May 15, 2008

Sudden Equal Rights
The California Supreme Court just struck down the California ban on gay marriage. Howard Mintz writes for the Mercury News:

A sharply divided California Supreme Court today legalized same-sex marriage, an historic ruling that will allow gay and lesbian couples across the state to wed as soon as next month and inflame the social, political and moral debate over gay unions.

In a 4-3 ruling written by Chief Justice Ronald George, the Supreme Court struck down California laws that restrict marriage to heterosexual couples, finding that it is unconstitutional to deprive gays and lesbians of the equal right to walk down the aisle with a marriage license in hand.

The California and Massachussetts Supreme Courts are now the only top courts in the country to uphold the right of gay couples to marry.

The ruling marks a watershed moment in the conflict over gay marriage, with the most influential state Supreme Court in the nation, dominated by Republican appointees, ruling in favor of gay rights advocates in the state with the largest gay population. California was considered a crucial battleground for civil rights groups, which have lost a number of major legal challenges in recent years in other states such as New York, Washington and New Jersey.

The decision is sure to spark a furor that could spill into the ballot box in November, when there is a strong chance voters will be weighing a ballot initiative to change the state Constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger previously announced his opposition to the ballot initiative, but that was before
today's ruling.

The three dissenters in today's ruling argued that it should be up to the voters or Legislature to sanction gay marriage, not the courts. A divided state appeals court reached that conclusion in 2006 when it upheld the ban on gay marriage, but that ruling was overturned by today's Supreme Court decision.

We don't leave whether blacks and whites can marry up to the voters. This shouldn't be left up to the voters either.

I sat next to this incredible woman on the plane back from the evolutionary psych conference in Manchester. We talked for a couple hours about a lot of things, including her family and family life. She seemed to be not only a great person, but a great mother, and it sounded like she had a great relationship with her husband. It was about two hours in that she used her partner's name, and I realized she was with a woman.

Sorry for all those people who think being gay means running around West Hollywood in leather pants with the butt circles cut out, but gay parents are just as boring as straight parents, and have pretty much the same problems (save for dealing with discrimination against homosexuals).

Why shouldn't this woman and her partner get every privilege and protection under the law that straight parents and their children do? How does giving them those rights hurt anyone, or hurt "the institution of marriage" itself?

Sorry, but if anyone's screwing up marriage, it isn't the homos who want to marry, but the straight people who keep breaking their marriages up and strewing children in their wake.

Bratless Dining
Glory be! A Silverton, Oregon restaurant just put up a sign banning children 6 and under. From KPTV in Portland:

The manager at the Red Thai restaurant on Oak Street said children under the age of 6 aren't welcome in the eatery.

The Red Thai manager, Craig Gereau, said children disrupt people who are trying to enjoy a quiet dinner.

He said most of his customers like the new rule, but he's had to turn some people away.

"We've had to turn a few young parents away. They're a little bit appalled, a little bit annoyed, but we have to do what we have to do. We can't stay in business to please everybody," Gereau said.

As the guy subsequently pointed out, there are plenty of restaurants that cater to young children. And I do my best to avoid them.

Sure, some kids are well-behaved. And these well-behaved kids seem rarer and rarer every day. Besides being raised as self-centered brats, many kids these days don't seem to be taught the first thing about how to behave in public.

Last week, at Manchester Airport, some lady was playing football with her two boy brats with a bag of trash from McDonald's in the center of the walkway lining the gates. I told them to stop as I went by, as I didn't want to end up wearing McDonald's.

Just today, I had a lunch meeting at the Rose Café, and I couldn't get past this little girl brat because she was sticking out her foot and apparently doing ballet exercises in the middle of the restaurant, and I didn't want to wear her foot dirt on my black skirt.

Her "parents" finally noticed that I was standing there waiting to get past and told her to pull her foot in and sit down. She ignored them, and lifted her little brat leg again.

Newsflash to people who have extruded children: You can't be in the habit of acting like "parents" and then expect acting like parents to have much of an effect beyond causing noise pollution for the rest of us.

Got kids? If they don't behave like little adults, there's a place for them, and it's home with the babysitter (or home cooking up meth for the babysitter, as the reality may be), not out in some restaurant where a lot of adults are trying to have a civilized dining experience.

Yes, that's right: I'm saying I want an adult dining experience whenever I do dine out. There's a reason I don't go to Chuckie Cheese's, and it isn't because they don't serve Amarone (fab Italian red wine).

Amy's Bookshelf
Excellent books I've read recently, or am reading:

Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), by Tavris and Aronson

The Stuff Of Thought, by Steven Pinker

Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely

The How Of Happiness, by Sonja Lyubomirsky

Rendezvous In Black, by Cornell Woolrich

"Is Maman Mean Or Magnifique?"
Janine di Giovanni asks the question in the Telegraph about French mothers' stricter style of parenting. I wrote about American parenting here, in my Advice Goddess column, "Look Before You Sleep":

The parental "no" has officially joined the ranks of chronically missing items like The Holy Grail, Atlantis, and Britney Spears' underpants.

You're supposed to be your kids' mom, not their full-time birthday clown. This means meeting their needs, as opposed to falling prey to their ransom demands; i.e., "Send in the chopper and the cupcakes or I'll scream my lungs out until spring!" If you're keeling over from reading "Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb" 40 times, it's because you didn't say no 39 times. "No" is also the correct response when besieged with requests for a chunky peanut butter sandwich with all the chunkies removed. But, children can be such finicky eaters! Correction: American children can be such finicky eaters, because their parents tend to confuse parenting with working room service at a five-star hotel. In France, on the other hand, the kids' meal is whatever the parents are eating; brains, livers, kidneys and all. And while the kids can pick out bits they don't like, their choice is clear: eat or starve.

Saying no to your kids will not turn them into meth-smoking, liquor store-robbing carjackers. Actually, throwing up a few boundaries might even serve to prevent this -- and less dire but extremely annoying outcomes (just what society needs, another 35-year-old snot who was denied nothing during childhood).

Here's how it works in France. di Giovanni writes:

An American friend, Susan, who grew up in Paris and is the mother of three boys, explained: "It's always shocking for Anglo-Saxons to hear the shrill 'ça suffit' that is the refrain of all French mothers. They speak with sharpness that is alarming to the uninitiated."

However, Susan does not see their behaviour as mean. "They think they are doing their children a favour, which is to civilise them. Teaching your children proper behaviour from the earliest age is of almost moral importance."

She recalls taking her five-year-old son to the park and telling him repeatedly not to do something. An elderly woman was eavesdropping and suddenly reached over and pinched the boy's ear until he squealed. "Listen to your mother," she said sternly in French.

Susan was not offended. "I know she, and every other French grandmother, would think that is for the good of the child. Anglo-Saxons tend to see children as charmingly thick savages who can be taught manners in a superficial way. The French grasp the deeper meaning of civilised behaviour as soon as they can speak, and drill it into them."

My son's godmother, who is French, also believes in discipline (though she is a highly loving and supportive mother and godmother). She says, "there is something called l'heure de l'adulte". That is when they go away and leave us alone." Children, she says, have to learn boundaries. "The big difference is that the French believe strongly in creating those divisions. And it works. Look how well behaved French children are, compared to American children."

I have to say, she has a point. When I see my six little French nieces and nephew, lined up neatly with plaits, scrubbed freckled faces and pinafores, parroting "Bonjour, tante Janine," and "Merci, tante Janine," and going off to their violin and piano lessons, I know she has a valid point.

But the hippy, earth mother part of me still wonders about originality, creativity and free thinking. (There is no such thing as an earth mother here, it is simply not chic). I worry that all this repression and enforced manners will kill any creative drive.

But then I think about Seth, the kid from the Upper West Side who invaded my living room and destroyed my dinner party. On that note, I am very happy to live in France and follow the French model. Slightly.

May 14, 2008

(White) Girl Power
Meet the art in manhater Amanda Marcotte's new book: the white man being rescued from the black savage by the white woman.

Black feminists were underthrilled. From BlackAmazon:

I think the point where I went fuck it , is when a law student, a couple writers, and a professor basically endorsed a book and MISSED in reading something they were ATTACHING their names to .

Racist comics, about MY PEOPLE. Yeah MY PEOPLE, being KILLED and destroyed to save a white man and give a white woman the "courage" she so desperately desires .

And people fell over themselves to excuse them . Cause they're learning

You know what , fuck off.

Here's a review from Amazon by Lotte Claire "lottelita":

Please do not buy this book -- at least, not yet., April 25, 2008

Amanda Marcotte is a witty writer, but she doesn't understand that feminism must embrace anti-racism as well. Her book features "retro" comic book imagery where a white woman saves a white man from dark-skinned savages, which has understandably upset a great number of feminists of color. She and her publisher claim that the inclusion of these images was a regrettable oversight, but they've also been dismissive of the concerns that were raised. This isn't the first time Marcotte has been down this road, either. Please don't support her work or her publisher until they get the message that feminism isn't just for white women.

Little light comments here:

Well, Vox, she learned that people will find fault with anything she does 'cause they're haters, right? So why settle for racist undertones with a white woman fighting a big black ape, when she can actually be beating down a spear-chucking, ooga-booga-mask-wearing, bulging-codpieced caricature of an actual black person? To save a clean-shaven whitebread man? With dancing, hooting savages and their animal companions representing all the threats to the erstwhile blonde feminist adventurer?

Or, oh wait, isn't the new claim that she had no input on the illustrations of her book, and was given galleys that didn't include those pages, but even if she had seen them, they're ironic, and anyway, the only people calling out racism are haters trying to find fault because of personal vendettas?

Seal Press "apologizes" here -- the way I do, when I don't really want to apologize, with "I'm sorry I offended you," which doesn't mean I'm sorry for what I wrote, just that you got pissed off by it. An excerpt (and do go to the link and do read the bit at the bottom where they go all weasely and try to excuse themselves by saying Amanda Marcotte, whose blog has had some image issues in the past, "who did not select these images for her book":

A Public Apology To Our Readers, Our Friends, Our Critics,

We are taking action immediately to remove the offensive images from It's A Jungle Out There. We are currently reprinting, and we will make these changes now. We apologize for any pain or concern these images have caused.

We do not believe it is appropriate for a book about feminism, albeit a book of humor, to have any images or illustrations that are offensive to anyone.

Some have asked the valid question, "What were you thinking?"

Please know that neither the cover, nor the interior images, were meant to make any serious statement. We were hoping for a campy, retro package to complement the author's humor. That is all. We were not thinking.

As an organization, we need to look seriously at the effects of white privilege. We will be looking for anti-racist trainings offered here in the Bay Area. We want to incorporate race analysis into our work.

In the meantime, please know that all involved in the publishing of It's A Jungle Out There, from editorial to production were not trying to send a message to anyone about our feelings regarding race. If taken seriously as a representation of our intentions, these images are also not very feminist. By putting the big blonde in the skimpy bathing suit with the big breasts, the tiny waist, and the weapon on our cover, we are also not asserting that she is any kind of standard that anyone should aspire to. This 1950s Marvel comic is not an accurate reflection of our beauty standards, our beliefs regarding one's right to bear arms, nor our perspectives on race relations, foreign policy, or environmental policy.

Hilariously, about the standard they don't think "anyone should aspire to," I can load you down with piles of research that show men go for big breasts and tiny waists. So...if you're a woman who wants a man...it would behoove you to wear a push-up bra and a dress that reveals a waist! Is this horrible to say? Or...simply prudent?

As I wrote long ago in my column: "If you want to trap a bear, don't trot off into the woods carrying a Tupperware container of salad.

Here's One Way To Get Amazon Reviews
This e-mail flew in on Tuesday afternoon:

In a message dated 5/13/08 1:58:02 PM, wilsongeek@gmail.com writes:

Hi,
As you may or may not know, I finished my first book in 2004. 

Healing The Unhappy Caveman: Why The Human Mind Was Not Designed For Happiness And What YOU Can Do About It

I spent two years blogging about the concept and trying to get a book deal, but the publishing industry and I never saw eye to eye on much of anything.  Fortunately, one of the readers of my blog started his own publishing company, and he asked me to be one of his first authors.  So...after what has seemed like an eternity, my book is finally out. 

It is available on Amazon -
(deleted)

You can also buy it on my website -
(deleted)

...Now for the money - as you probably know, the key to kicking ass on Amazon is reviews.  My book has only recently been added to their list, so I have no reviews.  I need them, and I'm willing to pay to get them.  I am NOT saying I am willing to pay for puff pieces.  I'm talking real reviews - good or bad.  One complication is that unless you've been a frequent reviewer at Amazon, they won't let you review a book you didn't buy from them.  So, if you want to participate in this, you'll probably need to buy the book from Amazon.  However, if you do, and you submit a review that gets posted - and it is clear that you actually read the book - I'll send you $50.  I have $500 set aside to do this, so once it's gone, the deal is over.  My preference is to pay through PayPal, but I'll send you a check via snail mail if that's what it takes.  Just be sure to let me know you're submitting a review before it goes up.

I hope this note finds you well.

Warm regards,
Chris Wilson

Probably to be safe, he says, "I am NOT saying I am willing to pay for puff pieces. I'm talking real reviews - good or bad."

Yeah, I'm sure he sent that out to all the people who really despise his work. I believe I'm on his list because I once sent him a complimentary note about his blog.

Einstein's Belief In God
"Sorry, theistards. Einstein was on our side," writes Evolved and Rational, posting a quote from a letter by Einstein that's about to be sold in London. Einstein wrote:

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions."

"The Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people."

"As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

I, too, find the "chosen people" brag offensive and rather immature ("We're the coolest, and you SUCK!"). And then, as a post-Jewish girl who's against the evidence-free belief in god (and, among others, the evidence-free belief that my frozen yogurt will fly), I agree with Al on all the rest.

Of course, of all the religions out there, Islam is the worst. The Jews might believe some dumb stuff, but they're not going to blow you up in the grocery store because of it.

Things That Go Chump In The Night
Just posted another Advice Goddess column here. Poor guy's in Iraq while all this is going on. Here's an excerpt:

The firm surface you need to meet up with is the business end of the clue stick. This saga started two years ago, when you and your wife agreed to separate. Two weeks later, after you left for the war, she moved her boyfriend into the family home. Two weeks later? Yes, before the exhaust trail from your plane to Iraq disappeared from the sky, she'd already managed a little troop surge of her own: Operation Screw Daddy Over. Yep, Daddy goes off to war and she eases the kids' minds that he'll be coming back in one piece by immediately bringing in his replacement.

May 13, 2008

Stare Death In The Face, But No Peeking At Naked Boobies!
Man enough to fight a war, but if a piece of legislation goes through, Uncle Sam's going to be your nanny. Seth Robson writes for Stars & Stripes:

Legislation that would restrict the sale of certain men's magazines on U.S. military bases around the world would be bad for morale, according to soldiers at Grafenwöhr.

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., has introduced legislation that would close a loophole in the current law that allows the sale of some sexually explicit material on military bases by lowering the threshold required to deem material "sexually explicit."

A Department of Defense committee that reviews materials sold on bases ruled last year that magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse are not pornographic. But Broun's Military Honor and Decency Act includes language that could make those magazines eligible for the ban.

What's "decent" is that Broun gets to decide what magazines he and his children read, but leaves the decision of what the adult men and women serving in the military read to those adult men and women.

Broun, a Marine veteran, told Newsweek recently that the magazines sold in military exchanges are partly responsible for a rise in sexual assaults in the military and other problems.

Yeah? On what evidence?

"Allowing the sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by: escalating the number of violent, sexual crimes; feeding a base addiction; eroding the family as the primary building block of society; and denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad," Broun says on his Web site.

Rape can be violent, but it is not a crime motivated by violence but a crime motivated by a desire for sex. There's plenty of evidence for that -- but none offered by Broun (at least, not in this article) for his claims of all the ills supposedly being caused on military bases by glimpses at Miss November.

More from Robson's piece:

The legislation would require the DOD to annually review material that is not currently deemed sexually explicit to determine if it should be prohibited, according to the Web site.

Some soldiers say magazines that could be banned are particularly important downrange.

Brown deployed to Afghanistan in 2002 and 2005 and is preparing to go to Iraq with the 12th Combat Aviation Brigade this summer. When he was in Afghanistan he was one of the first to pick up a new copy of Maxim or FHM when it came out, he said.

"It would suck if they ban it," he said. "It's bad enough we are down there to begin with. Taking that away would be like a knife in the chest. I'm not saying I'm depending on Maxim to keep me alive over there, but it helps."

Publications such as Maxim and FHM are not named by Broun, but lowering the threshold of the sexually explicit definition might mean such magazines would be targeted for a ban.

Sorry, but if you're laying your life on the line on behalf of the rest of us, the only boobs in your life shouldn't be puritanical jerks like Broun.

UPDATE: Vlad, in the comments below, had a great idea:

Amy if this jack ass gets his way we need to start a playboy and penthouse air lift. How's "Boobs for our troops" sound.

Jennifer had another:

I think we should start a porn drive right now for Paul Broun. Let's call it "Ass for Brass" and start mailing skin magazines by the hundreds to his congressional office, in protest.

Looking for my current copy of Hustler now!

That address:

Senator Paul Broun
2104 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515

via ifeminists

"Sexist And Degrading!"
That's what some French feminists are calling a new guide to the pretty women of Paris, which makes me want to pick a copy up right away. Unfortunately, you'll have to look real hard to find the French hotties in this BBC video.

AFP's Rory Mulholland quotes the author of the guidebook, Pierre-Louis Colin, the speech writer of a French foreign minister:

"Just as every region has its gastronomy, every quartier has its feminine speciality," ... "You do not find in Menilmontant the sublime legs you see at the Madeleine. But you do find perfectly shameless cleavages, radiant breasts often uncluttered by a bra," he said in his own book, which was published last month.

Paris is the most visited capital in the world and people come here to see city's magnificent women as much as they come to admire the Mona Lisa and the Eiffel Tower, Colin told AFP.

He could find no guidebooks to the human wonders of Paris so he decided to produce his own. The result is the 190-page "Guide des jolies femmes de Paris," which is more of a literary essay than a fact-packed guidebook.

Area by area, Colin notes the best observation posts -- bars, supermarkets, parks, museums, metro trains -- and the best times of day for the connoisseur to contemplate various Parisienne archetypes.

"Trendy youth," characterised by the "generalisation of the G-string and the near disappearance of the bra" is to be seen on rue Montorgueil, a pedestrian strip of cafés and upmarket food shops which the author hails as the "epicentre of the city's erotic radiations."

Rue Montorgueil, huh? Judge the legs for yourself. Personally, I think you'll have more luck on parade days in the Marais (complete with Crid's two femmes favorites, as they say in France).

May 12, 2008

Tupperware Parties, Second Amendment-Style
Rajesh Mirchandani writes for the BBC of ladies' taser parties:

In a downtown loft apartment in Denver, Colorado, a group of 30-something women is having a party. They joke easily with each other about men, cats and botox.

It's more Sex and the City than Psycho, but party organiser Dana Shafman would have them believe they could easily be victims of violent crime.

She runs a company that sells Tasers, the electric stun guns used by security forces around the world.

In Colorado and other US states, it's legal for ordinary people to own them. Dana's marketing them to women as the ideal personal protection device.

"I've been to everyone's Avon-type tupperware-style parties, purse parties, clothing parties, boutique parties and I felt like why not have a self-defence party? Why not have a Taser party, because without self-defence you won't have any of the other stuff?"

Grilled Bald Eagle, Anyone?
To save endangered plants and animals from extinction, conservation scientist Gary Paul Nabhan points the way from the free market to the supermarket. From nowpublic.com:

According to conservation scientist Gary Paul Nabhan, the best way to save more than 1,000 plants and animals on the edge of extinction is by creating a market demand for them. In other words, slice them up and slap them on the grill.

In his book released last month, Renewing America's Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent's Most Endangered Foods, Nabhan speculates that by creating a culinary need for many of the endangered species of North America, actions would be taken by private and public organizations to increase the population and establish safe havens for them. He reminds us that many of these foods are "delightful" and nutritious as well.

...Without a need beyond saving the animals from extinction, regulation can only be a band-aid for the problem. It takes financial incentive for corporations and demand by the public to go beyond the initial boost in population. There has to be a reason to keep them alive and help them grow.

via metafilter

Nissan: We Are Bullies?
Cyber-squatters are despicable, but this guy, the defendant in Nissan v. Nissan, doesn't seem to be one of them. He writes:

My name is Uzi Nissan. I was born in Jerusalem - Israel. My father's last name was Nissan, his father's last name was Nissan, and so on. Nissan is a biblical term identifying the seventh month in the Hebrew calendar. The term Nissan also is Arabic for the month of April.

I came to the US in 1976, and have used my surname for years to identify a number of business enterprises. The first was "Nissan Foreign Car" in 1980. When I operated this business, I serviced different makes and models of foreign cars, including cars manufactured by Nissan Motor, back then known as "DATSUN". Contrary to the allegations by Nissan Motor, I did not choose to use my last name "Nissan" for my business in 1980 because of their name. At that time, they and their automobiles were known as "DATSUN" and were not known as "Nissan".

On May 14, 1991, "Nissan Computer Corp" was incorporated in the state of North Carolina. I was then, and still am, the company President. I have used Nissan as part of my trade name in connection with the sale of computer hardware, computer maintenance, networking, computer training and other consulting services related to computers. On June 4, 1994, I registered the domain name "nissan.com" and created a web site to promote computer related products and services on the Internet.

In July of 1995, I obtained a service mark registration for Nissan and my logo from the State of North Carolina.

On March 17, 1996, I registered the domain name "nissan.net" , and began offering Internet services, including dial-up connections and direct data connections to business.

DECEMBER - 1999, Initial Filing.
More then five years after I registered nissan.com, legal action was instituted by Nissan Motor seeking $10,000,000 in damages, and to restrain me from the use of MY family name for business purposes on the Internet.

The court cases and the appeals go on and on. But, why? Did Nissan, the big car company, ever just try to buy nissan.com and nissan.net from the guy? And if not, why not?

To give all a fair hearing on this issue, I e-mailed a corporate communications guy at Nissan, Fred Standish, and gave him the URL of this entry:

Dear Fred, Regarding the court case from Uzi Nissan, I'm just wondering, did your company ever just try to buy the sites (nissan.com and nissan.net) from him? I blogged about his case, and I want to give you a chance to present your side. Best,-Amy Alkon

Awaiting word or comment.

via metafilter

May 11, 2008

The Real Reason Proportionally More Blacks Are In Jail?
Proportionally more blacks commit crimes.

Quick, somebody tell Al Sharpton to march against that one -- or, better yet, do something to help change it.

And next there's the claim that judges overcharge and oversentence blacks. Heather MacDonald writes on City Journal:

Obama describes this alleged postarrest treatment as "Scooter Libby justice for some and Jena justice for others." Jena, Louisiana, of course, was where a D.A. initially lodged attempted second-degree murder charges against black students who, in December 2006, slammed a white student's head against a concrete beam, knocking him unconscious, and then stomped and kicked him in the head while he was down. As Charlotte Allen has brilliantly chronicled in The Weekly Standard, a local civil rights activist crafted a narrative linking the attack to an unrelated incident months earlier, in which three white students hung two nooses from a schoolyard tree--a display that may or may not have been intended as a racial provocation. This entrepreneur then embellished the tale with other alleged instances of redneck racism--above all, the initial attempted-murder charges. An enthusiastic national press responded to the bait exactly as intended, transforming the "Jena Six" into victims rather than perpetrators. In the seven months of ensuing headlines and protests, Jena became a symbol of systemic racial unfairness in America's court system. If blacks were disproportionately in prison, the refrain went, it was because they faced biased prosecutors--like the one in Jena--as well as biased juries and judges.

Backing up this bias claim has been the holy grail of criminology for decades--and the prize remains as elusive as ever. In 1997, criminologists Robert Sampson and Janet Lauritsen reviewed the massive literature on charging and sentencing. They concluded that "large racial differences in criminal offending," not racism, explained why more blacks were in prison proportionately than whites and for longer terms. A 1987 analysis of Georgia felony convictions, for example, found that blacks frequently received disproportionately lenient punishment. A 1990 study of 11,000 California cases found that slight racial disparities in sentence length resulted from blacks' prior records and other legally relevant variables. A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases from the country's 75 largest urban areas discovered that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution following a felony than whites did and that they were less likely to be found guilty at trial. Following conviction, blacks were more likely to receive prison sentences, however--an outcome that reflected the gravity of their offenses as well as their criminal records.

Another criminologist--easily as liberal as Sampson--reached the same conclusion in 1995: "Racial differences in patterns of offending, not racial bias by police and other officials, are the principal reason that such greater proportions of blacks than whites are arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned," Michael Tonry wrote in Malign Neglect. (Tonry did go on to impute malign racial motives to drug enforcement, however.) The media's favorite criminologist, Alfred Blumstein, found in 1993 that blacks were significantly underrepresented in prison for homicide compared with their presence in arrest.

This consensus hasn't made the slightest dent in the ongoing search for systemic racism. An entire industry in the law schools now dedicates itself to flushing out prosecutorial and judicial bias, using ever more complicated statistical artillery. The net result? A few new studies show tiny, unexplained racial disparities in sentencing, while other analyses continue to find none. Any differences that do show up are trivially small compared with the exponentially greater rates of criminal offending among blacks.

Next, MacDonald clears up the racist crack penalties myth. All and all, this is another great piece of debunking by MacDonald.

What does this piece tell us? Well, that the mainstream media are indeed unfair to blacks -- but in the wrong direction, pandering to the notion that the justice system is racist, and howling, "Why are so many blacks in arrested or in jail?" instead of asking the black community, "Why are so many blacks doing things that get them arrested or thrown in jail?"

Easier for the Al Sharptons of the world to march on whitey than to start looking for answers and coming up with solutions, then put them into action, in the black community.

Heather MacDonald, like Bill Cosby, asks the right questions:

How many convicts were living in a stable relationship with the mother (or one of the mothers) of their children before being sent upstate? (Forget even asking about their marriage rate.) What kind of positive guidance do men who are committing enough crimes to end up in prison, rather than on probation (an exceedingly high threshold), provide to young people? Further, if Fagan is right that keeping criminals out of prison and on the streets preserves a community's social capital, inner cities should have thrived during the 1960s and early 1970s, when prison resources contracted sharply. In fact, New York's poorest neighborhoods--the subject of Fagan's analysis--turned around only in the 1990s, when the prison population reached its zenith.

...This popular "social ecological" analysis of incarceration, as Fagan and other criminologists call it, treats prison like an outbreak of infectious disease that takes over certain communities, felling people on a seemingly random basis. "As the risks of going to jail or prison grow over time for persons living in those areas, their prospects for marriage or earning a living and family-sustaining wage diminish as the incarceration rates around them rise," Fagan says. This analysis elides the role of individual will. Fagan and others assume that once one lives in a high-incarceration--that is, high-crime--area, one can do little to avoid prison. But even in the most frayed urban communities, plenty of people choose to avoid the "Life." Far from facing diminished marriage prospects, an upstanding, reliable young man in the inner city would be regarded as a valuable catch.

via aldaily

Hooters
Great tits cope well with warming.

May 10, 2008

Tolerance Is A One-Way Street
A British Muslim converted to Christianity, yet somehow missed out on his turn experiencing that fabulous "tolerance" the Muslims demand from the rest of their countrymen -- as they dot the country with mosque after mosque and preach the conversion, death, or dhimmitude of Christians, Jews, and atheists.

In fact, the "locals," as Times of London religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill calls them (and let's take a wild guess and assume they aren't a bunch of Protestants or Orthodox Jews), responded to news of the British Muslim's conversion to Christianity by threatening to burn his house down:

Nissar Hussein, 43, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, who was born and raised in Britain, converted from Islam to Christianity with his wife, Qubra, in 1996. The report says that he was subjected to a number of attacks and, after being told that his house would be burnt down if he did not repent and return to Islam, reported the threat to the police. It says he was told that such threats were rarely carried out and the police officer told him to "stop being a crusader and move to another place". A few days later the unoccupied house next door was set on fire.

Of course, it probably isn't fair to single out Islam for its treatment of apostates.

I mean, consider what Jews do to other Jews who convert to Christianity, or what Christians do to Christians who convert to Judaism or Islam:

Yes, that's right. Absolutely nothing.

Okay, come on, somebody tell me how unfair I am to Muslims.

(Just see to it that your smoke detector has new batteries before you do.)

The Kids With Nothing And Nobody
I got an e-mail from LA Weekly writer Daniel Hempel the other day, and figured I should print it here:

Hello Friends,

As you may know I have been covering Foster Care for some time now. Among the many problems I have found, one is at the crux of the problem for these kids. After their parents die or the court takes them from their homes because of abuse and neglect these children very rarely interact with people who are not paid.

Foster parents get paid monthly. The social workers who are the liaison between these kids and the nebulous foster care administration are on salary. The psychologists who are charged with helping the trauma and depression of separation that these kids endure are paid by the state. Their handlers at group homes are paid.

While many around them are there because they are truly concerned for these children, they are ultimately there for the money. And these kids know that very well, leaving them with a feeling of being unwanted that cannot be staunched by a hundred psychologists or the thousand score social workers employed by the system.

In my research I have come across one foundation in particular that provides that missing element to these kids. Children Uniting Nations (CUN) links foster youth up with mentors. In my case, the mentoring I do is informal. I met the foster youth who I have been engaged with before I ever knew of CUN or even starting writing about the subject. But I did go to a CUN training session to help me understand what this young man I know is going through.

What I found was a packed room on Pico Blvd. where a bunch of volunteers were preparing to make a difference in a child's life. While stumbling through the stark statistics and the anecdotal nightmare of any given child's experience, this group of people was happy to give up their Saturday and plan how they were going to change the world for one kiddo.

I can give you the facts. By age 24, about one-quarter of LA's Foster Youth who leave the system at 18 will experience homelessness, one in five will land in jail, and more than half will be unemployed. (Read my story on the subject for more information).

But all those facts are pretty useless if there is no action taken to remedy them.

I am not one to solicit my friends or my family. I feel that soliciting help like this is like pulling from a non-renewable resource. But in this case I am asking for help on behalf of CUN.

Please visit their website at: www.childrenunitingnations.org and sign up as a mentor. If the time requirement is too much or you do not live in the Los Angeles Area either find a way to mentor or please donate a minimum of $25.00, or an old computer or a backpack filled with school supplies.

If you feel inclined, please pass this message to your friends and family.

Thanks,
Daniel Heimpel
www.dheimpel.com

P.S. D. Heimpel (as he's known by byline) and I started corresponding from time to time after he wrote about the foster care scandal, in which "Los Angeles County foster-care employees decided to take a share of the crumbs taxpayers provide to foster children as they struggle in an often frightening and lonely life." I blogged his story here.

Echoing D. Heimpel's thoughts above on the backpacks: I sat next to this amazing woman on the plane home from the evolutionary psych conference in Manchester. I actually want to hang with her and her family in Los Angeles. She and her kids go to Staples and buy backpacks and office supplies for homeless kids, and her workplace has a program where they tutor "at risk" kids, and give them scholarships to college.

My own program is going well -- mainly because I'm not doing it as part of the system. I go speak to kids at an inner city school (Brentwood's University High, where kids are bused in from other neighborhoods) to demystify "making it."

As I just wrote to a friend: I've just been getting a teacher I pretty much stalked to get me into various classes. I thought it would be nice if she didn't have to do all the scheduling, so I talked to the official career day lady, and told her I'd bring in the likes of Rob Long, who, of course, said yes when I asked him, Denise Hamilton, Kerry Madden-Lunsford, a Harlem-born, self-made real-estate dude, and self-made black female fashion designer who's a friend of mine.

The woman whose job it is to coordinate this stuff told me it'd take her six months to propose the "program" and six months to see if it would get appproved. I thought, "Hey, fuck you lady...I'll call the teacher and get them in in a matter of weeks." Sadly, I'm not the least bit surprised by this shit.

G'wan! Have Lots Of Children You Can't Afford!
It's how the Catholic church produces parishioners. All the more in their collection plates after the kids grow up to have litters of children they can't afford.

The Pope, clearly one of the world's foremost authorities on fucking, maintains that it's wrong for Catholics to use artificial means of birth control. Yeah, but wrong for whom?

Benedict expressed concern that human life risks losing its value in today's culture, and worried that sex could "transform itself into a drug" that one partner had to have even against the will of the other.

Tell that to all the people whose partners won't have sex with them anymore. How many people you know who aren't getting it at home are also raping their partner at gunpoint?

Make the Pope a happy man, and keep on procreatin' and fill up those collection plates, kiddies! After all, the Church has got all those pedophilia fines to pay for protecting and moving around all the kiddie-diddling priests. Hmmm, perhaps the Pope should be more worried about the fuckers within?

May 9, 2008

Operation Stupid-Ass Way To Spend Tax Dollars
You'll never believe this but...frat boys smoke pot! And even take other drugs. And if you ask a frat boy at San Diego State to sell you a little weed, he just might do that!

Luckily, as Tony Perry writes in the LA Times, there was "Operation Sudden Fall," a six-month investigation where taxpayer dollars went into a bunch of cops playing dress-up, passing themselves off as frat boys, and entrapping a bunch of kids who are getting high and helping other kids get high:

SAN DIEGO -- The undercover officers started to appear at San Diego State fraternity parties about six months ago.

They dressed like students, complained about their parents and professors, and talked freely and knowingly of things of great interest on campus: music, sex and drugs.

Soon they were accepted, with no questions asked. They were spotted at student hangouts on and off campus. They swapped cellphone numbers with other partygoers. They text-messaged their newfound friends.

The real students appeared to accept the pretend ones -- most but not all of whom were men. On a campus of 34,000 students, blending into the crowd was not difficult. Neither was collecting evidence of drug dealing and drug use.

On Tuesday, authorities announced that 96 young men -- including 75 students -- had been arrested on a variety of drug charges as a result of Operation Sudden Fall, which infiltrated seven fraternities on Fraternity Row and Fraternity Circle. Officials said the name of the operation referred to the prospect of sudden death from drug usage.

The investigation involved marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and Ecstasy.

One of the alleged drug dealers is 19 and recently had been praised as a model student in a university publication. Another was just a month away from earning a master's degree in homeland security and had worked with the campus police as a security officer. One allegedly was selling cocaine to high school students.

A criminal justice major was arrested on suspicion of possession of cocaine. As he was being arrested, he asked officers if this would hurt his chances for a law enforcement career, officials said.

Now, best of all, taxpayer dollars will be spent to prosecute and imprison these kids.

Yet, as my pal Stanton Peele points out, all drug use is not abuse. How many of you know highly productive members of society whose version of the after-work martini comes in cannabis sativa?

My late friend Roy Walford, a UCLA gerontology professor, used to take coke to write his papers. He wasn't "destroyed" by drugs (and most users aren't). He used them to be more productive.

How about we end the drug war and start fighting the war against stupidity? Legalize drugs, the price will go down to the point where pot costs what you pay for organic salad, and the feds can make their coin by sticking a tax on it, like for cigarettes, instead of getting our dollars for prosecuting and/or keeping a bunch of not-exactly-dangerous-felons in prison.

Alice Walker's Motherless Daughter
Alice Walker was a little too busy being a feminist/civil rights icon to be a parent to her daughter Rebecca, writes Margerette Driscoll in the Times of London:

Walker's success as a campaigner was to her detriment as a mother. Like Dickens's Mrs Jellyby, who neglects her home and her children as she directs her energy towards the poor of Africa, so America's icon often went to feminist meetings and rallies and left Rebecca to fend for herself. Her daughter experimented with drugs and became pregnant at 14.

"My mother did a lot of leaving to go to her writing retreat, which was over 100 miles away -- so she'd go there and leave me a little bit of money, leave me in the care of a neighbour," recalls Rebecca, now 38.

"When I was pregnant at 14, I think it was because I was so lonely that I was reaching out through my sexuality. My mother's a crusader for daughters around the world, but couldn't see that her own daughter was having a difficult time. It was me having to psycho-emotionally tiptoe around her, rather than her taking care of me."

Walker is furious with Rebecca for making such sentiments public, and mother and daughter are estranged with little hope of reconciliation. Rebecca has a three-year-old son, Tenzin, whom her mother has never seen. Their last meaningful exchange, during Rebecca's pregnancy, ended in Walker sending a terse e-mail in which she resigned from "the job" of being her mother, and told her that in any case their relationship had been "inconsequential" for years.

The depth of her anger was such that she refused to budge even when Rebecca had a difficult birth and Tenzin's life hung in the balance in a special-care baby unit. "My father called her to tell her what was happening. He couldn't imagine that she wouldn't run right over . . . In some ways, I wanted her to -- but in other ways, I didn't. I knew she wouldn't be able to be there for me in the way I wanted. It would be problematic."

I love that she outed her mother. It's disgusting that this woman is so respected as a savior of the many instead of being vilified as a neglector of the one person who should have been her single greatest responsibility.

I don't have kids, both because I don't have the kid lust other women do, but also because I'm impatient, self-involved and make my career priority number one. If you're a person who feels similarly...please don't reproduce.

May 8, 2008

Parenting As Lockdown
My old New York Daily News colleague, Lenore Skenazy, now a columnist at the New York Sun, recently became internationally known for, get this, letting her 9-year-old out in New York without a team of nannies and armed guards.

Nancy McDermott writes for Spiked that Skenazy is considered by many to be guilty of child abuse because she gave her son, Izzy, 9, a $20 and a subway map, and trusted him to figure out that, from Bloomingdales, he should take the Lexington Avenue subway downtown and the 34th Street crosstown bus to get home.

"If he couldn't do that," Skenazy wrote in her column, "I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, 'Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I'll abduct this adorable child instead.' Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence."

McDermott reports:

Many people have reacted positively to Skenazy's column. 'It's like it's opened the floodgates. Lots of people are saying: "Thank God there's a name for this and I'm not the only one. She's doing what I do with my own kids."'

The name Skenazy has coined is 'Free Range' and the blog she has set up in response to the article - Free Range Kids - is filled with stories from parents who have let their children have the freedom to do things on their own and many more who would like to, but don't. Skenazy talks cautiously about a new movement. 'Some people are already doing these things on the website and some are just waking up to the idea that a little freedom is not the same thing as parental neglect.'

I asked her why she thinks parents are hesitant to give their kids more leeway. 'I think there are a lot of people who don't really see these things (like riding the subway or walking to school) as risks but they aren't letting their kids have more freedom because they get flak from their neighbours.

'It can be the simplest, stupidest thing. One lady wrote to me about how she had to go to work early so she let her 11-year-old daughter walk across the street alone to wait at the bus stop. The other mothers waiting with their kids were outraged and this mom ended up feeling horribly guilty. But when she came across the website she thought: "This is crazy. I've been torturing myself because I let my daughter walk across the street on her own!" Another woman told me how a stranger walked by and admonished her because she wasn't paying enough attention to her children playing in the yard in front of her. She was just reading her book.'

Why are strangers so quick to give parents a hard time? Skenazy thinks part of the reason is the proliferation of stories about the terrible things that happen to children. There are 'no other stories in the public [realm]', she says. 'If there's a story about how a child was left alone it's about him or her ending up dead. You never get a news story like "Kid Rides Subway Alone, Has Fun, Is Fine". It's always the other kind.'

Parents for their part, she says, 'are afraid of the media exposure if something did go wrong'. She describes how another woman wrote about the time one of her brothers cracked his head open on an amusement park ride when they were kids. 'Everyone was kind and sympathetic, but imagine if that happened to your child today? There'd be no sympathy. You'd be on TV in bad make-up stammering about how you were close by.'

Part of being a parent is being willing to let your kids grow up, and part of growing up is making mistakes and testing your independence.

One of the differences I see between France and the USA is the willingness to let kids get hurt, to fall down and cry. It seems to be seen as a normal part of childhood. Yet, here in the States, there are no more monkey bars anymore. Kids might fall and need stitches! Well, yes, they might. And that's how they find out they should be a little more careful. The way they're more likely to hurt themselves is if they're coddled the whole time they're growing up, and then don't know how to make a move without moment-by-moment micro-management from mommy and daddy.

And newsflash: If you aren't hanging out outside your drug dealer's tenement at 3 a.m., flashing a wad of $20's, New York City is pretty damn safe.

Sorry, Mr. Muslim, Women In America Haven't Had Their Rights Revoked Just Yet
Most conveniently, if you're a Muslim man living in a Muslim country, and you want to ditch your wife, you say "talaq" ("I divorce thee") three times.

To a Muslim man's dismay, judges ruled that that sort of thing isn't going to fly in Maryland. Nick Madigan writes for the Balt Sun:

Yesterday, the Court of Appeals rejected a Pakistani man's argument that his invocation of the Islamic talaq, under which a marriage is dissolved simply by the husband's say-so, allowed him to part with his wife of more than 20 years and deny her a share of his $2 million estate.

May 7, 2008

I Know What You Did Last Weekend

Psychologist/photographer/mischief-maker Nando Pelusi caught me, uh, meditating on the after-dinner speaker at NEEPS, the evolutionary psychology conference I attended in Manchester, New Hampshire this weekend.

Here are a few of the great columns Nando writes for Psychology Today, called "Neanderthink," combining his Albert Ellis-trained background in clinical psychology with evolutionary psychology.

"W" Is For Welfare
These days, savvy liars have gotten in the habit of calling whatever they're shilling "scientific" or "data-based." Jeffrey Tucker at Mises Economics Blog outs the latest cadre of welfare recipients sucking off the taxpayer hog -- echoing my notion that George Bush is the biggest Big Democrat we've had in office in years:

President Bush and the Republicans are no better than the naive Great Society liberals of yesteryear in thinking that a new law and new government spending can accomplish glorious things here and abroad, and one of those programs was called Reading First and it generated billions in spending. Billions.

I swear that the propaganda for this program reads like stuff from the Soviet Union in the 1960s or something: "This program focuses on putting proven methods of early reading instruction in classrooms. Through Reading First, states and districts receive support to apply scientifically based reading research--and the proven instructional and assessment tools consistent with this research--to ensure that all children learn to read well by the end of third grade. ... Only programs that are founded on scientifically based reading research are eligible for funding through Reading First."

Well, two things. First, it turns out that it didn't work. The Department of Education--more more specifically, named in the tradition of Elena Ceausescu, the "Institute of Education Sciences"--released a report yesterday (I don't see it online but the NYT reports on it here) that says, well, the program didn't do a darn thing.

But, second, that doesn't mean there weren't winners. It turns out that the program was really a subsidy to certain GOP-connected publishers, and that is what scientific really means.

Come up with a party of responsible, actually data-based (small) government, and I'll gladly vote for your candidates. As for the parties in power now, how disgustingly arrogant of those in them to think they get to spend our money on all this crap that doesn't work...all the while running this country's economy like a bottomless cash advance on a credit card. Scumbags.

Angry Dumbshit Of The Week
Get your entry in now, don't let SpiderMBA win this week's crown! (Although, I do have to say, the guy is quite the contender.) He e-mailed me this on Tuesday (the chin hairs line is a reference to a joke in my column):

In a message dated 5/6/08 6:50:36 AM, spidermba@cox.net writes:

Hey "Advice Goddess," are you still single and shacking up with some loser who can't stand the thought of the "M" word?

You may be whacking off your own chin hairs before you ever walk down that aisle.

My response:

I would never live with anyone, and I don't believe in marriage. To describe my boyfriend as a "loser" without knowing anything about him other than the fact that he isn't married to me says a lot about you. You should be so lucky to have even passing contact with him.

Hmmm, of course, if he did live with me, he wouldn't have such a long journey to bring me chicken soup in the middle of the night when I'm sick. He typically picks it up at Cantor's all the way across town, and hurries over to bring it to me here at the beach.

And then there's that Paris trip in February that he sent me on for our anniversary. Paris is too frou-frou for him to take more than once a year, but he knows it makes me happy, and that made him happy, even with the euro cresting at $1.50.

And then there's the way he brings me a bag of groceries when he worries that I haven't made my way to the store I call "The Ghetto Ralph's," and will be subsisting on a can of Wolfgang Puck clam chowder, or "The Chantal Special" (named for the French friend of mine who eats it in a pinch): a tin of sardines on a buttered English muffin.

And then there's the other night, a little while ago, when I accidentally ate something I was violently allergic to. I called him at 3 a.m. because I knew he'd be mad if I didn't, and then he just hung on the phone and listened to me throwing up so I wouldn't be alone.

Yeah, you're right. I should probably trade up.

Tell me about the person in your life so I can know what I should aspire to.

P.S. Apparently, this is an annual affair for SpiderMBA, e-mailing me to ask why Gregg and I aren't married yet.

May 6, 2008

All Drunk Sex Is Rape?
Don't drink and, uh, dive...among other things, in Australia. There, when the jury hears he says/she says cases (where he says sex was consensual, and she says it was rape), a jury may be forced to convict the man, and on nothing more than the woman's word. Janet Albrechtsen writes for The Australian:

Let us be clear. Rape is wrong. It is a crime that calls for imprisonment. It can destroy a victim's life. But let us be clear about something else. Wrongful claims of rape are made. And they can destroy a man's life. ... But under the old laws of rape, the defendant's actual state of mind was critical. If the accused had an honest belief that sex was consensual, the rape charge failed. And when the evidence became a simple contest between "he said, she said", a reasonable doubt would lead to an acquittal. Criminal law says that is as it should be; we are talking about a serious crime and imprisonment.

The new laws say that if a woman is "substantially affected" by alcohol, she may lack the capacity to consent to sex even if she says "yes" to sex. More disturbing, even if a man honestly believes consent was given, his state of mind is now irrelevant. Now, the man is effectively deemed to have knowledge of lack of consent if there are no reasonable grounds for believing consent was given. And it gets worse. When asked to determine whether the man had no reasonable grounds for believing the woman gave consent, the jury must ignore the fact that the man was drunk.

In other words, the fact that the woman who says "yes" to sex is drunk is highly relevant: it may vitiate her consent. But the man's intoxication must be ignored when working out whether he had "reasonable grounds" for believing consent was given. It is a curious law that says alcohol only affects the cognitive abilities of women.

Hello? Australia is pretty much the land of the free and the land of the free to drink their asses off, and then sing or pound each other silly, and they're saying alcohol doesn't affect the male brain?

And what about this thing: "If a woman is 'substantially affected' by alcohol"? Unless somebody drops something in her drink, isn't seeing to it she isn't "'substantially affected' by alcohol"...her responsibility?

As for a man's responsibility to himself, if he's Australian, I bet it won't be long before he can buy a discount legal document to have his dates sign to say it's consensual. Oh yeah -- followed by the in-home breathalizer test. Mmmm, sexy!

thanks, Jeff

How To Talk Like You're Nobody's Feminist
During my strugglingest year, I once worked as a mover (for an all-girls moving company in Manhattan), so it's not like I'm incapable of lifting anything heavier than a feather pen.

But, Gregg was bringing me home from the airport, and knowing me, realized I would have maybe one dented can of soup in my house (well, along with five cases of Pellegrino, five bottles of white wine, and six pounds of coffee), and pulled into Bristol Farms.

We ended up with three bags of groceries. I was closest to the bagger, who went to hand two of them to me.

I shook my head: "Oh, no...I'm just for decoration."

Yeah, that's right. The one with the man paws carries anything weightier than a potato chip. Try it sometime...it's really fun, letting the boy play the boy parts and the girl play the girl parts.

May 5, 2008

Putting The Civil Back In Civilization
Or what passes for it in Detroit. A kid named Keira Bell tells a city councilwoman how the manners thing works. Wipes the floor with her, as a matter of fact. But, with civility -- a rare quantity, apparently, in Detroit city council meetings:

via Instapundit

Do You Agree With Peggy Noonan?
Noonan doesn't see what all the fuss is about, and thinks Obama's friendship with and mentorship by Wright shouldn't be the deciding factor in the election.

Noonan writes in the WSJ that she disagrees with what Wright said (in her words, "The U.S. government did not spread AIDS among the black community, 9/11 was not the chickens coming home to roost, etc.") and she disapproves of his remarks, too, but...

I do not feel a sense of honest anger or violation at his remarks, in part because I don't think his views carry deep implications for our country. I have been watching America up close for many years - if you count a bright childhood, for half a century. I have seen, heard and respected the pain of a people who were forced to come here when they did not want to and made to live in a way that no one would want to. Who could deny them their grief or anger? I have seen radicalism and extremism, too. I have seen Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers, the Black National Anthem, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Louis Farrakhan. I came to see their radicalism as, putting the morality of policy based on rage aside, essentially unhelpful and impractical. It wouldn't work as an American movement, not long-term. Hatred plays itself out, has power in the short-term but is nonsustaining in the long. America, and this is one of its glories, has a conscience to which an appeal can be made. It may take a long time, it may take centuries, but in the end we try hard to do the right thing, and everyone knows it. Hatred is a form of energy that does not fuel this machine and cannot make it run.

And all the time I was watching the old days of rage, blacks in America were rising, joining the professions, becoming middle class, assuming authority, becoming professors and doctors. No one is surprised anymore to meet a powerful man or woman who devises systems by which others should live - that would be a politician - who is black.

I came to think all the talk of radicalism and extremism amounted to little, and was in the end rejected by the very people it was meant to rouse. They didn't buy it.

This week I talked to a young man, an Irish-American to whom I said, "Am I wrong not to feel anger about Wright?" He more or less saw it as I do, but for a different reason, or from different experience.

He said he figures Mr. Wright's followers delight in him the same way he delights in the Wolfe Tones, the Irish folk group named for the 18th-century leader condemned to death by the British occupying forces, as they say on their Web site. They sing songs about the Brits and how they subjugated the Irish and we'll rise up and trounce the bastards.

...Is this terrible? I don't think so. It's human and messy and warm-blooded, as a human would be.

The thing is to not let your affiliation with bitterness govern you, so that you leave the Wolfe Tones concert and punch an Englishman in the nose. In this connection it can be noted there is no apparent record of people leaving a Wright sermon and punching anyone in the nose. Maybe they're in search of solidarity too. Maybe they're showing loyalty too.

"We Can Fact-Check Your Ass!"
I love the above Ken Layne-ism about bloggers going after the lazies in the mainstream media. I only wish I knew how to say "fact-check" in French.

Susan Spano, the LA Times travel reporter with all the curiosity of a comatose hedgehog, must have the safest job in the world.

I didn't want to do it, but last week, when I read her LA Times piece on how to do Paris on a budget, devoid of much practical information (and with hot tips like buy a Paris Museum Pass to save money!), I just had to respond.

I wrote an exceedingly restrained (i.e. devoid of biting humor in order to give it a shot at being published) letter to the editor, and they ran just a bit of it.

Not surprisingly, they left out the advice that, when in need of really good tips on Paris, one should turn to PollyVousFrançais or TheParisBlog.com.

Here's my entire letter:

27 April 2007

Susan Spano mentioned only a single bus (the Roissybus) from Charles De Gaulle airport to a single location in Paris. Going from the Roissybus drop-off point at rue Scribe to the other side of Paris can be one pricey taxi ride.

The Air France bus goes to more locations - Gare Montparnasse, Porte Maillot, Étoile (beside the Arc de Triomphe), Gare de Lyon, and between Charles De Gaulle and Orly airports. It's plush, air-conditioned, extremely comfortable, and open to all travelers, not just those who fly Air France. It costs between 14 or 15 euros one way, and 22 or 24 euros round trip. See cars-airfrance.com, and use the pull-down menu to get information in English.

Travelers taking the RER B train from the airport to Paris should have luggage no wider than about 20 inches across, or they won't be able to fit it onto the escalators. It can be pretty much any height, but ideally, should be on wheels. Also, it's important to take precautions against pickpockets on the train, and consider keeping one's passport and money inside clothing. I've never had a problem, but it's easy to underestimate what jet lag can do to a person's street smarts.

There are numerous free exhibits in Paris every week. Some are really terrific, like the "Paris en Couleurs" photo exhibit at the Paris town hall (Hotel de Ville) that I saw in February -- 300 photos of Paris, from the Lumiere brothers' days to contemporary times. To find free exhibits, buy a copy of the weekly guide Pariscope at a newsstand for 40 cents. Travelers who don't speak French can navigate Pariscope if they know these few essential words: "Gratuit" is free. "Sauf" (probably abbreviated as "sf") basically means "except," as in, the museum is open all days except the day listed. So, "Sauf lundi" or "sf lundi" means a venue is open every day except "lundi," which is Monday. "Mardi" is Tuesday. "Mercredi" is Wednesday. "Jeudi" is Thursday. "Vendredi" is Friday. "Samedi" is Saturday. And "Dimanche" is Sunday.

TheParisBlog.com, a blog featuring the top Paris bloggers (mostly expats, like one of my favorites, pollyvousfrancais.blogspot.com), is another great source, both of cheap or free events and reviews of which events and venues are worth paying for. It also features some fun and often fascinating commentary on life in Paris and in France.

--Amy Alkon, Santa Monica

P.S. I'm guessing she only recommended the Roissybus because it was the bus she took, and felt no need to find out whether there were any other similar services. "Comme toujours!" as they say.