Charlotte Allen: The Public Intellectual

Christine on ms. musings linked to an article by Ms. Allen in the Los Angeles Times. The article begins thus:

Feminist Fatale
Where are the great women thinkers? Thinking so much about women has shrunk their minds.

The gist of the article is that there once used to be great women thinkers but now there aren't, except for Camilla Paglia, and the reason is feminism. Feminism shrinks women's minds so that they are only interested in topics that have to do with women and especially with women's bodies, and feminism is so rigid that it doesn't allow interesting alternative thinking to flourish. And everybody knows that women as a topic is narrow and special-interest and not something that deserves a great mind to ponder over it. Even if the majority of the world's people happen to be female.

Ms. Allen is an active member of the Independent Women's Forum, a rightwing organization largely funded by Richard Mellon Schaife. I bet you a zillion dollars that the IWF would not fund me, because my thinking doesn't follow their rigid rules. Neither would they publish any of my rants even if I gave them over for nothing.

Ms. Allen's use of evidence is interesting. She labels Susan Sontag as a great thinker because she refused "to embrace ideological feminism". It seems that Ms. Allen has not read very many of the great writings of Sontag to argue this, or perhaps she has a very odd definition of ideological feminism. But not to worry, the men that Ms. Allen label as great public intellectuals leave me less than impressed:

Still, there is no shortage of well-known male intellectuals. Besides Wolfe and Wills, we have Richard Posner, Louis Menand, Francis Fukuyama, Ian Buruma and Henry Louis Gates Jr., to name some, along with scientists who write provocatively for a general readership: Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins and Jared Diamond. In books and magazines, these intellectuals, who represent a wide variety of ideological perspectives, debate a broad spectrum of topics: science and politics, high and low art, literature, evolution, the Iraq war, campus sexual mores, the origins of the universe.

A few names on that list explain why Charlotte thinks that Camilla Paglia is a great thinker. Francis Fukuyama! And Steven Pinker has his odd quirks, I'd think. The list of women who have failed to become great thinkers in Charlotte's book includes most famous American feminists of the last thirty years, but excludes many columnists who indeed write on various topics. Molly Ivins is not mentioned, Katha Pollitt is not mentioned and so on. Barbara Ehrenreich is mentioned but her work on other than feminist topics is belittled, and other feminist writers who also write on other topics (Robin Morgan, for example) are omitted altogether.

What to say about all this? I think the idea of the public intellectual is a teeny weeny bit silly, considering the quality of thinking most public intellectuals offer us. But if we need such creatures there are plenty of good women writing for the general audience, and women's issues should be of general interest if men's issues are. Ms. Allen is trying a magician's trick here: Look! No great woman thinkers. Look here! Feminism is to blame! Which may be funny but isn't a real argument.

In any case, if Francis Fukuyama had been born a girl he would write somewhat differently if at all. Charlotte wants women to rise above their lives whereas she doesn't hold the men to the same standards. Fukuyama writes about the things which interest him: how to keep the world conservative and people like Francis Fukuyama the winners, but Charlotte doesn't see this as limited and of only special interest.

I also suspect that Charlotte applies a conservative male lens to the whole question. What sort of a thinking woman would a wingnut guy find impressive? Certainly not a feminist thinker, but that doesn't mean that feminist thinking isn't important. I happen to think that it has been one of the most interesting aspects of the twentieth century intellectual history.

Gannon and Daschle

It seems that Jeff Gannon had a part to play in getting rid of Daschle:

Gannon took up the Republicans' dirty work with great gusto, beginning more than a year before the election, in the summer of 2003. Working with two local South Dakota bloggers, both of whom later turned out to be secretly paid operatives of the Thune campaign, he targeted Daschle and discredited mainstream journalists. Among Gannon's direct hits was an embarrassing story that revealed that the three-term senator and his lobbyist wife, Linda, had applied for a "homestead exemption" on their costly Washington, D.C., residence, claiming it as their primary residence.

Gannon went much further, however, in accusing reporters at the state's most important newspaper, the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, of shilling for Daschle and, worse still, of colluding with the senator in the intimidation of his political adversaries. Such wild attacks were then played back on the Thune-financed Web logs, which attracted substantial attention in the Senate race and influenced coverage in the South Dakota media. As the National Journal explained in a post-election analysis, the blog assault "opened a new and potentially powerful front in the war over public opinion." The National Journal and local journalists agreed that the blog campaign against Daschle was "crucial." A top Argus Leader editor conceded, "I don't think there's any way to say [the blogs] didn't" affect the paper's coverage.

This isn't necessarily unjournalistic behavior, especially these days. I'd like to know where Daschle's paycheck came from, ultimately.

Women in Iraq and Afghanistan

Things don't look good for many Iraqi women, especially the educated and the secular ones. Most signs point towards at least some modified form of theocracy, and women tend to be losers under such systems. Just look at Iran next door. Here is a comment by an Iraqi woman in exile:

I am an Iraqi woman, and I am boycotting the elections. Women who do vote will be voting for an enslaved future. Surely, say those who support these elections, after decades of tyranny, here at last is a form of democracy, imperfect, but democracy nevertheless?

In reality, these elections are, for Iraq's women, little more than a cruel joke. Amid the suicide attacks, kidnappings and U.S.-led military assaults since Saddam Hussein's fall, the little-reported phenomenon is the sharp increase in the persecution of Iraqi women. Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity and of a political establishment that cares little for women's empowerment.

Indeed. Rather, the opposite is true: that the role of women as the repository of family and tribal honor will be most important for the men who have just seen their own honor tarnished by foreign invaders, and such repositories must be carefully guarded and restricted.

It is ironic, isn't it, that George Bush tells the world how he is bringing freedom to Iraq, all the time ignoring that the majority of Iraqis will not be any freer than in the past (women are the majority of Iraqi citizens)? Or perhaps I am wrong about my dire predictions concerning the future of Iraqi women. I sincerely hope so, especially as I marched against the war largely for the very reason that I didn't want to see another misogynistic country created.

In Afghanistan, women's lives are perhaps somewhat better, though formal measures of equality may not be very precise in this context. Keeping this in mind, it is interesting to read that:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai will appoint a female provincial governor for the first time in Afghanistan's history. Karzai will be choosing the governor of the central Bamiyan province from a short list of all-female candidates that includes the former Minister of Women's Affairs, Habiba Sorabi, reports the Associated Press.

Many see the appointment of a female governor as a positive step towards promoting women's rights in Afghanistan. Earlier this year, Karzai appointed three women to his newly formed Cabinet that consists of 30 people.

In fact, the Afghanistan parliament has more women than the U.S. Congress, though this is due to the quotas that were set for women's participation in the former country. The latter country cannot possibly have quotas: that would smack of communism. Unless we mean the common informal quota of regarding one or two women as an adequate number for female representation on all kinds of boards.
----
The first link via dailyKos diaries.

On the Psychology of the Chatrooms

I'm not a great user of the chatrooms because I'm a shy goddess. But they are interesting to visit once in a while and visiting them teaches all sorts of things about human psychology. For example, we seem to have an immense need to build gangs or groups of same-thinking individuals and then these gangs tend to oppose other gangs. This happens even in the chatrooms for the elderly! Another interesting thing is the way a chatroom responds to someone who is just plainly nasty: some oppose the person vigorously but many flatter him or her, perhaps in the hope to stay hidden from the nasty's little mean eyes.

Then there are good psychological things, too. Like the real community support that can crop up in chat rooms and the real friendships. But I tend to be more interested in the deviant and unpleasant behavior (must go and meditate on this), and one of those is the periodic explosion that happens in many chatrooms. Something is said, often something quite minor and unimportant, and suddenly open warfare erupts, things are thrown helter-skelter and at the end of the episode metaphorical dead bodies are heaped everywhere and half of the participants have stormed off in a huff. What is this all about?

I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with our inability to avoid those we detest on the internet. In real life we tend not to invite these people to our fireside and if we meet them in the office or the street we tend to ignore them. But in a chatroom we may not be able to do this (though some systems allow you to ignore others' comments). Hence the people who grate on us keep on grating until one day it's all too much and boom!

The nice thing about blogs is that all this is less likely to happen. It's easy to avoid a blogger you hate, and it's easy to ban a commenter a blogger doesn't like.

Many other things about internet communication are psychologically fascinating, too. The absence of voices and faces, for example. Would we actually listen to the people we now do if we could hear and see them? Do we put imaginary faces on the writing styles? And if we do, how off are we in our guesses? And does it matter?

The Ostrich Ambassador

Negroponte used to be called that. Why? Here's why:

Negroponte has a long resume in Republican administrations. Before Iraq, Negroponte was Bush's U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and, long before that, a player in the Reagan administration's Iran-Contra days. He served on Ronald Reagan's national security team in the late 1980s. And from 1981 to 1985, Negroponte served as U.S. ambassador to Honduras, where he helped the Contras fight Nicaragua's Sandinista government and, according to a series of stories in the Baltimore Sun, turned a blind eye to human rights abuses.

So we are in good hands.

Today's Action Alert

Today's Actions comes from NRDC -- and it's easy. NRDC is starting a blog that will focus on efforts to prevent the Bush administration from destroying the environment. Check out their new blog today and bookmark it so you can visit frequently.



*****



Dear NRDC Action Fund Supporter,

Right now, the Bush Administration and its allies in Congress are working to

pass sweeping, pro-industry legislation that would sacrifice our heritage and

health for decades to come.

For all of us at the NRDC Action Fund, that can mean only one thing: it's time

to fight back. Now more than ever, we need to protect our precious wildlands

from drilling, defend our clean air and water from pollution and take urgently

needed action to stop and reverse global warming.

But we can't do it without building a bigger and stronger community of people

like you.

Last week, we launched a Blog -- an interactive, online diary -- to serve as a

gathering place for everyone who wants to stop the Bush Administration's

outrageous assaults on our environment:

http://blog.nrdcactionfund.org/

Hosted by the NRDC Action Fund's own Frances Beinecke, the Blog will give you

the chance to exchange comments, participate in online chats and -- most

importantly -- get organized to take action. With personal reflections and a

fresh look at the issues, Frances will call attention to the dangers posed by

the Bush Administration's policies and tell you about what you can do to help

stop them.

Beginning tomorrow, Laurie David -- NRDC Action Fund trustee, co-founder of the

Detroit Project and wife of comedy writer Larry David -- will be our first

featured guest blogger. And stay tuned, because some of the most eloquent and

active voices in the environmental movement will soon follow in her footsteps

as guest bloggers.

Please visit the NRDC Action Fund Blog daily at http://blog.nrdcactionfund.org/

and get involved.

Thanks to people like you, I am optimistic that we will succeed in defending

America's natural heritage for ourselves and all future generations.

Sincerely,

John H. Adams

President

NRDC Action Fund

New York Times Catching Up...

You could do worse than read Maureen Dowd's and Frank Rich's columns on the Jeff Gannon affair in the New York Times, assuming that you haven't followed the story for a few weeks on the lefty blogs. Even I blogged on Jeff Gannon on American Street sometime in January. It's a funny thing about the internets: they make one feel dejavu all over again when one listens to the radio or watches the television. Though it's true that much of the material on the net turns out to be wrong.

Still, in this particular case the so-called liberal media has taken its precious time before getting on the topic. Is it because the Gannongate hits too close to the heart of this administration? Is it because the problem belongs to the wingnuts and the wingnuts are in power so the media has to tiptoe carefully? I can't think of any other reasons: the story has everything that is supposed to make for juicy reading, after all, though most importantly it has some bad ethics in high places. Who was it who let Gannon in so easily? And when will I get my White House pass?

Never mind. I would pick all the wrong stories. For example, I still think that we should be outraged over all the warnings that the administration ignored before 9/11. Which appears to be the wrong answer. The correct answer is to feel outraged about the food-for-oil program.

Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid!

This is to be recommended. Our administration has found it profitable, in any case.
Here's Porter Goss:

Islamic militants waging a deadly insurgency against U.S.-led forces in Iraq pose an emerging international terrorism threat, CIA Director Porter Goss said on Wednesday.

In his first public appearance as U.S. spymaster, Goss described Iraqi insurgents, including al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as part of a Sunni militant movement inspired by Osama bin Laden and intent on attacking Americans.

"The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists," Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

"Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries," he said.

Hence, it was very smart to attack Iraq. Now we have something more to be afraid about, something even more real. And Russians miss enough nuclear material for a nice bomb that can be dropped on a major U.S. city, or carried into it in a suitcase.

And what, exactly, are we going to do about it? Hmh? Or are we just supposed to crawl under our beds (with all the dustdogs) and let Daddy Bush take care of us?

On Making Things

I'm working on a post about fertility and the current pro-natalistic wingnut ideas, but I hate the topic so much that I'm procrastinating. Instead of talking about making babies I want to talk about how to make things in general.

We tend not to make what we wear in the West, anymore, largely because it is cheaper to buy what we need than to make it from scratch. Take shoes, for example. If I wanted to make my own shoes it would take months of study just to get started. So I don't make them, though I once made flipflops:

Find a large piece of corrugated cardboard. Stand on it without socks or shoes and outline the shapes of your feet on the cardboard. Cut these shapes out. They are your soles. Then cut two strips from the cardboard, long enough to go across the top of your foot. Staple then to the soles at a suitable point. Now you have flipflops! Warning, I made these when I was six years old, and I can't guarantee that they work for very long. But you can draw pictures of cowboys and horses on them and they look good.

One of the consequences of us not knowing how to make things anymore is that it is harder to value and respect the skill that goes into the work. That is one of the reasons why I try to learn a new skill every year. The other reason is my eternal curiosity which will one day kill me.

But not yet. Among my recent experiments in making things are building a kitchen cabinet and making a suit from scratch. They both turned out ok and they both taught me to respect people who can sew or do woodwork. And they both left a few scars on me. A reminder: take your fingers away before you press the pedal on your sewing machine or before you hammer down on the nail.

Learning how things are made is very salutary. It makes me feel connected to whoever has made the object I buy, and it makes me very angry when the work is not properly rewarded. This is especially the case with many of the handmade pieces of clothing and home linens that are sold these days at a few dollars. Anyone who has embroidered or quilted knows that somewhere the creator of these products must be starving to death. Many of these creators are women and the wages they are paid may be customary in the producing country but the fact still remains that we are exploiting this work. The same is probably true of much of the work men in the developing countries do for us.

I tend to view the recent feminist interest in knitting and crocheting from this angle: that we are learning the skills which are no longer valued, and that many of these skills are regarded as female ones. Another side of me bickers about the fact that these skills are kind of parodied in the most recent fashions, because none of us needs to knit or crochet nowadays, and my grandmothers' skills were considerably higher than anything I see in the new knitting books and magazines. But that is the side that needs a good kick on its backside, of course. In any case, that is what I am doing with my forays into sewing and woodworking: just scratching the surface of something that requires years of study and experience.

David Horowitz

He is a wingnut who is fighting to fumigate the lefty lairs in academia. The idea is to get rid of all the brainwashing that we progressives/liberals/lefties do to poor wingnut children who attend college. Horowitz is behind the proposed Ohio law that would infringe the academic freedom of professors. Now Atrios is linking to Horowitz's database on the complaints directly. If the connection works (it didn't for me) you can find for yourself all the horrible things that happen to poor baby wingnuts in colleges.

For a sample of the complaints, Thinkprogress gives us these:

"This complaint applies to the discriminating nature of grading of my English teacher…On the last one, I wrote about how family values in the books weve read aren't good. I know the paper was pretty much great because I spell checked it and proofred it twice. I got an D- just because the professor hates families and thinks its okay to be gay." [sic] - Ohio State, English, 2/9/05

"We were then required to watch an immoral Seinfeld episode dealing with masturbation, an exercise with little sociological value. She then gave a lecture on 'moral relativity,' which she defined very closely with 'cultural relativism.'" - St. Louis University, Sociology, 2/13/05

"Talked about flags as symbols of states and argued that new Iraqi flag was not a result of a transparent and fair process…Claimed AS FACT that other Arab societies had red, green and black in their flags…" - St. Michael's College, Human Geography, 4/30/04

Maybe there are many really valid complaints in Horowitz's database. I don't know. But I'm pretty sure that they will not contain the kinds of complaints I could have made as a student. For example, one professor told me to stop studying economics and go home and have babies instead. Another one argued that giving the good jobs to men makes perfect sense in economic theory. A third one suggested a little hanky-panky on his office floor. But then many more than these three said good and encouraging things to me and it never occurred to me to take anything anybody took as a message from the gods. It was all grist for my thinking and good in that sense, though sexual harassment didn't really contribute to anything good.

I have always thought that one of the most valuable things I got from university education was the ability to see, in great detail, how someone else's mind works. Horowitz doesn't like that, it seems. Neither does he like higher education in general, because the whole point of higher education is to stretch the students' thinking, to challenge it and then to change it if it deserves to be changed by facts.

Today's Silly Thought

"Every morning, I wake up and thank God for my unique ability to accessorize!"

Barbie the doll

And Even More on the Gannongate

Some of us still believe it matters:

Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (NY-28), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Rules, and Rep. John Conyers (MI-14), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, filed a Freedom of Information Act request today with the Department of Homeland Security asking for the release of all information related to Jeff Gannon, his credentialing/security clearance to cover the White House, the White House's involvement in credentialing/clearing reporters, and Gannon's involvement in the leaking of a classified Central Intelligence Agency memo containing the identity of undercover agent Valerie Plame.



"How much longer must we wait for answers? By his own implication 'Mr. Gannon' has had access to classified documents that contained the identity of an undercover agent for the CIA. The American people deserve to know how this man was able to get access not only to the White House briefing room but also these very sensitive documents," said Slaughter.

You said it, Louise.

International Diplomacy by the Bush Administration

It is called posturing, I believe, though I have no idea whether it is justified in this case or not:

The United States recalled its ambassador to Syria today in a gesture meant to reflect Washington's "profound outrage" over the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister, the State Department announced.

Before departing the Syrian capital of Damascus, the United States ambassador, Margaret Scobey, delivered a stern note to the Syrian government, according to the chief State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher.

The series of diplomatic moves came a day after the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, was killed in Beirut by a car bomb that took the lives of at least 11 other people and wounded scores more.

Although the Syrian government immediately condemned the attack, the Bush administration made it clear that it held Syria responsible, at least indirectly, because of its long domination of Lebanon. Mr. Hariri had spoken against Syrian influence in his country.

And Secretary of State Rice has called Syria one of the "outposts of tyranny" in the world. Tyranny is the new enemy of the war against terrorism in case you didn't know. But I'm truly annoyed that I cannot judge the validity of this move; the U.S. media is so uninformative that I am unenlightened on issues that I don't actively follow in the foreign press.

A Sham?

According to Salon, this is what Bush's faith-based initiative is. Or rather according to David Kuo who used to be the deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He has now written an essay for belief.net in which

...he says Bush's commitment to faith-based initiatives -- especially those aimed at helping the poor -- was essentially a sham.

Kuo says the Bush promises about being a "compassionate conservative" are today "unfulfilled in spirit and in fact." Kuo spreads around the blame. He says Republicans in Congress were ambivalent about the faith-based programs because they were indifferent about helping the poor, while Democrats took a "knee-jerk" position that opposed any linkage between government and religion.

Then there is the tiny problem that prayer might not work in a lot of the fields where the faith-based initiatives were promoted. But Kuo is probably right in arguing that Bush doesn't really care about the poor. Though he does care about the radical Christian right, so it's not really true that money has been unavailable. It has just been used where it gives a bigger bang for the buck: in abstinence education, for example. That abstinence education doesn't work is not something that would bother Bush a lot. After all, the point of the whole initiative is to serve as a kickback program for his voter base.

Today's Action Alert

Today's Action comes from Amnesty International:

No one has been brought to justice for the crimes against humanity being committed in Sudan. We need to focus the attention of world leaders on this problem.

Here's a sample letter you can send:

*****************

Dear Minister,

I'm writing to you to express my concern about the continuing failure to bring to justice those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan. Impunity has fuelled insecurity in Sudan for more than 21 years.

I therefore urge your government, as a member of the UN Security Council, to:

- Ensure the Sudanese government implements all human rights it has committed to respect under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement;

- Ensure a comprehensive reform of Sudanese criminal law and the justice system in conformity with international human rights and humanitarian law. Legal provisions that give immunity to the security forces must be abolished;

- In view of Sudan's lack of compliance with previous Security Council's resolutions and the failure of the Sudanese legal system to bring to justice those responsible for serious crimes under international law, the Security Council should refer the situation in Sudan, including Darfur, to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, according to Article 13 (b) of the Rome Statute;

- Give full consideration to the findings and recommendations of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, created under Security Council Resolution 1564 and mandated to investigate reports of crimes committed by all parties and to identify the perpetrators of such crimes, with a view to ensuring that those responsible are held individually criminally responsible.

Yours sincerely,

***********

Send your letter to:



Secretary of State
US Department of State
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20520

Fax: 202.647.1811
You can also contact the Department of State using this web form

Or send your letter to:


Rt Hon Jack Straw MP
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street
London
SW1A 2AH
United Kingdom

Fax: +44 20 7008 2144

Thanks for taking today's action!

From Riverbend

She is an Iraqi blogger with a very good blog. This is what she talks about in her latest post:

Last week my cousin needed to visit the current Ministry of Higher Education. After the ministry building was burned and looted, the employees had to be transferred to a much, much smaller building in another part of the city. My cousin's wife wanted to have her college degree legalized by the ministry and my cousin wasn't sure about how to go about doing it. So I volunteered to go along with him because I had some questions of my own.

We headed for the building containing the ministry employees (but hardly ever containing the minister). It was small and cramped. Every 8 employees were stuck in the same room. The air was tense and heavy. We were greeted in the reception area by a bearded man who scanned us disapprovingly. "Da'awachi," my cousin whispered under his breath, indicating the man was from the Da'awa Party. What could he do for us? Who did we want? We wanted to have some documents legalized by the ministry, I said loudly, trying to cover up my nervousness. He looked at me momentarily and then turned to the cousin pointedly. My cousin repeated why we were there and asked for directions. We were told to go to one of the rooms on the same floor and begin there.

"Please dress appropriately next time you come here." The man said to me. I looked down at what I was wearing- black pants, a beige high-necked sweater and a knee-length black coat. Huh? I blushed furiously. He meant my head should be covered and I should be wearing a skirt. I don't like being told what to wear and what not to wear by strange men. "I don't work here- I don't have to follow a dress code." I answered coldly. The cousin didn't like where the conversation was going, he angrily interceded, "We're only here for an hour and it really isn't your business."

"It is my business." Came the answer, "She should have some respect for the people who work here." And the conversation ended. I looked around for the people I should be respecting. There were three or four women who were apparently ministry employees. Two of them were wearing long skirts, loose sweaters and headscarves and the third had gone all out and was wearing a complete "jubba" or robe-like garb topped with a black head scarf. My cousin and I turned to enter the room the receptionist had indicated and my eyes were stinging. No one could talk that way before the war and if they did, you didn't have to listen. You could answer back. Now, you only answer back and make it an issue if you have some sort of death wish or just really, really like trouble.

Young females have the option of either just giving in to the pressure and dressing and acting 'safely'- which means making everything longer and looser and preferably covering some of their head or constantly being defiant to what is becoming endemic in Iraq today. The problem with defiance is that it doesn't just involve you personally, it involves anyone with you at that moment- usually a male relative. It means that there might be an exchange of ugly words or a fight and probably, after that, a detention in Abu Ghraib.

If it's like this in Baghdad, I shudder to think what the other cities and provinces must be like. The Allawis and Pachichis of Iraq don't sense it- their families are safely tucked away in Dubai and Amman, and the Hakeems and Jaffaris of Iraq promote it.

Freedom, anybody?

Down in the Dumps

That's what happens when one sits staring at the keyboard all night long. Everything seems so pointless. I read the opinions on the websites and I despair of ever seeing a better world. If human beings are hard-wired for anything at all it seems to be for the belief of their own superiority and for the contempt towards others who are at all different. We eagerly snatch up anything that will reinforce these views and reject everything else. Or some of us do.

This may seem naive but I used to believe in the idea that we learn from our history, that we can correct past mistakes, that the world will slowly and inexorably though not necessarily linearly turn towards a fairer and juster state. Such an underlying belief let me endure any suffering in my own life. Somehow my personal disasters didn't matter because as a species we humans were improving, becoming wiser and kinder. Why I thought that this was the case I don't know. Everything I learned about the twentieth century history should have proven how wrong I was. Perhaps it was the innate optimism of a teenager or a young adult that kept me wearing the pink spectacles. Or perhaps it was the fact that I rarely followed the news.

Now I know better, and though I try to battle back on most days I have begun to fear that the battle is pointless, that we are predestined to sink into something not very different from fascism or else something like a Christian Talibanism. The two pillars of faith: religion and science, are both used to uphold this trend and though dissenting voices exist they are mainly alone in the wilderness or certainly not in the mainstream media.

Consider the Social Security debate or the debate about Lawrence Summer's comments. Or the debate about revamping Medicare. Or the budget debate. What all these share is a sense of selfishness, a sense of withdrawing into each individual shell, a shell containing only those of your blood and flesh. What all these share is a lack of caring about others, a lack of willingness to change society, an intellectual laziness that refuses to look at new alternatives. Even the personal responsibility stress of the radical right is part and parcel of this same trend: if you are made to be responsible for those of your blood and flesh I can concentrate on amassing wealth without worrying about the homeless and the jobless who probably were just lazy and shiftless to begin with.

Writing this blog is my extremely minor attempt to argue back against this trend but it's like a mosquito challenging a herd of elephants to a duel: laughable, ridiculous, totally mad. Granted, there are many mosquitoes in the blogosphere but the elephants walk past very noisily and our whining will not be heard.

So this is how I am when the night spirits come and keep me company.

Interviewing Us

Morgaine from this site asked me to answer a few questions about blogging. I thought that you might find them interesting. No, I don't think that, actually, I just feel like a convalescent from the flu and totally without imagination, so I'm going to post my interview answers instead of any other writing. Here they are:


1. How did you start blogging? Why do you keep at it?


Goddess Answer: I started blogging out of boredom with being adulated by snakes alone. I needed a bigger audience. I keep at it because it works.
Human Answer: I started blogging to keep writing something every day. Having an imaginary reader made that more likely. I keep at it because the readers are real.


2. What are your most important issues?


Goddess Answer: Changing the world into a better place. We divines assume it is possible. Also showing that I can do better than Athena.
Human Answer: Feminism and fighting the radical right.


3. What's the nicest recognition you've ever received from the media and/or the blogosphere?


Goddess Answer: All those humans who come and worship at my altar by writing sweet comments on my blog. I grow a little bigger and more real every time something nice is said about me. Soon I will be a real force to be reckoned with!
Human Answer: My readers' comments, actually. But also to be read by Katha Pollitt (my great idol) and to be nominated as a semifinalist in many Koufax award categories. And being named the most polite political blogger!


4. Who is your audience? What is unique about your blog?


Goddess Answer: I write to everybody: divines, humans and snakes. Everybody. My blog is unique because it is written by me. How many snake goddesses blog on politics?
Human Answer: I'm not sure what my audience is, except for the fact that it probably consists of people who are feminist or profeminist in their views. My blog might be unique in its dualistic character: having a resident goddess can be hard at times, especially when I get possessed over longer periods of time. She's truly quite arrogant, whereas I'm very modest and shy.


5. Most frustrating aspect of blogging?


Goddess Answer: Not enough adulators! I need more, more, more!
Human Answer: The ephemeral nature of what happens. Though in some ways this is the best aspect of blogging, too, in its freshness and immediacy; the fact is that whatever I did yesterday is totally irrelevant today and that can be hard to accept.


6. What's the one point you'd like a reader to take away from your blog- the one thing for them to really "get".


Goddess Answer: Never say no to ice-cream or human kindness.
Human Answer: A difficult question to answer, because what I want to achieve is something not purely informational. It is a certain tone of writing more than just what the writing says and has to do with the respect of humanity while also acknowledging its negative side.



Quote: (Wrap up with a quotation – one of yours, a famous one you like, a personal Motto – be creative.)


See my Goddess Answer to question number 6.

Today's Deep Thought

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!" Have a wonderful day!
-----
From H.

Roses Are Red,...

Just sweet nothings today. For example, George Bush is not loved by most Americans, at least according to a recent poll:

What's even more shocking is that just days earlier, riding the crest of supposedly good news surrounding the election in Iraq, Bush -- as measured by the very same CNN/USA Today/Gallup polling unit -- posted his best approval ratings in 13 months. For the survey conducted Feb. 4-6, his approval rating shot up to 57 percent; heights Bush hadn't reached since January 2004, and hadn't consistently hit, month-after-month, since the spring of 2003.

Yet the most recent results show Bush's approval ratings cratering eight points to 49 percent and his disapproval ratings spiking 8 points to 48 percent. That's a 16-point swing in less than one week. What happened? It's possible the realization about the vote in Iraq began to set in among voters who grasped that with the overwhelming Shiite coalition victory there's now a distinct possibility of an Iran-friendly Islamic state being established in Baghdad. Hardly the reason why U.S. troops were deployed. Domestically, the hot issue behind Bush's decline was likely Social Security reform, which the president sold hard during his Feb. 2 State of the Union address. Despite that primetime push, and a subsequent White House road show designed to build support, a plurality of Americans, by a margin of 48 to 42 percent, still disapprove of Bush's handling on the issue. That, according to CNN/USA Today/Gallup.

Talk about ambivalent lovers! First the Americans elected him over a perfectly sane human being, then they still find fault with him. Co-dependency, anyone?

Then there is apparently Jeff Gannon, the male hooker. Which is nowhere as upsetting as the political hookery he engaged in. Even here the rightwing frames are going to win and we will end up talking about how the bloggers destroyed him by talking about his private life. Unless you raise your clear voice at every opportunity and pipe out that Echidne said to focus on his unethical behavior as a "journalist" and the administration hitman, and to forget about the pruriently fascinating sexual stuff.

Then there is me. I once got a cactus as a Valentine's Day present from an admirer who didn't find me very approachable (his socks smelled). I watered the poor cactus until it broke into two pieces, all rotten. Which is to explain why I don't write lots of very nice stuff about love today; I'm not very skilled in the field. Goddesses aren't.

On Love

A suitable topic for today, though the origins of Valentine's Day are more in sex than in love itself. But I will keep this post on love proper, and instead of blabbing on as usual I'm going to let other goddesses do the talking.

First, Lady Murasaki, the first female novelist and probably the first novelist overall. She wrote the Tale of Genji (c. 1008), and this quote is from that book:

Though nought of me remains save smoke drawn out across the windless sky, yet shall I drift to thee unerringly amid the trackless fields of space.

Next, Lorraine Hansberry, the playwright of A Raisin in the Sun (1959):

There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing.

Then, Emily Dickinson:

Love - is anterior to Life -
Posterior - to Death.

These are all so beautiful and deep that I feel my usual itch to add something silly. So here it goes:

To love somebody
Who doesn't love you
Is like going to a temple
And worshiping the behind
Of a wooden statue
Of a hungry devil.

By Lady Kasa, an eighth century poet.
----
The source for all these, and many other wonderful thoughts on love and other things, is the New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women.

Predict Your Future!

I stole this one from NY Mary on the Eschaton threads. It's a test which will tell you where in Dante's hell you might belong.

I'm on the fifth level should you want to visit:

The river Styx runs through this level of Hell, and in it are punished the wrathful and the gloomy. The former are forever lashing out at each other in anger, furious and naked, tearing each other piecemeal with their teeth. The latter are gurgling in the black mud, slothful and sullen, withdrawn from the world. Their lamentations bubble to the surface as they try to repeat a doleful hymn, though with unbroken words they cannot say it. Because you lived a cruel, vindictive and hateful life, you meet your fate in the Styx.

Everybody loves baby manatees

Yeah, right. The Republicans don't, not as much as money and free enterprise:

Four leading GOP House members and senators announced a joint effort Thursday to rewrite the Endangered Species Act to toughen up habitat and scientific provisions. Environmentalists immediately criticized the plan as the latest attempt to gut the law.

The lawmakers said it was the first time members of the House and Senate had banded together at the beginning of a congressional session to amend the 1973 act. Previous attempts to change the law have failed, but they said this time they hoped to produce a single Endangered Species Act reauthorization bill that could be introduced in both chambers.

"We've been working on this issue for a long time," said House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif. "And to have the opportunity now to sit down and work across the Capitol and try to come up with legislation that does move the ball forward and begins to modernize and update the Endangered Species Act is extremely important."

Joining Pombo were Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore.; Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho; and Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I. Chafee, among the Senate's most moderate Republicans, is a newcomer to the issue who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's subcommittee on fisheries, wildlife and water.

The lawmakers said they had no specific legislative language yet, but listed goals including increased involvement by states, more incentives for private landowners, and strengthening scientific reviews before species are listed or critical habitat is designated.

They contended the law now creates unreasonable regulatory hurdles for property owners while failing to help many species.

"Overall we believe that the Endangered Species Act can be less contentious and more effective," Crapo said.

Crapo. For once, someone has the name they deserve. I'm sure that the Endangered Species Act could be more effective in getting rid of those pesky endangered species and leaving more land available for real estate development and stuff. The endangered species don't vote, either, so why bother about them much?

Sunday Chat

I am trying to blog less on Sundays or not at all, because writing something every day drains me out and leaves me too little time to replenish the reserves with new stuff. Instead, I have been reading books and thinking about thoughts. This should make for better writing later on.

But today is a beautiful day and I feel like writing a little anyway. My human incarnation has had a touch of the flu and yesterday it made her feel like a flat tire. No emotions at all, just a slow clinkety-clink movement of the logical mind, and even that was mainly asking which food or drink would somehow change the situation. But life seems better now.

I have been reading George Lakoff and his ideas about framing. When I finish wrestling with him inside my head I will tell you what I think and then you can put me to rights on the issues. It's such a good and cheap way of learning for me!

But the administration doesn't want to learn very many things, if any. Neither do most of the media. We have the scandal of the century on our hands (no, it is not Jeff Gannon though that is bad enough), and it is not much discussed. The administration had plenty of warnings about bin Laden and chose to ignore them. My dead friend is still dead, and I am still blue-steel angry. Am I the only one? Where is Justice, that fickle goddess? It seems that justice will be up to us, so get cracking, my dear readers. Write to your newspapers, call your radio and television shows and your representatives in Congress.

You could also get cracking about Social Security. Bush is indeed engaged in class warfare, and we shouldn't let him get away with it. The wingnuts don't want Social Security; they want cheap and obedient workers scared of not having enough to eat. And that is what is behind all the other apparently reasonable arguments about Social Security problems and crises. Note how Bush is attacking "frivolous" law suits, only if they are mostly brought up by consumers and workers against firms? That is part of the same long-term plan by the corporations, and we should keep this in mind.

If all this sounds extremist to you, it is. But it's not my extremism that's bothersome here, it's the extremism of those in power. Not only do we get their messages rammed down our throats but we get them rammed down by people who have been paid to do so, yet appear as impartial media commentators. This is where Jeff Gannon and the other hired help apply to the picture.

And then we have Iraq where fundamentalism seems to be nicely on the rise. They get a theocratic state if they can avoid a civil war and we get oil. Nice, isn't it? Unless you are a secular person in Iraq, a Christian or a woman, of course. But these people don't control oil. At least they get freedom the way Bush defines it.

Boy, do I sound bitter! I'm not, actually. I'm quite chipper this afternoon. The righteous (my side) are finally awake and are even turning over in their beds. The next step will be getting up and fixing all this crap. I'm looking forward to witnessing that!

The dogs say hello. Henrietta is on a new arthritis treatment which Hank desires for reasons to do with equal treatment of dogs or something. She tries to steal the pill from Henrietta's lips and when that doesn't work she tries to barter dog biscuits for it. She also thinks we are being very unfair in thinking that a dog biscuit to her would be of the same worth as that mysterious pill disappearing into Henrietta's shell-pink gullet. I'm almost ready to bake some placebo pills for Hank so that we don't get all the whining and posturing every day.

The snakes don't say hello. Mostly they are asleep. Though Artful Asp is planning to go into business. She has designed some t-shirts with snakes twining the body and their heads peeking out from the armpits. She wants me to sell them on the blog. I have promised to look into it, but only after she hires someone to actually make the damn things. Which won't happen as she is a teenager: all grandious plans and no grit.

Donate to Celebrate Howard Dean's Election

Money talks, you know. Especially to the wingnuts. They are trying to paint Dean as an extremist who has no real support among Democrats. If you can afford it, prove them and the quasi-wingnuts in the Democratic party wrong.

Contribution amount:
$

Silly David Brooks

This time he truly has surpassed himself in silliness. He has written a column about his outrage over not having been treated like the Very Important Person he really is. Even women and minorities are protected from discrimination nowadays, but not David Brooks! Meaning that David Brooks didn't get the special privileges he so clearly deserves. In the mind of David Brooks, that is.

Anna Maria van Schurman

She was a very interesting woman, a prodigy who spoke several languages, wrote philosophical and religious theses, painted portraits and made engravings. She gave this all up for religion and joined the sect started by Jean de Labadie, a Jesuit who had converted to Protestantism. All this during the seventeenth century. Her current reputation lies mainly on her paintings and engravings.

I find her writings equally interesting. When Schurman was twenty-four, she engaged in correspondence with a sixty-year old theologian at the University of Leiden, Andre Rivet. Some of this correspondence was about the proper role of women and whether sciences and learning were acceptable for a Christian woman. So little seems to have changed in some ways.

Here is what Schurman says about the education of women:

[Schurman believed in her argument, but she also enjoyed using the arts of rhetoric. After citing classical authorities who argue for the education of men:]

But they are apt to argue that pulling the needle and distaff is an ample enough school for women. I confess many have been thus persuaded, and those of today who are maliciously inclined agree with them in many cases.

But we who seek the voice of reason, not of received custom, do not accept this rule of Lesbos. By what law, I ask, have these things become our lot? Divine or human? They will never demonstrate that these limits by which we are forced into an order are ordained by fate or prescribed from heaven. [pp.43-44]

Makes a feminist proud, doesn't she? Alas, she later backs off from this statement:

[Rivet's response was harsh, accusing Schurman of believing that women's minds "equaling and perhaps surpassing the minds of men," and reminding her of Paul's words that "woman is the weaker vessel." Schurman ignored the second statement and dealt with only the latter part of the first. In this way she was able---with more than a little flattery---to assure the elderly and powerful Rivet that they were in perfect agreement:]

...I suffered no small pain in seeing that either because of the obscurity of my defective writing style or because of my lack of skill in distinguishing, I have managed to impress on your mind a meaning far different from my intention, as if, that is to say, I so thoughtlessly favor that invidious and groundless assertion of the preeminence of our sex compared with yours that I would blithely raise it with you....

...[I]f the virtues of our order (i.e., maidens) ought to be preached rightly, I very much desire that that role be handed over to you who are a sublime herald of the virtues. [pp.54-55]

She also agreed that only "maidens" could spend time on studies, whereas wives and mothers had far too much on their plates already. Even this sounds a little familiar. It is interesting to read about someone who lived so long ago and find that she isn't really that different from us living today. Though I would never join a sect that wasn't started to honor me, of course.
----
You can see a portrait of Anna Maria van Schurman here.

More on the Gannongate

This is from Rep. Louise Slaughter:

Washington, DC - Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (NY-28), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Rules, and Rep. John Conyers (MI-14), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, called on Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the leaking of a classified Central Intelligence Agency memo containing the identity of undercover agent Valerie Plame to a man at the center of the White House Press Briefing Room scandal, "Jeff Gannon."

Rep. Slaughter, a long-time advocate for media reform and accountability, brought this story into the national spotlight days ago when she wrote President Bush asking for an investigation into the issue.

"This matter is growing more serious by the day. We now know that 'Jeff Gannon' had access to classified CIA documents that contained the identity of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. This is more than an issue of media manipulation by the White House... this is now an issue of national security," said Rep. Slaughter. "What is the White House hiding? This man, Mr. Gannon, should never have been admitted into the White House briefing room in the first place. Someone let him in day after day. Someone gave him access to classified CIA documents. Someone must answer for this. It is critical that we uncover the exact nature of the relationship between Gannon and this White House," added Slaughter."

In addition, Reps. Slaughter and Conyers wrote W. Ralph Basham, Director of the Secret Service, calling on his office to provide details on the security clearance of day pass holders in the White House briefing room as well as any and all information they can provide on Mr. Gannon.

"White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan was unable to answer these important questions in yesterday's briefing so we hope the Secret Service will be able to fill in the blanks," said Slaughter. "Since the White House has denied any role or responsibility in this matter I hope the Secret Service can shed some light on their procedures for clearing day pass holders to the White House briefing room," continued Slaughter.

Today's Action Alert

Today's Action comes from the Campaign for America's Future:

Beneath the incomprehensive federal budget numbers -- a $2.57 trillion budget, a $427 billion deficit, $419 billion in military spending -- the federal budget is a moment of truth. It reveals what we value, what kind of nation we are and what we seek to build. In this regard, the Bush budget is a stunning disservice to our education system, and it must be rejected.

The president's budget slashes education programs for children while adding more tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. Bush literally takes books from the hands of the poorest children to provide the wealthiest Americans with the money for a new Ferrari.

The silver lining is that what the president proposes, Congress disposes. None of Bush's cuts will happen if Congress rejects his budget. This is where we come in. Congress needs to hear loud and clear from the American people: the Bush budget should be dead on arrival.

Below are ten misguided Bush budget decisions that particularly offend American values and squander our country's future. Please help to get 100,000 signatures to Congress demanding that they reject Bush's spending priorities -- priorities that are fundamentally out of step with the needs of America's children and students.

Tell Congress to reject Bush's indecent budget proposal! Tell them that you don't want your government to...

1. Undercut schools in need by reneging on $12 billion in funding promised to schools by President Bush himself. [1]

2. Cut 25,000 children from Head Start. [2]

3. Eliminate childcare assistance for 300,000 children by 2009. [3]

4. Cut funding for school construction. [4]

5. Leave 1.7 million children without after-school programs. [5]

6. Eliminate the Even Start family literacy program that helps impoverished children and their parents learn to read. [6]

7. Cut funds from Medicaid that would pay health care for 1.8 million low-income children. [7]

8. Kill funding for Safe and Drug Free School programs. [8]

9. Keep college out of reach for qualified students by failing to raise the maximum Pell Grant as promised [9] -- and by freezing work-study funding. [10]

10. Force deeper cuts in education programs by adding new tax cuts that will cost $1.6 trillion over ten years. More than half of these cuts would go to households that earn more than $1 million yearly, while virtually none target households earning less than $100,000 per year. [11]

Congress has the power to overrule Bush's grossly misguided spending priorities. Please contact your representatives today and demand that they reject the Bush budget and realign America's spending priorities to serve us all, not just a privileged few.

Write a letter to your Congressperson today!

Thanks for taking today's action!

Prince Charles Marries...

This is a topic in which I have zero interest, so it's good for me to try to write on it. I feel sorry for Charles. It must be hard to be an eternal prince-in-waiting for the king's job that means nothing nowadays. But in my hierarchy of people to feel sorry for he's at the very bottom, right above Rupert Murdoch.

That he has decided to get married to his long-term flame is good, though. I wish them luck. And their marriage has nothing to do with Princess Diana or the myths that have sprung up around her. These myths are interesting in themselves and tell us much about the role of women and love in current thinking, but they are totally unrelated to what Charles and Camilla should do now.

Of course, the marriage of Charles and Diana was a farce, a cruel reminder of what marriages used to mean for the upper classes: find a suitable virgin with money and good connections to continue the name of the family, never mind if the groom and bride hate each other. And that is why all that followed was a tragedy for the participants. But they were still well dressed and fed and had lots of opportunities for relief. This is not true for most of those women who are still being married off under the same scenario, many at ages of eleven or twelve. That's where my real compassion goes.

Ok. This wasn't that good a writing exercize. I have the beginnings of the flu, and the color of my brain appears to be bright green. Don't think too much about how I know this.

The Howard Dean Era Begins?

I like Howard Dean, actually, even when I don't agree with his views. It's because he seems to be a real human being, not some sort of a public relations creation or a wind-up political toy. I even like his screaming. So reading this makes me feel or fuzzy and warm inside:

And now, as the Democratic National Committee's Winter Meeting begins in earnest, the Howard Dean era begins.


That means there's some sucking up to do. At the DNC's plenary session this morning, a string of establishment Democrats who tried to bury Dean rose to praise him instead. There was Nancy Pelosi, who pushed pro-lifer Tim Roemer into the race as an anybody-but-Dean candidate, declaring her support for Howard Dean and calling him a "great Democrat" who will "make a great chairman." Pelosi was followed on the stage by Mark Brewer, the head of the state party chairs' association who tried to orchestrate an endorsement for one of Dean's vanquished opponents. Brewer introduced Bill Richardson, who tried to orchestrate a scheme to minimize Dean's powers by saddling him with a more politically palatable "general chairman."

The Democratic party will never succeed as a less anemic version of wingnuts, never, and it's really stupid and suicidal to go that way. Those politicians who feel that way should join the real wingnuts. Whatever Dean might be he's not a wingnut on a diet.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

This is about something different than being gay or lesbian; it is about scientific beliefs:

It looks like it's time to add one more species to the "endangered" list at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: scientific facts.

When asked to respond anonymously to a survey regarding their work that was conducted by the watchdog groups Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Union of Concerned Scientists, some scientists received memos from higher-ups ordering them not to answer, even from home and on their personal time.

The results of the anonymous survey suggest why certain agency leaders might not have wanted the scientists' opinions to become public. Some 400 of the 1400 biologists, ecologists and botanists responded -- despite the intimidation -- and many of them reported that scientific data at U.S. Fish and Wildlife has been polluted by politics.

Just another little nail to the coffin of free debate and the freedom of expression in this country, another little push towards an Orwellian world. You know, I hate to say this, but Noam Chomsky may be right, after all.

Self-Advertizing

I'm guest blogging on Alas, A Blog this week. If you are interested in more theoretical musings by me, check this one out.

But I'm not deserting the Snakepit Inc., either; just letting my writing go into different directions at the same time.

Something New from the 9/11 Commission

It seems that much more was known about the threat that bin Laden posed than has so far been admitted by the administration:

In the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations, according to a previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 commission.

But aviation officials were "lulled into a false sense of security," and "intelligence that indicated a real and growing threat leading up to 9/11 did not stimulate significant increases in security procedures," the commission report concluded.

The report discloses that the Federal Aviation Administration, despite being focused on risks of hijackings overseas, warned airports in the spring of 2001 that if "the intent of the hijacker is not to exchange hostages for prisoners, but to commit suicide in a spectacular explosion, a domestic hijacking would probably be preferable."

We have not learned this earlier because the administration decided that we should be kept in the dark. Presumably at least until after last year's elections. Or that's what I conclude from this:

The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of the report for more than five months, officials said, much to the frustration of former commission members who say it provides a critical understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system. The administration provided both the classified report and a declassified, 120-page version to the National Archives two weeks ago and, even with heavy redactions in some areas, the declassified version provides the firmest evidence to date about the warnings that aviation officials received concerning the threat of an attack on airliners and the failure to take steps to deter it.

I don't know what to write. The people who died on 9/11 2001 are still dead.

On Obscene Phone Calls

I recently received one of those. The caller wanted to know if I would suck his cock like a whore. Which immediately made me wonder how whores would perform this task as opposed to whoever else he had in mind and also why he didn't call one of those paid services which let lone masturbators engage in vicarious sex for money. Or why he didn't just surf all the porn on the internet.

The obscene phone calls used to be more common before the current availability of porn everywhere. I even once had a woman call me and offer to suck my toes.

I can't really place myself in the position of someone who gets their thrills from telephoning absolute strangers this way. But my guess is that the thrill has something to do with the fact that the whole act is a small violation, that it has violence in it. The person who is phoned is used without her (or his?) permission. Maybe this is why it wouldn't be equally good with a paid listener.

Goddesses don't get upset over obscene phone callers, though they may send a few seasons of pestilence and some unpleasantly positioned warts to the caller, but in general being the target of obscene calls can be quite upsetting, even psychologically destructive. That this might actually increase the caller's enjoyment is one of those nasty sides of humanity.

Some Vintage Echidne

I wrote this peace when I was at most thirteen. You might get a kick out of it.


At night the stars strip off their foggy wraps, the trees stand cold and naked, the green eyes of the sea are glassed over.
At night I can see far. Across the snow-bedecked valleys into the gloomy dark center of forests. I can see into something where the souls are visible, simple and clear.

Into something where time ends and eternity begins, where death lives. Then my thoughts return to the cowering soul like birds with a broken wing.

The deepest most secret hopes and dreams of people have been pickled and sorted, have been piled up into neat piles in the unknown where they have turned into miserable small dusty heaps of worthless trash.

But far away there are thoughts which are clear and bright. If you start thinking them through and if you start believing in them they no longer exist.

At night one can see anything, even a green squirrel, and nobody will laugh at you for there is nobody here who knows if green squirrels can exist. Nobody even knows if they themselves exist or if all this is just a play staged by death or a big lie. And if you ask whether someone minds or whether it's just a question of time nobody will answer.

Though someone might say:"Time is the laughter of eternity, the life philosophy of the age rings of trees," I have no knowledge about this and neither do you.

Better to believe that there is nothing and nobody in existence; only a large brain beneath the earth which dreams the trees and the water, fruit, deer and snow. The stars and the moon are an illusion. Why fear death if one doesn't exist? If, on the other hand, one does exist, the debt is owed to death at the end anyway. All we hear or feel is illusion. Only the colors at night are real, the colors that nobody has seen and which do not exist.

Pain is nothing but the heartbeats of life and even then a dream. We humans fear so much: ants and bankruptcy and elephants. They don't even exist, for if you stop believing in them they disappear.

Hatred is a relative concept. A very strong love is hatred, too, and so is owning things and destroying things. Still, it is all pointless as all that remains between my cupped hands is space and empty screams and nonexistent colors.
It is the colors that are the truth.

The Thoughtful Steven Pinker

He has deigned to give a few carefully formed comments on the hullabaloo that ensued from the careless statements of Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard University, at a conference about how to get more women into the hard sciences. I blogged about this earlier if you are interested in the details. For now I want to talk to Professor Pinker, because he is an interesting man to talk to.

He's a warrior on President Summer's team, a warrior who wields his keyboard deftly and smartly. Listen to this:

Summers did not, of course, say that women are "natively inferior," that "they just can't cut it," that they suffer "an inherent cognitive deficit in the sciences," or that men have "a monopoly on basic math ability," as many academics and journalists assumed. Only a madman could believe such things.

I remember hearing a radio interview with Pinker when his book The Blank Slate came out, and he used the same madman-argument to clear the deck of any accusation that he might be an essentialist. As few researchers would call themselves madmen, this clever trick means that we can now dispense with any exploration of Professor Pinker's own possible biases, and can go on to study the biases of his opponents. Like this:

Conservative columnists have had a field day pointing to the Harvard hullabaloo as a sign of runaway political correctness at elite universities. Indeed, the quality of discussion among the nation's leading scholars and pundits is not a pretty sight. Summers's critics have repeatedly mangled his suggestion that innate differences might be one cause of gender disparities (a suggestion that he drew partly from a literature review in my book, The Blank Slate) into the claim that they must be the only cause. And they have converted his suggestion that the statistical distributions of men's and women's abilities are not identical to the claim that all men are talented and all women are not--as if someone heard that women typically live longer than men and concluded that every woman lives longer than every man. Just as depressing is an apparent unfamiliarity with the rationale behind political equality, as when Hopkins sarcastically remarked that, if Summers were right, Harvard should amend its admissions policy, presumably to accept fewer women. This is a classic confusion between the factual claim that men and women are not indistinguishable and the moral claim that we ought to judge people by their individual merits rather than the statistics of their group.

Conservative columnists always have a field day. If there is no reason for one, they invent it. But Pinker's summary of the issues is partial: he fails to address all the reasoned responses from feminists and progressives, and he fails to mention the truly outrageous statements on many of the anti-feminist and conservative websites and blogs. This makes the unreasonableness appear solely something that takes place among the liberals and feminists, not something that might even infect careful researchers such as Professor Pinker.

In any case, our careful researcher then goes on to summarize various studies which demonstrate gender differences on the average. He doesn't summarize the studies which don't support these findings or the studies which address the whole question of what we are actually trying to measure with the various tests. All this reads "biased" in my book.

Pinker's supporting examples of evidence are interesting. Take this one, for instance:

Anyone who has fled a cluster of men at a party debating the fine points of flat-screen televisions can appreciate that fewer women than men might choose engineering, even in the absence of arbitrary barriers. (As one female social scientist noted in Science Magazine, "Reinventing the curriculum will not make me more interested in learning how my dishwasher works.") To what degree these and other differences originate in biology must be determined by research, not fatwa. History tells us that how much we want to believe a proposition is not a reliable guide as to whether it is true.

Here we are to replace scientific evidence with anecdotes about what people talk about in parties or with one person's confessions. I know of a six-year old girl who took the family iron apart to find out how it works, and then couldn't put it back together. Who knows how many other things she had examined before she was caught in the act? But this is anecdotal evidence, and not to be admitted if it comes from my side of the aisle, the unreasonable one, the one which believes (despite all evidence to the contrary) that women and men are exactly identical at birth.

This is all rubbish, of course. There are no feminists who believe that women and men are biologically exactly the same, though there seem to be a very large number of anti-feminists who never see the most obvious difference between the two sexes which is the fact that women give birth. Anti-feminists want to have more science to find out what really distinguishes the sexes, all the while letting their eyes glide over the pregnant bellies of their coworkers or the countless young women pushing prams outside.

The reason for this bias is of course the political importance of gender differences. Anyone who believes that men and women should not be treated equally must base this belief on some form of innate differences. Feminists know this, and that is why the history of biased Victorian gender science is important to keep in mind. Pinker gives a nod to this argument, but then goes on glibly to place total trust in the newer generation of findings. Nobody, but nobody can be impartial in this field, and Pinker is not the sole exception here. He has an axe to grind, and that is to protect the views on which he has based his own research and writing. I also have an axe, of course, but you can see what it is and how sharply honed it always stays.

The differences that gender science may find are going to be put to political uses pretty fast. Even if the results are based on faulty methods and data, the harm the political applications will do is real. This is the reason why it is so important to insist on transparency and high methodical competency from all practitioners of gender science, and why it is very important not to have a value bias among this group towards one sex or the other. Currently there is such a general bias, as even a cursory reading of the studies reveals, and that is one of slight misogyny. In other words, not all science is somehow above politics or even above cheating, and all science should be approached with a very critical mind.

But Pinker is not too concerned about this. He does hint that he would love the world to be fairer and more equal if only facts would let that be the case, and he repeatedly reminds us how wrong discrimination is, before he goes on to tell us about the dangers of reverse discrimination if we ignore gender science.

Actually, I agree with Pinker on one of his arguments: that we should encourage good science on innate gender differences. The real question is how to do this. How would Pinker create a study which would tell us, for once and for all, what the real cognitive differences between men and women are? We actually don't have the tools to do this today, and this is the main reason why I find Pinker's elegant impartiality so insulting. He's willing to settle for JustSo stories from evolutionary psychology in lieue of proper genetic biology:

Since most sex differences are small and many favor women, they don't necessarily give an advantage to men in school or on the job. But Summers invoked yet another difference that may be more consequential. In many traits, men show greater variance than women, and are disproportionately found at both the low and high ends of the distribution. Boys are more likely to be learning disabled or retarded but also more likely to reach the top percentiles in assessments of mathematical ability, even though boys and girls are similar in the bulk of the bell curve. The pattern is readily explained by evolutionary biology. Since a male can have more offspring than a female--but also has a greater chance of being childless (the victims of other males who impregnate the available females)--natural selection favors a slightly more conservative and reliable baby-building process for females and a slightly more ambitious and error-prone process for males. That is because the advantage of an exceptional daughter (who still can have only as many children as a female can bear and nurse in a lifetime) would be canceled out by her unexceptional sisters, whereas an exceptional son who might sire several dozen grandchildren can more than make up for his dull childless brothers. One doesn't have to accept the evolutionary explanation to appreciate how greater male variability could explain, in part, why more men end up with extreme levels of achievement.

I'm not an evolutionary psychologist, only a goddess, but I have trouble with this myth of our prehistory. It's a very popular myth these days, this idea of the happy male who casts around buckets of high-quality sperm while the careful and coy females tend their one or two babies with great care. For one thing, a fertilized egg is not the same as a child brought to a point where that child can himself or herself breed further. Prehistory must not have been an easy life for pregnant women, and I find it very hard to believe that the buckets of sperm all took so easily as this myth explains. It's at least worth considering whether the men who stuck around one or two women got a greater yield by providing food, protection, sex, childcare and friendship. They also would have kept some of the bucket brigade away.

For another thing, this myth doesn't explain what Pinker seems to think it should. If indeed only the most technically minded men somehow managed to procreate, the men who do so poorly in mathematical tests that they are at the other end of the distribution should not exist. How come did their genes sneak in, too? No, for Pinker's explanation to be correct we should not observe greater male variability at both tails of the distribution.

I could go on, but I hope that the gist of my complaints is visible by now. What angers me about Pinker's approach is his "holier-than-thou" pretense combined with some very sneaky biases. At least I actually am holier than any of you thous out there and my biases are all goddess-sized.

Rep. Slaughter on the Gannongate

I received this in an e-mail from Slaughter's staff today. A delectable snippet:

And just this morning we have learned that "Mr. Gannon" has resigned his post at the, so called, Talon News amid growing concerns over his controversial background and falsified qualifications. In fact, it appears that "Mr. Gannon's" presence in the White House press corps was merely as a tool of propaganda for your Administration.

Mr. President, I am sure we both agree the White House Press Corps is an honored institution in America that should be beyond the scope of partisan meddling, and that a free and independent media is the cornerstone of our success as a democracy. Likewise, I am sure we can both agree the American people have the right to expect that journalists who question their President everyday are experienced, independent, and perhaps most importantly, unbiased in their approach.

I was already concerned about what appears to be an organized campaign to mask partisan propaganda as legitimate news by your Administration. That we have now learned this same type of deception is occurring inside the White House briefing room itself is even more disturbing.

That is why I am asking you to please explain to the Congress and to the American people how and why the individual known as "Mr. Gannon" was repeatedly cleared by your staff to join the legitimate White House press corps?

Read the next post if this is all gobbledegook for you. Or ignore it if you wish to remain cheerful and innocent for one day longer.

Goodbye, Jeff Gannon

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Today's Action Alert

(This is one that I feel a little ambivalent about, for reasons that have to do with the history of handing pacifists white feathers when they refused to participate in wars. It was something women did, and by doing so they reinforced the patriarchal and sexist values which saw men as the protector-killers and women as the providers of approval (and sex) for this role. But this may be just my own bias working here.)

Today's Action

Go to this link and send Jonah Goldberg a white feather to remind him that those who advocate going to war ought to be willing to, you know, actually go to war.

Thanks for taking today's action.

Approachable to Wingnuts...

This is Brian Williams, NBC's new news anchor:

While Fox News Channel remains the favorite network of Republican lawmakers, NBC's new anchor, Brian Williams, is the one turning GOP heads. Message guru and former MSNBC contributor Frank Luntz says in a confidential memo to Hill leaders that Williams has emerged as the "go-to network anchor" because of his brains and "lack of detectable ideological bias."

"Lack of detectable ideological bias"! If Luntz says this he means that Williams is at least a baby wingnut who can be made to blossom for the movement with careful manuring. And he's most likely correct in his assessment. After all, Williams recently said how often he listens to Rush Limbaugh and how he feels that Limbaugh hasn't gotten his proper dues yet.

I have met Williams once, and he smelled like a social conservative to my divine nostrils.
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Link via Josh Marshall.

Addicted Mothers

Oregon is getting tough on these women:

The Deschutes County District Attorney's Office has filed charges against three women, alleging that they caused their babies to ingest methamphetamine — two through umbilical cords and one by breast-feeding.

This is the first time a woman has been charged in Deschutes County for this conduct. But similar cases in other states have raised legal questions about holding drug-addicted mothers accountable.

"No one is saying it's OK to use (drugs) or for pregnant women to use," said criminal defense attorney Karla Nash, who represents one of the women who has been charged. "But pregnant women should be able to communicate openly and honestly with health care providers without being concerned about prosecution."

All three women charged in Deschutes County face the possibility of decades in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

The two cases where the drug was passed through the umbilical cord give another example of the problems that appear when people are viewed as containing other people in the manner of those Russian babushka dolls, and when the insert-people are regarded as independent for legal purposes.

I find this all very sad. Addiction is dreadful and addicted women are not taking drugs with the intent of giving them to the fetuses. Yet the prosecutor's view of them is very different:

"What we look at is whether the facts fit within the criminal law," said Deputy District Attorney Victoria Roe. "A baby can be a victim of abuse regardless of age. If we were talking about a 3-year-old, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

When asked about the intent of Oregon law, Roe references a discussion in the Legislature about a 13-year-old boy who was injected with drugs.

A house bill summary providing background on legislation prohibiting delivery of a controlled substance to minors states the 2001 assembly's intent was to increase the penalty for this offense.

"They wanted to make this a specific type of crime," Roe said.

So. Consider what would happen if medical science one day established that beer drinking causes all sorts of anomalies in sperm which then can be passed on to a baby that is conceived. Would all the beer-drinking fathers-to-be face prosecution?

Or more realistically, consider the case of any pregnant woman caught drinking a glass of wine or beer. Will she be immediately taken to court for child abuse? Even though the Italians and the French pregnant mothers have drunk wine in moderate amounts for centuries without any apparent ill-effects?

I feel very sorry for the children of these mothers, but I also feel very sorry for the mothers themselves. And for this punitive and radical culture of ours.
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Link by Thersites on Eschaton threads.

Mud Wrestling in Iraq

According to this article, a U.S. Army specialist was demoted to private first class and received a cut in pay because she had participated in mud wrestling in her bra and panties at a party in Iraq:

The party occurred Oct. 30, as the 160th Military Police Battalion, an Army Reserve Unit from Tallahassee, Fla., prepared to turn over its duties to the Asheville-based 105th Military Police Battalion, Johnson said.

In the course of the transfer of duties, "some individuals in their exuberance decided to put together a mud-wrestling thing," Johnson said Sunday.

Photos of the party were found after the 160th had left Iraq, Johnson said, adding that he understood a soldier had turned over the photos to commanders.

Johnson said it appeared the party was "primarily put on by troops of the 160th," and results of the inquiry were sent to the unit's commander. It wasn't immediately clear if any members of the 160th had been disciplined.

Four or five other members of the 105th who were spectators at the party received counseling, Johnson said.

I would dearly love to know who the "some individuals in their exuberance" were and how much the exuberance started with the demoted woman. Was she the brave initiator of the whole shebang? Or was she pressured into it? And what exactly is the counseling that some of the spectators received? It could be that they were so upset by this unsightly spectacle that they needed psychological help, but then it might be something quite different. Does this kind of counseling result in demotion and cuts in pay, I wonder?

It would also be interesting to know if any of the mud wrestlers were men.
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Original link by hybrid0.

Ellen MacArthur

She just broke the world record in single-handed sailing around the world. She completed the trip in 71 days and less than 13 hours. She faced icebergs, gale force winds and technical problems. And she nearly collided with a whale.



Crazy, I think. But admirable.

George's Budget Proposal

In an ethical world it would be a disgrace. In the corporate world it might be criminal. But in the current administration:

"It is a budget that sets priorities," the president told reporters after meeting with his second-term Cabinet for the first time. "Our priorities are winning the war on terror, protecting our homeland, growing our economy. It's a budget that focuses on results. Taxpayers in America don't want us spending their money on something that's not achieving results."

Right. So what we are going to get is more money for abstinence education for teenagers (39 million more), when every good study shows that abstinence education does not work. Faith-based programs will also get more money, and there will be more tax cuts for the wealthy.

Where are the cuts then? Well, they are going to be the inefficient programs, the programs that don't work, according to George. Like Medicaid, the system that pays for some of the medical care of the poor families. And the Foodstamps program which funds food for some poor people. This is what George says on the topic:

Bush disputed suggestions that his budget cuts would fall hardest on impoverished Americans, saying he targeted ineffectual or redundant spending. "The important question that needs to be asked for all constituencies is whether or not the programs achieve a certain result," he said. "Have you set goals, and are those goals being met? And the poor and disadvantaged absolutely ought to be asking that question too."

Using the same efficiency criterion, George is going to spend less money on police departments as they're first defenders and all that. But more will be spent on the war against terrorism abroad, except that the full costs of the Iraq occupation are not included in the budget. Neither are the transition costs of destroying Social Security if George gets around to this project.

The administration is also going to cut other inefficient programs such as fighting drug and alcohol use among school children.

The effect of all this is to barely make one tiny George-tooth sized dent in the federal deficit. Much more cutting will have to be done in the future. Remember that George started with a surplus four years ago. At this rate we'll be a third world nation before he is done.