We Get Hate Mail
"There's no excuse for domestic abuse"...right? Well, not unless the abuser has a vagina. I wrote an Advice Goddess column, Marrying The Hatchet, condemning a woman for throwing an ashtray at her husband, and condemning the double standard that has people shrugging off domestic violence against men. Here's an excerpt of what I wrote:
If your husband tossed an ashtray at your head, do you think he’d be describing himself as “Still So Angry Inside” or “Still In Court Trying To Get The Charges Reduced”?It doesn’t take much for domestic violence against men to be taken seriously…usually, just a chalk outline where a man’s body used to be. The rest of the time, people tend to shrug it off or even find it cute: “Well, well, well, she’s quite the firecracker!” Granted, male abusers can do much more damage with their fists, but put a heavy object in a woman’s hands, and good morning brain damage! (Just wondering…has your husband gotten the ashtray out of his skull, or does he have to hang around smoking areas with his head bent down so people have someplace to flick their ash?)
(Column continues here.)
Here's an e-mail I got in response from an angry female reader:
Subject: Re: Domestic abuse isn't a one way street articleI just had to write back over this one. My mother sends me your articles and this one just set me off. Just like the woman whose husband went to a strip club, so did my husband of 10 years (we have 3 kids together). I have to say that I had much the same reaction as she did. I do not advocate any type of abuse from either side of a relationship, but going to a strip club IS JUST THAT....ABUSE. It is no different from hiring a hooker for sex except that you don't stick it in. I find it disgusting that you attack this woman for her reaction, and then advocate this strip club behavior as "normal". This world seems to put strippers on a pedestal these days and it is acceptable behavior for men to do these things. I have to say I absolutely disagree with you, I think the man did deserve an ashtray in his skull ( or perhaps the loss of one important piece he needs to get excited for strippers), and I think your advocating porn, hookers, and perversion is just disgusting. This behavior should not be legal ANYWHERE, but it seems that you're okay with having it in your life. I think that's sad, because I know that no matter how "crazy" the world may think my reaction to going to strip clubs is, I know that it is absolutely insane to sit back and accept live porn as normal, acceptable behavior.
My response:
You write: "I think the man did deserve an ashtray in his skull ( or perhaps the loss of one important piece he needs to get excited for strippers)"I think you're scary.
She writes back:
Your advocating porn as acceptable is equally scary. Let's hope it lead to rape or sexual abuse of any child or person in your own life. You are a sick woman. Someone needs to take that pen out of your had.. your ego is way too big.
She writes back again:
I meant to say I hope that it DOES NOT LEAD to rape or sex abuse in your own life.
Typical crapthink, promoted by angry feminists with fistfuls of bad data. The studies of those who aren't "advocacy researchers" debunk this notion. Gad Saad details a number of them in a terrific new book, The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption, showing that, for example, with "exponential growth in the availability of sexually explicit materials available on the Internet from 1995 to 1999, the rate of forcible rape (as obtained from FBI data) during that period has steadily declined." This is just one example. I've read numerous other examples like this in Saad's book, and in the past, debunking the notion that porn leads to hatred of or violence to women.
Hmmm, speaking of violence and hatred, I wonder how this woman who wrote me would respond if I, in the mode of her bloodlust to dismember a man for eyeballing a few naked titties, suggested a similar punishment for a woman who, say, had an affair with the neighbor? Off with an arm...a leg...whatever!
I mean, she was asking for it, huh?
Dr. Frankenstein's Monster: A Creation Of Congress
Barry Meier writes for The New York Times of a bill Congress passed last month, making drug and medical device makers disclose results of clinical trials for all approved products. What got dropped from the bill? The bit about disclosing results of clinical trials for all products tested on patients, but dropped before marketing. And for some patients, that's where all the fun starts:
Many experts said the recent Congressional debate underscored a troubling fact: some patients in clinical studies never learn about test results. The problem may be particularly relevant to those implanted with medical devices that stay with them long after a trial is over.In August, for example, the Food and Drug Administration sent a warning to Boston Scientific after investigators discovered the company’s diligence in following up with patients faltered around the time it dropped a product under development.
The product being tested was an experimental stent intended to prevent the rupturing of an aneurysm in the major abdominal artery.
Among other things, agency investigators found that Boston Scientific, which halted development of the stent last year after a study showed it frequently fractured, had neglected to tell patients in that trial about the problem’s scope.
Researchers involved said such a fracture, while not dangerous in itself, could cause a stent device to shift position, thus rendering it useless in treating an aneurysm, a weakening of a blood vessel that can burst with fatal consequences.
Paul Donovan, a spokesman for Boston Scientific, said that the company was moving to address the F.D.A.’s concerns. While six patients involved in the study have died, Mr. Donovan said that the company did not believe that those deaths were related to either the stent or burst aneurysms.
“There were instances of reporting that was not done in a complete and timely manner, and we are addressing these shortcomings,” Mr. Donovan said.
Well, isn't that special. Luckily, some patients do find out about the problems with their test devices -- entirely by accident:
That apparently is what happened last year when two women struck up a conversation at a hospital in Tampa, Fla., and found out that they were both there for the same reason: severe pain, related to their breast implants.As they talked, the women, Christina Rafsky and Barbara Padgett, learned they had more in common. Both had seen the same doctor in Tampa, who had persuaded them to participate in a clinical trial he was overseeing of a new type of silicone-filled implant made by Inamed Aesthetics, now a unit of Allergan.
Next, a curious Ms. Rafsky called Allergan and learned for the first time that Inamed had halted that trial in 2005 because the implant model she had received was rupturing.
Their doctor claimed not to have gotten the letter telling him so:
As to whether Dr. Mosiello received the Inamed letter in 2005, the University of South Florida panel, which interviewed both Dr. Mosiello and an Allergan official, found that “there was no documentation or recordkeeping regarding who had been contacted and when,” its letter states.
While I'm disparaging of the people knee-jerk-criticizing "Big Pharma" (like the "health food" industry is in it for the luvvvv), there's far too much blind trust of doctors and drug companies. Buyer beware -- no matter who you're buying from. And especially, of course, when somebody tells you you're getting something for nothing. And then dumps it into your bloodstream or cuts into you to give it to you.
P.S. But, do thank your Congresscritter for looking out for your welfare -- well, whenever it doesn't get in the way of the that of the drug companies.
The McCain Mutiny
Ben Sullivan (in white) gets the first dance with Matt Welch at the party last Saturday night to celebrate the publication of Matt's fantastic book on John McCain, McCain: The Myth of a Maverick.
McCain is starting to look good to a few people -- like NRO's Ramesh Ponnuru. (Matt, send him a copy of the book, fast.) Ponnuru writes:
My own view is that McCain would be the strongest general-election candidate the Republicans could put up next year. He is solid on almost all of the important issues: the war, judges, entitlements, abortion, trade. . . Even on taxes, he has righted himself. He voted against the Bush tax cuts, but he has never voted to raise income taxes and, this spring, ruled out any such move in an interview with me.I endorsed McCain this spring because he is a conservative who can win in November 2008. Since my endorsement, he has moved from triumph to triumph. Well, okay, his campaign very nearly ended — I did not foresee that the immigration bill would be revived and McCain would then spend weeks alienating conservatives — and diagnosticians differ about whether it is showing new signs of life this month.
Sometimes people remember that they dislike someone even when they have forgotten what inspired their dislike. I think something like this has happened to McCain: His biggest problem with conservatives isn’t that they have had so many disagreements, but that they have a bad impression of him.
Or, is it that they've taken a clear look at him, and seen that he's a bad bet?
Matt does a terrific job stripping away all the facile depictions of Candidate McCain by the press, showing that "much of what we think we know about John McCain is wrong." For example, Matt writes that the "Straight Talk Express" man "does not, for instance, talk particularly straight." Very oddly, as Matt shows, nothing seems to invigorate the guy like a lost cause. And "the man of the people" really isn't, but likely got the reputation for it via his coziness with the men and women of the press, giving unprecedented access to journalists; or, as Matt puts it, "about every national journalist who has a question," and even invited feature writer Michael Lewis to stay at his apartment to cover the 2000 presidential campaign.
Another quote from Matt's book:
...The campaign finance crusade is where the modern McCain as we know him got his start. It combined all his best and worst character traits--noisy martyrdom for a hopeless cause, defiance in the face of hostile opposition, elitism, exaltation of the government at the expense of the individual, and a 12-Step sense of messianic fervor.
I didn't have time to describe or type out more stuff from the book, so I'll link to a piece Matt wrote about McCain in the Union Leader:
Sifting through McCain’s four best-selling books and nearly three decades of work on Capitol Hill, a distinct approach toward governance begins to emerge. And it’s one that the electorate ought to be particularly worried about right now. McCain, it turns out, wants to restore your faith in the U.S. government by any means necessary, even if that requires thousands of more military deaths, national service for civilians and federal micromanaging of innumerable private transactions. He’ll kick down the doors of boardroom and bedroom, mixing Democrats’ nanny-state regulations with the GOP’s red-meat paternalism in a dangerous brew of government activism. And he’s trying to accomplish this, in part, for reasons of self-realization.The first clue to McCain’s philosophy lies in two seemingly irrelevant items of gossip: His father was a drunk, and his second wife battled addiction to pain pills. Neither would be worth mentioning except for the fact that McCain’s books and speeches are shot through with the language and sentiment of 12-step recovery, especially Steps 1 (admitting the problem) and 2 (investing faith in a “Power greater than ourselves”).
Like many alcoholics who haven’t quite made it to Step 6 (becoming “entirely ready” to have these defects removed), McCain is disarmingly talented at admitting his narcissistic flaws. In his 2002 book “Worth the Fighting For,” the senator is constantly confessing his problems of “selfishness,” “immaturity,” “ambition” and especially “temper,” though he also makes clear that his outbreaks of anger can be justifiable and even laudable when channeled into “a cause greater than self-interest.”
“A rebel without a cause is just a punk,” he explains. “Whatever you’re called -- rebel, unorthodox, nonconformist, radical -- it’s all self-indulgence without a good cause to give your life meaning.”
What is this higher power that ennobles McCain’s crankiness? Just as it is for many soldiers, it’s the belief that Americans “were meant to transform history” and that sublimating the individual in the service of that “common national cause” is the wellspring of honor and purpose. (But unlike most soldiers, McCain has been in a position to prod and even compel civilians to join his cause.)
...One of the many charming confessions in “Worth the Fighting For” is McCain’s complaint that the man he replaced in the Senate -- Republican icon Barry Goldwater -- was “never as affectionate as I would have liked.” Small wonder.
Goldwater, a man who seemed to emanate from Arizona’s dust, was the paragon of limited government, believing to his core that the feds shouldn’t tell you how to run a business or whom you can sleep with. McCain, on the other hand, is a third-generation D.C. insider who carpetbagged his way into office, believing to his core that “national pride will not survive the people’s contempt for government.” On Nov. 7, those conflicting worldviews collided when Arizonans voted on whether to outlaw gay marriage. McCain campaigned in favor of the ban, in the name of “preserving the sanctity” of heterosexual unions. His exhortations went down to surprising defeat. Not, one suspects, for the last time.
Matt's book is terrific, and a terrific read. Buy one, and after you read it, pass it on to somebody you know who's a fan of McCain -- or, rather, the myth they think is McCain.
Yoohoo, Where's Congress?
Left-wing columnist Jim Hightower takes on the executive branch power-grab, and calls on Congress to take on its constitutional role and do something already. (There's supposed to be "separation of powers, not napping of powers.):
Constantly waving the bloody flag of 9/11 and swaggering around in commander-in-chief garb, the BushCheney duo are usurping authority from Congress, the courts, and the people, while also asserting arbitrary power that does not belong to the presidency. Their coup is changing our form of government, rewriting the genius of the founders by imposing a supreme executive that functions in secret and insists that it is above the law, unaccountable either to congressional oversight or to judicial review.As Al Gore pointed out in a powerful speech he gave last year (read it here), the BushCheney push for imperial power is much more dangerous and far-reaching than other presidential excesses for a couple of big reasons. First, the Bushites make no pretension that they want these powers only temporarily, instead contending that a super-powerful presidency is necessary to cope with a terrorist threat that they say will last "for the rest of our lives." Second, they are not merely pushing executive supremacy as a response to an outside threat, but as an ideological, right-wing theory of what they allege the Constitution actually meant to say.
Called the "unitary executive theory," this perverse, antidemocratic construct begs us to believe that the president has inherent executive powers that cannot be reviewed, questioned, or altered by the other branches. Bush himself has asserted that his executive power "must be unilateral and unchecked." Must? Extremist theorists aside, this effectively establishes an executive with arbitrary power over us. It creates the anti-America.
The list of Bushite excesses is long...and growing:
* Their sweeping, secret program of warrantless spying on Americans -- in direct violation of a long-standing federal law intended to forestall such flagrant intrusions into people's privacy.* The usurpation of legislative authority by attaching "signing statements" to laws passed by Congress, openly asserting Bush's intention to disobey or simply ignore the laws. He has used this artifice to challenge over 1,150laws, even though the Constitution and the founders never conceived of such a dodge (signing statements were concocted by Ed Meese, Reagan's attorney general, and were pushed at that time by a young Reaganite lawyer who is now ensconced for life on the Supreme Court, Sam Alito).
* Suspension of habeas corpus for anyone whom Bush deems to be an "enemy combatant"-allowing innocent people to be detained indefinitely in prison without charges or civil trial, subjected to abuse and even torture, and denied access to judicial review of their incarceration (thus usurping the power of the courts). The routine and illegal assertion of "executive privilege" to stonewall Congress's legitimate efforts to perform its constitutional obligation of executive oversight and to prevent the questioning of top officials engaged in outright violations of American law.
* The assertion of a "state secrets" doctrine to prevent citizens and judges from pursuing legitimate lawsuits on the spurious grounds that even to have the executive's actions brought before the court would endanger national security and infringe on executive authority.
* An ever-expanding grab bag of autocratic actions, including using "national security letters" to sidestep the courts and spy on American political groups and individuals with no connection at all to terrorism; censoring executive-branch employees and government information for political purposes and using federal officials and tax dollars to push the regime's political agenda; and, of course, outright lying to Congress and the public, including lying for the most despicable purpose of all -- putting our troops, our public treasury, and our nation's good name into a war based on nothing but hubris, oil, and ideological fantasies (including Bush's latest blatant lie that "progress" in Iraq warrants the killing and maiming of additional thousands of American troops -- none of whom comes from his family).
Democratic capitulation
What we have is a lawless presidency. But our problem is not Bush. He is who he is -- a bonehead. He won't change, and why should he? He's getting away with his power grab! So he has no reason to step back, and every reason to keep pushing and to keep trying to institutionalize his coup.
Rather, our problem is those weaselly, wimpy, feckless members of Congress who have failed to confront the runaway executive, who have sat silent or (astonishingly) cheered and assisted as their own constitutional powers have been taken and their once-proud, coequal branch has been made subservient to the executive.
In the first six years of BushCheney, the Republican Congress operated as no more than a rubber stamp for the accretion of presidential power, shamelessly surrendering its own autonomy in a burst of mindless partisan zeal. Too many Democrats just went along, either buying the lies or being cowed by the unrelenting politics of fear and intimidation whipped up by Bush and Cheney. (The Bushites are still using these bullying tactics, as when they demanded this past summer that Congress legalize their illegal domestic spy program and CIA chief Mike McConnell warned publicly that "Americans are going to die" if Democrats failed to pass it.)
Marijuana Is A Leaf
In an AP story, Schwarzenegger backpedals on his comments on marijuana:
LONDON - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says marijuana is not a drug, a British magazine reported Monday. But his spokesman said the governor was joking.Schwarzenegger told the British edition of GQ magazine that he had not taken drugs, even though the former bodybuilder and Hollywood star has acknowledged using marijuana in the 1970s and was shown smoking a joint in the 1977 documentary "Pumping Iron."
"That is not a drug. It's a leaf," Schwarzenegger told GQ. "My drug was pumping iron, trust me."
Aaron McLear, Schwarzenegger's press secretary, said the governor made the comments in a lighthearted context, noting his interviewer was Piers Morgan, one of the judges on "America's Got Talent." Morgan is a former British newspaper editor.
"The governor was doing an interview with the host of 'America's Got Talent,' the newest version of the gong show," McLear said. "I think it's important to keep that quote in the context of the environment where it was said."
"Of course the governor understands marijuana is a drug. It's like when he goes on Leno or the Daily Show, if you took something like that out of context, it might seem shocking but it was in a silly entertainment context," he added.
In the interview for the magazine's December issue, Schwarzenegger refused to condemn politicians who decline to answer questions about drug use.
"What would you rather have? A politician taking stuff and not saying, but making the best decisions and improving things? Or a politician who names all the drugs he or she has taken but makes lousy decisions for the country?" Schwarzenegger was quoted as saying.
How about a governor who fights to get rid of obscene drug laws?
Sorry, how much money are we spending to keep a bunch of potheads in prison? How many people have lost everything or a lot because their escape of choice is a joint, not a martini? How many extraordinary, productive people do you know or know of -- including our governor -- who relax with a doobie from time to time?
Applying The Puritan Work Ethic Is Gonna Cost Ya
While I am not for giving the ordinary lazy person charity, even if you absolutely hate the homeless and snarl at people who ask you for money, the fact remains that it's cheaper to give addicts and mentally ill people on skid row a roof over their heads...à la the "drunk bunks" in Seattle. Philip F. Mangano and Gary Blasi write for the LA Times:
The numbers of homeless people on the streets of Miami, Philadelphia, New York, St. Louis, Seattle, Denver, Portland, Ore., and 20 other cities have declined in the last several years.What have they done that Los Angeles has not? Within the context of a strategic plan, framed around business principles, they have moved homeless people with serious mental disabilities or addictions directly into housing units that include access to mental health and recovery services. As a result, these cities have stopped cycling homeless people through shelters, emergency rooms and jails -- and, overall, are seeing cost savings. It turns out that what is more humane is also more economical.
When we add up the arrests, incarcerations, emergency medical care and other crisis interventions, the true costs of chronic homelessness are staggering: $35,000 to $150,000 per person per year. By contrast, the annual cost of supportive housing for a person with serious mental illness or addiction disease is between $13,000 and $25,000. And once stabilized, many can qualify for federal disability and health insurance or get jobs that will further reduce local costs.
...The good news is that there are field-tested plans that have worked in other cities that suffered years of frustration and failure. From New York's Times Square to San Francisco's Tenderloin district, you can see the results: The number of people on the streets is down, and the savings in ambulance runs, emergency rooms and jails are up. In these cities, experienced teams made up of mental health and addiction clinicians, housing specialists and formerly homeless people engage those people experiencing chronic homeless, with the intent of moving them rapidly into long-term housing, not emergency shelter. The police are restored to their law enforcement role, relieved of punitive approaches and quasi-social work.
Once housed and given appropriate support and services, formerly homeless people with mental and addiction disabilities -- those for whom we used to think a bowl of soup and a blanket was the best we could do -- have a good chance of staying off the streets. In cities using this strategy, there has been an average retention rate of 85%.
Sure, some lazy people will surely take advantage of this. But, while I'm a grinch about giving the average person a handout, there's a pretty vast difference between the average person and somebody sleeping on skid row. And, then, there's a big difference in how my own neighborhood smells when people are not squatting and pooping in the bushes across from my house.
Who Does The Voiceover For Your Vagina?
Oh, haven't you heard? Your vagina is now a cartoon character named "Vajayjay."
Not surprisingly, this idiotic wee-wee poo-poo word flew into use after "Grey's Anatomy," pandering to the network standards and practices nannies, had to cut the number of "vagina" mentions in a script.
In the show, a pregnant doctor who'd gone into labor ordered a male intern, "Stop looking at my vajayjay." (Note to those who find themselves short on emetics: "Grey's Anatomy" may be an effective substitute.)
As with so many things that make me hurl, it wasn't long before the word spread like a bad girl's legs...all the way from Jimmy Kimmel to the HuffPo to Oprah. The New York Times Stephanie Rosenbloom was on the warpath for an explanation. My favorite was by linguist and Manhattan Institute senior fellow John H. McWhorter:
“The reason that vajayjay has caught on, I think, is because there is a black — Southern especially — naming tradition, which is to have names like Ray Ray and Boo Boo and things like that,” Dr. McWhorter said. “It sounds warm and familiar and it almost makes the vagina feel like a little cartoon character with eyes that walks around.”
The feminists were predictably concerned:
In a voice-mail message left for a reporter, Gloria Steinem said she hopes the women using vajayjay are doing so because they think it is more descriptive than vagina, not because they are squeamish.Technically speaking, the vagina is the canal that leads from the uterus to the outside of the body, a fact that has led both Ms. Ensler and Ms. Steinem to write that vagina — while not a word that should be stigmatized — is inadequate because it is not inclusive enough. It does not, they have pointed out, include the labia and clitoris, the nerve-rich locus of a woman’s sexual pleasure. “I’m hoping that the use of this new word is part of the objection to only saying vagina since it doesn’t include all of women’s genitalia, for instance the clitoris, in the way that vulva does,” Ms. Steinem said.
A gynecologist argues for a little more adulthood:
Dr. Carol A. Livoti, a Manhattan obstetrician and gynecologist and an author of “Vaginas: An Owner’s Manual” (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2004), said vajayjay and other euphemisms and slang offend her and can render women incapable of explaining their symptoms to health professionals. “I think it’s terrible,” Dr. Livoti said. “It’s time to start calling anatomical organs by their anatomical name.
Shonda Rhimes, the creator and exec producer of "Grey's Anatomy" says she fought to use vagina in the script:
“I had written an episode during the second season of ‘Grey’s’ in which we used the word vagina a great many times (perhaps 11),” Ms. Rhimes wrote in an e-mail message. “Now, we’d once used the word penis 17 times in a single episode and no one blinked. But with vagina, the good folks at broadcast standards and practices blinked over and over and over. I think no one is comfortable experiencing the female anatomy out loud — which is a shame considering our anatomy is half the population.”...“Now, vajayjay’s just a given for me,” Ms. Rhimes said. “It’s a word I use, a word my female friends use, a word I’ve heard women in the grocery store use. I don’t even think about where it came from anymore. It doesn’t belong to me or anyone at the show. It belongs to all women.”
Anybody got any ideas on what we can do to give it back? And while we're at it, what's your favorite non-sickening euphemism for 1. vagina, and 2. penis?
You Live In A Fire Zone?
How about you pay, not us? As Lena commented the other day on this entry:
Year after goddamn year, fires in the Malibu hills, followed by endless human interest stories on public radio about the heirlooms that people leave behind as they flee. That's entertainment? No, that's vomitous.Meanwhile, Allstate won't even do business in California anymore. The entire fucking state's been redlined.
And yes, the "you pay" goes for any other areas prone to national disasters.
Insurance premium too high? Can't afford a private company to foam your roof when the fires come? Unable or unwilling to buy yourself an auxiliary water tank and a 1,000-foot firehose? Unable or unwilling to pay private firefighters to defend your property? Well, then you can't afford to live there, now can you?
Kirk Johnson and Jesse McKinley write in The New York Times about "Rethinking Fire Policy in the Tinderbox Zone":
The long-term battle is one that fire experts suggest cannot be won, even with the better building codes and evacuation plans that have become a staple of government here and across much of the West. As the events of this week illustrate — at least 480,000 acres burned, 1,575 residences destroyed and 7 people killed — the cycle roars on with higher stakes, greater risk, and the grim certainty that it will happen again.The California state fire marshal, Kate Dargan, said discussions had begun at the highest levels of government on some of the toughest proposals: curtailing population growth on the wildland margins or a sweeping overhaul of how the public lands are managed for fire danger. But decisions are perhaps 5 to 10 years away because of the enormity and complexity of the task.
“In the meantime,” Ms. Dargan said, “we’ll have more people living out there, and if averages hold, we’ll have two more catastrophic incidents like this before the decisions get made.”
Many Californians say they want the best of both worlds — life in the danger zone and more fire protection — and are frustrated that they do not have it.
“I’m angry that we are in the same boat,” said Camie Pretzinger, who lost her Cedar Glen home to fire in 2003 and defied an evacuation order there this week. “Every time there’s a disaster,” Ms. Pretzinger said, “they have to reinvent the wheel.”
State and local governments are locked in an increasingly difficult battle with Mother Nature.
She's a mean old bitch, and if you can't pay the price for duking it out with her, there's a pretty simple answer: Decamp to Cleveland.
Unlimited Government
So many Republicans are "conservatives" mainly in that they 1. Aren't Democrats, and 2. Try to inject religious nuttery into policy. Neither point qualifies them for actual conservatism (à la being "classically liberal).
They claim to be against welfare, but they only mean welfare for poor people. There's welfare pork -- like the recently-nixed "Bridge to Nowhere" -- and lobbyist-driven welfare for corporations. So...in what way are they better than the Democrats? They just tax our asses and hand the proceeds out to different folks. And nobody seems to care a whit about the eeenormous debt we're leaving to future generations.
William Voegell writes in the LAT that, as one Republican laments, conservatives have "lost (their) brand," and they need to try to deliver what Reagan couldn't -- truly limited government:
In his inaugural address in 1981, Reagan said, "It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the federal government and those reserved to the states or to the people." In his farewell address eight years later, the president said, "[M]an is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts."But in between the two speeches, government did nothing but expand. In 1981, the federal government spent $678 billion; in 1989 it spent $1.144 trillion. Factoring out inflation, that was an increase of 19% in real spending. Republicans never expected that Reagan would leave office with a "federal establishment" one-fifth larger than when he arrived.
...In the 1980s, conservatives charged that the Democratic Congress was frustrating the Republican president's efforts to limit government. In the next decade, they said the Democratic president was frustrating the Republican Congress' efforts to rein in federal spending. Then, for the first time in 50 years, Republicans controlled both Congress and the presidency from 2003 through 2006 -- and real federal spending increased 10%.
...The political challenge for conservatives is this: Rather than allowing skirmishes about hundreds of different programs to indirectly determine the size of government, they need to shape the debate over the fate of individual programs in terms of the proper extent of the government's responsibilities. For instance, the earned income tax credit is popular among liberals and conservatives. Its political invulnerability shows that liberals have won the argument over whether the government has an obligation to help needy people. It also shows, however, that conservatives have won the argument against the belief in a "right" to public assistance that cannot be qualified by any distinctions between the deserving and undeserving poor.
The earned income credit's popularity suggests that conservatives could also win the argument in favor of means-testing entitlement programs. A nation wealthy enough to have a welfare state is wealthy enough to have lots of people who don't need most of what the welfare state provides. And a nation decent enough to maintain programs like the tax credit is decent enough to care for its poor citizens without bribing affluent taxpayers with entitlement benefits they don't need.
American liberals wake up every morning thinking about all the suffering and injustice they could alleviate if only the public sector didn't have to scrape by with 32% of our gross domestic product. The trouble is, Sweden's social democrats wake up every morning thinking about all the suffering and injustice they could alleviate if only their public sector weren't forced to scrape by with 55% of GDP -- and American liberals have little to say about what they find objectionable or excessive about this Scandinavian model.
Rather than waiting for the next Ronald Reagan, conservatives might do their cause more good by pressing liberals to answer these questions: What would be enough? When does the welfare state reach the point that it doesn't need one more budget increase? One more new program? One more percentage point of the GDP?
How About A Little See-Through Medicine?
And no, I'm not talking about that clear plastic skeleton I had as a kid. Hospitals fuck up and it's covered up, and Schwarzenegger talked transparency, and then nixed provisions for it.
(Bet there are some scary stories at some California hospitals. Too bad you're not allowed to know what they are.)
Other states, on the other hand -- New Jersey, Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland -- are beginning to release annual death and infection rates. Pennsylvania is supposedly the best at reporting the stats. Jordan Rau writes for the LAT:
Healthcare experts say that one of the most inexpensive and effective ways to encourage hospitals to improve patient care is to make their failures public. Schwarzenegger has endorsed this approach, saying as recently as March that greater transparency would "drive healthcare providers to perform at peak levels," "boost the power of consumer choices," "save a lot of money" and "save a lot of lives."But the governor on Friday vetoed a bill passed by the Legislature that contained provisions that would have made it easier for the public to review hospital performance.
The governor's own healthcare bill, released last week, adopted many sections of the legislative plan.
But he omitted or weakened patient-oriented provisions that are objectionable to the California Hospital Assn., one of Sacramento's biggest lobbyists and donors.
...Few patients are aware of the dangers. Actress Alicia Cole contracted a deadly flesh-eating bacterium that began devouring her abdomen shortly after she underwent surgery at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank in 2006.
"One of the nurses pulled my parents inside a room, closed the door and said, 'something is wrong here,' " Cole said. The 45-year-old from Sherman Oaks is still recovering from the illness.
The hospital declined to discuss her case, but said no other patients contracted necrotizing fasciitis, the infection that attacked Cole. Spokesman Dan Boyle said the hospital's infection rates are below the national average. The hospital would not provide actual figures and is not required to make them public.
California's hospital lobby has not supported aggressive public reporting of infection rates. The association is a dominant presence in the Capitol, spending $2.9 million on lobbying during the 2005-06 legislative session and giving $680,713 to candidates for office.
C. Duane Dauner, president of the state's hospital association, said he supports transparency if rates are accurate and their public reporting does not "open the institutions up for nonmeritorious and frivolous lawsuits" or discourage employees from reporting infection dangers.
"We in no way intend to be obstructionist," Dauner said. "We just want to have fair reporting for the hospitals and not unduly scare patients in their communities."
You know what? Scare me. I'd rather know.
With This Nose-Ring...
In the comments on my Advice Goddess column, The Burden Of Roof, about the guy who didn't want to move in with his girlfriend, commenter Monica writes about women on the warpath to marriage:
Women can be outrageously competitive about this sort of thing. Have you ever visited www.truebrideconfessions.com? Too many women confessing that they feel superior about getting married before their friends or family, because it's some kind of contest, and the one with the wedding ring/shared apartment/first kid wins. I have a friend who decided to get married a month before I did so she could "beat" me. I'm divorced now, and she probably feels good about herself for being married and having a baby, but I'm just thinking, "Better her than me."
Truebrideconfessions, huh? Let's take a peek. A selection of some of the comments there:
I am the maid of honor in my BFF's wedding this weekend. I gave her fiance the last blowjob I will ever give him today. We are ending our almost year-long affair mutually. She is the lucky one.
Today it's been a year since he lied to me. He said all those things he wanted from me and dreamed about for us. I guess I know beyond a doubt now that he didn't mean them ... I just wish I knew how much longer I'm going to spend wondering why the fuck he felt the need to say it in the first place. I didn't ask to have my heart stomped on. I just wanted to love him.I feel like I lost who I am when we got married. I moved for you, I got a job I don't like for you, and I am unhappy.
i feel bad saying this, but sometimes i look at different women on the bus or in a public place and wonder how they're engaged and i'm not!
It simply breaks my heart that I can't marry my girl. The only think that I hate about being gay is living in a country that hates me.I don't want a strapless wedding dress.
I'm breaking up with my fiance tonight.
I'm getting married in a little over four months, and I'm not excited yet. I think he's marrying me because I badgered him about it a year ago, and I don't think I can be a good wife like he wants. How are we ever going to pay off all our debt and surive a 350-mile move for his new job? I don't think I can do this.
I love my fiancee with all my heart. He's my best friend. But deep down I think that's all we're meant to be: best friends.
I got married in June and our friends got married in July. I love knowing that our wedding was so much better than theirs! They even went so far as to copy a bunch of things from our wedding, but that just made them look pathetic.
The truebrideconfessions site went out late last night when I posted this, but here's a cached version just in case it's out for good.
Wait...there's more -- truemomconfessions (and dad, green, and office, too):
Why doesn't this kid ever poop when her daddy is home? I feel like a human laxative and he's the human constipater.
It's been 20 years, and we've been through a lot of stuff -- overdoses, breakups, two weddings, two kids, baby surgery, thefts, death, affairs, depression, firings, financial problems, alcoholism, nonexistent sex, opposite shifts ... I'm starting to think we should just stick it out forever.We've both been pretty stressed out and busy lately, so we haven't had sex for awhile. I finally feel a little horny (and I know he wouldn't turn me down), and I got my effing period! Who knew having kids would lead to so much less sex...
I stare at other women's boobs.
I'm straight, but they mesmerize me.i hate talking dirty!
My inlaw used the word "Jew" as a slur. I'm B'nai Noach. I will never forget it... and I will do what I can to minimize her impact on my children's lives.
I wish I could stop being so damn insecure. The thing is though....I just love my husband so much. I am terrified of losing him. I feel like I will never ever be good enough for him. He says he loves me all the time, he says he thinks I am sexy....really I don't have any reason to believe that he doesn't love me.....but I still believe he doesn't so much of the time. It is hard living my life being afraid.
DH made me call him "Daddy" during sex the other night......HOTTEST SEX EVER! We've had sex every 4 hours since then.....WTH???
I had an ex who liked to call me mommy during sex, I never let him do it it freaked me out. Thats why he's an ex
If you want to know what it's like doing my job...well, this is a microcosm of it.
It's The Santa Anas, Not The Santa Al Qaedas, Nimnuts
Fox doesn't seem to let a lack of evidence get in the way of their "reporting." In this case, the story they're flogging is that Muslim terrorists started the fires. (For non-California residents, a bit on the Santa Anas from USA Today.) David Edwards and Nick Juliano write about Fox's coverage at RawStory:
For the second straight day, Fox News stood virtually alone in advancing thinly supported speculation to raise fears that the wildfires ravaging California are not the result of a confluence of arid heat and high winds but were set deliberately by al Qaeda terrorists bent on destroying America.Fox & Friends, the conservative cable channel, was panned Wednesday for breathlessly reporting a sketchy, four-year-old FBI memo as if it offered new information linking America's enemies in the "Global War on Terror" with a plot to burn down southern California.
The morning team was back at it Thursday, as anchor Alisyn Camerota introduced a segment on the fires that again mischaracterized and over-inflated warnings from a 2003 interview with an al Qaeda detainee.
Camerota said Fox's fear-mongering was "based on some information the FBI sent to local law enforcement in California and other Western states ... that there was a plot afoot to set three or four different" fires. Left unsaid by the Fox news-reader was that the FBI warning was sent more than four years ago, described a potential plot that made no mention of California, could not be proven accurate and did not raise alarms from forrest-fire officials at the time. (Such caveats all were included in an Associated Press report on the warning at the time.)
"How do they determine what's arson and what's terrorism?" she asked, noting accurately that authorities believe arsonists were responsible for at least "some of these fires." (Authorities say arson has been shown to have caused only two of more than a dozen fires so far.)
Terror analyst Erick Stakelbeck served as Camerota's foil in boosting the terror fears. Although he did clarify that the FBI memo was from 2003, the vintage of the intelligence didn't squelch his terror speculation; Stakelbeck warned that the fires appeared to be the result of a "coordinated effort ... over a large area."
"In a post-9/11 world, we have to consider all possibilities," Stakelbeck intoned.
Such as the possibility the tooth fairy set it?
I'm not exactly the Islamists' best friend, but what is this, the right-wing attempt to follow in the lead of 9/11 conspiracy theorists? Enough already. If you've got evidence, groovy. Otherwise, shut up and cover the damn flames.
Thanks, Norm
A More Discriminating Look At Discrimination
Discrimination is one of those knee-jerk words. Discrimination/Bad! ...right? Well, maybe not. I came upon a very interesting article by a guy named William Scott Dwyer, who goes a little deeper:
Discrimination is bad! We hear it from the pulpit, from the media, from our moralists and especially from our “civil rights” leaders. Discrimination is bad, immoral, indecent and downright un-American! Individualists even argue that discrimination is collectivist -- that it is wrong to discriminate on the basis of group membership, such as by offering price discounts to seniors or free drinks to women on “Ladies Night.” We even have laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, age or disabilityBut is discrimination the evil that everyone says it is? My answer is: No. It depends on the kind of discrimination one is talking about. In fact, discrimination can be a good thing and even something worth promoting. If that shocks you, then you need to pay close attention, for I will be defending the very evil that is everyone’s favorite whipping boy!
Let me begin by noting that racism is due not to the presence of discrimination but to its absence. We condemn the racist because he fails to discriminate among different members of the same race. Instead, he lumps them all together indiscriminately on the basis of group membership, when they’re really unique individuals with different characters and abilities. We call his action “discrimination” because he discriminates between members of his own race and those of another by judging the former as individuals but not the latter. But observe that what we really object to in the racist is his lack of discrimination. What we find offensive is that he is not sufficiently discriminating – that he does not discriminate enough among individual members of the same race. The cure for racist stereotyping is more discrimination, not less.
...Furthermore, much of what passes for racism -- for judging people indiscriminately on the basis of race -- is really an example of the opposite -- of discriminating among members of the same race.
Consider the oft-cited example of cabbies passing up blacks who are waiting for a cab. Do the cabbies pass up elderly black women? No, they pass up young black men. They discriminate, not on the basis of race, but among members of the same race according to age and gender. Is this kind of discrimination rational? Considering that eighty-five percent of the six felonies committed every day against cab drivers in New York City are by black men between the ages of sixteen and forty, it is eminently rational. Yet cab drivers who refuse to pick up young, black men as passengers are routinely condemned as racist.
In reality, in order for the drivers’ behavior to be classified as racist, they would have to exhibit a failure to discriminate among members of the same race, by lumping all blacks together and treating them as undifferentiated members of the same group, which they are obviously not doing. They are discriminating among blacks by passing up only certain individuals within that group.
And they are doing so out of concern for their very lives.
As one cabbie put it, "Cab drivers have only one effective way of protecting themselves against the murderous thieves who prey on us. And that is to exercise experienced discretion in whom we pick up [i.e., to discriminate against young black men]. . . . Half of New York's cab drivers are themselves black, and act no differently from white drivers."
Later in the piece, Dwyer writes of an SF supervisor, Willie Kennedy, who was furious that he was refused a delivery from Domino's. Apparently, his "predominantly black" neighborhood is less-than-safe. Charles Augustine, a black Bay Area publisher responded:
"Well, let's get real. Why won't [Domino's] go there? Have you ever heard of a merchant not wanting to make a buck? The answer is "no." The reason they do not want the business is because thugs rob, beat up or intimidate service people. Now why won't blacks deal with the real problem -- that is, getting people in the neighborhood to realize that if we allow thugs to bother service people, we will not be able to get service. It drives me crazy when I have difficulty catching a cab or have to wait forever for a bus. Do we expect people to endanger themselves?"
Well, yes, in the case of the SF Board of Supes, who passed a "pizza delivery law," making it illegal to refuse to deliver a pizza to dangerous neighborhoods in SF.
Responding to this absurd legislation, one San Francisco resident had this to say: "Refusing to make deliveries to extremely dangerous parts of town reflects more common sense than unfair discrimination. Restaurants are in business to make money; having goods stolen and drivers injured is not a profitable method of operation for any business. How many of the supervisors would honestly want to deliver a pizza to the Sunnydale or Bernal Heights projects after dark?" What he should have said is that not making deliveries to extremely dangerous parts of town is indeed a form of discrimination, but one that is entirely legitimate.The point is not that all discrimination is legitimate (obviously, such things as separate facilities for blacks and whites are not), but rather that there are many forms of discrimination which are justified, but which civil rights activists denounce as "discriminatory," thereby making no distinction between rational and irrational forms of discrimination. The kind of discrimination that cabbies and pizza deliverers engage in is eminently rational -- indeed, required for their health and safety. It should not be condemned as immoral, much less made illegal.
via Wendy McElroy
Just Show Us Her Tits Already
Ron Rosenbaum's takedown of the highbrow celebrity profile on Slate; in this case, Tom Junod's profile of Angelina Jolie, which Junod manages to start out like so (his text facing a photo of Jolie wearing only a shimmery sheet):
This is a 9/11 story. Granted it's also a celebrity profile—well, a profile of Angelina Jolie—and so calling it a 9/11 story may sound like a stretch. But that's the point. It's a 9/11 story because it's a celebrity profile—because celebrities and their perceived power are a big part of the strange story of how America responded to the attacks upon it. And no celebrity plays a bigger role in that strange story than Angelina Jolie.
Ron responds:
So, it's a 9/11 story. That's heavy, dude. And it's a 9/11 story because, um, because, well, celebrities—which were a totally unknown phenomenon before 9/11, as everyone knows—are a 9/11 phenomenon, and Angelia Jolie is a celebrity. A stunning concatenation of insights!Sure, it uses the death of thousands on 9/11 as a rationale for running a picture of a half-naked Angelina Jolie. But look, if we can't exploit 9/11 when we need to add a little gravitas to that silver sheet between Angelina's thighs, the terrorists win, right?
The fun continues back at the Slate link.
Fire, Fire Everywhere
It's very, very hot here, and very, very dry -- hotter and drier than I ever remember experiencing this place in late October.
I'm on Broadway and 18th, in the city of Santa Monica -- no mountains or brush-covered hillsides here -- and I noticed smoke. I went outside and saw this truck on fire.
For those looking for information on the major fires, my friend André Tascha-Lammé, with the help of a few colleagues, put up a California Fires 2007 site, calfires.net.
Maybe The Old Deal Was A Better Idea
The deal where we each pay for ourselves.
Social Security will be paying out more benefits than it takes in by 2017, and bankrupt by 2041 -- or so government predictions go -- and what then? Should we save Social Security?
My fellow fascist from my French class (at least that's how the others see us realists) agrees with me and with Yaron Brook from Ayn Rand Institute, quoted below, that Social Security should be no more:
"The basic principle behind Social Security is that individuals have a right to unearned retirement income. To pay for these unearned benefits, the government seizes money from workers and transfers it to the elderly. This is a perverse injustice. Why should a twenty year old who is struggling to make ends meet have to finance someone else's retirement? Why is it parasitical for a young person to live on the dole, but an inalienable right if he waits until he's 65? Why should those who conscientiously save for retirement be forced to sacrifice a chunk of their income to support those who were not as responsible?"There is no such thing as a 'right' to someone else's labor or money. The 'needs' of the elderly do not justify turning the young into part-time slaves. Instead of looking for ways to save Social Security, we should be designing a plan to phase it out entirely.
"Some claim that without Social Security the streets would be lined with senior citizens unable to pay for their homes or their food. But this fantasy ignores the fact that, before Social Security, there was no epidemic of starving old people. Individuals planned and saved for their own retirement. Those few who genuinely couldn't support themselves relied on their families and on private charity--they did not demand the government reach into other people's pockets to provide them with goodies.
"Social Security should not be saved--it should be abolished."
Just call me a personal responsibilitarian: My money in my pocket, your money in your pocket, and this lady paying her SIX kids' health care costs instead of gambling that the rest of us will pick them up. Oops, seems she can't pay...she's spending $400 a month on Starbucks, $240 on tans and manicures, and...and, it gets much, much, much worse..
My position: Sorry, but if your kids have no health insurance, you have no business in Starbucks unless you're wearing a green apron and asking "Would you like soy with that?"
Giving Head
Gregg told me about a posting he saw a while back on the bulletin board at an LAPD gang unit: a photo of the remains of a lovesick gang member who blew his head off after a fight with his girlfriend. Caption: "Love hurts."
What Is A Conservative?
I really don't know what to call myself. I usually say I'm fiscally conservative and socially libertarian; for small government and picking up after oneself, aka personal responsibility. For example...got four kids? Get a real job. (Want to have a woodcarving hobby instead? Wear a condom.)
I also think NPR shouldn't be on the taxpayer dole, and people should pay for their own damn kids to go to school (the rest of us should pay for the desperately poor -- we need an educated populace to maintain a democracy...not that we have one now, even with "no numbskull left behind.") Oh yeah, and like Barry Goldwater, I'm very much against the encroachment of the religious nutters on what should be secular life.
I'm rereading Hayek right now -- lost my copy of The Road to Serfdom, so I just reordered the one with the Greenspan intro, and I'm reminded of the term "classically liberal." But, the term isn't very well-known, and I'd hate to be mistaken for some Che-wearing Marxist. Perhaps somebody can make up a new term? Personal responsibilitarian? Or, as I sometimes call Matt Welch and myself, "common-sense moderates"? (Seems a little non-specific and weak.) I dunno. You got any ideas?
Accordingly, I don't agree with all the contentions in Gary Kamiya's Salon piece, "How Bush wrecked conservatism," but he does have a few good points, which I've pasted in below:
The real question is: After seven years of George W. Bush, why would any genuine conservative still support his party?Bush's presidency has made a shambles of real conservatism. Let's leave aside the issues on which liberals and conservatives can be expected to disagree, like his tax cuts for the rich, expansion of Medicare or his position on immigration, and focus solely on ones that should be above partisan rancor -- ones involving the Constitution and all-American values. On issue after Mom-and-apple-pie issue, from authorizing torture to approving illegal wiretapping to launching a self-destructive war, Bush has done incalculable damage to conservative principles -- far more, in fact, than any recent Democratic president. And he has been supported every step of the way by Republicans in Congress, who have voted in lockstep for his radical policies. None of the major Republican candidates running for office have repudiated any of Bush's policies. They simply promise to execute them better.
The Bush presidency has damaged American civil society in many ways, but one of the most lasting may be its destructive effect on conservatism. Even those who do not call themselves conservatives must acknowledge the power and enduring value of core conservative beliefs: belief in individual agency and responsibility, respect for American institutions and traditions, a resolute commitment to freedom, a willingness to take principled moral stands. It is a movement that draws its inspiration from towering figures: Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Burke. It stands for caution in foreign adventures, fiscal sobriety and a profound respect for tradition.
Or at least it used to stand for those things. Today's conservatism is a caricature of that movement: It embraces pointless wars, runs up a vast debt, and trashes the Constitution. Selling out their principles for power, abandoning deeply seated American values and traditions simply because someone on "their side" demanded that they do so, conservatives have made a deal with the devil that has reduced their movement to an empty, ends-obsessed shell. How did the party of Lincoln end up marching under the banner of Tom DeLay and Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and Ann Coulter?
Death Pussy
Meet the Hello Kitty assault rifle.
via Jackie Danicki
A New Low In Baby Naming
Sunday night, Lena and I walked by a woman whose baby was trying to stand up in its stroller contraption, and I heard her say to the kid, "Be careful, Gremlin."
Here are the top 20 weird celebrity baby names, some of which aren't such a big deal. (Somehow, Moon Unit and Dweezil don't bother me. They are Frank Zappa's kids after all, and I think it would be weirder if they were named Stephanie and Jason.)
I likewise don't find Satchel bad (Satchel Paige, anyone?...and he can be called "Satch"). But, sorry, if you're a 45-year-old executive, does Daisy Boo really work for you?
1. Moon Unit (Frank and Gail Zappa)
2. Fifi Trixibelle (Paula Yates and Bob Geldof)
3. Satchel (Mia Farrow and Woody Allen)
4. Apple (Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin)
5. Daisy Boo (Julia and Jamie Oliver)
6. Rumer (Demi Moore and Bruce Willis)
7. Peaches (Paula Yates and Bob Geldof)
8. River (Arlyn and John Phoenix)
9. Rocco (Madonna and Guy Ritchie)
10. Nell Marmalade (Helen Baxendale and David Eliot)
11. Maddox (adopted by Angelina Jolie)
12. Tiger Lily Heavenly Hirani (Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence)
13. Dweezil (Frank/Gail Zappa)
14. Brooklyn (Victoria/David Beckham)
15. Eugenie (Sarah Ferguson/Prince Andrew)
16. Zowie (Angie and David Bowie)
17. Rolan (Gloria Jones and Marc Bolan)
18. Phoenix Chi (Mel C and Jimmy Gulzar)
19. Coco (Courtney Cox and David Arquette)
20. Romeo (Victoria and David Beckham)
As for Tiger Lily Heavenly Hirani and Fifi Trixibelle, Yates should smoke a whole lot less pot. And maybe be brought up on child abuse charges.
Cat Psychos Band Together To Hate Hillary
Like Hillary Clinton or don't like Hillary Clinton, but don't like or dislike her over a manufactured story about how she's evil to cats. (What is this, Swift-Catting Hillary?) Here's the piece in The Times/UK by Sarah Baxter:
AS THE “first pet” of the Clinton era, Socks, the White House cat, allowed “chilly” Hillary Clinton to show a caring, maternal side as well as bringing joy to her daughter Chelsea. So where is Socks today?Once the presidency was over, there was no room for Socks any more. After years of loyal service at the White House, the black and white cat was dumped on Betty Currie, Bill Clinton’s personal secretary, who also had an embarrassing clean-up role in the saga of his relationship with the intern Monica Lewinsky.
Some believe (Amy: Names, please?) the abandoned pet could now come between Hillary Clinton and her ambition to return to the White House as America’s first woman president.
...Clinton’s treatment of Socks cuts to the heart of the questions about her candidacy. Is she too cold and calculating to win the presidency? Or does it signify political invincibility by showing she is willing to deploy every weapon to get what she wants?
“In the annals of human evil, off-loading a pet is nowhere near the top of the list,” writes Caitlin Flanagan in the current issue of The Atlantic magazine. “But neither is it dead last, and it is especially galling when said pet has been deployed for years as an all-purpose character reference.”
Flanagan’s article, headed No Girlfriend of Mine, points out that Clinton wrote a crowd-pleas-ing book Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids’ Letters to the First Pets, in which she claimed that only with the arrival of Socks and his “toy mouse” did the White House “become a home”.
Being Clinton, she also lectured readers that pets are an “adoption instead of an acquisition” and warned them to look out for their safety. (Buddy, the chocolate labrador, it should be noted, bounded into a road soon after leaving the White House and was promptly run over.)
From what I read, it was Chelsea's cat, and she left it with Betty Currie, probably because it would get a little more attention than it would from her globe-trotting father and Senator-on-the-presidential-make mother.
I'd like to see more opposition when either side does this -- Democrats or Republicans -- making propaganda out of a non-story. And, actually, I think the Repubs are more guilty of this, but not because the Democrats are more moral, just because, politically, they seem to be a lot less clever.
Oh, and as nutty special interest groups go, The Cat People are among the most virulent. Just ask Gary Larson, who got piles of angry letters whenever he did a cartoon about some ill befalling a cat. Or, ask my editor, who hopes I will answer letters from cat haters privately in the future.
As far as how I feel about cats...well, I guess I'll never be anybody's presidential nominee.
Rape...ish
If you kill someone suicidal, you've still committed murder. Likewise, if you force sex on somebody who's in the business of having sex, under the law, you're still doing more than stealing their services. Somebody should tell that to the judge, who happens to be a woman. Jill Porter writes for the Philly Daily News:
A DEFENDANT accused of forcing a prostitute at gunpoint to have sex with him and three other men got lucky, so to speak, last week.A Philadelphia judge dropped all sex and assault charges at his preliminary hearing.
Municipal Judge Teresa Carr Deni instead held the defendant on the bizarre charge of armed robbery for - get this - "theft of services."
Unbelievable.
Deni told me she based her decision on the fact that the prostitute consented to have sex with the defendant.
"She consented and she didn't get paid . . . I thought it was a robbery."
The prostitute, a 20-year-old single mother, agreed to $150 for an hour of oral and vaginal sex on Sept. 20, according to assistant district attorney Rich DeSipio. The arrangements were made through her posting on Craigslist.
She met the defendant, Dominique Gindraw, 19, at what she thought was his house, but which turned out to be an abandoned property in North Philadelphia.
He asked if she'd have sex with his friend, too, and she agreed for another $100.
The friend showed up without money, the gun was pulled and more men arrived.
When a fifth man arrived and was invited to join, DeSipio said, he asked why the girl was crying - and declined. He helped her get dressed so she could leave.
It's true the prostitute negotiated sex with the defendant - but not unprotected gang sex at gunpoint.
"The Legislature has defined sex by force as rape," said DeSipio, accusing the judge of "rewriting her own laws."
DeSipio said Judge Deni's ruling was based, not on the law, but on moral contempt.
"Certainly if a jury wants to make that judgment, they're entitled to. But for a judge to make a judgment on a human being - I've never seen that before."
Deni did seem contemptuous of the victim:
"Did she tell you she had another client before she went to report it?" Deni asked me yesterday when we met at a coffee shop.
"I thought rape was a terrible trauma."
A case like this, she said - to my astonishment - "minimizes true rape cases and demeans women who are really raped."
Uh, judgie...the woman was really raped: sex was forced on her. That's rape. Whether or not you think she's a slut. Whether or not she had a "client" before she reported it.
Just like we don't allow thought crimes (except for the dumb, wrong hate crimes law) we shouldn't allow thought victims; i.e., the woman seems to have a more cavalier attitude toward sex than most women, so...fuck her!
Destination Wedding?
A friend had to go to a "destination wedding" in Joshua Tree this weekend. Beyond the fact that I generally find wedding travel an imposition on one's guests (beyond having to attend at all), doesn't Joshua Tree seem like a better place for a "destination divorce"?
Hey! There's an idea somebody should capitalize on...like the quickie marriage industry in Vegas: Club Med For Breakups! Speed-Dating all around! (I mean, after the group divorce.) If you're lucky, you'll go home with somebody better than the guy or girl you came in with!
Thomas Friedman Is A Stuffy Old Man
People don't have to be marching on Washington to be politically engaged. But, The New York Times' Friedman's yet another fogey who doesn't understand that it's not the medium that matters. In fact, I see much more political engagement than ever; thanks, I think, to blogs.
Friedman, however, can't see beyond the boots-on-the-ground protests of decades (and decades and decades) past. Or...could it be that he just doesn't share the politics of many of those doing the engaging? An excerpt from his column:
The Iraq war may be a mess, but I noticed at Auburn and Ole Miss more than a few young men and women proudly wearing their R.O.T.C. uniforms. Many of those not going abroad have channeled their national service impulses into increasingly popular programs at home like “Teach for America,” which has become to this generation what the Peace Corps was to mine.It’s for all these reasons that I’ve been calling them “Generation Q” — the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad.
But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good. When I think of the huge budget deficit, Social Security deficit and ecological deficit that our generation is leaving this generation, if they are not spitting mad, well, then they’re just not paying attention. And we’ll just keep piling it on them.
...America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.
Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms. Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way — by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that — virtual.
Real dunderheadedness carries, no matter what the medium.
Thank Allah For Little Girls!
It seems "The Religion Of Peace" is also the religion of pedophilia. From Jihadwatch, a Toronto Muslim website reproduces the ruling of the "authorized scholar," the late Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz (the guy who issued the ruling prohibiting women from driving cars), on the question, "Is it allowed for a father to force his daughter to marry a specific man that she does not want to mary [sic]?" Sheikh bin Baz responds:
...The father must seek her permission if she is nine years of age or above. Similarly, her other guardians may not marry her off except by her permission. This is obligatory upon all of them. If one is married without permission, then the marriage is not valid. This is because one of the conditions of the marriage is that both partners accept the marriage. If she is married without her permission, by threat or coercion, then the marriage is not valid. The only exception is in the case of the father and his daughter who is less than nine years of age. There is no harm if he gets her married while she is less than nine years old, according to the correct opinion. This is based on the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) marrying Aisha without her consent when she was less than nine years old, as is stated in authentic Hadith. However, if she is nine years old or more, she cannot be married, even by her father, except with her consent....
Robert Spencer of Jihadwatch writes:
Wait a minute. I thought only venomous Islamophobes believed that (Mohammed's wife) Aisha was six when Muhammad married her and nine when he consummated the marriage. Is the House of Saud aware that it is featuring an Islamophobe on its fatwa website?
Hmmm...wasn't it just yesterday that somebody here was waxing poetic about Muslim women and their choices?
Save The Nose Hairs
The World's Most Boring Gossip Column
Naturally, it's in the LA Times, it's called "Cause Célèbre," and it seems to be about (yawn!) celebrity causes. Yes, just what we all want...nutritious gossip! Complete with boldfaced names, à la New York Times. (Nervous LA Times editors could never run an actual gossip column.) Tina Daunt writes:
AL GORE'S Hollywood fans applauded him at the Oscars, cheered at the Emmys and wept proud tears when he won the Nobel Peace Prize. But even now they admit that they'll probably never get the chance to dance at his inaugural ball.Over the last few weeks, the core of Gore's Hollywood support has been quietly shifting its allegiance to other candidates. They have resigned themselves to that fact that, no matter how hard they press him and no matter what good fortune comes his way, the former vice president won't seek the presidency.
Rob Reiner said he has had conversations with Gore about his intentions and he takes him at his word.
"He's not running," said Reiner, who has remained loyal to the former vice president since campaigning with him in 2000. (The director still carries in his brown satchel a signed copy of Gore's speech declaring that he would accept the Supreme Court decision that, effectively, ended his bid for the presidency against George W. Bush.)
Two weeks ago, Reiner announced that he would be supporting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Last week he made a campaign ad for her. On Saturday, he and his wife Michelle will host a birthday party for the senator at his Brentwood estate.
Among the guests gathering for the Democratic front-runner's 60th birthday will be two of Gore's other major Hollywood fans -- Warner Bros. Entertainment President Alan Horn and his wife Cindy. A Warner Bros. spokeswoman said this week that the couple is endorsing Clinton.
The decision by the Reiners and the Horns is significant.
For just how fucking dull it is! One more reason for Mickey Kaus to hike to the coffee shop to pick up the New York Post for Page Six!
D'ya Think It's Osama?
Photo, by CJDavis, on flickr, of an elderly nun getting felt up at Detroit Metro Airport. Meanwhile, screeners are missing 75% of fake bombs planted at LAX.
via lgf
"Should I Put The Bomb In The Tray With My 3 Oz. Toiletries, Sir?"
This is probably one of the few ways screeners would actually be able to find a bomb in somebody's carry-on.
In case you haven't heard, screeners at LAX missed 75% of fake bombs in carry-on bags or under clothes. Thomas Frank writes in USA Today:
"That's a huge cause for concern," said Clark Kent Ervin, the Homeland Security Department's former inspector general. Screeners' inability to find bombs could encourage terrorists to try to bring them on airplanes, Ervin said, and points to the need for more screener training and more powerful checkpoint scanning machines.In the past year, the TSA has adopted a more aggressive approach in its attempt to keep screeners attentive — the agency runs covert tests every day at every U.S. airport, TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said. Screeners who miss detonators, timers, batteries and blocks that resemble plastic explosives get remedial training.
The failure rates at Los Angeles and Chicago are "somewhat misleading" because they don't reflect screeners' improved ability to find bombs, Howe said.
TSA chief Kip Hawley, responding to previous reports about screeners missing hidden weapons, told a House hearing Tuesday that high failure rates stem from increasingly difficult covert tests that require screeners to find bomb parts the size of a pen cap. "We moved from testing of completely assembled bombs … to the small component parts," he said.
Terrorists bringing a homemade bomb on an airplane, or bringing on bomb parts and assembling them in the cabin, is the top threat against aviation. "Their focus is on using items easily available off grocery and hardware store shelves," Hawley said.
A report on covert tests in 2002 found screeners failed to find fake bombs, dynamite and guns 24% of the time. The TSA ran those tests shortly after it took over checkpoint screening from security companies.
Tests earlier in 2002 showed screeners missing 60% of fake bombs. In the late 1990s, tests showed that screeners missed about 40% of fake bombs, according to a separate report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
The recent TSA report says San Francisco screeners face constant covert tests and are "more suspicious."
Oh, goody. And it really seems to be working, huh? ("Mr. Bin Laden, you'll need to take your shoes off and place them in one of those plastic trays...")
This isn't to say I've never encountered really good screeners. I have. Twice. Once, in The Netherlands. (They asked all sorts of questions, and the people asking them were clearly not graduates of the fry line at Mickey D's.) And then, years ago (1982), when I won a trip to Israel.
Quiet frankly, if we're not hiring El Al-level screeners...why hire screeners at all?
What A Difference A Face-To-Face Makes
My friend Nancy Rommelmann is an extraordinary person; at once exceptionally kind, exceptionally fair, and nobody's fool. She tries to give her friend Michael Totten the benefit of the doubt on a post about Islam on her blog, but I suspect she probably continues to see things more the way I do. An excerpt from her post:
Last night, we had Michael Totten over for wine; this, before he leaves again for Falludjah. He just received in the mail his copy of Infidel; I told him, I was mailing a check, to help with Ali's security. I also cited a part of the book, wherein she writes that, immediately post 9/11, she was thrown into a morass of confusion, seeing that the words of Mohammed Atta and Osama bin Laden came directly from the Quran. More, I said my mother and I had argued last summer over whether the religion of Islam is one of peace (her position), or intolerance and violence, particularly against women (mine). I told Michael, Ali's position seems to echo mine (or, more accurately, mine hers), and she should know, having lived it.Michael pressed his lips together, and then said, "I halfway agree." When I asked why, he said, "I've spent the better part of four years in the Middle East, around Muslims, and do you know how many have shown me, as an American, any sort of anger or intolerance?"
How many?
"None. And how many have I felt threatened by?"
How many?
"Two, and they were members of Hezbollah, who detained me probably only because the photographer I was working with was Jewish."
Which is no excuse...
"No, but what I'm saying is, thousands of people in four years, and no threat, or violence, ever."
An experience to add to the mix.
Well, here are my thoughts on it, as I posted on Nancy's blog:
Regarding Michael Totten's experience, I sometimes get very nasty e-mails from readers; some of which I publish on my blog. Why? Because I suspect almost none of these people would ever have the guts to approach me face-to-face and say what they say in an e-mail.Muslim thought depersonalizes the rest of us. Jews are apes and pigs. The rest of us (well, I'm post-Jewish, but probably remain ape/pig, in Koranic terms) are still infidels, whom the Koran calls upon Muslims to convert or kill.
Christianity and Judaism don't have such sweet, gentle texts either, but you don't hear of rabbis or ministers getting up in front of their sheeple and telling them to go kill the guy next door who worships the other way.
Not all imams do that, but far too many do. Any, quite frankly, is far too many. And many, as there actually are, is far, far too many.
The New Rudeness
Public manners, more and more, seem to be a thing of the past. I'm writing something about this now, and I could use your help. I'd like to know about experiences that go beyond people shouting into cell phones -- unless you have a particularly funny or unique story about that. Please post any experiences you'd like to share below...rude neighbors, cube rudeness at work, restaurant rudeness, rudesters on the road, etc., if you'd like to sound off and/or help me put the "civil" back in "civilization."
Championing The Rights Of The Working Man...At Louis Vuitton
Is that "progress" or "progressive"? First, a little background: California State Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, says the headline on an LA Times story, "travels the world like a high roller" on "tens of thousand in campaign funds." Nancy Vogel writes:
As leader of the California Assembly, Speaker Fabian Nuñez has traveled the world in luxury, paying with campaign funds for visits to some of the finest hotels and restaurants and for purchases at high-end retailers such as Louis Vuitton in Paris.It is not clear how these activities have related to legislative business, as state law requires, because the Los Angeles Democrat refuses to provide details on tens of thousands of dollars in such expenditures.
The spending, listed in mandatory filings with the state, includes $47,412 on United, Lufthansa and Air France airlines this year; $8,745 at the exclusive Hotel Arts in Barcelona, Spain; $5,149 for a "meeting" at Cave L'Avant Garde, a wine seller in the Bordeaux region of France; a total of $2,562 for two "office expenses" at Vuitton, two years apart; and $1,795 for a "meeting" at Le Grand Colbert, a venerable Parisian restaurant.
Nuñez also spent $2,934 at Colosseum Travel in Rome, and paid $505 to the European airline Spanair.
Other expenses are closer to home: a $1,715 meeting at Asia de Cuba restaurant in West Hollywood; a $317 purchase at upscale Pavilion Salon Shoes in Sacramento; a $2,428 meeting at 58 Degrees and Holding, a Sacramento wine bar and bistro; and $800 spent at Dollar Rent a Car in Kihei, Hawaii.
Asked in an interview about his foreign travel in general, Nuñez said: "For me, it's a question of: Is my perspective on issues broad enough? Do I have enough context when I make decisions? This is a big state to run. You've got to know what you're doing.
"These trips," he said, "at least the ones I've taken -- I feel very confident and comfortable that they're not only justified but necessary for the decisions I need to make on a daily basis."
Given a list of 99 entries culled from his campaign finance filings, however, Nuñez's staff refused to show how the expenditures were related to California government or politics. Spokeswoman Beth Willon would say only that the expenditures were "properly disclosed and described as required by law."
California law requires all campaign fund expenditures to be at least "reasonably" related to a political, legislative or governmental purpose. Expenditures that confer a substantial personal benefit must be "directly" related to such purposes.
Some of Nuñez's travel in his more than three years as speaker has involved studying high-speed rail and preschool programs in France, studying renewable energy in Germany and Denmark, and visiting South America with other lawmakers and lobbyists to study global warming solutions.
Some activity, however, including the 2006 Barcelona visit and a $3,199 stay at Hotel Parco in Rome this year, does not appear tied to any policy-related trips announced by Nuñez's office.
In the interview, Nuñez said he wouldn't need to use his $5.3-million "Friends of Fabian Nuñez" campaign account to offset travel costs if he were independently wealthy. The speaker's job pays $130,062 a year plus a tax-free $170 for expenses each day the Assembly is in session.
"There's not too big a difference," he said, "between how I live and how most middle-class people live."
Excuse me while I double-hurl. I'm "middle-class," and I don't know about you, but Monday, Tuesday and Friday, I spend between $10 (for pizza) and $25 on a working lunch and drinks for my assistant and me, and maybe toss myself a $13 happy hour steak and $8 glass of wine with Lena.
On $170, tax-free? My assistant and I would be having blinis and caviar, and washing it down with champagne...well, but for the obvious work issues (champagne makes me sleepy, not writey). And, then, of course, for the "middle-class" pièce de resistance, when my assistant goes to pick up my mail, instead of taking a big woven straw bag I got for 11 eu at the rue de Rennes Monoprix, she'd be carrying something bought across the Boulevard St. Germain at L.V...maybe this $1000 "bucket" bag.
Hey, but not to worry about Fabio's spending. Steve Varalyay of Torrance isn't concerned. In a letter to the LA Times on Wednesday, he writes:
Re "Keeping up with Fabian," Opinion, Oct. 15As a progressive activist, I am less concerned about the lifestyle Nuñez leads than what his voting record is on issues that affect working people. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) doesn't live a Spartan-like existence, and neither does presidential candidate John Edwards, but both have sterling records when it comes to pro-worker legislation. Let's keep an eye on Nuñez and see if he starts supporting candidates or writing bills that are blatantly pro-company. That will be a cause for real concern.
Steve Varalyay
Torrance
Sorry, but whatever you think of Ted Kennedy or John Edwards, Kennedy "doesn't live a Spartan-like existence" because he has an enormous family fortune. Likewise, Edwards is a trial lawyer, raking in the bucks. Regarding Nuñez, and "working people," must we have such low standards for the people who are supposed to be working for us?
If You Support The War, Shouldn't You Support The War?
The New York Times' Thomas Friedman makes a very good point -- via Democrat David Obey, who proposed an Iraq war tax to help balance the budget. In Obey's words:
"If this war is important enough to fight, then it ought to be important enough to pay for.”
Friedman has White House press secretary Dana Perino's response:
“We’ve always known that Democrats seem to revert to type, and they are willing to raise taxes on just about anything.”Yes, those silly Democrats. They’ll raise taxes for anything, even — get this — to pay for a war!
And if we did raise taxes to pay for our war to bring a measure of democracy to the Arab world, “does anyone seriously believe that the Democrats are going to end these new taxes that they’re asking the American people to pay at a time when it’s not necessary to pay them?” added Ms. Perino. “I just think it’s completely fiscally irresponsible.”
Friends, we are through the looking glass. It is now “fiscally irresponsible” to want to pay for a war with a tax. These democrats just don’t understand: the tooth fairy pays for wars. Of course she does — the tooth fairy leaves the money at the end of every month under Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s pillow. And what a big pillow it is! My God, what will the Democrats come up with next? Taxes to rebuild bridges or schools or high-speed rail or our lagging broadband networks? No, no, the tooth fairy covers all that. She borrows the money from China and leaves it under Paulson’s pillow.
Of course, we can pay for the Iraq war without a tax increase. The question is, can we pay for it and be making the investments in infrastructure, science and education needed to propel our country into the 21st century? Visit Singapore, Japan, Korea, China or parts of Europe today and you’ll discover that the infrastructure in our country is not keeping pace with our peers’.
We can pay for anything today if we want to stop investing in tomorrow. The president has already slashed the National Institutes of Health research funding the past two years. His 2008 budget wants us to cut money for vocational training, infrastructure and many student aid programs.
Does the Bush team really believe that if we had a $1-a-gallon gasoline tax — which could reduce our dependence on Middle East oil dictators, and reduce payroll taxes for low-income workers, pay down the deficit and fund the development of renewable energy — we would be worse off as a country?
Excuse me, Ms. Perino, but I wish Republicans would revert to type. I thought they were, well, conservatives — the kind of people who saved for rainy days, who invested in tomorrow for their kids, folks who didn’t believe in free lunches or free wars.
The Idiots' Guide To Idiots
Michael Shermer takes on handwriting analysis. Part One:
Part two:
A possible explanation for the believers? The Forer effect:
The Forer effect refers to the tendency of people to rate sets of statements as highly accurate for them personally even though the statements could apply to many people.Psychologist Bertram R. Forer found that people tend to accept vague and general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to themselves without realizing that the same description could be applied to just about anyone. Consider the following as if it were given to you as an evaluation of your personality.
You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.Forer gave a personality test to his students, ignored their answers, and gave each student the above evaluation. He asked them to evaluate the evaluation from 0 to 5, with "5" meaning the recipient felt the evaluation was an "excellent" assessment and "4" meaning the assessment was "good." The class average evaluation was 4.26. That was in 1948. The test has been repeated hundreds of time with psychology students and the average is still around 4.2 out of 5, or 84% accurate.
In short, Forer convinced people he could successfully read their character. His accuracy amazed his subjects, though his personality analysis was taken from a newsstand astrology column and was presented to people without regard to their sun sign.
My astrological sign? I don't have one. If people press me for it, I tell them it's "No Parking/Street Cleaning" or "Don't even think of parking here."
Read your horoscope? It's bullshit. But, here, I'll help you have a better life. Next time you do read your horoscope, time how long it takes you. Add up the seconds a day, including the time retrieving or locating your horoscope, and then add them up by week, month, and year. Next, stop reading your horoscope, and put the minutes, days, weeks, and months you'd spend into something productive and worthwhile. (Even picking your nose would be a start.)
You May Now Dis The Bride
Just posted another Advice Goddess column, from yet another woman who's on the verge of confusing being her husband's mommy with his wife. Here's the question:
I recently married a wonderful man. A few of his friends who could be described as "anti-marriage" attended our wedding, but everything was perfect -- until the next day when we opened our gifts. Inside one box, badly wrapped in gold paper, was a little white plastic shovel and a note: "Beth, I know it's not gold, but you get the idea." Someone was calling me a gold digger! FYI, my husband makes a modest salary. I make slightly less. When we viewed our wedding video, one of the anti-marriage guys, "Rob," had the box in several shots. My husband called Rob, who claimed "some girl had (him) hold it while she took a picture." He couldn't describe her at all -- not even her hair color. My response: telling my husband Rob wasn't welcome in our house, and that I would never socialize with him. Am I justified? Should my husband still talk to him?--Outraged
My answer, and comments, are here.
When In Paris...
Do as the Peorians do. Or, I guess, that's what this lady thought.
Or, maybe she didn't consider how she was dressed at all. I found that idea pretty funny because she was wearing a Patagonia windbreaker and big white ugly tennies in Paris, and then seemed shocked when I turned to her and her husband and blurted out a big, friendly, American "Hello!" (And, yes, I wrote this in September, and just noticed that I forgot to post it.)
At the time, I was waiting next to them for the light to change so we could cross the Seine. After I spoke, the woman looked back at me with apparent terror -- I guess because she assumes Parisian pickpockets and ne'er do wells are generally tall redheaded women who appear to shop a lot, not smelly guys from North Africa.
"You're American?" I asked. The woman reluctantly mumbled yes, probably at a loss for how I could've known. "Me, too!" I said, and flounced off across the bridge in a black skirt, black jacket, spring green shirt, and slim black boots...stopping for a moment so they could pass me and I could steal a photo.
Word to the touristic and terrified: If you're worried people will know you're American, and immediately snatch your purse and toss you in the Seine, first of all you're silly, but second, don't telegraph the fact that you're straight out of Ohio by dressing like you're in a rush to get to Wal-Mart to buy toiletpaper.
Here's how I dress to blend in with the locals.
Uh, the French locals, that is. These happened to be more of those World Cup-spirited Scots in Paree. These are historical kilts. And in case you're wondering, I'm totally comfortable, and, yet, I manage to avoid looking like I'm heading out for a hot dog at an amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio.
photo of Amy and new friends by Gregg Sutter
Your Florida Beachfront Property
Well, it's not exactly your beachfront property, but if there's a hurricane that hits houses there, you (and I, and the rest of us non-beachfront-dwellers) could be picking up the tab. Socialism is such fun! From the WSJ op-ed page:
We've been warning of the financial disaster looming off the Florida coast ever since Governor Charlie Crist socialized the state's hurricane insurance market and put Florida taxpayers on the hook for billions. Earlier this year, Mr. Crist stumped for and then signed a law making the Florida government the state's dominant insurer, but without the reserves that would be required of real insurance companies. The plan will work splendidly as long as there are no hurricanes in Florida, but the state will face a difficult challenge once the inevitable storm hits: how to pry new tax revenue out of Floridians just as they begin sifting through the rubble that used to be their homes.Now Florida's politicians are doubling down on their mistake, by trying to make all American taxpayers subsidize insurance for Florida homeowners. Congressman Ron Klein (D., Fla.) is hoping for a floor vote this fall on his Homeowners' Defense Act and has been assured by Speaker Nancy Pelosi that this is a top priority. Governor Crist is also lobbying hard.
Mr. Klein's bill would force the U.S. Treasury to issue below-market loans to state-insurance programs, while also creating a kind of Fannie Mae of disaster reinsurance, a federally chartered organization called the "National Catastrophe Risk Consortium." Like Fannie, the consortium would carry an implicit guarantee from the federal government as it issues securities in the capital markets, distorting prices as it sells subsidized reinsurance to participating states, all the while saddling taxpayers with new risks. According to Treasury Assistant Secretary Phillip Swagel, "Taxpayers nationwide would subsidize insurance rates in high-risk areas, which would be both costly and unfair."
Transferring the risk from condo-owners in Boca to taxpayers in Syracuse does not reduce the cost of hurricane disasters. In fact, now that Congress looks ready to volunteer middle-class taxpayers nationwide as the financial backstop for lovely beachfront properties, South Florida developers will have even less incentive to use sturdy materials and set homes a reasonable distance from the waterline. We have already run this experiment with the National Flood Insurance Program, with predictable results. When people can buy insurance at below-market rates, they tend to stay in accident-prone homes.
Taxpayers might be forgiven for wondering whether they're already paying enough, given that there are no fewer than 27 federal agencies tasked with responding to emergencies, not to mention myriad state and local agencies and private groups such as the Red Cross. Even if some believe that government should be the insurer of last resort, should taxpayers pay for every resort?
Sensing that Americans might be suffering from disaster-assistance fatigue after shelling out $110 billion to the Gulf Coast after Katrina, Mr. Klein touts the loan programs in his bill as a way to avoid no-strings gifts to affected areas. But what's the most likely outcome if state insurance programs don't pay back the loans? Treasury's Mr. Swagel put it this way in testimony to the House last month: "With federal financing, it is more than likely that there will be significant pressures to forgive outstanding debt in the case of a huge catastrophe."
We're already paying for this sort of thing, of course. Stossel wrote about this a few years back in Reason:
My Life as a Welfare QueenIn 1980 I built a wonderful beach house. Four bedrooms -- every room with a view of the Atlantic Ocean.
It was an absurd place to build, right on the edge of the ocean. All that stood between my house and ruin was a hundred feet of sand. My father told me: "Don’t do it; it’s too risky. No one should build so close to an ocean."
But I built anyway.
Why? As my eager-for-the-business architect said, "Why not? If the ocean destroys your house, the government will pay for a new one."
What? Why would the government do that? Why would it encourage people to build in such risky places? That would be insane.
But the architect was right. If the ocean took my house, Uncle Sam would pay to replace it under the National Flood Insurance Program. Since private insurers weren’t dumb enough to sell cheap insurance to people who built on the edges of oceans or rivers, Congress decided the government should step in and do it. So if the ocean ate what I built, I could rebuild and rebuild again and again -- there was no limit to the number of claims on the same property in the same location -- up to a maximum of $250,000 per house per flood. And you taxpayers would pay for it.
Thanks.
I did have to pay insurance premiums, but they were dirt cheap -- mine never exceeded a few hundred dollars a year.
Why does Uncle Sam offer me cheap insurance? "It saves federal dollars," replied James Lee Witt, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), when I did a 20/20 report on this boondoggle. "If this insurance wasn’t here," he said, "then people would be building in those areas anyway. Then it would cost the American taxpayers more [in relief funds] if a disaster hit."
Sorry, but if you can afford a house on the beach in Florida, the Hamptons, or Malibu, I don't think you need the rest of us to relieve you. As the Spanish proverb goes: "Take what you need, but pay for it."
Why Should More Women Be In Science?
That isn't the question Wendy M. Williams asks. She wants to know, per the title of the book she co-edited, "Why Aren't More Women In Science?" as in, how do we encourage more women to be in science? But, why do we want women in science particularly, or anybody who isn't that interested in it without cajoling and prodding? (Gregg offers, most helpfully: "Because they look hot in lab coats, horn rims a little bit down on their nose, and decolletage?")
Why should we push women to be, say, physicists (to correct some perceived imbalance -- as if the gender of a researcher should matter) if they'd rather be, say, veterinarians? Or...sell advertising space. And, as Steven Pinker asked at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference in Austin, Texas, a few years back, if we're pushing women to go into physics, should we also be pushing men to go into talking and helping professions? And finally, if we, on a man-woman level, allow the typical "diversity" push I see in newspapers ("diversity" being code for "only give people who are not white fellowships"), what qualified men are getting pushed aside to make room for the girls?
I'm not saying there aren't successful women in science. I'm friends with a number of them. And I do think we need to ramp up science education in general in this country. But, I'm reminded of the words of a male evolutionary psychologist who planned one of the earlier Human Behavior and Evolution Society conferences. He tried and tried to get a top female ev. psych, ethologist, or anthropologist to do one of the keynote speeches. He found that women just weren't eager to get up in front of the entire group and present. In fact, every one he contacted turned him down. Even though that's generally a way to move forward in one's career. It's my observation that men, in science as in other fields, generally tend to be more self- and work-promotingly roosterish.
There is the argument that perhaps we'll miss out on great discoveries if we don't shove women into science (although I guess a word like "encourage" would be used), and then make allowances so women who want to be mothers as well can leave early to relieve the babysitter. But, what of the men (and women) who choose to skip the babies and the babysitter? How is the affirmative actionish suggestion for tenure by Williams below fair to them?
Am I suggesting (gasp!) women can't have it all? Well...yes.
I spent the entire weekend thinking out and writing a single paragraph for my column, and doing just a bit of other writing (and blogging, of course). It was a tough topic, and that amount of time was just what it took to get it right. I couldn't do this if I were a mother. Which (in addition to the convenient fact that I only like certain children, and only in small quantities) is why I am not one.
Williams sees things somewhat differently. Anna Lena Phillips interviews her via e-mail for American Scientist:
In your conclusion, you mention the importance of framing public presentation of such study in ways that don't discourage young women and their teachers and parents or make differences self-fulfilling. How would you like to see the debate framed in such a way as to produce the greatest positive effects?The debate should be framed in terms of the choices women make, both willingly due to personal preference (such as choosing veterinary medicine over engineering) and less willingly due to the dilemmas women (as opposed to men) face as a consequence of their biological sex (such as opting out of high-powered 60-hour-per-week jobs because of the desire to have children, which conflicts with tenure or partnership timetables in many cases). There are choices women make that represent choosing freely, and other choices they are compelled to make that men need never face.
...Of the research discussed in the essays in this book, what was the most surprising finding to you?
The single most surprising finding was how much better women in some countries perform on math tests as compared to men in the United States and Canada! For Steve Ceci, the most surprising finding was that countries not known for their egalitarian attitudes toward women (for example, Turkey) produce more women computer scientists than do countries thought to be more modern and egalitarian (for example, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom).
...What would you say to people who persist in believing that women's abilities, talents or interests are more suited for the helping professions than for the sciences?
Some extremely competent women and men may prefer the helping professions. We should not stigmatize these professions, nor should we belittle people who choose them. (For example, many men now teach elementary school, something unusual when I was a child.) On the other hand, these choices should not be forced by perceptions that some professions are too demanding for women. The fact that women now outnumber men 3 to 1 among veterinary medicine graduates suggests that these women like the emphasis on "helping" but have not devalued their abilities—this is an ideal situation. Women are not underrepresented in all fields of science, just the mathematically intensive ones (computer science, engineering, physics, chemistry, mathematics). Women are doing well in biological sciences, medicine, social sciences and law.
Several of these essays criticize the tenure system, which was created in a time when one-earner, one-caretaker households were the norm, for not adapting to the realities of juggling home and work that women face. What is one of the best examples you have seen of institutions using policy to model a balanced career/family workload for men and women?
Certainly institutions are aware of the problem and are struggling to confront it. Solutions take real creativity and a willingness to think outside of the box. Recently I was asked to comment on a practice of allowing some Cornell women scientists to bring their babies to work every day for several months following birth. That is very progressive!
The tenure system as it stands is definitely harsh for women wishing to have children. It represents critical evaluation at precisely the time at which these women must choose to procreate if they ever wish to. These women are expected to have their greatest intellectual productivity contemporaneously with their greatest physical and emotional productivity. Many very talented women opt out. If given somewhat longer to accrue a portfolio at, say, half time, these women might not opt out—if their half-time jobs could segue into full-time tenure-track positions. This is not presently the case, however. Why should we lose these women to science forever because of the special needs of a particular six-year period of time in their lives?
What would an ideal tenure system look like to you?
Big question. One thing an ideal tenure system would contain is more time for women having children to amass the portfolio of work submitted for tenure review. Perhaps women should be able to choose half-time positions for several years, then convert back to full-time. Women should not have to choose between having children and having a career they are well suited and well trained for. Men do not have to make this choice; they simply choose as partners women who are willing to stay home for a period of time and have children, as the data clearly show. Women are far less likely in our society to find male partners willing to make the sacrifice of staying home, and even if they do, it is the women who must undergo the strident physical experiences of childbearing, nursing and so on.
Or, they could just adopt. Or, satisfy themselves with being somebody's "Big Sister" or (non-)godparent. We all have choices to make, and no, it's usually not possible to pick "all of the above."
I Dismember Momma
Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you only pulverize the ones you love. In Afghanistan, a suicide bomber blew up his own mother and three siblings when his mother tried to stop him from carrying out an attack on others. Amir Shah writes for the AP:
The would-be bomber had been studying at a madrassa, or religious school, in Pakistan, and when he returned to his home in Uruzgan province over the weekend announced that he planned to carry out a suicide attack, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said.Surviving family members told police that the suicide vest exploded during a struggle between the mother and her son, said Juma Gul Himat, Uruzgan's police chief. The man's brother and two sisters were also killed.
Family members said the would-be bomber gave his family $3,600 before telling them he intended to carry out the attack, Himat said.
Bashary said the explosion happened on Sunday, but Himat said it occurred on Monday morning. It was not clear why the two accounts differed.
In a second accidental explosion, another would-be bomber killed himself Friday in Paktika province when he tried to take off the bomb vest he was wearing and it exploded, Bashary said. The man told authorities he had been instructed by his handlers in Pakistan to launch a suicide attack, but changed his mind when he saw people praying in a mosque.
Was Ann Coulter's Comment Offensive?
I am, of course, not an Ann Coulter fan. In fact, she can sound just as barbaric as the Islamists:
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.
At the moment, the The LA Times' Tim Rutten and a whole lot of people have their panties in a wad over what Ann Coulter said to Donnie Deutsch about Christians being "perfected Jews." (Transcript in here.) Here's the video:
Now, if you're a Christian, chances are, it's because your parents were Christians, and they took you to church and told you you were one, too. Typically works the same way for Muslims, Jews, and the rest. Few people actually make a conscious decision to worship a certain religion, let alone consider whether any belief, sans evidence, in god, makes sense...yet people of each religion tell themselves, essentially, "We're cool and everybody else sucks!" (Neener, neener, neener!)
Don't pussyfoot around on this: The Jews tell themselves they're the chosen people (how offensive). And the Christians, despite what Ann says about them believing that Jews go to heaven, do not believe any such thing...at least, not according to what I was told when I was a little girl by nasty Christian children: "You're going to burn in hell because you don't believe in Jesus!" And then, if Muslims manage to take over our society and instill Sharia law...death to the infidel! (Isn't religion grand?!)
Sure, religion does have its good points: caring for the poor, the sick, blah, blah, blah (not sure if that's how it works in Islam, but the Jews and the "perfected Jews" do go by that). But, Mano Singham has a good point, too. On Machines Like Us, he does the cost/benefit analysis of religion:
The key question is not how the balance sheet between good and evil comes out for any particular institution but whether the benefits that the institution provides is indispensable, so that we have no choice but to also tolerate the evils that accompany it. With religion, I have argued before that every benefit claimed for it can be provide by other existing sources. I think that we will all agree that religion can be the source of many good things and of many bad things. We will undoubtedly disagree on whether the net result is positive or negative. But the net result is not the key question. If we get rid of religion, while we will lose both the good and the bad, my point was that we can obtain every good thing lost using other means and institutions, so in the end we need only lose the bad things caused by religion.
As long as we have religion in our society, doesn't it make sense that people of one religion, whether they've thought it out or not (the business of religion not being the natural province of critical thinking)...think their religion is preferable to other religions? Just as Ann Coulter says yes to Deutch's comment, "We should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians, then?"
Tim Rutten sees this as a slippery slope -- the fast-track downhill, all the way to Auschwitz:
Perhaps the best response came from the Anti-Defamation League, which called Coulter's comments "outrageous, offensive and a throwback to the centuries-old teaching of contempt for Jews and Judaism. The notion that Jews are religiously inferior or imperfect because they do not accept Christian beliefs was the basis for 2,000 years of church-based anti-Semitism. While she is entitled to her beliefs, using mainstream media to espouse the idea that Judaism needs to be replaced with Christianity and that each individual Jew is somehow deficient and needs to be "perfected" is rank Christian supersessionism and has been rejected by the Catholic Church and the vast majority of mainstream Christian denominations. Clearly, Ann Coulter needs a wake-up call about the power of words to injure others and fuel hatred. She needs an education, too, about the roots of anti-Semitism."That she does. As the league points out, "supersessionism," the theological notion that Christianity "completes" or "perfects" Judaism is, along with the deicide libel, anti-Semitism's major theological underpinning. Indeed, in Central and Western Europe between the world wars, there was a substantial body of purportedly "respectable" intellectual opinion that held "supersessionism" made possible a "reasonable" theological anti-Semitism that was entirely licit, as opposed to the Nazis' and fascists' illicit, "racially based" anti-Semitism. It is fair to say that the rails leading to Auschwitz were greased by precisely the opinion Coulter expressed on American television this week.
Now, I'm sure I lost a few distant relatives in Auschwitz and other death camps. But, Rutten's thinking is akin to the thinking that gave us nanny-state-isms like Prohibition. Because some people may misuse alcohol, and even drink and drive, why should that mean I can't have a glass of wine with dinner?
Obviously, if Coulter didn't prefer Christianity to Judaism and other religions (or didn't think it would sell books -- like all the rest of her shock-jockery)...she wouldn't be a Christian. I mean, is this really so hard to grasp? Is it offensive? Or is it just...her opinion? Just as it's my opinion that this country and the world would be much better off if the silliness that is belief without evidence in god was wiped out tomorrow, and people started living rationally.
The problem is, people err in how they see criticism of religion -- as something akin to racism. A book I've mentioned before, The Trouble With Diversity, by Walter Benn Michaels, shows why this is wrong by clarifying the difference between prejudice and disagreement:
Yes, and "Choosy Mothers Choose Jif!" And "9 out of 10 mothers prefer Skippy!" And yes, Ann Coulter thinks it's better to be a Christian than a Jew. And I think you're irrational and silly if you believe in god at all. Deal with it.
Sands Of Passion
Episode Two of the jihadist soap opera. Hilarious.
Enlightenment Without Borders
Battling Muslim extremism means defending its front-line fighters; for example, The Netherlands' Ayan Hirsi Ali, whose government has forsaken her again and again: Dumped her as a legislator, ejected her from her home (the neighbors were worried), tried to yank her Dutch citizenship, and now, it seems they are dumping or have dumped her from their protection, deeming guarding her in the U.S., from the barbarians who'd cut her down like they did poor Theo Van Gogh, too expensive.
We're supposedly instilling western democratic values in Iraq -- we should be defending them on our own soil; both by welcoming the courageous, accomplished, and eloquent Hirsi Ali as a citizen, and by giving her the protection she needs to continue to speak out against those who'd slaughter her and all of us for not following the dictates of their particular primitive religion.
In New Perspectives Quarterly, Sam Harris and Salman Rushie speak out on Hirsi Ali's behalf, first describing her situation after Van Gogh's murder:
Hirsi Ali was immediately forced into hiding and moved from safe house to safe house, sometimes more than once a day, for months. Eventually, her security concerns drove her from the Netherlands altogether. She returned to the U.S., and the Dutch government has been paying for her protection here — that is, until it suddenly announced last week that it would no longer protect her outside the Netherlands, thereby advertising her vulnerability to the world.It is important to realize that Ms. Hirsi Ali may be the first refugee from Western Europe since the Holocaust. As such, she is a unique and indispensable witness to both the strength and weakness of the West: to the splendor of open society, and to the boundless energy of its antagonists. She knows the challenges we face in our struggle to contain the misogyny and religious fanaticism of the Muslim world, and she lives with the consequences of our failure each day. There is no one in a better position to remind us that tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.
Having recapitulated the Enlightenment for herself in a few short years, Hirsi Ali has surveyed every inch of the path leading out of the moral and intellectual wasteland that is traditional Islam. She has written two luminous books describing her journey, the most recent of which, “Infidel,” has been an international bestseller for months. It is difficult to exaggerate her courage. As Christopher Caldwell wrote in The New York Times, “Voltaire did not risk, with his every utterance, making a billion enemies who recognized his face and could, via the Internet, share information instantaneously with people who aspired to assassinate him.”
The Dutch parliament will be debating Hirsi Ali’s case this week. As it stands, the government’s decision to protect her only within the borders of the Netherlands is genuinely perverse. While the Dutch have complained about the cost of protecting Hirsi Ali in the United States, it is actually far more expensive for them to protect her in the Netherlands, as the risk to her is greatest there.
There is also the matter of broken promises: Ms. Hirsi Ali was persuaded to run for parliament, and to become the world’s most visible and imperiled spokeswoman for the rights of Muslim women, on the understanding that she would be provided security for as long as she needed it. Gerrit Zalm, in his capacity as both the deputy prime minister and the minister of finance, promised her such security without qualification. Most shamefully, Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister, has recommended that Hirsi Ali simply quit the Netherlands, while refusing to grant her even a week’s protection outside the country during which she might raise funds to hire security of her own. Is this a craven attempt to placate local Muslim fanatics? A warning to other Dutch dissidents not to stir up trouble by speaking too frankly about Islam? Or just pure thoughtlessness?
The Dutch government should recognize a scandal in the making and rediscover its obligation to provide Ms. Hirsi Ali with the protection she was promised.
There is not a person alive more deserving of the freedoms of speech and conscience we take for granted in the West, nor is there anyone making a more courageous effort to defend them.
Hitchens speaks out here, on Slate:
For a while, her security in America was provided by members of the elite Dutch squad that is responsible for the protection of the Dutch royal family and Dutch politicians. The U.S. government requested that this be discontinued, for the perfectly understandable reason that foreign policemen should not be operating on American soil. The job has now been subcontracted, and was until recently underwritten by The Hague. If The Hague defaults, then does the "war on terror" administration take no interest in protecting the life of one of the finest enemies, and one of the most prominent targets, of the terrorists? Hirsi Ali has been accepted for permanent residence in the United States, and would, I think, like to become a citizen. That's an honor. If she was the CEO of Heineken or the president of Royal Dutch Shell, and was subject to death threats while on U.S. soil, I have the distinct feeling that the forces of law and order would require no prompting to consider her safety a high priority.A last resort would be to set up a trust or fund by voluntary subscription and continue to pay for her security that way. Perhaps some of the readers of this column would consider kicking in or know someone who was about to make an unwise campaign contribution that could be diverted to a better end? If so, do please watch this space and be prepared to write to your congressional representatives, or to the Dutch ambassador, in the meantime. We keep hearing that not enough sacrifices are demanded of us, and many people wonder what they can do to forward the struggle against barbarism and intimidation. So, now's your chance.
The Shortest Subject In The Universe
Well, maybe I'm forgetting "Radical Islamist Strippers." But, "Feminist Humor" is probably right up there in brevity. This comment from Crid on the Dove/Axe entry reminded me of that:
> feminists actually DO > have a sense of humor.HOLY SHIT! Can't believe I missed that on the first read!
Share, Shinobi! Give us an example of an explosive feminist laugh for it's own sake... A line without the pointed subtext of expressing the hurt from some external social injustice...
I've been waiting almost five decades for this. It's going to be great!
Yes, do share. If that's even possible. (One link per comment, please, if you include links. If you want to post two links, make two comments. My anti-spam software is about as relaxed as Amanda Marcotte.)
Falling Out Of Dove
Celebration's over, ladies.
on a Venice street during the Abbot Kinney festival.)
Newsflash: Large, multinational corporations really don't give a shit about your body image. Feminist groups, silly dears, applauded Unilever for Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty," which should have been called Dove's "Campaign for Real Dollars" (not that there's anything wrong with that).
It isn't some company's job to worry about your body image. And frankly, I find it naive and silly to think for a moment they do. But, from a story by Alana Semuels in the LA Times, a consumer group called (sorry, I have to laugh, "The Campaign For A Commercial-Free Childhood") accused Unilever of (gasp!) hypocrisy!...because they're not only running the larger ladies in the Dove campaign, they're running a commercial for Axe grooming products for men that "blatantly objectifies and degrades" women.
First of all, it's not hard to have a "commercial-free childhood." I had one. It's called "Mommy didn't allow us to watch TV." But, back to the ads. Semuels writes:
Unilever shouldn't be commended for Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" while promoting products with a starkly different message, said Susan Linn, the consumer group's director and an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School."The campaign says they're going to help girls to resist a toxic marketing environment but they're creating that environment as well," Linn said.
Unilever spokeswoman Anita Larson said the Axe ads were clearly spoofs.
The Dove campaign is serious, she said, and "dedicated to making women feel more beautiful."
"Each brand effort is tailored to reflect the unique interests and needs of its audience," she said.
...A recent Axe TV ad showed a young woman who, spotting a man wearing Axe body spray in a grocery store, shoved a wheelchair out of her way to get close to him, gyrating and singing "bom chicka wah wah."
That and similar advertisements spawned a music video in which lingerie-clad pole-dancing women sing about "skimpy thongs."
The Axe line's U.S. website says that women turn into "lust-crazed vixens" around men wearing Axe, whose fragrance "acts upon the female libido and stimulates the clothing-removal section of the female brain." The company recently hired comedian David Spade to help make "The World's Dirtiest Film," a collection of clips sent in by young men who are encouraged to engage in "dirty sexy fun" so they can wash it away with Axe Shower Gel.
Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" has been extolled by women's groups and the advertising industry for its message that the beauty industry sets unrealistic standards for women. The company runs the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, a nonprofit that seeks to educate girls about a "wider definition of beauty."
Biological bullshit. For example, if you want to have a man in your life, wear clothes that reveal a waist, or give the illusion of one, since Devendra Singh found that men, across cultures, prefer women with an hourglass figure.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for helping young girls develop self-worth, but do you really make women's lives better by lying to them about what it takes to attract the opposite sex?
As for the mewling about the objectification of women, guess what: Men aren't the only ones doing it. Men objectify women and women objectify women -- meaning, they objectify themselves. I think it was my friend, professor Catherine Salmon, who pointed this out in an essay. Male sexuality is visually driven. When men fantasize, they picture the woman (or the gay man) as the object of their desire; women generally picture being the object of desire. (Shouldn't the angry ladies be vilifying women for this, too?)
Alien Abductions
Not to worry, all that's been abducted is your brain. And no, not by aliens, but by silly, evidence-free beliefs. Carl Sagan said in an interview with NOVA:
I'm frequently written to [to] say how could I search for extraterrestrial intelligence and disbelieve that we're being visited. I don't see any contradiction at all. It's a wonderful prospect, but requires the most severe and rigorous standards of evidence.NOVA: Could you please comment on the part of the quality of the evidence that is put forward by these so-called "abduction proponents."
SAGAN: Well, it's almost entirely anecdote. Someone says something happened to them...And, people can say anything. The fact that someone says something doesn't mean it's true. Doesn't mean they're lying, but it doesn't mean it's true.
To be taken seriously, you need physical evidence that can be examined at leisure by skeptical scientists: a scraping of the whole ship, and the discovery that it contains isotopic ratios that aren't present on earth, chemical elements form the so-called island of stability, very heavy elements that don't exist on earth. Or material of absolutely bizarre properties of many sorts -- electrical conductivity or ductility. There are many things like that that would instantly give serious credence to an account.
But there's no scrapings, no interior photographs, no filched page from the captain's log book. All there are are stories. There are instances of disturbed soil, but I can disturb soil with a shovel. There are instances of people claiming to flash lights at UFOs and the UFOs flash back. But, pilots of airplanes can also flash back, especially if they think it would be a good joke to play on the UFO enthusiast. So, that does not constitute good evidence.
And, a very interesting example of this sort of thing is the so-called crop circles in England in which wheat and rye and other grains -- these beautiful immense circles appeared and then -- this was in the 70's and 80's -- and then over progressive years, more and more complex geometries. And there were lots of people who said that these were made by UFOs that were landing and that it was too complex or too highly mathematical to be a hoax.
And it turns out that two blokes in Southern England, at their regular bar one night, thought it would be a good idea to make a kind of hoax to see if they could lure in UFO enthusiasts. And they succeeded every time--every time an explanation was proferred: a peculiar kind of wind, they then made another one which contradicted that hypothesis. And they were very pleased when it was said that no human intelligence could do this. That gave them great satisfaction. And for 15 years, they succeeded in these nocturnal expeditions using rope and board -- all the technology they needed.
And in their 60's, they finally confessed to the press with a demonstration of how it was done. And, of course, the confession received very little play in the media. And the claims of alien influence had received prominent exposure.
Sigmund Fraud
I've only skimmed Frederick Crews' book, Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend, but I've long been convinced that people had far too glowing an appraisal of Freud and Freudian analysis: Okay, penis envy? (Just to name one.) I mean, I'm a fan of the part when it's attached to a man, and I've sometimes joked about having a set of snap-on balls, but come on!
In New York, I saw people in analysis for years, and they never seemed happier or less neurotic, only poorer. Personally, I've found that whining endlessly about problems never brought me any nearer to solving them. Of course, I was told over and over again (in particular, by a Freud "scholar" I used to see at a Starbucks up on Mulholland) what an intellectual lightweight I was for not following the worshipful Freudian herd.
Reading Freud made reading Albert Ellis (who just died at 94) an enormous relief. Ellis showed that people do not need years of analysis to solve their emotional problems. In fact, I've seen him correct somebody's irrational thinking in a matter of minutes.
What Ellis does is not dwell on the past, but look at current fucked up thinking and behavior, and then he helps people correct their irrational thinking so they can start behaving less self-defeatingly. In short, his thinking, influenced by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus' notion that it's not events that disturb us but the views we take of them, goes like this:
Change the way you think and you change the way you feel. You're disturbed because you're thinking irrationally.
Albert Ellis demystified therapy, and who can perform it. In fact, when we had lunch out here, I asked him if I should get an MFA and train at his institute, and he said, in his Ellis-ian cackle:
You know everything you need to know. It would be a waste of time.
Happiness researcher Martin Seligman, in Learned Optimism, notes that the technique Ellis founded with Aaron Beck -- cognitive behavioral therapy (although he called it Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy) -- can be used on most disturbed people. (I can't find Seligman's book at the moment, but I think he excluded only people who are bipolar, manic-depressive, and schizophrenic, and probably not totally, but in terms of cognitive behavioral therapy being a last and only stop for them.)
And best of all, if you're a logical, and not too self-indulgent, you might even be able to fix your own irrational thoughts, and, in turn, your irrational behavior, and cheap! -- for $10.20 plus shipping -- the price of A Guide to Rational Living on Amazon.com.
And finally, here's my Advice Goddess column I just posted, Things That Go Bump In The Nightie, on how Freud The Fraud continues to damage many people, and why a good deal of his work should be understood what it is: invention and quackery from a man who needed treatment for his massive coke addiction, not near-deification by the psychiatric establishment for over a century.
Is There An Odder Couple?
It's kind of like hearing that Yassir Arafat got it on with Golda Meir. Check this out, from NYMag's Daily Intelligencer:
Former city-council president and lifelong Democrat Andrew Stein (seen here with Anne Hearst) made out with Ann Coulter at Soho House.
Is The "Surge" Working?
A "working paper" by MIT Department of Econ's Michael Greenstone. The whole thing's available for $5 in PDF here, but here's the abstract:
There is a paucity of facts about the effects of the recent military Surge on conditions in Iraq and whether it is paving the way for a stable Iraq. Selective, anecdotal and incomplete analyses abound. Policy makers and defense planners must decide which measures of success or failure are most important, but until now few, if any, systematic analyses were available on which to base those decisions. This paper applies modern statistical techniques to a new data file derived from more than a dozen of the most reliable and widely-cited sources to assess the Surge's impact on three key dimensions: the functioning of the Iraqi state (including civilian casualties); military casualties; and financial markets' assessment of Iraq's future. The new and unusually rigorous findings presented here should help inform current evaluations of the Surge and provide a basis for better decision making about future strategy.The analysis reveals mixed evidence on the Surge's effect on key trends in Iraq. The security situation has improved insofar as civilian fatalities have declined without any concurrent increase in casualties among coalition and Iraqi troops. However, other areas, such as oil production and the number of trained Iraqi Security Forces have shown no improvement or declined. Evaluating such conflicting indicators is challenging.
There is, however, another way to assess the Surge. This paper shows how data from world financial markets can be used to shed light on the central question of whether the Surge has increased or diminished the prospect of today's Iraq surviving into the future. In particular, I examine the price of Iraqi state bonds, which the Iraqi government is currently servicing, on world financial markets. After the Surge, there is a sharp decline in the price of those bonds, relative to alternative bonds. The decline signaled a 40% increase in the market's expectation that Iraq will default. This finding suggests that to date the Surge is failing to pave the way toward a stable Iraq and may in fact be undermining it.
Muslim Women And Their "Choices"
A woman e-mailed me yesterday to complain about a blog item I posted criticizing the headscarf-wearing Muslim woman in the "Modern Love" piece in The New York Times. Here's a snippet of the blog item she took issue with:
It's Supposed To Be "MODERN Love"
The New York Times' Modern Love column goes pre-Enlightenment for a little change of pace. A woman named Saba Ali writes about what it's like to look for love while adhering to primitive, evidence-free religious beliefs. Well, at least she gets to keep the headscarf and the evidence-free beliefs.
Here's what my critic e-mailed:
Your blog entry about those benighted Islamic women who "choose" to cover up is a little one-sided. I would guess that neither you nor most of the posters who commented have close ties within any Islamic communities. You dismiss any counter-arguments as if any woman who wore a head scarf was so benighted and brainwashed that she obviously can't think for herself. I think that if you had close women (or men) friends who were of Islamic background and who maybe still practiced their faith sincerely, you might still criticize the modesty laws, but with a deeper sense of understanding and perhaps appreciation as well as criticism.There is a huge variance in the degrees of freedom within any group as broad as "the global Islamic community". I have never lived in an Islamic country myself, but from what I have heard from the many women of my acquaintance who travel regularly to Egypt, Morocco, and other Middle Eastern countries, primarily to study music, dance, and both urban and rural culture, the textures and experiences of daily life for both men and women are far more varied than we might think.
I go regularly to a bellydance class taught by a woman who's been a student of Egyptian dance for 35 years. One of her students is a lovely Lebanese girl - educated, confident, and sophisticated - who's not only beautiful but also an excellent dancer. However, her family does not wish her to perform in public, although going to our class is perfectly OK. Everyone in the class acts like it's a huge tragedy that she has chosen to respect her family's wishes, like she's totally oppressed, like it's such a shame that she doesn't "get" to dance in public like the rest of us.
Well, I don't think she's oppressed! A lot of the American girls in the class are a lot more messed up than she is - whining about their boyfriends all the time, unhappy with their lives, big self-esteem issues. This girl is always cheerful, relaxed, confident and articulate. I don't remember if she's still in university or whether she's professionally employed, but whichever it is, she sure doesn't act like anyone else is in charge of her life, and she doesn't seem to be bothered by not being able to dance at local restaurants for $20 plus tips.
Why would we automatically assume that an educated woman from a solid middle-class family must be out of her mind to make even partial compromises or sacrifices for her family? Don't the rest of us do the same thing from time to time? Why are we more qualified than her to decide what she should be doing and why, because she must be too stupid, too ignorant, or too weak for her choices to have any validity?
That's my rant for the day.
-r
I'll let you all tell her all the reasons she's not only wrong, but in the words of an insult I love: "Your proctologist called. They found your head."
But, first, here's something you probably won't come up with; a bit from Satoshi Kanazawa's book, Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters:
...A recent study shows that women in Iran, where they are generally not exposed to the western media and culture...and where most women wear the traditional Muslim hijab that loosely covers their entire body so as to make it impossible to tell what shape it is, are actually more concerned with their body image, and want to lose more weight, than their American counterparts in the land of Vogue and the Barbie doll.
And next, some bio information about the woman who e-mailed me the letter:
Terrorism Meets German Engineering
Democratic Partying
From the Abbot Kinney Festival in Venice. She was a volunteer for the Democrats. Sorry if it's cruel for me to say, but how come the Republicans usually seem to look hotter?
Note the peace sign dangling from her neck. Now, I was, as I like to say, "against the Iraq war before I was against the Iraq war," but peace signs are silly. War is sometimes necessary to have peace, and to protect freedom and free societies. Once you're no longer a 14-year-old "revolutionary," it's time to recognize this.
Next slide? A flyer tacked up at the lady's booth:
Yes, they're having a "Be-In," and suggesting people "Reveal (their) Inner Hippie!" (Please! We're frightened. Don't disrobe!)
Over in Republicanland, I believe they're wearing "business casual," and serving drinks that have actual alcohol in them instead of hemp.
Now, I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican -- more of what I call a "common-sense moderate" (for electing the least moronic and sleazy sell-out running) -- but whatever you are, you have to admit, Republicans seem to have more fun.
That said, please do vote your conscience, not your shot glass. Two questions: The presidential candidate you'd vote for right now. And vice-presidential candidate, if you could choose.
Okay, one more: Is there anybody not running whom you think should be?
How Denmark Controls Speeding
NSBSFW: Not the slightest bit safe for work (unless you work for me)...although it should be.
Useless Idiots
I'm twisting the term for Soviet sympathizers, although I know ants will surely crawl out of the woodwork claiming Stalin's evil was inspired by atheism. Wrong. Atheism isn't a movement, it's an evidence-based orientation to life. Here's Mano Singham on religion's role in life on Machines Like Us:
I cannot think of a single benefit that is claimed for religion that could not be provided by other institutions. Meanwhile, the negatives of religion are unique to it. We see this in the murderous rampages that have been carried out over thousands of years by religious fanatics in dutiful obedience to what they thought was the will of god. I am not saying that getting rid of religion will get rid of all evil. But it will definitely remove one important source of it. The French philosopher and author Voltaire (1694-1778) had little doubt that religion was a negative influence and that we would be better off without it. He said: "Which is more dangerous: fanaticism or atheism? Fanaticism is certainly a thousand times more deadly; for atheism inspires no bloody passion whereas fanaticism does; atheism is opposed to crime and fanaticism causes crimes to be committed."While the evils done in the name of religion are often dismissed as aberrations by religious apologists, they actually arise quite naturally from the very basis of religion. When you believe that god exists and has a plan for you, the natural next step is to wonder what that plan is, what god wants you to do. To answer this, most people look to religious leaders and texts for guidance. As political and religious leaders discovered long ago, it is very easy to persuade people to believe that god expects them to do things that, without the sanction of religion, would be considered outrageously evil or simply crazy. (As an example of the latter, recall the thirty nine members of the Heaven's Gate sect who were persuaded to commit suicide so that their souls could get a ride on the spaceship carrying Jesus that was behind the Hale-Bopp comet that passed by the Earth in 1997.)
...Just recently, certain Islamic groups have called for the death of a Swedish cartoonist who is supposed to have drawn a cartoon disrespectful to Islam. This is yet another example of how religion seems to destroy people's basic reasoning skills because for some religious people, it seems perfectly reasonable that they have to fight and kill to defend their god's honor.
The obvious response to this call to avenge god by killing the cartoonist is to point out how absurd it is that humans think they have to protect their god's interests by fighting and killing people. Do such believers think that god is some kind of mobster boss who has to have goons to carry out his wishes? Pointing this out would reveal the impotence of god and ultimately the absurdity of the idea of god. After all, any rational person should be able to see that if their god has the abilities they ascribe to him, he should be quite capable of taking care of himself. He can not only kill the offending cartoonist but even wipe the entire country of Sweden off the map to drive the lesson home that he will not be trifled with.
But our 'respect for religion' attitude prevents us from pointing out such an obvious truth, because it gets too uncomfortably close to revealing the absurdity of the underlying premise of religion. So instead what happens is some theologian is trotted out who argues that what their religious book is 'really' saying is that it is wrong to kill, despite the existence of other passages in the same religious books that have been used to argue to the contrary. And so we end up with yet another dreary debate between the so-called 'moderates' and 'extremists' about what god is 'really' like and what he 'really' wants from us.
Welfare For The Middle Class
On Say Anything, Senator Judy Lee of North Dakota asks the essential question about SCHIP (The State Children's Health Insurance Program):
Should a family that qualifies to buy a $250,000 home be eligible for free health insurance?That is essentially the question currently being debated in Washington, DC.
...This program, called Healthy Steps in North Dakota, has been a very important tool for providing health care for children through age 18 in low-income families, but the bill recently passed by the US House and Senate is a radical expansion of the existing program.
The new bill would permit coverage up to 300% of the federal poverty level (FPL). 300% would be $61,974/year (in income) for a family of four. An earlier version, supported by many in Congress, would have covered families to 400% of the poverty level which is calculated to be $82,629/year for a family of four. That is way above the average income for North Dakotans.
Someone with an annual income of the 300% of poverty level, using standard formulas, can qualify for a monthly payment of $1446, permitting them to purchase a home valued at approximately $175,000. A family earning 400% of poverty level can qualify for $1928/month payment which would permit them to purchase a home valued at approximately $245,000. Should families who can buy homes for $175,000-$250,000 be permitted to receive government-paid health insurance? That is a welfare program for middle income families. The higher the income limits, the more state tax dollars will be needed to provide coverage, since there is a 25% state match required to draw down federal funds.
...The bill would permit states to expand coverage to “children” up to age 25, as well as to family members and caregivers for children in families whose incomes qualify for coverage. This could cause people who currently have health insurance to drop it and opt into the government program. This would be a dramatic encroachment of government-run health care and is an obvious attempt to move closer to universal health care coverage, way beyond the original intent to provide health care for children.
P.S. Here's a look at what $175,000 will getcha, homewise, in North Dakota. (Five bedrooms! 5.89 acres! Don't miss the jacuzzi tub! And yeah, they went a little apeshit with the antlers.)
Spend a little more ($231,000 in Rochester, MN), and you get this. Not exactly Steinbeckian grinding poverty, huh?
What poor dears are being left out by Bush's veto of SCHIP? Well, those like Graeme Frost, the kid the fact-checking-averse Democrats were dumb enough to use to stump for SCHIP expansion -- a kid whose parents, reportedly raising the kids on $45,000 a year, apparently choose to put their money into...other things:
What the article does not mention is that Halsey Frost has owned his own company "Frostworks", since this marriage announcement in the NY Times in 1992 so he chooses to not give himself insurance. He also employed his wife as "bookkeeper and operations management" prior to her recent 2007 hire at the "medical publishing firm". As her employer, he apparently denied her health insurance as well.His company, Frostworks, is located at 3701 E BALTIMORE ST. A building that was purchased for $160,000 in 1999. The buildings owner is listed as DIVERSIFIED INDUSTRIAL DESIGN CENTER, LLC whose mailing address is listed as 104 S Collington Ave which is the Frost's home. The commercial property he owns is also listed as the business address for another company called Reillys Designs which leads to the question of whether rental income is included in the above mentioned salary total
The current market value of their improved 3,040 SF home at 104 S Collington Ave is unknown but 113 S COLLINGTON AVE, also an end unit, sold for $485,000 this past March and it was only 2,060 SF. A photo taken in the family's kitchen shows what appears to be a recent remodeling job with granite counter tops and glass front cabinets
One has to wonder that if time and money can be found to remodel a home, send kids to exclusive private schools, purchase commercial property and run your own business... maybe money can be found for other things...maybe Dad should drop his woodworking hobby and get a real job that offers health insurance rather than making people like me (also with 4 kids in a 600sf smaller house and tuition $16,000 less per kid and no commercial property ownership) pay for it in my taxes.
Granted, it is possible the kiddies get financial assistance to attend their tony school. (Link here shows that Gemma and Graeme are students.) In lieu of their parents paying for health insurance for them, their classmates raised $4,000 for their medical bills.
Sorry if it sounds all witchiepoo of me, but here's a family health care plan for you: Forgot the nice new glass cabinets, and drive old cars, and use them to take a summer vacation that involves pitching a couple of tents...and then I won't be asked to pay for your children's healthcare. Oh yeah...and if you can't afford to pay for four children, have two, or one, or...yes, none. Don't have a family until you can support their asses without handouts from the rest of us.
Lawson In Translation
Nigella Lawson: It's all about the melons.
It's Supposed To Be "MODERN Love"
The New York Times' Modern Love column goes pre-Enlightenment for a little change of pace. A woman named Saba Ali writes about what it's like to look for love while adhering to primitive, evidence-free religious beliefs. Well, at least she gets to keep the headscarf and the evidence-free beliefs. An excerpt:
For scarf-wearing Muslims like me, premarital interaction between the sexes (touching, talking or even looking) is strictly controlled. Our mosques have his and her entrances and stairwells. Men and women pray, eat and congregate separately. At private dinner parties, women exit the dining room so the men can serve themselves platefuls of spicy curry and kebabs. Family celebrations are segregated: boys sit on one side of the hall, girls on the other, and married couples in the middle.When out in public — at school or the mall or the movie theater — interactions with non-Muslim boys tend to be less constrained but still formal. A playful push from a boy would bring an awkward explanation of how touching is against my religion.
(And we wonder why these guys will blow themselves up for 72 virgins -- even if it's possible this was mistranslated and they get 72 raisins instead?)
Ali writes of why she wears a headscarf:
Covering was a choice I had made in high school, partly out of a need for identity, and partly out of fear. The fear came from what I had heard at Muslim summer camp. Instead of ghost stories, we had “judgment day” stories about the terrible things that would happen if you strayed from God, which scared me enough to start covering and praying.
Anybody ever see those terrible things happen to anybody? Experience those terrible things? So...in other words, Ali has no more proof terrible things happen than that wonderful things would happen if she not only (gasp!) held hands with a guy, but proceeded to throw off her headscarf -- and a whole lot more -- then pose for Hustler while revving up a big, whirring silver dildo.
The "Theological Iron Curtain"
Western values like freedom of expression are pummeled by totalitarian Islam; of course, in backward and repressive Muslim societies. But, now they're trying to bring their repression to the rest of us by evoking a special standard for "blasphemy." Paul Marshall of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom writes:
Some of the world's most repressive governments are attempting to use a controversy over a Swedish cartoon to provide legitimacy for their suppression of their critics in the name of respect for Islam. In particular, the Organization of the Islamic Conference is seeking to rewrite international human rights standards to curtail any freedom of expression that threatens their more authoritarian members.In August, Swedish artist Lars Vilks drew a cartoon with Mohammed's head on a dog's body. He is now in hiding after Al Qaeda in Iraq placed a bounty of $100,000 on his head (with a $50,000 bonus if his throat is slit) and police told him he was no longer safe at home. As with the 2005 Danish Jyllands-Posten cartoons, and the knighting of Salman Rushdie, Muslim ambassadors and the OIC have not only demanded an apology from the Swedes, but are also pushing Western countries to restrict press freedom in the name of preventing "insults" to Islam.
The Iranian foreign ministry protested to Sweden, while Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asserted that "Zionists," "an organized minority who have infiltrated the world," were behind the affair. Pakistan complained and said that "the right to freedom of expression" is inconsistent with "defamation of religions and prophets." The Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs called for rules specifying new limits of press freedom.These calls were renewed in September when a U.N. report said that Articles 18, 19 and 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights should be reinterpreted by "adopting complementary standards on the interrelations between freedom of expression, freedom of religion and non-discrimination." Speaking for the OIC, Pakistani diplomat Marghoob Saleem Butt then criticized "unrestricted and disrespectful enjoyment of freedom of expression."
The issues here go beyond the right of cartoonists to offend people. They go to the heart of repression in much of the Muslim world. Islamists and authoritarian governments now routinely use accusations of blasphemy to repress writers, journalists, political dissidents and, perhaps politically most important, religious reformers.
Examples follow at the link.
Not only should we continue to "insult" Islam -- and all religions, social or political movements we find reprehensible -- we should use any kind of coercion available to us (political capital, propaganda on the Internet, and economic sanctions) to force these primitivists to stop imprisoning, otherwise persecuting and even killing critics of Islam. Oh yeah, and like Marshall says, we should "condemn" them, too.
The ammunition we need to fight back against the totalitarianist sympathy-grubbers is in Walter Benn Michaels' book, The Trouble With Diversity, which points out that religious beliefs are simply beliefs, no different from Republican beliefs or Democratic beliefs -- contrary to the notions of those who equate being against somebody's beliefs with racism.
Idiots Come In All Flavors
Why lobby or legislate when you can just wish really hard? Nancy Pelosi has been really busy praying for policy to go the way she wants it, blogs Politico:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday that she prays for President Bush to change his policies “all the time” and specifically has prayed for him to sign SCHIP legislation that would expand health insurance for uninsured children.“First of all, I pray for President Bush all the time, and I pray especially hard that he would sign the children’s health bill because it’s so important for America’s children,” she said on Fox News Sunday. “I pray that he makes the right decisions for the American people.”
But she added she doesn’t pray specifically “for a political outcome.”
Oh, hurl. So, let me get this straight: Pelosi believes that there's a big Imaginary Friend in the sky who will grant her wishes (otherwise, why pray?) yet she doesn't put in a special order or two? Except like in paragraph one of the piece. Word to Nancy and the rest of the nutters: More legislative work, less wishing to a god there's no evidence exists.
More here on the silly exercise of superstition that is prayer.
Who's To Blame?
People always want to blame police when something goes awry in custody, as in the sad case of Carol Ann Gotbaum, the woman who died while handcuffed and shackled in a holding room in the Phoenix airport. I hadn't paid more than cursory attention to the case, and then, this morning I read this on CNN.com:
According to the police report released Thursday, Gotbaum's husband, Noah, called the airport several times that day, trying to reach his wife or the airport police, telling them they didn't know the circumstances involving his wife, whom he described as suicidal.
If this is true, what form of expediency and cost savings allows you to send a suicidal (or at the very least, apparently disturbed) woman across the country all by her lonesome?
I looked on CheapTickets.com, and a round-trip flight from New York to Tucson, Gotbaum's intended destination, can be had for $289. Of course, one might have to hire a babysitter or leave the kiddies with grandma, which can be inconvenient, and even cost a few bucks.
The family has retained a lawyer in Phoenix, but perhaps assigning responsibility and blame starts at home? (Then again, there isn't a whole lot of money in suing yourself for negligence.)
Backlash To The Future
Let's see more of this. Errol Louis writes in the New York Daily News of comedian Eddie Griffin getting bounced from the stage for using "the N-word" at a Black Enterprise event:
Griffin was 10 minutes into a comedy routine peppered with the N-word, asking the audience "Why are some black leaders telling us to stop using the N-word?"An unexpected punch line came when Griffin's microphone suddenly went dead and Black Enterprise founder and bossman Earl Graves appeared onstage, like the fabled executioner at Harlem's Apollo Theater, to declare Griffin's set over and done with.
"We at Black Enterprise will not allow our culture to go backwards," said Graves. "Black Enterprise stands for decency, black culture and dignity and we will pay Mr. Griffin all that we owe him - but we will not allow him to finish the show if that's the way he's going to talk."
The crowd went wild. Graves got a standing ovation.
Griffin, who apparently wasn't finished making an ass of himself, reportedly wandered back onstage, hurled an obscenity at his audience and vanished.
Rioting For Dummies, "Religion Of Peace"-Style
Turns out that at least "several" of the people who incited the violence in the wake of the Mohammed cartoons never actually saw the cartoons. From the Copenhagen Post:
In a new documentary film, the violent protests in the Middle East over the infamous Mohammed cartoons in 2005 are proven to have been instigated by Islamic leaders who never actually saw the drawings themselves.Danish director Karsten Kjær travelled throughout the Middle East to investigate who and what was responsible for the wave of violence released from the cartoons for his documentary ‘Those Damned Drawings’ (‘De Forbandede Tegninger’). He said the primary theme of the film is freedom of expression and its boundaries.
‘I’ve sought to be objective about the crisis’ factual events,’ Kjær told public broadcaster DR. ‘But it is also a very personal film that portrays my travels around the Middle East and my own impression of both the causes and consequences of the conflict brought about by the 12 drawings.
The film suggests the crisis began full-force when the man many consider to be Islam’s most powerful figure, Sheik Yussuf Al-Qaradawi, declared 3 February 2006 as ‘Anger Day’ on his TV programme. A wave of violent protests across the globe unleashing followed in the wake of that transmission.
In the documentary, Kjær shows the Mohammed drawings to Al-Qaradawi, who views them for the first time.
Kjær also shows the cartoons to Ali Bakhsi, the Iranian who spearheaded demonstrations in Tehran that led to the burning of the Danish embassy there. Bakhsi laughingly says the drawings look nothing like Mohammed but rather like an Indian Sikh.
Ho. Ho. Ho.
The High Price Of Enlightenment
I just love when people who are raging assholes have all this eastern religion crap all over their homes and offices. These I spotted at the Abbot Kinney festival in Venice.
What Jena Means
Heather Mac Donald does it again -- bringing clarity to the cries that Jena is proof that America is a racist country, and that the black prison population is high merely because blacks are overcharged. In City Journal, in a reprint of a Dallas Morning News op-ed, Mac Donald writes:
The reason the black incarceration rate is the highest in the country is that blacks have the highest crime rate – by a long shot. Nationally, blacks commit murder at about eight times the frequency of whites. In New York, any given violent crime is 13 times as likely to have been committed by a black person as by a white person, according to the reports of victims and witnesses. These ratios are similar across the country. In Los Angeles, blacks committed 41 percent of all robberies in 2001, according to victims' descriptions, though they constitute only 11 percent of the city's population.No one in the Jena stampede dares whisper a word about black crime, because it undercuts the portrait of a victimized race. You can listen to every protest across the country glorifying the Jena Six, and you will never hear an acknowledgement of the massive social breakdown that is the black crime rate: no mention of the violence in inner-city schools that black students commit overwhelmingly; no mention of the rising homicides in midsize cities that young black males commit when they feel "disrespected." It is not racism putting black men in jail; it's their own behavior. Behind the crime wave is the cataclysmic disappearance of marriage – the black illegitimacy rate can approach 90 percent in inner cities – but it, too, is taboo.
What about the broader significance of Jena? Is Jena's supposed racism a microcosm of America? To the contrary: There is not a single elite institution in the country that is not twisting itself into knots in favor of African-Americans, instituting double standards for the sake of "diversity." After college, law schools, business schools, medical schools, engineering schools and others accept black students whose test scores would disqualify them if they were white or Asian. The preferences continue into the professions.
The Jena protesters deny these truths. In fact, the purpose of such mass celebrations – and that is indeed what they are – is to make sure that attention stays far away from the actual problems holding blacks back. Both whites and blacks are complicit in this sabotage. These ecstatic festivals of racism-bashing are a crippling ritual in the co-dependency between absolution-seeking whites and angry blacks, a phenomenon that African-American scholar Shelby Steele has powerfully analyzed.
The demonstrators exhibit a palpable desire for the moral clarity of the civil rights era, as do the reporters, who cover their every utterance. But there has been nothing like Selma or Montgomery for the current generation because much of America has accomplished almost an about-face on race since the 1950s. The current martyrs to American bigotry are a far cry from Rosa Parks.
The Jena situation is undoubtedly a bit more complex than the tale the press has woven of hate-filled whites and peace-loving blacks. But even if it were not, the catharsis that this morality play has offered to its participants is spurious. The real tragedy is the dysfunctional culture that holds back too many blacks from seizing the many opportunities open to them.
It's easier to complain than do something about it. I'm trying to do something about it. I've wanted for years to start a program in inner-city schools where people like me -- not rich, not movie stars, but people with cool jobs whose lives are the product of hard work -- go talk to kids. I've been talking to an English teacher who teaches inner-city kids, and we're going to give it a shot at her school. I'm going to do the first one, and then, the plan is, I'll come back and interview friends who fit the bill. I'm not sure this will come off well, but I hope it will, and I'm writing about it a bit prematurely, because it's an idea I'd like to encourage other people to steal.
I think there's a problem of hopelessness for inner-city kids, and I think seeing examples of people who've done something with their lives, who demystify what it takes, will help. I'm going to bring copies of the numerous pages of crap I write and rewrite on the way to a finished column, for example. And I'm going to have others I invite do a similar show-and-tell.
A Wise Guy On His Way Out
Rainer writes:
I guess you have heard about Randy Pausch's last lecture, as there have been a lot of news reports about it even over here in Germany. If you haven't: Randy Pausch is a professor at Carnegie Mellon who sadly has only a couple of months to live. He delivered a FANTASTIC last lecture with reflections about how to achieve your childhood dreams, and I think it would make a great topic for your blog. To give you an example why I think so: For instance, he makes it very clear that he won't become religious even now, he says:
"We're not gonna talk about spirituality and religion, although I will tell you that I've experienced a deathbed conversion"
(Pause)
"I just bought a Macintosh!"
(audience explodes with laughter)
"Now, I knew I would get 9 percent of the audience with that."
The full 85-minute lecture is here.
The Portable Doggie
From the Abbot Kinney Festival in Venice, dog as man-purse:
Smart lady pushing the stroller. They never get bigger, don't whine about borrowing the car, are unlikely to develop a meth habit...
...and while they are likely to sleep through much of freshman year of college, you won't be forking over megabucks for the privilege.
If You're Anti-Discrimination
You don't get to specialize.
Regarding abortion, I am, of course, pro-choice. But, I defend your right to be against abortion and to speak out for the anti-choice side. Accordingly, I defend this student's right to start an "anti-abortion club" at her school; just as I defend any student's right to start a GSA -- A Gay/Straight Alliance club at their school.
And here's a comment I left on Glenn Sacks' site, on an entry with a remark from a man-hating woman envisioning a world without men:
There are many women out there like me who are appalled by what feminism has become -- they're just not the ones screeching and waving signs along the barricades. I will either tell people I'm not a feminist or that I'm a "humanist" or an "Elizabeth Cady Stanton feminist," meaning I'm for women having the right to vote and making equal pay for truly equal work, but not for what feminism, these days, has become: too often thinly-veiled man-hating (or in-your-face man-hating) and a way to sell special treatment for women by pretending to be for equality.The women I know and respect are those, like me, who don't speak out against injustice along gender lines, but are as enraged at injustices to and lies about men as they are about discrimination against women.
"What's In Your Wallet?"
The surgical version. (One man's Aqua Net is another man's suppository.)
If I Dressed Up For Halloween
Naturally, every day is Halloween for me, as it is for Lucy, so actual Halloween is the only day I dress down.
But, if I didn't, I'd wear a Very Bat Girl Costume. A nice change of pace from the naughty enema nurse, don't you think?
What's Wrong With "Hate-Crimes" Legislation
If you're brutally murdered, does it really matter what the murderer thinks of you? And should we even be trying to prove thought crimes? And if we continue to do that...what sort of precedent is it setting?
The Senate voted to expand federal hate-crimes law to include protections for gays and lesbians...in addition to protection by race, color, religion and national origin. P.S. The bill was tacked onto a defense bill...this sounds suspiciously like a bid by the Democrats to win points with voters while playing veto-chicken with George Bush.
I am, of course, all for the equal protection of gays and lesbians, but number one, hate crime law isn't equal protection, and number two, it's unrealistic and stupid. (Do the Senators really think some hater is going to consult federal hate-crimes law before they do their crime, and maybe pick one somebody straight or white instead?)
Free Republic gives an example of why this is bad legislation:
Example: Some people say I look a bit like Idaho Senator Larry Craig. Not that there's anything wrong with that! Well, let's say that Larry Craig and I get mugged on the same Washington DC street by a gang of white skinheads within minutes of each other. The crime against Senator Craig could be considered to be more serious because of the possibility that these skinheads were reacting to stories of his restroom adventures. Me? Just an ordinary white guy. A second class victim.
via Breitbart
"One True Purpose"?
Nuh-uh. That's the argument people frequently bring up when they tell you they're against gay marriage: They say marriage is for raising children, and since gay unions can't produce children, gays shouldn't be allowed to marry.
I'm frequently surprised by this argument, since gays can and do adopt, and since straight marriages are often childless. I mean, we don't stop menopausal women from tying the knot...well, not unless the partner they happen to be in love with is a chick.
Eugene Volokh has done a bunch of posts on the topic that clear up this anti-gay-marriage illogic, and takes on another silly argument, the notion that gay sex is not "natural." When one of his commenters argued that gay sex is "natural" for gay people, another commenter shot back:
"You are simply wrong based on human biology. Tab P goes into slot V not slot B."
Volokh made neat work of this one:
Well, tab P goes into slot V, except when it doesn't. My guess is that, as a purely descriptive matter, tab P goes into the P-owner's hand many more times, on average, than it goes into slot V. If the most common use (i.e., the norm) defines the One True Inherent Use, then any sex other than masturbation is unnatural.Ah, the commenter might respond, but that's not the purpose of the penis. The purpose of the penis, either in the sense of what its biological function is, or in the sense of how God designed it (I don't know the commenter's philosophy, so I'm not sure which he'd focus on), is to be inserted into a vagina so as to procreate.
But biology doesn't have "purposes," except in a metaphorical sense. Biology has developed the penis into a multi-functioned organ — it can be used for urination, for sexual pleasure, for emotional bonding, and for reproduction (I list these in what I guess to be decreasing order of actual frequency of use). Likewise for the multi-functioned vagina, though replacing urination with delivery of babies. More broadly, the sexual act is likewise a multi-functioned act. Likewise, biology has developed the mouth into a stunningly multi-functioned organ: It can be used for (among other things) breathing, communicating, consuming sustenance-producing substances, tasting substances to see whether they are wholesome, expelling vomit, kissing, licking stamps, and at least four different kinds of production of pleasure in oneself and others — singing, eating tasty food, stimulating others' nongenital erogenous zones, and stimulating others' genitals.
The anus is a less multi-functioned organ. Still, it can be used not just for elimination of wastes, but also for prostate exams, for gynecological exams, for the administration of medicine to people (often babies) who can't easily keep it down when the medicine is administered orally, and for the relatively accurate determination of body temperature. The latter four functions are of course artifacts of modern medicine, but I doubt that any of us would condemn them as violations of natural law, especially since learning, thinking, and developing new processes is natural for humans. Likewise, the anus can be used for sexual pleasure, and has been used that way by humans for millennia (and is used that way by some animals). Why then treat the anus, the mouth, or the penis as having One True Inherent Purpose rather than recognizing that they can be used in multiple ways, each of which is fully consistent with our biology.
Likewise if one sees the human being as part of God's design, and tries to deduce proper conduct from such design. (I set aside the separate argument that proper conduct should be deduced from supposedly authoritative religious works, such as the Bible — that's not the argument I'm responding to here.) God seems to have designed the human body in such a way that the penis, the mouth, and the anus can be used in lots of different ways; why should we infer, simply from the fact that one use (penile-vaginal sex leading to reproduction) is so important, that it's the One True Proper Use of genitalia? Likewise, God has designed humans in a way that allows some of them to be attracted to members of their own sex; even if you believe that this preference isn't innate, but is caused in part by upbringing or by personal choice, it's clear that the possibility of this preference is indeed present in humans (and, as I said, other animals). This too casts doubt on the theory that penises or the sexual act have One True Inherent Purpose or One True Inherent Mode Of Employment.
Words can have many functions (in the sense of many meanings). Institutions, like marriage, can have many functions. Parts of the body can have many functions. Human practices can have many functions. One can certainly argue that some functions are beneficial and some are harmful. But I see little reason to assume that there can only be one true inherent metaphysical natural function, or to infer that just because one function is very important, all other possible functions are improper or violations of natural (or linguistic) law.
I also commented on the broader "unnaturalness" argument three years ago, here.
This Message Brought To You By "The Religion Of Peace"
Flyers were found on cars in Sterling Heights, Michigan, urging the murder of Christians and Jews. Gordon Wilczynski writes in The Macomb Daily:
Police said anti-Jewish and anti-Christian fliers were found on cars parked in a lot on the northwest corner of 15 Mile and Ryan roads.Sterling Heights police Detective Sgt. Paul Jesperson said three separate complaints were filed by residents Tuesday who found the fliers on their windshields.
He said the flier said: "Kill Jews and Christians if they don't believe in Allah and Mohammad."
It further advises people to "Fight those who do not believe."
"I really don't know what it means other than suggesting violence to Jews and Christians," Jesperson said. "We certainly have no intentions of stifling someone's religious beliefs but it is most certainly a violation of the law if you're condoning violence with this hate literature."
Jesperson said police received three complaints and the fliers were seen on at least 15 other cars in the parking lot.
He said there was no damage to the cars and no one else filed a complaint.
"I would imagine many people thought this was some type of advertising flier and didn't even read it," Jesperson said.
Sam Richardson, who was shopping at the Kroger store on Tuesday, saw the flier on his windshield while walking to his car and asked his 11-year-old daughter to remove it.
He said she walked toward him while she was reading the flier and then she started crying.
"She asked me what the flier was all about," said Richardson, an electrician at General Motors. "I tried to explain to her what it meant and I then had to explain it to my 7-year-old son."
Now, while it's possible these flyers were put out by a Jew or a Christian to highlight how Islam calls for killing or converting "infidels," and replacing secular law with Sharia law, but the fact remains that Muslim leaders often incite the death of those who believe in different versions of The Imaginary Friend. And they use the Koran to do it; for example, this quotie-bit from Osama Bin Ladin:
Allah the Most High says:“And fight them until there’s no fitnah (polytheism) and religion is wholly for Allah.” Quran 8:39
That's why, in my eyes, modern Christianity and Judaism are merely meddling (mostly the Christians, on a legislative level), silly (the belief, without evidence, in god) and annoying, but Islam is a serious threat to our lives and our way of life. And we'd better get that through our thick American heads before it's too late -- like I believe it is in The Netherlands, Britain, and France...just for starters.
via Jihadwatch
Hat About You
Head toppers spotted this past Sunday at the ginormous Venice, California block party known as the Abbot Kinney Festival. Here's the wavy lady:
Lady with a fur Kangol in 80-degree heat:
Here's Noah from Abbot's Habit showing a little lemony love to the LAPD:
This very pretty girl was working in the mumbo-jumbo tent in the eco section.
Her turbanned compadre told me he is a Sikh. (By way of Beverly Hills, I'm guessing.)
The very pretty girl started very earnestly telling me how, if you magic-marker "hate" on a bottle of water and "love" on another, like on these tubery-looking things...
...that "research shows" the molecular composition of the fluid in the bottles will change accordingly. Uh...right.
Not technically a hat, but close enough.
(I'm thinking he's going to need those Life Savers.)
Nando On Al
Here's my friend Nando Pelusi on the brilliant and hilarious Albert Ellis, whose NYC memorial (Friday, when I was in Savannah) I unfortunately couldn't attend. Nando calls Al, the founder, with Aaron Beck, of cognitive behavioral therapy:
"Epictetus via Groucho Marx with a stop at the Bronx Botanical Gardens."
If you aren't bipolar, just kind of fucked up, you might be able to fix yourself in relatively short order, and for $10.20 -- the price of Albert Ellis' A Guide to Rational Living. Beats whining in analysis for 20 years. Take the money you would've spent and buy a yacht. Or buy me a yacht.
The Albert Ellis Of Dietary Science
Believe me, I don't compare anyone to Ellis lightly, but Gary Taubes has written a book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, that pops myth after myth about diet, dieting, obesity, and disease. His work should be groundbreaking for the American diet in the way Ellis' was for mental health. (Ellis, for the uninitiated, showed psychoanalysis to be most effective as a cure for the overstuffed wallet.)
As with Ellis, who was disparaged by the psychological establishment, Taubes' work will be fiercely fought by the medical and dietary establishment -- mainly because he so clearly lays out how miserably they've failed us.
This book is, above all else, a detective story. Gary Taubes is a meticulous researcher -- probably the best investigative science journalist out there -- who has spent seven years going over every piece of data about food and diet from the 1800s on, and he's debunked a lot of what's considered science as "science."
If you're one of those who never clicks when I make a book recommendation, this is the one book to buy. I don't care if you buy it through my link or at a bookstore, and just take it out from the library or read a friend's copy. Read this book. So many people are suffering with obesity and disease, and there's really no need.
A commenter on Jackie Danicki's blog item about a recent article by Taubes in The New York Times gets it:
Squander Two saysA brilliant article.
The particularly weird thing is that, when you’re diagnosed with diabetes, a consultant explains the mechanisms to you and tells you how your body’s going to be working from now on and what natural behaviour you’re going to have to emulate with injections — and what they’re telling you is exactly what’s in that article: insulin turns sugars and carbohydrates into fat for storage. But, when you’re talking to any other doctor in any other context, they insist that weight-gain is driven by the simple calories-in-minus-calories-out model and that Atkins was a quack.
Taubes' detractors are popping up right and left -- like a "New York nutritionist" chickie from an ABC news story. But, first, here's Taubes from that same piece:
Taubes said that after rereading years of scientific research, he has found proof that for the last half century, science has just gotten it wrong: It's not fat that is making Americans fat, he said, it is the base of the food pyramid, the complex carbohydrates, foods such as bread, pasta, potatoes. It's the starches we were told we needed that make us pudgy.It's simple chemistry, said Taubes. Carbs spike insulin. Insulin creates sugar. And sugar packs on the pounds.
"The grains are carbohydrates," Taubes said. "They're refined carbohydrates. You take off the shell and all the protein and the vitamins, and you refine it down, and you end up with something that its primary effect on the body, immediate effect, is to raise insulin levels. And if you raise insulin levels, what that does is drive calories into your fat tissue. Raising insulin literally works to make you accumulate fat. This is one of these phenomena that for some reason the medical research establishment has chosen to consider irrelevant to why we get obese."
It's a theory that Taubes claims is simple -- and anthropological. It evolved from our days as hunter-gatherers, before we ate refined carbohydrates and sugars.
"And all we're saying [in the book] to do is, 'Don't eat these foods we didn't evolve to eat.' It's conceivable that switching to a diet absent these foods, making the transition has side effects that we have to deal with, that doctors have to deal with," he said. Click here to read an excerpt of Taubes' book.
And here's that "New York Nutritionist":
"Carbs are not killers," said New York nutritionist Carol Forman Helerstein. "Mother Nature would not have put carbs on the face of the earth if they were killers."
Carol, darling, that sort of thinking is called "the naturalistic fallacy," the silly notion that because something is natural it's good. Replace the word "carbs" in your sentence above with "poison mushrooms."
And onto your next bit of silliness, ABC quotes you saying this:
"If you go back to our ancestry and you look at the caveman, what did he eat? He ate carbs."
Where are you looking, on reruns of The Flintstones? I prefer to consult live-action anthropologists working in the field. For example, from this New York Times story by John Noble Wilford about the Neanderthal skull found in Croatia a few years back:
Thor Goes Catholic Schoolgirl
From the Abbot Kinney Festival in Venice on Sunday.
Childhood Has Become A Work-Release Program
Except without the release part.
Western countries ended child labor long ago -- only to re-up it in the form of homework. Now, I do have to say, as a smart kid, I did almost zero homework during my school years, except when there was an occasional project. But, I read almost constantly -- including Russian literature from the time I was in my early teens -- so it's not like I wasn't learning.
I absolutely love learning -- it's one of my favorite thing about my job, that I can dig in for a week or weeks reading studies for a single column. I see what I do as intellectual detective work and internal debate, both of which I find very exciting. But, I found school, pre-college, boring and annoying...probably due in part to my long-undiagnosed ADHD...and the fact that school was, well, too often boring and annoying.
I did love a few classes -- the American Civil War, Africa, government, journalism, and, especially, logic -- my very favorite class in high school. Aside from journalism and logic class, we were rarely asked to think. In fact, thinking was frowned upon in many cases, like when I angered the American lit teacher by questioning the agreed-upon meanings of literary symbolism in some of the books we read. I did get mostly A's, because school was easy for me, but I really didn't get a whole lot out of my K-12 experience, vis a vis time invested, save for all the reading I did on my own.
Getting back to the homework issue, while I think it's a good thing to teach kids good work and study habits, which I acquired later in life, the level of homework The Wall Street Journal's Jeff Opdyke describes his kid getting, and what I see friends' kids going through, seems ridiculous:
I hate school!Yes, I know that's a bit immature for someone 41 years old. But it's true. I hate school -- so much so that my wife, Amy, and I have hired a college student to help our fifth-grade son manage his schoolwork a few times a week.
It's not that we can't do the work with him, or that we don't want to. Just this evening we helped him study for a reading test, and over the weekend I was quizzing him on customary and metric units of measurement one day and biological definitions the next.
No, it's that the volume of homework and tests that fill his docket is, in a word, ridiculous.
I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point U.S. schools decided that if you can't teach 'em, test 'em...or pile on more homework.
The result is that my son's life -- and by extension our family life -- is a constant, stress-laden stream of homework and tests and projects. It overshadows everything we do, always hanging over our head. It affects our weekends, our meals, our vacations, our work time, our playtime, our pocketbooks.
And to what end? Maybe I'm missing something, but when did schools determine that the best place for kids to learn math, science and English is at their own kitchen table?
Obviously, learning is what school is about. I have nothing against homework or school projects or a certain level of anxiety about it all. How a student deals with those demands and that anxiety is great preparation for later life.
But the level of homework and anxiety my son deals with on a daily basis is well beyond anything healthy. And from talking to other parents, this problem is hardly unique to our family.
Amy and I knew there was a problem several weeks ago when our son brought home a D and a C. This was the first time that he earned anything less than a B. And then, a week later, another D.
At first we were mad. He's just not paying attention to the questions; he's rushing through the tests; he's being careless. We quizzed him before the test and again afterward. How is it that he can know the information before and after, yet not during?
It turns out he's stressed out. He told Amy that he wishes he could do better. But he already wakes up on school days between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m., panicked that he doesn't know the material he has already studied. He wakes up Amy to help him go over his notes one more time. He studies in the car on the way to school. Some nights he's up past 10 p.m., writing, reading or memorizing. He spends parts of many weekends reading and doing projects.
Then he sees the Ds and Cs and gets dejected, wondering how he could possibly study any harder or any longer.
The truth is, he can't. His childhood is already all but consumed by textbooks, notebooks and flashcards.
I used to play outside when I was a kid. When do these kids get to do it -- between their Swiss Alps of weekly homework assignments and summer camp for math? And what of kids who need after-school jobs to help pay for college? And how about the notion that every kid is not cut out for college -- despite the way we treat high school as an automatic conduit, when many kids would be served better by the celebration of trade school as a terrific option?
In short, by shoveling homework on the very young, are we preparing kids for life or preparing them for life in the therapist's office?