Brooklynite, one of our sometime commenters here, has been working on a great essay on white anti-racism - the work that white people are obligated to do to reduce the impact of racism on society, and the difference between that - being actively anti-racist - and being “non-racist”. He’ll be posting it soon, so keep an eye out. But it has prompted some counter-revolutionary thinking on my part, which has caught me predictable amounts of shit over on his blog. Even so, something that occurs to me off and on about the question of the “obligation to activism” - the idea that we are all morally required to put effort into making the world better for the oppressed - has been triggered by that discussion, as well as by the recent furor in the feminist/person-of-color blogosphere over perceived white indifference to POC issues. I never know quite how to express this thought, or what significance it has given the world we actually do live in, but I’ll try it out here in the hope that no one will notice.
What occurs to me is this: anti-oppression activism of all kinds is a kind of contingent undertaking - a reaction to conditions as they are (and should not be) that seeks to achieve conditions as they are not (but should be). It is in a way Utopian, in that it seeks what in practical terms is unlikely, but more to the point in that it is reactive to conditions that simply should not be allowed to exist and conceivably might not if the world were a better place, or if we succeed in making it one in the future. In other words, action against inequality seeks to put itself out of business - to eliminate the conditions that make it necessary. The fact that it is currently necessary is a failure of those living today to undertake the work of eliminating it. To the extent that each of us has not adopted the anti-racist mindset, racism persists; to the extent that we do successfully spread anti-racism, racism will die, and with it the need for and practice of anti-racism. If this is true, the lack of engagement in activism against oppression may be a sign, in some cases, not of anti-progressive attitudes, but of overly optimistic, and progressive, ones.
May 3rd, 2008
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General, Politics, Culture |
8 comments
A friend of mine, and occasional Lean Left commenter, Angus Johnston, has started a blog focused on US student activism: studentactivism.net. Angus is completing his PhD in History this semester; his dissertation is on the history of student activist groups from the 60s. He is also currently hooked into nationwide student activist groups as they exist today, and has acted in an advisory role for some of them. (He was, you won’t be surprised to hear, more or less the Megaphone Mark of his own campus as an undergrad.) He comes to his subject with considerable experience and academic expertise.
studentactivism.net covers current controversies involving students or colleges, as well as student organizing, activism, and rights issues. Given the high representation of the academic world in the blogosphere, and the increasing politicization of campuses and the educational experience, it’s a valuable resource for anyone interested in what’s happening with campuses today, and the generations of young citizens they are turning out. Check it out!
April 30th, 2008
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General, Politics, Bloggin, School, Culture, Education |
no comments
How the times change. Three of the top five boy names in 2006 are names that greatly increased the likelihood of you getting your ass kicked on a regular basis back when I was a kid.
April 24th, 2008
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I do too have a life, Culture |
9 comments
Ann VanderMeer knows …
Mermaid - A: “No, for the obvious reasons.” EM: “What if you marry one? Is that kosher? Will a rabbi marry you?” A: “Kosher is a term about eating, not about sex.” EM: “I’m not talking about sex–I’m talking about marriage!” A: “If the mermaid is Jewish, the rabbi will probably marry you. But only if you’re Jewish too. But you’ll definitely have to find the right rabbi…”
Mongolian Death Worm - A: “No, because you cannot eat anything that crawls on its belly.” EM: “Does that mean an injured kosher animal that is crawling along isn’t kosher any more?” A: “Yes, because you can’t eat an animal that’s been injured or is sick.” EM: “It’s a wonder you haven’t all starved to death.”
April 21st, 2008
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General, Culture, Humor |
no comments
Geoff Davis, Republican from Kentucky, callled Obama a boy:
“I’m going to tell you something: That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button,” Davis said. “He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country.”
Then, when the furor erupted, he “apologized”:
My poor choice of words is regrettable and was in no way meant to impugn you or your integrity. I offer my sincere apology to you and ask for your forgiveness.
Though we may disagree on many issues, I know that we share the goal of a prosperous, secure future for our nation. My comment has detracted from the dialogue that we should all be having on legitimate policy differences and in no way reflects the personal and professional respect I have for you.
Notice what is missing? An apology for calling Obama “boy”. Boy, in that context, is a racist remark, period. Boy is what people in the South say when they want to say n*gger but don’t want to get called on it. It is as racist as it is possible to be, and yet Davis did not apologize for it. Lee Atwater would have been proud: not only did Davis blow the dog whistle but he then refused to mute it by apologizing for it.
This is going to be an ugly campaign. The GOP clearly intends to yell “n*gger, n*gger” or “b*tch, b*tch” for the entire campaign in a desperate attempt to divert attention away from the complete mess they have made of the country. If they did not, McCain wouldn’t have chuckled when the a questioner called Clinton a b*tch. If they did not, McCain would have fired the staffer that spread the email rumors about Obama instead of just suspending him/her. If they did not, Davis would have actually apologized for his use of racist terminology. But none of that happened.
Expect it tog et worse, folks. This kind of base “us and them” destructiveness is all they have left and they obviously feel no shame in using it.
April 15th, 2008
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General, Politics, Culture |
82 comments
I don’t have a lot of time, but I wanted to say something today. Forty years ago, Dr. King was assasinated in Memphis, TN. The country lost perhaps its greatest citizen (even if John McCain couldn’t see that in 1983) and a sure moral compass at a time when it needed that compass desperately. We are a worse country than we would be because we lost Dr. King too soon.
Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same: “We want to be free.”
We don’t have to argue with anybody. We don’t have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don’t need any bricks and bottles. We don’t need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, “God sent us by here, to say to you that you’re not treating his children right. And we’ve come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God’s children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.”
And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy — what is the other bread? — Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart’s bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven’t been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on town — downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right.
And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.
And I don’t mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
And so I’m happy, tonight.
I’m not worried about anything.
I’m not fearing any man!
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!
April 4th, 2008
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General, Culture, Race |
2 comments
Black Americans were a founding population. Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That’s not a very pretty reality of our founding. . . .
Descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that. . . .
That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today.
Wow - pretty radical words. Must have been some sort of angry, hateful, anti-white, black nationalist, racist, fear-mongering, Malcolm X-wannabe who spewed that kind of anti-American garbage.
Oh, wait. It was Condi Rice, unindicted Iraqi Occupation co-conspirator, vestigial Secretary of State, and fever-dream GOP Vice-Presidential possible who claims that the United States suffers from a “birth defect” relating to its treatment of blacks and that that history still matters. So I guess we’re not going to be hearing anything about how “angry”, “hateful”, or “anti-American” she is, because . . . IOKIYA(B)R.
March 28th, 2008
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General, Politics, Culture, Media, News & Current Events, Race |
13 comments
Over at Obsidian Wings, I made the following two statements:
- We should change the constitution so that all federal judges require a 2/3 majority in the Senate for confirmation.
- I have never seen Dr. Strangelove
Guess which statement caused a ruckus!
March 27th, 2008
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I do too have a life, Bloggin, Culture, Humor |
15 comments
I have a confession: I don’t “get” Elvis Costello. Kevin, our gracious host, is a huge Elvis Costello fan. This is far from our only difference of opinion when it comes to music. We have almost nothing in common in terms of musical taste. And I think I know why.
I submit that you can divide pretty much all of the music fans in the country into two distinct groups. The first group (of which I am a member) listens first and foremost to the music, while the second group (of which Kevin is a member) listens first and foremost to what the song has to say. Within either group, of course, musical tastes will vary widely, and two people within the same group may still have virtually nothing in common — after all, there’s no accounting for taste, as the old expression goes. But the two groups still hold, I believe. And this is an important distinction. For ease of distinction, I’ll refer to my group as the Bubblegum Pop Team (BPT), and Kevin’s group as the Important Music Team (IMT).
For the Bubblegum Pop Team, music is entertainment, first and foremost. There may or may not be a message to the song, but it doesn’t much matter, because members of the BPT generally have no idea what most of the songs they like are even about, if they’re about anything at all. This is true, by the way, even if they know all the words to the song. Listening to music is a passive activity for them, and as such, they’re not really paying attention to what they’re hearing. This is why BPTs often like music which, if they paid any attention to the message, they’d find abhorrent (which explains Eminem). It’s a simple function of, “Do I like the music? Do I like the singer’s voice? Does this entertain me?” Or, to dust of repressed memories of American Bandstand, “Can I dance to it?” For BPTs, this is what’s important. BPTs are the people who like manufactured pop like Britney Spears, or who (like me) got into the 80’s hair metal thing, or stuff like Outkast, Fergie, or just about any other popular music.
For the Important Music Team, on the other hand, music is a form of expression. As such, the message of a song is important. IMTs are acutely aware of what a song has to say, and that message — coupled with whether or not they agree with that message — will have a profound effect on whether or not they like a particular song. Listening to music is active for IMTs; they’re the type of people who would discard a Van Halen album, because “they have nothing to say” (a phrase I actually once read in a review of a Van Halen album, by the way). IMTs like stuff like Elvis Costello, Rites of Spring, and Tom Waits. IMTs look at BPTs happily bopping around to Semi-Charmed Life and wonder how people can be cheered by a song about a downward spiral into drug addiction. (They’re also likely to take great pleasure in ruining a BPTs mood by telling them that’s what the song is about…)
As a general rule, IMTs and BPTs look at each other with confusion. IMTs look at BPT music and wonder what the redeeming social value is. BPTs look at IMT music and wonder what all the fuss is about, complaining that “the guy can’t sing,” or “it doesn’t have a good beat,” or “why do all the songs have to be so damn depressing?” The truth of the matter is, because of the completely incompatible ways in which the two groups do something as fundamental as listening to music, they’re likely to never understand one another.
That said, the groups are not completely mutually exclusive. From time to time, there are artists that manage to have appeal across both groups. some of which can do so without being accused of “selling out.” Bruce Springsteen and Green Day spring to mind as artists that write “important” music, but which have a broad following even among BPTs. I’m sure if EMTs thought about it for a while, they could come up with some artists or songs they like, despite the fact that they have no coherent message or redeeming social value. But these crossovers are uncommon, and the exception to the rule.
With all that groundwork laid, there’s one more important thing to point out: BPTs far outnumber IMTs, probably by at least one order of magnitude. Don’t believe me? I can give you a single anecdotal example which, for me anyway, is compelling proof: Reagan’s use of Springsteen’s Born In The USA as a campaign song. If even a third of the population consisted of IMTs, there’s no way Reagan gets away with this: the message of the song had nothing at all to do with the message or the mood that Reagan was trying to convey, and IMTs recognized this immediately. They even complained about it at the time. This fell on deaf ears, because most Americans are BPTs, who heard the words “Born In The USA” and an uptempo tune, scratched their guts, held up their PBR beers, and screamed “Whooooo! USA #1!!”
Need another example? How about the cruise line commercials that play Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life? I’m pretty sure heroin addiction isn’t what the cruise line is trying to sell (or, subliminally, maybe it is). Most people (BPTs) hear it, hear the words “Lust For Life” sung to an upbeat tune, and think, “Fun! Adventure!”
Well, that’s my theory. Have fun tearing it to shreds. 
(I should note that there are two other groups, who do not fit neatly into this dichotomy. The first is the Musician Group. Musicians are an odd bird, and they tend to like things that are musically challenging or complex, whether or not they’re any good. This explains why they’re so enamored of the Dave Matthews Band. The other group is the Psychoactive Drug Group. This group is the only way I can explain Pink Floyd, The Doors, and Bob Dylan.)
March 26th, 2008
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I do too have a life, Bloggin, Culture, Weekend Flame Bait |
26 comments
Peggy Noonan mostly praised Obama’s speech, and largely seemed to understand it, which puts her in a minority of conservative commentators. But she criticizes him, near the end of her article, for . . . wait for it . . . not understanding America. Yes, snotty Reaganite lickspittles who made a profession of courting racists and religious bigots with coded signals, demonizing “welfare queens”, glorifying death squads and Nazi war dead, excusing incompetence and ignorance at every turn, and obsessing over wayward blowjobs, now presume to tell candidates of the working-class party what the real America is all about.
March 21st, 2008
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General, Politics, Church & State, Economics, Culture, News & Current Events, Fiasco, Torture |
9 comments
I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to the “Obama’s Pastor” controversy, because it’s the product of three forms of conservative stupidity that I am glad to be immune to. The first is their deliberate, calculated, and organized distortion of political campaigns with red herring issues and machine-gun assaults of irrelevant attacks whipped up by their noise machine to drown out a substantive discussion of issues on which they cannot compete. The second is their inability to think for themselves and its corollary, their assumption that nobody else is capable of thinking for themselves - hence the bizarre “controversy” over whether Obama was present in the room when somebody else said something that makes white conservatives uncomfortable. (It’s true: a major portion of the noisemaking over individual sentences spoken by Jeremiah Wright and taken out of context by Obama’s critics is the question not whether Obama agrees with them, but whether he was present when they were spoken. Somebody should ask these clowns if they are so weak-minded that they are incapable of hearing anything and not believing it - and if not, why they assume that black people must be.) The third is the inherent inability even to acknowledge race and racial history as an issue in America - the drooling stupidity that allows conservative whites to imagine that the Confederate flag is not a symbol of race hatred, but that black anger over discrimination is. Like so much of conservative discourse, this nonsensical “controversy” simply fails to rise to the level that would deserve to be taken seriously; as with conservatism in general, giving it no credence is the safest and most efficient way to deal with the mess it presents.
But the speech that Obama planned on the subject was interesting to me - interesting as a phenomenon. It occurs to me that this election has now seen two “Kennedy moments” - defining speeches in which a candidate has been forced, by others’ bigotry, to confront their own outsider status and challenge America to expand its notion of community membership and our range of shared values. Kennedy did it with panache over the question of Catholicism, and this year Romney did a decent job in the same vein regarding Mormonism. Obama faces a larger challenge on the question of race. Race and sex are the fundamental lines of discrimination written into the Constitution itself; race especially was the ground of the most vicious and tenacious divisions of American society, the one that defined and shaped the country as no other, and laid the groundwork on which the lives of all Americans are lived today.
Americans have always been able to make themselves feel good about themselves by invoking both religiosity and religious freedom, but they have invested to an even greater degree in defining and maintaining racial divisions. In some ways, Kennedy and Romney were fighting a downhill battle; it required little more for either of them than to express teary-eyed religious fervor and promise not to go overboard with it. Obama is unquestionably struggling uphill; he cannot claim community with other groups by invoking his devotion to his own, as Kennedy and Romney could, and he cannot erase their bigotry by any degree of non-threatening rhetoric or promises not to challenge their complacency (which is just as well, because that’s not what he’s about). Even so, a speech on race is an opportunity to bring race to the forefront of the discussion in a serious way, and potentially to cut through the winking code-words and denials and evasions that invariably smothered any approach to the subject heretofore. It was an unique enough opportunity, also, that it just might have had a chance to make whites shut up and listen for a change, and maybe shift the grounds of discussion just a bit. I was interested to see what Obama would do with it.
(More after the break)
March 18th, 2008
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Media, News & Current Events, Read Your Bible, Race |
23 comments
This is just lovely:
Inside the store, hooded Klan robes hang on the same rack as the racist T-shirts. Pictures of men, women and children in Klan clothing and pamphlets tell a partial history of the organization.
…snip…
“If anything turns people off, they shouldn’t come in here. It’s not a thing in here that’s against the law,” Howard said, adding that he was once the KKK’s grand dragon for South Carolina and North Carolina.
That a store like that can make enough money to stay in business belies the whole “post-racism society” crap. The market, apparently, likes racism, at least in that part of the country. Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it?
March 10th, 2008
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Culture, Race |
13 comments
I’m slow to blog this, as I’ve been very busy with work, but it’s worth mentioning. On Tuesday, Gary Gygax, co-creator of the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game, died at 69.
For my part, I was a D&D geek from about the age of 11 to the age of 14 or 15, and my love affair with computer role playing games started there and continued into my twenties. One of my best friends to this day was a kid I met playing D&D on the playground at elementary school. I hadn’t really thought about it all that much until I read about his death on Tuesday.
Gygax’s impact on popular culture is difficult to overstate. Even if you’ve never played D&D, you’ve certainly heard of it, and there’s a good chance that at some point in your life, you’ve played a game that borrowed heavily from it. Computer games in particular have borrowed and continue to borrow from D&D with impunity. Whether it’s the old Ultima series on Apple II computers, or more modern variants like World of Warcraft and EverQuest, modern role-playing gaming owes a great deal to Gygax’s contributions.
Sympathies to Gygax’s family and friends. He will be missed.
March 6th, 2008
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Culture |
2 comments
The principal writers of The Wire, the HBO drama about the Baltimore underworld, have published a public call for civil disobedience in non-violent drug crime prosecutions:
[The drug] war grinds on, flooding our prisons, devouring resources, turning city neighborhoods into free-fire zones. To what end? State and federal prisons are packed with victims of the drug conflict. A new report by the Pew Center shows that 1 of every 100 adults in the U.S. — and 1 in 15 black men over 18 — is currently incarcerated. That’s the world’s highest rate of imprisonment.
The drug war has ravaged law enforcement too. In cities where police agencies commit the most resources to arresting their way out of their drug problems, the arrest rates for violent crime — murder, rape, aggravated assault — have declined. In Baltimore, where we set The Wire, drug arrests have skyrocketed over the past three decades, yet in that same span, arrest rates for murder have gone from 80% and 90% to half that. Lost in an unwinnable drug war, a new generation of law officers is no longer capable of investigating crime properly, having learned only to make court pay by grabbing cheap, meaningless drug arrests off the nearest corner.
What the drugs themselves have not destroyed, the warfare against them has. And what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass. Since declaring war on drugs nearly 40 years ago, we’ve been demonizing our most desperate citizens, isolating and incarcerating them and otherwise denying them a role in the American collective. All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain. . . .
[W]e offer a small idea that is, perhaps, no small idea. It will not solve the drug problem, nor will it heal all civic wounds. It does not yet address questions of how the resources spent warring with our poor over drug use might be better spent on treatment or education or job training, or anything else that might begin to restore those places in America where the only economic engine remaining is the illegal drug economy. It doesn’t resolve the myriad complexities that a retreat from war to sanity will require. All it does is open a range of intricate, paradoxical issues. But this is what we can do — and what we will do.
If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun’s manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.
“Jury nullification” has often been urged as a strategy against perceived government abuses, particularly in the case of drug crimes. (It is also a favorite mythology of the delusional far-right militia types, which hardly makes it more attractive.) I have written about my own flirtation with that path, under similar circumstances. But in this case they are advocating it not merely as a protest against unjust laws, but as a strategy to get those laws overturned by making them unenforceable.
It would be remarkable if they could recruit enough people to make an observable difference in these cases. What is also remarkable is that this article appeared in Time magazine - once the bastion of toe-the-line traditionalism. It’s interesting, too, that the staff of a popular TV show would take such a stand publicly - advocating for civil disobedience on a controversial issue involving widely-despised behavior, and linking their stance, indirectly at least, to the content of their show. Simply by countenancing such statements, both Time and HBO signal that this stance - open recruitment to contempt for the law - has come within the bounds of acceptable opinion. (This isn’t the first time network TV has taken such risks. The coded anti-Vietnam-war ethos of M*A*S*H, and the somewhat tame feminism of Maude and One Day at a Time were controversial in their day, and also reflected the personal opinions of their stars or producers. But they didn’t advocate civil disobedience.)
I wonder if these could be signs of a turning tide in the “War on Drugs”.
March 6th, 2008
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General, Politics, Legal Issues, Culture, News & Current Events |
5 comments
So the Washington Post printed an opinion piece that had as its central theme the notion that women are idiots. No, really:
“I am perfectly willing to admit that I myself am a classic case of female mental deficiencies. I can’t add 2 and 2 (well, I can, but then what?). I don’t even know how many pairs of shoes I own. I have coasted through life and academia on the basis of an excellent memory and superior verbal skills, two areas where, researchers agree, women consistently outpace men. (An evolutionary just-so story explains this facility of ours: Back in hunter-gatherer days, men were the hunters and needed to calculate spear trajectories, while women were the gatherers and needed to remember where the berries were.) I don’t mind recognizing and accepting that the women in history I admire most — Sappho, Hildegard of Bingen, Elizabeth I, George Eliot, Margaret Thatcher — were brilliant outliers.
The same goes for female fighter pilots, architects, tax accountants, chemical engineers, Supreme Court justices and brain surgeons. Yes, they can do their jobs and do them well, and I don’t think anyone should put obstacles in their paths. I predict that over the long run, however, even with all the special mentoring and role-modeling the 21st century can provide, the number of women in these fields will always lag behind the number of men, for good reason.
So I don’t understand why more women don’t relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home. (Even I, who inherited my interior-decorating skills from my Bronx Irish paternal grandmother, whose idea of upgrading the living-room sofa was to throw a blanket over it, can make a house a home.) Then we could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to our hearts’ content and not mind the fact that way down deep, we are . . . kind of dim.”
This was an edited piece. And editor either solicited this piece or read it on spec and decided that it fit within the pages of the Washington Post. He or she read it, edited it, and ordered it placed into the paper. No other editor or superior stopped it and no other editor or superior has removed it or apologized for it. And it does need to be apologized for. Labeling an entire group of people as “dim”, pretending that a writer’s own insufficiencies and prejudices are somehow the same as research and insight: neither is acceptable for an actual newspaper engage din actual journalism. This is nothing more than a milder version of the old National Journal resistance that segregation was required to save White culture. Save America form the dim-witted women is this piece’s not so under undertone.
Now ask yourself this: at a paper that saw fit to print this dreck, do you think the editors can be trusted to evaluate the work of female reporters and writers fairly? Do you think those editors are going to want stories that touch on issues that have traditionally considered women’s issues? Do you think those editors are going to be fair and honest towards female executives and politicians? Do you think those editors are going to be interested in stories about women’s health or work issues, especially those told from a woman’s point of view? Do you being to understand why feminism is necessary?
That article is still on the front page of the Washington Post’s website as of this morning. We do not live in a post sexism society.
March 3rd, 2008
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General, Culture, Media |
34 comments
The news has been reporting for the last day or so on the plight of young Harry Windsor, Prince of Whateverthefuck and one of the few members of the British royal family who doesn’t turn your stomach merely by existing [oops - yes he is]. Bowing to his family’s destiny, Harry joined the Army, but it was made clear that his royal arse was much too precious ever to be exposed to combat. Legitimately, also, there were fears that the knowledge of his presence in a combat theater would subject his unit mates to increased danger as enemies from around the globe fell over each other to take the most exalted scalp since Mountbatten’s. The issue was especially poignant given the British Army’s long and less-than-exalted history in Afghanistan.
To his credit, he complained of being kept back, going so far as to threaten to resign his comission if he wasn’t allowed to play a full role. He was eventually shipped over - spending most of his time in a behind-the-lines role, but also going on patrols with his air-cav unit. The British press were briefed on his participation, under “embargo” conditions (they agree not to publish the information until given permission, in return for being informed). For less than three months, Harry was in the combat theater, if not exactly in frequent combat, and things were going OK.
Yesterday, Matt Drudge revealed these facts, and within 24 hours Harry was homeward-bound. It seems likely that Drudge was not subject to the embargo - that is, he did not personally agree to its terms - but likely got a leak and chose to publish the information anyway. That he was, in actual effect, working to get a prince of the British royal succession, and soldiers of the coalition forces in Afghanistan, killed, was apparently not a reason in his mind not to do so.
February 29th, 2008
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General, Politics, Culture, Media, News & Current Events, Fiasco |
37 comments
I’ve been ambivalent as between Hillary and Obama - each has great strengths and also some flaws or weaknesses. But Obama impresses me more and more as a man whose principles are more than window-dressing, and sorely needed. Today, he proved it beyond question:
An Open Letter to LGBT Americans
I’m running for President to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all – a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters. It’s wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class citizens in this nation. And I ask for your support in this election so that together we can bring about real change for all LGBT Americans.
Equality is a moral imperative. That’s why throughout my career, I have fought to eliminate discrimination against LGBT Americans. In Illinois, I co-sponsored a fully inclusive bill that prohibited discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity, extending protection to the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation. In the U.S. Senate, I have co-sponsored bills that would equalize tax treatment for same-sex couples and provide benefits to domestic partners of federal employees. And as president, I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws. I personally believe that civil unions represent the best way to secure that equal treatment. But I also believe that the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and lesbian couples — whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union, or a civil marriage. Unlike Senator Clinton, I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) – a position I have held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate. While some say we should repeal only part of the law, I believe we should get rid of that statute altogether. Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does. I have also called for us to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and I have worked to improve the Uniting American Families Act so we can afford same-sex couples the same rights and obligations as married couples in our immigration system.
The next president must also address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. When it comes to prevention, we do not have to choose between values and science. While abstinence education should be part of any strategy, we also need to use common sense. We should have age-appropriate sex education that includes information about contraception. We should pass the JUSTICE Act to combat infection within our prison population. And we should lift the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. In addition, local governments can protect public health by distributing contraceptives.
We also need a president who’s willing to confront the stigma – too often tied to homophobia– that continues to surround HIV/AIDS. I confronted this stigma directly in a speech to evangelicals at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, and will continue to speak out as president. That is where I stand on the major issues of the day. But having the right positions on the issues is only half the battle. The other half is to win broad support for those positions. And winning broad support will require stepping outside our comfort zone. If we want to repeal DOMA, repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and implement fully inclusive laws outlawing hate crimes and discrimination in the workplace, we need to bring the message of LGBT equality to skeptical audiences as well as friendly ones – and that’s what I’ve done throughout my career. I brought this message of inclusiveness to all of America in my keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention. I talked about the need to fight homophobia when I announced my candidacy for President, and I have been talking about LGBT equality to a number of groups during this campaign – from local LGBT activists to rural farmers to parishioners at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr. Martin Luther King once preached.
Just as important, I have been listening to what all Americans have to say. I will never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans. But neither will I close my ears to the voices of those who still need to be convinced. That is the work we must do to move forward together. It is difficult. It is challenging. And it is necessary.
Americans are yearning for leadership that can empower us to reach for what we know is possible. I believe that we can achieve the goal of full equality for the millions of LGBT people in this country. To do that, we need leadership that can appeal to the best parts of the human spirit. Join with me, and I will provide that leadership. Together, we will achieve real equality for all Americans, gay and straight alike.
Barack Obama
It rankles a little that he still finds it necessary to equivocate on this “civil union” nonsense, but it’s important to remember that that was the progressive position on gay rights just a few years ago. No one in high office, in the history of this nation, has made so forthright and so morally upright a statement in favor of full and uncompromising equality - certainly none with the Presidency in their grasp, still less on the very issue that the haters and bigots had used to put one of their own into the Presidency at the very time it was said. He didn’t have to say it - he could have coasted into office while keeping this issue on the back burner - but he chose to stand up in a way that was so badly needed, and will cause such a vicious backlash, and that he could have so easily avoided.
Aside from simply being right on an important issue, Obama today showed remarkable moral depth. It was inspiring - in a way that has nothing to do with rhetoric or visionary exhortation, but with true moral courage and the dedication to govern his life and work by his ideals. It is impossible not to admire this.
February 28th, 2008
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General, Politics, Legal Issues, Church & State, Religion, Culture, News & Current Events |
72 comments
Waaah! Most people don’t have as much of Teh Crazy as I do!
Seriously, I wonder if it ever occurs to these folks that not everyone has the same bizarre definition of “freedom” that they do. At the risk of sounding like the “America, love it or leave it” folks, I’m not aware that anyone has taken away their right to leave if they think it’s so bad and so beyond hope…
February 26th, 2008
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Politics, Culture, Libertarian Problem Solving |
15 comments
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