBI, in the lab scenes, on the ground, everywhere, there is a dearth of women. Forget women of adequate roles, but women in general are scarce in the various institutions. And with Astrid being relegated to the lab even though she is a federal agent and Olivia's assistant, we are left with only Olivia as a dynamic and (semi) three-dimensional character. Nina, the shadowy woman in a seat of power in a suspicious organization, is also relegated to scenes primarily taking place in her office. Which lends to the reading of Olivia as the exceptional female character.

In Olivia, we have a full character; a character with wants and desires and strengths and weaknesses. She's not a particularly compelling, but most of the characters - by virtue of the writing - have more in common with cardboard than humanity in general (I should point out that this aspect seems to be evolving, but whether the writing is actually getting better or I'm just getting more used to it is up in the air). However, with no other woman characters around her she ends up looking more like an exception to the rule rather than an example of one. Instead of showing that women are capable, we see that Olivia is capable. Instead of really recognizing that women have a place in these different, historically male-dominated, fields, we only see that Olivia has a place in these fields. Olivia and her place on television is not truly all that progressive or awe inspiring. After all, we've had Julie Barnes from The Mod Squad and Emma Peel from The Avengers. And it is somewhat frustrating that there is only one bright woman in the presence of men who are more than bright, who are by any conceivable test intellectual giants. That juxtaposition only further highlights Olivia's exceptional femaleness, and how even being an exceptional female does not place her in the upper tiers of empirical greatness. And if Olivia looks like an idiot savant next to Walter and Peter Bishop, Astrid disappears entirely due to being merely a "just a". Walter betrays her trust and doses her against her will and without her knowledge? She is back in the lab acting buddy-buddy again over the course of the next episode, her trauma and her story ignored in order to further examine Walter and Walter's motivations. Because while Astrid is just a woman and Olivia is the exceptional female, Walter is unequivocally exceptional.

Contrast this show to Bones, another Fox show not truly rooted in the reality of science, and the difference is incredible. There is a truly exceptional character on Bones, who happens  to be female. And she is in the presence of other brilliant minds, several of them also female. She interacts with them, and their stories are also highlighted. Angela is an expert in her own right, and exists separate from the other characters as well as in conjunction with them. Cam's addition is a comparable achievement. There are other women who are studying to do what Brennan does. There are women present in the FBI; there are women present in almost every arena the show traverses, from the lab to the people investigating the crimes scenes to the prosecution. Brennan travels in a world replete with women - and men. There is a healthy mix not present in Fringe. And Fringe is less for it. All of this lends itself to one conclusion: Olivia Dunham may be in the running toward becoming someone we can look to as a feminist icon, but Fringe itself is not a feminist enterprise. Its lack of women amid a plethora of men is a detraction from the show it could be. And that, the conventional invisibility of women, is upsetting.

"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?):

The Power Of The Dollar

Watching CBS Evening News tonight with Katie Couric, I saw a feature about Gay Rights activists and their fight against Prop. 8. Those supporters of same sex marriage are posting "the names and businesses who gave money to help Proposition 8 pass" on the internet, and are arranging boycotts of those businesses. I think this is a brilliant move, though I am of two minds about California allowing all donations to be public knowledge. On the one hand, I firmly believe that one should be proud of what one donates to and willing to accept the consequences of that affiliation. If anyone wants to know, I would gladly rattle off the (many) organizations and charities I give to and why. At the same time, there is something akin to the "sure the government can tap my phones, because I have nothing to hide" to the whole thing. That, however, is an entirely separate issue from what Gay Rights activists are doing with that information. My parents have long believed - and practiced the belief - that in a capitalist society, one of the greater powers one has is the power of the dollar. If a person does not agree with a company, if a person has a problem with a company or business's practices or policies, the best way to create change is to not buy.

My parents have their own blacklist of sorts, ranging from people like Nestle (for the marketing of their baby formula in developing nations) to Exxon (for their response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill) to countless others. Obviously, Nestle is still around and Exxon is making more money than ever, but the principle remains. Do not contribute to the wealth of people who actively work against your ethics or interests. Those people on the so-called "blacklists" created by supporters of gay marriage rights actively worked against the rights and interests of gay rights activists; and those activists have the right - since the information is public knowledge (and especially since the Yes on Prop 8 tried to use the same list to garner donations from companies who had contributed to No on 8 campaigns by threatening to reveal them as proponents of gay marriage) - to both not contribute to those companies and people. And they should have the right to alert the rest of the community as well, so that those supportive of gay rights but not active in the movement can decide what to do with their dollars as well. And those who were anti-gay rights may find a new place to grant patronage.

And then there is the opposition, both those who appeared on the list and those supporters who are uncomfortable with the tactics:

I have several issues with the video. One, for Chris Li (or Lee; CBS isn't sure about the spelling either): you're wrong. When you say, "This sort of blacklist should only appear in communist countries, should not be found in the United States", you demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding about both what this blacklist is and what the United States stands for. If the government were perpetuating this blacklist effort, or pressuring others to blacklist those supporters of Yes on 8 (as it did during McCarthyism), you would be wholly correct; that would be behavior wholly unbecoming of a democratic republic. But this blacklist is being perpetuated by individual organizations not affiliated with the government of the United States; those groups are very much within their own Constitutional rights to call your ass out on what they see as homophobic and bigoted donations. That's how a free society operates. Those on the side that gay marriage should be legal can decide to not redistribute their wealth to those who feel otherwise.

Another point of interest is this idea of 'Free Speech'. It is really the crux of Chris Li (or Lee)'s argument, and it was the prominent idea on the signs being waved by the demonstrators in Sacramento in support of Scott Eckern. There seems to be this strange and adolescent idea that free speech should really be free, and without consequence. That one should be able to say and do anything without feeling the burdens of their actions. And that is wholly incorrect. A person can say whatever they like, within reason. But that same person must also take responsibility for what they have said; they must own it. Free speech is never truly free; what I write here could negatively impact my life, just as what I write here could (and I feel has) positively impacted my life. If someone I would want to be friends with reads something here that is controversial or that they disagree with, they are fully within their rights to limit their contact with me. So too do those people organizing this boycott have the right to not shop in those stores or hire that engineer or go to that theater. That is how the whole thing works. We have to have courage of our convictions when we begin making public statements, whether through money or through dialogue. I donate money to the ACLU. I donate money to Emily's List and Planned Parenthood and Heifer International, and countless others. That is my freedom of speech at work, every time I donate a dollar to an organization. And if I lived in California (and worked in a service industry) and a pro-lifer didn't want to buy the merchandise I was selling, that is their right and their expression of free speech. It goes both ways, and we can't expect to be only positively impacted by our actions. It is cowardly to think so, and it is remarkably self-involved to believe it - or believe that one should be immune from the consequences of one's decisions.

New Music

At work, I spend my day surrounded by insurance policies and listening to various podcasts. I get my Bill Moyers fix, my daily update on what I need to know about the economy going wrong (Planet Money), a short burst of politics (The Political Rewind), a longer burst of politics (It's All Politics), national news (Talk of the Nation), and other random stuff (like This American Life and Addicted to Race). But what I've really become insanely addicted to are music podcasts. I've been loving Musicheads and All Songs Considered (and Second Stage). This is bad, both for my coworkers and my bank account, because I have been falling in love with music like woah for the last two weeks now. I've also become slightly infatuated with a guy who happens to favor the same Ryan Adams record I do (Heartbreaker), but that is a different story.

What I really love is when bands are mentioned in both of the main podcasts about music I listen to. I'm looking forward to Paul McCartney's new release, for instance, because it was mentioned favorably on both shows; released under the band name "The Fireman", it is McCartney's venture into electronica. His newest album with this project - from the brief snippet allotted on All Songs Considered and Musicheads sounded incredibly interesting. And unlike most of my impressions of electronica, it sounded warm - as if there was an actual human being creating the music I was listening to. The closest thing I could equate this to would be Madonna's "Ray of Light", and even though I love that album it still seems like a weak comparison.

The band whose album I impulsively bought off of iTunes, though, is another find I credit with its cross exposure. I'm From Barcelona is a band I first heard of on All Songs Considered. The band sounded interesting, especially the song Headphones. One of the podcasts, I think it was Musicheads (and it could have even been the guy who appreciates Heartbreaker), mentions that the song is practically begging to be made into an iPod commercial. And it is true. It is catchy, and probably my favorite song on the album. The other songs are well worth a listen as well. Oddly modern while sounding at the same time vaguely seventies, the music works. It has a full sound and strange lyrics. And it makes me insanely happy. So, for that reason, I thought I'd talk about them here. And show the one video I could find, their single "Paper Planes":

George Orwell's Diaries

George Orwell's diaries have been turned into a blog, 70 years after they had been written. Awesomeness. It's going into the blogroll along the side, but I wanted to highlight it here because it is both an innovative use of blogging and because Orwell has become such a looming figure in our own perceptions of the way our world has been formed and the way politics works. It is extremely cool to see a man who cared so much about words having his words come alive, in a way, again.

I would also recommend reading the Newsweek article about him. It was both interesting and informative, and where I found out about the blog.

Sexism and Sarah Palin

For once, I agree with Sarah Palin; Palin has already been turned into a scapegoat in regards to John McCain's loss in such quarters as Fox News, and that isn't much of a surprise. Instead, it was one of those things I feared when Palin was picked as the VP nominee. Just like Geraldine Ferraro's nomination, Sarah Palin's pick was meant to energize a faltering campaign, granting it an immediate injection of progressiveness and excitement. Unfortunately for women in politics, in both situations the candidates were fighting an uphill battle before the choice for VP, and that battle only loomed larger after the pick. Which makes the VP pick a wonderful and myopic reason for failure. Mondale lost every state in the union but one (Massachusetts). John McCain has lost by 173 electoral college votes to 365, and was defeated in such Republican strongholds as Virginia and North Carolina. And it is easy to lay the blame at the feet of a woman who, frankly, will probably go down as one of the worst picks for vice-president - even ahead of Dan Quale, the guy who couldn't spell "potato" correctly. But more than Palin, it is McCain who is at fault for picking a woman with at best rudimentary knowledge of the world outside of Alaska. It is McCain and his campaign's fault for not better preparing her, for not compensating for that lack of knowledge base. And Palin is incredibly correct when she says that those within the McCain campaign who are criticizing her anonymously are "cruel. It's mean-spirited. It's immature. It's unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away with it, taking things out of context, and then tried to spread something on national news. It's not fair and it's not right". She's right. Those guys are jerks. And it is not fair, and it is not right.

I'm all for criticizing Palin. I don't like the woman one iota. But criticizing her anonymously, calling her a diva, diminishing her intelligence when they worked for the man who picked her, and saying she was going rogue is ridiculous. If Palin's lack of knowledge base was such a detriment, the focus should be on John McCain, the man who plucked her from obscurity and made her his vice-presidential running mate. If Palin was not prepared for or able to do the job she was selected for, the reporting should be less about her and more about McCain. Sarah Palin didn't pull a Jesse Jackson and put her own name in consideration for VP nomination. That was John McCain's choice, and if she was so unprepared as to do the job he chose her for, at the end of the day the buck stops with him. But McCain aides, as anonymous as they are, want someone not their boss to blame for losing. And instead of acknowledging that McCain the Nominee was not McCain the Maverick, instead of acknowledging that McCain's handling of several situations lacked a certain deftness and/or wisdom, and instead of acknowledging that Obama is in all probability one of the best politicians to have run for president ever (and I'm speaking of his abilities on the campaign trail, as we obviously don't know if he is going to be one of the best actual presidents), they take the easy way out and blame Palin.

And with the media still going insane over Palin's clothing, something Campbell Brown ranted about weeks ago at this point, it seems obvious to me why Palin is the prominent target. It is because she was a phenomenally bad candidate, yes. But it also seems to me that some of the critique of her, even if it were rooted in fact such as the idea that she was a superficial and lame addition to an already weakened ticket, comes out in sexist terms. It reverberates in obsession with her clothing as much as it does with the rush to report what she didn't know, without nary a shred of "What was that man thinking?" rebounding on McCain. This is all highlighted by the fact that we are still talking about this woman, and that this crazy lady is the one to say, "This is Barack Obama's time right now, and this is an historic moment in our nation and this can be a shining moment for America and our history, and look what we're talking about. Again, we're talking about my shoes and belts and skirts. It's ridiculous." It is ridiculous. It is revolting. It is the same crap that kept us focused on Hillary Clinton's array of pantsuits and what has caused more attention to be granted to Michelle Obama's dress on the night of Obama's historic win. So please, media and McCain hounds, stop making me think about and agree with Sarah Palin. Because I don't like either of those things. They're enough to put me in the padded room they reserved for Keith Olbermann in the event of a McCain victory.