How To Televise the Olympics

In the United States this goes as follows:

Remember that the main objective is to frighten away all sports lovers. Never forget this important principle: if it ain't suitable for a soap opera, it ain't olympic enough. Remember to skip from event to event, always leaving just when things get interesting, then returning four hours later with a quick recap which must be made very hard to decipher. Remember to do a lot of closeups of people that might be the same athletes we thought we'd see in the actual competition, but make sure that these closeups are taken several years earlier and show no sporting aspects. Search high and low for athletes who might be orphans or at least fatherless, who might have broken out of a tremendous addiction for Twinkies, who have a third cousin who is cheering for them in some distant and hopefully wartorn place.

Try to find the Human Interest! This attracts women, and women, as we all know, are not the same as sports fans. Women like to hear about terrible personal duels between two athletes, as long as both of them look cute. This is a known fact. And women don't want to watch the events themselves, so don't show them. Instead, give them background stories on one or two athletes who might or might not do well in the games. Spend a lot of camera time on the families of American athletes in the audiences. Women like this a lot, especially if a world record is broken at the same time.
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As you may have noticed, I'm spitting angry. I'm a female goddess and I like sports just fine. I also don't like the way women are being blamed for the inane decisions of some television corporations.

To compare this coverage to something that many Americans might relate to, consider an important baseball game in which most of the time is taken by closeups of the players and stories of their family backgrounds and trials and tribulations, then a quick scan is given of the start of the game, then back to 'close and personal', then a quick view of the fifth inning, then perhaps some graphs about the rules of the game, then a final summary of who actually won the game. This is how most of the olympic events come across to me. I really don't know why I bother watching.

Saturday House Cleaning

This blog is giving me an identity crisis of a sort. Whenever I write about American politics in general my feminist angel or demon points out that it won't be of any feminist interest, and the reverse happens when I write about feminist developments. When I write about dog walking, all the rest of me gives a sermon about the triviality and triteness of such things.

But doing things differently smacks to me of work, and that takes the joy away from all writing which in turn makes the writing stiff and wooden (or more so than usually). So what to do? It would be great to be all organized and decisive, but then I also really want to write about the arts and literature, about kicking butt, about meditation practises, childrearing, how to shape a moustache,...
The only thing I'm not that keen to write about is economics, probably because I actually know something about it.

Having this blog go all over the place can't be good for my market share, if I cared about it. Sometimes I do, of course, especially when I feel lonely and unadulated, but mostly I just like to talk to interesting people and read what they have to say back. I've learned a lot that way.

What I have not learned is where to go with my writing or the rest of my life. But perhaps a messy life and messy writing is what I'm supposed to do? Perhaps it's what we are all meant to do?

Nah.

Dog Walks

I went out with Hank today, actually walking her on a leash. It goes something like this: she zooms forward like mad, me being dragged behind like one of those people hanging from a moving car in an old tv crime series, then she stops to sniff at some interesting pee and I come to a halt, rise up, shake the dust off and inspect the new wounds. Then she spots a squirrel or a cat and the thing repeats itself. So I don't do walking-on-a-leash very much, except with Henrietta, of course, who has taught me to heel very well indeed. (And don't give me advice on how to train Hank; she's untrainable, and I have many dog-trainers' written affidavits on that.)

But today was a little different, as I took Hank for a run, several swims and mudpool baths first. She was somewhat calmed by all this activity and actually stayed within the usual bounds of a leash-walked dog. We passed by an outdoor cafe with several people, and they all got up to coo and goo over Hank. (This is something I have not mentioned before. Hank is very cute. For some reason her shape never changed from that of a Labrador puppy, and she also has a puppy face. So people want to eat her and stuff.)

Can you imagine how hard it is to stave people off the idea of getting a Labrador puppy when Hank looks angelic? I had to work so damn hard, telling them about the koprophagia and vomiting and the need for three hours' running a day and the fact that Labrador puppies eat the house and how you can't sleep through a full night for months. When that wasn't enough I had to tell them about her being a Bush-lover (this is a solid libural area), but they were just not convinced. Then Hank did a round of groin poking with her freshly mudded snout and that cooled some of them. But I fear I have spread doom and despondency by my careless act of taking Hank out.

This is very different from walking Henrietta, of course. She's so perfect that you'd never know I'm the one who is heeling, obeying and taking commands. We stop at all traffic lights, look first left and then right and then left again, wait until the road is clear and then cross quickly. We hold long conversations about the deteriorating urban architecture and the poor taste in human fashions and the total pointlessness of having cats exist. When we meet humans, Henrietta leaps backwards, raises her hackles, bares her teeth and wags. So we are left alone, pretty much. When we meet dogs Henrietta waits until they pass by and then bites them in the butt. Friendly-like, of course.

Walking the two together is something I've only ever done once. I had to take to my bed for a week afterwards. Now I just load them into the car using the shortest exit route from the house, and pray that nobody is made deaf by the barking.

Take Care

When you're driving home, when you go out tonight, when you debate wingnuts, when you read pointless propaganda. But especially take care if you live in Florida where Charley plans to land.

Taking care is a good thing. I wish that more people took care when they open their mouths publicly, I wish that U.S. journalists took care before they auction off their consciences, I wish, oh how I wish, that we could breed a new type of politicians with both values and spunk.

Taking care sometimes means stopping, taking a break, and asking: "Where is my life going? Is that where I want to go?" Taking care may mean asking the questions that nobody asks or stating the obvious that somehow has become mysteriously difficult. Taking care means seeing a world in trouble and deciding not to contribute to this trouble but instead deciding to be the lone voice in the wilderness if needed, or deciding to go out and find those others who are also taking care.

Taking care means being safe, yes, but it also means knowing that sometimes to be safe we must first stand up and act, even if this looks unsafe. So if you are in a dangerous place (on the route of a hurricane or in a country falling apart), the first step may well be a daring one, one that looks frighteningly unsafe, yet ultimately the step that will lead you to safety.

Julia Child

She had an interesting life and died in her sleep, after 91 years of eating butter. I think that she had the favor of the gods and goddesses.

She became a television celebrity around the age of sixty and before that did a little spying, a little traveling, a little writing and so on. She towered over others both in reality (being very tall) and in her refusal to be held back by societal expectations. What an appetite she had!

If You Are Fed Up With Me...

Which of course you aren't. But it's always good to graze widely to keep the mental constitution at its best. Here are some suggestions for weekend outings.

First, if you can never get enough feminist ideas and stories, check Mouse Words where Amanda kicks butt most admirably, or the new blog XX by four smart women. I assume you already read feministing.com, a feminist blog by young women, Alas a Blog, the venerable granddaddy of all feminist blogs and the feministe which offers you everything from pure theory to knitting recipes.
And it's very important to see what Christine has to say about the popular culture and women in ms. musings. She rocks. (There are so many new good blogs with feminist contents that I will have to do a second post in the near future, assuming that my greedy and jealous nature will allow this. Maybe not...)

Within the Liberal Coalition, Trish Wilson has an excellent article on the way the mainstream media accuses feminists whatever we might do or not do, and how these accusations could care less about facts or evidence or other boring stuff like that. Read it to be informed.

Second, if you need your artistic education improved, sample some of these good critiques of various arts forms, all by Liberal Coalition bloggers (we're more than just political mouthpieces!): Invisible library has an interesting discussion on the Left Behind series (whence the current obsessions amongst fundamentalists about the possibility of impending Rapture). A nearby post stresses the benefits of idleness. Speedkill reviews the new documentary about the Fox News, Outfoxed. Read this, especially if you can't see the movie itself. Upyernoz ( love that handle) reviews the Manchurian Candidate, Elayne Riggs talks about what it's like to listen to Air America, the new liberal radio, iddybud reviews the book Bush on the Couch (scary stuff) and gamer's nook gives a concert review of which I understood nothing which shows that it's good (I've got van Gogh's ear for music). Rivka has a great review of a book on security concerns, useful reading during these terra times. Finally, Lefty picks eleven books that libraries should have about comics. I want to read them right away, but then I'd like to look for some that might be written by women, too.

Third, you could just relax and read some interesting, good and funny stuff. Bloggg on manners and etiquette is funny and so is clonecone when he 'thanks the media'. WTF Is It Now? has great pictures of Bush, and Steven Bates has written an enjoyable meditation on inspiration and other stuff that only he can make belong.

Fourth, and finally, the Coalition members still blog politics, too. You could transition gently by finding out about all the WMDs in the US that Natalie has unearthed for us or by reading norbizness's suggestions on how Bushites could tighten security at the campaign stops even more. Charles on the fulcrum reminds us that class warfare is real and mercuryx23 tells us whether celebrities' political views should matter. Scout has a good piece on the hatred of the United Nations here in the U.S., and Mustang Bobby talks about Ron Reagan's politics. Both farmer on the Corrente and David on blogAmy discuss Alan Keyes, the Republican in the Obama-Keyes Senate race. Amy on blogAmy also gives a good set of links on which to click to help someone or something almost effortlessly. Michael gives a good assessment of the appointment of Porter Goss (what a name!) to run the CIA. John on archy reminds us of the sad fact that the point of one thousand dead Americans in Iraq will soon be reached, and discusses what this might mean in the U.S. politics. Steven Gilliard has a superb article about the advisability (or rather not) of taking on the Shia the way our current administration has decided to do.

Four Months and Flip Flops

Eschaton has an interesting post about the number of newspapers and media pundits who have stated in recent days that John Kerry's Vietnam service amounted to four months. The way this is arrived at is by defining service as direct combat experience and then by counting that wrong, too. Where it comes from is the wingnut think tanks, the usual source for materials for some journalists.

Using the same logic, we can argue that George Bush served approximately 1.5 minutes in the National Guard. Only flying counts, after all, and by my calculations (heh!) his flying time was around 90 seconds, take or add a few.

Fascinating how the conversation can turn from the original question of how one candidate managed to avoid going to Vietnam altogether to the much more mesmerizing one of how well the other candidate actually fought to earn a lot of medals and stuff. It would have been better if Kerry had stayed at home, it seems. Then he would have come across as evenly pitted with the other candidate. Don't mind me.

I think that Karl Rove has an F-fixation. First it was flip flops, then it was four months. What next? Could it be a four-letter word or was that Cheneyed to death already? I'm all agog with anticipation.

Flip flops to me are those sandals that children wear. To Karl Rove any learning from experience is a flip flop. One must never change ones mind, you know. Only people who cannot learn can be presidents of the most powerful country of the world. I prefer flip flops.

The Centers for Disease Control for Abstinence Only!

This is a public service message. The Centers for Disease Control are proposing new rules for the control of programs that do HIV education. You can read the proposed rule changes here. Be forewarned, they are heavily covered in governmentalese language.

A translation of the new proposals has been made by Doug Ireland:

Lethal new regulations from President Bush's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, quietly issued with no fanfare last week, complete the right-wing Republicans' goal of gutting HIV-prevention education in the United States. In place of effective, disease-preventing safe-sex education, little will soon remain except failed programs that denounce condom use, while teaching abstinence as the only way to prevent the spread of AIDS. And those abstinence-only programs, researchers say, actually increase the risk of contracting AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

Published on June 16 in the Federal Register, the censorious new CDC guidelines will be mandatory for any organization that does HIV-prevention work and also receives federal funds -- whether or not any federal money is directly spent on their programs designed to fight the spread of the epidemic. (The CDC is the principal federal funder of prevention education about HIV and AIDS, and its head a Bush appointee). It's all couched in arcane bureaucratese, but this is the Bush administration's Big Stick - do exactly as we say, or lose your federal funding. And nearly all of the some 3,800 AIDS service organizations (ASOs) that do the bulk of HIV-prevention education receive at least part of their budget from federal dollars. Without that money, they'd have to slash programs or even close their doors.

These new regs require the censoring of any "content" – including "pamphlets, brochures, fliers, curricula," "audiovisual materials" and "pictorials (for example, posters and similar educational materials using photographs, slides, drawings or paintings)," as well as "advertising" and Web-based info. They require all such "content" to eliminate anything even vaguely "sexually suggestive" or "obscene"—like teaching how to use a condom correctly by putting it on a dildo, or even a cucumber. And they demand that all such materials include information on the "lack of effectiveness of condom use" in preventing the spread of HIV and other STDs -- in other words, the Bush administration wants AIDS fighters to tell people: Condoms don't work. This demented exigency flies in the face of every competent medical body's judgment that, in the absence of an HIV-preventing vaccine, the condom is the single most effective tool available to protect someone from getting or spreading the AIDS virus.

Moreover, the CDC will now take the decisions on which AIDS-fighting educational materials actually work away from those on the frontlines of the combat against the epidemic, and hand them over to political appointees.

This is done by requiring that Policy Review Panels, which each group engaged in HIV prevention must have, can no longer be appointed by that group but must instead be named by state and local health departments. And those panels must then take a vote on every single flier or brochure or other "content" before it is issued.

This means that, under the new regs, political appointees will have a veto and be able to ban anything in those educational materials they deem "obscene" or lacking in anti-condom propaganda. With Republicans controlling a majority of statehouses, and having handed over control of the health departments to folks deemed acceptable to the Christian right and cultural conservatives in many Southern and Midwestern states -- and the rest of public-health departments notoriously subservient to political pressure from the state and local legislatures that control their appropriations --anti-condom junk science that plays politics with people's lives will rule the day.

Under the new regs, it will be impossible even to track the spread of unsafe sexual practices -- because the CDC's politically inspired censorship includes "questionnaires and survey materials" and thus would forbid asking people if they engage in specific sexual acts without protection against HIV. For that too would be "obscene." (Questions about gay kids have already disappeared from the CDC's national Youth Risk Survey after Christian-right pressure).

I have not vetted the correctness of this translation, but it seems correct based on a quick perusal of the original article. The public is allowed to comment on the new proposal until August 16. If you would like to do so, go here.

Dog Blogging!

Hail to All Dogs!

This is Henrietta the Hound reporting on recent developments in the dogdom. My private life is without events as usual, just the everyday annoyances of a zero IQ Rethug retriever imitating my every move and trying to beat me in wrestling. Her most recent innovation is the butt whirl. This consists of gyrating wildly and hoping that her heavy thighs might hit me in the chest. By the time her tardy butt arrives I have of course already lightly stepped to the side and caught her neck between my canines. Then a gentle flip sends her over on her head and all that remains is a little bit of snarling at her astonished face. How dare she think that I could be taken by such simple maneuvres?

She reminds me of some other Rethugs and their war plans. If at first you don't succeed, try again, and again...and again.

I have had my bimonthly medical and have been found to be fit to fly planes and steer boats and all the rest of it. The veterinarian commented on my shiny coat and bright eyes and wanted to know the secret for these things in a twelve-year old dog. I told her that it had to be my faith in the Cause: my dedication and trust in the future that will belong to dogs alone. But she, being merely human, didn't understand a word I said. Sometimes I lose all patience with these lower animals who never evolved to ESP, yet are so stupid that they don't even realize it. Heh.

I'm going to share with you something even more important. Not the reason for my intelligence, good looks and very audible barking; they are all inborn, but the reason for my astonishing perseverance and military intelligence: I am a torture survivor. Yes, indeed, I spent my early years cooped up in a box no bigger than the ones humans have for shoes, and the attention that came my way consisted of kicks and broom handles. I learned what all those who are tortured learn: to remember and to hate. I learned to read the human growling and muttering and carefully remembered all the important terms (fucking dog, bitch, cunt). I vowed never to forgive and I have kept that promise.

When I liberated myself I sought a gullible goddess as my base camp and acquired more of those primitive terms that might come in useful (pizza, car, park, walkies and various spelled versions of these). By using these terms and by reacting to them appropriately I have easily conquered the household. My next step in the revolution was to engage several co-conspirators, beginning with Hank. But here the forces of nature worked against me. Who can work with a dog that came without a brain? But she is a dog, nevertheless, and I shall defend her with all my might. I had to change my plans slightly, that is all, and now I spend more time on audible monitoring of the neighborhood. Already several of the nearby houses are for sale, and I'm hopeful that they will be taken over by suitably teachable dogs. I shall keep you posted!

Yours,
Henrietta the Hound

Not Again...

Darfur:

In a major setback for what the United Nations describes "as the world's worst humanitarian crisis," UN officials confirmed that the Sudanese government "carried out fresh helicopter gunship attacks in Darfur yesterday [Tuesday] while militia forces attacked refugees," report both Reuters and the Associated Press.

What is there to say? I don't even want to post this, but not posting this would be wrong, too. Maybe the Supreme Beings could start again with cockroaches.

Dignity and Disgust in Misogyny

Martha Nussbaum, a well-known philosopher, has recently written a book entitled Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame and the Law. Her main thesis is that while emotions such as anger, fear and compassion have a meaningful role to play in the formation and execution of laws, we should be much more wary of the role that disgust and shame can play in legal decisions. This is because disgust and shame have a different root from other commonly felt emotions, and this root grows from some very nasty soil.

Nussbaum argues that the feeling of disgust, especially, is often provoked not only by things which we might find disgusting (feces, animals, corpses, slimy and smelly objects), but also by groups of people that we have assigned the role of being disgusting. She quotes as examples Hitler's views on Jews and suggests that something similar may be provoke the current argument that homosexual marriages would defile the institution of marriage.

Shame functions somewhat similarly. Shame may be a consequence of wrongful acts, but it may also be used to stigmatize groups of individuals. Both shame and disgust generalize this way because human beings are frail and mortal and will ultimately die and rot and this is simply unbearable for many. By shaming some other groups of people and by expressing disgust at their behavior, especially those behaviors which are slimy, gooey or reminiscent of bodily orifices and wastes we can build some distance between ourselves and our animal nature with its unbreakable links to mortality.

This is an interesting theory. It would explain why societies 'need' a group of outcastes and how this group is created. Nussbaum points out that women have almost always carried some aspects of the disgusting and the shameful by just being born female. This is because women are more closely associated (in some minds at least) to the earthly via the processes of menstruation and giving birth, and because to some men the bodies of women are seen as the depositories of their own bodily wastes, the ever-present reminders of death. If one then combines the repugnance of the female body to such men with the idea of its sexual attractiveness, a base for misogyny may be created.

I am not sure if I find this theory an adequate one, but it is certainly true that many so-called primitive tribes attribute the reason for women's lower social standing to their ability to menstruate. This ability seems to be viewed as both disgusting and frightening at the same time, which supports Nussbaum's arguments.

If she is right, the term 'misogyny' should not be translated as simply 'hatred of women' but also, or perhaps even mostly, as 'disgust of women'. This would also explain the tinge of contempt that most misogynists exhibit and which can be absent in other types of hatred towards a group, and the view sometimes expressed that women should be ashamed of the fact that they are Eve's daughters.

What does this have to do with dignity? Nussbaum uses the term to express the opposite idea from the one that argues for the use of disgust and shame as a basis for laws. If I am found disgusting and shameful my dignity as a person is violated. But I think that the concept of dignity is used slightly differently by others who fear shameful and disgusting things. Though I have no idea whether Cardinal Ratzinger finds women shameful and disgusting, his use of the term in the recent letter about the role of women in the church and in the wider society is revealing:

. The Church, expert in humanity, has a perennial interest in whatever concerns men and women. In recent times, much reflection has been given to the question of the dignity of women and to women's rights and duties in the different areas of civil society and the Church.

(bolds mine)

Likewise, I have read the word 'dignity' on the Taliban website some years ago and also elsewhere in the writings of islamic fundamentalists about women. Women are seen as having 'dignity' when they are not accorded equality, and this term always made me very curious about its actual meaning. What is a dignified woman in the world that Cardinal Ratzinger or a Taliban theologian envisions? How is femaleness dignified? I believe that Nussbaum's theory shows me the correct way to read this term: it's not women's dignity that is being addressed at all, but the dignity of those who find women disgusting, and such dignity is best preserved by enforcing strict separation of the sexes or at least sexual roles. An equal woman would be undignified because she would provoke repugnance and disgust in the observer with conservative views, because she would get too close, would remind him too much of our shared bonds to the material, the wastes, the body that makes them, would remind him too much of his own death.

In this sense dignity is just another word for disgust.


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A short introduction to Nussbaum's ideas can be found here.

The Terrorist Cat!

This is the official story about the mysterious cat (Macavity, anyone?):

The SN Brussels flight from the Belgian capital to Vienna, Austria, had been in the air about 20 minutes Monday when "it was noticed" that a passenger's pet had escaped from its cage, "although it is not yet clear how," according to an airline statement.
"Once free, the animal proceeded to wander around the cabin," slipping into the cockpit when meals were being delivered to the two-man flight crew, it said.
"At this stage the animal became agitated and nervous," it said. An airline spokeswoman added that the cat scratched the copilot's arm.
The pilot decided to return to Brussels as a precaution, and the 58 passengers departed once more two hours later on another flight.

Is this the real story? Decide for yourselves:

A cat identified as Al-Garfield Mahmud Allawi, escaped his cage in a Belgium Airliner, pretended to go to the restroom in the front of the airplane, and then entered the pilot's cabin and proceeded to attack him.

"It looked like he was trying to take over the airplane." Stated the pilot of the airplane, "All I saw was this cat coming at me. He kept saying 'meowjiad meowjiad'. I didn't understand at first what he was trying to say. Then it clicked. He was saying Jihad! Jihad!. I wrestled the cat to the ground and took control of the situation."

The airliner had to quickly turn around and come back to the Brussels International Airport where Belgium security forces along with the FBI and CIA where waiting there to apprehend the terrorist cat.

"I had no idea what to expect." Stated an FBI official, "I had no clue that Al-Qaeda was now using animals to do their dirty deeds."

As it turns out, Al-Garfield Mahmud Allawi is an American out of work cat actor who grew frustrated with Hollywood and moved to Afghanistan during the 1980's and joined Al-Qaeda.

"I was sick and tired of the American way of life." Stated Al-Garfield Mahumd Allawi, "It's all about being skinny, famous, rich and materialistic. I needed to get more spiritual. So I went to Afghanistan and there I learned the truth about you American pigs. That is why I wanted to help the cause. I volunteered to become a martyr. I want to go to heaven with my 73 virgin cats."

Check the picture of Al-Garfield in the second link, too. Of course this is all very questionable humor, but what wouldn't I do for the cat lovers among my readers...


Thanks to msCJ for the links.

Real Rich People Figure Out How To Dodge Taxes

Wow! New political science has been made! A totally new theory of taxation has been created! We are talking about something that will spin this world off its orbit, and things will never be the same again.

Here is our president George Bush on his campaign trail:

US President George W. Bush today said there was no point in taxing the rich because they just dodged their tax bill anyway.

"Real rich people figure out how to dodge taxes," he said during a campaign stop in suburban Washington.
Mr Bush's rival in the November 2 election, Democratic Senator John Kerry, has pledged to scrap the president's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans in a bid to rein in the record US budget deficit.
Mr Bush said: "You've got to be careful about this rhetoric, we're only going to tax the rich. You know who the - the rich in America happen to be the small business owners."

So there's no point in taxing the rich because the rich are not just richer than the rest of us, they're also smarter. That leaves no rich people to be taxed, just small business owners. All is now clear and I can die in peace.


Thanks to backslider for the link.

Those Damned Ketchup Labels!

According to today's All Things Considered, the Bush campaign covered all the Heinz ketchup labels with Bush/Cheney stickers at a recent New Hampshire picnic where George Bush spoke. Why not just pick some other brand name of ketchup?

In general, the Bush campaign has adopted an approach to mass meetings with the president which smacks of either Potemkin-type stagecasting (if you're a Liberal) or just a good business practice of controlling your brand name image ( if you're a Conservative). This approach consists of vetting the people very carefully; you can't just turn up for a Bush meet, no. You also can't ask nasty questions of the president. Only nice and grateful comments are appreciated.

The negative aspect of this policy is that the president is totally surrounded with happy and grateful yes-men and yes-women. I envy him that as the snakes are rather stoic in their expressions, but I don't envy him all the negative criticism he probably never hears about. It reminds me of another public figure similarly held in the dark about some uncomfortable facts, the last tzar of Russia, and we all know what happened to him.

Prozac in the Drinking Water!

Supposedly Britain's drinking water now has measurable traces of the antidepressant medication Prozac. Environmentalists are concerned about its possible reproductive effects on the unsuspecting population, but others argue that the amounts are not large enough to cause concern:

The Observer said that a report by the government's environment watchdog found Prozac was building up in river systems and groundwater used for drinking supplies.
The exact quantity of Prozac in the drinking water was unknown, but the Environment Agency's report concluded Prozac could be potentially toxic in the water table.
Experts say that Prozac finds its way into rivers and water systems from treated sewage water, and some believe the drugs could affect reproductive ability. A spokesman for the Drinking Water Inspectorate said Prozac was likely to be found in a considerably watered down form that was unlikely to pose a health risk.
"It is extremely unlikely that there is a risk, as such drugs are excreted in very low concentrations," the spokesman said. "Advanced treatment processes installed for pesticide removal are effective in removing drug residues."

Drugs like Prozac are not supposed to work on people who are not depressed, so Prozac in the drinking water would not cause a nation of people on a permanent high. Still, it says something about the need for antidepressants that traces of their use can be spotted in the water system. This makes me wonder about the traces of all sorts of other things we use or consume: pesticides, paint removers and household cleaners. Maybe even conservative KoolAid. Prozac makes for better news, of course.

A Presidential Poll

There are so many of these nowadays, asking important questions such as whether the respondent believes that Bush is intelligent or whether it was a great idea to occupy Iraq. I refuse to believe in the representativeness of these samples; the alternative would be to uproot the whole Snakepit Inc. and start life again on planet qyz45. Which I might have to do anyway, but there is still hope.

So I decided to create my own presidential poll. Here it is:

1. If you had to have emergency surgery performed on you, would you choose to have George Bush or John Kerry as the head surgeon?

2. If you had to choose either John Kerry or George Bush as the reading teacher of your only child, which would it be?

3. What have you learned from the first two questions about the desirability of having George Bush re-elected to run the world for another interminable four years?
a) Nothing. I already knew that he is an idiot.
b) Nothing. I am an idiot.
c) Ahaa! I guess I should vote for Kerry, then. Good for you.

Now, this might come across as a tad biased, but so might other polls that are actually treated with reverence. You could also argue that my blog is not a good way to reach deep into the American mainstream, but then I'd argue that the same could be said of many of the polls, too, especially the Internet ones.

Polls are very imperfect, in other words. What's sad is that they can have an impact, by telling us how supposedly the masses think, and by making some of us change their expressed opinions to match whatever is touted as the so-called public opinion. This is probably quite different from people's private opinions which often consist of I-don't-know-and-I-don't-care.

The only polling that really matters is voting.

Goodbye PBS

It's sad to go to funerals, and we have one right now in the airwaves, that of the Public Broadcasting System. It's being buried, perhaps prematurely, as a consequence of the clever politics of the wingnuts.

Their warplan goes like this: Accuse the PBS of being leftwing, nay, communist. Demand fairness and balance. Install the most annoying wingnut commentators as your share of the fairness and balance. Then sit back and watch when donations dry out. Privatize PBS. Voila!

If this doesn't work out, at least we can expect the Big Bird to start talking about god-given sex roles and the ten commandments. So either way the wingnuts win. Never mind that the PBS is not leftwing to begin with. As FAIR has reported, the PBS has been leaning right for quite some time. To argue otherwise requires one to view weather forecasts as essentially communist because they don't differentiate between areas or give better weather to the Christians.

Here's the newest development in the wingnut plan:

Having lost their spot on CNBC in early 2003, the Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial-page chieftains have found a new home for their public affairs roundtable on PBS.
The 30-minute program, "Journal Editorial Report," will be part of the pubcaster's Friday night lineup, airing at 10:30 beginning Sept. 17.
Veteran TV newsman Paul Friedman, formerly of ABC News' "World News Tonight," is exec producer.
Panel discussion will be hosted by WSJ editorial page topper Paul Gigot, formerly a correspondent on PBS' "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." Gigot is known for his right-leaning views but is not strident in his style.
In recent weeks, PBS has come under criticism for turning to the right in its programming, starting with its decision to give conservative CNN commentator Tucker Carlson a new show.
PBS prexy-CEO Pat Mitchell countered that the desire is to have a balanced slate. She said "Report," produced by WSJ parent company Dow Jones in association with WNET in Gotham, helps achieve that goal.
"Our mission is to be a marketplace of ideas, an op-ed page for the information age, reflecting a broad range of perspectives and points of view. We expect this series to add yet another dimension to our current public affairs lineup," Mitchell said.

Very good. The PBS has one lefty program, Bill Moyer's NOW. This is going to be cut from one hour to half an hour a week. Tucker Carlson and his bowtie blabbery has been added and now another wingnut program will be introduced. Of course we need a lot more wingnut shows to balance the weather forecasts and the Antiques Roadshow and all those reruns of old BBC programs.

More seriously, almost all the airwaves are funded by corporations and the views that this supports are not neutral. To demand the same of the publicly funded media will mean that we will get nothing but corporate views. This is not a 'marketplace of ideas', except in the most cynical interpretation of the term.

On Eyelids

Humans only have two over each eye and the lower one doesn't seem to do much. Some other animals have much more interesting eyelids, like a third one that closes horizontally or translucent ones. Maybe even phosphorescent ones?

Eyelids are to cover the eyeballs so that they don't stare all the time so insistently or dry out from the wind and drop off like really old and stale raisins. They are also useful for keeping bees out. Imagine the horrible boring of tunnels bees could undertake smack in the middle of your iris!

Some people paint their eyelids different colors to increase the attractiveness of their eyeballs or to keep evil spirits out. I once used to paint my eyelids orange, because I thought orange would go nicely with green eyes (Now you know my eye color, except that this might be a complicated double- bluff!). The effect in photographs is stunning, to say the least. But mostly I leave my eyelids alone, though I have recently wondered if they could be profitably pierced with safety pins as a form of general diffuse aggression.

This is turning out quite gruesome. I wanted to write something about the velvety touch of a fluttering eyelid, like a butterfly landing softly on an opening flower, but other stories are more interesting. Like the one about putting toothpicks behind the eyelids to keep them open, or the story I once heard about someone who got a grain of wheat in the eye and then had long green stalks growing out of it. Probably not completely true, but you never know.

Have you ever successfully closed the eye by just moving the lower lid? If so, let me know how it is done.

News From the Front

Well, a few of the fronts. First, for those of you who've been practising hibernation, a reminder that the Great Communicator is still dead:

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

This is the current president of the United States. So cute, his ability to dance with a foot in his mouth, isn't it? Just the guy I want to represent the United States to the world.

Second, the beginning of a counteroffensive, finally. A lefty commentator actually fighting back! Should we run and hide? What's the world coming to? Why are the lefties so full of hatred? Hmmm. Judge for yourselves:

O'Reilly called Krugman a "quasi-socialist"; Krugman called that "slander" and said if he is a quasi-socialist then O'Reilly is a "quasi-murderer"; O'Reilly pronounced Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" a bit of "Nazi propaganda" that reinforced all of Krugman's "paranoid delusions"; Krugman insisted Moore's flick was "flawed" but was made by "a guy who really does love this country"; Russert hardly got a word in edgewise; and a good time was had by all. One of those exchanges that make you so proud to be a journalist.
During their give and take -- okay, maybe it's more accurate to say push and shove, or slap and smack -- O'Reilly would periodically accuse Krugman of not letting him get in a sentence, or words to that effect.
So we counted and, according to The Washington Post TV Team Transcript Tally, O'Reilly actually got in 321 sentences during the "debate," to Krugman's 258.

For those of you not in the U.S., the good guy is Krugman and the evil guy is O'Reilly. O'Reilly has been bullying and pummeling poor lefties for years. He belongs to the red-face-with-saliva brigade, the group that now wonders why the lefties are so angry...

I got this link from first draft, a great new blog by athenae, holden, pie and tina of Eschaton fame.

And Now Something Completely Silly

To maintain the universal balance. What is your favorite month of the year and why? Mine is January because it is dedicated to Janus, the two-faced god of the portals. I like two-faced gods, though two-faced politicians are a different thing altogether. I also like snow and the beautiful art trees make in their nakedness.

The month I do not love is August, and the reasons are humidity, humidity and humidity. Humans may be mostly water, but goddesses are not, except in August. What useful purpose does August serve, other than the fact that politicians tend to go away then? Even ice-cream goes bad in August if left on the counter for more than a second (though this does not happen in the Snakepit Inc., ever).

My proposal is to have August replaced by a second January.

On Health Care Access for Black Americans

A new study finds that black patients tend to see physicians who are less qualified and have fewer contacts for high-quality tertiary care institutions:

''When black patients go to the doctor, they're more likely to be treated by a doctor who can't harness the full capabilities of the health care system," said Dr. Peter B. Bach, an epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York who was the lead author of the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Examining patterns of office visits by black and white patients on Medicare, the government health insurance program for the elderly, the study found that most blacks were treated by a subset of doctors who had less training than doctors who treated whites, and who told interviewers that they were frequently unable to provide high-quality care.
These doctors, of all races, were less likely than doctors who mostly treated white patients to have passed exams showing mastery of a primary care specialty. They were more likely to report that they could not always help their patients get treatment from specialists, diagnostic imaging such as MRIs, or admission to the hospital when it wasn't an emergency. These differences remained even after the researchers took into account patients' insurance status.

The researchers also found out that similar problems beset other physicians in the same geographical areas. In other words, the access to good quality care is reduced for blacks because of racial segregation in housing: blacks tend to live in areas with lower incomes and with fewer highly-qualified physicians. It's easy to see why lower income areas would not attract large numbers of skilled practitioners; the money just isn't there. But this is something that could be changed by government policies.

Access to health care has shown a racial difference for a long time. This is partly why black health indicators are consistently lower, too, with higher death rates from cancer and heart disease and a much lower average life expectancy. But equalizing all access measures would not equalize the health outcomes: This would require us to do something about the greater deaths from violence among blacks as well as about the lower average incomes of blacks.

Taliban Unbanned?

Atrios links to an NPR program which states that Hamid Karzai is considering allowing the Taliban a bigger say in the political process of Afghanistan. This made me dig up an old piece I wrote about Taliban and its effects on the girls of Afghanistan. Be forewarned, this is the Ranting and Raving Feminist Goddess in fourth gear:

If you had to choose between a birth as a puppy in the United States or as a baby girl in Taliban-dominated Afghanistan, which would you go for? I know that this is a tough one. Perhaps it would help to compare the options in some detail:


Both are cute, for starters. Both are also often unwanted. The Afghan girls are likely to live longer than puppies, although American puppies may have better access to medical care. Neither puppies nor Afghan girls are required to seek an education. Puppies may, however, go to school if their owners so desire, while the Afghan parents have no such rights over their daughter's education.

Both are powerless in affecting their own lives and equally vulnerable to random strikes of bad luck. Their fates are firmly in the hands of others: those of owners for the puppies and those of fathers (and later of husbands) for the Afghan girls. If these others are kind, the lives of both puppies and girls can be fairly enjoyable. If these others are cruel, both lives can be hell.

Still undediced? Neither puppies nor older Afghan girls are allowed to go out unchaperoned. Puppies must also wear identification tags and be leashed at all times, except in specially designated areas and on the property of their owners. Older Afghan girls must wear a body wrap that leaves no part uncovered, including their faces. It should be noted, though, that they don't have to wear leashes or identity tags. Yet, anyway.

Puppies are routinely banned from many public buildings as well as restaurants and grocery stores. Afghan girls are routinely banned from most public life.

See, I told you that the choice would be difficult. What is not so difficult to see is the incredibly poor taste I am exhibiting in even posing the question. But this is nothing compared to the poor taste the world has exhibited in providing me with the raw materials for this story.

Old Masters Facing the Wall

An idea for a different kind of art exhibition:

A South African museum is to exhibit 17th century Dutch master paintings all hung facing the wall.
Curator Andrew Lamprecht said the "Flip" exhibition opening in Cape Town next month was "a conceptual art intervention" on one of the country's premier art collections.
"They'll all be flipped, to completely take the space and turn it into something new and unexpected," he said. The Michaelis Collection at Cape Town's Old Town House includes works by Dutch and Flemish masters such as Frans Hals, Jan Steen and Anthony van Dyck, and is seen as one of the best of its kind outside the Netherlands.
Mr Lamprecht said the exhibition would force gallery goers to reconsider their preconceptions about the art and its legacy in South Africa.
"I'm asking questions about the history," he said, adding that the reverse of the paintings revealed a wealth of detail not normally on view to the public, ranging from old attempts to preserve the canvas to notes from different collectors over the years.

Interesting. I probably would go there, pay the admission fee, and then throw a terrible temper tantrum when I find out that there's nothing to see but the paintings' buttocks. But it's still interesting as an idea. We could expand this to everything that has to do with art. And on a much more humble level, we bloggers could show you only the rejects and things like my daily get-going freeform writing pages:

What is thepurposeoflifeoh whyohwhyoh why oh did I everleave Ohio??????Not tht i ever wenttoOhiointhe firstplace but, but, BUt WHat IF ihad been to Ohio and was educated so different so succulent so permanent so corpulent? Should I write about the flesh and the wayofallflesh...

And this links nicely to a new article in the Women's Enews about the freedom blogging gives to women. I sort of agree, but freedom of speech is not the same as someone listening. Not at all. And then there is the whole thorny question of freedom from listening which I sometimes really yearn for in this country of the octopus media. Still, women do deserve to be heard more, and especially very erudite and funny goddesses who suffer from heatrash.

Gandhi for Today

You must be the change you wish to see in the world

Don't let it take you as long as it has taken me.

Krugman is Good

He gives a courageous assessment of the professionalism of cable news (not much), their tilt (to the right) and the way they treat new evidence (ignore it and just hold on to the old script). And he makes the point that the Internet allows a way around these traps. (Not that he reads my blog, but some other famous people do! More about that later.)

This is an example of Krugman's criticisms:

But the real power of a script is the way it can retroactively change the story about what happened.
On Thursday night, Mr. Kerry's speech was a palpable hit. A focus group organized by Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, found it impressive and persuasive. Even pro-Bush commentators conceded, at first, that it had gone over well.
But a terrorism alert is already blotting out memories of last week. Although there is now a long history of alerts with remarkably convenient political timing, and Tom Ridge politicized the announcement by using the occasion to praise "the president's leadership in the war against terror," this one may be based on real information. Regardless, it gives the usual suspects a breathing space; once calm returns, don't be surprised if some of those same commentators begin describing the ineffective speech they expected (and hoped) to see, not the one they actually saw.
Luckily, in this age of the Internet it's possible to bypass the filter.

I don't see the blogs as a substitute for mainstream news, though. Rather, they are the thorn in the side of the Big Boys and Girls, a small reminder of long-forgotten values which don't have that much to do with money. Like conscience.

Here We Go Again!

This from Washington Post:

Most of the al Qaeda surveillance of five financial institutions that led to a new terrorism alert Sunday was conducted before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and authorities are not sure whether the casing of the buildings has continued since then, numerous intelligence and law enforcement officials said yesterday.
More than half a dozen government officials interviewed yesterday, who declined to be identified because classified information is involved, said that most, if not all, of the information about the buildings seized by authorities in a raid in Pakistan last week was about three years old, and possibly older.
"There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don't know that."

But it was very important to raise the terror alert, wasn't it? Otherwise Kerry-Edwards might have earned a blip in the polls, and that's un-American and possibly even traitorous.

I want to weep, I do.

Something to Envy

He looked like an ancient walrus, she like a very alert geriatric sparrow. They sat, side by side, at my table in the dining-car of the train. We were all waiting for service which for some reason was unusually slow.

She asked me a few innocent questions and then launched into a tirade about 'that horrible man Bush'. He kept trying to shush her: "Now, dearest, no politics, remember?" She put her hand on his, smiled and turned back towards me, vehement in her lesson about the bad current administration.

When she found that I agreed, he relaxed and started telling stories about his job on the railways in the 1930's. No, things hadn't been better then, but they sure had had quicker meals. She kept listening to him intently, showing the kind of pride in his humor that I normally associate with proud parents. In order to attract the attention of the waitstaff to our needs he asked her in a loud voice:"Hey, good-looking, aren't you peckish yet?"

The food finally arrived, and he had trouble pouring the coffee into his cup. As she helped him he told me all about the homeless animals she was rescuing and how astonishingly lucky he was to be married to her.

"He's ninety next week", she answered, and they turned to look at each other. "I'm just a chicken in comparison", she added, "I just turned eighty-five."

"I think we're going to retire early tonight", he said with a wink as they got up to return to their compartment.

Federal Sales Taxes Would Get Rid of the IRS?

One should never use an unreliable and biased source for anything, so don't follow my example here as I'm going to use Drudge for a discussion of sales taxes as an alternative method of funding the U.S. government.

According to his site:

A domestic centerpiece of the Bush/GOP agenda for a second Bush term is getting rid of the Internal Revenue Service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The Speaker of the House will push for replacing the nation's current tax system with a national sales tax or a value added tax, Hill sources tell DRUDGE.

"People ask me if I'm really calling for the elimination of the IRS, and I say I think that's a great thing to do for future generations of Americans," Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert explains in his new book, to be released on Wednesday.

"Pushing reform legislation will be difficult. Change of any sort seldom comes easy. But these changes are critical to our economic vitality and our economic security abroad,"

""If you own property, stock, or, say, one hundred acres of farmland and tax time is approaching, you don't want to make a mistake, so you're almost obliged to go to a certified public accountant, tax preparer, or tax attorney to help you file a correct return. That costs a lot of money. Now multiply the amount you have to pay by the total number of people who are in the same boat. You can't. No one can because precise numbers don't exist. But we can stipulate that we're talking about a huge amount. Now consider that a flat tax, national sales tax, or VAT would not only eliminate the need to do this, it could also eliminate the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) itself and make the process of paying taxes much easier."

A national sales tax as an alternative to income taxes would not get rid of the IRS. It might even make the IRS bigger, more bureaucratic and more invasive.

The reasons are simple: A system of national sales taxes would be simple to administer only if it was incredibly unfair, causing the brunt of the tax burden to fall on the poor, causing the elderly to starve to death. (A sales tax is something everybody who consumes would have to pay, and as consumption is a bigger percentage of the incomes of the poorer they would end up paying relatively more (as a percentage of their incomes or assets) than the wealthy.) Such a tax would never be passed. Instead, all sorts of exemptions and varying rates of taxation would have to be added, and someone would have to administer all the paperwork that follows from this.

Also, the first thing that would develop in the wake of a general national sales tax would be an illegal market in goods and services, quite likely a very large one. We'd need people to combat this, to investigate suspicious cases and to enforce punishments to those who try to escape the taxes.

National sales taxes would make goods and services more expensive to buy. Consumers would cut back their purchases. Firms would find their revenues fall and then they'd lay off workers. The government would collect less tax revenue than what we'd estimate it would, based on the current levels of consumption. This means that the tax rates would either have to be higher than many people expect or that the government would have to cut back the services it provides. But of course this is one of the reasons for the proposal, the other being the desire to increase the tax payments of the less well-off, including those who earn no incomes.

But no, the IRS would not disappear under such an alternative tax system.

More on Cardinal Virtues

Cardinal Ratzinger's little letter on women contains a few additional interesting pieces of information: For example, not only are the sexes fundamentally different by god's decree but even death will not erase this difference:

In the afterlife, the letter stated, men and women will continue to be different, but sex will come to an end. "The temporal and earthly expression of sexuality is transient," it declared.

Why bother with maintaining the differences if there is no more sexual activity? And if dead people become angels, are some male angels and some female angels? Do the female angels specialize in praising and waiting? If so, what do the male angels do? Scold and hurry the dead souls on? Come to think of it, the whole letter (which I have read) is pretty insulting to men. This is always a problem when one aims at subjugating some group through pure praise of its special abilities: all the other groups get short shrift. Though not as short as the group that's being placed on a pedestal: it's impossible to move in that position.

And the following quote reveals the most important part of the whole letter, the raison d'etre for the whole enterprise:

It also warned of challenges to fundamentals of church teaching, saying the blurring of differences "would consider as lacking in importance and relevance the fact that the Son of God assumed human nature in its male form."

If the blurring of sex differences (of which the church accuses feminism) would 'consider as lacking in importance and relevance the fact that the Son of God assumed human nature in its male form', then keeping any such differences between the sexes always in clear and sharp sight will guarantee that we cannot forget that it was a man who became god, not a woman. This statement is why my anger at Ratzinger's letter is a holy one, a righteous desire to smite those who are mean and small-minded. For the sake of all those little girls who sit in the church pews turning their eager faces towards the priest who cannot see god reflected in them.

Holy Mary!

She's the only kind of woman that could make it to the Dean's List of the Roman Catholic church. A new 'Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World' by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope's favorite theologian, tells us women (and goddesses?) what our basic characteristics and roles are. I'm very happy to be enlightened about these questions by a man who is a celibate, of course. Only adequate distance can provide neutrality and objectivity, right?

Thus quoth Cardinal Ratzinger about women's characteristic traits:

'Listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting.'

What, nothing about vanity or competitiveness or greediness or ambition or the hunger for power? Nothing about intelligence, the love of peace, the ability to understand and manipulate people? If we start using all sorts of ancient stereotypes about women, why not add those that the Catholic church used to hold before? For example, that women might be soulless, or especially easily seduced by the Devil or like temples built on top of filthy sewers.

But of course Cardinal Ratzinger knows better than I ever could what women are like. It's the woman's special ability to give birth that molds her in ways totally unknown to men. This ability, according to Ritzinger:

'allows her to acquire maturity very quickly, and gives a sense of the seriousness of life and of its responsibilities. A sense and a respect for what is concrete develop in her, opposed to abstractions which are so often fatal for the existence of individuals and society,'

'A sense and a respect for what is concrete'! Indeed. Abstractions are really hard for us female creatures. We never get them. When I hear stories about Jesus as a shepherd I always wonder why he needed to do magic about the loaves and the wishes; why didn't he just eat his flock for Chrissake? And women certainly mature very quickly. As a religious brother of Ratzinger, one Martin Luther, used to say, girls grow so much faster than boys because weeds mature before valuable plants do.

Given the way women are, meek and passive and meant to think of concrete stuff, what would the Cardinal have women do in the society? Here he goes all feminist on us; he even allows for the possibility that women might hold jobs, though always remembering about the waiting and the humility and stuff. And the main place of women is at home, of course.

Why this sudden feminism? I'm kidding you, sort of. In fact, the letter is an attack on feminism which the good Cardinal views responsible for all sorts of evils in this world. Feminism has:

inspired ideologies which, for example, call into question the family in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and make homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent".

Even more worrying to Cardinal Ratzinger is his belief that feminism can persuade women to become "adversaries of men" and that this can have "lethal effects in the structure of the family". Consider what this statement would sound like if Ratzinger had talked about the Civil Rights Movement as having persuaded blacks to become "adversaries of whites" and as having caused "lethal effects in the structure of the society". Just consider it.

For Cardinal Ratzinger men and women are fundamentally different (remember all that waiting and humility stuff?) and the feminist attempts to increase gender equality have been misplaced because he sees them as trying to erase these fundamental differences between the sexes. But if he's right and such differences are so fundamental, what's his worry? Surely no social movement can erase fundamental god-ordained differences? So why worry about feminism? All our Cardinal needs to do is to bide his time.
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You can read the whole letter here.

The Savage Party

Our friendly and moderate wingnut commentator Michael Savage gave us some pearls in his July 28 radio show:

You know something; I'm voting for Bush, I just made up my mind. There's nothing in this for me. I'm a white male, I'm a white, male, married heterosexual -- I don't want the Democrats. Everywhere I turn, there's another hot coal in my eye. For example, today's DNC calendar of public events included lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender meeting, the disability meeting, the ethnic meeting, the American Indian meeting, the Asian/Pacific Islander meeting, the Hispanic meeting, and the African American meeting -- God bless 'em, they're entitled to their meeting, I'm entitled to my vote, they're not my party, end of story. And that's it. I'm not voting for a party of ethnic minorities and women and immigrants. I will not do it. And if I thought for a moment that they had changed their direction, if I thought for a moment there was a new Democrat Party that was more centrist and more focused on the real issues of today, I would have considered, well, maybe sitting the election out, or voting for Kerry -- no, I'm not.

Isn't this fun! The Democrats really should have had a convention where white, heterosexual, married men had at least a tiny role to play. Too bad that they didn't set up a separate meeting for those people; then we could have had Savage, too.

On Feminist Whiners

This is a statement that I often read in various forms from both men and women about feminism:

What (some) women need now is a prominent public figure or two to tell them to quit playing the victim and take charge of their life. Or better yet, figure it out on their own. Yes, there's inequality in every aspect of life. Get over it.

It sounds so bracing and simple that I immediately want to join the military, run for the president of the United States and start my own pro-life organization selling automatic assault weapons. After I have finished with my term as the Pope, of course.

This quote is an example of the way anti-feminists who are not misogynists usually argue. Often the quote is embedded in a longer diatribe which specifies that the speaker or writer is a mother, a wife, a successful businesswoman and someone who has single-handedly broken open every "No Girls Allowed" door or glass ceiling. In other words, someone who never needed feminism (or just perhaps didn't notice how feminism had paved the road for her). The diatribe usually ends with an exhortation for feminists to work on something really important, for example the sanctity of life, or to get a life themselves.

The benign interpretation of this message is that everybody can succeed if they only try hard enough or work enough. Of course, the other side of that one means that those who don't succeed haven't worked hard enough or tried enough (or haven't happened to have parents with money and power, or the right markers for a high social position). But it's undeniable that there is an optimism about this message which is sorely lacking in the feminist diatribes about violence against women or sex discrimination.

The less benign interpretation (and the one I prefer) takes a little bit more space to spell out. This is unfortunately the case with many complicated topics: to understand them fully some effort is needed, and the simple soundbites tend to win just by their easy digestibility. So I hope that you will bear with me.

Let's look at the first two sentences in this quote:

What (some) women need now is a prominent public figure or two to tell them to quit playing the victim and take charge of their life. Or better yet, figure it out on their own.

This writer believes that some women (which stands for feminists, really) play the victim and refuse to take charge of their lives. In order to heal this illness the sufferers might need someone prominent to show them the cure, though they might also be spontaneously cured. I'm not sure how one 'plays the victim'; does it involve self-inflicted wounds or some complicated games with ropes? Either one is a victim or one is not, and if one is a victim very little play seems to be involved. The basic thrust of this part of the argument is pretty clear, though: women are not really victimized and could easily alter their lives by just deciding to do so. Like the 'Just Say No' campaign that Nancy Reagan used to advocate as a tool against drug abuse. Women could do the same about crimes such as rapes, perhaps, and they could just shrug off anything like unfair hirings or firings and ride off into the sunset in search of better pastures. But despite this ability that women have to take charge of their lives they still might need someone prominent to remind them. So.

But it is a seductive idea, isn't it? Nobody likes the idea of being affected by external factors beyond our control, and we do indeed have some power over our lives. The crucial question here is how much power. People like the writer of this quote believe that such self-determination is quite easy, but the cost of this belief is the total dismissal of any societal constraints on our abilities to choose freely. These constraints don't bind everybody to the same extent, of course, but they exist and many of them are specifically aimed at women's choices.

The gist of these two sentences is that women are not discriminated against or otherwise especially burdened. It comes as a surprise, then, that the next two sentences turn this argument upside down:

Yes, there's inequality in every aspect of life. Get over it.

Now the writer has decided that inequalities exist, after all! However, and this is a big however, they don't matter, because they exist everywhere! Sort of like saying that AIDS doesn't matter if it affects enough people. And then the brisk air returns, and feminists are told to get over it, it being the grudges feminists are assumed to mistakenly bear.

But there is a deeper meaning to the inequality-argument here, and that is the implication that everybody suffers from all sorts of inequalities. What makes your inequality so special that it should be addressed? Or in the words of one right-wing commentator, why would misogyny be more of a problem than the fact that some people don't like those who have hair of a certain color?

The answer to this one is easy: Some inequalities are based on considerations of power and access to resources, others are more random in nature. Some inequalities have been legally enshrined and embedded in religious doctrine for centuries, others (such as the hair-example) amount to not much more than personal quirks which often cancel each other out. Some inequalities affect a very large number of individuals, others only a few. Some inequalities are pervasive in almost all areas of life, others in only some. And so on.

But of course I have not managed to condense any of this into a soundbite. Maybe I should just try harder?


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Thanks to Lynne for the original link.

Swallows

They are beautiful birds, aren't they? I read somewhere that certain types of swallows don't use their feet to climb into a nest but need a landing pad. This is probably not true, but I like the idea of kamikaze birds crashing on their pads with a nice juicy worm in their beaks.

The term also has other meanings, of course. Like 'to swallow', which you do while eating and drinking if you're a human, or when someone makes you accept something that makes your inner rebel scream and kick wildly. So in this sense some people have had to swallow Kerry's speech which was a really good speech. It covered almost all the important points and didn't sound at all wimpy. In fact, it sounded mature, insightful and strong. And he kicked Republican ass which I enjoyed very much.

Whether anyone outside the Convention or those who watched or listened to the few still-free media outlets will agree depends on many factors, including how much KoolAid the journalists have swallowed and how well they can distract the country with something else when the secret bitter pill is sneaked down our throats (Kerry is a flip-flopper! Look here: a terrorist has been captured! Tax rebates! Death taxes! The end of civilization as we know it!)

I went to Chicago on my recent vacation. Chicago has lovely flower arrangements all over the place and a fun set of twin fountains which spray water from holographic faces. Children and goddesses and snakes can play in the water, so we all had a good time. Then we went souvenir shopping. I had a hard time choosing between a bright orange cowboy hat with a zebra-patterned rim and a t-shirt which stated:"Swallow. Bitch. Swallow." with corresponding pictures of the intended animals. Just in case the buyer didn't get that the t-shirt has nothing to do with hatred of women, noooh.
And if you think so, you can't swallow even the tiniest, weeniest kind of joke.

In case you're interested I chose the orange cowboy hat. It's going to make a charming present for Ares if I ever find him.

The American Fetus

Or maybe this should be entitled "The Handmaiden's Tale: A Preamble"? It was really just a question of time before president Bush's fetal policy would cause something like this to happen:

Lawyers for a pregnant woman who was deported earlier this month have said that she should be allowed to return to the United States because her 32-week-gestation fetus -- which was conceived in the United States -- is guaranteed equal protection under criminal law as a result of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 and therefore could be eligible for U.S. citizenship rights, the reports. Maria Christina Rubio was deported on July 16 after immigration officials determined that her residency request had been denied two years ago and that she previously had been deported after illegally entering the United States. In addition, immigration officials last week denied Rubio's request for a humanitarian visa to return to the United States because of pregnancy complications that are putting the health of her fetus at risk; Rubio was hospitalized during her fifth month of pregnancy and has reported severe stomach pains throughout her pregnancy, according to Luis Carrillo, Rubio's husband's attorney. Carrillo said that because Rubio's fetus would be viable outside the womb, it should be treated as a U.S. citizen because the Unborn Victims of Violence Act grants a fetus equal protection under criminal law.

It's not likely that Rubio would win on this argument as the U.S. law currently defines citizenship by birth, but the seeds are sown, the seeds are sown, and one day we shall reap. I'm thinking of all the tourism the U.S. could have for conception vacations: happy couples could visit the Disney world and have a brand new American in the family by one single stroke!

Of course the role of the mother as a container would also become more pronounced. We'd need laws about the containers of human beings and how such should act. But those are probably already being written in the hidden offices of the FBU (The Federal Bureau of the Unborn; I stole this from a cartoon in Mother Jones).
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Thanks to ms CJ for the link.

The Expected Arrest?

As an earlier post of mine mentioned the Pakistanis were supposed to capture someone important in Al Qaeida, preferably during the first three days of the Democratic Convention. Well, though yesterday was the last day of the Convention, we did indeed get some good news from Pakistan:

A top al Qaeda operative, one of the world's most wanted men with a $25 million price on his head, was in custody in Pakistan on Friday for his suspected role in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa.
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was arrested along with 13 others after a 14-hour gunbattle with security forces at the weekend in the city of Gujarat, about 110 miles southeast of Islamabad, Pakistan Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said.
"It is a big achievement for our security forces," he said.
The United States had offered a reward of $25 million for the capture of the Tanzanian national, the same bounty offered for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and 19 others on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist List.
Ghailani is probably the most senior al Qaeda operative caught in Pakistan since the arrest in March 2003 of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
"He is wanted for the death of Americans," said an official in Washington on condition of anonymity.

Of course it's good news if a real terrorist has been captured. Nothing wrong with that. But I would have wanted the date of the arrest not to fall so close to the predicted time slot. Poor me. I have gone all cynical and sour. And it isn't even my fault.

I'm Baa-a-ack!

But totally frazzled. It's one of the basic rules of vacationing: you return more tired than you left. And there's still unpacking to do and then I have to find out all about the politics of the last four days. But at least the Snakepit Inc. is still standing and as Addams-familiesque as ever. I really need to get into some interior designing soon. The spiderwebs look nice but they're so nineties, don't you think?

I had a good time on my trip, though, and once I've slept some I'll tell you all about it and show videos, too, and photographs (just kidding here). And I'll tell you what I ate and drank and what the snakes said and so on ad infinitum (not kidding here). So count your blessings that I'm still too tired.

A Vacation Post

Dearest,
I don't know how to say this. It will hurt, however I try to frame it, I know, and I truly wish I didn't have to write this letter. We have had so many things in common, so many memories, so many moments that will for ever stay in our hearts.

But time moves on and sometimes what was the right thing to do yesterday is no longer so today. I know that you understand, even if you can't really forgive me right now....

In other words, I'm taking four days off from blogging! I should be back on Thursday evening. I'm going to put up some really long and boring short stories later on tonight, and you could read a paragraph on each day or something. That way I get visitors every day! So this isn't really about you, of course, but about me and my fear of not being adored if I disappear.

But such are the problems of us goddesses. I'm going to administer some traditional snake-fertility rites on a secret mountain location, and the keyboard is not a sacred object and cannot be backed with all the other paraphernalia. Is 'paraphernalia' a word?
Never mind, you know what I mean: extra food for the dogs and the snakes, swimming suits, nectar and books telling how badly the Bush administation is doing. Also the sacred contained for all the skins to be shedded. And the twelve suitcases consisting of Artful Asp's makeup kit. I sure am glad when this trip will be safely over.

Looking For God

You can read this if you miss me! It could be better, but so could I.

Looking For God

Jonathan is looking for God. He has looked everywhere: in Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam, in Hinduism. He has studied native religions from all parts of the world, studied meditation and shamanism. He has read all the holy texts, but he has not found God. He has talked to believers of all the faiths he has been able to find, and he has found them convinced of their own truths, shiny-eyed in certainty and happiness, and, yet, somehow, very frightening.

Of course, God might not exist, Jonathan thinks as he makes coffee in his kitchen, grinding the shiny, brown beans in the electric grinder. He probably doesn't exist. Jonathan pours the ground coffee in the filter and filtered, clean water in the coffee-maker. He clicks the on-button and waits. Who made the water? Did anybody or anything intend coffee to grow and humans to drink it? Or is the world just a chapter from books on physics, chemistry, geography and biology? And people, what are they? Lumbering apes with small lusty eyes, who can rape and kill, who can break everything with their clumsy paws, who can decode the DNA and go to space, still lumbering apes with small lusty eyes? Who, then is the god? The man with the most Nobel prizes? The man with the most money? The man who killed the most men and impregnated the most women?

Jonathan takes his coffee to the balcony. It is a beautiful morning, birds sing and the sun dapples the grass under the trees below. Here he sits, watching children play, drinking good coffee and drinking in the sun and the birds, the fresh breeze of a spring morning. He doesn't see how this goes with the lumbering ape theory, and, besides, he doesn't believe in lumbering apes. Apes are a mystery at which people gaze through human eyes, a mirror which humans warp to see what they believe is there, what their theory needs to be there.

The wind ruffles Jonathan's hair. It is not a chilly wind. Still, it sends shivers down his body. This is why he needs God: because everything affects him, tells him something, and he can't close his doors against that. A God would let him see patterns, understand what refuses to be understood. Not just why there are wars, holocausts, murders, cancer or airplane crashes. All religions tell stories about this, and although Jonathan doesn't believe in these stories, he is more obsessed with other patterns; patterns so subtle that he can't even see their presence, only sense them in some apparent absence.

He finishes his coffee and sets the empty cup down on the balcony table. The wind tosses a green willow leaf into it. The leaf hesitates a moment on the edge before falling to the bottom of the cup. Was this a conscious act? Anne would have smiled at this thought.

Jonathan picks up the leaf and looks at its intricate veining. Anne found Jonathan's search for God funny and exasperating. She knew that there was no God. They had read the holy texts together, criticized them to each other. She was the first to point out their inconsistencies, their espousal of some values which ancient tribal societies once shared but which now seemed reprehensible. She was the one noting that the god in these texts favored men over women. But they both saw the texts as reflections of what people once had thought god to be, what they had wanted god to say, not as a proof of the existence of God. Jonathan had been disappointed, Anne had been deeply hurt at his disappointment. She wanted to know why Jonathan could still seek for such a god as the texts described. She feared that he needed a heavenly father even if this father had disowned her as an equally loved daughter.

Jonathan wished that she could be with him on the balcony this morning. He would tell her that the God he is seeking is not a man, is not a father. Probably God would resemble no human being. But if Jonathan had to choose he would have God be a heavenly mother, a Goddess. Anne would raise her eyebrows in disbelief. Still, Jonathan rather liked the idea of a Goddess: a beginning and an end in her dark lap.

Is that where Anne was now, he wondered, in Her dark lap? Do suicides sleep there peacefully? Or is Anne simply gone like her ashes he had to sprinkle into the winds? Would she miss him if she could?

He misses her, the dark twin to his light, as she laughingly once said. They were together from the beginning, sharing the womb together, hardly ever apart even later. Without her Jonathan is unfinished, neither coming nor going, a man with one foot in some other invisible world. He needs God to put him firmly in one or the other.

Anne had taken the leap alone, trusting in the existence of no-one, not herself, not God, not Jonathan. She had been outfought. Her war against the world was an impossible one, and when she knew that she could never be more than half-alive, she had opted for total death. Leaving Jonathan behind, half-alive.

Jonathan picks up his cup and goes indoors. He is not working today and plans to spend the whole day looking for God. It doesn't matter if God doesn't want to be found. It doesn't matter if God doesn't exist. If ancient people could create gods in their own image, Jonathan can surely look for God in his own life. Today he is going to do so by meditating in the park.

The park is full of people. Joggers pass Jonathan as he walks in. Children and dogs run around and the benches are all taken. A kite climbs toward the sun. Jonathan finds a small empty corner and sits down under an oak tree. It must be an old tree; its roots are everywhere. Meditation is something Jonathan learned when he studied Buddhism. He never got enlightened, but he can relax his body, quiet his mind and, for some time, enter a state of emptiness. Should God come calling he'll be at home.

He closes his eyes and the sun paints psychedelic bursts on the insides of his eyelids. His body slowly slips its tension and his breathing gently expands. Thoughts drift in and out of his mind, then stop. Somewhere deep inside him a neutral eye opens and observes. Time passes and the sun moves.

He comes back to ordinary awareness when something earth-smelling and moist touches his face. He opens his eyes, staring straight into the brown curious eyes of a dog. There is barely an inch between their noses. Jonathan doesn't know dogs very well, but this seems friendly. It waves its large plume of a tail from side to side. He gives it a clumsy pat on the head. The dog looks at him with raised eyebrows. Evidently pats on the head are not correct.

The dog steps back a little and then bows to Jonathan. Or whatever it does, that's how it looks. It? He? She? She. She turns around and walks away, stopping and turning her head toward him as if asking him to go along. Who does she belong to? She has no tags or collar. She doesn't act like a dog who belongs to somebody. Jonathan looks around for a possible owner, but the park is now empty. The dog keeps insisting that he follow. Perhaps he should, perhaps the dog will show him what she needs or lead him to an accident victim or to God.

This amuses him as he gets up and starts trailing the dog. Dogs are used to hunt, after all, and he is a holy hunter. And wasn't Artemis, the goddess with the bow and arrows, always accompanied by hounds? Then there are the hounds of hell, of course. Better be careful.

Off they go, the man and the dog, stopping every now and then for her to sniff at an interesting smell, zigzagging across the park in apparently meaningless patterns. Jonathan begins to feel like an idiot, but whenever he tries to turn around and leave, the dog looks at him again with that challenging expression in her eyes.

They finally leave the park through one of the side gates. The street outside is busy and Jonathan suddenly realizes that loose dogs are dangerous in traffic. He lunges at the dog, trying to get hold of her but ends on his knees and elbows, staring at the ground. She must have evaded him at the last moment. He must have imagined that his body had gone straight through hers in its path to the ground.

The dog has already crossed the street, and Jonathan rushes after her. She disappears into the crowd and is lost from sight. Suddenly following her is imperative. Jonathan starts running, bumping into people and objects. He can't spot her and is becoming desperate. He looks everywhere, almost ready to give up. Then he sees her, patiently waiting for him at a corner. She turns to a sidestreet and Jonathan follows.

They walk on for what seems like hours to him. The streets begin to look alien. There are fewer and fewer people about. Jonathan is getting tired. Their tempo speeds up. She seems to know where she is going, now, and he can barely keep up. Storefronts whizz by and the occasional pedestrian on the street looks frozen in place. They go faster and faster, turning corners recklessly, crossing streets without checking for cars. Jonathan needs to catch his breath but they go on. He develops a stitch in his side. They keep going. He is sweating freely now, and his legs tremble and ache. They must have run for miles; the dog always at the same easy trot, Jonathan more and more haltingly. Finally he simply must stop and rest.

He stands leaning against a lamppost, drawing in ragged breaths. He doesn't know where he is, the shop windows are full of writing in some foreign script. He doesn't see any people. The dog sits at the next street corner, a vague blurry shape. She hasn't released him yet.

Jonathan closes his eyes and notices that they are full of tears. Is he that tired? The tears fall down his cheeks. He hasn't cried since Anne's death. She didn't care for tears; she managed her emotions by acting them out, by violently throwing books into the wall or by lifting weights until she was exhausted. Jonathan didn't want to cry for her but now he does. He wants her back alive and he wants God to arrange it.

The dog is coming towards Jonathan, stopping once to pee on something on the sidewalk. She is not a handsome dog, her ears don't match and her coat is tangled and matted. But she has something Jonathan needs. Perhaps she knows God.

She sits down nearby and waits until his tears are done. Then she gets up, tells him to follow and trots off.

Jonathan is hollow and light, empty to his bones, but he follows. They pass through streets he never knew existed, cross rivers marked on no map. They walk by odd, distorted buildings, by traffic signs with constantly changing wavering messages. He doesn't understand any of them.

The sun is setting and the mounting shadows take the shapes of plume-tailed dogs. Jonathan thinks that he may have walked like this not for a day but for a year, an eternity. He no longer feels tired, he can now walk tirelessly, softly like a dog. Anne walks by his side, sometimes smiling, sometimes turning her head away. She tells him stories which he doesn't understand. She storms ahead in frustration, then waits for him in mock resignation.. She takes his hand, her eyes fill with love and then she becomes ashes, scattered by the winds. Jonathan looks at his empty hand.

The dog has led him into a deep forest. He has to bend down to avoid the tree branches as he makes his way in. The needles of evergreens sting his cheekbones, the roots try to snare his ankles. The dog is a dim light ahead, still moving deeper into the darkness. Jonathan follows. Finally they emerge into an open area, a hollow, a bog surrounded by trees. The air is scented with something pungent, earthly. The ground beneath him gives on each step, squishes liquid and musky half-remembered smells as he forces his weight on it. A full moon is centered in the sky.

The dog leaps into the bog, splashing water everywhere, her four legs dancing in the air as she rolls onto her back. She rolls back on her stomach and lies there, panting. Jonathan can hear her panting; it is the only sound.

He sits down against a tree trunk and waits. This is where God will speak to him. The dog gets up and shakes herself. Suddenly she starts running. Not the way she moved before. Now she runs in the air, rising up in impossible arabesques, twisting around in slow motion. She chases her own tail high above Jonathan's head, chases imaginary cats around the moon, bounces and leaps through Jonathan's heart. She is all motion; a gentle, piercing song of air, a wild howl of pirouettes. She runs and turns into a golden shower of ashes which rains down on Jonathan. She becomes a dog again, lies down next to him, panting, and starts licking her paws in order. She turns her head and looks at him again with that unfathomable message. Anne turns her head and looks at him, her eyebrows raised. He almost gets it.

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He opens his eyes. He is sitting under the oak tree in the park. It is night and he is alone. His body is stiff and numb; it takes a long time before he can get up. His clothes are wet and cold and there are pine needles in his hair. He walks home trying not to think. He takes a scaldingly hot shower still not thinking, changes into dry clothing and makes coffee.

He sits down at his desk with the coffee cup and pulls open a drawer. Somewhere in there is a picture of Anne and him, looking at the photographer through sun-squinted eyes. They are smiling in that picture, wearing matching T-shirts with 'twin' emblazoned on the front. Jonathan had hidden the picture in his grief. Now he needs it. He pulls open another drawer and finds it. He props it against the cup and looks at their faces, first hers, then his, then both of them together. He thinks of the dog. He almost gets it.

After a while he gives up and goes to bed, taking the picture with him. He places it on the pillow next to him and closes his eyes. Tomorrow will be a new day. Just before he falls asleep he hears, from somewhere far away, a solitary dog howl.