The Pigeons Have Come Home to Roost

My Saturday news commentary:

First, recent polls show that the popularity of our fearless leader is down.

"President Bush's January decline in public opinion started soon after a top adviser on the search for weapons of mass destruction said he did not believe Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons, a tracking poll suggests.
David Kay made his initial comments about doubting the weapons existed soon after the administration announced Jan. 23 that Kay was being replaced as the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq.
Bush's job approval rating dropped 10 points from Jan. 25 through Jan. 31, according to the National Annenberg Election Survey. The tracking poll takes a nightly sample and rolls together two or three nights' findings at a time to produce periodic reports.
Support for the war in Iraq also dipped in that period, from a majority saying the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over, 53 percent, to 46 percent during the last few days of January saying it was worth going to war and 49 percent saying it was not. "

This is interesting though not that important. Not important, because there's still plenty of time before the elections for the administration to take care of this little problem. Interesting because I thought that everybody knew that there was no evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, just as there was no evidence of a connection between the terrorist attacks against the U.S. and Iraq. To be quite honest, I thought that those people who backed the war, any war, did so largely to get their desire for revenge satisfied. Gods and goddesses often used to do such things, and I assumed humans had taken up the same custom.

The drop in the polls is not the only piece of bad news for the administration. The U.S. allies are also getting a bit jittery about the way the dollar has been allowed to plunge in the international markets:

The Bush administration tried Saturday to reassure America's major economic allies worried about the sinking dollar and the exploding U.S. budget and trade deficits.
In the face of stinging criticism from other rich countries, the administration defended its hands-off approach to the dollar's sharp slide, which has pushed the greenback in recent weeks to record lows against the euro, the common currency of 12 European nations, and to three-year lows against the Japanese yen.

The low value of the dollar is great news for the U.S. export industries which have suffered from unemployment in the recent past. It's not happy news for the importers, of course, and it's deplorable news for some of the foreign allies:

Europeans complained, however, that their companies were being forced to bear the brunt of the dollar's plummet because Japan, China and other Asian countries were intervening massively in currency markets to stem the dollar's fall against their currencies.

That way the Asian countries can still continue their cheap imports to the U.S., they are happy, we are happy, and the Europeans are grumpy. But who cares about old moldy Europe anyway?

Maybe Rumsfeld does, believe it or not. At least he gave an impassioned speech in Europe, to defend the Iraq war. Some tidbits from it:

""I know in my heart and my brain that America ain't what's wrong with the world," Rumsfeld told a German questioner after his speech.
"To the extent that that concept is promoted, as it is," Rumsfeld said, "only time will deal with that."
Rumsfeld asserted that the war showed other "rogue regimes" what could happen if they should refuse to come clean about disarming. He did not mention that inspectors have failed to find banned weapons in Iraq, a principal reason the Bush administration gave for invading last March. "

Doesn't he look cute when he gets 'impassioned'?* This is why Donald thinks that the Iraq war and occupation are worthy things to have accomplished:

"Rumsfeld said there was more at stake in Iraq than just banned weapons. He asserted that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have liberated 50 million oppressed people."

Um, Donald, that should be roughly 20 million oppressed people. The women in Afghanistan may be slightly better off than they were, but their future looks very uncertain, and the women in Iraq are not going to be liberated any time soon.
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*I always wanted to mirror this sexism to see how it works. I think Rumsfeld can take it.

The Knife Wielding Feminists

Relax. These are in the kitchen, or writing in a new blog about food. The list of contributors is awe-inspiring in gastronomical lore and feminist commentary, and flea of One Good Thing named the blog (she slaughters pumpkins, so be forewarned). You can go to the blog and get Elayne's secret chicken recipe, too.

All this makes me very unhappy. Kitchens hate me. I tried to take up cooking as a hobby, to while away the centuries, but I was never any good at it. When I peel a potato, I end up with a long lovely curl of the peel and no potato insides. Most raw food is daunting; how does one get inside it? And how does one chop without ending a few fingers short? And why are so many things humans eat reminiscent of gooey slime: egg yolks, tomato pulp, brains?

Now that I've awakened your appetite, go and check out the Knife Wielding Feminists.

The Sacredness of Marriage

George W. Bush, in hinting his willingness to back a constitutional amendment which would define marriage in the U.S. as a 'union between a man and a woman', called marriage sacred. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (and boy, does it weigh on my lap!) gives the following definitions of 'sacred':

1. devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated.
2. entitled to veneration or religious respect by association with divinity or divine things; holy.
3. pertaining to or connected with religion.
4. reverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object.
5. regarded with reverence.
6. secured against violation, infringement etc., as by reverence or sense of right.
7. properly immune from violence, interference etc., as a person or office.

What a handy little word 'sacred' is! It's possible to convey quite different messages in one word; it's even possible to convey all of them at the same time. And note that if you type quickly like goddesses do, 'sacred' so very easily becomes 'scared'. Marriage as a 'scared' institution? Probably.

The first four definitions of 'sacred' in my list are about religious associations, and as this is the majority of the definitions presented, I'm going to wager that Bush sees the marriage as a religiously based institution. If the separation of church and state is still in the constitutional books as well, the sacredness of marriage would seem to be a very bad reason for supporting a heterosexual monogamous legal interpretation of it. There might be other, better reasons, perhaps, but those are not the ones Bush is engaging in creating this new wedge issue for the election year.

So let's see what the religious connections of marriage might be in the president's own religious tradition, Protestant Christianity. (My source for this very rapid survey is Marilyn Yalom's A History of the Wife, an entertaining book, but also relatively well researched. Still, remember that this is kitchen-table theorizing, not an academic thesis, and my discussion will not be complete.)

The Bible is a problematic source for the interpretation of marriage as sacred. Though quotes can be found to support this view, the Bible is also rife with stories about the acceptability of incest, about men with hundreds of wives, and the New Testament, in particular, sets celibacy above the married state:

"The unmarried man cares for the Lord's business; his aim is to please the Lord. But the married man cares for worldly things; his aim is to please his wife, and he has a divided mind...The married woman cares for worldly things; her aim is to please her husband."(I Corinthians 7:32-34)

The early Christians were pretty much opposed to marrying, and deplored its necessity for the sake of procreation. This didn't change until the Middle Ages when the Catholic Church in Europe gradually took over the jurisdiction over marriage. Marriage was declared a sacrament (a ceremony through which one obtained God's grace) in the Council of Trent in 1563. As far as I know, it is still so regarded in the Catholic Church. But this didn't mean that marriage was regarded as 'sacred' in the sense of being revered. Celibacy was still the highest state humans could reach. Saint Jerome, for example, stated:

"Let married women take their pride in coming next after virgins."

Ok. But what about the Protestants? G.W. Bush is not a Catholic, he is a Methodist. This is what Yalom writes about Martin Luther's views on marriage:

[In 1520], in his "Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church" Luther argues that marriage is not a sacrament - a religious ceremony of sacred significance. He and like-minded reformers reduced the seven Catholic sacraments to three; only baptism, penance and the Eucharist remained, since they were mentioned in the Bible and considered necessary for salvation. But this did not mean that marriage was to be any less significant in the life of a Christian. On the basis of Scripture - always his ultimate test on the matters of faith - Luther recommended it to everyone, both priest and layman."

Everyone? Luther recommended marriage to everyone. Think about that in the current context.

Well, in any case, by the second quarter of the sixteenth century the nonsacramental nature of marriage had become a common Protestant doctrine. I don't think George has a leg to stand on here, if 'sacred' is defined as 'sacramental'.

But maybe he was using 'sacred' in the last three senses of Webster's definition: as 'regarded with reverence', 'secured against violation' and 'properly immune from interference'? Marriage is under assault, after all, from all sorts of unsuitable people who want to get married, too. In fact, I think that if marriage truly is 'sacred' in this sense, then we all should do our utmost to keep it that way. Nobody I have ever met is pure enough to get married. The sacredness of marriage requires a constitutional amendment that bans people from getting married at all. Only this way will the institution of marriage remain what it was intended to be: holy.

Rara Avis, Part IV (George Will)

George Will is another conservative columnist. I'm fixated on them, it seems. He caught my beady eye with his recent innovative column which argues that seriousness in American politics requires the weeding out of all feminization. This was in short order followed by another column explaining that Democrats are that way because they like to live off the government, whereas Republicans are all brave individualists. Given that he lives in a country which has one of the lowest percentages of female participation in politics among the developed world, and in which the Republican-voting states show a net gain from government transfers while the Democrat-voting states are net payers-in, George is clearly another rare bird who flies in skies unrelated to this mundane planet. Something worth a little study.

This is what I found in my Will-watching. George has been a major conservative voice in the media since 1973, and he is currently syndicated in over 450 newspapers. He appears regularly in the Washington Post, the Newsweek and on ABC's This Week.He is respected as an antidote to all those braying, hyperbolic, conservative voices. He is seen as serious, soft-spoken and intelligent, an 'honest broker of ideas', a sort of 'affirmative action case' for the brainy in the Republican party, a token boy for those who'd like some evidence with their weekly vitriol.

Everything is relative in the media, of course. Will may indeed come across as a careful researcher when Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter are used as a basis for comparisons. But his efforts would not always qualify for a passing-grade student essay in a sophomore course on politics, sociology or economics. Here's an example of some of the problems in the way Will uses his sources. It is based on one of his 2002 columns called "Feminism Hijacked". This might be a book review of Christine Stolba's Lying in a Room of One's Own: How Women's Studies Textbooks Miseducate Students, if Will actually reviewed the book instead of giving us an extremely condensed, approving summary of it.

Let's pretend that we are to grade Will's essay. The first thing to raise an alarm flag is the way he begins:

"Christine Stolba, a history PhD and senior fellow at the indispensable Independent Women's Forum (IWF), recently steeled herself for the ordeal of reading a lot of meretricious rubbish. The result is her report, "Lying in a Room of One's Own: How Women's Studies Textbooks Miseducate Students." It is published by the IWF, a voice for women unlike those who have hijacked feminism."

Notice that no evidence is offered for the 'indispensability' of the Independent Women's Forum, a girl's auxiliary of the extreme right wing. I, for one, could easily dispense with them. And if the IWF is a voice for women unlike those who have hijacked feminism, then I'm a voice for George Walker Bush.

Still, Will is writing an opinion column, so his partiality may be understandable. Opinion columnists, unlike news reporters, don't have to pretend to be objective, as we all know. But what about his superior use of evidence? The only evidence this column uses is Stolba's book. There is no attempt to verify her claims by using independent information. This wouldn't be good news for my hypothetical sophomore student with a similarly structured paper submitted for an academic grade.

The poor student would get another demerit from the way Will quotes from the textbooks Stolba criticizes:

"What Stolba calls the "women-under-siege" theme -- what one of the textbooks calls the "matrix of domination" -- is impervious to evidence. As one book insists: "The overall effect of the twentieth century on women was neither liberation nor gender equality as much as it was change in the nature and meaning of their fragmentation."

What are these 'one books'? Don't they have titles and authors? No, I'm afraid that Will the student would have to rewrite his essay.

To title the column "Hijacking Feminism" and to end it with the statement "How feminism has fallen" is a tiny bit overgeneralizing, as the body of the column talks about one person's views on several textbooks used in women's studies courses. There's a big leap from women's study textbooks to feminism and an even bigger leap from Christine Stolba's opinions of the same to the current state of the feminist movement.

I haven't read Stolba's book and I have never taken a single women's studies course, so I can't judge the veracity of her arguments. But I would suggest to Will the student that he might also consider how university level courses routinely assign many different readings, some describing one extreme set of beliefs and others describing the other extreme. The point about a university education is, after all, to learn critical thinking. I could probably make up lists of wildly deranged quotes from the readings in all sorts of university courses, and by a stint of careful writing make them all seem like something out of the worst conservative's or progressive's nightmare. In fact, I could do the same with the contents of this blog. And I would, if someone paid me the sorts of fees George Will routinely collects.

Not all these fees are for the honest brokerage of ideas in his well-researched, intellectual columns. Recent revelations suggest that Will may have unusual ideas about journalistic ethics. One fee he collected was $25,000 per day of consultations in the informal international board of advisers of Hollinger International, a newspaper company owned by the media baron Conrad Black. Nothing wrong with this. But then he wrote a column which described a speech Black made in favorable terms. When asked if his monetary relationship with Hollinger International should have been revealed to his readers, George replied that he saw no reason to do so and that:

""My business is my business," he said. "Got it?""

I got it. The rules are not only different for Republicans and Democrats, something to be expected in a conservative opinion writer, but also for George Will and everybody else. In fact, George has a long history of practising according to his very own journalistic ethics:

"During the 1980 campaign, he drew fire when it was learned he'd secretly coached Republican candidate Ronald Reagan for a debate with President Jimmy Carter using a debate briefing book stolen from the Carter campaign. Immediately following the debate, Will appeared on Nightline (10/28/80) to praise Reagan's "thoroughbred performance," never disclosing his role in rehearsing that performance (New York Times, 7/9/83)."

"During the 1996 campaign, Will caught some criticism for commenting on the presidential race while his second wife, Mari Maseng Will, was a senior staffer for the Dole presidential campaign. Defending a Dole speech on ABC News (1/28/96), Will, according to Washingtonian (3/96), "failed to mention.… that his wife not only counseled Dole to give the speech but also helped write it." Similarly, a Will column criticizing Clinton for proposing tariffs on Japanese luxury cars (5/19/95) included no mention that Maseng Will's public relations firm had received almost $200,000 from the Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Association. When asked, Will defiantly dismissed any need for disclosure, declaring (Washington Post, 5/23/95), "I was for free trade long before I met my wife.""

Maybe honest brokers of ideas don't need disclosure? Maybe historians who do good research don't need to quote alternative sources? Maybe I'm far too hard on George just because I don't like his opinions? Who knows. But in doing the research for this essay, I did find something about George Will that has long been overlooked: his warm-heartedness. To see what I mean, carefully read the following quote:

"Will suffered another ethical lapse in the 2000 campaign when he met with George W. Bush just before the Republican candidate was to appear on ABC's This Week. Later, in a column (Washington Post, 3/4/01), Will admitted that he'd met with Bush to preview questions, not wanting to "ambush him with unfamiliar material." In the meeting, Will provided Bush with a 3-by-5 card containing a crucial question he would later ask the candidate on the air."

Set aside, for the time being, the question whether Will was ethically justified in helping the other George out. Now, isn't it really quite sweet how he came to the aid of a candidate who was probably quaking in his boots with stage fright? George Will, the concerned human being! Now that's what I call a rara avis!
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This post is a part of a (possibly unending) series. The earlier ones are:
Rara Avis, Part I (Wendy McElroy), Part II (Rush Limbaugh) and Part III (Laura Schlessinger)

The Key to Internet Fame

Now I know! To become a celebrated, widely-googled bloggist, all you have to do is to mention certain words relating to male and female anatomy. Let me see...

Would these work, too: "Thepenismightierthanthesword"?
"Twoabreastisthewaytomarch"?

Probably not. Well, I've had my fifteen minutes' worth in any case.

The Breast

Instead of writing about all the important, serious and upsetting news in this world, I am going to write about The Breast. It belongs to Janet Jackson, though similar versions are widely known to exist elsewhere. They are part of the female anatomy, and the ultimate reason why humans belong to the group mammals.

The Breast was revealed during the halftime show of this year's Superbowl, the final match in the American football season. Two performers, Janet Jackson and Justing Timberlake, were singing a duet:

"...with Timberlake singing, "Rock Your Body," and the lines he sang at the moment of truth were: "I'm gonna have you naked by the end of this song."
With that, Timberlake reached across Jackson's leather gladiator outfit and pulled off the covering to her right breast, which was partially obscured by a sun-shaped, metal nipple decoration.
The network quickly cut away from the shot, and did not mention the exposure on the air."

Was this intended, a choreographed part of the act, or just an unfortunate wardrobe mistake ? Surely the answer to this question matters. The Breast does not belong to the American public; it belongs to Janet Jackson, and if she was stripped without her consent in front of millions of viewers she's likely to feel a little bit outraged. On the other hand, maybe she was in on the stunt. I cannot tell, not having been present myself.

What I can tell is that everybody feels very apologetic about this revelation. Some examples:

""CBS deeply regrets the incident," spokeswoman LeslieAnne Wade said."

"MTV, CBS' corporate cousin in Viacom, issued a contrite statement in which it also apologized, saying the incident was "unrehearsed, unplanned, completely unintentional and was inconsistent with assurances we had about the content of the performance." "

"Timberlake said he did not intend to expose Jackson's breast.
"I am sorry that anyone was offended by the wardrobe malfunction during the halftime performance of the Super Bowl," Timberlake said in a statement. "It was not intentional and is regrettable."

Lots of apologies, none of them directed at Janet Jackson. So either she was in on the stunt or everybody involved suffers from the idea that the dangers in baring The Breast are all to do with its sudden and devastating impact on the viewers, not on the woman whose body part it happens to be. Even if the whole thing was preplanned, an appearance of sincerity in the apologies would have required that at least one of them be directed to the woman who was most affected by this exposure.

It's something very powerful, The Breast. Even breastfeeding in public raises deep primal fears in some people. The Superbowl is marketed as a family-oriented show, and revealing a naked breast to children is an indecency (well, except, of course, when they are small enough to be still breast-fed). Hence the outrage, the planned FCC investigation into this event, and all the apologies. Except to Janet Jackson, of course.

If totally preplanned, the way in which Jackson's breast was revealed and her reaction to it convey an additional message: It's ok to disrobe women in public as long as they pretend to be shocked by it. "No" means "yes" and so on. Not the development most feminists would like to see in the honesty of communication about sex between men and women. But then the Superbowl halftime isn't exactly the earthly paradise of gender equality.
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Postscript: The incident seems to have been 'sort of planned but sort of not'. And Jackson apologized, too. But this was an unfortunate choice of words from Michael Powell, the head of the FCC:

"Powell told CNN he was not convinced the incident was an accident.
"Clearly somebody had knowledge of it. Clearly it was something that was planned by someone," he said. "She probably got what she was looking for." "

Verrry unfortunate, I'd say.

Something Fun for Sunday

These are sayings of Swedish children. Daniel gave me their source: Gamla tanter lägger inte ägg([old] Aunties don't lay eggs) by Mark Levengood and Unni Lindell. Read also the ones that Daniel added in the comments.

On Human Bodies

1. The most important part of us is the toes. They are used for steering.(Mattias, 6)
2. The bodies of ghosts are not made of flesh. They are made of sheet material. (Olav, 5)
3. The nose is actually a muscle for breathing, but it can also be used to transport snot.(Emil, 6)
4. If you walk in the woods and your brains fall out, you won't be able to find your way home
because you can't think clearly. (Marten, 4)
5. If we had no bones we would be reptiles, and shoe stores wouldn't sell very much.(Mikael,6)
6. The brains are for keeping the hair attached. (Nina, 5)
7. People have many sorts of skins. The foreskin is in the front, the backskin is in the back.
(Therese, 6)
8. If you have no nerves you work better and run more errands. (Harald, 7)
9. My mom is awfully pretty; she has such long tits. (Mia, 4)
10. The stomach is very important. If we didn't have it, food would run down our legs. (Lars, 6)

On Animals

1. The cows which are the friskiest and shake their udders the most make youghurt.(Allan, 5)
2. The body of animals usually lies behind the head and the paws hang on the underside. (Ketja, 6)
3. The name of the dog's mother is dog and the name of the dog's father is dog and the children's name is puppy and the dog's name is dog. (Allan, 5)
4. Mother's name is hen and father's name is male, the children are lambs and the grandchildren are eggs. (Stefan, 6).

On Religions

1. When God died, he was allowed into heaven like all the others. So there he stayed. (Erik, 5)
2. Jesus was first a pupa, then a bug, then he grew wings and became a god. (Kate, 6)
3. Only the soul dies. The body continues living. (Elisabeth, 7)
4. When you die you get an eternal life. This means that when you die once, you can't die again ever, even if you die one more time. (Elena, 9)
5. When it is twelve o'clock, everybody turns towards Mecca and chews on the fringes of the
carpet. (Raymond, 7)

On Grandparents

1. Grandma was in great-grandma's belly, mom was in grandma's belly and I was in mom's
belly. But I have nothing in my belly except meatballs. (Helene, 6)
2. A grandma is an auntie who used to be a mother when she was a child. (Caroline, 6)
3. A grandma is the one out of which the whole family came. So it is no wonder that her skin
is a little loose. (Kristina, 7)
4. Grandpa lies under a tombstone. We pat him on the stone and once we dug some onions
into the ground so that he'd have something to bite. (Siri, 5)
5. A mother-in-law is a grandmother who is not the mother of the person in question.(Hannele, 6)
6. A mother-in-law is what you get for marrying a stranger. (Pal, 7)

Curiouser and Curiouser

Did you know that 8,279 voters in the New Hampshire Republican primaries wrote a Democrat's name on their ballots? In fact,

U.S. Senator John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, who won the Democratic primary, came in second to Bush in the Republican contest, winning 3,009 votes. Kerry name was written in on almost 5 percent of all GOP ballots.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if this presaged the beginning of a new era of sanity in New Hampshire and, cross your fingers, even in the rest of the country? Probably not. But it's always good to dream.

Blog Touring

Here's a short travel guide to the Liberal Coalition blogs and a few others:

First, both Steve Gilliard and Stradiotto are feeling poorly. Best wishes for speedy recovery. You are needed back.

Second, the Democratic primaries are the hot topic as might be expected. Corrente has a good analysis of the treatment the 'cool' media of television gives to Dean's 'hot' candidacy, Respectful of Otters reminds us that Dean is just acting like physicians do, Trish Wilson discusses the Diane Sawyer interview of the Deans and also doubts whether the two parties are any different at all for the majority of voters. Chris Brown reminds us that Dean still has the most delegates, and Bark Bark Woof Woof considers the desirability of a continuing Dean campaign.

Dean is not the only candidate people write about. The Clonecone blog looks at Lieberman's position in the race and wonders if anybody wants him there, and dohiy mir tells us why he doesn't want to vote for Kerry.

Choices for everybody, right? And if you like something more general on the primaries, Amy at blogAmy gives a good assessment of several of the candidates. If this is too serious, go and play the game with the Democratic debate points at And Then...

Third, looking at the policies of president Bush is ever popular. MercuryX23 notes that people in Iraq don't much matter to the administration, while upyernoz at Rubber Hose writes about what does matter in Iraq for the president: the proper timing of shifting power for maximal election benefits at home. Edwardpig urges people to vote against Bush and praises the administration whistleblowers, and Invisible Library tells us why librarians and reading suffer under the current administration. Gotham City13 interprets the Bush interview in Poland for us ordinary folks. The Fulcrum is astonished that a journalist actually pressed Condi Rice for an answer on an important question, though she refused, and Collective Sigh thinks that Cheney will be dumped.

Fourth, humor is also to be had on the LC blogs, or at least good discussions of it. Speedkill watched Dennis Miller's inaugural show on CNBC and it wasn't funny, and Pen-Elayne has a good discussion on why something is funny and why it's not.

Finally, Rook has a wonderful rant! Also, don't miss the interesting discussion on manliness at Alas, A Blog.

The Manly Art of Politics

From one extreme end of the political spectrum (George Will in the Washington Post) to the other (Richard Goldstein in the Nation) the pundits and talking heads seem to agree: Politics Is A Manly Man's Game. Neither writer finds this particularly disconcerting, probably because they are both men. It's nice to have a game all for yourself and to point out that it's because you are better at it.

The only problem with this is, of course, that politics is not a parlour-game, but supposedly the manner in which we take care of our shared concerns. Or is that just propaganda to be fed to the not-so-manly men and all women?

Be as it may, these otherwise completely different political writers are now unanimous in their demands for macho or butch politicians, men bristling with body hair, anger and competitiveness. George Will quotes a writer called Carnes Lord who argues that leadership

"... presupposes some element of "such traditionally manly qualities as competitiveness, aggression or, for that matter, the ability to command.""

There you have it. Woman can't lead because they don't have the manly qualities of competitiveness, aggression or, for that matter, the ability to command. Well, except for the tiny fact that Will provides no evidence of the absence of these qualities in women, and except for the tiny fact that anybody who grew up a girl knows all about womanly competitiveness, aggression and even the ability to lead.

"Can a Democrat be an alpha male?" asks Richard Goldstein in his rambling Nation article. Goldstein sees the popularity of the Republican party among white men as caused by a successful campaign to interpret political issues in symbolic terms as a battle between the white men and everybody else; a war waged to either maintain their supremacy in the society or to end it. And the Republicans are on the side of the white dude, whereas the Democrats are against him. That's why, according to Goldstein, only 22% of white men identify as Democrats.

George Will goes even further:

"New Hampshire confirmed what Iowa intimated. Democrats who are serious about the candidates' electability understand that seriousness requires a retreat from the feminization of politics.

That explains Democrats' short-lived flirtation with Wesley Clark, the empty uniform who, were a Democrat now president, probably would be on the right flank of Republicans running this year. And the Democrats' movement away from feminization explains John Kerry's brisk forward march, with a military cadence.

Kerry's "patrician aloofness" may be manly reticence. But he has embraced today's confessional ethos by making autobiography serve as political philosophy and reducing his narrative to a war story. Riding his Harley, gunning for Iowa pheasants and playing hockey in New Hampshire have expressed his campaign's subtext: manliness."

A retreat from the feminization of politics is what we need now according to Will? Hmmm. What's the number of women in the U.S. Congress again? How many female American presidents can you list? How many are running for the job of the next president? How much feminization of politics would be acceptable to Will? One percent? Or even less?

Goldstein doesn't pretend that politics has somehow suddenly been feminized, but he does have other odd ideas. For one, he thinks that the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center Towers has a clear symbolic significance as an attack on traditional masculinity (never mind that the attackers also were men, never mind that women also died in this atrocity, never mind that this utterly trivializes the real human suffering that took place), and that this attack reinforces our desire for a strong Daddy to lead and protect us. And presumably the new phallic symbol that will be erected in the place of the destroyed Towers.

Because Will is a conservative, he's quite comfortable with a plan to masculinize politics even further. Because Goldstein is not, he adds the obligatory nod to us non-macho readers at the end of his article:

"We may resent the fact that Americans regard the penis and its symbolic projections as synonymous with strength. But the psychic reality cannot be denied. At this moment, most voters are looking for a leader who reassures them with a manly presentation. The trick is to be the man women admire, blacks find credible and white guys bond with. It's a hard job, but someone's got to do it or Bush will ride the backlash to the White House - with a real mandate this time."

And what is the backlash that will take Bush back to the White House? It's not obvious from Goldstein's article, unless he means the need to protect our phallic symbols. I wonder if this bit is from an older article, written about 2000. Never mind, in comparison to Will's feverish ramblings (do read them if you doubt me) Goldstein comes across clear as water. Sort of.

Now, as I have no penis handy myself, I do resent the 'fact' that Americans regard the penis as synonymous with strength. Maybe I should strike Will and Goldstein down with my divine feminine pinky, just to remind them not to make simplistic stereotyping generalizations at the expense of real critical thought. Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Elizabeth the First of England, Catharine the Great of Russia and many other woman leaders in history show that strength is not only a manly characteristic. Women can be competitive, aggressive and ruthless, and men can be cooperative, kind and merciful. Human beings have access to all sorts personality traits, and to assume that they are solely determined by what might be found between the legs is preposterous and insulting. And not only insulting to women, as may have been the intention of these articles, but also to men and especially white men whom Goldstein at least regards as immature teenagers permanently worried about the next erection and its size and unable to differentiate their own human worth from such considerations.

Does This Work?

The next post below this one is intended to reveal my soft side, the subtle feminine touches of appreciating beauty in a snowflake and the admiration one feels when ones long scaly snaketail whips up lovely filigrees in the freshly-fallen snow. I hope it works to balance my public image. It better work, for my future plans for posts are a bit fangy.

An Introduction to Winter

On a winter night when it's snowing, go out, turn your head up and stick out your tongue. Taste the snowflakes melting on your tongue. If there's already enough snow on the ground, lie down on your back and look at the sky. Are there stars? Northern lights? Then move your straight legs and arms up and down as far as they go. Get up carefully, and admire your artwork. You have just created a buttangel! You could make a whole row of these, a chorus to sing the ode to winter. If you are a man, you could also write them a song to sing in the snow.

Next, make a snow lantern if the snow balls easily in your hands. Make nine snowballs and set them in a tight circle on the ground. Place another seven snowballs above the first eleven, slightly inwards and inbetween the first balls. Continue with five and then three. Slip a lighted candle or tealight down through the whole that remains, and cap the whole with one perfect snowball. You could have a row of snowlights leading to your door, inviting the spirits of winter in, or just partyguests if you prefer.

Find a piece of corrugated cardboard and a hill where children go sledding. If you are shy, wait until they have gone to bed. Sit on your cardboard and slide down the hill. Don't forget to scream. Then try it on your back, head first.

Go home and make a SnowBush. The principle is the same as in making snowmen. Use pebbles for eyes, nostrils and teeth. Use larger stones to pelt the SnowBush down.

On a clear winter morning, take a walk. Look at the architecture of nature, its spare, elegant bones, the beauty of the bodies of trees, the contrasting plushness of winter animals and birds. Notice the colors that hide in what first seems starkly black and white: the silvers and faint burgundies, the pinks and icy blues, the colored shadows of tree trunks and boulders, and then the sudden thrill of the blood-red berries on bare branches.

Then go back to your warm home, anticipating a hot cup of chocolate or a glass of cider with a cinnamon stick, and the warmth that will slowly seep back into your fingers and cheeks while your eyes will retain the shine and brightness of winter.

The Jobless Recovery Is Just Fine!

So says an editorial in the Washington Post, a central player in the great liberal media conspiracy. Such editorials are a goddess-send to us weary bloggers, even when they are anonymous as this one is. And no, I didn't write it just to have something to laugh at, but I almost wish I had.

The editorial tells us to look at the bright side of the jobless recovery. It points out that the current unemployment is largely structural rather than cyclical (i.e., based on a mismatch with the changed needs of the economy and the existing skills and education of the workers rather than on a drop in aggregate demand caused by recessions). It then interprets this as joyous news:

"But the bigger question is whether jobless recoveries are a bad thing. They are, after all, the flip side of good news. There is less cyclical unemployment these days, so recessions are milder; fewer jobs are being created now because fewer jobs were destroyed during the downturn. Moreover, a jobless recovery means, by definition, that each worker is producing more. Higher productivity, in turn, is the best promise possible of higher wages and employment in the future."

The first two sentences in this quote are equivalent to saying that it would be a good thing if cancer was a larger percentage of all illnesses and if the relative percentage of influenza sufferers decreased correspondingly. We could then avoid getting the flu every winter, because we would all be dead from cancer or barely surviving chemotherapy. Whatever will the so-called liberal media say next?

Well, the editorial says next that it's great how each worker still working in a jobless recovery is producing more, or rather, working harder. Then it makes a subtle shift to a different reality, and continues by stating that:

"Higher productivity, in turn, is the best promise possible of higher wages and employment in the future."

That each worker might be producing more does NOT necessarily mean that worker productivity per hour of work is up. People may simply be working much longer hours just to keep their jobs. And no, dear Anonymous, higher worker productivity does NOT mean that earnings will automatically rise. There's a large number of workers out there who'd like a stab at any job, many of them in places like India and China, and this reserve will keep wages low. Besides, employers have market power in many labor markets, and they can use this power to keep wages and employment lower. Workers, on the other hand, have very little power, what with us having gotten rid of the evil trade unions.

Read the whole thing tonight instead of the cartoons page in your local newspaper. It's worth it.

Poetry For Today

The New Hampshire primaries have taken the limelight away from George W. Bush. I want to give some of it back to him. Here it goes:

This following poem is composed entirely of actual quotes from George W. Bush. It was compiled and arranged by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson.

Make the Pie Higher

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen
And uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the internet
Become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish
Can coexist.

Families is where our nation finds hope
Where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!

Malpractice Awards - The Cause of High Health Care Costs?

You may be forgiven for believing so if you listened to president Bush speak on Monday in Arkansas. He blamed the malpractice system for high medical care costs. One of his main arguments was this:

""Hear me out on this: (unnecessary lawsuits) drive docs to prescribe drugs and procedures that may not be necessary, just to avoid lawsuits. That's called the defensive practice of medicine.""

And all this defensive yet unnecessary medicine costs more, thus causing the health care expenses to rise. Or so says the president.

What to do about this? The Republicans and the American Medical Association, AMA (sort of like a trade union for physicians) favor caps on malpractice awards, or at least the part of the awards that goes to compensate the victim for pain and suffering. Bush also seems to believe that there are too many:

""junk" lawsuits [that] cost taxpayers because they drive the federal government's health care costs up by $28 billion a year."."

Does this mean that we should reduce the patients' ability to sue their providers and limit the total awards to some smaller sum than is currently possible? In other words, should we get rid of 'frivolous' law suits and 'excessive' awards? And would this then reduce the costs of health care?

To answer these questions, it's good to know why we have a system of medical malpractice suits in the first place. Its major goals are to compensate the victims of medical malpractice and to discourage doctors, hospitals and other medical providers from committing acts of malpractice; malpractice beind defined as acts of omission (not doing the correct thing) and acts of commission (doing the incorrect thing). If we make suing doctors and hospitals harder, and if we reduce the awards going to the victims, we'll cut back on the probability that the victim will be adequately compensated and we'll increase the probability that a negligent doctor or hospital will get away with this negligence altogether. What other safety precautions would the president apply to protect the victims and to deter future malpractice? I see none in the proposals.

Oh, but we are told that many of the current malpractice suits are frivolous. Maybe then it would be acceptable to cut back a little on the patients' rights and the providers' restraints? Maybe. But consider the results from a study carried out by the Harvard School of Public Health in the 1990s: The researchers retrospectively studied the actual medical records of hospital patients in New York state during the mid-1980's, and found out that medical malpractice had taken place in one admission out of each one hundred. Only a tenth of those affected by malpractice had actually sued their practitioners, and less than one half of this tenth won their cases. In summary, only five per cent of those with a good case had actually been awarded malpractice compensation.

Now, it's possible that many patients also sue without proper cause, given that roughly 40% of all doctors will be sued at least once during their lifetimes. Some suits are indeed frivolous, and some frivolous suits get awards because of the inherent randomness of the legal process. It would be nice to reduce these suits while retaining and even encouraging the rights of those with a real grievance to sue. The trick is how to do this.

What about the large court awards for medical malpractice? The average award size has grown over the years, that's true. President Bush sees the cause for this in the greedy trial lawyers who take cases on contingency basis (client pays nothing if the suit is unsuccessul, then a certain percentage of the total award for successful cases): the bigger the award, the more the lawyers get paid.

"Lawyers walk away with up to 40 percent - 40 percent! - of every settlement and verdict," Bush said."

The legal system is indeed a pretty inefficient way of compensating the victims. The problem is that the Bush alternative would not only reduce some of these inefficiencies but also reduce the patients' ability to seek compensation. As an example, if contingency suits are banned, poor patients will find it very hard to procure legal help, as they need to be able to pay whether the suit is successful or not.

The president may have spoken against trial lawyers for political reasons, but he was silent about other reasons for the high malpractice awards for reason of ignorance, most likely. The awards are not high simply because lawyers are seeking maximal payments for themselves. They are also high because doctors and hospitals carry insurance against malpractice awards, and the juries know that the money they allow to the victims is not coming from the pockets of the individual provider standing in the dock, but from anonymous, big and wealthy insurance companies. No need to cry for the lost educational opportunities of the poor doctor's children, or to fear that a small local hospital will shut down due to the financial problems of paying the award.

The whole existence of medical malpractice insurance is an anomaly. Insurance is supposed to protect us against unforeseen random events outside our influence. Surely malpractice is none of those things. Strictly speaking, malpractice insurance makes no economic sense. Its existence protects doctors, hospitals and other medical providers, true, but we don't in general sell people insurance against their own mistakes or crimes.

One unintended consequence of the malpractice insurance system is the protection it offers to the true 'rotten eggs' in the medical professions. Only a small number of doctors, for example, is responsible for most large awards; yet all doctors help them out by subsidizing them through malpractice insurance. This is not good for the goal of discouraging providers from committing further malpractice, and it makes nonnegligent doctors and hospitals take the side of those who actually should not be allowed to practice any longer. Something that should have been seen as a fault-based approach to compensating the victims and punishing the offenders has now been transformed into a general business problem for all doctors and hospitals.

So yes, the system does need urgent reforms. Whether the ones president Bush is backing are in fact the right ones is highly debatable. I believe that we are at risk of throwing away the baby (compensating victims and deterring further malpractice) while keeping the bathwater (high health care costs).

And what about the bathwater? According to the president, we would save lots of money if physicians no longer had to practise defensive medicine. Actually, studies have shown that whatever is said by the politicians, doctors don't practise that defensively to begin with. This makes sense as most malpractice studies are not about something the doctor didn't do (omission), but about something the doctor may have done wrong (commission). Doing more things on top of something that's wrong isn't going to reduce the likelihood that a provider will be sued. Given the absence of evidence on any current costs of defensive medicine, we can't assume that the health care costs would be lowered by changes in the malpractice awards system.

Reducing the size of the payments could decrease the doctors' insurance payments, of course. It's a totally different question whether doctors would pass these savings to their patients or not.

On Shopping

I have a sin to confess: I don't like shopping. No, I don't just not-like it; I HATE IT! Have hated it for years.

I wish I were a man. Men are not given the commandment to "shop until you drop", men are not held to blame when the economy collapses due to "loss in consumer confidence" (read: due to women buying less). Nonshopping men are not regarded as evolutionary failures. Rather, men have the much more pleasant duty to make up bad jokes about shopaholic women. I wish I were a man.

But the fact is that I am a woman who hates shopping. We never have any food in the house. We have a house we have long since outgrown. I wear my clothes until they fall into shreds, when my long-suffering husband goes out and buys me some new ones in varying, approximately correct sizes. And still I will not repent or reform. Not even when our president told us that the war against terrorism depended on my shopping.

Oh, but I tried! I tried. But I never got past the first step in my twelve-step program: admitting that I hate shopping. Medications failed to work; having the prescriptions filled would have meant going out to buy them. My Freudian therapist thought that I suffered from insufficient consumption envy, my cognitive one urged me to rethink shopping until I realized I had a previously unrecognized phobia concerning internet sales sites. At last I could no longer face the thought of shopping for a new therapist.

This can't go on. I am falling apart under the pressure. My husband, loving and supportive all through this unending ordeal, is developing ulcers from the unnatural, unmanly position he has been forced to take as the main consumer in the family. My friends seldom visit us anymore, and when they do I hear them whispering to each other, pointing out the absence of bunny-decorated kitchen towels, dried flower arrangements, food.

I have a recurring nightmare: There is a knock on the door, presaging the entry of the stern agents from the Consumer Interest Association. Gigabites of their computers are filled by my case: the Public Enemy Number One, a woman denying her proper womanly role, a consumer abstaining from consumption, a citizen refusing to participate in this most sacred sphere of our shared capitalistic concerns. I wake up screaming:"What are you going to do with me?"

What they might do with me doesn't bear thinking about. Oh, don't doubt for one moment that I wouldn't accept whatever fate it might be; I know that it is people like me who are slowly destroying the country our founding fathers made so great. If they ever come for me I shall go without resistance.

But in the meantime I still hate shopping.

Some Interesting News

Colin Powell on the missing WMD in Iraq:

"The open question is how many stocks they had, if any, and if they had any, where did they go. And if they didn't have any, then why wasn't that known beforehand?"

Good questions, especially in the second sentence. Especially as we went to war over not having the correct answer to that one.

Dick Cheney on the selection of the quote in his family Christmas cards:

"Lynne Cheney was responsible, the vice president said, for the quote from Benjamin Franklin on the family Christmas card: "If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid"?"

According to Cheney

"The quote reflects Franklin's musing over the importance of God in the affairs of men, the vice president said. "It did not refer, or should not be taken as some kind of indication, that the United States today sees itself as an empire"."

Whooah! Now that's a relief for the rest of the world. I think?

The Pope on the media portrayals of marriage and family:

"Infidelity, sexual activity outside of marriage, and the absence of a moral and spiritual vision of the marriage covenant are depicted uncritically, while positive support is at times given to divorce, contraception, abortion and homosexuality. Such portrayals, by promoting causes inimical to marriage and the family, are detrimental to the common good of society."

Assuming that the basic unit of the society is a creature called 'the marriage and the family', and assuming that these are interpreted very traditionally, perhaps yes. But what happens if the basic unit of the society is a creature called 'a human being'? Things aren't then always anywhere near so clear-cut. I can't help thinking that the Pope's own existence as an unmarried childless man makes him perhaps not the most expert of judges in this field. But what do I know? I'm just a pagan goddess.

After reading through this and the last few posts, I think that I need lessons on benevolent writing and sunniness. "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade" and all that stuff. I think that when life gives you lemons,you squirt them in your enemy's eye. Something seriously wrong here.

Are Women More Prone to Injuries?

"Are women more prone to injuries? It's that time of year when many people start trying to get into shape, but it may be more difficult for women than men. In fact, when it comes to beginning an exercise program or trying out a new sport, men and women may not always be created equal."

This is what my screen revealed when I clicked on the link to CNN.com for its Headline News.
To learn more about these injury-prone women, I clicked on the 'full story' link, eager to find out exactly what makes women so fragile or clumsy-footed.

But of course I was disappointed. The 'full story' refers to two military studies, one done in Britain and one in the U.S.. The British study found that female recruits were eight times more likely to be discharged for injuries once men and women were put on the same basic training program. The research concluded that

"...differences in strength, bone mass and the length of their strides put women at a greater risk of getting hurt."

Bone mass, strength, length of stride? In other words, smaller people were found to be more at risk for injuries in a program that most likely is extremely demanding and geared to the bone mass, weight and length of stride of larger people. Now, women are, on average, smaller than men, but most women who initiate an exercise program are not going to pick up the British military training manual and blindly follow it as the ideal daily routine. Keep in mind the preface to this story: "It's that time of the year when many people start trying to get into shape..."

The American military study had similar findings, but found out that the injury gap narrowed as training proceeded. This made the researchers suggest that

"...the level of fitness matters more than gender, and that women, on average, start out at lower levels than men."

And what can we conclude from this story? Its author believes that it is

"If you're starting an exercise program or a new sport, take it easy. You'll be less likely to get hurt, and when you've reached the level of fitness that you want -- go get 'em!"

Ok, sort of, though this conclusion has nothing to do with the way the article lured us in to begin with. And it is not all that we are going to take with us after reading it. We are also going to have a slightly greater belief in women's greater injury-proneness, whether such injury-proneness exists or not. After all, it was in CNN news!

The manner in which this story was sold is common for reporting of this ilk: first hint at great new revelations about what makes women women and men men, then go into a summary of various, often half-baked, research findings, but always, always finish with something that lets the gender that's been getting the bad rap (usually women) to feel that they have not been getting such a bad rap after all. This sells, I guess. But it doesn't change the basic message of such writings.

I, for one, expect more from writers who pretend to tell people how to live their lives, including how to exercise safely. Some proper research into the field, applicable to average individuals and their average circumstances would be good. Avoidance of pitting one gender against another would also be good, and tying the message of the piece to its title and preface would be excellent.

I, for one, will probably expect forevermore, at least with regard to writings aimed at strengthening and manufacturing women's many insecurities.
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And whatever blogger says, this IS a Saturday's post.
PS: Read this excellent article on why women's bodies attract so much more interest in the medical subspecialty of "Feeble, Weak and Withering" when there are no real reasons for this.
Thanks to Amy (in the comments) for the link.

My Favorite SOTU Assessment

..is this one:

Meanwhile, Bush was running the same old plays in his State of the Union Address: fear, threat, danger, terror, war, enemies. He even trotted out the weapons of mass destruction again, just as though they had actually existed. And the media accuse Howard Dean of being negative!

Read the whole thing here.

Echidne goes girly

Why? It's a long story, but the gist of it is that I slipped into the body of someone who was having a migraine attack. At first I feared that I could actually die from this thing, then I feared that I would not die. Afterwards, I felt a strong need to spruce up my appearance, what with the death-ringed eyes and the translucent teeth.

So I dug up my library on beauty care. It spans a long way back. Here's instructions from an 1873 Young Ladies' Journal on how to wash the hair:

It is occasionally necessary to thoroughly cleanse the hair. One or two precautions must be taken, however. Never use soap if you can avoid it; if you do, let it be the very mildest and unperfumed. Avoid so-called hair-cleansing fluids, and use rain-water filtered. The yolks of two new-laid eggs are much to be preferred to soap; they make a beautiful lather, and when the washing is finished, and the hair thoroughly rinsed in the purest rain-water, you will find, when dry, that the gloss will not be destroyed, which an alkali never fails to do. The first water must not be very hot, only just warm, and the last perfectly cold. Dry with soft towels - but do not rub till the skin is tender - and afterwards brush. Be always careful to have your brushes and combs perfectly clean and free from grease.

If this is too much girliness for you, take this quiz. It tells you which famous Western feminist you most resemble. If you are a man, you must first take a few deep breaths, imagine yourself to be a woman, and then rapidly answer the questions. I am Simone de Beauvoir, with a dingleberry named Sartre dragging behind me. Link to the quiz via Going Dutch.
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Postscript: I just realized why the water must be so cool: Imagine your hair with a couple of egg yolks in hot water! Anyone who's thickened a sauce with egg yolks would know what would happen. Wet hair encircled by slimy globs of semi-cooked egg!

Behind the Veil

France is contemplating banning the veil, the Yarmulke and large Christian crosses in schools. This can be seen as a consequence of the strict separation between religion and state in France, a tradition which has its roots in the state's fight for supremacy against the once-powerful Catholic church. But it is also a response to the growing French fears about islamic fundamentalism in a country with five to seven million muslims. The effect of the proposed ban is, of course, to limit the individual's scope for the free practice of religion.

This has provoked demonstrations in France but even more fervent protests abroad. Now some in the French government question the advisability of the ban. Here's the foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin:

"De Villepin told fellow ministers that the planned ban "puts France in a very delicate situation on the international stage," a well-placed government source who was briefed on the talks quoted him as saying. The source spoke on condition of anonymity.
Particularly, bans against wearing the veil put France "on the wrong foot with Arab nations, but also with the United States, which is for the respect of individual liberties," the source quoted de Villepin as saying."

Meanwhile, the top islamic cleric in Saudi Arabia, an Arab country, has criticized the atmosphere at an economic summit in Jiddah for the intermingling of the sexes:

"What we saw at that meeting of the mixing of men and women, and the women's appearance without their hijab (head scarf), which is ordered by God, is forbidden," Grand Mufti Sheik Abdul-Aziz bin Abdullah al-Sheik said in a statement released Tuesday.
He said he was troubled by photographs from the meeting published in newspapers Monday, saying the women's dress violated Islamic law. He also said he was worried about the moral state of Saudi Arabia.
"My pain is increased by such shameful behavior," he said. "God curses the woman that imitates a man, whether in appearance, clothing or in the lifting of her voice. So how can she walk among them, mix with them, uncovered?"

The Saudis have always taken a firm approach against any relaxation in the women's dress code. When the U.S. military decided to no longer require that American servicewomen in Saudi Arabia wear abayas (black head-to-toe robes) while off-base:

... the Saudi Committee for the Preservation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a government office, announced that the women would not be allowed in public without the abaya regardless of their U.S. citizenship or religious opposition. Saudi officials called the change in U.S. policy an affront to Islamic law that challenged Saudi sovereignty. Officials were also displeased that the U.S. did not consult the Saudi government before changing the policy.

It seems to me that the U.S. holds France to a higher standard of behavior than, say, Saudi Arabia. Though France is proposing restrictions to religious freedom, these would only apply in the school system. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, disallows the public practice of other religions. Surely those that are concerned about the freedom of religion should first address the more egregious violations, or at least criticize them with an equally loud voice. But then, of course, the Saudis are the friends of the U.S., whereas the French are... you know, Old Europe and all that.
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And what about the feminist analysis of the veil that I'm duty-bound to present? That, unfortunately, must wait until I have more time. Lots more time.

Matchmaking Between You And The U.S. Presidential Candidates

I'll write anything to make you look... Actually, this is a quiz which helps you find out which candidate you might want to elect. The results might surprise you. I was surprised by mine. Too bad that I'm not allowed to vote in this anti-goddess society.

Liberal Anger

An oxymoron? So it seemed until quite recently. As Molly Ivins points out,

Guys like Rush Limbaugh figured that out a long time ago--attack a liberal and the first thing he says is, "You may have a point there."

Conservatives, on the other hand, are excellent haters. They have had the hate arena mostly to themselves for the last decade, after all, and practice does make perfect. Liberals are no match for voices such as Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh, though they are the targets, naturally. So puny has the left resistance been in these games that some right-wingers have had to turn to attacking their own to stay in training. Here's David Frum, a neo-conservative, on the paleoconservatives of his own party:

They began by hating the neoconservatives. They came to hate their party and this president. They have finished by hating their country.
War is a great clarifier. It forces people to take sides. The paleoconservatives have chosen — and the rest of us must choose too. In a time of danger, they have turned their backs on their country. Now we turn our backs on them.

Well, things are looking up for Frum and other underemployed conservative pugilists. Several recent articles have declared that liberals have finally turned angry. "I hate Bush" begins Jonathan Chait in last September's New Republic, and he notes that he's not the only one:

There seem to be quite a few of us Bush haters. I have friends who have a viscerally hostile reaction to the sound of his voice or describe his existence as a constant oppressive force in their daily psyche. Nor is this phenomenon limited to my personal experience: Pollster Geoff Garin, speaking to The New York Times, called Bush hatred "as strong as anything I've experienced in 25 years now of polling." Columnist Robert Novak described it as a "hatred ... that I have never seen in 44 years of campaign watching."

Not only does the conservative columnist Novak find this hatred unmatched in the last forty-four years of campaing watching (he must have had his back towards his own troops), but other commentators on the right also find it 'puzzling', 'a mystery'. Liberals have no such trouble understanding the root causes of Bush-hatred. Here's Chait's summary on the issues which have turned your average kind-hearted Liberal into a bloodthirsty wannabe-warrior. He sets out the scene by reminding us that the year 2000 election results made all reasonable observers expect that George W. Bush would govern from a moderate, bi-partisan position:

Instead, Bush has governed as the most partisan president in modern U.S. history. The pillars of his compassionate-conservative agenda--the faith-based initiative, charitable tax credits, additional spending on education--have been abandoned or absurdly underfunded. Instead, Bush's legislative strategy has revolved around wringing out narrow, party-line votes for conservative priorities by applying relentless pressure to GOP moderates--in one case, to the point of driving Vermont's James Jeffords out of the party. Indeed, when bipartisanship shows even the slightest sign of life, Bush usually responds by ruthlessly tamping it down. In 2001, he convinced GOP Representative Charlie Norwood to abandon his long-cherished patients' bill of rights, which enjoyed widespread Democratic support. According to a Washington Post account, Bush and other White House officials "met with Norwood for hours and issued endless appeals to party loyalty." Such behavior is now so routine that it barely rates notice. Earlier this year, a column by Novak noted almost in passing that "senior lawmakers are admonished by junior White House aides to refrain from being too chummy with Democrats."

When the September 11 attacks gave Bush an opportunity to unite the country, he simply took it as another chance for partisan gain. He opposed a plan to bolster airport security for fear that it would lead to a few more union jobs. When Democrats proposed creating a Department of Homeland Security, he resisted it as well. But later, facing controversy over disclosures of pre-September 11 intelligence failures, he adopted the idea as his own and immediately began using it as a cudgel with which to bludgeon Democrats. The episode was telling: Having spent the better part of a year denying the need for any Homeland Security Department at all, Bush aides secretly wrote up a plan with civil service provisions they knew Democrats would oppose and then used it to impugn the patriotism of any Democrats who did--most notably Georgia Senator Max Cleland, a triple-amputee veteran running for reelection who, despite his support for the war with Iraq and general hawkishness, lost his Senate race thanks to an ugly GOP ad linking him to Osama bin Laden.

All this helps answer the oft-posed question of why liberals detest Bush more than Reagan. It's not just that Bush has been more ideologically radical; it's that Bush's success represents a breakdown of the political process. Reagan didn't pretend to be anything other than what he was; his election came at the crest of a twelve-year-long popular rebellion against liberalism. Bush, on the other hand, assumed office at a time when most Americans approved of Clinton's policies. He triumphed largely because a number of democratic safeguards failed. The media overwhelmingly bought into Bush's compassionate-conservative facade and downplayed his radical economic conservatism. On top of that, it took the monomania of a third-party spoiler candidate, plus an electoral college that gives disproportionate weight to GOP voters--the voting population of Gore's blue-state voters exceeded that of Bush's red-state voters--even to bring Bush close enough that faulty ballots in Florida could put him in office.

But Bush is never called to task for the radical disconnect between how he got into office and what he has done since arriving. Reporters don't ask if he has succeeded in "changing the tone." Even the fact that Bush lost the popular vote is hardly ever mentioned. Liberals hate Bush not because he has succeeded but because his success is deeply unfair and could even be described as cheating.

Add to this the anger boiling due to the administration's unusual approach to environmental protection, its contempt for women's rights, its unilateralism and most importantly, its pre-emptively defensive war against Saddam Hussein, and most of the ingredients of the liberal Molotov's cocktail are mixed. The only thing that's surprising about this anger is how slow it has been in coming together.

So, now that we are all angry together, will the country benefit? The answer depends on whom one asks. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times deplores this trend:

Considering the savagery with which the Snarling Right excoriated President Clinton as a "sociopath," blocked judicial appointments, undermined U.S. military operations from Kosovo to Iraq, hounded Vincent Foster and then accused the Clintons of murdering him, it is utterly hypocritical for conservatives to complain about liberal incivility. But they're right. Liberals have now become as intemperate as conservatives, and the result - everybody shouting at everybody else - corrodes the body politic and is counterproductive for Democrats themselves.

Anger may well corrode the body politic; in fact, the conservative anger has already done so. But why is anger counterproductive for Democrats when it seems to have served the Republicans very well? Kristof implies that the kind of anger that gets you votes is not the liberal sort:

My guess is that if the Democrats stay angry, then they'll offend Southern white guys, with or without pickups and flags, and lose again.

Hmmm. And if the Democrats swallow their anger and smile, will the Southern white guys vote for them in droves? Please say that it is so, Nicholas.

Given the above analysis, the Republicans should welcome the anger of liberals everywhere. They don't seem to do so, of course. Rather, they act as if their own behavior in the last decade or so has been worthy of ten Nobel Peace Prizes. You know, feigned assaulted innocence.

Consider the reactions from the right to the MoveOn Organization's recent ad competition where one of the entries had Bush morph into Hitler. RNC chairman Ed Gillespie called this "the worst and most vile form of political hate speech" and "a despicable tactic". And no doubt it is. However, using nazi-terminology to describe ones political opponents appears to be much more common from the other side of the aisle. Here are Michael Savage and Norman Liebmann on the topic of nazis:

"I once wrote that 'Vac'm in the Vulva' Barbara Boxer was the reincarnation of Adolf Mengele in drag, the Nazi Angel of Death. I meant it. ... The spirit of Mengele knows well to start at the weakest point and work from there – with Clinton, Singer, Boxer or any other willing host."

"The difference between Clinton's fascists and Hitler's fascists is Clinton's have no paradigm. The trickiest to identify are the fascists in Arkansas, but only because the people there found the Nazi salute too intricate a maneuver for them to master."

Conwebwatch gives thirty-four such examples of the use of nazi imagery by right-wing pundits in the last five years.

No sane person would defend such slurs from either political party, but in the absence of these extremes, could rising liberal anger actually be a good thing? Paul Starobin in the Atlantic Monthly thinks so:

The clash between angry secular liberals and angry religiously motivated conservatives sometimes seems to generate little more than media din. But the rising partisanship of the American voter is probably a positive development. A country as big and diverse as the United States cannot avoid contentious fights over public-policy issues. A broad sorting of voters into a Red team and a Blue team—a trend harking back to the intense partisanship of the nineteenth century—is better than a European-style fragmentation of the electorate into numerous small parties, able to govern only after patching together fragile coalitions. The same Pew Research Center survey that found—tut-tut—a surge in the intensity of partisan feelings also turned up a decline in cynicism about government.

I'd feel more comfortable with Starobin's arguments if his excitement didn't give me mental images of beer-drinking fans rooting for the two sides in the Superbowl. Does he want two big teams because their clash would be more gigantic, and therefore more fun to watch? Or because he seems to see the art of compromising as nothing but the 'patching together of fragile coalitions'? Would this country indeed be better off with more open anger on both sides?

And might the liberals themselves be better off now that they are finally angry? How will they negotiate this volatile emotion? Its dangerous zones are at both ends of the scale: in sullen, inward-turned bitterness and apathy on one hand and in self-destructive foaming-at-the-mouth rage on the other. Neither of these are attractive campaign promises for the Democratic candidates. But there is a third way: anger used as fuel for long-term organizing, campaigning and negotiating. This is anger as a small warming flame firmly under control of reason; anger with a smiling face if you like.

I believe, on balance, that the new liberal anger can be a great opportunity when carefully handled. It isn't even that new, historically speaking. What could be more liberal than the righteous anger one feels when injustices are committed? That, my friends, lies at the very heart of liberalism.
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See Carol Tavris' Anger. The Misunderstood Emotion for more ideas about how to use anger productively.

I've Been to the Mountaintop

Martin Luther King, April 3, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee:

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 go 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.

All About Me!

The blogosphere has been sweet to me! I have been raised to the proper divine place!
First, this blog is among the nominees for the Koufax award for the Best New Blog! And look at the company I keep! I'm humbled and elated at the same time...

Next, the Great Voice of ms. musings has picked my blog from among the multitudes of very good blogs as one to be praised! And once again, look at the company I keep!

Enough with the exclamation marks already. I'm a very pessimistic goddess, and immediately noticed that there's no way in hell I can win the Koufax award, given all the professional and famous and otherwise excellent competition. And then I noticed that the Ms. magazine writeup mentioned that I blog daily, and yesterday I DID NOT blog, as I was asleep.... And then the pressures started building up: there's nowhere to go but down now... and I've barely begun! What if I run dry? Why is everything always so hard?

Ok. Now I feel more normal, and can extend my sincere, from-the-very-bottom-of-my-heart thanks to everybody who's been so nice to me, and everybody who hasn't been so nice to me but still reads here once and a while. And my sincere, admiring thanks to everybody whose blogs I mine daily for good data and ideas (you know who you are). And to everybody else, including the people who give me material by their very existence...

The only logical way to stop this would be to say that I am quitting blogging now while I'm still doing good, but I won't!

Maureen Dowd: Marriage and Career Counseling for Politicians

Maureen Dowd is a New York Times columnist who inherited the 'one-woman-only-in-a-prominent-position' job from Anna Quindlen. In fact, it's said that Anna herself fished Maureen's writings from the slush pile and brought them to the paper's attention. I so wish she had let them stay in the slush pile.

Based on her picture, Dowd is a woman, and I dare conjecture that she's supposed to cater for the female market in political readership. And what does she think might interest women readers of the Times?

The answer: argyle sweaters on men, inability of being a 'good wife' in women. Both of these topics are applied to Democratic candidates for the job of the president of the United States. Apparently our nation's future is hanging by a thread of argyle wool which a careless wife could easily snap. So.

Her latest assault on wives concerns the role and career of one Dr. Judith Steinberg, the wife of Howard Dean. Dowd begins her article suggesting that the Deans are in urgent need of George W. Bush's new initiative for propping up the conventional marriage. Why? Because Judith is not sitting in the front row when Howard gives speeches; widening her eyes into admiring opaque circles at the wonder and wit of this man that she suddenly finds herself married to. Instead, she's back home in Vermont taking care of her patients and the Deans' school-aged child still at home.

This MUST mean that the Deans marriage is in deep trouble. On the other hand, of course, if she indeed had chosen to sit in all the front rows on her husband's campaign tour, what would Maureen and others like her have thought about that? Shall I guess? Perhaps Judith would have come across as a political groupie, a woman who wants the limelight more than she wants to help her poor suffering patients. A woman who chooses to wine and dine with celebrities while her poor child is all abandoned in the middle of the frigid snow fields of Vermont.

Wives just can't win. Guilt is a fine tool in even clumsy hands as Maureen shows us:

"What will she tell their grandkids?" wondered one political reporter here. "Yeah, Grandpa was once a front-runner for president with crowds all over America cheering him but I was too busy to go see it?"

Too busy. Or too selfish. Or too cold. Or too clingy. Or too independent. Or too lumpish. Yes, I've heard them all about political wives. Poor things, they can't do a thing right, and as a corollary neither can any other wives. Is this what Maureen thinks that women like to read about in the mornings, just before donning their hairshirts and taking up the daily self-flagellation?

Why couldn't she stick to argyle shirts? Oh, but I nearly forgot! She does discuss the fashion sense of Judith:

In worn jeans and old sneakers, the shy and retiring Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean looked like a crunchy Vermont hippie, blithely uncoiffed, unadorned, unstyled and unconcerned about not being at her husband's side — the anti-Laura. You could easily imagine the din of Rush Limbaugh and Co. demonizing her as a counterculture fem-lib role model for the blue states.

No! How terrible! She's actually dressed like most women in real life! This won't do. Put her back in corsets and high heels, give her a dolly face with makeup and puff up her hair. Then wind up the key and off she totters, to walk properly just three steps behind her husband: the perfect political Barbie. The guilt and blame programs come with the basic version, and all socially conservative potential Dean voters can breathe a long sigh and relax: we can still win this thing, Dean now looks like he's supposed to: a package deal where we get a butch leader and his Suitable Spouse to fight another butch dealer with a suitable spouse.

According to the ever-unreliable source of the Drudge Report, Maureen isn't even done with Deans yet. Supposedly Howard forgot to give her a promised telephone interview, and she's promised to write about it tomorrow. Ah, the suspension! There is a hint, though, if Drudge is to be trusted (I wouldn't, personally). Dowd told him (he says):

"A race rooted mainly in attacking the president may not take Dean far enough. Voters want someone who's been through the fire. They care about character. They want to know the evolution of the man, even if it's a myth."

Myth? If Dowd wants to be the mythmaker, Echidne save us all. And she can't.
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Postscript: And what did she write?

But a race rooted mainly in attacking the president may not take Dr. Dean far enough. Voters want someone who's been through the fire. They care about character. They want to know the evolution of the man, even if it's a myth.

And I want to know why she reads her columns to Matt Drudge before they are published.

Fighting Fat - The Bush Administration Approach

The World Health Organization just issued a report on the world-wide obesity problem. It estimates that 300 million people are obese and 750 million overweight. Even 22 million children under the age five are regarded as overweight. The WHO wants people to start eating differently and their governments to support this change:

The WHO report recommends eating more fruits and vegetables and limiting fats and salt. It also suggests governments limit food advertising aimed at children and encourage their citizens to eat healthier foods. Taxes and subsidies could be used to reduce the price of healthy food and make them more attractive to consumers, the report said.

The U.S. administration response was swift. HHS official William Steiger argued that the WHO findings were based on faulty science. I guess he also didn't like any of the onus put on governments or the business interests:

"The (U.S. government) favors dietary guidance that focuses on the total diet, promotes the view that all foods can be part of a healthy and balanced diet, and supports personal responsibility to choose a diet conducive to individual energy balance, weight control and health," wrote Steiger, special assistant for international affairs at Health and Human Services.

Now, personal responsibility is all fine and dandy, and exercize is also an important part of a healthy life. But personal responsibility is something that's a lot easier to practise when the grocery stores offer many affordable alternatives of healthy foods, when the cheapest filling thing to eat isn't a Big Mac with fries from McDonald's, and when the television isn't constantly blaring messages about the desirability of fast foods and soft drinks to its watching audience. If these messages didn't work, advertizers wouldn't be willing to pay for most of the tv industry.

Wiener's response isn't surprising, of course, given that the Bush administration wants pregnant women to assert individual responsibility in avoiding mercury that might possibly lurk in quite a few saltwater fish species, while the fishing and power plant industries (which put the mercury there) are not held to the same standards of individual responsibility.

Would you like to have lunch with me here at the headquarters of Snakepit Inc.? The menu: tuna salad with dill and mercury, freedom fries with saturated fat and a soft drink beverage with phosphoric acid. After lunch, we'll don our bulletproof vests and go for a brisk walk through the nearby delapidated area, admiring en route the individual initiative demonstrated by the drug dealers peddling at every street corner. Even the poorest American can do this much!

Frittering Away Your Life

Which is sometimes the only thing to do. Here are two interesting ways:

1. Play basketball. Warning: this ain't easy, so it's a great way to fritter away large chunks. Credit due to the Grand Reptilian.

2. Find out which world leader you most resemble. Idea stolen from Bronson's website. He won't mind as he's a lawyer! Note: you can do this test with four different numbers of questions, and the answers might change, so many minutes can be whiled away. (Though I always came out Gandhi-like, which casts grave doubt on the validity of the test.)

Enjoy!

The Short Version of News on Women in Afghanistan and Iraq

Afghanistan:

Women can now sing on the television:

Deputy Culture and Information Minister Abdul Hamid Mubaiz:"There should be no discrimination between man and woman. Therefore, we wanted to have them appear on television to give them the same rights as men."

Or maybe not:

Afghanistan's Supreme Court has protested the video, stating that they "are opposed to women singing and dancing as a whole...this is totally against the decision of the Supreme Court and it has to be stopped,"

Women are now citizens with equal rights and duties to those of men:

Afghanistan's new constitution is a success for the country's women. It deserves commendation for guaranteeing women what appears to be an equal rights clause, something that still eludes women in the United States.

Or maybe not:

The final constitution could be used to implement Taliban-like Sharia law. Before the equal rights clause appears, Article III of the constitution states that in Afghanistan, "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam."

Iraq:

The Bush administration pledged its support for the inclusion of women in decision-making bodies. The result: three women on the Iraqi Governing Council, one woman on the Iraqi cabinet and no women appointed to the 24-member constitutional committee. The proportion of women in the Iraqi population is 65%.

The nice interpretation:

Hey, Rome wasn't built in a day. Iraq must start somewhere. Besides, we aren't going to interfere with another country's social traditions. We only interfere with political traditions!

The not-so-nice interpretation:

...the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) is treating a growing human rights crisis for women as an extracurricular issue at best, leaving women at the mercy of thugs on the streets and the religious parties that have rushed into the political vacuum.

and

Over dinner in the palace cafeteria one night, when I discussed the accelerating crisis for women with two high-ranking American officials in the Interior Ministry--which oversees police and security--I was told with shocking candor as my pen perched over my reporter's notebook: "We don't do women." It's hardly a dirty secret that our government abroad views women's rights as at most a secondary concern, yet it was thoroughly sobering to hear this lack of interest so casually discussed.

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Postscript:
The Talibanization of Iraq: It's beginning:

The provisional government in Iraq has removed the Saddam-era family law from the legal books and replaced it with the use of sharia to be administered by local religious leaders.

The order, narrowly approved by the 25-member council in a closed-door session Dec. 29, was reportedly sponsored by conservative Shiite members.

Paul Bremer hasn't approved this change yet. Will he? And whether he will or not, what's going to happen after June? One guess:

"This new law will send Iraqi families back to the Middle Ages," Hakki said. "It will allow men to have four or five or six wives. It will take away children from their mothers. It will allow anyone who calls himself a cleric to open an Islamic court in his house and decide about who can marry and divorce and have rights."

Is this what we went to war for? Is this what freedom means for the female citizens of Iraq?
Gag me with a spoon.

And: No, Afghani women canNOT sing on television. Link courtesy of upyernoz.

The ACLU is Fascist. Now You Know...

From Bill O'Reilly's opening comments January 9:

Now the ACLU is free to come to your town and sue the heck out of it. And believe me, that organization will. The ACLU doesn't care about the law or the constitution or what the people want. It's a fascist organization that uses lawyers instead of Panzers. It'll find a way to inflict financial damage on any concern that opposes its secular agenda and its growing in power.

From Mediawhoresonline.