Thou shalt not ration justice

Shark-Fu:

What we are living in…and some of us are suffering through…is the mess that results from decades of avoiding the issues of race, class and gender by embracing the school of tolerance rather than engaging in the hard work of social justice.

Read the whole thing.

And then maybe have a look at this: How Many Blacks In Jail = One Obama?

blogroll amnesty month

Mr. Jon Swift and Mr. Skippy the Bush Kangaroo asked me, back in January, to consider participating in "Blogroll Amnesty Day" on February 3rd. I said something about "yes, certainly, if I don't forget."

I didn't forget, but I also didn't do it on the 3rd. But secretly I intended to do a "late post." Well, blah blah road to hell, etc. However! It is the last leap day of February, so I'm getting this post in under the wire. Nyah.

Thus, in the spirit, if not the letter, of the season, here are a few of my recent blog discoveries. Good stuff, worth reading, that you might not otherwise have come across.

PostBourgie. Probably my favorite recent discovery. The Black History Month posts are absolutely required reading.

The Skepbitch. A good place to start might be her entry that asks, Are women more prone to paranormal and pseudoscientific belief than men?

Bluealto. I *really* loved her two-part story, "Violent Crime: A Personal Account." Part I. Part II. (FYI, this is a story about a robbery and assault; it might be kind of upsetting.)

Progressive California politics blog. Bookmarked.

DoctorMama. Just nice occasional stuff-of-life blogging from a mama doctor.

The Family Brood. Which I found because of her post about voting for Obama.

I stared at her name. I was surprised to feel my skin prickle and my eyes fill with tears. My throat squeezed inside. I inhaled once short and quick, then once long and slow.

I thought, "Am I really about to do this?"

Then, still staring at her name, I picked up the pen, whispered, "I'm sorry" under my breath, and voted for Barack Obama.

And finally, if you don't all already know this, there's some bad news over at F-words.

I want to be her

I realize, of course, that NYT profiles are somewhat idealized. Nonetheless. This story about Margaret B. Jones (whose book I am buying tomorrow) describes exactly the kind of person I wish I were.

More than any neighborhood, her house, which she shares with a changing cast of family and friends, is now her world. “Whatever I do in this town has to be more fun than hanging out at home with my friends and dogs,” she said. “There’s not a lot of things.”

For a long time she rented out rooms to people — “college students, hippies, whoever, to help pay the mortgage,” she said. “When the check from the book deal cleared, I got rid of the housemates and set up little college funds for the kids” — her daughter and Masai, the son of another foster sister, Christi. For months at a time, Masai, 6, comes from Los Angeles to live with Ms. Jones so he can attend a better school. “He’s family,” Ms. Jones said. “But to me, family is a little broader than to the average person.”
....
In 2000, while working at a Starbucks, Ms. Jones bought her four-bedroom house in the Whiteaker neighborhood, considered the ghetto of Eugene, she said. “But it’s the nicest place I’ve ever lived. This little ’hood is safe. Schools are great. The neighbor kids come over to play, Mexican and white. I feel cool — I walk my dogs at two in the morning down to the river.”
....
A friend let herself in with a key, found a bowl in a cabinet and quietly dished up some gumbo that Ms. Jones had left on the stove top. Another friend, Steven Moore, sat in the living room playing video games. (He is staying with Ms. Jones indefinitely.)
....
A film agent has shown interest in her book, she said. What if the film rights were sold and she were to see some bigger money?

“I’d probably buy a building in the ’hood in L.A. and open a community center and some boxing rings,” she said. “There’s nothing for kids to do. I don’t really need that iPod that shows movies.”

I could so easily choose that life. What keeps me from doing it, I don't entirely understand.

And while Mama's at it....

McCain: Worst Senator for Children.

(He's also a far-right nutjob where abortion's concerned, contrary to what a lot of people think.)

Illinois Sick Days Access: Call for Narratives

I'm blowing some anonymity here, but it's worth it:

My agency is part of a coalition, led by Women Employed and including Heartland Alliance, working with lead sponsor Rep. Julie Hamos to change the fact that 3 million private sector workers don't have the right to a single sick day.

Our basic bill proposes a way for these workers to accrue 7 days of paid sick time over the course of one year. (For every 30 hours worked, a worker can earn 1 hour of paid sick time.)

The bill, HB 5320, has been introduced. There is support for this in the legislature but to move the bill out of Rules, through Labor, and towards a vote on the floor, we need more.

So we need stories.

We are looking for stories from people in Illinois who can talk about the need for paid sick days—either you used to work somewhere that didn’t have it when you needed it (and what happened), or you are currently working and don’t get paid sick days.

We’re looking for brief summaries that we could turn into a letter, use as part of legislative testimony, or perhaps include on a fact sheet.

If you have a story, or know someone in Illinois who does, email takeastand@ywcachicago.org.

You can, of course, request your story to be as anonymous as you want it to be (i.e., Marion, 27, Retail, Chicago.)

We hope you can help. (If you want to know more about how you can help lobby for this piece of legislation, you can send an email to that same address.)

[edited to remove Chicago Coalition for the Homeless as a coalition partner]

Mama delivers a good scolding

So a lotta feminist blogs are talking about this anti-child nonsense from "Reason" magazine. Which I get--sort of--because sure, a lot of feminists don't have, and don't want, children.

But that shouldn't lead you to say things like this:

There are many reasons social and economic that people (read: women, for the purposes of the anti-choice doom-sayers) don’t want children, or at least many children. They’re expensive, they’re time constraints, and our fast-paced economy doesn’t have time for the slower lives required to raise children properly.

They're also human beings. If you don't want kids, bully for you: take your birth control, hope it doesn't fail, and if it does, have an abortion. You absolutely have the right to do all this shit, and I will absolutely support you.

But for fuck's sake. If you're a feminist, you ought to know better than to buy into the bullshit idea that people are commodities. Because conceding that point leads to this sort of thing. Isn't it just hi-larious?!? Nothing's as funny as laughing at a class of people for "choosing" to be poor, don'tcha know. (See the very first comment and ensuing thread for more. Apparently children = cancer, and there's nothing wrong with saying you "don't like children, period." Because children are all the same, and prejudice against an entire class of people ought not to make you "some sort of social pariah.")

Let me reminds you, once again, that people do not "choose" to have kids. A lot of people choose *not* to have kids--birth control, wealth, and modernity certainly contribute to this decision, which is perfectly irreproachable, by the way--but reproducing is not a conscious decision. It is something that the bodies of living creatures simply DO. It is, in fact, part of the definition of "living."

And it's not funny, feminist, "reasonable," or acceptable to talk about children as things, or to imply that people who "choose" to have kids are crazy or stupid. When you do those things, you implicitly support the idea that women's reproductive systems are abnormal, that women with kids are fools, and that children and reproducing women are not part of human society.

I get that a lot of women without kids feel beseiged by sexist bullshit about how unfeminine and selfish they are. Y'all 100% deserve not to hear that crap, and y'all 100% deserve for those of us with kids to have your backs on the right not to.

By the same token, women with kids deserve better than to have childless women support sexism by thinking that if they drink the smug libertarian kool-aid, they'll somehow get treated as honorary men. I expect feminists like Ann and Amanda to be able to see through the game where we're asked to turn on each other in order to take the pressure off the folks with the real power--in this case, the power to "choose" whether or not to acknowledge that children are people, too. It's the same fucking logic that underpins the "if I can't force her to have an abortion, I shouldn't have to pay child support" argument: children are someone else's (read: those bitches') problem. If you don't have a uterus--or if you choose not to use yours--then hey, kids are just theoretical abstractions to you.

Yes, having children is the biggest risk factor for poverty. It is time-consuming. It is at odds with being a Good Worker. But as a commenter at Pandagon put it,

the same people who are whining about too few babies of the style and color they prefer are the ones who continue to promote a culture and economic system in which any sensible person will recognize just how far the incentives against having kids go.

That is the real point. I agree with Amanda that people with kids and people without kids can be on the same side. Being amused by or endorsing "rational" anti-child arguments is NOT something we can agree on, though.

So, so true

Ding continues to keep the good stuff for her own personal blog. The bitch.

In light of yet another failed student attempt at racial 'satire' (this time out of the University of Colorado) I think it's time for all us current and former literature profs, English adjuncts, composition teachers, and English dept. graduate instructors to put our feet down.

So here's an open letter to all undergrads everywhere, particularly on campus newspapers:

Dear Undergrad Writer,

For the love of Polyhymnia, just stop.

We, your former and current college and university English instructors, have endured an endless supply of undergraduate compositions and we are happy to do so. This is, after all, our job. With varying degrees of success, we have introduced you to the best of Western literary tradition as well as the brightest new additions to the literary canon from women, people of color and across the globe. Though other disciplines certainly have the right to say the same, we English instructors think that ours is a calling that can best equip a young person to be culturally literate and we are grateful we have had a role in your intellectual maturation.

Like a Crusoe with his Friday, (you did read Dafoe, didn't you?) we encouraged you to fill pages with your inner thoughts, your ideas, your theories and we reluctantly approved them, as long as there was a shadow of an argument. The writing was the thing, not necessarily the matter of your writing. We overlooked your problematic arguments against reproductive choice, papers agreeing with the internment of the Japanese, and your wrong-headed ideas about Shakespeare's Viola being a victim of incest. Lest we be accused of liberal bias, as long as you wrote, and relatively well, we smiled. (It was a strained smile, but it was there.)

Well, now you can stop. Stop writing.

Your failure to understand the most basic literary devices is starting to make us and our profession look bad. Clearly, when we assigned you Swift's A Modest Proposal, you didn't read it closely enough. You didn't study, did you? When we assigned you Milton's Paradise Lost and reviewed his rhetorical devices you zoned out, didn't you? You didn't pay attention to Twain, you didn't 'get' Dickens, you forgot to read Heller and you just skimmed the Cliffs Notes for Vonnegut. In fact, if Twain took a page from your book, poor Jim would end lynched and Huck would have joined the White Knights.

We implore you - stop writing. In particular, stop calling your work product satire. It's not satire! It's not even a jeremiad or a good parody! It is unfocused, poorly conceived, shabby, mean and clumsy. Your writing has nothing to do with social commentary or criticism because you don't have the mental will to poke your finger in the eye of Power and you just don't have the intellectual heft to carry it off.

Moreover, before you can write well you must be able to read well and, apparently, you've burned all your books - with the possible exception of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Before your lack of education becomes too embarassing, just put down the pen. Close the laptop. Be silent.

Best Regards,
The Faculty

[h/t Alas, A Blog]

in which i act as the candidates for the democratic nomination, with bonus profanity

Hi, guys. Sorry for my absence. I didn't really have a good excuse, although I do now, because I think I am getting sick. The fact that I went to sleep at 9 pm one night and 7:30 pm the next should be a tipoff, huh? Of course, it means that I am awake now, at 2:00 am on a weeknight. And my delete key is acting up, which makes it very, very difficult to blog. But here I am anyway! At your service!

I slept through the debate, but based on my review of the transcript, it sounded pretty exciting, though Russert continues to annoy the fuck out of me. I have to hand it to Clinton for calling him out on his stupid "would you re-invade Iraq?!" question. It was a stupid question to begin with because the idea that the Iraqi government is going to say "Have 100,000 troops or ZERO!!1!1 MWAHAHAHA!" is basically ridiculous. We've seen this problem before, where news anchors pretend to be foreign-policy illiterate and express open-mouthed shock that both the leading candidates think we should keep some troops in Iraq for assorted activities like, you know, defending our embassy. Nevermind the fact that we do that for, well, every embassy everywhere.

I also have to hand it to Obama for his response to the last question.

What is the fundamental question you believe Senator Clinton must answer along the way to the voters here in Ohio and in Texas, and for that matter across the country, in order to prove her worthiness as the nominee? And then we will ask the same question of Senator Clinton.

OBAMA: I have to say, Brian, I think she is -- she would be worthy as a nominee. Now, I think I'd be better. Otherwise, I wouldn't be running. But there's no doubt that Senator Clinton is qualified and capable and would be a much better president than John McCain, who I respect and I honor his service to this country, but essentially has tethered himself to the failed policies of George Bush over the last seven years....So I don't think that Senator Clinton has to answer a question as to whether she's capable of being president or our standard bearer.

Stay classy, Barack. That's some good shit. He's absolutely right, too. She doesn't have to "prove herself." He thinks he's better, and that's why he's running, but he doesn't think she would be bad. For all of the hooting and hollering about how Obama is full of empty rhetoric, he's really a plain-speaking guy a lot of the time. This honesty is refreshing. "She's good, but I'd be better."

Now on to the topic of the night! I was reading this Op-Ed in the Times where a few journalists present their questions for the candidates, things they think have been overlooked in the campaign. The best question of them all, is I think, the first one, which asks:

1. Responding to a questionnaire from The Boston Globe on presidential power, you both criticized President Bush’s use of signing statements, with which he has asserted a constitutional right to bypass more than 1,000 sections of bills that he has signed into law. You both also said you would continue using signing statements, though in a less aggressive way.

But the American Bar Association has called for an end to this practice, and Senator John McCain says he will never issue a signing statement. Why are they wrong?

I would really like to hear an answer to this one. I didn't know about the questionnaire, and I think presidential signing statements are bullshit, and unconstitutional. But from there, things kind of devolve.

2. Both of you have said the Constitution does not allow a president to detain a citizen without charges as an enemy combatant. But President Bush won court rulings upholding the indefinite detention of two Americans as enemy combatants. Were the courts wrong? Does a president have the authority to interpret the Constitution differently from the judiciary? Would you ever use the court-approved authority to hold a citizen indefinitely as an enemy combatant?

Dumb question, try again. This is basically irrelevant. Obviously the president is free to feel that the courts were wrong; I'm sure it's true of every president that s/he thinks so of some decisions. Given that there are often very strong arguments to be made on both sides of a case, it's perfectly possible for two basically good people to come down on opposite sides. Now, my problem with conservative justices (save Scalia and Thomas, who are just assholes) is that they conveniently seem to always come down on the side that hurts women, children, minorities, and poor people, if there is such a side, and the side that benefits big business and the expansion of executive power. Whoops! How'd that happen?! But this notion of the courts being right and wrong is usually not a helpful way to think about issues that make it all the way up to the supreme court. More often than not, decisions I disagree with tend to be fairly correct as a legal matter, but wrong as a moral matter.

But that's neither here nor there. What I want to say is that trying to have a gotcha moment by getting the candidates to say the courts were wrong in this or that matter is misguided. And further, in this particular instance, the question is foolish because it tries to frame the issue as "would you override the judiciary?!" when the activity in question is something that is a recent departure from long-established tradition of not allowing the government to hold people indefinitely without trial. So, there is no need to have the "authority to interpret the Constitution differently." He or she may simply not detain people indefinitely Just because the Supreme Court said it was ok for the president to sometimes detain people indefinitely doesn't mean it's some kind of new presidential mandate. This "overriding" question would only come into play if the President wanted to take an action that the court said was forbidden by the Constitution. Silly gooses.

3. Both of you have said that President Bush cannot attack Iran without first obtaining Congressional authorization for the use of military force. But two Democratic presidents, Harry Truman and Bill Clinton, ordered American forces into extended armed conflicts without Congressional authorization. Did the Korean and Kosovo wars violate the Constitution?

Yup. Next question.

Would an attack on Iran be legally different, and if so, how?

Nope.

If you want a longer answer, I'd say that blah blah both wars were very important to protect America and/or the people of Kosovo, and we were right and please don't interpret me as hating on Harry Truman, who is now old and dead and therefore must be lauded. But, you know, given that not requiring Congressional approval doesn't always work so well, and that even the last time the president got an Authorization to Use Military Force (after 9/11) ended up getting pretty badly fucked up, it might be a good idea to try and actually follow the Constitution from now on.

3. Senator Obama, virtually all economists say trade is good for growth, but you have blamed trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement for the loss of American jobs. Do you really think building an economic wall along the Rio Grande will promote a stronger, more resilient American economy, and if so why?

Bzzt! Bad question. Yes, economists say "trade is good for growth!" which is true. Trade is good for companies. In this particular case, "trade" (which apparently, will not exist if there is no NAFTA) is also bad for individuals, and has destroyed parts of the country who relied on manufacturing jobs. Given that re-negotiating NAFTA will hopefully bring about an improvement in the number of American jobs (or at least a slowing of the losses), and jobs form a huge part of the economy, yes, renegotiating NAFTA will be good for the economy.

Excuse me while I play armchair economist for a minute here, but hasn't it become incredibly clear to everyone that how the economy is "doing" is in huge part completely dependent on perception? A new report says there are 100,000 new jobs! The economy is doing great! Then the market does well. Foreclosure rates have gone from "people are totally fucked" to "people are only sorta fucked"! The economy is rebounding. A new report shows the market is doing well! Then the market does well. It's so incredibly meta that it kind of makes my head hurt sometimes.

5. Senator Obama, you rail against the oil companies, but under the American system of free enterprise, aren’t companies supposed to earn a profit — and even to charge what the market will bear?

You're right, my problem with oil companies is that they earn a profit. No, the problem is that there needs to be regulations in place so that certain companies won't rake in the dough while simultaneously screwing over consumers, making a profit on the backs of human rights violations in Africa, and benefiting from unjust wars in the Middle East. And getting protection from the American government. For example, gas prices fluctuate whimsically, and the government, despite frequent promises to do something about it, in fact, as far as I know, does nothing about it. Like when there's a story about "now that the terrorists are winning, will gas prices go up?!" The next day, magically, the gas prices go up. Why? Well, it is like the economy, in large part based on perception. Except this time, it's not subject to a million different factors out of the control of anyone, like the economy, but subject to the whims and desires of oil companies to make assloads of money.

6. Franklin D. Roosevelt, a president you both have evoked, said Americans need fear only fear itself. Under President Bush, Americans have been told to so fear terrorism that the executive branch has been permitted to snoop on citizens, hijack the powers of Congress and torture foreigners. Do you agree that fear of terrorism has been pushed too far, and if so, what measures would you adopt to return the United States to a more normal civilian life?

Yes. I would stop fear-mongering, and forbid my surrogates from fear-mongering.

1. Senator Obama, as commander in chief an American president must understand the sense of honor that motivates his armed forces. Last September, MoveOn.org ran an advertisement in The Times that mocked Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, as “General Betray Us.” You chose not to vote on the Senate resolution that condemned the advertisement. Would you still characterize the Senate vote as a “stunt” and “empty politics”?

Yes, because it was. Even if the MoveOn ad demonstrates a lack of understanding for the "sense of honor" befitting the military, it was still a political stunt, at a time when there was a lot of important work to be done in Congress, to take up Congressional time about a stupid resolution to condemn a fucking ad, for fuck's sake. Anyway, the whole point of the ad was that military leaders are supposed to serve and protect us, and Petraeus was basically shilling for the administration. Which is bogus. But either way, to characterize it as anything other than a stunt, you would have to not understand what the word "stunt" means.

2. Samantha Power, one of Senator Obama’s chief foreign policy advisers, strongly criticized the United States in her book “A Problem From Hell” for failing to intervene in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and for the three-year delay in intervening in the Bosnian war, until the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

Saddam Hussein also committed genocide by killing thousands of Iraqi Kurds with chemical weapons in the late 1980s and massacring thousands of Shiite marsh dwellers in southern Iraq after the first gulf war. How could we have left Mr. Hussein in power? How can Senator Obama say that removing a genocidal killer was a “dumb” war?

GOTCHA! Actually, there was a difference between what was happening in Rwanda and what happened in Iraq. In Rwanda, the genocide was actually still happening, was much more widespread relative to the country's population, and was something we actually could have done something about. Stepped in and made a difference. When we went into Iraq, we did so not to stop an ongoing genocide, and to assert that we did is simply revisionist. We did so as a pre-emptive strike against weapons of mass destruction that existed only in the minds of people obsessed with (or willing to overlook) faulty intelligence. And when we went into Iraq, we started killing people, and continue to do so, five years later.

3. Senator Clinton, you have stated that American troop withdrawals from Iraq will begin as soon as you take office as president. But you also note on your campaign Web site that you will order “narrow and targeted operations against Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in the region.”

Isn’t that what the surge is about? The United States and local leaders have allied to drive out members of Al Qaeda from Baghdad and other areas. How is your policy any different from the policy of President Bush?

No, that's not what the surge is about. The surge is about increasing the number of troops in Iraq in some kind of last-ditch effort to regain control of the situation in Iraq. In fact, given the sheer number of troops, it's less "narrow and targeted," if anything. And the surge is dealing with fighting the insurgency, which is not the same as Al Qaeda. Anyway, I like how you threw "local leaders" in there. That was a nice touch.

NEXT!

So. Tired.

We spent this weekend visiting Mr. B.'s family on the occasion of his mother's 75th birthday. There were many cousins, it was a good time, blah blah.

Except. After a fairly busy travel day yesterday, we arrived home at 1 am, transferred the sleeping PK to his bed, unloaded the bags from the car, and realized . . . PK's backpack wasn't there. The one that held not only the homework I'd forced him to do and one of his favorite (used, so irreplacable) books, but also a new toy his aunt had given him and his little cat J.J.

Those of you with small children need no further explanation of what a tragedy this was. Mr. B. went out to rummage around in the car again while I dug his phone out of his bag and hit "redial" to call the folks at the long-term parking place.

"Hi. I think we left our son's blue backpack in one of your shuttles about two hours ago.

It's blue. . . . Are you sure?

Could it have been overlooked? The driver was a young woman, and I think I left the backpack right behind her seat. . . . You're sure? No? Um. Okay. Thanks."

Fuck. Mr. B. is getting angry, I'm getting preternaturally calm. I'm telling him not to worry, it *will* show up.

Ten minutes later, Mr. B.'s phone rings. I can hear the Arabic(?) accent of the guy I just spoke to as Mr. B. talks to him.

"Yes, blue with gray stripes. . . . Yes, a water bottle on the side. Yes. Okay, great! My wife will pick it up tomorrow! Thank you so much!"

The guy who'd answered the phone had gone out to look through the shuttles, and the backpack had turned up.

So after dropping PK off at school this morning, I took Mr. B. to work and then drove along the Pacific Coast Highway for a little over an hour, back to LA. Which I gotta say, is a pretty drive (though slow) during the morning rush hour. I'm not sure if I was proud or annoyed to be seeing surfers parking along the side of the road as I drove past--up with the surfers is a wee bit too early, in my book. But a little sea spray on the windshield and watching the waves roll in up ahead on the curves goes a long way towards making up for an unnecessarily early drive.

So I can't say it was a miserable experience, even though on the drive back I tried to get clever and skip the 405 northbound until after the 10, having noticed that it was pretty much bumper-to-bumper as I approached LAX, and hopped on the 10 eastbound at La Brea, which it turns out--duh, bitch--is after the 405 exchange. So I ended up driving east around downtown LA in midmorning before finally ending up back on the damn 101 north. At which point Mr. B. called and said "I'm too sick to be at work today" (he having caught some crud from our young feverish nephew this weekend), so I drove back to his workplace, picked him up, dragged him to breakfast because I was STARVING, realized it was only an hour before PK's school let out, went and bought cat food and groceries, went to PK's school, spent the last fifteen minutes of class helping one of his classmates with reading, then delivered everyone home and went back to damn bed for a long nap.

Now we are eating oatmeal for dinner. And J.J. is sitting on the table next to me. PK has no idea that J.J. was ever gone, and Mr. B., J.J. and I have agreed not to tell him.

in honor of black history month

Texas early voting started on Tuesday--if you're a Texan, you can vote anytime between now and election day by just stopping in at any polling place. Waller County, near Houston, reduced its polling places from six to two this year.

None of those polling places in on the campus of Prairie View A&M, a historically black campus with a student population of about 8,000. The population of Waller County is about 35,000--so yeah, the college is a pretty big chunk of the county.

The students at Prairie View have a pretty good history of fighting for their voting rights--according to Black America, "More than 30 years ago, their protest led to a Supreme Court decision that allows college students to register and vote in communities where they attend school." And according to the Houston Chronicle,

The controversy over voting came to a head in 2004 when students marched from the campus to the courthouse after former Waller County District Attorney Oliver Kitzman declared them ineligible to vote, claiming they did not meet state residency standards.

Meanwhile, the county is being investigated by the Texas Attorney General's Office based on complaints by local black leaders following after the November 2006 general election. Those allegations stem from voting machine failures, inadequate staffing and long delays for voting results.

So on Tuesday, a couple thousand people walked from Prairie A&M to the nearest voting precinct. There are only two machines there, so they stood in line and voted two by two.

On Tuesday, Waller county added three more polling sites. It's not clear if this was in response to the students, or if it had been planned beforehand because of ongoing pressure from the Justice Department, but none of the three is open until the weekend.

You can see video and some info about the Democratic turnout in Waller County here.

Story via Pandagon

Fidel

I've been waiting to find something intelligent about Fidel's retirement. Obviously, the person who was going to write it was going to be Tony Karon.

Fidel represented to the global south — not a model of governance and economic management. . . . No, what Fidel represented to South Africa’s new leaders was a symbol of independence, of casting off colonial and neo-colonial overlords and defending your sovereignty, against Quixotic odds, from an arrogant power.

And to Cubans?

Antonio’s parents were cane-cutters; their children were university educated intellectuals. And they hadn’t won a lottery — their social mobility had been enabled by Cuba’s social system, the education and health and other programs designed to lift up the impoverished majority had transformed their life possibilities within a generation. Antonio understood all too well what his life would have been had the revolution not triumphed in 1959. And he was sticking by it, no matter how bad things got.

Here's hoping that Cuba manages to "modernize" without losing those two things, a post-colonial worldview and a truly egalitarian and progressive society.

Link courtesy Unfogged.

In honor of Obama's recent electoral victories, I "plagiarize" a bunch of other bloggers

I'm going to exercise my Authority as the Original Bitch to just reprint the entirety of Ding's blog post today. Here it is.
-------
Small Donations Add Up for Obama - New York Times

i just made a donation this morning (not as large as i would have liked, but it's something.) the story of how regular, private citizens are giving directly to candidates is amazing. i don't know about any of my five regular readers, but i haven't given a donation to the main Democratic party since that crushing Al Gore defeat. why give my cash to them when they FUBAR things so completely?

while the obama 'juggernaut' continues i have to admit that i feel a little bad for clinton. i'm sure that feeling of momentary pity will pass soon.

in other obama news, just came across this blog, Think on These Things, that does a pretty good job of delineating the difference between Obama and Clinton - their policy stances, the arguments about 'experience' (hey, guess who's actually passed major legislation and who's just named a post office?) and the sneaky media attacks on Obama.

particularly good is this video of a young black guy laying it down about Obama and healthcare to a pushy interviewer in L.A. Think of These Things is pretty up front about being pro-Obama, so make of that what you will. S/He's laying out a comprehensive argument in favor of a candidate and it's convincing to me.

and, via that clip, here's another blog i stumbled on - Jack & Jill Politics - that looks pretty cool, mixing bougie-ness and political wonkiness all in one.

(what's Jack & Jill? where i come from, if you were black, lived in Baldwin Hills and your parents were of the professional class, you probably participated in J&J. if , like me, you lived below the Hill, your parents were lower middle class and didn't know about such things, then you didn't.)

have i wasted enough time at work?
i think so. back to the grind, folks.
---------
In Ding's comment section, I (BPhD) said:

I too am feeling a little bad for Clinton. OTOH, start reading stuff like this and a lot of my screw-the-misogynists impulse to support Clinton shifts over to the screw-the-racists.

It's kind of cool, though, that the racists (so far) seem to primarily be in the old upper echelons of The Establishment, rather than in the more populist venues of Fox News and MSNBC. It gives one hope for America.

(Of course, it's also possible that, not having cable, I'm just blissfully ignorant.)

To which I want to add here on *this* blog a link to Belle's post about the same article as the EotAW post linked just above. Belle herself can't resist reprinting all of the heinous National Review article that everyone's talking about today, but I myself can't resist reprinting most of what Belle herself says instead. Mostly because Belle is a *lot* better writer.

Sometimes I read old articles from the National Review and I think, where did that spirit of frank, open racism go? Why must John Derbyshire be restrained by political correctness when he "wraps his silk dressing gown tightly about his withered frame and totters onto the balcony to address the Negro Question"? But along comes sweet, sweet Lisa "Clinton really was running drugs through Mena AK" Schffrin to pour some sugar on me. She's got that old-time religion, friends. Do click over, either to Schiffren or, if you don't want to reward her with clicks, to Belle's post, to read the piece--it's hilarious. -Ed.
....
The truly beautiful thing about this is that it incoherently wavers between two poles of repulsive slander: is it Communist Negroes having sex with our white women? Or are Communist Jewesses subverting black Americans who, patriotic though modestly ill-treated, would have been able to resist had the party not offered them the tempting fruits of miscegenation?

This general election is going to be so much fun.

Boys have feelings! Alert the NYT!

The stereotype of the 16-year-old boy is that he has sex on the brain. But a fascinating new report suggests that boys are motivated more by love and a desire to form real relationships with the girls they date.

Shocking.

(Link via Pandagon.

Parental Bleg

Does anyone out there know if there are any *educational* games for the Nintendo DS that focus on teaching reading?

Next up, we'll repeal the law of gravity!

Awesome. Missorui--the "you can show me the evidence all you want, lalalalala I'm not listening" state--legislators have introduced a bill that would declare that emergency contraception causes abortions.

The bill also would protect pharmacies from lawsuits and from punishment by state regulators for refusing to sell or fill a prescription for any drug defined as triggering an abortion. Supporters said it would remove any financial incentive to sue the pharmacy’s owners for refusing to sell or stock an item that violated their conscience.
....
The bill applies specifically to two drugs: RU486, the early name for mifepristone, the drug administered in a doctor’s office to perform a nonsurgical abortion; and emergency contraception, which is marketed as Plan B.
....
pharmacists are not allowed to dispense mifepristone, which must be administered by a doctor.

Okay, so the mifeprestone thing is just a distraction and an attempt to muddy the water. It's really a bill that "defines" *contraception* as *abortion*.

Plan B, which is effective up to about 100 hours after unprotected sexual intercourse, works primarily by preventing ovulation, the FDA says. If an egg has already been released, the drug also can prevent fertilization. And if fertilization has occurred, it can prevent the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus.

Susan Klein, a lobbyist for Missouri Right to Life, noted that the bill does not attempt to make emergency contraception illegal. . . .

Klein said her group considers emergency contraception a form of abortion because her members believe that pregnancy begins the moment an egg is fertilized. Plan B, therefore, can lead to the death of “an already-created human being” by blocking implantation in the uterus, she said.

Honey. You can *believe* whatever the hell you want. That don't make it so.

Plan B is contraception. It *prevents* abortion.

Plan B consists of two pills that contain a synthetic form of progesterone, one of the two main female hormones (the other is estrogen) that occur naturally and are used in birth control pills. Men, by the way, have progesterone too, though in lower doses. When you take Plan B—two pills twelve hours apart—you get a very large dose of progesterone that lasts for a day or two.

When a woman is pregnant, her body produces a lot of progesterone, which keeps her from ovulating—thereby preventing her from getting pregnant a second time and trying to carry them both, which would be a disaster. So progesterone prevents ovulation. Which, if you're a woman who doesn't want to get pregnant, is a pretty useful thing for it to do.

So let's say for some reason a woman who isn't on birth control finds herself with sperm floating around inside her: a condom broke, she was raped, she and her partner were sloppy and overly enthusiastic, whatever. If she's already ovulated within the last 24 hours, all she can do is cross her fingers: you can't stop something that's already happened. But if she hasn't, and is unlucky enough that she's just about to, she can take a big dose of progesterone that will stop her from popping an egg long enough for the sperm to die, and no pregnancy. Hurrah!

But, you ask, what if she's already ovulated, and the sperm luck out, and there's a zygote floating around but it hasn't yet stuck itself to the wall of the uterus? Would Plan B work then? And if it does, isn't that technically a kind of abortion?

Nope, and nope. If you've ovulated, the zygote either is or isn't going to be lucky enough to find a resting place. A lot of them don't, which is why pregnancy starts once the zygote takes root in the uterine lining. If you're not pregnant, you can't abort.

Okay, but. What if there's a zygote, and you personally see fertilization as the beginning point of life, even if it happens before pregnancy actually starts? If Plan B prevents implantation—and their own literature says they "may" do that—then that feels iffy to me.

This is the second thing that needs explaining. There is no evidence that Plan B prevents implantation. That's not a known effect of progesterone.

See also PZ Myers's posts on the same topic. He's an actual embryologist. Or you can see what The Well-Timed Period has to say; it's written by a real live ob/gyn.

And then go smack a member of the Missouri legislature upside the head.



Story courtesy Feministing.

"Wide-open beaver gratitude"

I know that Twisty is, like, busy and everything, but I would really like it if she would not quit blogging for ever. Because even the morsels that she throws us are fuckin' hilarious.

For Valentine's Day, me and The Bear did what we always do: we went out for dinner. Actually, we went to a really awesome place--it's a non-profit restaurant! Wha?! And they served us a 5-course meal for $20. Now that's what I'm talking about. Because I am a do-gooder liberal, and also, I like food. Also, we got drunk, and I passed out at 10 pm.

Speaking of gratitude, I know that people only like to talk about gratitude on Thanksgiving or when they go to church or whatever, but I think today is my personal gratitude day. I am grateful for my job, which is entertaining and meaningful and hilarious, and for my boyfriend, who is extremely cute and intellectually badass, and for my friends, who are unpretentious and funny and easygoing, and for my apartment, which is kind of messy but airy and bright and warm, and for this city, which is beautiful and layered and busy and contains multitudes.

Happy Februrary 18th!

Congratulations to a fellow bitch

Shark-fu's got a gig at RH Reality Check, and her first piece is awesome.

Who do you *really* like?

Kinda fun Implicit Association test for the presidential candidates. I always love those kinds of things.

Surprisingly, according to this test I like Obama a fair bit better than Clinton, who I like a bit better than Huckabee (I blame my internalized sexism/racism and the fact that I don't watch tv news; I don't really have particular associations with the man's face), and I really loathe John McCain.

Got it over at Pandagon.

Dear god in heaven, save us from your followers

Y'all probably heard the charming story about the Kansas high school that refused to let a woman referee work a boys' basketball game because "a woman, could not be put in a position of authority over boys."

Of course the immediate thought is, what about those boys' mamas?

The next thought, which is much funnier, is that it's terribly ironic that the school is called "St. Mary's."

Anyhoo. The story is jaw-droppingly asinine, of course. Sadly, the comment thread to Bean's post about it over at LGM *isn't* jaw-dropping. It's just garden-variety lefty sexism. Some wanker's arguing that, even though the school in question belongs to a "Catholic" sect that's actually been excommunicated, it's valid to refer to it as Catholic, because "it's misleading to pretend there's a big difference btw St Mary's and the Church in re women" since, after all, not ordaining women as priests (which is, yes, heinous and assholish of the church) is basically only a "trivial" distinction from not allowing women *authority over boys*, full stop.

Then we've got 20+ comments of guys arguing about whether or not that distinction matters before a chick (me) steps in and tells the "it doesn't really matter" side to stfu, on the grounds that feminists don't really need the help of guys whose primary interest in women's rights seems to be based in their desire to win pissing contests about their own impeccable moral righteousness.

It reminds me of a t-shirt I once saw, a Lichtensteinish print of a man and a woman, in which the man is nattering on lecturing the woman about feminism in an attempt to hit on her, and she's thinking, "will no one rid me of this smooth-talking bore?"

Friday Cat Blogging

Sorry, folks; I've spent the last couple days outside on my bike instead of inside on my computer.

I notice, however, that my esteemed co-bloggers haven't posted anything either. This post, therefore, is dedicated to them.

(And to Lauren, from whom I stole picture, title, and post idea. Because I'm a bitch like that.)

College Scholarships for Bloggers and other people

If you are a college student, go check out Collegescholarships.org.

If you blog, take note: until 21 February, you can apply for their Political Blogging Scholarship; the prize is $2000 in each of three categories: Republican, Democratic, and "Other/Third Party." If you're in college and you have a political blog, just enter the damn thing already--it's a 300-word essay (short!) and you know, you might just win.

Do you maintain a political weblog and attend college? Would you like $2,000 to help pay for books, tuition, or other living costs? If so, read on.

We're giving away $2,000 this year to a college student who blogs about politics. Our scholarship is awarded annually.
Scholarship Requirements:

* Your blog must contain unique and interesting information about political issues, current events, opinions, etc. No spam bloggers please!!!
* U.S. citizen;
* 3.0 GPA;
* Currently attending full-time in post-secondary education; and
* If you win, you must be willing to allow us to list your name and blog on this page. We want to be able to say we knew you before you became a well educated, rich, and famous blogging legend.

There are similar small scholarships for web design, library science, "minority," and "women's," and the webiste also lists other scholarship opportunities.

You Go Online, Girl

Today just happens to be the birthday of my beloved niece. Subject to correction by my sister, niece is 13! A big year.

Niece was born, obviously, a long time before PK was. I don't think my sister will mind my saying that niece was unplanned, and conceived while sis was still in college; sis spent a few years as a pretty damn poor single mom, and then one ill-advised year married to niece's dad (a nice guy, but somewhat trifling, as they say). Sis married again a year or so after the divorce, and she and brother-in-law have another little girl who is much younger than PK.

Now, PK and I have always adored niece. PK because she's older, and way cool, and has always been very nice to him. Me, because she is really the first child I ever fell in love with; I was one of girls that didn't babysit much, because I never really knew what to "do" with kids. I mean, I guess they were okay, as long as they didn't spend a lot of time near me.

Then niece came along. Teh cute! Teh clever! Teh sweet! I remember being the Very Bad Aunt and encouraging her to do things like stay up past her bedtime ("Aw, sis, c'mon, let her stay up with us!") and eat more sweets than sis thought she should ("She's a kid!"). Sadly I don't see her very often--we've lived on opposite sides of the continent for most of her life--but whether or not she feels close to me, I'm certainly always going to feel close to her.

It's a little tricky, though, being the feminist aunt of a girl who you're crazy about--you want to encourage her in all things feminist, of course, but you don't want to embarrass her or freak her out by pushing too hard on the "you are woman, let me hear you roar" stuff. If she were my own kid, I'd know her better, and be better able to gauge how much "you go girl"ism to send her way.

Luckily, of course, there are her parents to consult. And friends and acquaintances. One of whom--a woman I met through this blog, actually--recommended Orb28 as a good 13-yo girl gift. Orb28 is an online community for 13-15ish girls, created by the folks who do New Moon Magazine. No ads. It's not quite launched yet, but there's a nice little blog to tell you what's planned. (They also have another online community for girls 8-12, and the parent company, New Moon, has a nascent blog for parents, too.)

I thought it looked cool, so I called my brother-in-law to ask what he thought of my giving niece a membership. Yes, it turns out, niece does like being online--which sis and brother-in-law monitor pretty closely. So safety's a concern. Now, I'm pretty inclined to trust the folks at New Moon, but I thought, well, it doesn't hurt to check--so I left a comment on the blog asking about safety (and offering a free plug for the project, which you are now reading), and my friend who'd recommended it to me emailed someone she knows who still works there. This morning I got a reply in my email box, the gist of which also went up as a blog post on the Orb28 blog.

So. Safe as houses, pretty much; a place to share creative work like photos, stories, poems, artwork, podcasts, essays; a place to hang out online with other girls the same age. Kinda like a blog without trolls, or MySpace without "look at my hot cleavage".

It's a really interesting project, and I thought that if any of you have daughters or nieces that you might wanna know about it.

(Now I'm wondering when someone's going to launch a similar site for boys like PK....)

Best blog posts about clinton or obama?

Mr. Ari is looking to collect the best analytical posts endorsing either Obama or Clinton--presumably for one of those "be a more informed voter" projects.

What he means is posts that aren't long on the emotion or rhetoric, but that do what the lazy-ass mainstream media isn't doing for us: collect solid evidence--bills sponsored, votes recorded, deeds done--of either candidate's strengths. For instance Hilzoy's Obama endorsement (which if you haven't read it, you really really really really should. It's damn good.) The kind of post that requires actual homework.

If you guys know of any, please mosey over to the edge of the west and leave a link in the comments section.

black history month: a case for voting black

My aunt's apartment was stifling hot and smelled strange but I tried to ignore it.

"Our people took the name of Mr. C-, you know. He owned our family and when the war was over, we just kept the name," my aunt said.
"I don't know anything about that time. I mean, no one's told me stories about it," I said.

"Well, it's here and there." She thought a little. "You know, there is a story about a relative of ours. The rest of the family kept the C- name and stayed in Alabama. But one left. He came up North and disappeared."
"Disappeared? Why'd he disappear?"
"Because he passed."
"No!"

"Yes. He was white. Real white. Your great granddaddy passed for white for a while; his wife could pass, too.” She paused again. “I don’t know how your grandfather got so dark. Anyway, he came up to Chicago and the story is that he worked in a store and started a business. But he never got back in touch with the rest of the family. He's just lost."

She said this like he just wandered into State Street and just couldn’t find his way back.

"I have never heard this story!"
My aunt sighed. "There aren't that many family members left who know it."
"Huh. Fascinating."

Unfortunately, I have totally forgotten what my passing distant relative’s name was.
...

The new Skip Gates special on PBS is full of these stories of passing, diaspora, disappearance and reinvention. (But sometimes I wonder if my own family's narrative is real or just patterned on other stories of black family lines whose origins are just as murky or tangled.)

What strikes me about some of these early stories of lost family members reclaimed is how prominent black-owned land figures into them and how crucial the land is to forming early black identity as well as ideas of freedom and citizenship. The program begins with Gates visiting the land his family has owned for 6 generations and passes by a parcel of land his family had owned but had to sell. Since part of their own genealogical story is lost to them, their farm acts like an anchor for their identity. In subsequent conversations with celebrities like Chris Rock, Tina Turner, Morgan Freeman, Don Cheadle or Tom Joyner, Gates reveals that their families had once owned land - 40 acres, 62 acres, 65 acres - donating or selling some of their land to build schools or churches. The revelations about property and land ownership become a source of pride in their family.

What is it that Rock says – If he had known this before, it would have taken away the inevitability that he would be nothing. And property is usually the vehicle for these stories to come to light; it acts like a bracket around early black families: you were property and now you have property.

At the turn of the century blacks owned between 12-15 million acres of land; by the 30s and 40s that number shrinks to just a little over a million. For many of these black families the land is a foundation to build their newly acquired identities as freed people that suddenly disappears, forcing their story to jump, only to be picked up further down the line. What happened? What happened in those intervening years? Did African Americans just suddenly decide, "Hm, you know, owning land sucks. Let's pick up and go north"? Usually something else happened to make a family, or even a whole black town, disperse.

Tom Joyner's family story is a good example; Gates finds his great grandmother but her paper trail ends somewhere in late 19th/turn of the century Carolinas, only to pick up again several years later in the north. Joyner has no idea why she left home or what the story of his family is but Gates and his team discover the reason: His family owned a substantial parcel of land but when his two great uncles are accused of murder and executed, the family sells their land to pay for legal fees and the remaining family flees the area. But Gates' team also uncovers that the accusation was probably false, specifically targeted at the two great uncles because they were part of a black landowning family.

Chris Rock asks how his own ancestor could go from slave, to soldier, to legislator, to landowner, to sharecropper all in 10 short years; Gates simply answers, 'Reconstruction ended.'
We're left to conclude what happened to Julius Caesar Tingman's land on our own.
...

Three years ago the exhibit "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America" came to the Chicago Historical Society and it was a hard exhibit to walk through. Again, I noticed stories of black land ownership (or burgeoning private enterprise) running alongside the photos of ‘extra-legal deaths at the hands of unknown persons' (which is how the Society described the lynchings that spread throughout the country from Reconstruction to roughly 1965 or '68.)

In 2001, the AP ran a series called 'Torn from the Land' that researched and confirmed claims of widespread land theft - claims that are crucial to the reparations movement. Opponents of the reparations movement say that it's a fallacy to punish or extort money from people today for events in the past; slavery is over. I counter that the cost of these past events is still felt today through procedures that, are legal and that still disproportionately affect poor communities of color, i.e., partitioning, rezoning, ‘revitalization’/gentrification, and eminent domain. These legal maneuvers aren't 'extra-legal' or as extreme as lynching but they sure do have the same result – displacement, dispersal, diasporas.

Personally, I'm sort of neutral about the reparations movement. Do I want my father's family to be paid money because of slavery? Not really. What I want is a deeper, more public acknowledgment of how slavery impacted and drove our capitalist system, and how our nation's participation in the slave trade laid a foundation for practices, industries and institutions that not only continue to have an adverse affect on communities of color today but still provide the elite in this country with wealth and prosperity. That's not too much to ask, is it?

Land is at the bottom of our American imagination and mythology. The land was the lure and the land has allowed us Americans to earn our claim to citizenship - we stole it, settled it, colonized it, killed for it, and exploited the shit out of it. American land is a metaphor for our political and national identities at home, as well as a justification for our acts abroad.

As an African American, though I am a participant in (and benefactor of) this American history, I am distant from it because of how the land figures into our own fraught, black history: we were counted with the land, we worked on the land, we fought and were killed for the land. More acted upon than actor, we have seen our roles in history marginalized or elided, but now we approach a moment where, at last, our acts can be writ large and with boldness.

I say we owe a debt to our ancestors for the sacrifices they were forced to make – if we have the chance to take a firm step toward repaying that debt, toward reclaiming the lost land of our identities as black Americans, then we should take it now.

Vote smart--but not *too* smart; or, why "identity politics" matter

If you haven't taken the SelectSmart presidential thingamabobby yet, it's pretty interesting. Yeah, yeah, it'll give you a ranked list of "your" candidates based on your answers to a few questions.

FWIW, my results gave Kucinich as the first choice, duh--though I have to admit I don't, in fact, support him and never did. Way too hippy-dippy and new agey. Obama was my second choice result; Clinton was the sixth.



But what I really like about it is that it made me think pretty hard about some things.

Like all of these "which candidate for you?" games--there was on on NPR, for instance, a few days ago, where they summarized candidate's positions and labelled each candidate with a fictional name, then revealed which summary was who--the SelectSmart quiz is supposed to eliminate emotional biases from your selection process. The argument for using these kinds of things is that it's supposed to help you isolate your political beliefs on specific issues from the personalities of the actual candidates running.

Which is a perfectly fine goal. (Project Vote Smart is really a better site for this kind of thing, by the way, since you can use it to research your local representatives as well as the presidential candidates.) But I think this "vote smart" focus overlooks some important stuff. Ostensibly these resources are supposed to make your voting choice more rational, informed, and issue-based--which is an entirely good thing.

But the thing is, our opinions on the issues, and the things we want to be informed about, *aren't* entirely rational. And I kind of think that that's perfectly okay. And that even if it weren't, it would be unavoidable.

Example: yes, I can come up with a number of reasons why preserving Social Security is good for America and Americans, but to be entirely honest? All of these reasons are based on an irrational feeling that Social Security is *fair*, dammit (and would be more fair if we didn't cap taxable SS earnings, by the way). And that being fair matters.

And of course *that* is predicated on the way I define "fair"; it doesn't mean everyone gets an equal chance to fuckup their retirement savings (the argument for privatization). It means accepting the fact that people do irrational shit (like fail to save for retirement even when they can afford to) all the time; and feeling like letting people suffer because they do stupid shit is "unfair." Especially when it's possible to prevent it, and doing so doesn't harm anyone else in any way.

That's just an aside to illustrate the point that policy opinions aren't always rational in the first place. But it illustrates the larger point I'm trying to make here, which is that I think even the most adamant "be informed!" advocacy rests on a *feeling* that being informed is important. And that this is a good, because human, thing. We are not robots. We do not, and should not, want a robotic power structure that ignores the emotions, affections, foibles, and failings that are part who we are.

Taking this quiz, and reading the results, made me acutely aware of two things.

(1) Sometimes really important issues aren't considered "issues."

The questions weigh all sorts of "issues" equally--despite your ability to say how important a particular issue is to you. By which I mean, there's one question on abortion rights, there's one question on Iraq. But in fact, abortion rights is just one of a constellation of issues about women's rights, human rights, reproduction, etc. Many of those issues don't even *register* politically as "issues." You're never going to see a political candidate or platform that directly asks if you think reproductive rights *ought* to be a political issue in the first place, for example.

So the questions pre-define for you what "the issues" are, and they implicitly treat some "issues" as more important than others (e.g., there's one abortion question, and no other questions on women's or civil rights; but there are two questions about the Iraq war (one about getting in, one about leaving) *and* a question about civil liberties--which is currently a political issue b/c it's part of the same constellation of problems as the Iraq war.

(2) Feelings can outweigh "reasons" for all sorts of voters, not just "uninformed" ones.

Recognizing that the quiz pretends to be rational/impersonal when it isn't, and more importantly, that this fact kind of bothers me, is a real window onto the kinds of things that we (educated folks, political junkies) often bemoan about the electorate. Especially when it supports things we don't.

So, for instance, I imagine most of you reading this would agree with me that it's frustrating that poor people often support candidates with enormously regressive economic policies, or that Values Voters who think that gay marriage is more important than (say) the economy or the Iraq war are insane.

But really, how is the feeling that, say, one wants to vote for Huckabee because dammit, he's a Christian, *that* much different than the feeling that one wants to vote for Clinton because she's a woman? I know some people are going to say, "it isn't, and that demonstrates that wanting to vote for Clinton because she's a woman is stupid and just as bigoted as the fact that there's never been a woman president ever!!" But--with all due respect to those of you who are thinking that--well, that's just stupid. Symbols and feelings matter. (And if you want a totally "rational" explanation of why, do a little digging and read up on the difference between tokenism and having a critical mass of X subgroup represented in power positions--faculty, management, etc. Then consider who it was, exactly, that led the suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, the farmworkers' union: you have to be personally affected by an issue to care enough to really make it your #1 priority in life.)

It would be kinda cool if one of the outcomes of this election is that those of us who are really deeply moved by the fact that the Democratic nominee is going to be either the first ever major party black Presidential candidate, or the first ever woman could begin to empathize with and talk to the folks who are really deeply moved by the desire to have their religious identity reflected in their political leaders. And, of course, vice-versa: if the religious voters could empathize with and talk to the feminists and anti-racists* (not to mention the gays and allies, ahem).

Look at me. I'm starting to sound as hippy-dippy and new-agey as Kucinich.



*What the heck would be the proper label for folks who think it's important to have more brown people in powerful positions (teachers, presidents, CEOs, whatever)? I cannot think of one. Boy, that's kind of fucked up.

I voted

There was something of a line--not a really long one, but a definitely line--at my polling place. At about 4 pm, half the people there had little kids with them. I was explaining to PK how voting works while we waited. A guy showed up with a bike helmet on and sort of impatiently sighed at the wait, and PK complained a bit about there being nothing for little kids to do, so I said loudly enough to be heard that it was a really good thing there were so many people voting, because voting is really important, etc.

Interestingly, they gave PK a kids' ballot, with the exact same "complete the arrow" methodology as the adult ballots. I asked the guys at EotAW if they'd blog the kid ballot for me, because I didn't know half the names on it; if they do, I'll be sure and link because it was totally awesome. It also meant that PK got an "I Voted" sticker.

I heard a woman in line behind me being told that she had her choice of three ballots; she asked for a Democratic ballot. She was about my age and had a daughter with her. I don't know who she voted for, obviously.

I don't know if I'm going to say who I voted for at some point. Not right now.

Maybe I'll Flip a $@#! Coin

Tell me about it baby. Like Traister (first link), I still do not know who to vote for. Unlike Drum (second) or Pollitt (third), I'm haven't decided to vote for Obama, although like both of them, I've wavered for a long time. But I'm still not decided yet, and I have to vote tomorrow.

I agree with Pollitt about this:

I'm with her on health care mandates, and with him on driver's licences for undocumented immigrants; both would probably be equally good on women's rights, abortion rights and judicial appointments. But on foreign policy Obama seems more enlightened, as in less bellicose.

Add in that Hillary really *does* have a well-established history of caring, passionately, about children and families in a way that I think is extremely important and that this country really, really needs. On the other hand, Obama has a more detailed economic plan that talks about small business (as opposed to big business). He doesn't say anything about needing to get back to regulating Wall Street and the banks and the energy companies and the other big money assholes, which worries me; on the other hand, Clinton's statements on the economy look purely like an after-the-fact reaction to the subprime mortgage meltdown.

I disagree about this:

Much as I would love to pull the lever for a woman president -- a pro-choice Democratic woman president, that is --I realized [when Obama won Iowa] how deeply unthrilled I was by the prospect of a grim vote-by-vote fight for the 50 percent+1 majority in a campaign that would rehearse all the old, (yes, mostly bogus or exaggerated) scandals and maybe turn up some new ones too. I wasn't delighted to think success would mean four more years of Bill Clinton either, or might come at the price of downticket losses, as many red-state Democrats fear. Democrats have nominated plenty of dutiful public servants over the years -- Humphrey, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry . They have always lost (or in Gore's case, not won by enough to not lose).

I was excited when Obama won Iowa, too. I think, though, that it wasn't for the reasons Pollitt cites--which surprise me, really, because I think all those reasons are rooted in sexism, for reasons I'll explain in a second--but because it made me feel like it was a horserace. And I think that's all to the good, having two (formerly three, alas) excellent candidates on our side. And frankly politics can be kind of exciting, the more so when there's a good argument going on about stuff that's actually important.

But I have a personal problem. I really, really resist and resent "practical" compromises that are based on bigotry. And I think that 99% of Clinton's negatives are because she's a woman (and a feminist), including the "four more years of Bill Clinton." Historically, women achieve power (even in representative democracies, but well before representative democracies: think of Queen Elizabeth, for instance) on the coattails of their fathers or husbands. Benazir Bhutto and Corazon Aquino were, respectively, their father's daughter and their husband's widow. One might argue that this isn't true of Thatcher and Merkel, but I would respond that both England and German are more feminist than we are: both have reasonably well established welfare states and haven't spent 200 years drinking the KoolAid of Rugged Individualism the way we have. Also, both are more conservative than Clinton.

Which gets to the other thing. I cannot get past the feeling that my hesitation about Clinton is a version of the old dictum that "a woman has to be three times better than a man to be considered his equal." Basically, Obama and Clinton are on a pretty even footing for a lot of people. But Obama's just More Exciting! He has that Special Something--momentum, charisma, whatever--that puts him over the edge with folks who, like me, have been wavering. It seems to me that (unless you never considered Clinton because of her votes on Iraq and Iran, which okay, fine) the tiebreaker is intangible, that it's that "likeability" thing. And my gut (and lots of research about unconscious prejudice in, say, hiring) tells me that "likeability" has a lot to do with prejudices that we don't even realize we have. Hillary's "shrill"; her crying is "manipulative"; we don't want "four more years of Bill," she's "less electable," she's "not trustworthy." All of that really means, "she's a woman, and we've never had a woman president before, and I'm just . . . not . . . sure . . . ." I firmly believe this.

Or, as Traister says,

Who am I to turn up my nose at her because she's imperfect? I always figured the first female president would be a Thatcher-style Republican -- how can I complain about a Wellesley-educated Democrat who once resembled the Second Wave women who fought for my ability to control my own reproduction and get paid as much as my male colleagues?

Amen, my sister. She's imperfect. ZOMG!!!! When have we *ever* had a Perfect Candidate to vote for? Is Obama perfect? Why is it that Clinton, the woman, is the one whose imperfections seem so, so difficult to excuse? Because it's true: a woman has to be demonstrably better than a man to be seen as his equal. Whether it's concert musicians trying out behind a screen, studies sending out identical resumes with differently-gendered names on top, studies in which teachers deliberately call evenly on boys and girls only to have the boys blow up about how the teachers are "giving the girls all the attention" (or studies showing that teachers who *think* they call on boys and girls evenly, in fact, don't), we know that we hold women to higher standards. And I'm certain that we're holding Clinton to a higher standard than we have held any Democratic nominee within *my* lifetime, anyway.

Of course, many of those problems apply also to African-Americans. I realize that. And although I think Traister is wrong that

frankly, Obama can be comfortably looked at as an exceptional black man, not as a harbinger of what's to come, whereas Hillary will stand in for all those pushy broads coming to take your jobs, college admissions letters, and your seats in Congress,

I do think that--for whatever reason--Obama just has not had the baggage of "omg a black man!!" the way that Clinton's had the "omg a woman!!!" problem. Maybe he'll get it in the general election, or maybe it's that Clinton is not just a woman but an actual avowed feminist, or maybe it's that Obama just hasn't been around long enough for the bullshit to start to pile up in our subconscious. Or maybe, you know, being a white woman myself, I'm just a lot more sensitive to Clinton's gendered "negatives" than I am to Obama's racialized ones.

Except. I was going to say that I feel like Drum is right that

while I still like both candidates a lot (which is what's kept me on the fence for so long), I guess I finally decided that Bill Clinton was right: voting for Obama is a roll of the dice.

Traister, likewise, says that Obama provides "a nimbus of vague hope," in contrast to Clinton's "steel-solid track record." But now that I've gotten to that part of this post, I'm thinking that that "roll of the dice" thing might be Bill's smarter (and he is pretty smart, you know) version of the "Obama just doesn't have enough experience" meme, which I *do* recognize as racist. He hasn't been in the U.S. Senate as long as Clinton, but he was in the Illinois State Senate before she was elected. Other than that, he and Clinton have similar backgrounds; law degrees, advocating for admirable causes. He taught Constitutional Law for a year, correction: ten years. Thanks to Joe in comments for pointing out my error (link is to Obama's CV! Hee), which seems promising, to say the least. Clinton's got the first lady experience, which both her campaign *and* her detractors are making a big deal over (and which I see as basically supporting my contention that women don't get this far without daddy or hubby going first, and therefore irrelevant as regards my voting decision). He's not inexperienced--unless you reflexively (and hopefully unconsciously) assume that any black man on an equal footing with white men (and women) is probably "unqualified," as all the anti-affirmative action bullshit arguments do.

But this feeling that I have (and I'm not the only one, based on comments I've seen around the blogosphere and heard in person--comments often coming from people who support him, by the way) that Obama is a good *speaker* but, you know, what, specifically, does he plan to *do*?--that feeling might also be a version of the "unqualified" argument, now that I think about it. Maybe my subconscious is thinking, "Oh, he's a flashy performer (and you know, the blacks, they're *good* at performance and public speaking! Just look at that Louis Armstrong or that Martin Luther King Jr.!), but you know, that comes naturally to them, so it doesn't demonstrate any *real* commitment." After all, my perusal of the candidate's respective websites--and their performance in the debates, based on what I've read of them (because I haven't actually watched the debates), suggests that he's got *at least* as much specific policy wonkage as Clilnton does. And, in fact, they're pretty similar on most things, with respective strengths in different areas.

I've actually said a couple of times that I'm going to vote for Obama. I know that most of the people who I think of as on my side are supporting him. But whenever I say that I do, too, it makes my tummy hurt. I just don't know if I can walk into the booth tomorrow and *not* vote for Clinton. I don't like not knowing who to vote for, the day before the primaries. I don't like the worry that part of my hesitation about Obama might be racist, or the knowledge that part of my hesitation about Clinton is sexist. I don't feel, as Traister and a lot of other feminists seem to, the need to protest about how I'd never vote for someone just because she's a woman--after all, we've *all* been voting for someones just because they're men for a long time now, and a lot of Americans are going to be doing it in this election too. Voting for someone because she's a woman is not the same thing as voting for *any* woman, any more than voting for someone because he's a man (as we've always done) means that we've always voted for *any* man. I'm cool with the idea that some women (and men) want to vote for Clinton because dammit, it's about time; I'm cool knowing that some blacks (and whites, and browns, etc.) want to vote for Obama because, dammit, it's about time.

So I'm just going to keep in mind that however I end up voting tomorrow, the outcome is gonna be a good candidate that I can unconditionally get behind. And dammit, it's about time.

reading hillary

All You Need Is Hate - Stanley Fish - Think Again - Opinion - New York Times Blog

Over at my other blog, Church Gal, I was having an interesting exchange with an anonymous commenter about my post poking at the Clinton campaign for beating the 'experience' drum so hard. What made this exchange interesting was the cloudy, shifting view of Hillary Clinton the commenter had.

Anonymous' quote:
"Hillary is strong, very clever. She reminds me of Meryl Streeps' character in the Machurian Candidate. Hillary put up with Bills cheating ways for way too long. Why would a strong woman like that put up with nonsense? More then likely it was because at the end of it all, his presidency that is, something was in it for her. Bill and Hillary have a political relationship. They have mastered the art of lying to win. She is using Bill every step of the way. I wish she would come out and say just what you wrote. Interesting, and she will still win because so many men do not have the balls to stop her."

It begins with a positive: Hillary is strong, very clever.

But then comes the less than flattering comparison where a positive figure merges with a character who is dysfunctional, manipulative, deceitful and ruthlessly cunning: She reminds me of Meryl Streeps' character in the Machurian Candidate.

And then the comment changes again, this time turning Hillary Clinton into the 'woman wronged' who stands too much by her man: Hillary put up with Bills cheating ways for way too long.

Her strength, previously praised, is in doubt: Why would a strong woman like that put up with nonsense?

The answer is her cunning and grasping nature - her (dare I say it?) ambition: More then likely it was because at the end of it all, his presidency that is, something was in it for her. Bill and Hillary have a political relationship.

The Clinton's ambitious partnership is a vehicle for another accusation of deceit, though the worst that they could be accused of is playing semantics: They have mastered the art of lying to win.

Then, erasing the picture we have of companionate ambition, we have another nod to Hillary Clinton's singular agency (manipulative as it is): She is using Bill every step of the way.

And here is where things get interesting and the comment seems to be at war with itself. Anonymous says: ...she will still win because so many men do not have the balls to stop her.

What I like about this part of the comment is how everything sort of crumbles - no one has agency, everyone is sort of a failure: Hillary will win but her victory is only because men fail around her. It makes me ask: If men didn't fail, would Hillary still win? Do I hear grudging respect from Anonymous toward Hillary? Or is it fear? Is Anonymous gloating? And who is the object of derision? Men?

For these readers of Hillary, especially those mentioned in Fish's column, she becomes like a comic book superhero, like the Scarlet Witch or maybe even Dark Phoenix - able to change reality around her, or at least prompt those looking at her to dip into some shapeshifting realities of their own. She can be read as an aspirational stand in (like Wonder Woman) for women who see themselves in her and her life's narrative; she can be the shadowy council that makes men afraid or women secretly proud; or she is the sinister shapeshifter who will do what she must to further her own desire for world domination (like Mystique.)

It's all rather silly when you see it like a bunch of comic book characters.

Wo-bama

If you haven't seen it already, you should really watch this video, which combines the work of will.i.am of the Black-Eyed Peas, Barack Obama, and Jesse Dylan, son of Bob Dylan. Curious now?

I volunteered today to do phone banking at the Obama headquarters in downtown Chicago. It was kind of fascinating in its own particular way. The first exciting part was that there were hundreds of people there. They ran out of phones before the session even started, they kept running out of scripts and lists of numbers, there weren't even close to enough chairs. So people (including me) were spread out on the floor, making calls on their cell phones, and taking notes off other people's scripts and then improvising. There were a lot of middle-aged women and young people. I didn't see too many middle-aged men, except a lawyer I knew, a partner at a major law firm who'd brought his kids along. Everyone was pretty excited; some people were even giddy.

Making my calls, I talked to a man in New Mexico who said he'd never voted because of his religion; he told me that he's a Jehovah's Witness. I tried to convince him for a while ("Don't you think that God needs helpers?") but I think I failed. Can anyone confirm that Jehovah's Witnesses not voting is an actual thing? He told me he was impressed and inspired by Obama, but that the world had problems even Barack couldn't fix. True, of course. I was momentarily stumped.

I talked to a man in Idaho who didn't understand what the caucuses were and had never participated in one. I explained it all to him very carefully, to the best of my ability (limited, having never participated in a caucus), and he seemed relieved and like "oh! I could do that!" We closed the call with him saying that he planned to go out and caucus for Obama--I was pleased.

For most of the numbers I called, I was either hung up on, or left a message on the machine; I think I talked to about 15 people out of 60 or so calls I made. But one thing I did notice was that almost none of the women I spoke to wanted to tell me who they was voting for. Out of the men, there was the Idaho guy who I convinced to go out for Obama, and then a bunch of other guys voting for McCain and Romney, and the Jehovah's Witness guy. But every woman I talked to either claimed to be undecided or explicitly said she wouldn't say who she was voting for, save one woman who said she was supporting Obama. Maybe they're all voting for Clinton and didn't want to tell me, as I introduced myself as an Obama volunteer. I say rock on with their bad selves.

So thinking all day about how these women reacted to being interrogated about their voting plans, I was really disappointed, upon getting home from watching the Superbowl, to read the following line in this NYT article:

But at the Upper West Side gathering, four white, liberal, baby-boomer women defended Mrs. Clinton’s feminist credentials as they sipped red wine and talked politics with a gusto more often reserved for topics like sex, husbands, children and real estate."

I am getting really tired of the "all women are now like the characters from Sex & the City!" meme. Get over it, world. Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda are characters in a television show. Ask any actual woman which character she's like and she'll probably be stumped, because they are not like real people. They are archetypes, and they are interesting archetypes who eventually change and progress, but they do not represent women. Anyway, this is patronizing and sexist. Women actually care about politics?! No!

Women do care. They far outnumbered the male volunteers at the event I was at today, and they were running the show. And this is in Obama's campaign; I can't even imagine what it's like in Clinton's campaign. The women I talked to on the phone all said they were going to go caucus, and they felt that their political preferences were something private and sacred, almost like if I'd asked them whether they were sexually active or smoked marijuana. They weren't flip about it, and they sure as hell didn't want a young whippersnapper like me telling them who to vote for; I respected that.

So it is with that thought that I am pleased to announce to you that people on MSNBC have been taking their talking points from me. Last week sometime, I wrote down the following fragment on a scrap of paper that is currently sitting on my coffee table: "MSNBC, Chuck Todd: The swing vote is going to be the educated white men." Hearing somone acknowledge that men, specifically educated white men, comprise a group that sometimes votes as a bloc, just like women and black people, warms the cockles of my humorless feminist machine-heart. Thanks, Chuck.

On the other hand, I iz a happy cat. LOL.

One look at this and I can't not be amused.

Via Savage Minds, which I found via LGM.

I am not a happy pup

I have come to realize (I think) that the smoking thing was doing a good job of helping me manage the depression thing. Because I used cigarettes as transition objects: okay, I've finished getting PK off to school, now I can have a cigarette and a cup of coffee on the patio; okay, I've been fucking around long enough, I'll have a cigarette and then go get dressed; okay, PK's watched enough tv, I'll have a cigarette and then see if he wants to play a game.

Now that I don't have that gentle little crutch, I've spent the last week sitting on my bottom doing almost nothing, just like I did "back when I was depressed."

It probably doesn't help that I ran out of the smaller of the two daily pills I'm supposed to take and (of course!) don't have the impetus to click on over to my insurance company website and refill the damn prescription.

(Okay, as I typed that I was like, just do it already, lazy-ass, so that, at least, is done.)

Anyhoo. I've done stuff. I went with Mr. B. yesterday to buy a new bike (the Trek 7002) which I can pick up today when he gets home with the car (yay); did my momly duty in re. volunteering in PK's class and typing up the first issue of the class newspaper; made sure people got fed; took PK to the dentist. But that's about it. PK has watched a lot of tv and played a lot of video games. I have done a lot of nothing. Every once in a while I think, I would really really like a cigarette.

Bleah. Don't try this at home, kids.