Texas Tattoos
Here's a Smart car with a bunch of em, in Montparnasse. (Oh, what a war zone it is waiting for a table at fine dining rush hour at La Coupole.)
Here's the Smart's tattooed sister (granny?) across the pond. 1964 Ford Fairlane 500, shot in Ft. Worth, Texas, September 2006.
Getting back to Paris, here's another Smart car with no tattoos...but très snappy, no? And reasonably priced. Wish we had cars like this in the USA.
Of course, at the Ft. Worth auto show, I did get to sit in this pleasingly parkable thingie by BMW.
And, in the parking lot of Ft. Worth's Railhead Smokehouse, a legendary BBQ place I somehow sniffed out, I saw this alien-green twin of my own little battery-assisted hybrid car.
...and a different sort of patron than I've been seeing at my favorite Paris café.
Flying First Class Or Fat Class?
Story in The New York Times by Gina Kolata about fat people. Here's an excerpt:
Last week the list of ills attributable to obesity grew: fat people cause global warming.This latest contribution to the obesity debate comes in an article by Sheldon H. Jacobson of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and his doctoral student, Laura McLay. Their paper, published in the current issue of The Engineering Economist, calculates how much extra gasoline is used to transport Americans now that they have grown fatter. The answer, they said, is a billion gallons a year.
Their conclusion is in the same vein as a letter published last year in The American Journal of Public Health. Its authors, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did a sort of back-of-the-envelope calculation of how much extra fuel airlines spend hauling around fatter Americans. The answer, they wrote, based on the extra 10 pounds the average American gained in the 1990’s, is 350 million gallons, which means an extra 3.8 million tons of carbon dioxide.
“People are out scouring the landscape for things that make obese people look bad,” said Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale.
And is that a bad thing? Dr. Jacobson doesn’t think so. “We felt that beyond public health, being overweight has many other socioeconomic implications,” he said, which was why he was drawn to calculating the gasoline costs of added weight.
The idea of using economic incentives to help people shed pounds comes up in the periodic calls for taxes on junk food. Martin B. Schmidt, an economist at the College of William and Mary, suggests a tax on food bought at drive-through windows. Describing his theory in a recent Op-Ed article in The New York Times, Dr. Schmidt said people would expend more calories if they had to get out of their cars to pick up their food.
Hey, loser -- I rarely eat fast food, but whether I go to a drive-through window or not to get it won't make me fit into American sizes any better. No, not because I'm too fat, but because everybody else is getting so enormous, I sometimes wear a two or a four -- or a one or a zero! -- in American sizes, and I'm 5'9", and don't diet. Then again, I move. I got a deal on an apartment in France because I gladly rented a fifth-floor walk up. Free stairmaster with the rental is the way I see it. It's healthy.
My secret of staying reasonably sized is no big mystery: Small portions, mostly green veggies and protein, plenty of fat, not a lot of bread, and if I do eat bread, it's with some kind of fat in it or smeared on it, and generally in the morning. Oh yeah, and when I order, say, an almond croissant in America, I eat half of it. Because what woman who isn't seven feet tall is truly hungry for an entire American croissant? (Usually two or three times the size of a French one.)
In other words, my eating plan: No dieting, no denial, no low-fat or fat-free (taste-free) food -- leaves you hungry after you eat it, and isn't that antithetical to the point of having a meal?
Hmmm, what else? Resign from "The Clean Plate Club." Eat what you want, when you're hungry, even if you one day want ice cream at 7 am. Of course, in advising this, I'm assuming you're eating small portions -- not the entire vat of Haagen-Dazs. When you're no longer hungry, stop eating. Trust me, your steak is dead; the part you've left on your plate won't feel insulted.
By the way, I'd love if they'd price airline tickets by passenger weight, same as they make you pay extra if you bring over-limit luggage. Otherwise, I'm paying for the fuel to haul your wide load over the Atlantic, and some anorexic, poor dear, is funding me.
P.S. A helpful book I've recommended before on eating only to quell stomach hunger instead of the emotional kind: Diets Don't Work, by Bob Schwartz. And a piece of advice for those trying to adopt a healthier psychology of eating: Remember, you're human and fallible. If you hoover down a trough of ice cream today, remind yourself about the being human thing, and resolve to do better tomorrow.
Le Monde N'Est Pas Votre Cendrier
Or, as I like to admonish people in America who put their butts out in my favorite café's flower pots, then leave them there:
Paris transit has a campaign that includes posters on bus shelters to encourage a little more...politesse. Here are two posters I saw tonight. The "Homo Modernus" angle is a little too cute, and I found this one a little too nannyish for my taste:
abandons his aggression.
Liked this one better:
the use of the trash can about 35,000 years ago.
Unfortunately, the humor and visuals fall a little flat; still, anything anybody can do to help staunch the Niagara Falls-like rushing of manners out of modern society is much appreciated.
Terrorists, Go Home
Yes, the U.S. is a land of immigrants, I was saying Sunday night to two friends in France; one American and one from the U.K. The American one made the point that we, in America, have groups banding together (like the Mormons in Utah), and I noted that, yes, there are immigrant communities that are all Asian or Latino right near L.A.
It actually was pretty stunning for me, a girl who grew up in a Michigan suburb where everybody was as white as a sheet of typing paper, to participate in a panel discussion about separation of church and state before a hall of California high school kids (via the Arsalyn Program to encourage youth participation in politics): Other than Cathy Seipp's daughter Maia, who's white, and one Latino boy, every single face in the room was Asian. Quite a surprise for a girl from Michigan who grew up with AN Asian in her high school class.
Getting back to the immigration topic, sure, we have loads of immigrants in the US, I said, but the thing is, they come wanting to be a part of what the US is -- to join our system and our economy. To be part of the old "melting pot." That's what I see from immigrants from Mexico who stay in the United States (as opposed to the ones who basically "commute to work" in the U.S. by crawling over the border to send money back home). They want to learn English, buy a house, feed their children, and be a part of "The American Dream" -- probably because it's more lucrative than the Mexican reality.
But, what of immigrants like many Muslims in Europe (and maybe in the U.S. -- in places like "Dearbornistan") who want to come to your country or our country and make it unfree like the places they're from? Who spread violence or press others to spread violence to achieve that goal?
When I visit France, for example, it's to learn how to do things the French way. In other words, I don't stamp my feet and demand coffee with my salad. It's just not done here. And I've learned the rudiments of how to get along in French society, like the very nice basic of saying "Bonjour, Madame" or "Bonjour, Monsieur" to the person behind the counter when I enter a store. I've incorporated this into my American life -- always greeting and speaking to people who serve me. It has its benefits -- I get amazing service, and it mystifies people. I'm the girl at Loehmann's for whom the ladies hanging up the clothes in the fitting room offer to go back to the stock room to look for another size. Why? Because I say hello to them when I walk in the fitting room, and thank them as I leave. Nobody does that. Hmmm, maybe we "Freedom Fry"-chowing Americans have a few things to learn from the frogs?
Anyway, if I wanted to have things the American way at all times, I'd be back home in America right now; maybe eating a bucket of KFC and watching the game. Likewise, if you don't want the free country way, stay in your own unfree countries, thank you, and, if you're a woman, walk around wearing a pup tent over your head.
And sure, it's rough for, say, Muslim immigrants in France. Guess what? Every immigrant population has been the kickball of their time. Deal with it. As I mentioned here before, my great grandpa made his way in America by digging through the trash -- picking metal scrap out of the garbage and selling it. No 40 acres, no mule, no free government cheese, no French social programs where the poor get free technical schooling, no nothing.
In other words, all you immigrants: Quit bitching, quit bus-burning, and get your ass to work. If you really, really want to work -- you will. Yes, it might be tough and even demoralizing -- maybe you'll have to be a delivery guy or a busboy or a cleaning lady -- but guess what? That's the price of being an immigrant. If that's too high a price, again, the road back to Burqaville is that way.
Dante Goes To Baghdad
A Marine officer in Iraq wrote a letter to a small group of family and friends that got around. According to TIME magazine, their staffer Sally B. Donnelly got a copy of the letter three weeks ago, but was just able to track down the author and verify the letter’s authenticity. The author asked to remain anonymous, but let TIME publish the letter with a few omissions. These are my favorite bits below, but the whole thing is at the link:
Most Surreal Moment — Watching Marines arrive at my detention facility and unload a truck load of flex-cuffed midgets. 26 to be exact. We had put the word out earlier in the day to the Marines in Fallujah that we were looking for Bad Guy X, who was described as a midget. Little did I know that Fallujah was home to a small community of midgets, who banded together for support since they were considered as social outcasts. The Marines were anxious to get back to the midget colony to bring in the rest of the midget suspects, but I called off the search, figuring Bad Guy X was long gone on his short legs after seeing his companions rounded up by the giant infidels.Biggest Hassle — High-ranking visitors. More disruptive to work than a rocket attack. VIPs demand briefs and "battlefield" tours (we take them to quiet sections of Fallujah, which is plenty scary for them). Our briefs and commentary seem to have no effect on their preconceived notions of what's going on in Iraq. Their trips allow them to say that they've been to Fallujah, which gives them an unfortunate degree of credibility in perpetuating their fantasies about the insurgency here.
Second Biggest Mystery — if there's no atheists in foxholes, then why aren't there more people at Mass every Sunday?
Biggest Outrage — Practically anything said by talking heads on TV about the war in Iraq, not that I get to watch much TV. Their thoughts are consistently both grossly simplistic and politically slanted. Biggest Offender: Bill O'Reilly.
Best Chuck Norris Moment — 13 May. Bad Guys arrived at the government center in a small town to kidnap the mayor, since they have a problem with any form of government that does not include regular beheadings and women wearing burqahs. There were seven of them. As they brought the mayor out to put him in a pick-up truck to take him off to be beheaded (on video, as usual), one of the Bad Guys put down his machine gun so that he could tie the mayor's hands. The mayor took the opportunity to pick up the machine gun and drill five of the Bad Guys. The other two ran away. One of the dead Bad Guys was on our top twenty wanted list. Like they say, you can't fight City Hall.
Proudest Moment — It's a tie every day, watching our Marines produce phenomenal intelligence products that go pretty far in teasing apart Bad Guy operations in al-Anbar. Every night Marines and Soldiers are kicking in doors and grabbing Bad Guys based on intelligence developed by our guys. We rarely lose a Marine during these raids, they are so well-informed of the objective. A bunch of kids right out of high school shouldn't be able to work so well, but they do.
I hope you all are doing well. If you want to do something for me, kiss a cop, flush a toilet, and drink a beer. I'll try to write again before too long — I promise.
I Hate Baby Bush
But, I didn't hate his daddy. FYI, I'm not a Republican, but I'm not a Democrat, either. I vote for the least idiotic sellout running, basically. Here's an interesting article from The New York Times, unfortunately, from their dumb for-pay Times Select (ie, select certain writers who won't be read or blogged about), by Helene Cooper and David E. Sanger, about confidential Bush admin memos that don't trumpet the Bush "Yay! War is beautiful, wish you were here!" party line:
For the last 18 months, Philip D. Zelikow has churned out confidential memorandums and proposals for his boss and close friend, Condoleezza Rice, that often depart sharply from the Bush administration's current line.
One described the potential for Iraq to become a "catastrophic failure." Another, among several that have come to light in recent weeks, was an early call for changes in a detention policy that many in the State Department believed was doing tremendous harm to the United States.
Others have proposed new diplomatic initiatives toward North Korea and the Middle East, and one went as far as to call for a reconsideration of the phrase "war on terror" because it alienated many Muslims - an idea that quickly fizzled after opposition from the White House.
Such ideas would have found a more natural home under President George H. W. Bush, for whom Zelikow and Rice worked on the staff of the National Security Council. They reflect a sense that American influence is perishable, and can be damaged by overreaching, as allies and other partners react against decisions made in Washington. They form a kind of foreign policy realism that was eclipsed in Bush's first term, in favor of a more ideological, unilateral ethos, but that has made something of a comeback in his second term.
...Rice herself has said that she went through something of a transformation after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in which she moved away from the classical realism of her own roots and Zelikow's, and closer to the neoconservatives who dominated policy discussions in the first term.
Rice has told friends that President Bush has had a major impact on her thinking in terms of reintroducing values-based politics and ideology.
"Values-based politics and ideology"; ie, pandering to the Bush Baby base.
The Duck Is On Its Last Leg
A wobbly little attempt at "shoot the duck" on Pont des Invalides two nights ago. This kid and two girls were attempting to trick skate -- always amusing to see in France. There's something about the French -- they do a number of things very well (my friend Mark calls them "The three F's": food, fashion, and fucking), and then there are a number of things they don't do so well, capitalism, dancing, and rollerskating.
When I'm here in the summers and I see a froggie on rollerblades (except for a few whiz-bang young guys), I leap out of the way like I used to when Americans first got them. And I say that as a snob skater -- I'm basically Tonya Harding on wheels, but without the boyfriend with the crowbar.
Anyway, it's kind of amazing to me that the French are so motion-challenged. Perhaps somebody can explain it?
I probably should've asked this very interesting girl I just met, the Paris-based apartment-finding consultant Susie Hollands. She's Scottish, adorable, very smart, and very savvy, and like me, an entrepreneur who saw an opportunity in the marketplace and seized it.
I went over for tea and a chat with her yesterday afternoon. Three years ago, she came to Paris for two months, saw how hard it was for non-French -- even people with money -- to rent apartments here for more than a short vacation, and vowed to do something about it.
She's built a nice business -- part real estate, part psychoanalysis -- finding the right rental apartments for people from outside France, and cutting through all the crap and red tape. Now, she's starting to help people who want to buy apartments -- for example, my Los Angeles/Paris friend Laurie Pike, who Paris-blogs here.
Susie's also a blogger, with a very interesting and informative blog on Paris real estate. Plus, after three years here in real estate, she can't help but have a very realistic picture of France and French society. Read her blog for more on that. In fact, read this piece commenting on a New York Times piece on the area where I'm staying, in the 17th arrondissement.
Depends What The Definition Of "Is" Is
Lynne Cheney tells Wolf Blitzer there is no lesbian love affair in her book Sisters. Cheney suggest that contention is just a big lie:
BLITZER: Here's what the Democratic Party put out today, theDemocratic Congressional -- Senatorial Campaign Committee: "Lynne
Cheney's book featured brothels and attempted rape. In 1981, Vice
President Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne, wrote a book called "Sisters",
which featured a lesbian love affair, brothels and attempted rapes."
CHENEY: No.
BLITZER: "In 1988, Lynn Cheney wrote about a Republican vice
president who dies of a heart attack while having sex with his
mistress." Is that true?
CHENEY: Nothing explicit. And actually, that was full of lies.
It's not -- it's just -- it's absolutely not a...
BLITZER: Did you write a book entitled "Sisters"?
CHENEY: I did write a book entitled "Sisters".
BLITZER: It did have lesbian characters.
CHENEY: This -- no, not necessarily. This description is a lie.
I'll stand on that.
BLITZER: There's nothing in there about rape and brothels?
CHENEY: Well, Wolf, could we talk about a children's book for a minute?
BLITZER: We can talk about the children's book. I just wanted to...
CHENEY: I think my segment is, like, 15 minutes long and we've had
about 10 minutes of...
BLITZER: I just wanted to -- I just wanted to clarify what's in the
news today, given -- this is...
CHENEY: That's lies and distortion. That's what it is.
BLITZER: This is an opportunity for you to explain on these
sensitive issues.
CHENEY: Wolf, I have nothing to explain. Jim Webb has a lot to
explain.
BLITZER: Well, he says he's only -- as a serious writer, novelist,
a fiction writer, he was doing basically what you were doing.
CHENEY: Jim Webb is full of baloney.
And now, let's see what Lynne Cheney is full of (from her book Sisters):
"'To my Helena, my dearest lover...Thine always, A.T.' Helen and Amy Travers? No, it couldn't be, simply couldn't.""Helen, my joy and my beloved...Let us go away together, away from the anger and the imperatives of men...There will be only the two of us...In the evenings I shall read to you while you work your cross-stitch in the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl..."
"Society as a whole might conclude that women were sexless creatures, but she knew otherwise. She also knew that claiming a relationship was not erotic, thinking it could not be would not keep it from being so. There could be no tearing off of one's clothes and lustily hopping into bed, not if one would preserve the love-religion. But the loving words and the warm embrace were permitted, and the kiss before sleep, the arousal gentle enough so that its nature would not have to be acknowledged."
"The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve...-- no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were. She felt curiously moved...she saw that the women in the cart had a passionate, loving intimacy forever closed to her."
I dunno about you, but that's lookin' awful "sisterly" to me!
"Speak Softly And Carry A Big Stick"
A statue on Pont des Invalides, the bridge on my way home. The quote is from Teddy Roosevelt.
P.S. I always like when it's a girl pictured holding the sword.
A New Definition Of Child Abuse
Child abuse, according to 67 "rights groups," means being the child of extremely wealthy and famous parents, and living in extreme privilege in the U.K., complete with a stable of horses. What would be better? Living in probably semi-starvation, with substandard medical care, in an African orphanage, of course!
Madonna adopted some poor Malawian subsistence farmer's child, and now he says he's worried the media hailstorm will cause her to drop her efforts. Sure, perhaps he equivocated to the media at first -- perhaps because he was lead to equivocate? From the Associate Press story:
"These so-called human rights activists are harassing me every day, threatening me that I am not aware of what I am doing," Banda said Thursday. "I'm afraid David may be sent back and the orphanage may not even accept him back. So where will he end up? Here? He will certainly die."The Human Rights Consultative Committee, a group of human rights groups in Malawi, has asked Judge Andrew Nyirenda to review the adoption process to make sure all the laws have been followed. A hearing is scheduled Friday.
Banda said activists tried to visit him Wednesday.
"I hid from them. I didn't want to see them. They want me to support their court case, a thing I cannot do for I know what I agreed with Madonna and her husband," said Banda.
Banda was reacting to Madonna's appearance on "The
Oprah Winfrey Show" on Wednesday, in which the 48-year-old singer said she had done nothing wrong, had not used her celebrity to influence Malawian officials and wanted to give David, who had been in an orphanage, a better life....Justin Dzonzi, chairman of the human rights group, said the coalition of 67 groups would go ahead with its court petition Friday to protect the rights of any child up for adoption in Malawi.
"It's not like we are blocking the adoption but we want laws followed to the letter," he said.
Dzonzi said under current laws, David, who was taken to Madonna's home in London last week, was not entitled to inherit any of the wealth of the singer and her husband, director Guy Ritchie. He said the child also could suffer psychologically if there is a divorce by the celebrity couple.
Oh, please. Sorry, but there's a whole different measure of what "suffering" is when you're a hungry little African orphan. How much of this is about a RICH, FAMOUS, WHITE, AMERICAN adopting a baby? Sorry, but the kid could do worse -- like by being left in Malawi at the orphanage, for starters.
If you give money to these idiot groups wasting their time protesting this, please stop, or stop payment on your check if it isn't too late.
The Only Thing I Don't Understand
Is why this article -- "DNA Evidence Frees Man After 15 Years Of Marriage" -- is in The Onion. An excerpt:
JACKSONVILLE, FL—Henry "Hank" Doswell, 42, was released from his marriage Wednesday, after DNA tests conclusively proved his innocence in the July 1991 fathering of Spencer Doswell, the solitary charge that has kept him committed for 15 years.Doswell, flanked by his lawyers, as a "free and single man" after 15 years locked up in marriage.
Visibly moved to tears as his divorce lawyer read the test results, Doswell, who had been confined to a suburban housing facility after being wrongly wedded after allegedly impregnating then-girlfriend Karen Sanders, told reporters he was relieved to finally set his matrimonial record straight.
"Fifteen years, seven months, and two days," said Doswell, speaking to a group at the Red Room bar's Singles Night shortly after his release. "I always said they'd made a terrible mistake, that I did not deserve to be put away in the prime of my life, but no one believed me. If it hadn't been for this DNA test, I might have died in that monogamous relationship."
Though he feared he might never be able to break free of "the old ball and chain," Doswell always professed that being sentenced to a life of enforced fidelity was a "horrible injustice." But as each new anniversary seemed only to confirm his guilt, Doswell began to doubt he would ever be a free man again.
"From that first sleepless night in the Poconos, to the tense and terrifying baby showers, to my scheduled work in the yard, the only way I could get through it was by telling myself, 'I did nothing to deserve this. I don't belong in here with these people,'" said Doswell, who claimed monthly visits from family members only made his imprisonment more difficult to bear. "But after 15 years of listening to someone call you 'Daddy,' you start to believe it yourself."
Although it took place nearly two decades ago, Doswell said he remembers the events that led to his marriage term "like it was yesterday." After Sanders was discovered alone and pregnant in her apartment, there was an outcry to find the man responsible. During the course of the investigation, she named only Doswell. Despite his sworn testimony that he had no sexual contact with Sanders on the night in question, Doswell was tried in front of a group of Sanders' peers, who unanimously found him guilty after only a single two-hour brunch.
"The wedding ceremony was a farce," said Doswell, who recalled he was led out from city hall in French cuffs to an awaiting limousine. "The justice of the peace was ready to marry us the moment I walked in. He couldn't pronounce us man and wife fast enough."
Doswell, who admitted that he had fantasized about escaping "countless times," said he would like a public apology from those who were most vocal about his assumed guilt, especially the bride's father, Ralph Sanders, who reportedly paid off top-level wedding planners in exchange for a guarantee of swift nuptials.
In a statement released to the press, lawyers for the wrongfully espoused announced that they were seeking an immediate annulment as well as damages from the state in the amount of half of Doswell's net worth.
Actually, I do understand why it's in The Onion. It's because, in cases of paternity fraud, men are usually not allowed to escape, DNA or no DNA on their side.
The Paris Street
First, Alkon by Rynski.
That would be me, shot by my friend Sue Rynski, the Detroit-born rock-and-roll photographer turned art photographer now living in Paris. We went to lunch at this adorable tea room in the 7th arrondissement, Les Deux Abeilles (great tarte tatin - French apple pie), with a very interesting friend of hers, Diane Pernet (click on the "DP history" on the right on her blog to know more about her).
Later, I met my Ohio-born, London-dwelling friend Jackie Danicki at Galleries Lafayette, and we marched (well, Métro-ed) off to Bar du Marché, corner of rue de Seine and rue de Buci, off Boulevard St. Germain, to watch the world walk by. Here we are at Bar du Marché...
And here are a few of the other marchers.
Islam And Modern European Values Do Not Mix
Dan Bilefsky and Ian Fisher write in the IHT that people in Europe have had it with the Muslim immigrants:
"You saw what happened with the pope," said Patrick Goeman, 43, the owner of Raga, a funky wine bar in central Antwerp, half an hour outside Brussels. "He said Islam is an aggressive religion. And the next day they kill a nun somewhere and make his point.
"Rationality is gone."
Goeman is hardly an extremist. In fact, he organized a protest last week in which 20 bars and restaurants closed on the night when a far-right party with an anti-Muslim message held a rally nearby.
His worry is shared by centrists across Europe disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of violence.
For years, those who raised their voices were mostly on the far right. Now those normally seen as moderates - ordinary people as well as politicians - are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism should have limits.
...Whatever the motivations, "the reality is that views on both sides are becoming more extreme," said Imam Wahid Pedersen, a prominent Dane who is a convert to Islam. "It has become politically correct to attack Islam, and this is making it hard for moderates on both sides to remain reasonable."
Yeah? Well, maybe Islam should be attacked. I heard some Islamic Studies prof from American University mewling about how people are people are mean to Muslims on Terri Gross' Fresh Air when I was back in the States. The prof complained that we're "sensitive" to blacks in America, but why can't we be "sensitive" to Muslims? Oh, boohoo. Terry brought up a version of the point made above, about the Islam as an excuse for a death cult thing of a growing number of Muslims.
Meanwhile, in France, via The Paris Blog, a bus was set on fire in the Paris suburbs yesterday. Rue Rude writes:
Everyone is worried about a renewal of the violence of last November. Yesterday a bus was set on fire in the middle of the day in one of the “sensitive” suburbs, Grigny in Essonne, and about 300 people stood around and watched as the firemen put it out, protected by policemen who themselves were the target of stone-throwing. The local reaction, even from older people, seemed to be, “Why don’t the police leave?...Afterward, a lot of promises were made and there was a lot of talk about improving the lot of the jeunes de banlieue, but nothing has really changed. The only real hope is for the economy to get better, and it is inching its way up at the moment.
What has changed since last year is that there is starting to be more violence directed at the policemen individually, including traps set for them. In the past week several policemen have been wounded badly. It's remarkable to me, as an American, to see that these policemen, all armed, have not one single time drawn their guns to shoot the men and boys attacking them.
More from the IHT story about the mood of Europeans in Europe:
"So there is this fear," he said, "that we are being transported back in a time machine where we have to explain to our immigrants that there is equality between men and women, and gays should be treated properly. Now there is the idea we have to do it again."
So strong is the fear that Dutch values of tolerance are under siege that the government introduced a primer on those values last winter for prospective newcomers to Dutch life: a DVD briefly showing topless women and two men kissing. The film does not explicitly mention Muslims, but its target audience is as clear as its message: Embrace our culture or leave.
Perhaps most wrenching has been the issue of free speech and expression, and the growing fear that any criticism of Islam could provoke violence.
In France last month, a secondary school teacher went into hiding after receiving death threats for writing an article calling the Prophet Muhammad "a merciless warlord, a looter, a mass murderer of Jews and a polygamist." In Germany, a Mozart opera with an additional scene showing the severed heads of Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha and Poseidon was canceled because of security fears.
With each incident, mainstream leaders are speaking more plainly.
"Self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practice violence in the name of Islam," Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said in criticizing the opera's cancellation. "It makes no sense to retreat."
The backlash is showing itself in other ways. Last month, the British home secretary, John Reid, called on Muslim parents to keep a close watch on their children. "There's no nice way of saying this," he told a Muslim group in East London. "These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombing, grooming them to kill themselves to murder others."
If having you in our society is like having a mass homicide virus, I think you should be asked to leave. But, how, in a free society, do we find out who the mass murderers are before they do the deed -- and still have a free society?
Boohoohoo
The LA Weekly is reporting news. And it isn't PC-friendly.
Sanity Test
Are you rational? Find out here.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster's Got Company
And the same goes for Jesus and Allah and the god of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. A friend of a friend saw this on someone's car:
Zeus is God. Read the Illiad.
If you believe in the god your parents believe in, how come you're so sure he's the real deal?
If you're going to be irrational and believe in god, why not believe in a fun, interesting god, and become a Pastafarian, a worshipper of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is the deity of a parody religion founded in 2005 by physics graduate Bobby Henderson to protest the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to require the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution. In an open letter on his website, Henderson professes belief in a supernatural Creator that resembles spaghetti and meatballs called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and calls for Pastafarianism to be taught in science classrooms, essentially invoking a reductio ad absurdum argument against the teaching of intelligent design.[1][2]Followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) call themselves Pastafarians, a word combined from pasta and Rastafarian.
Here are the tenets of the religion:
Henderson proposed many of the beliefs to parody common arguments by proponents of intelligent design.[2] These are the canonical beliefs set forth by Henderson:[3]* An invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe, including a mountain, trees and a midget.
* All evidence for evolution was planted by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The FSM tests Pastafarians' faith by making things look older than they are. "For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 11,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease."
* The Pastafarian belief of heaven stresses two points. "A) It has beer volcanos as far as the eye can see & B) It has a stripper factory."[3]
* "RAmen" is the official conclusion to prayers, certain sections of The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and so on, and is a combination of the Semitic term "Amen" (used in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and Ramen, a noodle. While it is typically spelled with both a capital "R" and "A", it is also acceptable to spell it with only a capital R.
Chien Perdu
Heart-snatching in any language; but for me, especially heart-snatching in French.
My little dog did not come with me this time (took me too long to find an apartment -- didn't have time to get her papers). She's home with Gregg. It takes a big man to walk a tiny dog. Also, he's discovered what a girl-magnet Lucy is. He thinks I should rent her out to guys who can't get dates.
We Broke It, You Pay For It
From a story by Michael R. Gordon in The New York Times, Gen. Casey appears to either need some bed rest or fewer bong hits. We're going to hand off Iraq to the Iraqi army? And something good is going to come of it? Now, I was never for going into Iraq, and always for going in getting Osama (flattening Afghanistan is how I believe I put it). And I think it's terrible our soldiers have been sent in on a bogus mission. But, now that we've broken the stranglehold Saddam had that kept the peace at a minimum of bloodshed (compared to what the Iraqis have now), we're simply going to pull out? And what, the Iraqi army is going to convince the Sunnis and Shiites to shake hands and play nice?
Mmmm...maybe not. An excerpt from Gordon's article:
Given the rise in sectarian killings, a Sunni-based insurgency that appears to be as potent as ever and an Iraqi security establishment that continues to have difficulties deploying sufficient numbers of motivated and proficient forces in Baghdad, General Casey’s target seems to be an increasingly heroic assumption.On paper, Iraq has substantial security forces. The Pentagon noted in an August report to Congress that Iraq had more than 277,000 troops and police officers, including some 115,000 army combat soldiers.
But those figures, which have often been cited at Pentagon news conferences as an indicator of progress and a potential exit strategy for American troops, paint a distorted picture. When the deep-seated reluctance of many soldiers to serve outside their home regions, leaves of absence and AWOL rates are taken into account, only a portion of the Iraqi Army is readily available for duty in Baghdad and other hot spots.
The fact that the Ministry of Defense has sent only two of the six additional battalions that American commanders have requested for Baghdad speaks volumes about the difficulty the Iraqi government has encountered in fielding a professional military. The four battalions that American commanders are still waiting for is equivalent to 2,800 soldiers, hardly a large commitment in the abstract but one that the Iraqis are still struggling to meet.
From the start, General Casey’s broader strategy for Iraq has been premised on the optimistic assumption that Iraqi forces could soon substitute for American ones. In February 2005, General Casey noted that in the year ahead the United States would begin to “transfer the counterinsurgency mission to the increasingly capable Iraqi security forces across Iraq.”
Gordon writes of some reasons for optimism. Slim and slimmer:
Certainly, the Iraqi security forces have made some gains. The Iraqi military is larger and better trained, and has taken control of more territory in the past year. Some Iraqi soldiers have fought well. But in Baghdad, which American commanders have defined as the central front in the war, it is still a junior partner.To improve the Iraqi forces, the American military is inserting teams of military advisers with Iraqi units. American officials also say their Iraqi counterparts are trying to use the lure of extra pay to persuade reluctant troops to come to the aid of their capital.
But longstanding problems remain. A quarter or so of a typical Iraqi unit is on leave at any one time. Since Iraq lacks an effective banking system for paying its troops, soldiers are generally given a week’s leave each month to bring their pay home.
Desertions and absenteeism are another concern. According to the August Pentagon report, 15 percent of new recruits drop out during initial training. Beyond that, deployment to combat zones, the report adds, sometimes results in additional “absentee spikes of 5 to 8 percent.”
As a result, the actual number of Iraqi boots on the ground on a given day is routinely less than the official number. In areas where the risks and hardship are particularly great, the shortfall is sometimes significant. In fiercely contested Anbar Province in western Iraq, the day-to-day strength of the Seventh Iraqi Army Division in August was only about 35 percent of the soldiers on its rolls, while the day-to-day strength of the First Division was 50 percent of its authorized strength.
Another complication is that the even-numbered divisions in the 10-division army have largely been recruited locally and thus generally reflect the ethnic makeup of the regions where they are based. So, much of the Iraqi Army consists of soldiers who are reluctant to serve outside the areas in which they reside. Several battalions have gone AWOL rather then deploy to Baghdad, an American military officer said.
Leave that to us Americans. Dying and coming home in pieces, on George Bush's bad errand.
Hear Me Blab In France
Talking tonight for the Paris EPWN, European Professional Woman's Network, about what I do for a living and how I did it and do it. Here's the announcement:
WRITER AMY ALKON, "THE ADVICE GODDESS" - exclusively for ParisEPWN (European Professional Women's Network).Amy Alkon is a syndicated columnist whose award-winning, hilarious and psychologically sound advice column, "The Advice Goddess," appears weekly in 100+ newspapers across the USA and Canada. Although her column reads as humor, it’s based in science, evolutionary psychology, and ethics. Amy has made numerous television and radio appearances, including on Politically Incorrect, Good Morning America, The Today Show, NPR, CNN, MTV, and Entertainment Tonight.
Come hear how she started her advice-giving career on the streets of New York... literally, and how she’s developed it into a successful writing profession. Amy blogs daily at www.advicegoddess.com and will also share useful information on the business of blogging.
Non-members of EPWN may sign up at: http://www.parispwn.net/ in "Paris Calendar" top center of the page.
15 Euros participation aux frais includes drinks and munchies.
Le Pub Saint-Germain, 17 rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, 75006 Paris
Starts at 19h sharp.
Note: My talk will be taking place upstairs.
Unsafe At Any Speed
Oh, the joy of the Parisian washing machine.
Part of the fun of being in a different country is experiencing new appliances in rental apartments where the owner has decided to give you an exciting game -- washing and drying your clothes without the directions booklet so you can either correctly decipher the little hieroglyphics or break the appliances and lose your security deposit!
No, we didn't break the washer/dryer. But our clothes were trapped in it for quite some time -- not the first time this has happened to me in France. (You have to wait for the cycles you've accidentally started to complete so it will set your wash free.)
In the inability to figure out how to make "essorage" (the dryer function) work Sunday afternoon, I took photos of the thing -- clever me -- to take to the regular Sunday night dinner at Jim Haynes' in hopes of showing somebody in the know the pics in my camera and getting advice. At Haynes' place, I met a very interesting guy named Johnty doing a doc on France for the BBC, and Lena met a retired logic and then aesthetics prof-turned painter from Vancouver, BC, and we got so wrapped up talking to them that I forgot -- clever me -- to pull out my camera.
Oh well...we ended up having a forest of wet shirts, socks, pants, and underwear to machete through every time we needed to get something out of the refrigerator. Not the worst thing in the world, and these Parisian moments of inability to function on the most mundane level are always good for a laugh.
That said, L'Amerloque, if you happen to be lurking in these blog parts, Lena is heading out, but I'm still here for another week. What the hell is the 800/500 button for, and will pushing it after going to programme K (essorage) dry my wet clothes?
Giving Michael J. Fox The Thug's Rush
Rush Limbaugh is a brilliant broadcaster, but compassion and veracity aren't his strong suits. He takes Michael J. Fox to task for appearing in a commercial for a Democratic pol, accusing him of going off his meds for the occasion. And, so what if he did? Then again, I doubt it -- both from my personal experience with somebody with Parkinson's, and from Fox's own words.
In reading through the comments on the Fox/Limbaugh post on Crooks & Liars, I found a link to Fox's account -- an excerpt from his autobio, Lucky Man -- about learning he had Parkinson's, covering it up, and the effects of the disease. A very moving piece. Fox writes:
I need to explain the "on-off" phenomenon. This Jekyll-and-Hyde melodrama is a constant vexation for the P.D. patient, especially one as determined as I was to remain closeted. "On" refers to the time when the medication is telling my brain everything it wants to hear. I'm relatively loose and fluid, my mind clear and movements under control. Only a trained observer could detect my Parkinson's. During one of my "off" periods, even the most myopic layperson, while perhaps not able to diagnose P.D. specifically, can recognize that I am in serious trouble.When I'm "off," the disease has complete authority over my physical being. I'm utterly in its possession. Sometimes there are flashes of function, and I can be effective at performing basic physical tasks, certainly feeding and dressing myself (though I'll lean toward loafers and pullover sweaters), as well as any chore calling for more brute force than manual dexterity. In my very worst "off" times I experience the full panoply of classic Parkinsonian symptoms: rigidity, shuffling, tremors, lack of balance, diminished small motor control, and the insidious cluster of symptoms that makes communicationówritten as well as spokenódifficult and sometimes impossible.
Hypophonia, hypomimia, and "cluttering" can all get in the way of verbally expressing feelings and ideas. Hypophonia weakens the voice so badly that for some, like Muhammad Ali, simply making yourself audible demands a tremendous effort. So far I've been spared that particular challenge. When I'm "off," my struggle is with "cluttered speech" combined with hypomimia, the medical term for the "mask effect" often observed in the faces of P.D. patients. My ability to form thoughts and ideas into words and sentences is not impaired; the problem is translating those words and sentences into articulate speech. My lips, tongue, and jaw muscles simply won't cooperate. What words I do smuggle through the blockade can be heard, though not always comprehended. Try as I might, I can't inflect my speech to reflect my state of mind. And it's not like I can liven up my halting monotone with a raised eyebrow; my face, utterly expressionless, simply won't respond. Like Emmett Kelly, but without the greasepaint, I often appear sad on the outside while actually smiling, or at least smirking, on the inside.
Micrographia is precisely what it sounds like -- tiny writing. I have a stockbroker friend, a fellow Young Onset patient (amazingly, the friendship predates our diagnoses) whose secretary was the first to recommend he consult a neurologist. Over the course of a year or so, she had found it increasingly difficult to decipher his memos, and finally confronted him with the evidence of his incredible shrinking handwriting. Without drugs, my own penmanship becomes similarly microscopic. Combined with the stubborn refusal of my "off" arm to move in a smooth, lateral, left-to-right direction, the result is a fractured column of miniature scribbles.
These impediments to self-expression are not the most painful or debilitating features of Parkinson's disease, yet they madden me more than even the most teeth-rattling full body tremor. When the meds are "off" and P.D. has already rendered me a prisoner in my own body, the suspension of my telephone and letter-writing privileges seems excessive.
Then there's the sensation of not being able to settle, or land in any one spot for more than a second or two. When I'm "off," I feel like I'm dangling from a coat hanger that has been surgically implanted under my skin in the muscles of my back, wedged between my shoulder blades. The sensation is not quite one of being suspended in the air; it's more like being jacked up, with my toes scraping and kicking at the ground, straining for purchase, so that, if only for a moment, both feet can plant firmly and bear the full weight of my body. During the years I spent promoting the fiction that none of this was actually happening to me, my only recourse was to isolate myself and grit it out.
Three to four times every day, I go through the transitions between the two poles, navigating the tricky passage from the land of "off" to "on." The most surreal aspect of this thrill ride is that during every "on" time, I delude myself into believing that that, and not the other, is my "normal" condition.
None of the pills I take gives me even a mild buzz, but the freedom of movement and the interlude of physical grace they provide are intoxicating. I don't squander a nanosecond of this time contemplating the inconvenient truth that what I'm experiencing is not "real." I don't think about that when I'm splashing in the surf with Aquinnah and Schuyler, fishing for bass with Sam, or huffing to keep up with Tracy on the bike rides she loves so much. I truly do forget and, lost in this sublime ordinariness, it's easy to miss the subtle twitches, creeping rigidity, and vibrating sensations urging me to crack open the vial and toss back another little blue pill.
Every P.D. patient's experience is unique. Mine is this: If I miss or ignore those early-warning signs, there's no second chance. I am down for the full sixty to ninety minutes. It's no good upping the dosage, either -- that only results in exaggerated dyskinesias (random, spastic, hyperextended movements of the extremities) when the L-dopa finally does take effect. As with the "on" period, it is hard to believe that the "off" is ever going to end, and it doesn't help to remind myself that it always does.
Arranging life in order to be "on" in public, and "off" for as little time as possible, is a balancing act for any P.D.er. In my case, the gut-wrenching prospect of losing my balance, figuratively or literally, on The Late Show, say, or at a public event where there was no way to avoid close scrutiny, loomed ever larger the longer I remained in the closet.
Learning to titrate medication so that it kicked in before an appearance or performance, sometimes within minutes of my cue, became a process of continuous tweaking and refining -- lots of trial with little room for error. Timing a punchline was a joke if I hadn't timed my meds accurately. I became a virtuoso at manipulating drug intake, so that I'd peak at exactly the right time and place.
When the L-dopa begins to work, and the current "off" segues into a fresh "on," the sheer relief of the transformation is its own special high. The people close to me are attuned to the physical ceremony that marks my latest transition back into the world of the fully functioning -- the subtle sigh, accompanied by a sudden spastic thrust or two of my left leg, immediately followed by the outstretching of my arms and rolling of my head. The leg thrusts are involuntary but entirely welcome, because they signal the beginning of the end. As the tension leaves my body, it always travels down and through that particular limb, and then into my foot, which rotates three or four times. Finally, as if being pulled by the force of a vacuum, the tension disappears, departing through the sole of my left shoe. The extension of my arms, and rolling of my head, are simply my body's way of celebrating the reunion of mind and motion.
This ritual ending of an "off" period is immediately followed by another personal rite, this one marking the return to "on" status. If you ask Tracy or anyone else who spends a lot of time with me, they will tell you that I do, and say, the same thing every single time: I smile, close my eyes, and then, like Barry White on helium, croon, "oh baby . . . I love it when the drugs kick in."
One caveat -- the research, via Columbia University, that Fox mentions (at the link) on the power of prayer was actually fraudulent. Of course, as anybody rational would expect, distant people praying for you doesn't affect health outcomes. Okay, Fox is just an actor, not a Ph.D., but like too many people, he's immediately taken in by the label of a prestigious university on a study...even when it so obviously flies in the face of reason.
And, getting back to the original subject, here's another video clip of Fox, on Inside The Actor's Studio, in which his Parkinson's is somewhat apparent, although the clip mainly includes a head and shoulders shot.
Birthday At La Coupole
You really haven't lived until you've had the waiters march to your table, all in a line, Busby Berkeley-style, at Paris' La Coupole, to bring your cake and sing you happy birthday. The cute waiter on the end was ours. Count along with them. Un!
Deux!
Trois!
Bon anniversaire!
Are We Or Aren't We?
George Bush tells George Stephanopoulos we've never been "stay the course" on Iraq. Well, never except for these times:
BUSH: We will stay the course. [8/30/06]BUSH: We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq. [8/4/05]
BUSH: We will stay the course until the job is done, Steve. And the temptation is to try to get the President or somebody to put a timetable on the definition of getting the job done. We’re just going to stay the course. [12/15/03]
BUSH: And my message today to those in Iraq is: We’ll stay the course. [4/13/04]
BUSH: And that’s why we’re going to stay the course in Iraq. And that’s why when we say something in Iraq, we’re going to do it. [4/16/04]
BUSH: And so we’ve got tough action in Iraq. But we will stay the course. [4/5/04]
Will we pull our troops out just for the election, and maybe keep them on warships playing chess, and then send them back in after a Republican Congress and Senate are assured?
Muppets On The Métro
Sorry the puppets in the puppet show at the rear of the train are a little hard to see, but I was a bit jetlagged, and too tired to get up and get in closer. Luckily, I still got a nice tight photo of this guy who's clearly campaigning very hard to be my French boyfriend.
Anyway, we have this friend in Paris, my friend's boyfriend, a retired master woodworker named Pierre, who speaks no English. Despite that, he and my boyfriend Gregg, whose command of French includes the words "bonjour" and "merci," and the ability to point to exactly the right cut of meat at Boucherie Roger, really hit it off.
Gregg and I are coming back to Paris in a while, enroute to a noir film festival in Italy he needs to attend, and he wants to be able to talk directly with Pierre. He proposed hiring a translator. I told my friend, who said this would be a bad idea, because Gregg would miss too much, as Pierre carries on the French tradition of mime. No, not Marcel Marceau whiteface mime, but Pierre's in-the-moment hilarious imitations of people to get his point across if ever he says a word in French we don't know -- or just to make us laugh. Typical of this is his pantomime, when he sees very old ladies on the bus, of giving them an injection (description not complete without his "psssst!" sound effect) and sending them on the bus line all the way to the end, to the cemetery Père Lachaise.
Tempest in a B Cup
Tony's got titties. Tony Blair, that is, and people actually seem to care. Barbara Ellen writes in the Observer:
More interesting still was that, for a change, it was the men in power whose bodies were being scrutinised and objectified. Usually it would be their women (Cherie and Samantha) who would get the cameras zooming in on their cellulite, with columnists like myself worrying on their behalf about the 'orange-peel effect' (complete with pips), and musing whether middle-aged mothers should 'risk' going on to the beach at all without being garbed in head-to-toe tarpaulin.This time around, it was the men having their various areas of flab labelled and criticised, including 'love handles' (strangely termed, because when you have them nobody loves you) and 'moobies' (the dreaded man-boobs). It's a new cultural wriggle we could probably thank Heat for - specifically the magazine's 'Not Torso of the Week' section, which features famous men looking bad topless. (For the uninitiated, a recent entry was Michael Douglas, the size of whose stomach suggested he had been following his most famous character's mantra, 'greed is good', a tad too literally). Now here are Blair and Cameron getting the same treatment. All rather heartening in a twisted sort of way. It's about time men got a taste of the body fascism women suffer from teen mag to grave. Then again, maybe not - when Winston Churchill was planning to 'fight them on the beaches' he probably had quite different things in mind than being teased by tabloids about his 'moobies'.
Interestingly, there weren't the expected levels of gender Schadenfraude among women to see Blair and Cameron being objectified, simply because most females are hardwired to be sympathetic towards anybody who gets caught out with 'holiday podge' syndrome.
No, it's that most women don't care about men's looks with anywhere near the intensity men care about women's. See Gaulin and McBurney's primer on evolutionary psychology. In the mean time, here's a quickie explanation from my column:
Evolutionary psychologist David Buss studied 10,047 of us neo-knuckledraggers across 37 cultures. They aren't reading Vogue magazine in Zambia, but men there are still as hunter-gatherer hot as men here for female fertility high-signs like youth, beauty, symmetry, and hourglass figures. Women around the world (even those popping birth control pills like M&Ms) are still driven to seek high status men who show the potential to provide for the cave-lings. (Do note that "high status" doesn't necessarily mean the richest guy on the planet. If you're a poet, a day-trader is likely to make you hurl.)
How To Buy A Chicken
Park your bike ...
...in front of Boucherie Roger on rue Montorgueil, the food street...
...where, at a café next door, Lena and Amy, eating sandwiches after a stint at the museum Georges Pompidou, including this interactive exhibit...
...and following a little trip to buy a printer at FNAC after Amy forgot the cables to her portable one...Lena and Amy will watch, unable to pry themselves from their chairs, as some guy steals it. (No, it didn't happen, but we admired Monsieur Bike Rider's...courage...in leaving it to chance.)
Finally, le chick. Don't forget to pluck it or to remove the toes before you cook it!
Cozy little thing, oui?
What's Wrong With Sexy Mommy Halloween?
I'm in Paris, where many, if not most, of the women have sex appeal -- into their 60s and beyond. And you know what? That's smart. You want to keep a man, don't dress so he'll confuse you with the plumber.
Allison Glock doesn't get it, writing an op-ed whine about sexy Halloween costumes for adults for the IHT. An excerpt:
While the hemlines were slightly lower on the Kmart French Maid and Cheerleader, Wal-Mart hewed to form with a saucy Red Riding Hood and a naughty rag doll, advertising a "sultry vinyl bodice and thigh-highs - lollipop not included."
A theme was emerging. And it wasn't Halloween. Since when did Halloween costumes become marital aids? The hobo has turned into the Hillbilly Honey. The traditional vampire is now the Mistress of Darkness. I have nothing against playing erotic dress-up, or even mass-market fetishism. I'd just prefer it didn't converge with a family holiday (and wasn't sold next to the dryer sheets). If you want to play cheerleader at home - go team. But trick-or-treating with your children in anything featuring latex and cleavage seems like a little too much trick.
And really, wasn't Halloween the one day modern women could relax about looking hot? What if I just want to be a mummy sans yummy?
I noticed that on the outside of every package was a photo of a woman modeling not only the costume, but teetering heels and bras of the push-up variety. The First Lady costume was not, as one might expect, a red business suit, but a pink crepe mini-dress. At least it had the matching pillbox hat. The angel was dubbed "heaven's hottie."
My girls were confused. "Where are the monsters?" they asked.
"Where are the superheroes?" I pointed weakly to Wonder Woman and her thigh-high boots. "She's pretty," said my 4-year-old. Before adding, "You can see her breasts."
As I watched them scan the selections, soaking in the unspoken message, I remembered my freshman year in college, going to a Halloween party dressed as a pumpkin. My face was painted orange. My torso was covered in fabric stuffed into a wide, round orb. It was not seductive. And it hadn't occurred to me that it should be. There were no adult pumpkin costumes in the stores this year. No vegetable costumes of any sort.
You know, lady, your girls would do well to see you dressed as a sexy mommy instead of a big pumpkin. Maybe they'd learn a little something about how to keep a man. FYI, as an advice columnist, "Mommy sans yummy" is something I hear a lot about -- from all the guys having affairs with their secretaries.
Talk To The Snail
This is "Year In The Merde" author Stephen Clarke's next book, and it looks very funny. Skimmed it at the Village Voice bookshop on rue Princesse as Lena was buying books to read while I slave over a hot computer in a café.
Amy & Lena's Excellent Paris Adventure
I'm in Paris and Lena has come to visit me for a few days to get further work done on her sex change operation in between eating escargot and seeing the sights. The view from our window:
The view from inside our window.
I'm Not A Gang Member And I Don't Belong To A Gym
Suddenly, "hoodies" are everywhere. Yes, American continues its descent from one day of "Casual Friday" to every day looking like Extremely Slovely Saturday.
In keeping with the rapid decline into the "I'm either your $500/hr. lawyer, or a lady who got lost while cleaning out her garage" aesthetic, somebody decided to get two zip-up gray sweatshirts together with a couple of mohair sweaters, and convinced them them to fuck like rabbits.
Yes, now we have hoodies in a multiplicity of ridiculous fabrics -- wool, mohair, and cashmere. Worse yet, the hoodie isn't even interesting enough to be awful, like Uggs or those rubber clogs everybody wears that only come in triple-J width.
Luckily, I don't follow fashion -- a nonhabit which saves me piles of money, along with the embarrassment of being a hoodie-wearing sheep. I mean, sure, wear one you bought for $15.99 at Target to the gym, but spend $300 on the cashmere sweatshirt pictured above? Oh, sorry, I mean $277.20. Marked down from...$462.00!
Lately, I've been dressing in evening wear for regular day-to-day errands (evening wear bought on deep discount for $30 at Loehmann's, since the Archie Bunker aesthetic seems to be what all the girls are wearing these days).
So...doggie needs to be picked up from the groomer? I'll wear a fishtailed floor-length tafetta skirt, cut with a very thin Motocross ski jacket I got for 10 eu in Paris, along with a lacy green evening-wear shawl as a scarf. And a pair of boots under it all.
It takes no more time (less, in fact) than throwing on a pair of jeans and...horrors...a hoodie...but when's the last time a guy bowed for you at the grocery store because you came in wearing a sweatshirt?
Sheeple Are Ugly
The New York Times, via Michelle Slatalla, eventually noticed (in May) that people are wearing bright-colored, hideously ugly rubber clogs with a big rubber belt on the back, called Crocs. P.S. They look a lot less big and ugly at the Amazon link above than they actually are. Here's an excerpt from her piece:
"Congratulations on creating another teenage fad," I told Tia Mattson, a company spokeswoman."No, no, the thing we've tried to do is not push this as a fashion product. It's not fad-driven and it's not just teenagers," Ms. Mattson said, horrified at the thought.
"But all the teenagers in my town are wearing them," I said.
"Children are wearing them," Ms. Mattson corrected me. "Grandmothers are wearing them. Men are wearing them. Chefs. Doctors and nurses."
"Nurses too?" I asked.
"The thing that's unique about the shoes is their material," Ms. Mattson said. "It's not plastic or rubber. It's a resin that we developed that feels really soft and warm when you wear it."
I tried to picture fuchsia clog things in the intensive care unit. It was slightly easier than trying to imagine Uggs.
"If they're not a fad, what are they?" I asked.
"They're a great comfort shoe at a great price," Ms. Mattson said.
One interesting thing I learned about this particular fad — sorry, I mean comfort shoe — is that the trend started in the middle of the country, instead of on the East or West coasts. Orders have been strong since 2002, when the company exhibited the shoes (in limited colors) at the Miami International Boat Show. But production capabilities limited early distribution to states like Colorado and regions like the Midwest.
"So California kids are adopting a fad that Kansas City is already over?" I asked.
"It's not a fad," Ms. Mattson reminded me.
If you'd like bright clogs that are very comfortable (I bought them about three years ago, after I saw my doctor wearing them, and he told me he could go 12 hours on his feet in them), go for Italian-made Calzuros. Nobody else has them, and they're very sleek looking compared to the ugly Crocs. Here are mine.
They are exceptionally comfortable, and I don't know if you can say the same for Sloggers, but Sloggers are the best-priced clog I've seen, and much better looking than the double-wide Crocs.
Of course, I don't leave the house wearing my Calzuros, unless the house happens to be on fire. The same goes for flipflops, which are rightly known as "shower shoes" -- a wee hint on where to wear them.
As for rubber clogs as gardening shoes...as I mentioned recently, I don't "garden," as I consider gardening glorified farming, but I guess you could come mow my lawn wearing them and I wouldn't complain.
It's Called "British Airways" Not "Airline Employees For Jesus"
A British Airways employee is told she can't wear her cross over her uniform, and she wigs. David Smith writes for the London Observer that Nadia Eweida plans to sue BA for religious discrimination:
Eweida, from Twickenham, said she had just undergone training on respecting and understanding other people's beliefs with BA when she was asked to remove the crucifix. She said she sought permission to wear it from management, but was refused. After a meeting with her managers in September, she was told in a letter: 'You have been sent home because you have failed to comply with a reasonable request. You were asked to cover up or remove your cross and chain which you refused to do. British Airways uniform standards stipulate that adornments of any kind are not to be worn with the uniform.'A BA spokeswoman emphasised yesterday that Eweida has not been suspended from work, but chose to take unpaid leave. She said that the matter remained under investigation and an appeal was due to be heard this week.
She added: 'British Airways does recognise that uniformed employees may wish to wear jewellery including religious symbols. Our uniform policy states that these items can be worn, underneath the uniform. There is no ban. This rule applies for all jewellery and religious symbols on chains and is not specific to the Christian cross.'
One woman's cross is another woman's Wiccan pentagram! And what's next, handing out wine and wafers with every boarding pass?
Delusion, Not Honesty, Is The Best Policy
Well, at least for a number of LA Times readers. Heather Havrilesky wrote a fantastic piece about pregnancy -- the kind of piece I'd subscribe to the LAT daily to read. Here's an excerpt:
I'VE NEVER KNOWN a thing about pregnancy, so once I got pregnant, I quizzed every mother I knew about what Mother Nature had in store for me. Instead of taking time out from their busy mothering lives to relive the biological roller coaster of creating another human being, every single one advised me to purchase "What to Expect When You're Expecting," a hideous descent into the hell of gestation that outlines every possible malady and gruesome side effect ever experienced by any pregnant woman anywhere.The grotesqueries listed therein, from heartburn to hemorrhoids to chronic dependence on adult diapers, are divided into monthly sections so that future mothers can savor a little dose of suspense-horror thrills and chills before bed each night.
But the most unnerving thing about "What to Expect When You're Expecting" is the cover. Perhaps in an effort to offset the bewildering and unpleasant-sounding ailments inside, the book is pink and yellow and covered in some kind of flocked, flowery wallpaper or quilt pattern clearly meant to evoke the sort of stuffy, overheated, split-level homes in the Midwest that have "country" decorations everywhere, from porcelain milkmaid statuettes to framed pictures of white ducks with blue ribbons around their necks. A mere glance at that cover is clinically proven to give pregnant women hot flashes, cramping and suicidal ideation.
And that's before their eyes rest on the main illustration. There, perched amid all those tiny yellow and pink flowers, is the expectant mother of every woman's nightmares. On my copy, she has a perky bob haircut, the sort of molded, unmoving mom-hair that only a woman who stayed up all night baking brownies for the PTA sale would have the audacity to wear out of the house. Not only that, she's clad in a yellow, Mr. Rogers-style cardigan and red polyester slacks that call to mind your fourth-grade Social Studies teacher, the one who gave an entire class of 9-year-olds night sweats by telling them that the Iran hostage crisis was sure to develop into World War III.
But that's not all. The woman also has on terrible geriatric penny loafers, and she's perched primly in a rocking chair, with this filthy, chipper smile on her face, like all she's done for months is sit there, rocking back and forth, only occasionally stopping to peruse the "Debilitating Symptom of the Month" or to order more whimsical milkmaid statuettes for the dining room. You could pass out copies of this image at local high schools and instantly cut the teenage pregnancy rate in half.
The fun goes on. The readers used to the LAT as a form of sleep aid must not have been the least bit pleased. This lady managed to take it very personally, reminding me of my parents stern intonings, "Just be glad you have two arms and two legs." Um, yes, we are glad, but can't we kind of move on from there? Here's the lady's letter:
Painful readingRe "One mad mamma-to-be," Opinion, Oct. 12
Heather Havrilesky's vitriolic Op-Ed article slamming the book "What to Expect When You're Expecting" did not strike me as funny.
A normal, healthy pregnancy is a gift, not a "hell of gestation." Talk to any woman (or man) who has lived with the pain of infertility. She would gladly take on the heartburn, dizzy spells and hormone-induced mood swings for the joy of a healthy fetal heartbeat.
Compared to hands-on motherhood, pregnancy is but a hormonally charged walk in the park.
JOAN WAGNER
Los Alamitos
You know, every time something bad happens to me -- like the death of my Advice Lady partner Marlowe, I don't write angry letters to the newspaper about articles that relate to what killed her but that treat the subject matter somewhat under-solemnly.
Look, we're sorry you appear to be humorless, Mrs. Wagner, but, on the bright side, if you don't like funny, entertaining reading, the LAT is still running Al Martinez, Howard Leff, and Chris Erskine.
By the way, how come so few editors at daily newspapers have figured out the not-exactly-particle-physics idea of putting the ACTUAL FUCKING LINK to the story in the letters to the editor online? Still not hip to the Internets, huh, boys and girls?
Irate reader link via Kate Coe/FishbowlLA
Geek House
Before I started reading Orac's blog, Respectful Insolence, we had a chance non-meeting.
Actually, he posted a piece on the house next door to where I used to live, on Westminster, by the beach, in Venice -- the house where he dreams of spending the geek-perfect retirement.
The Dungeons & Dragons next door, you could call the place.
Equal Pay For A Whole Lot Less Work?
That's my problem with what a lot of women are really asking for when they quote that old "75 cents on the dollar" figure that women supposedly make compared to men.
Sorry, but simpy having a vagina doesn't mean you're automatically going to make less money. In fact, in Australia, they found that women make more than men when they take "traditionally male" jobs. Bettina Arndt explains in Australia's Herald Sun:
So, what if the average woman in Australia earns $300 less per week than the average man.That statistic fails to take in account the hours worked. In fact, the average Australian Joe Blow works almost twice as many hours as the average Jenny Blow, according to data HILDA, the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia survey.
Since he's putting in twice as many hours, I hope Joe Blow would earn far more.
Not only does he work far longer hours, he's also far more likely to take on hazardous jobs such as mining, construction, trucking, he's more likely to be willing to move overseas, or to an undesirable location on demand and has trained for more technical jobs with less people contact.
In fact, the wage gap hasn't much to do with discrimination, or conservative governments trying to keep women in their place.
Differences in the way men and women behave in the workplace largely determine how much they earn.
Women are more likely to balance income with a desire for safety, fulfilment, flexibility and proximity to home.
These lifestyle advantages lead to more people competing for jobs and thus lower pay.
Wage gaps tend to disappear when women put in the same hours and have the same experience, training and work history as men.
In Australia, similarly trained men and women under 30 show similar earnings. It is only in the older age groups that wage gaps start to widen, according to Mark Woden at the Melbourne Institute.
Yet men and women still tend not to have the same training.
A London School of Economics study of more than 10,000 British graduates found the men started off earning 12 per cent more than the women.
The reason? Most of the women had majored in the social sciences, while many men chose engineering, maths and computing.
While more than half the women said their primary interest was a socially useful job, men were twice as likely to mention salary.
...Women are making choices. Yes, these choices are constrained by their family responsibilities. That's the reason they work those shorter hours and seek the lower paid, but more flexible work closer to home.
I like to call this the "Thank you for raising children who won't grow up to carjack the rest of us" plan. You have kids, you'd better be up for it. If you're not, go heavy on the spermicide, thank you.
Recent statistics reported by Robert Pear in The New York Times say mothers and fathers today are spending more time with their kids than most people probably think -- if the parents were honest in their reportage. Self-reported sexual statistics are notoriously dubious. I'd say parental guilt could likewise be a motivator for fudging the stats; in this case, based on analysis of thousands of personal diaries. Here they are:
Despite the surge of women into the work force, mothers are spending at least as much time with their children today as they did 40 years ago, and the amount of child care and housework performed by fathers has sharply increased, researchers say......At first, the authors say, “it seems reasonable to expect that parental investment in child-rearing would have declined” since 1965, when 60 percent of all children lived in families with a breadwinner father and a stay-at-home mother. Only about 30 percent of children now live in such families. With more mothers in paid jobs, many policy makers have assumed that parents must have less time to interact with their children.
But, the researchers say, the conventional wisdom is not borne out by the data they collected from families asked to account for their time. The researchers found, to their surprise, that married and single parents spent more time teaching, playing with and caring for their children than parents did 40 years ago.
For married mothers, the time spent on child care activities increased to an average of 12.9 hours a week in 2000, from 10.6 hours in 1965. For married fathers, the time spent on child care more than doubled, to 6.5 hours a week, from 2.6 hours. Single mothers reported spending 11.8 hours a week on child care, up from 7.5 hours in 1965.
“As the hours of paid work went up for mothers, their hours of housework declined,” said Ms. Bianchi, a former president of the Population Association of America. “It was almost a one-for-one trade.”
Meaghan O. Perlowski, a 32-year-old mother of three in Des Moines, said in an interview, “Spending time with my kids is my highest priority, but it’s a juggling act.”
Ms. Perlowski, who is a full-time pharmaceutical sales representative, said she did grocery shopping and errands on her lunch hour and cut back on housework so she would have more time with her children.
“We don’t worry much about keeping the house spotless,” she said. “It’s sometimes a mess, cluttered with school papers, backpacks and toys, but that’s O.K.”
Fathers have picked up some of the slack. Married fathers are spending more time on housework: an average of 9.7 hours a week in 2000, up from 4.4 hours in 1965. That increase was more than offset by the decline in time devoted to housework by married mothers: 19.4 hours a week in 2000, down from 34.5 hours in 1965.
Again, however, if "spending time with my kids" is your highest priority -- male or female, you're going to be a different kind of worker than somebody without. And you should be compensated accordingly.
Australian link via iFeminists
How Come God Never Tells Anyone To Clean Between Their Toes And Shut Up?
Republican congressional candidate Michele Bachmann says:
God then called me to run for the United States Congress...
Any word on God's mother-in-law or his spastic colon?
link via HuffPo
The Aisle Less Traveled
I don't like the term "single" because it's a comparison to being married, as if marriage is the gold standard. "Single" still has a bit of the stench of "loser" eminating off it -- even as more and more people are going unmarried. This doesn't mean marriage is dead or dying, but maybe people will continue finding it less weird for someone to be what I call an "independent" or to be in a relationship that doesn't culminate in marriage -- but may last longer than their naysayers' legally wedded unions. Sam Roberts writes in The New York Times that married people in America, for the first time, are outnumbered by unmarried people.
The American Community Survey, released this month by the Census Bureau, found that 49.7 percent, or 55.2 million, of the nation’s 111.1 million households in 2005 were made up of married couples — with and without children — just shy of a majority and down from more than 52 percent five years earlier.The numbers by no means suggests marriage is dead or necessarily that a tipping point has been reached. The total number of married couples is higher than ever, and most Americans eventually marry. But marriage has been facing more competition. A growing number of adults are spending more of their lives single or living unmarried with partners, and the potential social and economic implications are profound.
“It just changes the social weight of marriage in the economy, in the work force, in sales of homes and rentals, and who manufacturers advertise to,” said Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research group. “It certainly challenges the way we set up our work policies.”
While the number of single young adults and elderly widows are both growing, Professor Coontz said, “we have an anachronistic view as to what extent you can use marriage to organize the distribution and redistribution of benefits.”
Couples decide to live together for many reasons, but real estate can be as compelling as romance.
“Owning three toothbrushes and finding that they are always at the wrong house when you are getting ready to go to bed wears on you,” said Amanda Hawn, a 28-year-old writer who set up housekeeping near San Francisco with her boyfriend, Nate Larsen, a real estate analyst, after shuttling between his apartment and one she shared with a friend. “Moving in together has simplified life,” Ms. Hawn said.
Yeah? See if you find it so simplified after living together kills your sex life. No, it's not an inevitability, but if you read anything about the chemicals involved in long-term bonding, you'll see that the forces of nature are not on your side. From my Advice Goddess column "Just The Too Much Of Us":
Desire runs on the economics of scarcity. That's why diamonds, not speckled gray pebbles, "are forever," and why special occasions are celebrated with champagne and caviar, not tap water and a scoop of tuna. You want what's rare, or seems rare, not what's there 24/7 gassing up your couch.Biology is not on our side. In fact, recent research suggests people in relationships are chemically predisposed to come to find each other about as sexually compelling as yesterday's Cream of Wheat. Another one of nature's charming practical jokes? Actually, anthropologist Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love, surmises sexual ennui was evolution's way of getting lovers to stop bouncing naked off the cave walls and raise their kids.
While, to the average person, a relationship seems to be one big crock pot of lust, attraction, and commitment, Fisher and other researchers see three distinct stages, each biochemically different. Lust, fueled by testosterone, gets you out in a short skirt looking for prey. In the attraction stage, you're drunk on a cocktail of dopamine and other excitors (the "love high"), still lusty, but laser-focused on one particular object of desire. Finally, there's the attachment stage, when the bonding chemicals vasopressin (in men) and oxytocin (in men and women) take over -- and getting off on each other tends to give way to nodding off on each other.
Sound familiar? Don't despair. Who says Mother Nature isn't ripe for a con? Helen Fisher suspects you can fool your biochemistry into believing you're still back in the chase phase. "Novel experiences drive up levels of dopamine in the brain," writes Fisher. This "can stimulate the release of testosterone, the hormone of sexual desire."
In other words, there's no security in security. Imagine, on the first date, if a guy ignored you to play Grand Theft Auto. Why is it any less a problem at the one-year mark? Clearly, you need to break up a little to have any hope of staying together. Move out and make like you're dating. Remember dates? They're special events where two people get all excited to see each other, put a lot of effort into looking and smelling seduction-friendly, pay close attention to each other, then, jump on each other instead of the Internet.
Fisher also cites experiments that suggest bringing an element of danger into a relationship can elevate a couple's dopamine. Perhaps you could relocate your boyfriend's lost libido while jumping out of an airplane or taunting mother bears. Or, if you aren't exactly a great outdoors type, just continue badgering him about whether he's attracted to you. Then again, while that might tempt him to throw himself off the nearest terrace, it probably isn't the kind of near-death experience Fisher had in mind.
Finally, I'm always amazed by people who assume your relationship is crappy if they ask you whether you and your partner are getting married, and you say you aren't. Um, we're not getting married because we're already very happy together, thanks, and we don't think a state-certified contract declaring us happy, or whatever it does declare, would make us any happier.
Habeas Corpse
Andrew Sullivan links to a fantastic piece by Keith Olbermann on the death of habeas corpus and more. The good news is, the Third Amendment -- prohibiting soldiers from turning your house into their Bed & Breakfast -- still stands.
Armey Of One
Via Ryan Sager's blog, Dick Armey lectures the James Dobsons of the world with a remarkable letter:
Christians and Big Government
Why faith requires freedomThere was a day when social conservatives were united with economic conservatives in the belief that small, limited government was not only good for our economy and the prosperity of American families, but essential to protect traditional family values. We all fought for a limited federal government — a government that had the decency to respect the American people by staying out of their lives. Small government meant that all Christians could practice their faith as they saw fit. Big government violates those rights by meddling in our lives, misusing our hard-earned money, and dictating cultural norms to us. We were and are rightly outraged when government imposes wrong-headed values through its monopoly of schools, government-funded “art,” and taxpayer funded “family planning.”
As a united conservative movement, we win when we defend traditional values against big government pretensions to impose its brand of “morality” on the American people. We lose when we attempt to use government power to impose our values on others.
I am a devout Christian. I am a so-called “values voter.” As a member of Congress and as Majority Leader, I believe I faithfully served our values. One of my proudest moments in Congress was beating the Democrats’ attempts to meddle in the affairs of families that had chosen to opt out of secular government education by home-schooling their children. I took on the entire political establishment, but we only won because thousands of Christian home-schoolers demanded that Congress keep its nose out of their decision to raise and educate their children as they saw fit.
I am also a free market economist by training, and I believe that economic freedom is vitally important in the defense of the American family. Big issues like retirement security, tax reform, school choice and spending restraint will determine whether or not families will be dependent and subservient to government. Who owns your retirement? Who decides how you provide for your family’s future. Can you leave your estate to your grandchildren, or is it the government’s? Will the government socially engineer your life through the tax code? Will liberal education bureaucrats determine your child’s education? These are all issues that used to matter to the political leadership of Christian conservative voters.
And while for most in the Christian conservative movement these issues still resonate, the same cannot be said for some of our Washington, D.C.-based religious leaders. Right after I had left Congress and joined FreedomWorks, we found ourselves embroiled in a major tax fight in Alabama. Oddly, an old friend, Bob Riley, had been elected governor only to immediately reverse course, cut a deal with the teachers union, and advocate a massive tax increase to prop up the failing government school system. It was “what Jesus would do,” he said. I took personal offense to that, as did many of the voters who had just worked so hard to elect him Governor. Our activists had joined forces with local Christian conservatives, including the Alabama Christian Coalition, to fight both bad policy and a sense of personal betrayal.
We were blindsided when the national leadership of the Christian Coalition endorsed the Governor’s proposed tax increase, joining forces with liberal interests in the state that had actively worked against our values for a generation. In the end we won, thanks in no small part to the fact that members of the local Christian Coalition chapter parted ways with the national organization and stood with Alabama FreedomWorks, the Alabama Policy Institute, local taxpayer organizations, and a host of other small government advocates all united in the effort to stop a big government tax-hike scheme.
...Another Armey’s Axiom says that if it is about power, you lose. And unfortunately when it comes to James Dobson, my personal experience has been that the man is most interested in political power.
As Majority Leader, I remember vividly a meeting with the House leadership where Dobson scolded us for having failed to “deliver” for Christian conservatives, that we owed our majority to him, and that he had the power to take our jobs back. This offended me, and I told him so.
In a later meeting Dobson and a colleague came into my office to lobby against a trade bill, asking me to stop the legislation from going to the House floor. They were wrong on the issue, and I told them no. Would you at least postpone the vote, they asked? We have a direct mail fundraising letter about to go out to our membership, they said.
I wondered then if their opposition to the bill was driven less by their moral compass and more by the need to rile their membership and increase revenue. I wondered then, if these self-appointed Christian leaders, like many politicians, had come to Washington to do good, but had instead done well for themselves.
Dobson later ran an orchestrated campaign against me in my race to retain the Majority Leader post, telling my colleagues that I was not a good Christian. I prefer to leave that decision to Lord God Almighty on Judgment Day.
...Freedom works. Freedom is a gift from God Almighty, and we have a responsibility to protect it. Christians face a temptation to power when we are fortunate enough to have a majority of support in Congress. But government can never advance a faith that is freely given, and it is corrosive to even try. Just look at Europe, where decades of nanny-state activism— including taxpayer support for churches and for religious political parties— have severely eroded the faith. In America today, too many of our Christian leaders fail to recognize the temptation to power and the danger it holds for our society and our faith.
And so America’s Christian conservative movement is confronted with this divide: small government advocates who want to practice their faith independent of heavy-handed government versus big government sympathizers who want to impose their version of “righteousness” on others through the hammer of law.
We must avoid the temptation to use the power of government to perfect our society and its citizens. That is the same urge that drives the Left and the socialists, and I can assure you that every program or power we give government today in the name of our values can be turned against us when the day comes where a majority of Congress is hostile to us.
Instead, we need to limit the sphere of government and create civil space where private institutions, individual responsibility and religious faith can flourish. By reducing the size of the welfare state, we increase the importance of the works of Christian charities and our church communities. By reducing the tax burden on families, we make it easier for Christian households to tithe or for young mothers to stay home to raise their children. The same is true for retirement security based on ownership. Reducing the ever-growing reach of the federal government means local communities, and more important, parents, are free to establish the standards and values for the education of their children.
Consider the welfare reform we passed in 1996. By reducing bureaucracy and dependency and emphasizing work and responsibility, we changed conditions for an entire segment of our society. Since welfare reform passed, teen pregnancy, welfare caseloads, and the number of abortions in America have all declined. That is the kind of policy change that values voters need to support, and it is the result of limiting government’s power over our lives.
Our movement must avoid the temptations of power and those who would twist the good intentions of Christian voters to support policies that undermine freedom and grow government. Freedom is what gives America its unique place in the world, and protecting and expanding our freedom is what creates the space necessary to keep our faith strong and growing.
Sincerely,
Dick Armey
Chairman
FreedomWorks
Sager wisely remarks, "Armey can fight this fight because he no longer has to deal with these people on a regular basis or depend on them for reelection. How many in Congress feel the exact same way but stay quiet?"
It's just like with the "moderate Muslims" versus the fundamentalists. And it's reminiscent of the old Pastor Martin Neimoller verse:
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist.When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
Everything Under The Sun Is Racism
I've found, in the course of writing my column, that mere mention of certain groups, usually racial or religious groups (but don't even get me started on polyamorists), will cause accusations of racism or anti-something-ism.
My favorite past incident of my own stemmed from my response in my column to a question from a controlling woman, basically telling her to ease up or she'd lose her boyfriend. I started my answer with a example showing how people value freedom:
Note that there were Cubans floating to the US recently, in a green 1959 Buick they turned into a boat, but no Jewish grannies from Miami sailing the other direction in their retrofitted giant yellow Cadillacs: “Oy, Irving, I think I left my heart pills back at the condo.”
Naturally, from the mere mention of a Jewish grandmother in a Cadillac I got letters:
How dare you use your column as a platform for anti-semitism!
My response:
Shalom! If I am anti-semitic, I learned my anti-semitism at Temple Beth El. P.S. That's my bubbie, who used to live in Florida and drive a gigantic pale yellow Cadillac. I thought she'd get a kick out of making it into my column.
Here's another one -- from a column about a woman who wasn't exactly svelte, but whom I was encouraging to dress sexy for her husband. Strangely, all the angry letters were from white women (example: "I'm not black or Latina, but I am a women's studies professor...") protesting on behalf of black and Latino women! Here's the bit from my column:
What should be on your mind is slipping into a sexy little French thing called “bien dans sa peau” -- being comfortable in your skin, much like all the hot black and Latina secretaries I used to see when I lived in downtown New York City. A lot of them were fat, but they wore bright, tight, sexy clothes, and strutted around like they were fat and proud.
If you're not racist, can't you just make observations about people and comment on them? The truth is, it's risky.
A likely upcoming incident is my answer to a short question from my column (soon to run) in support of a girl who'd just gotten divorced, and wanted to change her name. I've always found it hilarious when people give their kids names that are an obvious mismatch. For example, as I wrote in that column:
Some will tell you you’re being silly, as in, “Oh, come on, what’s in a name?” Well, if yours is something like “Dakota Finkelstein,” probably at least a few people nodding to themselves upon meeting you, “Mmmhmm…young Jewish parents, drunk in the western-wear section at Ralph Lauren.”
Even though I'm now technically post-Jewish (my business card reads "Amy Alkon, godless harlot"), at least I can still always play the Heeb card when I get accused of being anti-semitic. Steve Lyons wasn't so lucky. Here's the AP story by sports writer Janie McCauley:
Fox baseball broadcaster Steve Lyons has been fired for making a racially insensitive comment directed at colleague Lou Piniella's Hispanic heritage on the air during Game 3 of the American League championship series.The network confirmed Saturday that Lyons was dismissed after Friday's game. He has been replaced for the remainder of the series by Los Angeles Angels announcer Jose Mota.
Piniella had made an analogy involving the luck of finding a wallet, then briefly used a couple of Spanish phrases during Friday's broadcast.
Lyons said that Piniella was "hablaing Espanol" — butchering the conjugation for the word "to speak" — and added, "I still can't find my wallet."
"I don't understand him, and I don't want to sit too close to him now," Lyons continued.
Lyons claimed he was kidding.
"If I offended anybody, I'm truly sorry," Lyons said in a phone interview. "But my comment about Lou taking my wallet was a joke and in no way racially motivated."
Lyons flew Saturday to Los Angeles, where he hoped to meet with Fox chairman David Hill. Lyons had been working in the booth for the ALCS alongside Thom Brennaman and Piniella, the No. 2 broadcast team for Fox this postseason.
"Steve Lyons has been relieved of his Fox Sports duties for making comments on air that the company found inappropriate," network spokesman Dan Bell said.
You know, from my own TV and radio experiences, things fly pretty fast and furious on the air. Somebody makes a comment about finding a wallet, I might make a joke about losing mine just as Lyons did. I like teasing people and I like being teased. It can make for some entertaining bits on the air. Unfortunately for Lyons, he apparently made his teasing remark about the wallet a little too close to the "habla-ing" remark.
And sorry, is there some stereotype I have yet to hear about of Latinos, specifically, as pickpockets or muggers more than any other race, color or creed?
Do I think Lyons is racist? No. Unfortunately, he's a victim of the "mere mention" rule, and can't fall back on a Latina granny like I was able to play the Jewish bubbie card.
In that case, I also wrote back to the people to say I could just as easily have used Larry Elder's (now-late little old black lady) mother, whose voice I used to love on the radio. I don't know what she actually looked like, but the picture in my head when I wrote the Cuba remark was some tiny little old lady, all dressed up, whose feet could barely reach the pedals of her big yellow Cadillac boat.
Affirmative Discrimination
Via Egoist, interesting bit from the blog mikeseyes on racism. I've always thought that "minority fellowship" programs in journalism were racist. Who needs a leg up, the black kid from an upper middle class neighborhood, simply because her skin is non-white, or the kid of whatever color from the wrong side of tracks, supported by a single mother, who's working his way through college?
I also find it insulting; the intimation that smart, interesting people I know who are black or otherwise "of color" would need some sort of extra help -- beyond the lucky breaks we all get or don't get. From Mikeseyes (and I don't agree with the "only because of their race" bit about civil rights activists):
White racists had been telling blacks that as an individual they had little or no value because of their race. White civil rights activists were telling blacks they did have value but only because of their race, and that the solution to discriminating against blacks and other minorities lies in passing laws that discriminate for those minorities. In other words, the standard of value was still the collective (race) and not the individual. This allowed the white liberals to remain loyal to their core philosophy--collectivism--of which racism is a form.Staying loyal to collectivism was absolutely essential. It laid the groundwork for getting blacks, and whites for that matter, to accept the next twist on collectivism--diversity--the New Segregation.
Diversity teaches people not to focus on their individual traits, but on their collective differences. Thus it becomes virtuous for schools to have seperate cafeterias, seperate dorms, seperate graduating ceremonies and who knows what else is coming? White southern racists might very well be rolling over in their graves today saying "Damn, why didn't we think of that"?
Americans have been betrayed by their intellectual leaders who have abondoned individualism in favor of collectivism. Adolf Hitler once said "Du bist nichts, dein volk ist alles", "You are nothing, your race is everything"--from Mein Kampf. A lot of real, living, breathing individuals died in his ovens because they did not belong to the right collective.
Dr. Martin Luther King said in his "I have a dream" speech that he wanted his children to be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. While Dr. King did not come right out and say "individualism" he nevertheless was focused on its manifestation: respect for the individual on his own merits and not those of his collective.
If racism is to be ended, it is it's source--collectivism--that must be rejected. But this will require the American people to demand our universities purge themselves of the multicultural and diversity dogmas. I think that alumni refusing to donate until universities abandon their collectivist curriculum and begin to study individualism anew, would be a good start.
Big Pharma? Meet Big Altie
Orac, the surgeon/scientist/blogger does it again, with another post about the alternative medicine industry. Yes, industry. This time, it's about the claim by the alties (apparently, commies, not capitalists) that any alternative medicine skeptic is "in the pocket of big pharma."
But, how about the pockets of the purveyers of alternative cures? Turns out they're pretty deep -- and pretty full up with cash, too.
Orac points to vastly expensive "Chinese medicine" cures -- 85-year-old ginseng root selling for $138,000 U.S., and to an American product called Airborne...for which there's no scientific proof given of its efficacy. He quotes a New York Times article by Rob Walker:
Packages of Airborne, found in the cough-and-cold aisle of major chains like CVS, Rite Aid and Wal-Mart, proudly proclaim that the product was "Created by a School Teacher!" This seems a little odd. Don't we want to fight our seasonal ailments with things created by, for instance, doctors and scientists? Apparently not all of us do: Airborne is extremely successful, and its creation by someone without the slightest medical expertise or qualification is almost certainly a factor in its success.For one thing, it makes for an excellent creation story. In the late 1990's, Victoria Knight-McDowell, an elementary-school teacher in Spreckels, Calif., grew weary of picking up colds from her students and began "researching Chinese and holistic medicine and the use of herbs and vitamins to boost the immune system," an official company history explains. She and her husband then decided to market her "natural formula of 17 ingredients" in 1997. They used the money her husband had made selling a television script. They handed out samples in malls and gradually got distribution in various stores. Kevin Costner became one of many celebrities to declare his confidence in the product. In 2000, Knight-McDowell gave up her teaching gig, and by 2004 annual sales hit $90 million. Along the way, Knight-McDowell appeared on "Dr. Phil," and Airborne was discussed on "Live With Regis and Kelly" and other shows.
...People also must use Airborne because it works, or rather because they believe it works. Technically, Airborne is a dietary supplement (you're supposed to take it "at the first sign of a cold symptom or before entering crowded environments"), meaning that it does not require Food and Drug Administration testing and approval. As the package disclaimer notes, it is "not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease." As with many supplements, there is no independent scientific evidence of Airborne's medicinal value. But many people continue to buy the herbal supplement echinacea, despite many studies (including one in The New England Journal of Medicine) saying it does nothing to ward off or treat colds.
Orac writes:
I'm sure there is "nothing else like it," but one could say that about almost any concoction. So far, this sounds pretty science- and data-free, don't you agree? Of course, curmudgeon that I am, I can't help but wonder why Ms. Knight-McDowell advertises "invented by a schoolteacher," thus appealing to her customer's mistrust of "conventional medicine," but then says that she developed Airborne with a "team of health professionals." She seems to want to have it both ways, appealing to homespun "practical" knowledge while at the same time appealing to the authority of "health care professionals." (Of course, the blurb above doesn't say just who these "health professionals" are or whether they're even doctors or scientists; they could well be alties like Hulda Clark for all we know.) Also, her experience as a teacher has to be the lamest argument from authority with respect to a health product that I've seen in a long time. Sure, kids are germ factories, and working with children as a teacher is a great way to be regularly exposed to the latest bug going around, but how does that give Ms. Knight-Dowell the expertise to come up with an herbal/supplement concoction to prevent or fight colds? I might buy it if she claimed to have figured out a method of hand-washing that kids can actually do correctly, which would probably go much farther in decreasing the spread of colds in schools than any herbal remedy, but don't see how her experience as a school teacher suddenly qualifies her as a expert in herbal medicine. And, of course, there isn't one whit of scientific evidence or studies from clinical trials to support her claims for Airborne.Another interesting point to consider is that it is recommended that people take Airborne "at the first sign of a cold symptom or before entering crowded environments." However, "at the first sign of a cold symptom" is a fairly vague criterion, one that's tripped up any number of studies looking at, for example, whether zinc prevents or decreases the severity of colds. Some people cough once or twice and think they're coming down with a cold; if they take Airborne and don't get any further symptoms, they're likely to attribute it to the Airborne rather than to a different cause for their coughing, another example of confirmation bias. Ditto if people take Airborne before going into a "crowded environment" or an airplane and happen not to get a cold.
...Products like Airborne are yet another indication of a gaping hole in the laws dealing with how we regulate medicines. Ms. Knight-McDowell is clearly making a medical claim for her product, namely that it can prevent or diminish the severity of colds. If I make a claim for a a compound that I develop, I'll have to prove it through clinical studies before I could ever get FDA approval to market it, which takes many years and costs hundreds of millions of dollars. Ms. Knight-McDowell can throw together a concoction of a bunch of vitamins and herbs and make millions. Certainly I'll give her props for her entrepreneurial spirit and willingness to risk everything for her business, but I only wish she could produce some actual evidence that her product does what she claims it does. A randomized, double-blinded study (preferably more than one) would, of course, be the gold standard, but in lieu of that I'd settle for lesser levels of evidence (or, for that matter, any credible evidence at all from a well-designed study, even a preliminary one) to give me some indication that Airborne is something other than a rather elaborate placebo. Medically, it's probably harmless, although we don't know even that for sure, given that some herbal medicines can interact with conventional medicines such as coumadin or anti-HIV retroviral drugs in potentially harmful ways.
He goes back to the New York Times article to explain why:
Airborne - which, Donahue points out, is positioned as a mainstream product, not as an "alternative medicine" - is not against pharmaceutical companies or anyone else. It is simply for something that happens to have been invented by a nonexpert. But it probably benefits from distrust of medical authority and faith in a certain kind of folk wisdom just the same. Donahue acknowledges that, for instance, the phrase "Created by a Journalist!" might not be such a great marketing device. "People trust a schoolteacher," she says.
Orac wraps it all up:
My point here is not to defend big pharma or the conflicts of interest that come about because pharmaceutical companies are prone to giving inducements to doctors to prescribe their product. My point is to echo Abel in pointing out that there's a lot of money in alternative medicine and nutritional supplements, and the industry is growing. As the industry grows, it naturally starts to behave not unlike the way big pharma behaves, whose excesses have led to a backlash and increasing numbers of hospitals and doctors refusing to accept gifts of other than nominal value from drug reps. Moreover, alternative medicine companies do not have to deal with anything near the regulatory hurdles that traditional pharmaceutical companies do (you know, pesky little requirements that the drug be safe and effective and stuff like that). As these companies become more profitable, it is not unlikely that many of them will be purchased by pharmaceutical companies and become part of big pharma themselves.What all of this means is that it's nothing more than a massive fallacy to imply that alternative medicine sellers are somehow above the commerce of it all, that they are untainted by financial concerns. They aren't, and are probably becoming less so. Arguments over the efficacy (or lack thereof) of any treatment or drug should be confined to the scientific evidence.
Is There Anything That Can't Be Seen As An Insult To Islam?
This time it's the latest New York City Apple computer store. Here it is under construction, and apparently at its most offensive. MEMRI, the Middle East Research Institute, quotes an Islamic website calling it "clearly meant to provoke Muslims":
The fact that the building resembles the Ka'ba (see picture below), is called "Apple Mecca," is intended to be open 24 hours a day like the Ka'ba, and moreover, contains bars selling alcoholic beverages, constitutes a blatant insult to Islam. The message urges Muslims to spread this alert, in hope that "Muslims will be able to stop the project."
Oops...stop it...how? Since a number of Muslims seek violence as a means of protest, isn't their suggestion illegal (very possibly, or even very likely, inciting violence)?
Apple says, via a K.C. Jones story on TechWeb News:
Apple's Web site states that the store opened May 19. Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said Wednesday that the entrance to the Apple Store is not meant to resemble the holy structure and the company has never referred to the site as "Mecca.""New Yorkers have given our store on Fifth Avenue a resoundingly positive reception," he said. "A couple of blogs referred to it as 'Mecca,' and others observed that, during construction it looked like the Ka'ba. Apple has never referred to our store as Mecca, and the entrance is not an attempt to look like the Ka'ba. We respect all people's religions and regret that the comments of these independent bloggers have offended anyone."
You know, if living in a secular, free country disturbs you...perhaps go back to where you came from and have as little freedom as works for you?
UPDATE: MEMRI mention corrected.
George Bush's First Veto
As I said when I voted for that worm John Kerry: "I loathe John Kerry, but I'd vote for an autistic monkey before I'd vote for that fundamentalist, anti-science George Bush."
This summer, the biggest big Democrat we've had in office since FDR, George "Spendalot" Bush, finally put an end to his veto virginity thanks to a bill funding embryonic stem cell research. Not surprisingly, Bush and his fellow fundies are ill-informed about science. Richard Dawkins has a few corrective harsh words for them on MachinesLikeUs:
The moral objection to killing blastocysts, then, cannot be based on suffering. So, what is it based on? Religion, almost always. It is partly a mystical reverence for humanness, as though all cells of Homo sapiens are suffused with a divine essence, some sort of sacred juice called Homsap, which no other species possesses.* Such a notion is fundamentally un-evolutionary. At what point in the line of descent from the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees, was the divine essence first injected? If you set aside what it will eventually grow into, there is no important difference between a human blastocyst and that of any other mammal. So we are left with the fact that human blastocysts, which can feel nothing now, have the future potential eventually to develop into beings that are capable of human suffering, human loves, hates and fears, human consciousness. It seems to me an inadequate basis for an ethical decision. Even if you disagree, you should surely at least consider the relative moral status of an Iraqi or Lebanese whose capacity to suffer is not just potential in the future, but here and now in the present.If you ask me whether I care more about the destruction of a blastocyst, which theoretically has the potential to develop into a conscious human being, or the painful killing of an adult cow in an abattoir which has already reached its full potential, my answer is not in doubt. If I see a terrified cow about to have its throat cut by a Jewish or Muslim slaughterman who insists, purely for religious reasons, that it must be fully conscious when the knife hits, I want to intervene on its behalf. If I see a human blastocyst the size of a pinhead about to be flushed down the drain, do I want to intervene on its behalf? Oh come on, get real.
Why I Don't Live Near The Santa Monica Airport
Now, I'm not one of those "fear of flying" nitwits who'd drive 10 hours instead of taking an airplane at the sight of a raindrop. Barry Glassner, I think it is, tells a story about that: A woman's in San Francisco, and it starts pouring rain. Instead of flying back to Los Angeles as planned, she cancels her plane ticket, rents a car, and drives back to L.A....statistically multiplying to some enormous extent her chances of biting it in a crash.
Think for a minute about who's on the road: Somebody's 90-year-old granny, a drunk guy who just got fired, some kid who got his license 20 minutes ago. Commercial pilots, on the other hand, are highly trained and tested. Sure, you sometimes hear about one being hauled off from the airport for stinking of gin. But, for the most part, I feel much safer in a commercial airplane than I do in a car, and statistics back me up.
If only we could say the same vis a vis the weekend wingnuts who go puttering around in small planes; a good many of them from the Santa Monica Municipal Airport. Sure, some of the pilots of small private planes are very experienced; maybe even many of them. And then...there are those who take a dive down somebody's chimney...or into somebody's Manhattan living room. For example, from the Santa Monica Airport link:
In 2001, an inexperienced pilot rented a Cessna 172 from Justice Aviation at the airport and subsequently lost control of the aircraft over the Pacific Ocean upon encountering dark, instrument meteorological conditions. Three were killed. [3]Later that year, the pilot of a twin-engine Cessna failed to remove the device that locks the control system for parking (to prevent wind damage) and two were killed when the aircraft overran the runway after an unsuccessful aborted takeoff. [4].
Cory Lidle apparently did have a flight instructor with him, and the facts of the crash will become clearer as the days go by, I'm sure. But, this crash reminds me, I just love the people who have to do these really asshat things -- sky-dive, bungee-jump, mosey around in small planes. If you're sky-diving, chances are it's only your own ass you're endangering. But, in a small plane...what makes you think you have the right to endanger the rest of us...just because what, you're bored because there's no state fair or NASCAR on TV over the weekend?
P.S. From the CNN report linked above:
(Watch witness accounts of cascading fireballs and a plane split in half -- 1:58 Video)
Cascading fireballs? As somebody who used to rollerskate and cycle around Manhattan, thanks, but it was hard enough avoiding drivers opening their car doors in the bike lane.
LA Times Investigates How Not To Bore Readers Senseless
Yes, via Romenesko, it seems they actually put a team of investigative reporters on this!
The Los Angeles Times has assigned three investigative reporters and half a dozen editors to find ideas for re-engaging readers, reports Katharine Q. Seelye. A report is expected in about two months. "We shouldn’t be waiting for corporate headquarters or a think tank or a consultant to come up with ideas to secure our future," says Marc Duvoisin, an assistant managing editor who will direct the investigation. Tribune's spokesman wouldn't comment on the project.
Perhaps I should send Marc Duvoisin my column samples. I mean, if they aren't pulling 'em in in droves with Al Martinez and Howard Leff.
What The 'Nutters Really Wanted
Silly wabbits, it was never just about abortion. You didn't think that, did you? Check out this Judith Graham article from the Chicago Trib entitled "Contraception becomes new rallying point for abortion foes":
Emboldened by the anti-abortion movement's success in restricting access to abortion, an increasingly vocal group of Christian conservatives is arguing that it's time to mount a concerted attack on contraception.Their voices were raised in Rosemont, Ill., last week at an unusual anti-abortion meeting that drew 250 people from around the nation to condemn artificial birth control. Experts at the gathering assailed contraception on the grounds that it devalues children, harms relationships between men and women, promotes sexual promiscuity and leads to falling birth rates, among social ills.
"Contraception is more the root cause of abortion than anything else," Joseph Scheidler, an anti-abortion veteran whose Pro-Life Action League sponsored the conference, said in an interview.
Moron.
No one knows how many supporters Scheidler and his colleagues have, but conservative leaders are watching to see if the anti-contraception rhetoric gains traction.Of special interest is how closely evangelical Christians are willing to align themselves with traditional Catholics on the issue. The Catholic Church long has opposed contraception, but evangelicals generally embraced its use - until recently, some argue.
"It is clear there is a major rethinking going on among evangelicals on this issue, especially among young people" disenchanted with the sexual revolution, said the Rev. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. "There is a real push back against the contraceptive culture now."
Oh, please. It's not the sexual revolution, but the feminist revolution that caused all the problems. And no, I don't mean the one that gave me the right to vote, or the part about equal pay for equal work.
Thanks to the radical feminists and gender feminists (the "men are evil and must be brought down!" crowd), it's really hard for a lot of people to even get a date these days. Guys are too pussified to ask, and why would they want to, since so many girls respond so bitchily if they do ask and/or dress like plumbers?
As for a solution to the problem of horny evangies trying to yank the freedoms of the rest of us...well, it's just like the Middle East: Airdrop Whitney and an army of hookers, and you won't hear word one from Osama and friends -- or from the sex-starved religious fanatics.
As for the "contraceptive culture," I can't remember the name of the guy's blog where I read this, but he brought up a good point the nutters don't consider: Why would getting rid of "the contraceptive culture" (or abortions) be a good thing? Since (let's be real) people aren't going to stop fucking, where does that leave us? With loads of unwanted babies being born? Well, who's going to take care of them? And who's going to pay for them?
At the end of the article, one of the 'nutter chicks says this:
"It's not just a side issue from pro-life, it's the core issue," Libby Gray Macke, director of Project Reality, an abstinence program in Illinois, told the crowd last Friday. "Abstinence is the way to prevent abortion."
How about this: You abstain, I'll fuck my brains out. You can also abstain from making laws that tell me I can't have an abortion if fucking my brains out gets me pregnant. I'm guessing you only read the Bible, not science, so of course you don't understand that a clump of cells is not a person. But, I do know that, and I'm fine with having clumps of cells expunged from my body, whether they're fertilized eggs, suspicious moles, or hangnails.
Why Does Congress Seem So Much Like Junior High?
I just got this e-mail from the "Free Enterprise Fund":
Pelosi Pledge Countdown
7,6,5,4,3,2,1 Days Left
(Washington, DC) – October, 11th 2006 - Twenty one self-proclaimed “conservative” or “moderate” Democrats who were asked to sign the “Pelosi Pledge” – promising not to vote for liberal Nancy Pelosi for Speaker– have so far failed to sign and return the pledge to the Free Enterprise Fund
Mallory Factor, Chairman of the Free Enterprise Fund, said “Voting to make Nancy Pelosi Speaker is tantamount to voting to raise taxes. A true conservative or moderate could never vote to make a San Francisco liberal Speaker of the House. You have proclaimed yourself a ‘different kind of Democrat.’ Signing the Pledge is one way to prove it.”
The Free Enterprise Fund has asked each of the following candidates to sign and return the pledge by fax or mail within seven days of its receipt. With two days left before the deadline, not a single one has made the commitment to lower taxes and free market values by signing the pledge.
The following candidates were asked to sign the “Pelosi Pledge”: John Donnelly, IN-02; Brad Ellsworth, IN-08; Baron Hill, IN-09; Ken Lucas, KY-04; Mike Weaver, KY-02; John Barrow, GA-12; Jim Marshall, GA-08; John Spratt, SC-05; Phil Kellam, VA-02; Heath Shuler, NC-11; Larry Kissell, NC-08; Melissa Bean, IL-08; Tammy Duckworth, IL-06; Chet Edwards, TX-17; Nick Lampson, TX-22; Gabrielle Giffords, AZ-08; Gary Trauner, WY-0; Larry Graf, ID-01; Jerry McNerney, CA-11; Charlie Brown, CA-04, Jay Fawcett, CO-0.
What I'm wondering is how many of their "true conservatives" are actually fiscal conservatives and how many are just fundamentalists in conservative's clothing, like George "Spendalot" Bush? In the words of Reason's Jesse Walker from 2004:
7. The drunken sailor factor. Fine, you say: We all expect a Republican president to molest our civil liberties. But this one has poached the Democrats' turf as well, increasing federal spending by over $400 billion—its fastest rate of growth in three decades. Even if you set aside the Pentagon budget, Washington is doling out dollars like crazy: Under Bush, domestic discretionary spending has already gone up 25 percent. (Clinton only increased it 10 percent, and it took him eight years to do that.) "In 2003," the conservative Heritage Foundation notes, "inflation-adjusted federal spending topped $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II."
Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hiding
The "alcohol made me do it" defense -- most recently employed by Jew-hater Mel Gibson and page-perving Rep. Mark Foley -- gets called for what it is by Reason's Jacob Sullum:
Alcoholic impairment may be the world's oldest excuse. It was the reason Noah cavorted naked in his tent, the reason Lot slept with his daughters, the reason (some say) Aaron's sons, Nadav and Avihu, brought "strange fire" into the Tabernacle.The defense does not always work; Nadav and Avihu, for instance, were immediately consumed by divine fire. But it must work often enough for people to keep trotting it out after all these years, and why it does is a bit of a puzzle.
Foley seems eager to be known as a drunk as well as a pervert, pressing his case in the face of skepticism from associates who never noticed he had a drinking problem, who can't even remember seeing him with a drink at any of the Washington receptions he attended during more than a decade in office. And since one of Foley's incriminating instant message exchanges occurred during a House vote, he wants us to believe he was passing judgment on legislation while he was plastered.
Picturing Foley staggering into the House Chamber to cast a vote is supposed to make us think better of him. If he's an alcoholic, suffering from a disease that makes him incapable of drinking moderately, he is not fully responsible for his behavior. In those online exchanges with pages, it was his disease talking, not him.
Even Alcoholics Anonymous, the group that has done the most to promote the idea that habitual drunkenness is an illness, does not go quite that far. For one thing, people who know they have difficulty drinking responsibly can be held accountable for drinking to begin with. And while A.A. members have to acknowledge they are "powerless over alcohol" and submit themselves to God, they also have to accept responsibility for their actions and make amends to people they've wronged.
Even if some people are predisposed to drink heavily, that tendency does not explain how they act when they drink. Does anyone really believe that alcohol made Mel Gibson temporarily anti-Semitic, causing him to rail against the Jews when he was pulled over in Malibu for drunk driving? Or that Bob Ney, the Republican congressman from Ohio who mentioned "a dependence on alcohol" when he pleaded guilty to corruption charges, was driven by demon rum to accept lobbyists' goodies in exchange for official favors?
"The Poet Laureate Of Wild Assholes With Guns"
That's how Time Out/London summed up crime writer Elmore "Dutch" Leonard. In honor of Dutch's birthday today, here's one of my favorite quotes from his book La Brava, which I happen to be reading now:
I spent most of my dough on booze, broads and boats and the rest I wasted.
The Hot Kid is still my all-time favorite.
For a photgraphic history of Elmore, click on this link. Here's one shot I love:
The caption by Gregg Sutter: Pictured here at his house in Memphis in 1934, with his sister, mother and family friend, Elmore was preoccupied with gun toting desperados like Bonnie and Clyde who lept off the front page of the newspaper and into the boy’s imagination.
A Man Of The Sloth
I just posted my Advice Goddess column on a girl's inability to get away from her lazy, manipulative boyfriend. She intimates that she's only still there because she can't win an argument against him -- since he has a Ph.D. in philosophy with a specialty in logic, and she only has an M.F.A. in poetry. I let her know poetry is actually her ticket out of there:
Sorry, but Aristotle mudwrestling Emily Dickinson this isn’t. The guy’s an ambitionless, ethically vacant mooch. Sure, he’s got a degree in philosophy, and a specialty in cheap manipulation (basically, he’s a tapeworm with a Ph.D.). You do have to hand it to the guy, who’s at his most industrious when he’s desperate to stay lazy. To that end, he’s now proposing a shrink to help you work out your differences; namely, your inability to find being used anywhere near as sexy as he finds using you. Lemme guess, couples counseling, single payer? Thanks, but you already have a fantastic shrink, one who’s cheap, brief, and dead. Yes, Gertrude Stein told you everything you need to know about your future with this guy: “A sponge is a sponge is a sponge.”
The rest is here.
Trans Fatty Asses
What's with these idiots trying to "save" a handful of people in New York City from crappy French fry grease? I loved the op-ed piece on the proposed trans fat ban in Monday's LA Times (in my favorite section in the paper) by Mark Kurlansky. While I don't believe in rent control (you should be able to charge whatever you want for your property), I think he has a good point:
But what is odd about New York City banning artificial trans fats is that nobody I know eats them. They are not eaten in Manhattan and the better parts of Brooklyn. They are used in cheap restaurants for things like French fries. In my Upper West Side neighborhood, we don't eat French fries. In the unlikely event that we do not find ourselves on a low-carb diet, we eat frites. Frites are not cooked in trans fat but in the better oils, some of which, by the way, may also prove fatal.In protecting New Yorkers from trans fat, the city would be largely protecting its lower-income citizens. And that is the surprising part. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — the billionaire reelected last year in a landslide against Fernando Ferrer, a Puerto Rican from the Bronx, who convinced most voters of his incompetence by repeatedly bringing up issues affecting poor people — defended the ban on trans fat by comparing it to the city's ban on lead paint. He had a point because the lead paint ban, which was adopted in 1960, was one of the last times anyone can recall that the city focused on helping the poor.
In my Upper West Side building, one by one the artists, waiters, musicians, teachers, actors and social workers have been leaving town and are being replaced by financial advisors and investment bankers. Over the last 40 years, government has slowly stripped away most guarantees of affordable housing. Today it is difficult to find an apartment anywhere in Manhattan large enough for a small family that does not cost more than $1 million or can be had for affordable rent. If the landlords who reap these enormous profits give a little bit away, they get streets named after them and articles written about their beneficence.
...So maybe the city isn't protecting poor people from heart attacks. Maybe it is protecting us from poor people — taking away their French fries the same way it took away their homes. Cars probably are a greater health threat than trans fats, but the type of New Yorkers who are staying like to have their own cars.
"I'm A Christian And You Suck!"
Essentially what loopy "born again" evangelist Stephen Baldwin is saying to Bono in his new book. From a Salon piece by Lauren Sandler:
"The Unusual Suspect" features an open letter to Bono, lambasting him for lobbying for debt relief for developing countries instead of preaching the gospel on MTV. Bono must be in league with Satan, whom Baldwin spends a lot of time thinking about. "I am smart enough to know that Satan is alive and well today," he writes. "Satan has all kinds of power, and he is able to control the minds of anyone whose mind isn't controlled by God." Baldwin's theology -- and criticism of secularists and Christian poseurs like Bono -- is written with remarkable confidence for someone who can only recite six of the Ten Commandments and four of the Twelve Apostles.
Don't laugh (or choke) -- he's been named a cultural advisor to President Bush, and it wasn't by somebody playing a newscaster on Saturday Night Live.
The 2,000-Year-Old Man On Blogging
Al Martinez, one of the columnists I find most unreadable in the LA Times (along with occasional Calendar columnist Howard Leff, author of this recent piece of suckage on satellite radio), has a few huffy words about bloggers:
...I have learned that, with some notable exceptions, blogs are largely the habitat of unemployed writers, enraged misanthropes, retired teachers, aging journalists and people who normally pass their time doodling or making obscene telephone calls.A blogger occupies a website from which comments emerge in various forms to clutter cyberspace with his or her opinions on politics, war, movies, sex, music, medicine, health, aerobics, food, marriage, animals … and, well, just about everything. No subject is too lofty or too inane for the blogger.
Not true. Until now, I've avoided blogging about global warming or Al Martinez. I don't understand climatology well enough, and no matter how I try, I can't get through an Al Martinez column or understand why this tedium dispenser continues to have a job.
To be fair to Al, perhaps he only reads blogs like the LA Times' Susan Spano's. Witness the brilliance of the corporate-bankrolled Paris-ensconced blogger in her most recent entry:
My effort to find the best day spa treatments in Paris continues. I just had a fabulous Thai massage at Espace France Asie near the Madeleine. It was an hour of bliss for 70 euros. Maybe I should move to Thailand so I can have one every day.
Please do. Preferably to an area where there's no Internet access.
For those who'd like a blog on Paris that actually says something, check out my favorite, The Paris Blog.
P.S. Al, nobody does aerobics anymore. Since the 90s, they've been doing yoga.
More Than Just A KFC Or Two In Baghdad
Critics of globalization have a common misconception -- that it begins and ends with opening up McDonald's and KFC around the globe. Economic globalization is only a start. It really is a values thing -- global values instead of tribal ones. Well, I was reading about tribalism last night, and I came upon this piece on billsaysthis.com, which explains it from a very interesting evolutionary viewpoint:
The conflict between America and its allies and bin Laden and the other Islamic terrorists is really a battle between a new and an old adaptive strategy, tribalism and globalization. When the human race was young, small, widely dispersed, and challenged by basic survival, tribalism was an adaptive device that helped people cooperate to reduce risk. With tribalism you get an in-group/out-group mentality that is a liability in the current diverse and densely populated world. The Taliban represents this old adaptive model--tribal, closed, rigid--and they are railing against what are really evolutionary changes in cultural systems. When the tribes are separated with infrequent contact, everything's ok. Maybe a few skirmishes when they do come in contact. When the tribes are forced to live together, though, life gets complicated.Globalization, and not just in the economic sense but rather meaning the interconnection and interdependence of groups across national and other boundaries is the latest and so far highest level of human cultural evolution. In this general sense one might call it one-worldism except that few voices are calling for a single world government. This development values the diversity of individuals and encourages the contributions such diversity brings; it finally rings down the curtain on the view that just because someone does not belong to "my" group that person must be bad, wrong, put down, converted, or killed. We see remnants of tribalism in the Western nations in the campaigns of the anti-globalization protesters and our own religious fundamentalists (Falwell, McVeigh, Farrakhan), so this is not just another name for the division between fundamentalist Islamists and the rest of the world.
...An anthropology professor at UC Santa Cruz once said that warfare was a form of rejection of the enemy's cultural values. Consider current and past wars, including terrorism, in light of this assertion and see if it holds up. The reasons why we went to war against Japan and Germany during WWII are clear, but Vietnam is less obvious. We went to war against Iraq to move them out of Kuwait because we had a treaty with them and because the flow of oil is strategic to us. We went to war against Panama because they were enabling the Medellin Cartel to flood us with drugs.
...Those cultures that accept diversity, in the most universal sense of the word, will survive. Those that do not accept diversity will be engaged in conflict and will not survive, or alternatively, if humanity does not have that capacity, none of us will survive. Thinking out loud, perhaps there will be conflict on such an enormous scale that population will revert to 2000 year ago levels with the whole process then to repeat until humanity is able to get past it.
If we don't learn to live together in a connected global community we will destroy ourselves.
Pay-To-Play Voting
Great piece in The New York Times today by a guy named Adam Cohen on the hidden poll tax in the bill passed last month by the House of Representatives -- a bill that would deny the right to vote to anyone without government-issued ID. Now I don't want illegal aliens voting; nor do I want voter fraud. But, if the House is truly against voter fraud and not just the denial of votes to people who'd likely vote Democratic, why not pass a bill against use of voting machines like Diebold's until all the kinks are worked out? Adam Cohen has the answer in his piece:
Disenfranchisement was often motivated by partisan politics. In the South, at the end of Reconstruction, white Democrats pushed through poll taxes and literacy tests to reduce the black Republican vote. In the North, it was Republicans putting up the barriers, like New York’s 1921 constitutional amendment imposing a rigorous literacy test, aimed at keeping hundreds of thousands of Yiddish speakers from voting.Poll taxes and literacy tests are unconstitutional today, but the forces of disenfranchisement have come up with creative new methods. In 2004, the Ohio secretary of state, Kenneth Blackwell, ordered election officials to reject any voter registration form that was submitted on less than 80-pound paper. The edict disproportionately hurt poor and minority voters by interfering with registration drives aimed at them.
This year, Florida adopted new rules for voter registration drives that were so onerous — and carried such draconian punishments for mistakes — that the League of Women Voters of Florida announced that for the first time in 67 years it would not register voters.
Election officials are still wrongly purging eligible voters from the rolls. Four years after Ms. Harris’s error-filled purge of felons, her successor as Florida secretary of state developed another error-filled felon list. She abandoned it only after news media pointed out that, oddly enough, it included 22,000 blacks, a group that votes heavily Democratic, but just 61 Hispanics, a group that tends to vote Republican in Florida. Just last week, a court struck down another error-filled voter roll purge, in Kentucky.
The voter ID laws that have been enacted recently have been set up not to verify voters’ identities, but to stop certain groups from voting. Georgia’s law — whose sponsor was quoted in a Justice Department memo as saying that if blacks in her district “are not paid to vote, they don’t go to the polls” — required people to pay for voter ID cards, until the courts held that to be an illegal poll tax. When it took effect there was not a single office in Atlanta where the cards were for sale.
The current wave of laws began after 2000, when the presidency was decided by just 537 votes. With today’s closely divided electorate, there is more strategic value than ever in disenfranchising people who fall into groups likely to support the other party. To a disheartening degree, this new wave is supported almost entirely by Republicans and opposed only by Democrats.
The opposition should be bipartisan. Disenfranchisement undermines not only American democracy, but also the whole idea of America, by illegitimately excluding some people from their rightful place in it.
I Love This Man
A student not only lets his phone ring but answers it in class -- and the professor shows the student and the phone the respect they deserve. My hero.
In a store yesterday, futilely trying to hear my own thoughts over some cellphone-blathering girl's loud inanity, all I could do was join the conversation already in progress:
"Do you know what I need?" she asked the person on the other end.
"A muzzle, just for starters," I cut in.
"Foley's Closet Will Be His Tomb"
Fantastic letter from a Congressional page posted on Andrew Sullivan's blog, explaining why homo hatred (of course, spurred by religion) and the closet were most likely what got Foley to where he is today:
I was a Congressional page in the summer of 1992. (By the way, it is an incredible program that should be protected from anyone who calls for its elimination, as some reactionary Members are now grumbling.) I was 17, from a small town in the West, and I was realizing that I was gay. Based on my experience, I’m saddened for these young men in this scandal, some who by the content of their IMs with Foley are most likely gay. They were preyed up on by this powerful hypocrite. Remembering my summer on Capitol Hill, I’m sure I would have been a bit star struck by this Congressman - pages were always impressed by a Member of Congress who took the time to learn our names, thank us for our work, and was open to saying ‘hi’ in the hallways. I’m also sure that as a young person questioning my sexuality, and full of testosterone to boot, I would have been intrigued by Foley’s continued advances. Foley knew this, which is why he did what he did, and he was wrong to do it.I now live as an out gay man and this scandal affirms my belief that the closet is a horribly destructive social control mechanism. If those young pages felt that they could be open about their sexuality they might have been more likely to have come forward about Foley’s advances to their superiors, without fear of being stigmatized, instead of playing his creepy secret games. And more important - because Foley is in the position of power here — if Foley had lived his life with integrity as an out gay man this scandal would likely never have happened. He wouldn’t have turned to the most vulnerable and impressionable men regularly in his sphere, the young pages. Foley’s closet will be his tomb.
Oh, and by the way, about all those idiotic claims by Republicans that gays wouldn't have wanted Foley prosecuted, in another blog item, Sullivan has this to say:
Every time I hear some Republican flack claiming that any previous attempt to discipline Mark Foley would have been viewed as homophobic by the media and Democrats and gays, my jaw drops to the floor. Memo to Gingrich: It is not homophobic in any way to stop a grown man preying on teens in his care, whether that guy is gay or straight. No gay person would object to stopping that; we'd all insist on it; and I have found no gay people excusing Foley since. The premise behind this excuse is itself homophobic, and shows what little clue these Republicans have about gay people in general.
And Sullivan yet again on what was known, by whom, and when:
From an array of different gay sources, informal and formal, these past few days, the picture I have received of Foley (whom I'd never met and knew only as a Republican closet-case) is that, from the minute he got to DC, he was a disaster waiting to happen. How this was dealt with and by whom over the years I don't know. But from what I'm hearing, Foley's online excesses may have truly been pretty well hidden, but the fundamental Foley problem wasn't. It was happening in broad daylight. If the alleged "prankster" page is to be believed, then it must have been common knowledge among the pages as well. Maybe real warnings were given, and ignored. Maybe the truth is in the murky middle. But this much I now believe: if Hastert didn't know, he should have. If he was told, he should remember. It's the kind of thing someone who actually cares about the pages would instantly remember. My guess (and I do not know for sure) is that he chose not to know, because he needed a seat in Florida. If that's true, people are right to be mad.
The Horror...The Horror...
The FCC only has the public's best interest in mind: We have to think of The Children, its supporters remind us. Just think of all the terrible things that could happen to The Children.
You know what? If the children are so fucking fragile, maybe people who have them should stuff their underdeveloped ears with earthquake wax and leave the little tykes tied up in the living room and covered with plastic like my granny used to do to her couch. (I don't think granny's living room couch saw ass once.)
Anyway, the way the FCC nitwits play it, if The Children hear the word "shit," they have no choice but to immediately run over to sell crank to first graders outside the elementary school and pimp unwitting fourth graders to feed their own habits. (Yeah, right -- like it takes one of the most benign banned words out there to make them do that.)
Back here in the real world, The Children don't need TV to "corrupt" them. No, they're much too busy teaching classes in teabagging on the playground -- when they aren't too busy having some hot back door fun behind the gym. In Bill Maher's words, from his Salon piece I posted once before:
New Rule: Abstinence pledges make you horny. A new eight-year study just released reveals that American teenagers who take "virginity" pledges of the sort so favored by the Bush administration wind up with just as many STDs as the other kids.But that's not all -- taking the pledges also makes a teenage girl six times more likely to perform oral sex, and a boy four times more likely to get anal. Which leads me to an important question: where were these pledges when I was in high school?
Seriously, when I was a teenager, the only kids having anal intercourse were the ones who missed. My idea of lubrication was oiling my bike chain. If I had known I could have been getting porn star sex the same year I took Algebra II, simply by joining up with the Christian right, I'd have been so down with Jesus they would have had to pry me out of the pew.
Meanwhile, back at Advice Goddess Acres, I had Dish Network set to record Boston Legal, a show I love, lately guest-starring my witty talented, playwright and screenwriter friend David Bottrell as the judge's creepy peeping neighbor.
When Dish is about to record, it flips to the correct channel about two minutes early. In this case, a show with Ted Danson, Help Me Help You, was on. Looked like a bunch of people in group therapy -- one of whom described a woman as...get this:
"Bat-poop crazy."
Bat-poop crazy? Bat-POOP crazy? How does the writer sleep at night? I was especially offended by this horror, as, along with "assclown" and, more recently, "sugartits," "bat-shit crazy" happens to be one of my favorite terms -- one, by the way, that's extremely helpful in accurately describing every tenth person in large gatherings of psychotherapists.
And I know we're not supposed to ask this, but what, exactly, would happen to all the precious little enfants...if somebody just said the actual word "shit"? Well, nothing...but think of all those nice thousand dollar bills from fines for shit dissemination that must be snuggling up together in the FCC's coffers.
Oh yeah, and while we're on the phony baloney sanctity of words, the other day, a commenter trying to dance around the fact that he has no proof of god's existence intimated that there were class issues around my mention of the word "vagina." In his words:
Love the vagina analogy, by the way. Classy.
To be fair, it was a giant purple hovering vagina. I'd written:
Personally, I see no evidence there is a god, just as I see no evidence, as I believe I posted elsewhere, that there's a giant purple vagina hovering over my house. Until there's proof of either Hover Pussy or God, I'll go on my merry way, writing, blogging, and preening...until I'm worm kibble.
We've already solved the one on whether there's a god (no evidence, dears!) This is great, because now we can move on to a really thorny question about genitalia and class: If there is such a thing as a giant purple hovering vagina, do you think it can be excluded from country club membership?
photo by Gregg Sutter outside the downtown L.A. Laemmle theater.
Art Teacher Shows Kids Extremely Expensive Porn
Let me just float a guess that it wasn't a member of the Dallas atheists' alliance who complained that a teacher took her fifth grade class to the art museum. Yes, a popular art teacher, with 28 years in the classroom, got suspended after some kid complained to Mommy about the...gasp...nudity in the museum.
No, it wasn't an exhibition of Jenna Jameson's latest films, but Maillol's "Flora" and
and Rodin's "Shade," among others. Wow, huh? A little, shall we say, less animated and explicit than what they're shooting in the Valley these days. Ralph Blumenthal writes for The New York Times:
Although the tour had been approved by the principal, and the 89 students were accompanied by 4 other teachers, at least 12 parents and a museum docent, Ms. McGee said, she was called to the principal the next day and "bashed."She later received a memorandum in which the principal, Nancy Lawson, wrote: "During a study trip that you planned for fifth graders, students were exposed to nude statues and other nude art representations." It cited additional complaints, which Ms. McGee has challenged.
The school board suspended her with pay on Sept. 22.
In a newsletter e-mailed to parents this week, the principal and Rick Reedy, superintendent of the Frisco Independent School District, said that Ms. McGee had been denied transfer to another school in the district, that her annual contract would not be renewed and that a replacement had been interviewed.
The episode has dumbfounded and exasperated many in and out of this mushrooming exurb, where nearly two dozen new schools have been built in the last decade and computers outnumber students three to one.
A representative of the Texas State Teachers Association, which has sprung to Ms. McGee's defense, calls it "the first 'nudity-in-a-museum case' we have seen."
"Teachers get in trouble for a variety of reasons," said the association's general counsel, Kevin Lungwitz, "but I've never heard of a teacher getting in trouble for taking her kiddoes on an approved trip to an art museum."
John R. Lane, director of the museum, said he had no information on why Ms. McGee had been disciplined.
"I think you can walk into the Dallas Museum of Art and see nothing that would cause concern," Mr. Lane said.
For thousands of years, women walked around with their tits hanging out, and nobody went psycho because of it. Here's a woman who sounds like one of those teachers you remember years later for being a big influence on you; yet, she sounds dangerously close to being canned...all because Johnny saw a glimpse of boob.
You know, they have exposed titties all over the damn place in France -- a particularly nice collection of Maillol's sculpted hooters reside in the Jardin des Tuilleries -- and France isn't awash in serial killers and sex offenders because of it. Yeah, okay, they may be a bunch of chain-smoking commies over there, but at least they don't get apoplectic over classic nudes.
Probably Sculpted By Augustus Saint-Gaudens
A Stiff Among The Swells
Hilarious rerun on Slate of a Michael Kinsley piece on Bill O'Reilly's handy persecution fantasies, including O'Reilly's absurd contention that he sits home every night because nobody invites him to parties. Yeah, right. Kinsley's having none of it:
Certainly, traditional snobbery cannot hope to compete with today's most powerful social ordering principle: celebrity. O'Reilly, as he himself has been known to admit, has the most popular news show on cable. His book, The O'Reilly Factor (named after the show), was a No. 1 best seller. When he appears at an "A-list" (Newsweek's label) social function, nobody wonders, "What's he doing here?"...Yet O'Reilly, like many other people, clings to the fantasy that he is a stiff among the swells. He plays this chord repeatedly in the book, a potpourri of anecdotes and opinions about life in general and his in particular. He had a very strange experience as a graduate student at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (which let the likes of Bill O'Reilly through its ivy-covered gates, he is careful to note, "in an effort to bring all sorts of people together"). Other Kennedy School students, he says, insisted on being called by three names, none of which could be "Vinny, Stevie, or Serge." Their "clothing was understated but top quality … and their rooms hinted of exotic vacations and sprawling family property. Winter Skiing in Grindelwald? No problem." They tried to be nice, but Bill was nevertheless humiliated, in a Thai restaurant, to be "the only one who didn't know how to order my meal in Thai."
I should explain this last one to those who may not have been aware that Thai is the lingua franca of the American WASP upper class. The explanation is simple. American Jewish parents only one or two generations off the boat often spoke in Yiddish when they didn't want their children to understand. Italian-Americans used Italian, and so on. But WASPs only had English. (They tried Latin, but tended to forget the declensions after the second martini.) So they adopted Thai, which they use in front of the servants and the O'Reillys of the world as well. (At least it sounds like Thai after the second martini.) When they turn 18, upper-class children attend a secret Thai language school, disguised as a ski resort, in Grindelwald.
...Why fake a humble background? Partly for business reasons: Joe Sixpack versus the elitists is a good posture for any talk show host, especially one on Fox. Partly out of vanity: It makes the climb to your current perch more impressive. Partly for political reasons: Under our system, even conservatives need some plausible theory to qualify for victim status, from which all blessings flow. But mainly out of sheer snobbery. And it's the only kind of snobbery with any real power in America today: reverse snobbery. Bill O'Reilly pretends (or maybe sincerely imagines) that he feels the sting of status from above. But he unintentionally reveals that he actually fears it more from below. Like most of us.
Duck And Cover!
A huge loogie of a weasel job on National Review Online about the Foley case, by Mark Levin:
As best I can tell, ABC News has yet to report on or address Drudge’s revelation, i.e., that former congressional page Jordan Edmund “goaded an unwitting Foley to type embarrassing comments that were then shared with a small group of young Hill politicos. The prank went awry when the saved IM sessions got into the hands of political operatives.”Of course, this doesn’t expunge Foley’s conduct. But it does put at least this page’s conduct into a completely different light. He wasn’t the innocent victim portrayed by some who have sought to exploit this situation.
Although ABC hasn’t reported on Drudge’s revelation at this writing, it has apparently communicated its position to rawstory.com.
Among other things, ABC claims that this couldn’t be a prank because there are other pages and other communications. That may well be true. And nobody would argue, I think, that Foley shouldn't have resigned over his communications with Edmund. But it certainly does raise other questions. For example, Speaker Hastert is under political attack because he is accused of not doing enough in response to the Edmund’s e-mails. As I understand the Drudge revelation, these e-mails, among other communications, were intentional attempts by Edmund to get the kind of reaction from Foley that, in fact, he got. So, not only hadn’t Hastert seen these e-mails, if he had seen them any subsequent decisions Hastert might have made would have based on Edmund’s prank. Perhaps that might have resulted in the discovery of additional communications between Foley and other pages, but that’s not a basis for concluding that Hastert was negligent or should resign.
Here's the WSJ:
A statement on behalf of the executive committee of the family-coalition Arlington Group, including cultural conservative leaders Don Wildmon, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer and Paul Weyrich, wants the "whole truth," which apparently consists of "when House Leadership or other members from either party knew of this situation." The group demands that "legal authorities prosecute any person who had knowledge of any such activity but did not report it immediately." And of course while the House Speaker was taking this public beating, his No. 2, Majority Leader John Boehner, pulled down the shades and turned away with his now-famous dismissal: "It's in his corner; it's his responsibility."And so with an election weeks away and its troops already at the edge of the cliff, the Republican elites decided to jump into the sea over Mr. Foley.
We doubt that Messrs. Boehner, Wildmon, Perkins, Bauer and Weyrich will feel as politically cleansed as they seem to be this week if they wake up November 8 to a House run by Ms. Pelosi and Messrs. Rangel, Murtha, Dingell, Waxman, Obey and Frank. And if the pundits are right, the Foley wilding may even give them a Harry Reid Senate.
And, of course, that's all that matters here. Family values, schmamly values!
Clinging To God Like A Rat On Driftwood
On my Dennett post about the irrational belief in god, Dark Sided had a great idea, which he left in the comments:
When people tell you their religion or belief in gods gives their life meaning, ask them: how? Ask them: "What does your life mean, then?" And then watch them squirm.
So, all you god believers, answer the question (click on Comments, below).
Here, I'll start: My life has meaning because I give it meaning. I live ethically, try to make people laugh, to help out where I can, and to "leave the campground better than I found it."
On the same Dennett post, somebody also left this little gem:
“It is hell to live without hope, and religion saves people from hell.” - Mordecai Kaplan, Rabbi
Yeah, right. Just ask a few gay people who've spent their lives in the closet, or worse yet, have been beaten up or killed because somebody read the bible and found it anti-gay. And then, there's the girl on The Amazing Race, whose father cried that she's gay. I find that tragic and obscene. And I guarantee you it's because of religion. I can't imagine any atheists caring whether you're gay, straight, herm, or other -- providing you don't diddle the children. Personally, I don't care how anybody fucks, or with whom, as long as they don't splash bodily fluids all over my sidewalk. Then again, I don't live my life based on a really old book of fables people like to believe was handed down by a giant invisble man.
An excerpt from my response to the nitwit who posted the rabbi's words:
Mordechai Kaplan doesn't speak for me. Perhaps like the Pope, he was just promoting his business. ...There's no evidence of heaven or hell - and this is actually discussed in Judaism. So perhaps the guy doesn't know his shit.What is "hope" exactly? Personally, I have rational optimism, and I don't believe in dumb unproven crap. I'd venture that I'm happier than most people...perhaps because I don't waste my life, since, best I can see, I have a few decades on the planet and then I'm worms. Like all of you will be.
Not one of you has evidence for god or heaven or hell. Therefore believing in it is...well, to put it politely, highly irrational.
And while I don't fear god, I sure do fear god-believing people:
They live irrationally and get me fired from papers when I use science and reason in my work -- as opposed to mouthing the words of the bible. They prevent stem cell research and they do a great job of keeping contraception and the morning after pill out of the hands of those who need it -- promoting disease and teen pregnancy. The evil Pope keeps his business going - the church being the most successful multinational corporation ever - by promoting AIDs in Africa through urging people to not use condoms. And then, take an airplane recently? You think the atheists are trying to blow you up, or maybe it's the believers?
In short: I'm not afraid of people's silly, irrational thoughts -- it's just how they apply them, say, with cross-imprinted jackboots, to the lives of the rest of us.
P.S. Don't forget to check out Carnival Of The Godless...here.
Does The 5 Freeway Run Through Loehmann's?
I'm always amazed when people not only lie but do it unabashedly. I was in the Beverly Hills Loehmann's on Sunday, nowhere near the 5 freeway, being tortured by various loud dull women shouting into their cell phones. At least this woman -- well-dressed black woman, about 6'4" -- gave me a laugh from across the designer section. Her phone rang and she barked into it:
Hi...I'm stuck on the 5 freeway. Traffic is just terrible, and I don't think I'll be getting there anytime soon.
It's hard to know whether a black woman's blushing, but her face didn't seem to reflect even a micron of shame. She hung up and went back to sorting through the designer slacks.
Your Boy Isn't The Only One Who Gets Use Of The Magic Ring
Orac doesn't just write about science. There's often something smart and interesting about politics or culture on his blog. Take this piece about presidential powers. He makes exactly the right point:
Would the right trust President Clinton with the power given to Bush last week?
He's talking about the Military Commissions Act of 2006, authorizing the president to establish military tribunals for "enemy combatants," which Orac calls "a category that, given the murky language of the act, is not clearly limited to noncitizens, to be a deeply disturbing turn of events."
David Wallechinsky gives a brief rundown on what the Act does -- gives the president:
...the right to interpret, without Congressional oversight, the Geneva Conventions, to waive the right of habeas corpus, to authorize the use of information gathered through torture, and to, in effect, establish a separate judicial system that will be run out of the White House, willfully giving up powers that until now were reserved for the legislative and judicial branches of the government....The text of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (formerly known as the "Bringing Terrorists to Justice Act") is smooth and fair-sounding, but it is filled with loopholes created by a combination of vaguely-defined phrases and carefully parsed definitions. For example, the section banning torture contains an exception, namely "pain and suffering incidental to lawful sanctions." This is a phrase that is used in the United Nations Convention Against Torture to refer to practices that are internationally accepted, such as imprisonment. However, there is nothing to stop the Bush administration from redefining that clause, as it has so many others.
One of the many disturbing aspects of the Act is that the president now has the right to declare any foreign citizen, including a legal resident of the United States, an "unlawful enemy combatant" if that person is suspected of giving money to an organization that supports terrorism, with the term "terrorism" defined by the president.
...Then there is the question of whether the Act gives the Bush administration permission to detain American citizens. Section 948a of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 defines "unlawful enemy combatant" as "an individual engaged in hostilities againtst the United States who is not a lawful enemy combatant." Does the phrase "an individual" include U.S. citizens? Apparently we will have to wait for President Bush to make that decision.
Orac writes:
Personally, I do not trust President Bush, a future President Hillary Clinton, or any other President with the power to label people an "enemy combatants" and throw them in jail in essence indefinitely. It clearly goes past the line of powers that the President should be given, even in a time of war. It's not unlike what I discussed earlier today regarding laws in Germany against Nazi symbols. This administration may not use this law much; the next administration may not use it much; but some administration in the future will be tempted to push this law to the limit.
That's the problem with all the power being grabbed by the executive branch during this administration. The guys currently in The White House have to think about what it would be like if the other team got the magic ring. Don't they consider that? Or do they have the place all locked up thanks to Diebold?
A Few Words About Bill Clinton
...And Monica and all:
"It's vile...It's more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction."-- Rep. Mark Foley, R-West Palm Beach
Boobs Are Good Food
But, it turns out, sucking on one as a baby won't make you smarter, writes Jeremy Laurance in the Independent:
It is one of the most hotly debated topics in pregnancy and early motherhood. Does breastfeeding really boost a baby's intelligence?Now the largest scientific study yet carried out has settled the issue. Breastfed babies are indeed smarter - because their mothers are. Mothers who breastfeed tend to be more intelligent, more highly educated and to provide more stimulation at home. The higher IQ of their babies is therefore mostly inherited, accounting for 75 per cent of the difference between them and bottle-fed babies, the researchers found.
The rest of the difference is down to the environment in which they are raised. Breastfed babies have mothers who are older and better educated, and live in nicer homes where they get more attention.
When all these factors were taken into account, breastfeeding made less than half a point's difference in the intelligence scores - laying to rest a myth that has held sway for almost 80 years.
Geoff Der, a statistician from the Medical Research Council's social and public health sciences unit at the University of Edinburgh, said: "This question has been debated ever since a link between the two was first discovered in 1929. We found 73 articles which dealt with the link."
He added: "Breastfed children do tend to score higher on intelligence tests, but they also tend to come from more advantaged backgrounds."
The study, published online by the British Medical Journal today, is based on US data on the breastfeeding history and IQs of 5,000 children and 3,000 mothers, which was not available in the UK. Mr Der concluded: "There is no reason why the same findings would not apply here."
God Doesn't Just Hate Amputees
If there is a god, in addition to hating amputees, he must hate little girls, since "god" let five little girls be killed execution-style by a child molester. Mark Scolforo writes for the AP:
Stoltzfus said the victims' families will be sustained by their faith.“We think it was God's plan and we're going to have to pick up the pieces and keep going,” he said. “A funeral to us is a much more important thing than the day of birth because we believe in the hereafter. The children are better off than their survivors.”
I dunno about you, but if I have a choice, I'll take surviving over a bullet in the head at age 7.
Now, if anybody works hard at praying, it's the Amish. That, apparently, doesn't count for much. Not for much more than it does with the amputees, anyway. At the amputee link above, here's a bit on how praying will get you bupkis:
According to the Standard Model of God:God is all-powerful. Therefore, God can do anything, and regenerating a leg is trivial.
God is perfect, and he created the Bible, which is his perfect book. In the Bible, Jesus makes very specific statements about the power of prayer. Since Jesus is God, and God and the Bible are perfect, those statements should be true and accurate.
God is all-knowing and all-loving. He certainly knows about the plight of the amputee, and he loves this amputee very much.
God is ready and willing to answer your prayers no matter how big or small. All that you have to do is believe. He says it in multiple places in the Bible. Surely, with millions of people in the prayer circle, at least one of them will believe and the prayer will be answered.
God has no reason to discriminate against amputees. If he is answering millions of other prayers like Jeanna's every day, God should be answering the prayers of amputees too.
Nonetheless, the amputated legs are not going to regenerate.
What are we seeing here? It is not that God sometimes answers the prayers of amputees, and sometimes does not. Instead, in this situation there is a very clear line. God never answers the prayers of amputees. It would appear, to an unbiased observer, that God is singling out amputees and purposefully ignoring them.
And now, tragically, they've got company.
Now They're Challenging Me To A Bar Brawl
After Kate Coe posted a link to a rant about my column, "Along Came Polyamory," on FishbowlLA, and the column found its way to various polyamory bulletin boards, a handful of humorless polyamorists hopped on my comments section.
Brave "Tom" with no last name wanted to rumble:
I'm near Colorado and Cloverfield if you are interested in hashing this out.
Some sane, intelligent polyamorists posted, too. Unfortunately, they seem to be in short supply. But, check out all the huffy commenters on my blog post, "Amy Alkon Is A Big, Dumb Meanie Who Won't Apologize."
The bottom line, despite their heavings and their rude attempts to coerce me into apologizing -- I was quite accurate in my description of what is and isn't a "sexually open relationship":
No, humans aren't naturally monogamous — which is why people say relationships "take work" while you never hear anybody talking about what a coal mine an affair can be. There are "sexually open relationships," but none other than the late Nena O'Neill, coauthor of Open Marriage, admitted to me that few couples can make a go of them. Of course, without an explicit agreement for, let's say, a feel-up free-for-all, you don't have a sexually open anything, just a partner who's cheating.
In lieu of having the goods on me, they turn into anonymous comments section thugs -- nuts who compare unfavorably even to The Cat People. I have yet to see a Jim Treacher-level commenter among them. Quite frankly, I love a good bitchslapping. It's just that if I'm going to be bitchslapped, I'd like it to be by somebody smart and funny like Treach. What most of these polyamory people are doing in my comments at the moment, well, it's like being pecked to death by ducks.
Next time, I'll listen to Cathy Seipp:
Seriously, Amy, I sort of hate to see you bother with such a tiny nitwit as this. She desperately wants attention, and now she's got it although she doesn't deserve it.The interesting issue to me is: How should these blogospheric attacks from people so far beneath you be handled? My policy is to generally ignore them...other than an occasional tangential mention.
Most helpfully, Cathy also explained my headline for the short of intellect:
Forgot to add that "Along Came Polyamory" is obviously just a play on words and a clever headline, not an insult.
What's most amazing about this whole stupid thing is what one commenter (a polyamorist herself) pointed out -- could there be worse PR for the "poly people"? I've never had such a bunch of rude, low-blow commenters on my site. Quite frankly, I'm not so much horrified by the names they're calling me and rude remarks they're making as I am by how free they feel to make them -- and anonymously. They even insult...Movable Type! In the words of brave Tom with no last name:
> I apologize for the double post,
> the server kicked a 500 error for some reason.That's 'cuz she's using "Movable Type."
The choice of imbeciles, everywhere.
My personal comments section policy for the past few years -- on my site or others': either I post under my own full name or not at all. Of course, I'm not a weenie. Then again, a number of these commenters did post remarks about how I look like a man. What do you think? Can you spot my huge member under this dress?
You Might Be Offended But That Doesn't Mean I'm Wrong
The silly dustup with the humorless polyamorist Amy Gahran reminded me of something: how often, these days, Americans of various stripes appear to have no sense of humor. For example, I got fired from two papers -- The Ithaca Journal and the St. Cloud Caller Times -- for this line:
Where you go wrong is thinking sex is special. It isn’t. Monkeys have it, and not because somebody gave them flowers and expensive jewelry.
I try not to get fired unnecessarily, but at the same time, I write freely and refuse to be silenced by the humorless. If I think a line or a headline is fair I'll run with it. Meanwhile, I make plenty of fun of myself (especially for the ADHD: Memory of a sand-flea. Mind like a steel sieve.) I even ran with the nasty crack from the polyamorists (have yet to encounter a ruder, meaner bunch of commenters on my site) about how I look like a man. The truth is, since the nastiest ones are all posting anonymously, I obviously have much bigger balls than they do.
A pity Europe, on the other hand, is buckling left and right. To be fair, I don't deal with death threats, only the prospect of lining up for dinner with the homeless guys on the Santa Monica palisades.
Here's Daniel Barenboim on the canceled performance of Mozart's "Idomeneo" in Germany. The performance was canceled to buckle to as-of-yet-unheard Muslim protests -- over elements in it which, in Barenboim's words, "could offend people who are in fact not even required to see it."
Yes, there are all these Muslims, immigrants (stupidly accepted in droves) in Europe, who are suddenly controlling what is and isn't heard in a concert hall by virtue of the violence of some of their religion. No, not all Muslims, but far too many, with far too few "moderates" unzipping their lips to protest. (Is that offensive? Sorry, I couldn't give a shit.)
Barenboim writes:
It is the duty of a government to protect its citizens from the threat of violence and terrorism. But is it the duty of a theater to protect its audience from artistic expressions that might be interpreted as offensive?
The link between artistic expression and the associations it evokes is not unlike the link between substance and perception. Much too often we alter the substance to suit its perception. There is, of course, no way to determine the associations evoked by art, because it is an individual's prerogative.
In music the difference between content and perception is provided by the printed page. In theater or opera, where there is no score for the stage direction, it is the exclusive responsibility of the director.
The very essence of the role of theater in society is its ability to remain in constant dialogue with reality regardless of its impact on real events. This form of dialogue is neither a sign of courage nor of cowardice, but must come of the inner necessity of an individual or an institution to express itself.
Limiting one's freedom of expression as a response to fear is as ineffective as imposing one's point of view through military force.
Art is neither moral nor immoral, neither edifying nor offensive; it is our reaction to it that makes it one or the other in our minds.
Shades of Albert Ellis from Barenboim! Very impressive. He continues:
Our society sees controversy more and more as a negative attribute, yet difference of opinion and the difference between content and the perception of it lie at the very essence of creativity.
If content can be manipulated, perception can be doubly so. By censoring ourselves artistically out of fear of insulting a certain group of people we not only limit rather than enlarge human thought in general but in fact insult the intelligence of a large group of Muslims and deprive them of the opportunity to demonstrate their maturity of thought.
This is the exact opposite of dialogue and a consequence of the inability to discern between the many different points of view existent in the vast Muslim world.
The Tenants Of The Conservative Right
Embarrassing error in Monday's LA Times profile of Sam Harris by Gina Piccalo. I read the error Monday at 9 a.m., and as I'm typing this sentence (Monday at 11:08 p.m.) it has yet to be corrected. Here's a screen shot:
Um, sorry, but that would probably be the tenets. As in beliefs, not Christian people renting rooms.
Just a thought, but Tribune bottom line notwithstanding, a few good copy editors should be probably offered tenancy over there on Spring Street. Even if there are, in the words of the late David Shaw, hordes of seasoned editors going over every comma:
"At least four experienced Times editors will have examined this column [before publication], for example," Shaw boasted. "They will have checked it for accuracy, fairness, grammar, taste and libel, among other things."
Other things...like whether the Christian tenants do or do not owe six months back rent.
UPDATE: My own embarrassing error corrected below by Mimi. One single Mimi, not hordes, or horrors, hoards.
Ain't Nothin' But A Hound Dog
They Investigated Clinton's Cat
But, it seems they needed a Republican Congress more than they needed to stand up for the "family values" they profess to believe in. Cenk Ugyur explores Republican ethics:
Is there anything these Republicans won't cover up? Duke Cunningham took millions of dollars in bribes. The people who were buying him off bought him a yacht called the Duke-Stir. He had a bribe menu on Congressional letter head. How many ethics investigations? Zero. Zilch. Nada.Bob Ney took gifts and favors from Jack Abramoff.
He has confessed and is about to go to prison. How many ethics investigations? Zero. None. Not one.
Then there is Hastert's shady land deal. Bill Frist's insider trading. Tom DeLay's money laundering. The list goes on and on. Every one of them had their ass covered by the rest of their Republican colleagues, crooks, whatever you want to call them.
When Joel Hefley, a conservative Republican from Colorado, had the temerity to actually do an ethics investigation of Tom DeLay -- he was removed. Can't have it. You can't have any ethics investigations in a place with no ethics. The house will fall in.
Well, now it has. Because they've gone too far. This time they covered for a sexual predator. Mark Foley, Republican of Florida, was caught sending very explicit sexual messages to 16 and 17 year old boys who worked as pages for Congress.
Actually, he was caught by a fellow Republican, Rodney Alexander, because one of the pages worked for Rep. Alexander and turned Foley in. So, what did the Republicans do about it? Absolutely nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
They covered it up. Because it's what they do.
The Republican Protection Racket stepped in and made the story go away. There was no public apology to the boys that were sexually harassed. No criminal investigation. No ethics investigation. Not a word.
The Republican leadership knew for most of the year. In all that time, while other kids could have been exposed, while they knew of several instances of sexual advances toward underage boys -- they did nothing!
Now, they feign outrage. Why weren't they outraged when they first found out about it? They're not outraged because young boys were jeopardized. They're outraged now because they're jeopardized.
But it gets worse. They left Foley in charge of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus. Come on!
If you put it in a movie about a corrupt Congress, I wouldn't believe it. It's too over the top. You'd walk out of the theater saying, "That's too much. No one would do that." Apparently they would and they did.
Remember this is the same Republicans who spent 140 hours investigating Bill Clinton's Christmas card list. I'm not kidding. They even started an investigation into his cat. If you put it in a movie, no one would believe it.
Here's one of the IMs:
Xxxxxxxxx (8:04:04 PM): normal clothesXxxxxxxxx (8:04:09 PM): tshirt and shorts
Maf54 (8:04:17 PM): um so a big buldge
Xxxxxxxxx (8:04:35 PM): ya
Maf54 (8:04:45 PM): um
Maf54 (8:04:58 PM): love to slip them off of you
Xxxxxxxxx (8:05:08 PM): haha
Maf54 (8:05:53 PM): and gram the one eyed snake
Maf54 (8:06:13 PM): grab
Xxxxxxxxx (8:06:53 PM): not tonight...dont get to excited
Maf54 (8:07:12 PM): well your hard
Xxxxxxxxx (8:07:45 PM): that is true
Maf54 (8:08:03 PM): and a little horny
Xxxxxxxxx (8:08:11 PM): and also tru
Maf54 (8:08:31 PM): get a ruler and measure it for me
Xxxxxxxxx (8:08:38 PM): ive already told you that
Maf54 (8:08:47 PM): tell me again
Xxxxxxxxx (8:08:49 PM): 7 and 1/2
Maf54 (8:09:04 PM): ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Maf54 (8:09:08 PM): beautiful
Xxxxxxxxx (8:09:38 PM): lol
Maf54 (8:09:44 PM): thats a great size
Xxxxxxxxx (8:10:00 PM): thank you
Maf54 (8:10:22 PM): still stiff
Xxxxxxxxx (8:10:28 PM): ya
Maf54 (8:10:40 PM): take it out
Xxxxxxxxx (8:10:54 PM): brb...my mom is yelling
Maf54 (8:11:06 PM): ok
Xxxxxxxxx (8:14:02 PM): back
Maf54 (8:14:37 PM): cool hope se didnt see any thing
Now maybe it's just because the Republicans are in power right now. No, I don't think so. Save for a few suspect Democratic lawmakers -- Maxine Waters, Alan Mollohan, and William Jefferson -- the Republicans outpace the Democrats in sleaze bigtime.
Carnival Of The Godless
I'm the bearded lady with the midgets in the yellow and purple tent on the left.
Three Terrible Mistakes In Iraq
Of course, there are really four, with being there at all the main one. Slowly, even some of the president's dittoheads are beginning to admit that. As for the three terrible mistakes, Bob Woodward chronicles them in a story in Sunday's Washington Post, "Secret Reports Dispute White House Optimism":
On June 18, 2003, Jay Garner went to see Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to report on his brief tenure in Iraq as head of the postwar planning office. Throughout the invasion and the early days of the war, Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general, had struggled just to get his team into Iraq. Two days after he arrived, Rumsfeld called to tell him that L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, a 61-year-old terrorism expert and protege of Henry A. Kissinger, would be coming over as the presidential envoy, effectively replacing Garner."We've made three tragic decisions," Garner told Rumsfeld.
"Really?" Rumsfeld asked.
"Three terrible mistakes," Garner said.
He cited the first two orders Bremer signed when he arrived, the first one banning as many as 50,000 members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from government jobs and the second disbanding the Iraqi military. Now there were hundreds of thousands of disorganized, unemployed, armed Iraqis running around.
Third, Garner said, Bremer had summarily dismissed an interim Iraqi leadership group that had been eager to help the United States administer the country in the short term. "Jerry Bremer can't be the face of the government to the Iraqi people. You've got to have an Iraqi face for the Iraqi people."
Garner made his final point: "There's still time to rectify this. There's still time to turn it around."
Rumsfeld looked at Garner for a moment with his take-no-prisoners gaze. "Well," he said, "I don't think there is anything we can do, because we are where we are."
I do have to comment, one does wonder how Bob Woodward can be so sure he gets all these quotes and little details right. I'd be very uncomfortable stating, secondhand, what kind of gaze Rumsfeld had. And then, exactly what he said -- as-told-to or not. On the rare occasion I write an interview piece, I use a tape recorder, because I'm terrified of misquoting people. I guess few others share my terror.
Guess Who's Looking After The Children
Here's a clue: "Are you horny?"
Yes, Dave Weigel at Reason's Hit & Run blog writes that Congressman Mark Foley was the chair of...the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus! According to his Web page (taken down now, but conveniently available in Google cache form):
Mark has been instrumental in the development and passage of legislation designed to protect our children.He authored legislation that became law -- the Volunteers for Children Act -- that gives volunteer organizations that work with children, such as scouting and sports groups, access to FBI fingerprint-based background checks to ensure that they are not inadvertently hiring child molesters.
He has also cosponsored legislation toughening the penalties levied at those who hurt children and, most recently, has joined forces with the Administration and Congress to fight child predators. His Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, which has passed both the House and Senate, will overhaul the way we track and monitor predatory pedophiles. He has also introduced and cosponsored legislation designed to eliminate child pornography and exploitive child modeling web sites.
Over the years, Mark also has worked closely with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and John Walsh (host of Fox TV’s America’s Most Wanted) on a variety of child protection programs. Among the latest of these is a program designed to show children how to protect themselves from online predators.
Such as himself.
According to Weigel, Foley even had (eeeeuw!) a MySpace page:
You can find the page by searching for maf54@aol.com's profile - maf54 is Foley's IM name. There's no information in the profile, apart from Foley's age (52) and Zodiac sign (Virgo; he was born on September 8, 1954). This is common for stalkers and sexual predators - you need to set up a MySpace account to view profiles, but you don't need to add more info about yourself.
I took a screen shot of it, which I'll paste in below (coincidence note: Dave added the viz of the page to his Reason entry after I put it in the post I was writing, and we have a similar response to it):
Oh, lookee, he doesn't want kids. Well, not for more than a few hours.
"Are you horny?"
What Did They Know And When Did They Know It?
And why didn't they see something was done? The GOP plays duck-and-cover. From a Charles Babington and Jonathan Weisman Washington Post story:
House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of inappropriate "contact" between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he then told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert.It was not immediately clear what actions Hastert took. His spokesman had said earlier that the speaker did not know of the sexually charged online exchanges between Foley and the boy.
...Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), who sponsored the page from his district, said he had learned of some of the online exchanges from a reporter some months ago and passed on the information to Rep. Thomas Reynolds (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Republican campaign organization, the Associated Press reported. Alexander said he did not pursue the matter further because "his parents said they didn't want me to do anything."
Carl Forti, a spokesman for the GOP campaign organization, said Reynolds learned from Alexander that the parents did not want to pursue the matter, AP reported.
Shimkus said in a statement last night, "in late 2005, I was notified by the then Clerk of the House," that Alexander had told the Clerk "about an email exchange between Congressman Foley and a former House Page. I took immediate action to investigate the matter."
In the e-mail, "Foley asked about the former Page's well-being after Hurricane Katrina and requested a photograph," Shimkus said. He said Foley assured him it was an innocent exchange, but "nevertheless, we ordered Congressman Foley to cease all contact" with the boy and to respect all pages. "Only now have I learned that Congressman Foley was not honest about his conduct," Shimkus said.
Shades of the Catholic church anyone? And would politicians of the other stripe (i.e., Democrats) be any more forthcoming or diligent?
"A Crazy Beaver Tried To Ass-Rape Sharon Stone"
Celeb blogger D-Listed is hilarious, and although I've had a girl-crush on smart, witty, gorgeous Sharon Stone for quite some time, I can't help but post D's link to these "what the fuck was she thinking?" photos of Stone from the Macy's "Passport Gala." Or, shall we say "Assport Gala"? (Sorry, it's late, my inhibitions are useless.)
Note to Sharon: Your stylist hates you. And I say that as somebody who's enjoyed your fashion adventures; for example, the men's shirt at the Academy Awards.
All you needed to do was think a little before you dressed:
"Macys...ass cheeks. Macy's...ass cheeks..."
Nah, just doesn't play, does it?
Please don't drink and dress.
Is The TSA Screening Area A First Amendment-Free Zone?
Should it be? I don't mean that people should be allowed to make bomb threat jokes -- any more than they can yell "fire" in a crowded (or even semi-populated) theater. But, what of the guy who criticized the TSA in black magic marker on his toiletries bag?
A Wisconsin man who wrote "Kip Hawley is an Idiot" on a plastic bag containing toiletries said he was detained at an airport security checkpoint for about 25 minutes before authorities concluded the statement was not a threat.Ryan Bird, 31, said he wrote the comment about Hawley -- head of the Transportation Security Administration -- as a political statement. He said he feels the TSA is imposing unreasonable rules on passengers while ignoring bigger threats.
..."My level of frustration with the TSA and their idiotic policies has grown over 2 ½ years," he said. "I'm frustrated that poorly trained TSA people can pull random passengers out of line and pat them down like common criminals. The average traveler has no recourse."
Bird put the marked bag in a plastic tray along with his shoes and cell phone. A TSA screener saw the bag and went to get a supervisor, who grabbed it and asked Bird if it was his.
"It was obvious that he was already angry," Bird said, adding that the screener told him, "You can't write things like that."
The supervisor told Bird he had the right to express his opinions "out there" -- pointing outside the screening area -- but did not have the right "in here," Bird said.
The supervisor called a sheriff's deputy, who checked to see if Bird had any warrants for his arrest, Bird said. Bird asked the officer if he was under arrest, and was told that he was being detained, he said.
A supervisor said he was going to confiscate the bag, but after Bird refused, he just photographed it, Bird said.
Bird said he filed a complaint about the incident with the TSA.
I maintain that we aren't safer thanks to the TSA, just more annoyed. We'd only be safer if we had El-Al level security -- which I don't think people would be willing to put up with to fly, say, from L.A. to San Fran, in terms of time and/or expense. Instead, we've got Joey and Janey "Want Fries With That?" screening our bags and feeling us up. If anyone of reasonable intelligence really wanted to blow up a plane, they could.
Meanwhile, our ports, chemical plants, and our nuke sites remain unguarded. But, is guarding them all in a meaningful way even possible? Randall Larsen, director of the Institute For Homeland Security (a "non-partisan, not-for-profit research organization") writes in The Wall Street Journal:
The best strategy for preventing a nuclear device from entering the U.S. has little to do with examining containers by X-ray machines and radiological scanners -- despite the idea's appeal to citizens and their elected officials. The formula for success is rather "70-20-10":70% of money appropriated in the name of "securing America against nuclear terrorism" should be spent "upstream": thwarting efforts to obtain weapons-grade nuclear material. This includes increased funding for programs such as Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction. Furthermore, we must ensure that nukes are the intelligence community's highest concern. The recent Report from the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction stated: "It is obvious that intelligence on loose nukes is not a high priority for the intelligence community." What could possibly be a higher priority?
20% of funding should be allocated to the pursuit and recovery of material and devices should weapons-grade materials fall into terrorists' hands. This should be a multinational effort led by the U.S. Funds for research and development of new-generation, rapidly deployable detectors would be included here.
10% should be spent on response and mitigation capabilities should a nuclear detonation occur. Developing pre-positioned equipment (as does France) for responders and the American population is required.
Since 9/11, the administration and Congress have spent too much time thinking at a tactical level, and too often technology has driven their strategy. No one doubts their good intentions, but this is a backward approach. Wasting money with good intentions make us no more secure.
We can try to protect ourselves, but maybe what we have to do is accept that some people may die in an unfortunate way due to terrorism. Of course, we could also have gone after Osama instead of invading Iraq and fomenting terrorists, but that's water (dead soldiers and amputated limbs) under the bridge.
