Yeah, I was wrong

Apparently the bailout was a really bad idea.

That'll teach me to (1) listen to a former trader--and a foreigner, to boot--the greedy fucker; (2) disagree with Taddy.

Catblogging Friday

Seriously rather wonderful.



From Eric Whitacre's blog, via Chris Clarke on twitter.

Been Readin'

What with not having much to do this summer, I have been plowing through some novels. They aren't, like, new novels mostly because I am way not up to date on things like that. But here are the highlights:

The God of Small Things - Possibly I have never read a more beautiful novel. Almost certainly have I never read a more devastating one. If you are interested in India, Marxism, early childhood development, language and its relationship to identity, class, caste, religion, beauty, any of these things, this novel will break you. In a good way. I feel sure.

The White Tiger - Less so. I shouldn't have read this after Roy's probably, as it is a hard act to follow, but this left me thoroughly underwhelmed. The book jacket promises about similarities to Invisible Man and Native Son are accurate insofar as the author is clearly indebted to Ellison and Wright, but the novel pales in comparison to either.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Man do I love this book. It's a sort of murder mystery novel narrated from the perspective of a boy on the high functioning end of the autism spectrum and as such has much to say about cognition, emotional connections, interpersonal relationships and families, but for my money it's a novel about novels and about How Novels Work. As are all the good novels. I coudl make that case, as I think of it, about every single novel I have loved.

Let the Right One In - Ok, s this one I have just been sneaking chunks of when Mr. V is not reading it, but if you love vampires and weird fucked up gender paradigms, bleak Scandanavian settings, and are not totally skeeved by creepily sexualized children, I am going to recommend this one for your beach-reading category.

Just as Long as We're together - Firstly, the cover image here is all wrong. I can't find a pastable file of what the novel is supposed to look like, but it should have 3 young girls sitting on a bed laughing as they hold up purple t-shirts that read, "Friends." Anything else is wrong. I re-read this during my recent trip to my mom's, where all my books are archived like some giant Young Adult library collection. Good Lord if I don't love this book. Its so smart, the narration is much more sophisticated than I remember and it is very honest about the shit factors of being an adolescent. I will forever bless Judy Blume for that

I've got 2 weeks of procrastination to go, so what are y'all reading?

I wish I had had an abortion

. . . whether or not it [equating abortion with murder/genocide] is hate speech, and whether or not it can be linked directly to the murder of Dr. Tiller and other abortion providers, it is language that reveals a frightening degree of anger, disrespect for and hostility not only to the people who perform abortions but also to those who have abortions -- pregnant women.
...
Who are the millions of "murderous" women who have abortions? Sixty-one percent of women having abortions are already mothers. . . . Regardless of your point of view about abortion, it is time to ask your spiritual, religious, and political leaders to give a sermon or speech explaining the difference between the personal decisions women and their families make and government sponsored genocide.
...
If you have had an abortion and given birth, experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth, adopted or raised a child -- tell your story with a picture, a sign, a 1 minute or less video and we will post it at advocatesforpregnantwomen.org/mystory.

Reproductive rights = human rights

So sayeth Amnesty International.

Nicaragua’s total ban on abortions is endangering the lives of girls and women, denying them life-saving treatment, preventing health professionals from practicing effective medicine and contributing to an increase in maternal deaths across the country, concludes Amnesty International in a new report issues on Monday.

According to official figures, 33 girls and women have died in pregnancy this year as compared to 20 in the same period last year. Amnesty International believes these figures are only a minimum as the government itself has acknowledged that the number of maternal deaths is under-recorded.

H/t Majikthise.

The Berenstain Bears Meet Christopher McCandless

I worry. Am a worrier. Is it the Catholic upbringing? The eye-talian in me? The grad schooling? Who can know. Whatever it is, it's entrenched.

Right now, I worry that those of you who don't do twitter are perhaps missing a twitter trend and, more importantly, B's enthusiastic participation in it: failed children's books titles. I'd hate for you to miss these gems:

The Little Engine that Warmed Up The Whole World
Harold and the Purple Thing
How to Kill a Mockingbird
Pride and Prejudice: The Story of Pat Robertson
The Scarlet Letter and Other Cautionary Tales for Abstinence-Only Education
Walter the Farting Dog That Went to Live on a Farm Because Really, He Just Wouldn't Stop Farting
Richard Scarry's Best Storybook Ever! Which Isn't Saying Much Because Most of His Books Aren't Storybooks, Really
Mouse Soup and Other Recipes For Poor Children
Is Your Mama a Llama? Only if You're a God-hating Evolutionist
Guess How Much I Love You? No, Guess Again. [my personal favorite]
More, More, More Said the Baby, While Its Parents Grew Increasingly Irritable
We're Going on A Bear Hunt; Let's Start at the Rainbow Room
Mama and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Baby
Everybody Poops, Sure, But Do We Have to Talk About It?
I'll Talk to Your Mama Outside
Free to Be You and Me, But Not Those People Over There Because We Have to Draw the Line Somewhere
On The Day You Were Born Mommy Had To Have Stitches In Her Perineum
Oh, the Places You'd Go If We Had The Money
Charlotte's Web of Lies
Overly Curious George
Bicurious George
Where the Wild Things Are is Under Your Bed

You're welcome.

Turn the other cheek, my ass

Fuck these people: Randall Terry "predicts" violence if health care bill covers abortion.

And I feel bad saying this, but fuck Norma McCorvey, too. I read something recently, sorry I don't remember where, where she had said that one of the reasons she became anti-abortion is because the anti-abortion Christians were much kinder to her and treated her more like a fellow human being than the pro-choice folks she dealt with. Which I find not hard to believe, I'm sorry to say, and quite moving.

I'm quite aware that by saying "fuck Norma McCorvey" I'm providing a tiny bit of evidence for why it's not hard to believe. So okay, maybe not "fuck Norma McCorvey." But then again, by all accounts George Tiller, whose murder Terry has repeatedly been an apologist for, was a Christian who treated the women he dealt with with great respect and compassion, so while that's an explanation, it's sure as shit not an excuse. It's not as if there aren't plenty of Christians--even anti-abortion Christians--who aren't freaking lunatics that implicitly threaten violence if they don't get their way.

And no, I'm not terribly interested in the inevitable "by believing in hell all Christians blah blah blah" comment, so don't bother.

All Sexblogging, All The Time

See, this is why I write pseudonymously. Because then I can write about how I like balls or whatever. Jezebel alerts me to this study reported on by UPI which found that 60 percent of women 45-80 are having sex. Is this supposed to be a lot? I actually thought that was kinda low. I think it would be more helpful to break it down further, because I would be really surprised if only 60% of women 45-55 are doin' it. But I stumped on the same part that Katy did:

The study, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, also found 43 percent of the women reported at least moderate sexual desire, challenging conventional wisdom that women lose interest in sex due to their own physical problems.

I do actually think that this is conventional wisdom, though. I think it's patriarchal wisdom, which blames women for their own supposed "lack of interest" in sex, in part because I think it's much more stinging to acknowledge what's really going on, which is "lack of interest in their partners" or "lack of sexual compatibility with their partners."

I don't know about y'all, but physical problems don't really reduce my interest in sex, they just reduce my interest in performing sex. So, if I'm feeling like crap, I might not want to put forth any effort, but I still wanna get off. Know what I'm sayin'?

Is this bizarre? Having, say, a cold doesn't really stand in the way of my wanting to have sex, it just makes me lazier. In general, I find that sex/orgasms are quite palliative for ailments of all kinds: menstrual cramps, cold/flu, headache, insomnia, anxiety, etc. These are, to be sure, minor ailments, but still. The point stands.

As Amanda Marcotte explains, "[Mary Roach] talks about how the most effective---but still, sadly ineffective---treatment for women who are having problems getting aroused or having orgasms is to work on helping them unlearn to "perform" sex for men, and start approaching sex like men do, which is something you do for fun."

So, when if you regard sex a chore, or a performance you have to do, any small amount of not feeling totally great is going to make you not want to do it. But if it's something that you do because it's nice and it feels good, well...amen to that, man.

So Far (Dammit Christ already)

Well, the relocation family, sale of a home, and entry into life with a commuting partner all for the sake of a 4/4 teaching load, it's in full swing. Myself and almost-4-ohmygod-year-old-V and sometimes Mr. V are here and without any major trips on the horizon to distract us from the fact that we live here now. I am finding this period to be particularly awkward - school hasn't started (for me or the kid), but I have some shit to do, but not a whole lot of shit honestly, any routines little V and I establish over the next few weeks will just have to be replaced by the more laborious routines of the school year, so we're just sort of floating through the days.

And I am trying to get her to stop swearing so much. I hate that this is happening (my realizing it does matter that I swear constantly, that is). I actually don't care about the actual cuss words, but I am trying to convince her to stop saying, "Oh for Christ's sake!" and "Dammit Christ already!" and "Oh Jesus hell Christ" every time she is frustrated. I mean, she is averaging 10 times a day on these phrases. We live in a religion-dominant part of the country and besides I generally don't want her to run around offending sensibilities about deities and their names and in-vain-taking. But fuck if it isn't an annoying this to explain this reasoning to a 4 yr old who has no exposure to religious paradigms. And I think my face is doing something funny when I talk about how "some words means very special things to some people, like, say, your Grandma..... Well, no they aren't magic words, really. They don't do anything.... Well, I guess Grandma might believe that the words do something, but that's because she believes that there are different rules than I do. But when we are around other people we try to be respectful of their rules even if they aren't the same as ours. It's like how Stephen can't eat peanuts so when he is at our house, we don't eat any peanut butter, see?"

That's right, the third commandment is a lot like nut allergies.

Anyway, as I gear up for the semester I am trying to be thoughtful about what my expectations are and where in my training they've come from and how they are or aren't met. All through grad school, people are always telling you that you aren't likely to end up at an institution like your graduate one for your first job. Certainly true in most cases my own included. But not in the ways I expected (which are, when the advice is given, presumed to be all about class, prestige, and the caliber of the students the existence of a grad program, etc). For example:

- I've been poking around for suggestions on babysitters and childcare alternatives for the days that little V has the sniffles but I still need to go to work and Mr. V is in commuting town. When I asked for some suggestions from my chair (who is a parent), I was strongly encouraged to always feel ok about bringing little V into campus. My chairs office will always be available (and teaching schedule opposite from mine) and there are faculty all over the floor who will be happy to entertain her for a few hours here and there; happens all the time, I was told. You can imagine how this made me feel. And holy hell it is ever a departure from my grad school.

- On the other hand, aside from the meeting at which I had to solo-represent the department (no, I am not on the payroll yet), I have basically had to set up everything that has happened so far with respect to getting in the system. I initiated and scheduled my own HR 'orientation,' I found my bookstore contact so I could push through a fast order, I tracked down the maintenance person who gives me my office key, etc. None of this bothers me because I am annoying and anal about anticipating what needs doing and liking having things in my own hands, but there is a serious lack of systemization.

I have more reflections like this, but my daughter wants to go to the beach, so I am wrapping up. Except for this - soliciting thoughts:
We used movers. Prior to engaging them, we secured 4 estimates. 3 of those were done over the phone, with my giving an estimate of room sizes adn contents, 1 involved a representative spending 90 minutes at my house making an inventory. This last estimate, which one presumes to be the most accurate, was the lowest by about $600. So we went with them. The contract we signed authorized them to charge our card on the day of move up to 110% of the estimated charge, since the real charge was to be based on weight. Any amount over 110% they have to bill us for and we have 30 days to pay.

The actual weight of the shipment ended up being 39% more than was estimated, which results in a charge that is 43% more than we were quoted. My feeling here is that I don't want to pay it. Obviously. But really, I do feel like given the time the representative spent generating the estimate and the glaring inaccuracy of it, it's hard to imagine being that far off unless she was low-balling me to get me under contract. So far my position has been to tell the company I am "very concerned" about the discrepancy and that I am "hopeful but skeptical" about our coming to an understanding. Thoughts on whether I am being an asshole here? I really don't want to pay it.

Beyond Comparison

I.

Right before I was about to meet my friends for brunch on Sunday, I skimmed over this piece, brought to me by the "most emailed" sidebar on the New York Times homepage. "Oh, great," I thought. "Women are better managers." Here we're going to get some crap science, replete with fake just-so stories that rely on very convenient stereotypes about women and men.

I was wrong. It's worse than fake science journalism. Carol Smith, who is the head of the "Elle Group" (I guess they publish Elle magazine?) just goes on record and makes brazen assertions about stuff. New York Times to the world: here, would you like some troll-bait? We've got plenty!

"[W]omen are better list-makers. They will do their to-do list. They will prioritize their to-do list. They will get through their to-do list. Maybe it’s because we do shopping lists."

Groan.

"In my experience, female bosses tend to be better managers, better advisers, mentors, rational thinkers. Men love to hear themselves talk. I’m so generalizing. I know I am. But in a couple of places I’ve worked, I would often say, "Call me 15 minutes after the meeting starts and then I’ll come," because I will have missed all the football."

Really? Women are better managers because men talk about football? I know I shouldn't be, but I'm truly flabbergasted that the Times publishes this crap. I shouldn't be surprised because it's very clear that in order to get an audience as an opinion-writer/opinion-espouser (rather than as a reporter) as a woman, in the pages of our nation's esteemed newspapers, you must do one of two things: a) bash women and talk about how they suck (see, e.g., Caitlin Flanagan and Charlotte Allen as the masters of the genre); or b) talk about how women are so much better than men at everything. Or espouse the belief that having a vagina is the most important criteria for political jobs (see, e.g. Amy Siskind). The better incarnation you can be of a straw-feminist, the more pub you'll get. Like I said, newspapers love troll-bait.

Mainstream publications want to present this false caricature of feminism, rather than actually engage with feminist ideas. They want to set up a dialogue that garners three hundred and twenty-three comments (and counting) bursting with anecdotal evidence about how this one woman boss I had was absolutely the best, and also, every woman boss I've ever had has been a complete and total fucking bitch, man.

The Smith piece isn't even an interview. The interviewer's questions are, for example "so, tell me about stuff." Since the interviewer does so little directing of the conversation, it essentially ends up as Carol Smith's opinion piece on Why Women Are Better. And it gets play, in the Sunday paper no less, because it nicely confirms pernicious stereotypes about what women executives are like: they just think women are better! The brassy bitches. The New York Times likes this. A lot.

II.

Salon hosted a feature yesterday by writer Mary Elizabeth Williams, about why guy friends are awesome. As a strong proponent of opposite-sex friendships myself, I settled in for a good read, and perhaps, I thought, a feel-good reminder of how lucky I am to have such awesome friends in my life. What did I get? Good, good..good..SEXISM!

That's what I appreciate about the men in my life -- their masculinity. Similarly, I doubt I fill a “one of the guys” role to any of them. A male friend is not a slightly hairier substitute girlfriend. If I want to get my nails done, I’ll call a lady. If I want to talk about motherhood, I’ll call another mom. My guy friends, on the other hand, will hang out for an entire evening and never once mention anything to do with feelings. If one of them forwards me an e-mail, there’s an 85 percent probability it involves "Star Wars" and zero chance it contains a quote from Maya Angelou. If a man I'm not sleeping with tells me I'm beautiful, I believe him. I have had guy friends gallantly toss me over a shoulder and carry me through big puddles. They have, when I've been blue, asked if I needed somebody’s ass kicked. My guy friends have never asked to split an appetizer because they were really trying to stay in the Zone, nor looked at me like I was a war criminal for ordering dessert. And while I’m no fan of sweeping gender generalizations, I will note anecdotally that if you’re the sort of woman who finds fart humor hilarious, you will never lack for male companionship.

Guy friends are awesome, because women are so girly and care about feelings and stuff. I'm really disappointed that Williams had to turn her otherwise great piece into an exercise in femininity-bashing. (Side note: I split appetizers with my male friends all the time. Don't people usually split appetizers when they go out to dinner?) Also, Mary Elizabeth Williams is no fan of sweeping gender generalizations, except for that she just made twenty of them. I am so tempted to enumerate the ways in which my wonderful female friends defy all the ridiculous stereotypes Williams has just proudly propounded, but I'll take a deep breath and I won't because that's not the point. What I will say is that I'm really tired of any discussion of gender turning into a fourth-grade tug-of-war contest. If women are valuable, it's not because of the ways in which they're different from the fart-joke-making icky-football-talking men. If men are valuable, it's not because of the ways in which they're different from the feelings-having perpetually-on-a-diet women (p.s. because it is totally women's fault that they are engaging in fucked-up food related behaviors in a culture that tells them every day that they're worthless unless they're thin?).

You don't need to push one down to lift the other up.

III.

On Sunday evening, I went with the lovely Kate Harding to the Sunday Night Sex Show at the Burlington, which is not so much a sex show but a sex reading where people get up and read "creative non-fiction" about sex. Kate was reading an awesome but, in my opinion, insufficiently racy story (sorry, Kate, but you know it's true) and was the evening's celebrity, and I'd been wanting to go since I heard of the thing.

It was truly awesome. The stories were fantastic. I've already started writing my own story that maybe, someday, they'll let me read. But there was one moment that caught me off guard. In between the stories, the hosts asked sex trivia questions (I got one right and won a penis-candy necklace) and answered questions submitted by the audience. Someone asked a question about licking balls--I think--and in the banter that ensued two of the female hosts were making cracks about how men's genitalia are weird and how, in general, their bodies are less attractive than women's.

I thought, even here? Even at a sex-positive event where women are reading hilarious, heart-warming, and sexy stories about fucking men? Because if I've heard this once, I've heard it a million times. From men and from women. About how women's bodies are more attractive to look at, objectively, and men's bodies are weird or "utilitarian."

It puzzles me. The reason that women's inherent superior attractiveness is regarded as a given is because of the patriarchy, people. If women are just naturally way better to look at when they're naked, doesn't it justify the metric assload of pornography, advertising, products, movies, art, comics, music videos, and strip clubs that feature their naked forms? Of course! Which is why beside the whole homophobia thing, men are deeply invested in the notion that women's bodies are inherently more attractive than men's.

Also, if women's bodies are inherently more attractive than men's bodies, straight women sure are getting a raw deal. That or they're just lacking in aesthetic sense. The notion that women's bodies are attractive and men's are not serves as a basic premise that underlies the formation of the sex class comprised of women.

As an unexamined thought, it can feel empowering, or powerful, to assert that women are better or superior in some way, But asserting that women are superior in this particular way has always struck me as bizarre, since a) it's obviously just not true; b) it's an assertion that is a core foundation of sexism, misogyny, objectification of women, sexual oppression and repression, and sexual and economic exploitation.

I like men's bodies. I think they're wonderful--aesthetically and sensually appealing. Yes, even balls. And no matter how many straight women I hear assert that men's bodies are ugly, it still won't cease to surprise me.

IV.

These dichotomies, these methods of comparison in which one gender is proclaimed superior in some aspect, at the expense of the "other" (nevermind, of course, the notion that the binary construction of gender is invalid—let's save that for another day), only whip our discourse into a frenzied loop of one-upsmanship. Can we get beyond comparison? Can we get beyond the fourth-grade tug of war? Of course, if you take the "average" woman and the "average" man relative to a set of criteria, there will be differences. But in the rush to stake out territory in particular facets of life, or skills, or roles, we marginalize feminism as just another tug on the rope.

I, for one, would much rather tug on something else.

Pseudonymous Kid's first publication

Pseudonymous Kid has implored commanded that I use my powers as editor of the very scientific journal "Bitch Ph.D." to publish his first scientific papers. Oh, and he wants comments please. Especially from scientists. Peer review is important to him.

Without further ado:

1. PK's theory of Quarks

2. Layers of Time: a Metaphor

3. Plans for an Anti-Matter-Fueled Rocket

Care about Health Care

So it's looking like those fuckers are about to ditch the public option. Please, please don't let's let them do that. It's time to make some noise.

Take a minute--literally, it should take about two minutes--to call your representative and your senator. (The linked article suggests putting their #s in your phone, which is an excellent idea--why hadn't I thought of that one?) All the person on the other end of the phone is going to do is mark you in the "for" or "against" column, so all you have to say is "I'm a constituent, and I want a real public option kept in the health care plan" or words to that effect.

Or call 1-877-264-HCAN and they'll connect you to your rep, which presumably lets the Health Care Action Network keep track of how many people are calling their representatives. But having the rep's number in your phone sounds better. Just *think* of all the fun you can have with that....

You can also--also, NOT instead--FAX your representative* or, and this really does give me the giggles, tweet your senators.

*You might want to read this run-down of the bill in question first, though.

busted: my knee and race relations

I sat in the Northwestern ER for 3 hours yesterday because I misjudged the distance between a curb, a flowerbed and a sidewalk at 2 am on Sunday morning. I fell, bounced and landed so hard on the edge of a concrete step, a divot of flesh was wedged from my knee and I barely avoided smashing my kneecap.

Some moments from the past 48 hours:

Sitting in my kitchen, both of us ready for bed, my leg in his lap, while we both look at my divoted knee, getting totally grossed out at all the bloody flesh. He looks up and says, 'It'll be ok, babe.'
I say, 'I might need stitches.'
He says, 'Do you want to go to the ER?'
I say, 'No...it can't be that bad, right?' Despite how wrong we both were, it strikes me that, other than my parents and my very close friends, no one has taken care of me before. Correction: I have not allowed anyone to take care of me.

Post-makeshift bandage, kissing in my kitchen, while the thought runs through my head that blood or no, busted knee or no, there is always room for a frolic.

The next afternoon, hobbling and exhausted after 3 hours in the ER, hearing a knock at my door and there's M- on his bike who dropped by to check on me and feeling a little, 'awww!'

And before the fall (heh), waiting for my hot dog at the Portage Theater during the monster flick triple feature, while M- runs into an acquaintance and hearing him introduce me as his girlfriend.

A milestone? Or is it a milestone when *I* start introducing him as my boyfriend, instead of 'my friend, M-'?
...
In other, more serious, news that has nothing to do with Ding's new relationship, here's a post on the Gates/Crowley Affair from the Tenured Radical about the 'danger' posed by white folks. (Thanks to SybilV's Tweet at Bitch, Ph.D.)

This whole thing has only made it obvious to me that conversations about 'race,' 'race relations', etc. are woefully uneven and won't ever get to any useful point because, frankly, we're all at different reading levels. It has also made it clear that the training I received from UCLA re: semiotics comes in handy. Because when we talk about race, we are really talking about conflicting systems of knowledge and conflicting mythologies that form the foundation of that knowledge.

There is a mythology (of history, of human interactions, of experience) that most North American white people unblinkingly buy into and which people of color (unless they have been privileged by class - and even then, only very rarely) have never had the luxury to believe.

Like, the policemen are our friends. Or, Bridgeport is a perfectly nice community to live in. Or, missionaries just want to read the bible to you and give you blankets. Things like that.

Using Pat Buchanan as an extreme example, there won't be any common ground wrt race relations until we first see the Buchanan mythology of America as intrinsically flawed, one-dimensional and, at its core, the product of white supremacist ideology. Or, if that phrasing makes one uncomfortable, then perhaps White Racial Frame is more palatable.

(What Feminism 101 does for basic feminist discourse, RacismReview does for academic studies of race/anti-racist work and is a gem of a site if you're honestly interested in anti-racist discourse.)

I remember using one of Pat Buchanan's early essays about the 'manifest destiny' of America, waay back in the early 90s, as an extreme tool to challenge the idea of 'neutral' values (as well as provide the ideological backdrop of cowboy narratives.) Values are never neutral. Some ideology, or interest, is always at play. And, frankly, since the White Racial Frame constitutes the foundation of our western culture it is, unfortunately, everywhere. Right thinking people naturally distance themselves from a Buchanan because he is so blisteringly and overtly racist (and his Southern accent doesn't help) but fail to see the how the White Racial Frame invisibly informs our culture and our experiences and, consequently, makes them complicit in disseminating it.

Which brings me back to the Gates/Crowley Affair. Listening to our national media, and the pundits - as well as the folks around here - speak so simplistically about it makes me think that, unless all parties get on the same page, 'talking about race' with most non-people of color will continue to be like speaking to a Stockholm Syndrome victim.

(In comments, please try to avoid proving me right. Really. Or moderation goes back on.)

Please please please we need a real 100% genuine public option on health care

I dunno about you, but I am already pissed that people with job-based health insurance apparently won't have the option of switching to the public plan the instant the new health care bill--if there ever *is* a new health care bill--goes into effect. Because look, folks, we have health insurance through Mr. B.'s employer. Ostensibly it is good health insurance. In fact, we have always had health insurance through Mr. B.'s employers except for three years when we lived in Canadia.

And I am here to tell you that, although I bitched a *lot* about how fucking difficult it was to get mental health care in Canada at the time, specifically talk therapy, most of that frustration cleared up once I was finally rockin' the Effexor. Which I *was* able to get. Because once I sucked it up and just went to the MD, who gave me pills instead of talking to me (which was what I thought I wanted), and we cycled through different kinds of pills and found one that worked for me, I *started feeling better*.

Score one for research-based, rather than consumer-driven, medicine.

And that was my one big frustration with the Ontario system. Which by the way, knows that mental health coverage is an ongoing problem and therefore elected officials are actually addressing the issue.

Which is more than you can say about the way it works here when your private health insurance constantly changes, forcing you to switch providers, so that your doctors have no consistent overall sense of your health situation and therefore you end up with inadequate care. Or, as I'm dealing with these days, you refuse to change providers when your employer switches plans on you every damn year, so that you end up paying for most of your visits *anyway*, so what's the point of having health insurance? Except that obviously not having it would be insane because what if someone needed to go to the ER?

Then there's the fun of having the private insurer refuse to cover procedures that their booklet says they damnwell *do* cover, and you have thirty days to jump through their hoop appeal in writing. Every. Fucking. Time. You get a filling (I shit you not).

Or the joy of the mail-order prescription service. Which I loathe. Because not only do they keep jacking their prices ($60/prescription these days--in Canadia, prescriptions were free, people), they also provide contradictory information about whether you need to mail in a hand-written prescription yourself, once your refills run out (which is what the website says) or whether you need to have the doctor fax in the new scrip from his office (which is what the paper they mail you with your last refill says). In which case, you need to call the doctor *again* and have him *rewrite* the scrip and fax it in, over and above the appointment you set up to have the new scrip written two weeks ago--so let's see, we're wasting how much of the doctor's time (and my money) to "save" money for the insurance company?

Seriously, people. Even if you don't give a shit about whether or not people who don't have jobs can get any kind of medical care short of going to the ER with a sinus infection and making the lines hours and hours longer and costing the system thousands; even if you think it's hunky-dory for the government to slash health care for poor people if there's a financial crisis, instead of treating health care as an entitlement--meaning that, even if/when we run into budget problems, figuring out how to pay for it is going to be a huge fucking national priority rather than the concern of "special interests"; even if you believe that The Free Market Solves Everything; and even if you think for some reason that it's better to have the employees of profit-minded organizations deciding when you can see a doctor rather than elected officials who are at least theoretically answerable to you; even if you yourself have "good" private insurance and lack the imagination to believe that it's possible you might ever lack it. . . .

Even if all these things are true, I'm here to tell you: public insurance sure as shit isn't any *worse* than what we've got now.

Auntie Cyclonic

No we're not the jet set

We're the old Chev-roh-let set

Naturally, its always jarring to learn your adored elder aunties are doing the humpty-dumpty.

That's right, jarring. I'm sorry. I am sorry but that's the truth and its gone unsaid for too long.

As a general scientific proposition I, of course, accept that my Aunties were canoodling and cavorting sometime around the late Pleistocene. Just like your aunties were. Your mama, too, probably. So don't come the high horse with me.

But as a genuine fact of life, you do not want to meet your Auntie's aged boyfriend shuffling along the corridor between the kitchen and Auntie's bedchamber at two in the morning bearing a bowl of strawberries, a spray can of WD40, and your newest pair of buckskin work gloves.

I know its happened to you and I wish you would have warned me about it so's I could've prepared some remarks. As it happened, there were nothing I could say as I retrieved my gloves and endured, unsmiling, the old fellow digging me in the ribs and blinking his bad eye as he says to me, Your Auntie's having trouble sleeping.

If you want us to be friends, do not wink at me on your way to my Auntie's boudoir, all right? Just don't. Pretend like I'm not even there. Cause that's what I'm doing.

Pretending that one of us is not there.

Sunday quick hits

Powerful story about 16 yr old Assiya Rafiq of Pakistan, who is seeking to prosecute men who kidnapped and raped her as well as the police who "rescued" her by continuing to beat and rape her.

****

Less powerful and poignant series of stories about this Erin Andrews scandal. Andrews, an ESPN reporter, was victimized by some peckerheads who hid a camera in some hotel room closets, recording her in various states of undress. Video becomes internet sensation. While many sites, including TMZ of all places, refuse to post the video, others, including the New York Post, happily make stills available. It's an appalling situation, obviously, made more appalling by the typical victim-blaming that commenced this week. A USA Today columnist, Christine Brennan, tweeted about the scandal this week:

Andrews incident is bad, but to add perspective: there are 100s of women sports journalists who have never had this happen to them.

and then,

Women sports journalists need to be smart and not play to the frat house. There are tons of nuts out there.

In other words, if you didn't look like such a slut, maybe people wouldn't violate your private space, videotape you getting naked, and then post the video on the internet.

****

Absurd.

I

Tiller postscript

Nice article about Tiller, his history, and the effect of his death on the anti-abortionists. Who are somehow "credited" at the end of the piece with saying he was a worthy opponent. As if abortion rights were a game.

But other than that, really, it's a good article.

Witness Reports Place Americans at Scene of Afghanistan Massacre

Read the story from Mark Benjamin at Salon. You'll recall that we covered this story earlier this month. Or at least, we covered the part about how sources have revealed that the Bush Administration stifled, strangled, and refused to allow investigations of the mass murder of up to two thousand Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan.

When the story broke on the New York Times, Obama administration officials said they had no grounds to investigate because "only foreigners were involved and the alleged killings occurred in a foreign country."

Just a couple days later, they reversed course and President Obama ordered an investigation into the killings.

He said: "And if it appears that our conduct in some way supported violations of the laws of war, then I think that, you know, we have to know about that."

Indeed.

Mark Benjamin reports today that there is eyewitness testimony indicating that our conduct did, in fact, support violations of the laws of war, because we were there. In fact, James Risen knew about these eyewitness reports when he wrote the piece for the Times a few weeks ago. But he decided not to report them:

Earlier this month, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter James Risen advanced the story, revealing that the United States had resisted any war crimes investigation into the massacre, despite learning from Dell Spry, the lead FBI agent at Guantánamo Bay following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, that many Afghan detainees were telling similar stories of a mass killing. Spry directed interviews of detainees by FBI agents at Guantánamo Bay, and compiled allegations made by the detainees.

But what the Times did not report was that many of those same detainees also alleged to Spry's interviewers that U.S. personnel were present during the massacre, a potentially explosive allegation that, if true, might further explain American resistance to a war crimes probe of the deaths. In an exclusive interview, Spry told Salon that he informed Risen about the additional allegation that U.S. forces were present. Risen confirmed to Salon that Spry told him of the allegations, but said he did not publish them, in part, because he didn't believe them.

Risen said that not only did he not believe the allegations, but his source for the allegations, Dell Spry, didn't believe them either. But what was the basis for Spry's disbelief?

He found the claims of the involvement of U.S. personnel, however, more specious, mostly because he doubted that Americans would participate in or stand by passively during a massacre. "I did not believe that then and I do not believe that now," he said about the alleged involvement of U.S. personnel.

Nothing, really, except for that he didn't want it to be true. Not because the witnesses were unreliable, or because there were holes in their accounts of American personnel being present. Not because of any fact in particular. Because he didn't think Americans were capable of standing by while a massacre was taking place?

Seriously? After all that? After all we've been through as a country, war after war, torture scandal after war crimes scandal? After being through the collective hysteria that gripped the country after 9/11, which surely gripped those soldiers who were the first sent off to fight the battle against the terrorists? He doesn't believe that they could stand there while others committed war crimes?

When we ourselves have committed war crimes?

Perhaps Mr. Spry and Mr. Risen can willfully suspend their disbelief for a few moments while they read the documents that were obtained by Salon. Documents which recount the allegations made by Afghan detainees about what happened the day of the massacre. You can read the document yourself right here. The money quote is where the detainee talks about a "big, tall, Caucasian American" who was "taking pictures of trucks and the occupants."

You know, the trucks where those occupants suffocated.

We must demand a full investigation now. It may already be too late. Evidence may have been destroyed. Witnesses need to be protected. This was 8 years ago. It's been too long already.

?Maiz o Harina?

Great questions of self-government and self-determination vex our state and our national life, even unto roiling the comments of our beloved blog.

The Republicans besiege our people and boast that they will undo us. The trolls harry my sisters and the commenters who visit us.

My own self-state is not all it should be. I know this because each morning my Auntie sets the porridge before me and, invariably, clucks to herself, oh, the state of him, thinking I am deaf as well as ruined.

My veins run and overrun with a tidal bore of radioactive sheepdip. I am swept up and I am cast down. I secrete poisons and scrape myself clean with a fine blade because everything I touch becomes soiled.

I do not sleep, entirely, neither do I wake. I am slung in a hammock woven from my cares and my carelessness and can't quite find a restful pose. I want to sleep but I don't want to sleep because there is a dream of death.

I want my little boy close to me because he is not afraid. I know its selfish but I want his bravery for myself. Everyone is afraid but he is not afraid. He is the man of the house now and he is not afraid.

The great questions of our Republic, of self-government and self-determination are not easy for me to concentrate on now. Mostly, I concentrate on growing my hair back. And not making a mess in the bathroom.

But I don't worry about the great questions of our Republic because I know Barack knows what he's doing. And I don't worry about the trolls who besiege our blog because I know my sisters will hammer them into pudding.

Here are the questions that occupy me: tortillas; corn or flour? Tortillas; heated on the burner or on the griddle? Or in the oven?

Kisses; will she still want to kiss me when she sees me like this? Will she let me kiss her?

YO MAMA

Henry Louis Gates, uppity "loud and tumultuous" negro. Because everyone knows that when black people get mad, they yell YO MAMA!

Seriously, the cop couldn't come up with a slightly more plausible line to put in the report?

(Also, poor Ross Douthat picked a bad day to publish an article about how the problem with affirmative action is that it pisses white people off.)

Wow

Some UC faculty propose "entrepreneurial solutions" to the CA budget crisis.

We suggest, more generally, that in discussions systemwide, you drop the pretence that all campuses are equal.

Yesterday I went to the ATM and read the following message after entering my PIN: "Please note: Registered warrants issued by the State of California are no longer being accepted for deposit."

Divide and conquer, and devil take the hindmost.

Via my old colleague and friend Hooker Boots.

Sure would be a pity if something were to happen....

Christy Hardin Smith asks whether GOP lawmakers endorse Randall Terry's latest veiled threat. As much as I hate the "you must denounce and repudiate" genre of politicking, I can't help wondering if anti-abortion activists do, too.

Dear Amy Siskind:

There are more than enough examples of women who are in power getting slighted, talked over, put down, and patronized to. You don't need to make them up, especially not in service of your point that because women in power are ill-treated, Sarah Palin was "brave" for resigning. On Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand:

Also on YouTube, you can catch the speech by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand as she introduces Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Well, part of it. The part before Senator Leahy rudely interrupts her and basically tells her “shut up.”

In a Senate body known for its collegial atmosphere, especially amongst those of the same political party, the senator from Vermont just could not contain himself. Sure women compose just 17 percent of the Senate, and only 2 of the 19 members of the Judiciary Committee (Al Franken is on it; but not Kirsten Gillibrand). Don't you get it, Kirsten? Women in politics, if you are seen, should not be heard. And certainly not beyond five minutes.

Huh, I thought. I didn't hear about that. And I generally like Sen. Leahy. So I watch the video:


Wow. That does look pretty bad. Although I must confess that Gillibrand's speaking style is stilted and I find it immediately off-putting. But I think: what's going on here? Was she over time? Or was Leahy just bored? Luckily, the New York Times covered the "incident":

Ms. Gillibrand was just over 6 minutes and 15 seconds into what was to have been her five-minute speech when the Senate Judiciary chairman, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, first tried to cut her off, gently rapping his gavel. But he failed to get the senator’s attention as she quoted Justice Antonin Scalia — or as she said, “Anthony Scalia” — on the subject of ethnicity and prejudice.

So she was over time. And got cut off. This is evidence of the "silencing" of women? I guess I should have know. Amy Siskind is a professional PUMA.

Call me an asshole, but the fact that Siskind focused on Gillibrand's (justified) getting cut off, rather than the four days of sexist and racist attacks on Judge Sotomayor that they were a miniscule part of, just confirms my suspicions that PUMAS are all about the white ladies.

Love

Progress, of a sort

Clarence Thomas was nominated and confirmed because he was adamant that not only was his race irrelevant, it was (if anything) something he had to actively counter. At least Sotomayor gets to say that it's neutral.

That said, it's really pretty astonishing how much concern the committee is exhibiting to make sure that the aggrieved firefighters get to have their say. I don't remember anyone who got a ruling they didn't like from oh, say, Roberts, getting a chance to testify at his hearing. But I guess it's not a big deal when litigants feel hard done by if their judge is a white guy--after all, it's his natural job to make decisions about people lower in the hierarchy.

(Also, what's with the presumption that the litigants studied hard but what--the black men who didn't pass the test didn't?)

Buchanan to GOP: Be More Racist

It's hilarious that conservatives like to complain about MSNBC being a horrible liberal channel when every time I turn the damn thing on, I have to see Pat Buchanan's ugly mug. This is the guy who just penned a piece arguing that Republicans need to be more, not less racist, to ensure that their party doesn't go the way of the dodo. First, he recounts the demographics:

In 2008, Hispanics, according to the latest figures, were 7.4 percent of the total vote. White folks were 74 percent, 10 times as large. Adding just 1 percent to the white vote is thus the same as adding 10 percent to the candidate's Hispanic vote.

If John McCain, instead of getting 55 percent of the white vote, got the 58 percent George W. Bush got in 2004, that would have had the same impact as lifting his share of the Hispanic vote from 32 percent to 62 percent.

Apparently, the reason John McCain didn't win the election is because he wasn't racist enough:

Why did McCain fail to win the white conservative Democrats Hillary Clinton swept in the primaries? He never addressed or cared about their issues.

These are the folks whose jobs have been outsourced to China and Asia, who pay the price of affirmative action when their sons and daughters are pushed aside to make room for the Sonia Sotomayors. These are the folks who want the borders secured and the illegals sent back.

Had McCain been willing to drape Jeremiah Wright around the neck of Barack Obama, as Lee Atwater draped Willie Horton around the neck of Michael Dukakis, the mainstream media might have howled.

And McCain might be president.

Obviously, this point of view is extremely odious. Pat Buchanan has an even lower opinion of white people than the opinion he attributes to the horrible brown people who are trying to take over. He thinks that white people's "issues" are that they don't like black and brown people. Nevermind the fact that he just compared Jeremiah Wright to a convicted murderer (aren't all black people criminals?).

But Matthew Yglesias says that even though what Buchanan's proposing is offensive and telling, it's not actually wrong: being more racist might give the Republicans some additional leverage. He says:

Consequently states with small white populations like Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi can be solid GOP territory. Under the circumstances, it’s not entirely crazy for Republicans to believe that the right way to respond to shifting American demographics is by just trying to amp-up the level of racial anxiety in the shrinking white majority.

Both Yglesias and Buchanan are forgetting a very important point about American politics: we don't have national elections. So even if you can add ten percent to the number of white people who vote Republican in Alabama and Mississippi, that's not going to win you more elections, because Republicans already win those states.

I hate to break it to Pat Buchanan, but the racists already vote Republican. Meanwhile, there are a lot of states where racial anxiety is lower than in the south, and being more racist isn't necessarily going to win you more votes from white people. It might actually turn them off. Because again, Pat Buchanan doesn't seem to understand that not all white people are inveterate racists who will vote on the basis of race. Furthermore, there are states with significant Latino populations where Latinos comprise far, far more than 7% of the population and can have a serious impact on electoral outcomes. Buchanan's argument seems to be "Latinos are only 7%! Fuck 'em!" But in making that argument, he reveals himself to be not only a racist, but getting a bit senile, since he seems to forget about that old electoral college we've got.

While we're talking about great women

Hilzoy is retiring from blogging.

Her blogging has been absolutely the best I have seen. I raise a virtual glass in her honor.

Parental Notification Law May Finally Take Effect In Illinois

Anti-abortion lawmakers in Illinois have been trying to get a parental notification law up and running for the last twenty-five years or so. Today, thanks to a decision from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, it looks like they'll finally get their wish.

As a pro-choice person, lawyer, and probable future reproductive rights advocate, this issue is near and dear to my heart and mind. In fact, parental notification laws and their attendant bypass provisions were actually the thing that got me interested in going to law school in the first place, way back in 2001. When I found out there were entire organizations dedicated to providing free counsel to minors seeking judicial bypass, I started to realize how important lawyers can be not just in achieving favorable results in landmark litigation, but in helping the everyday lives of ordinary people.

Sadly, I think the Seventh Circuit is probably right here, and their decision is demanded by Supreme Court precedent on this issue. Let's not forget that the Supreme Court has multiple times upheld not just parental notification laws, but parental consent laws, of which this is not one. It's tempting to vilify the judges who make these decisions, but such vilification is often not justified.

The decision is here. But I've read it for you, which is good for you, because it's long and complicated.

The first parental notification law was passed in 1983. It was held unconstitutional because it didn't ensure minors' right to anonymity or provide for an expedited appeal process. So the Illinois Supreme Court promulgated rules that were supposed to address that deficiency, but again, courts held that it wasn't good enough. All this time, there is an injunction barring enforcement of the law. After years and years of legal wrangling, anti-abortion lawmakers pass another law, the Parental Notification Act of 1995. Again, there is an injunction barring implementation of the law until the Illinois Supreme Court created and passed rules making sure that the judicial bypass system would work properly. The Illinois Supreme Court said, hey, we're not going to do that. No rule promulgation for you! So the law couldn't go into effect.

That's the part I'm confused about--I don't know why the Illinois Supreme Court refused to promulgate the rules. But at some point, they change their mind, and passed rule 303(a) in 2006, which is titled "Expedited and Confidential Proceedings Under the Parental Notification of Abortion Act." This rule was supposed to address the hurdles that the original 1983 law had faced and dissolve those barriers to implementation.

The rule is this: courts have to rule on the petition within 48 hours of the time the petition for a bypass is filed. If the petition is denied, the minor gets an expedited appeal to the appropriate Appellate court, which has to be ruled on within three business days of receiving all the materials. If the minor requests an attorney, the appellate court has to appoint one. Everything up to this point is confidential.

So, these are the rules governing the courts who have to implement the act's bypass provision, which states that minors shall be granted judicial bypass of the law if:

(1) that the minor or incompetent person is sufficiently
mature and well enough informed to
decide intelligently whether to have an abortion, or
(2) that notification under Section 15 of this Act
would not be in the best interests of the minor or
incompetent person.

Also, in case you're wondering about situations where it's a medical emergency or the minor is a victim of abuse by the people who are supposed to be notified, the Act provides that the doctor can just obtain a written statement from the minor about the abuse and the minor doesn't have to go to court to obtain a waiver.

All in all, I'd say that if you were going to have a parental notification law, these provisions are pretty good ones to have to ensure that waiver is possible.

But my question is: why? Why all this? Can you imagine how much money and time has been spent trying to get this law passed and get it enforced? Millions of dollars. How much legal wrangling over what precise conditions must apply for the law to be waived, or for the doctor to just do what is, in effect, an in-house waiver without going to the courts?

And now it's going to cost the state even more money. Even more time. For courts to have to drop everything and decide on a waiver petition right away. For appellate courts to hear the appeals immediately. For doctors to complete the voluminous paperwork showing that they notified the appropriate parties. For doctors to have to defend against allegations that they didn't properly notify parties. For legal services organizations to represent minors who need abortions. For the state to appoint counsel to represent those minors who can't find counsel of their own. This is after twenty-five years of litigation. Where every single dime that goes to represent the defendants, who are the state's attorneys of Illinois, has come out of state coffers.

Why? All so parents can get a call or a letter from a doctor saying that their daughter is going to have an abortion. Not even to obtain the parents' consent. Just to make it way more of a pain in the ass for minors to obtain an abortion. To keep them scared. To keep us all scared.

If the law worked exactly as it's supposed to, it seems kind of pointless. No, the law is much more than just a phone call or a letter. It is a barrier. A big barrier. It means that poor teens, and teens in rural areas, and teens with no form of transportation, and teens who don't understand the legal system (which—surprise!!—is all of them) are fucked. It means that you can't just make an appointment with a clinic in Chicago and get your one friend with reliable transportation to drive you up from Decatur or wherever and hope for the best. It means that not only do you have to get up the courage to call an abortion clinic, you have to get up the courage to call a lawyer, or lawyers, or a courthouse, or you have to tell your doctor that you're being abused by your mother/father/stepfather/whatever which, by the way, they are legally required to report to law enforcement once the abortion is over.

Think about that and tell me that this isn't about punishing women who have the gall to have sex.

I wish I could say that the Seventh Circuit is wrong and that they'll be reversed on appeal, but I don't think they will. Their ruling is right in line with Supreme Court precedent.

I don't care whether parental notification laws are constitutional. If they are, then the constitution's wrong. Either way, the people who write, and vote for, and pass these laws are assholes who want to punish women. Fuck 'em.

Asking, Telling

The intrepid Jason Jones brings to my attention a rather mind blowing and yet utterly banal Event in Higher Education: Forth Hays University (Kansas) is outsourcing it's gen-ed classes. (that link in NSF anyone at all sensitive about web design or terribly cluttered ad spaces). Jason calls the development a 'harbinger of doom,' with which I agree, but he also wonders who is staffing the external companies? If it is, as Jason notes, unemployable academics, well, hows about that?

The phenomenon reminds me of a Chronicle piece from last week that compared contingent labor in academia to a kind of 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' paradigm. I felt, still feel, a little squeamish about that analogy for a number of reasons, but on some basic structural level it does seem right. The disenfranchisement is everyone's problem, it does impact the fulltime faculty and the students, everyone is done a disservice by the 'like it or lump it' approach.

It wasn't until my last year at my grad school that I really started to notice the disparity between the faces and voices I observed coming from classrooms and the offices with nameplates. As I start this new job, I am determined to be aware of the contingent labor in my department (and there's a lot). I'm not naive enough to think a first-yr Ass Prof can do anything about the situation, but the very least I can do is not be willfully ignorant. I do know the pay is atrocious, even by adjunct standards (around $1200/class). I have to wonder, at what point exactly do I feel brave/culpable enough to start indicting myself for being a part of such a set-up?

*****
I've moved, btw. We are getting settled, Mr. V is commuting, my houseplants are adjusting. Little V and I, we go back and forth on how much we enjoy having *so* much time together. Mostly back, but occasionally forth. This morning, for example, I am reflecting on how nice it is that she is oblivious by my spending my morning coffee and email naked, whereas Mr. V is always 'distracted' by such things.

Having been in the new place for around a week, we felt it a good time to leave for two weeks. I'll be visiting and tolerating family and in-laws starting tomorrow, so infrequently popping in.

Bringing down property values in a neighborhood that's hopefully not near you

We have shipped Pseudonymous Kid off to Grandpa's for a week, and Mr. B. has taken a week off work. Instead of running off to the Yucatan, as we ought, we are Working On The House. Extra bonus activity: scaring the neighbors by making what was a cute, if fussy and old-fashioned, yard begin to look like absolute hell.

Step one: collect a big pile of boxes. These have been accumulating in the front yard for a couple weeks now.

Step two: knock boxes down, make sure and strip all the tape off (many of these boxes have been used for several moves, i.e., lots of tape). Start pulling out scalloped brick border edging. Weed-whack the grass as short as possible. Start laying down cardboard. Anchor it occasionally with scalloped brick edge pieces. Finish as the sun is going down.

Step three: the next day, do the other half of the yard. Run out of boxes. Start using newspaper and/or packing paper from boxes, which involves smoothing each individual sheet out and then counting a dozen sheets. Be sure and anchor each individual pile as you go so it doesn't blow all over the yard. Explain to three different neighbors who stop by what you're doing. Get about three-quarters of the way done, then quit out of exhaustion.

Step four: Day three of actual work. Collect extra boxes from a friend who, on seeing the above picture, decided that the newspaper looked *way* too godawful and volunteered some of her own boxes. Finish covering grass. Call tree-trimming company to deliver mulch; they don't call back. Go to Lowe's with Mr. B. to buy a second grinder, he having broken the first one yesterday trying to saw down the fence.

Step five: let Mr. B. saw through fence pieces. Note burning; be careful about flying sparks. Carry heavy fence pieces to side of house, discuss how to deal with anchor posts which seem to be cemented into the ground. Decide that probably cutting them as close to the ground as possible, then putting concrete on top, is probably the most do-able approach. Find sprinkler head next to one post; worry about how to saw post without sawing sprinkler head. Find sprinkler tube in ground, broken in half. Yank it out. Decide sprinkler head is obviously not hooked up. Yank it out. Watch water pool in hole. Go to turn water main off, discover second handle nearby that obviously controls sprinkler setup. Try to turn that off, but instead turn it out. Hear sound of water shooting up under cardboard. Shout ACK and turn sprinklers back off. Decide pooling water was just from leftover water in pipes. Decide that sprinkler system needs to be disconnected and capped. Continue destroying fence.

Linky Monday: from the sublime to the banal

1. The President Obama Orders National Security Team To Investigate Dasht-e-Leili Massacre and Alleged Cover-Up. It took a little prodding, but still, good. See Emptywheel for some interesting discussion of how that decision got made.

2. Speaking of needing prodding, apparently Eric Holder is considering investigating Bush-era war crimes. (The two stories--the Afghanistan investigation and possible war crimes investigations--aren't unrelated, by the way.) According to Glenn Greenwald, the NYT and WSJ differ on whether Holder is likely to do a full investigation including the DoJ and possibly the White House, or will limit his inquiries to the immediate CIA folks on the ground. FDL helpfully provides a petition you can use to urge a full investigation.

3. If you get bored with Sotomayor, or prefer to skip the self-serving introductory speeches, you can watch the Health Care Reform Mark-Up at the link.

4. Emily's List now has its own blog. Cool.

5. Ann Althouse, stupid as ever, seems to think that my comment about this uncharacteristically banal post over at EotaW is somehow not insulting her as well as the post's author. Just so the record's clear, Ann: I'm accusing Scott of being *almost* as boring and idiotic as you are everyday. (Also for the record: it's fucking obvious that Obama isn't paying attention to the young woman in the red dress. NOT THAT ANYONE SHOULD GIVE A SHIT.) Luckily some of her commenters get it.

Sotomonday

Good morning! The Sotomayor confirmation hearings have started. I am incredibly excited, because, as we all know, she's obviously going to be confirmed, and I think she's awesome. Also, it gives the Republicans a chance to show what they're really made of, which is to say, racist as hell. I do wish that I were in a coffee shop with a croissant and an east-coast latte with my laptop, watching the hearings. And liveblogging. Alas, I have to work. Legal drudgery waits for no man, woman, or wise Latina.

But! I bring you links. Adam Serwer has the definitive preview of the cast of characters and what they're likely to say. He's also liveblogging the thing, so keep an eye on his blog. His latest post is about how Sen. Leahy, in his opening remarks, is doing a bit of the "reclaim the territory of Real Americans" gambit I was complaining about just the other day. Also, Jeff Sessions comes out predictably swinging to call Sotomayor a racist.

Since you'll be undoubtedly hearing a lot how judges should be "umpires" today, here's a good NYT piece analyzing the analogy. While you're over there, here's a roundup of NYT writers who cover the Court talking about "what to watch for." And here's a more basic primer.

Finally, this video put out by the Women's Media Center showcases the racist and sexist nonsense we've seen on TV about Sotomayor so far. Watch it and brace yourself for a whole week of this crap.



UPDATE: If you're on Twitter, @AdamSerwer and @anamariecox are live-tweeting this thing with insights, links, and funny. Any other good people I should follow who are watching? Tell us in comments.

Mass murder in Afghanistan II

update: new code, so if you've copied or reposted, please correct.

Soy Puro Americano

The lads took me to Chimayo yesterday. That's a photo of El Santuario de Chimayo.

In a room behind the altar is a pocito, a little well full of mud. Sacred mud. Miraculous mud. Curing mud.

So they say, anyway. I don't hold with mud, myself, but people come from all over the world to get a little jar of the damp earth. No, really.

There's a pole shed nearby packed with the artifacts of the saved and cured. Crutches and wheelchairs and walkers and braces and slings and every kind of medical mangle you can think of. All flotsam and jetsam jettisoned by the believers who came here and were cured or believe they were cured by the Black Christ, Our Lord of Esquipulas.

So, what the hell, you know? Couldn't hurt. The lads think I look a little peaked and don't see the difference between doctors pouring bags of chemicals into me or pilgrims smearing mud on me. They could have a point. Even though I don't believe in mud.

But it was good just to get out of the damned house. And its a beautiful drive. Through the Sangre de Cristos. Down el Camino Real.

And Chimayo is famous for its retablos; panels, sometimes screens, usually hammered out of tin, with images of the saints, the Madonna, scenes from the Scriptures, that sort of thing. I collect retablos as art so its fun to look around the marketplace to see what is on offer in the way of santos and pietas.

And there's some great dining and drinking between here and Chimayo. Every village has a cantina and in the high summer, the doors are propped open and the juke is blowing up.
Presently, I'm restricted to iced tea but I don't mind.

OK, that's bullshit. I do mind. Sipping from a jarful of steeped leaves while lounging in the placita is not my idea of the good life.

Still its life, within the meaning of the act. The sun is warm on my face. The rough legged hawk floats over the portero. Volcanic peaks rocket up from the shimmering desert. My friends are near and solicitous to the point of embarassment.

I bite the crusty sopapilla. Honey runs down my chin.

We are seated at a long trestle. A beautiful woman, the owner of the cantina, sits with us, mashing avocados and chopping chimayo chiles for our guacamole. She wipes my chin like I'm an old man.

She touches the bandana covering my unhaired head and tells me that her chiles will grow the hair back stiff and black. She tells me her chiles will stiffen anything.

I believe in her chiles.

Bush Administration Strangled Investigations of Mass Murder in Afghanistan

The New York Times reports today that on at least three separate occasions, members of the Bush administration foiled attempts to investigate a mass killing, and dumping of thousands of bodies in a mass grave, that happened in Afghanistan in 2001.

The warlord responsible for the murders—which number up to two thousand and happened when Taliban fighters taken prisoner by the Northern Alliance were packed into shipping containers for a trip across Afghanistan, in which they suffocated and died—is Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum.

Dostum, in addition to being a powerful warlord, was on the payroll of the CIA in 2001, when these killings—both by suffocation and gunfire—and subsequent dumping of the bodies at a mass grave occurred.

This mass killing isn't itself the biggest news; the New York Times reported on it in 2002.

What is news is that various arms of the United States government attempted to launch investigations into the incident, which were stifled by the administration:

American officials had been reluctant to pursue an investigation — sought by officials from the F.B.I., the State Department, the Red Cross and human rights groups — because the warlord, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, was on the payroll of the C.I.A. and his militia worked closely with United States Special Forces in 2001, several officials said. They said the United States also worried about undermining the American-supported government of President Hamid Karzai, in which General Dostum has served as a defense official.

Physicians for Human Rights, which has a press release here, has been trying to launch an investigation of this horrifying atrocity for years:

Physicians for Human Rights went to investigate inhumane conditions at a prison in northern Afghanistan, but what we found was much worse,” stated Susannah Sirkin, PHR Deputy Director. Our researchers documented an apparent mass grave site with reportedly thousands of bodies of captured prisoners who were suffocated to death in trucks. That was 2002; seven years later, we still seek answers about what exactly happened and who was involved.

Where is this General Dostum now? Why, he's serving in a government post, as military chief of staff to President Hamid Karzai. Who, again, is supposed to be an American ally. As I understand it, Dostum has been re-appointed to his government post, but has not yet returned to Afghanistan from exile in Turkey. According to the NYT article, State Dept. officials have been "quietly tried to thwart General Dostum’s reappointment."

Not only was Dostum on the CIA payroll at the time this atrocity occurred, the forces under his control were operating jointly with American forces. In all likelihood, there were many American witnesses to what happened. But did the government fully investigate this angle?

Pentagon spokesmen have said that the United States Central Command conducted an “informal inquiry,” questioning Special Forces personnel members who worked with General Dostum if they knew of a mass-killing by his forces. When they said they did not, the inquiry went no further.

Sounds like a very thorough investigation. Meanwhile, it appears that the grave site has been tampered with and perhaps even moved. The grave site has not been exhumed and, apart from 3 autopsies done by Physicians for Human Rights under UN auspices, there has been no investigation permitted.

This happened under our watch, as a direct result of the invasion we launched and the forces we backed with military and financial support. But every time someone wanted to investigate, it was always "ooh, that's tricky...I dunno." Until it magically went away.

So far, the response from the Obama administration seems non-committal. State Department officials "suggested that the administration might not be hostile to an inquiry."

That's not good enough. Justice for the thousands of people suffocated and killed in shipping containers partially on our dime, by forces led by people we paid, isn't too much to ask.

Sign the Petition to Attorney General Eric Holder here.

Talkin' Bout Real

I have something to get off my chest. I would be blissfully happy if I never have to hear the phrase "Real Americans" again. There's been a lot of talk about "Real Americans," both implicitly and explicitly, on this blog and almost every other blog I've been reading this week. Not to mention the newspapers. Reading it all day after day, taking it in, I've seen a common thread everywhere that I'm going to try and delicately extract. And then eviscerate.

(I know I'm mixing my metaphors).

It all sort of started with Douthat's column in the New York Times last Sunday about Sarah Palin. Douthat argued that the failure of Sarah Palin's political career was a failure of the "democratic ideal," which is apparently that "anyone can grow up to be a success story without going to Columbia or Harvard." I don't know if I can make a pithy statement about what the "democratic ideal" is, but whatever it is, it sure as hell ain't that. Yglesias pointed out why Douthat's asserted class divide didn't make sense (with bonus charts!).

Douthat's view of class is an incredibly simplistic one where the name of your Alma Mater is apparently what matters most. Where you can position Barack Obama in a higher class than Sarah Palin because of where he went to school. Sure, education matters. But Douthat wants to think it matters the most because, like many east coast conservatives--surprise!--he's the recipient of an Ivy League education himself. Hell, he parlayed his experience at Harvard into a whole book. But by his own description, then, Douthat is not himself a Real American, because the Real Americans are the ones who didn't go to college went to community college went to college in Idaho.

Liberals have tried to take back the Real American label from the Republican rhetoric of white populism, and I'm sorry to break it to you guys, but we failed. We'll continue to fail. I objected to Taddy's post the other day which talked about Real Americans. As long as we're bickering over who is and who is not Real Americans, we're fucked. Because the rhetorical history of "Real Americans" is white people. It has always been a dog whistle for talking about white people, and we can not change it into a dog whistle for talking about something other than white people. What else is it? Real Americans = people? No, it is far too loaded to be something as simple as that.

Besides, even if we could construct something non-racist about what constitutes a "Real American," it would inevitably exclude people who are not actually Americans. What about the people who just immigrated? What about people with dual citizenship? Our government should stand for and protect all the people living in this country.

If you make an assertion about what a "Real American" is, you are implicitly making an assertion that there is a group of people who are not "Real Americans." And you're wrong. I don't care who it is. People with stable jobs, rich people, white people, people who drink lattes, people who live in New York City, people who have no education, people with every degree in the book, unemployed people, welders, college professors, and CEOs. Even Sarah Palin. All real Americans.

Any concept you can envision about what a Real American is, unless you mean it to mean "every single person in this country" (in which case it's a pretty meaningless term) is going to leave out huge swaths of people that you actually might give a shit about.

I want to draw your attention to two particularly excellent posts on this subject. The first is from Ta-Nehisi Coates. You've got to read the whole thing, because it's great, but this part is particularly excellent:

For most of this country's history, being black and brilliant was not something that set you a part from other black people--it was something that could get you killed by white people. A study of this country's history reveals to not be hyperbole. This notion that white people of medium talents could rise to rule the world was not simply "the democratic ideal," it was the tyranny of our lives--with depressing, disastrous effects. The idea that mediocre white people could rise to incredible levels of power was not so much an ideal for us--it was the whole point of white supremacy.

So you can see here that the idea that average folk should be able to rise to the presidency isn't just weird and insidious, it's actually racist.

The second post comes from Amanda Marcotte, writing from a totally different perspective than Coates, but with some great observations about how white populism isn't even really about white populism. It's not even about identifying with middle-class white people in the South, because if you are a middle class white person in the south and you are a feminist, or a liberal, or you think being gay is okay, you're automatically disqualified. "Real Americans" really means "other people who are also bigots." She says:

I know how to two-step, and can probably sing every word to "The Chair". I’ve shot beer cans off fences, slept on trampolines, and I’ve had friends that don’t have indoor flushable toilets. I use the phrase “pepper belly” without a trace of irony. I was born in Texas, and have lived my whole life in Texas, and the two months I spent in small town Virginia drove me nuts in no small part because I thought most people put on too many airs. [...]

Despite possessing all the stated markers for being a member of the salt-of-the-earth tribe, I doubt Douthat would consider me a member like he does Sarah Palin, even though I think I beat her on many counts, including the fact that neither my parents nor some of my exes even have college degrees. [...]

The reason is obvious, if politely unstated: I’m not in because I’m not a believer in sexism, racism, or American imperialism. I don’t believe white people are better than everyone else, I don’t think that it’s such a great idea to force women to bear children against their will, and I don’t rally round the flag when some politician starts coming up with excuses to invade another country to steal their resources and/or start a libertarian experiment.

You should read the whole thing; it's really great. Read it and tell me that this fetishization of middle America or red states or salt-of-the-earth-people or Average Americans or, finally, Real Americans is not anything but a lie. It is a political tactic used to rally other people who are 1) white 2) afraid that giving rights to anyone who's not white/male/heterosexual might mean that mediocre people don't get a pass anymore just because they look like Everyman.

A lot of people call this identity politics. But is isn't really identity politics. For a long time, I instinctively got my back up every time I heard that phrase, because it's got very negative connotations. Identity politics is bad, right? Republicans say that the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor was "identity politics" because she wouldn't have been nominated if she weren't a Puerto Rican woman. Same with Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and and and.

Usually our response, as non-bigots is "no, [the person] is very smart and has accomplished this and this and this and this." But I propose another response:

So what?

Would Sotomayor have been nominated if she weren't a Puerto Rican woman? Probably not. If Sonia Sotomayor's name was really Joseph Miller and she was a white guy? No. Because Barack Obama was specifically looking for a highly qualified female judge, and if he could get it a highly qualified female judge of color, to put on the bench. And that's okay.

Let me repeat it: that's okay. Because it is good to have diversity on the court. It is good for the court itself. It is good for the decisions that that court hands down. It is good for the people who share a gender and/or ethnic identity with that person. This is what they mean when they talk about identity politics: picking someone because of who they are, what they look like, where they grew up. That's not only okay, it's essential in a multi-cultural society like the one we have. Because whites get to have one of their own on the court. Hell, they get to have eight of their own. Latino(a)s say, well, we want one of our own, too. And they should get it, if not all the time, at least once in a while, don't you think?

Identity politics shouldn't be a dirty word. I want there to be some identity politics. I want for African-Americans, and Latinos, and Asians, and gays and lesbians and people with disabilities to get one of their own up there sometimes. If people aren't qualified, don't pick 'em. It should be plain to everyone by now that there's more than one qualified person for any job, and you can't always just pick the best person. There's rarely any obvious best. So, sometimes, one of the things you consider in who you pick among all the people who have crossed the qualification threshold is race or gender or ethnicity or sexual orientation or disability.

And that's okay. That's good.

The "Real Americans" nonsense that the Republicans trot out every time there's an election and, well, any time they open their mouths, that's not identity politics. Because as Marcotte so ably argued, how you look and where you're from doesn't make you part of the tribe. It's whether you're a bigot (but you also have to be white/not-urban/Christian too).

So let's just stop with the those people aren't Real Americans bit. Even if the those people are racist populist assholes. Just like when it precedes any other noun, "real" just serves as a way to us-and-them. Just like "real women have curves!" doesn't do anything to fight the absurd cultural beauty standards we inflict on women (people without curves aren't real women?), "real Americans" only serves to divide us. And we are divided, yes. But real and not-real isn't where the division lies. It's fear of change against embracing change. It's exclusion against inclusion. It's bigotry against tolerance. It's hate against love.

I haven't forgotten that there are Real Things to write about

But like I said, Dad's visiting.

So in the meantime, which is more embarrassingly non-news-worthy: Palin or MJ?

Update: That said, dear god.

Herself Quits

Can we now have an end to the happy horseshit put about by the millionaires in the GOP and their millionaire stooges in the barking media about how Sarah Palin stands for and understands about real Americans? Real working class Americans? Real working class Americans who work?

Cause real Americans who work are losing their work. They are losing their jobs. Or taking pay cuts to keep their jobs. Or relocating to keep their jobs. Or making concessions on benefits. And overtime. And work rules. And pensions. And 401K's. And still they're losing their jobs.

Real Americans are having a hell of a time. Real Americans are not quitting their jobs.

Sarah Palin has a job. Her job is guaranteed for another 18 months. Her job pays $125,000 a year. It comes with full benefits. It comes with a generous per diem. It comes with a house. It comes with a car. And a driver. And a security detail.

The county where I spent the winter has an unemployment rate of 16.3% and a median household income of $32,000. The county where I live has an unemployment rate of 15.4% and a median household income of $27,000. Sarah Palin's job would support three or four households where I come from.

But Sarah Palin is not happy in her work. She's not happy in her well paid job. She's not happy in the job she asked Alaskans to hire her to do. The job she promised Alaskans she would do for four years. Cause its a hard job. Its a demanding job. Its a job that draws a lot of criticism and scrutiny.

So she's quitting her job.

Real Americans who work for a living are glad to have a job now. They do not quit their jobs. Not now. Not in the middle of the Great Recession. The Great Republican Recession.

Real Americans are hanging on to their jobs like grim death. Cause they have kids to feed and bills to pay. Real Americans put up with just about any bullshit on the job cause they need their job.

If you don't understand that, you don't understand real Americans. If you don't understand the terror of joblessness that's stalking real Americans, then you don't understand real Americans.

I'm talking to you, Sarah Palin. And I'm talking to the millionaire fools in the barking media.

Meanwhile

This is pretty cool.

So my dad's visiting, which means light blogging on my end for a couple days while Dad tells me about the meth lab across the street from his house, where Pseudonymous Kid will be for the next two weeks (greaaaat) and his various gardening projects and whatever else pops into his head. We've already discussed religion (he gave me a dirty look when I explained to PK that intercessions are prayers that "people who believe in god" make, as a clarification to Dad's explanation that they're just "asking for help) and politics (where we're more or less on the same page). I've gotten irritated by his insisting on second-guessing my garden plans, and he's gotten irritated by my correcting his mispronunciation of "melamine" ("melmac"? Turns out that Melmac was a brand name a jillion years ago).

So you know, par for the course for your average parental visit.

calling all brainiac word people

Is not today the perfect day for lounging around doing puzzles?

Blog buddy Orange Tangerine wrote today's NYT crossword. So if you don't have the NYT in hand, run out and get one (or better yet, ask someone else to do it for you). If your near and dear are lazy ingrates, you can surf over to the NYT crossword site, which (speaking of ingrates) costs money. But then apparently a month's worth of access costs .95 more than a hard copy of the NYT anyway, so.

I'm not smart enough to even tackle the thing, but I'll bet a few people reading here are. Especially if you've read her book. You guys might also wanna follow her crossword blog.

Happy 4th

I heart the 4th. Summer weather, outside food, and fireworks. It doesn't get any better.

Enjoy.

IOU

Hi, everybody. We're fucked. Just wanted you all to know that.

OTOH, it really is beautiful weather outside. And if you're inclined to want to get out into it and skip reading a longish blog post, then I recommend just scrolling to the bottom and marking the five numbered posts, which I didn't write, for reading later.

I have been not-blogging the CA budget crisis because really, what is there to say? The state is generally agreed to be ungovernable, so much so that I'm ashamed to say I've done basically nothing calling-representatives-wise about any of it. It sucks that the parks are going to be closed,* and I understand the damage that'll do, but I also know that the money situation is acute and it's gotta give somewhere. Ditto cuts to education funding, health insurance for the poor, broader social services, and all the rest of it. So I haven't bothered to do anything other than shrug my shoulders and wonder what the long-term effects are going to be.

My uninformed predictions are that as state workers continue to take huge pay cuts (currently at 14%; 8%, I understand, for University of CA faculty), teachers don't get re-hired (including, I predict, the teacher Pseudonymous Kid was to have next year, which is a pity because she has a ton of energy and did some awesome stuff with her class this year and because I like her a lot), and state contractors have to start laying people off, we'll see more people being unable to pay their mortgages, hence foreclosures, hence an even further drop in real estate prices, hence more people ending up underwater and more businesses shutting their doors, hence even further drops in state revenue. Catch-22.

And of course, even if state workers continue working for free because there is already too much work and not enough staffing, the demand for state services will only increase. It's not hyperbolic to say that there will certainly be people who will die because of all this: nearly one million children will lose health coverage (.pdf), 10% of the state's spending on child welfare will go (.pdf),** the elderly are losing health care services.

So, given that I believe all this but haven't gone up to Sacramento this summer to protest or lobby, am I part of the problem? You know, I'm really not buying that I, or that "Californians" as a group, are responsible for this bullshit. Yes, the voters have passed a lot of bullshit propositions without clearly understanding their impact on budgeting and running the state--but come on, you can't honestly expect individual voters to be experts in state funding.

Yes, we passed (among other things) Prop 13, which has crippled our revenue stream for the past forty years, and people continue to resist the idea of repealing it because we feel that our property taxes are too high. But ironically (and almost certainly intentionally on Jarvis's part) we're right: the biggest effect of Prop 13 is that corporate real estate taxes are astonishingly low and individual homeowners' property taxes are actually higher, because corporations hold onto property much longer than individuals do. But again, it's not really reasonable to expect individuals to think about that sort of thing, since the property taxes the voters have to deal with are the ones on their homes. (Which by the way, the lower real estate prices get, the lower the property tax rate that gets locked in by anyone buying now--whether homeowners or corporations--another hidden effect of the crisis that's going to have repercussions for years to come.)

And yes, an even worse problem is that we--or rather our legislators--can't pass a budget without a 2/3rds majority, *and* they're required to balance the budget. Both of which, again, sound like good ideas if you don't know a lot about state funding issues: after all, a 2/3rds majority suggests that any budget that gets passed will be broadly acceptable to the majority of the voters who elected the legislators, right? And a balanced budget always sounds like a good, responsible idea. Or so one would imagine.

But we have these budget crises over and over and over again. It's not surprising, then, that the voters feel like "the government" is broken (it is) and that somehow the legislators are to blame (they're not, really, despite the fact that the Republicans are being intransigent assholes). Or that this feeling leads to our voting for even *more* propositions that tie the legislature's hands, or voting against necessary suspensions of mandates, even though passing them might have helped. Or that it buttresses both anti-government reactionaries and passive bystanders.

It's some catch, that Catch-22.

The only solution that will work, some say, is a constitutional convention to rewrite some of those rules. I think this is probably right. Not that there's any guarantee that a new constitution would be better, and god knows the fear that it might be worse is terrifying.

If you're still reading, and have any interest in understanding how CA's legislature works and what the entrenched problems are, I strongly recommend the CA budget-related posts over at the Edge of the American West. Which I provide here in chronological order (that is, reverse blog order) for your reading . . . pleasure.

1. Decline and Fall
2. "This State is Days Away from a Budget Collapse" (note that this was written back in February)
3. Partisanship and Budget Crises (This might be the most interesting for those who are interested in partisanship and governance. It also makes a good case that Prop 13, which most of us like to say is *the* biggest problem in CA, isn't.)
4. How We Got Here: Thoughts on the State of California
5. California's Crisis and the Collapse of the Republican Party (I found this one really interesting by way of understanding what the hell has happened since the days of my grandparents' Eisenhower Republicanism.)



*Though maybe not.

**Both pdfs taken from the California Budget Project, which is a pretty good site for the wonkily-inclined.

Mawiage

It's sort of ironic that the reason I'm actually sitting down to write this is because I'm not running an Important Errand because Mr. B. left the lights on in the car (again) and it didn't start, and of course I wasn't leaving on Important Errand until fifteen minutes before the destination location closed, so I am basically fucked, which actually I would be okay with but Mr. B. has a bug up his ass about how Important Errand HAS to be done TODAY.

So, instead, I have time to finally talk about why I loved Sandra Tsing-Loh's piece about her divorce, and why all the gossip and schadenfreude about Mark Sanford kind of depresses me and, while we're at it, why I thought it was really crappy, the criticism that Edmund Andrews got a while back because, in his book about the subprime mortgage crisis and his own bad mortgage, he didn't talk about his wife's bankruptcy.

Look. Anyone who has spent five minutes on the internet knows that any time someone writes honestly about their personal life, everyone and their dog is going to jump up and down and DEMAND to know more, or pontificate about why the author is CLEARLY a BAD PERSON. Or, what's worse, how the other people in the author's life--their wife, their husband, their children--are either idiots or victims or both.

(Which that last is really obviously shitty, people. I mean, even if you think that by virtue of writing about one's life one is inviting criticism, *clearly* the non-authorial characters aren't.)

But let's be honest. If you are an adult, and you have ever in your life had a relationship with another human being, you know damn well that you have made mistakes, that the other person has made mistakes, that people get hurt and friends have tiffs and partners have problems. (And if you don't know this, then I don't care how old you are, you're not an adult.)

And the point of that kind of writing, or one point, is that it is beneficial to be honest about the human condition. Especially if, like Tsing-Loh, you can do so graciously. Because life *isn't* a crystal stair, dammit, and Cinderella stories are fantasies. This is a feminist point, though you don't need to be a feminist to embrace it; which is why I think it's extra-shitty of feminists to crucify people for this kind of honesty, by the way. We know that the Ideal Mother doesn't exist; and most of us, though we adore our children, definitely have moments (or months) when we loathe everything having to do with them.

And marriage is the same way. I mean, really: is anyone surprised to hear Tsing-Loh say that many of her friends in long marriages with children are finding that "the passion" is on the back burner?? That after twenty years, she

can pick up our girls from school every day; I can feed them dinner and kiss their noses and tell them stories; I can take them to their doctor and dentist appointments; I can earn my half—sometimes more—of the money; I can pay the bills; I can refinance the house at the best possible interest rate; I can drive my husband to the airport; in his absence, I can sort his mail; I can be home to let the plumber in on Thursday between nine and three, and I can wait for the cable guy; I can make dinner conversation with any family member; I can ask friendly questions about anybody’s day; I can administer hugs as needed to children, adults, dogs, cats; I can empty the litter box; I can stir wet food into dry.

Which is to say I can work at a career and child care and joint homeownership and even platonic male-female friendship. However, in this cluttered forest of my 40s, what I cannot authentically reconjure is the ancient dream of brides, even with the Oprah fluffery of weekly “date nights,” when gauzy candlelight obscures the messy house, child talk is nixed and silky lingerie donned, so the two of you can look into each other’s eyes and feel that “spark” again. Do you see? Given my staggering working mother’s to-do list, I cannot take on yet another arduous home- and self-improvement project, that of rekindling our romance.

She says that this is a "failure," and so it is. It's a failure in terms of our idea of what A Good Marriage is Supposed to be. But maybe that failure isn't, in fact, a personal one.

The Good Marriage is Supposed to be:

sexually monogamous
between one man and one woman (even though, or rather because, men and women Are Different)
for their entire lives
begun early enough that they can have children, plural, (if they want to), without having to go through infertility treatment
passionate, again, for their entire lives
respectful at all times
mutually supportive, at all times
economically successful
able to accommodate two careers, if so desired
a friendship
something you "work" at, but it's not supposed to feel like work
flirty--but only with each other
not jealous
a PIllar of Society

Marriage should be like the early days of dating + the settled feeling of being "a couple" + a true partnership + a friendship + exciting + comfortable + productive (of kids, of material goods). People shouldn't get married "too young," but they certainly shouldn't wait "too long." They should both want to have passionate sex with each other whenever the other person wants to, but not when the other person doesn't, and god knows we don't want to see married people acting like teenagers in public places: holding hands is cute, and so are sweet chaste kisses, but come on! Especially if you already have children!

You mustn't fight--not in public, not in front of the children, and not so the neighbors can hear you. Certainly not in front of guests or friends. In fact, not only mustn't you fight, but you mustn't even act tense lest it make others uncomfortable. If one of you is abusive, then why does the other one put up with it???--but divorce, of course, is a Terrible Thing. Unless we've known all along that that person was bad for you, or that you were a terrible couple, or that the relationship was doomed, in which case for god's sake why didn't you divorce years ago? In fact, why did you get married in the first place?? We tried to tell you.

We also tried to tell you that that two careers thing wasn't going to work--you hardly spent any time together. It also doesn't work when one of you subsumes your life in the other person's career, though--I mean, don't you feel your masculinity is threatened? Isn't it your own fault that you don't have any savings or retirement or interests of your own now that he's left you/died/the children have moved out? Anyway, marriage is a total tool of patriarchy. And while we're at it, are you going to change your name or not?

If you're gay and you (want to) get married, you're just being assimilationist. And if your marriage ends, then not only are you a personal failure, but you've Undermined the Cause. Anyway, given how fucked up marriage is, why do you want to have anything to do with it? Except that oh right, we want you to save it for us, because god knows we've fucked it up. Unless of course your getting married is going to fuck it up even worse, in which case, forget it.

Marriage is a sacrament. It was ordained by god. It's a secular institution, which should include tax benefits and health insurance because it promotes stability and because financial benefits not only incentivize marriage but make it easier for spouses to support each other in hard times. But that's not fair to single people! So really, marriage shouldn't convey any benefits whatsoever--but you don't get to complain about the emotional or financial burdens of marriage, because after all, you chose to do it.

NOT that that means you can choose *how* you do it. Because your weird, unconventional marriage makes other people uncomfortable, and plus it sets a bad example for the children, who might think that it's okay to live that way. Which it isn't.

....

So yeah. I loved it that Sandra Tsing-Loh had the huevos to write about the end of her marriage, and to do so in a way that "depressed" people by saying that (duh) even really good marriages sometimes end, in part because maintaing a Really Good Marriage is virtually an impossible task.

Which isn't to say that staying married, or having a good enough marriage, or loving someone your whole life is impossible. Just that by and large, when it happens, it doesn't usually look the way outsiders--or even the people in it--expect it to.

And you know, if some of us can admit that about our own marriages? Maybe the rest of you could have the manners to admit that you don't know everything, too.

ding and doom

I couldn't sleep last night.
At M-'s place, I tossed and turned, waking up at 2, 3, 4 and finally 5 am. I dressed, got my bag together and sat back on the bed waiting for M- to turn over. He walked me downstairs and gave me a big hug, whispering, 'Things will be ok today. They'll be ok.'

I think I mumbled 'I know,' or something inadequate, and walked to the bus that would take me to the train that would take me home.

I'm at work now and everyone is silent. There's no chit chat. No 'Hey, what did you do last night?' Just silence.

I hope I get my pink slip by noon so I can go home and cry in private. (I haven't cried this whole month; I've been tamping down my emotions just so I could get through this and get the work done. Rather, I've been letting my anger float up. But something's bound to crack.)

I've also decided that I'm done with the non profit sector. My search strategy will be to Embrace Evil, to identify and work for the most badass corporate entity I can find in the region, make an obscene (for me) amount of money and not look back. Maybe I'll even change my political party and sell out completely. Hell, I'm almost 40; time for a change.

Really. I'm done.
Suggestions welcome.