Lawns

(Something apolitical for Sunday: a garden essay. Well, as apolitical as I can be. The picture is of my ex-lawn last year. Heh.)





Gardeners fall neatly into two political parties: those who love lawns and those who see them as vacant space for more "real" gardening. I am a card-carrying member of the latter party. If I had my way, no lot would have a single non-ornamental blade of grass.

Given my political views, it should come as no surprise that I find lawn fanatics curious people. They spend time, money and water encouraging grass to grow. The minute it obeys, out comes the lawn mower. The process is then restarted. Lawn lovers continually fret over the turf and keep looking for solutions to improve it. It never seems to occur to them that cutting a plant's head off every seven days or so weakens it and may even cause it to lose the will to live. This is what creates most of the problems lawns experience: lawns don't want to be lawns; they want to be tall hayfields swaying in the wind, preferably with lots of other plants thrown in.

But lawn fanatics, and some city ordinances, don't let them fulfill this destiny. Not only is the natural process stunted but often the poor grass is expected to survive on infrequent high-calorie snacks of inorganic fertilizers. All dying vegetation (including grass clippings) is neatly removed so that the lawn never gets a decent meal. And when it throws in the towel, the lawn-obsessed turn to the myriad chemical remedies available in all garden centers. But none of them will work for long, for lawns are an aberration against nature; an aberration which may be successfully maintained in none but a few climatically favored (i.e. rainy) areas. Elsewhere keeping a lawn going is a task suited only to wealthy masochists.

Am I biased against lawns, you might ask. Of course. But I do admit that grass has its place in sports fields and perhaps also as a ground for sunbathing and picnicking; and if it required no upkeep it would even serve as a pleasant green frame for other plantings. I even admit that all gardening is an aberration against nature in that gardeners attempt to slow down nature's plans of making the garden into whatever ecoscape would take its place without human intervention.

But in most cases the natural process we tamper with would take longer than a few days, whereas a lawn unattended for a week's vacation is already well on its way to its natural destination. In fact, it sometimes seems that this is true for a lawn unattended for just an hour

This is my major objection to lawns. They require too large a chunk of gardening time in exchange for barely looking average. And I don't enjoy time spent caring for grass. Perhaps the lawn-obsessed do. If so, how come none of them has offered to take over the upkeep of my lawn?

Me Opinionating in the Dallas Morning News

Thanks to trifecta in the comments, I learned that my earlier TAP piece on research into gender roles is now available in the Dead Tree Press, too. So you can read it again. Or the first time should you have somehow missed it. The reprint doesn't have the links of the original piece, so some of the argument is weakened if you don't check the original, too.

Lies In - Disaster Out, Posted by olvlzl.

Going over some old posts recently this one dealing with the role the media plays in insuring bad government got my attention. I think the argument it makes is valid, the disasters in Iraq and New Orleans don’t seem to have produced its contradiction. In an inversion of how it is supposed to work, media now regularly prevents responsible politicians and public servants from telling the public the simple truth that public services have to be paid for. It prevents public servants from doing their jobs honestly and efficiently. Anyone who is honest about that risks being ridiculed as an idiot, a tax and spender... we all know the words the media whores use. Safe in their air conditioned studios either having or aspiring to the good life of a media shill it’s no skin off their back that the cities, states and entire country are falling apart.

Starting from there the results spread. Anyone who is unwilling to lie about the necessity of paying for things will be removed from office and be replaced by someone who is willing, if not eager, to lie about the possibilities of cutting taxes while cutting essential services to the point of non-existence. Then the media will point to that situation as proof that the public sector can’t deliver and those should be contracted to private companies. But when those contracts don’t work out the way they are supposed to do the media liars mend their ways? Do the politicians who handed them the public sector reconsider?

The media is the problem, they are the source of the lies. A country that lives on a diet of lies can’t govern itself. It is as simple as that, as certain as water flowing and unsupported construction falling. Our media believes that lies are good for ratings and good for business. They think that telling the public lies they will want to hear will give them a ratings advantage. Their ratings and the profit those bring are the only thing they really care about. They won’t stop lying until the news is made not-for-profit, a requirement for holding a broadcasting license or other privilege granted to those companies. And it will take law to force them to stop lying.

My Family Friendly Blog

Via the awesome watertiger, I found a site which rates blogs as if they were movies. Her blog got an R-rating. Mine, of course, got this:





I must try harder.

Silent Spring

I had my morning coffee in the garden, watching the opening sage flowers and the roses at their loveliest. The sun was gently stroking their heads and the birds were taking a rest from their busy flying and feeding activities. Coffee tastes so much better outside, I thought. And the quiet is nice.

Quiet? Where are the bees? They love the sage and my nepeta has been flowering for days now. They love that, too. Last year those violet flowers often looked more like brown-and-yellow ones, because of the number of bees on them. Where are the bees this year?

I took a tour of the garden. All I found were butterflies and one wasp. There were some bumble bees earlier in the year. But no other kind of bees at all.

You may have read about the sudden death of so many bees and about the various theories explaining it. Or trying to explain it. I read those stories, too. But to go out into your own garden and to not hear that buzzing, well, it hits the message home.

Saturday Cat Blogging

The dog and cat above belong to Barry. The caption goes: "Honest, officer, I found her like that."





This one is FeralLiberal's Pippin again. I collected several Pippin pictures for leaner times. The picture looks very zen to me.

Some Echidne Musings

Time for my self-indulgent post of the week. I spent most of this week at the Take Back America conference, and there will be further posts on that later on. For example, I met the Billionaires for Bush at the cocktail reception on Tuesday night. They are very funny. One of them told me that I clean up quite well (I was in my best duds and had high heels n all) and if I only could get some funds I could be one of them! A new career path opened up for me. -- Anyway, I might write about them.

Also on the Code Pink people. I interviewed a pink police officer holding a large "Stop the War" traffic sign. They are an interesting bunch of people and the way they are downplayed is also fascinating. It has feminist links, too.

Then again, I might not write about any of these people. Blogging is hard to do to a formula and often really interesting topics fall down on the to-do list, as some of you know; those who offered me topics I said I would do and still have not. Guilt. It's always with me. I think guilt smells of estrogen.

You can probably guess where I am going with this post. Time, once again, to twist my hands and moan incoherently about the road ahead. Where should I go with this blog? Who is going to guest-post for me on weekends? And when I go to the snake rites on the big mountain? Should I just close up shop or turn this into a team blog of many fascinating feminists? But I'm very bad in social intelligence and all that admin stuff, and even worse at having someone else tell me what to do. Yet the future lies in team blogs, I think.

Even more importantly, is a blog of this type of any real use now that the feminist blogosphere is vibrant and full of all sorts of blogs? My good-cop schtick may no longer be of value if it ever was. And the low-tech setup stinks. No pictures or eerie snake music when you come to the site.

I don't take advice very well at all. Just ask my mom. But I would be interested in your ideas on all this, because a blog doesn't belong to just whoever is writing the posts. It belongs to those who read it and those who participate in the discussion.

Friday Weirdness Blogging

I saved these pictures a long time ago and the acknowledgements got separated from the pics. My apologies for therefore not saying who gave them to me.

These are food items on which we divines send you humans messages of great spiritual importance. The top is a piece of toast with the face of Ernest Borgnine. Now, what a message in that one might be is a very big mystery. But the bottom one is an easier one: a cinnamon bun with the face of Mother Theresa! To remind you not to eat more than your fair share of cinnamon buns.

John Howard and the Aborigines

Or "meanwhile, in Australia", I guess, to continue the format I've been using for short posts commenting on events in far-away places. The Australian government has decided to tackle the high rates of child molestation among the Aborigines by some swift and firm policies:

Australia's prime minister announced plans Thursday to ban pornography and alcohol for Aborigines in northern areas and tighten control over their welfare benefits to fight child sex abuse among them.

Some Aboriginal leaders rejected the plan as paternalistic and said the measures were discriminatory and would violate the civil rights of the country's original inhabitants. But others applauded the initiative and recommended extending the welfare restrictions to Aborigines in other parts of the country.

Prime Minister John Howard was responding to a report last week that found sexual abuse of children to be rampant in indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. The report said the abuse was fueled by endemic alcohol abuse, unemployment, poverty and other factors causing a breakdown in traditional society.

'This is a national emergency,' Howard told Parliament. 'We're dealing with a group of young Australians for whom the concept of childhood innocence has never been present.'

Howard announced the measures for the Northern Territory, an Outback region where the federal government retains powers it doesn't have over Australia's six states. He urged state leaders to apply similar tough rules in their jurisdictions.

The federal government can change laws in the territory with an act of Parliament, where Howard has a majority that ensures he can implement his policy.

What do you think of this approach? Should we ban alcohol and pornography in, say, Washington, D.C.? Only in Washington, D.C.? Should welfare payments be linked to alcohol tests showing no drinking, but only if you are a person of color?

Or perhaps a better comparison would be to do all this within an American Indian reservation. Only American Indians would be forced to stay sober and chaste. Everybody else could go on drinking and watching porn and all that would be paid from welfare checks if the person otherwise qualified. Yes, I like this comparison, because the Aborigines were also the initial occupants of a continent, pushed aside and put into reservations by the incoming Europeans.

I'm sure that the problems Howard talks about are real and horrible. But this solution seems unlikely to work, because it really is paternalistic, put in place from the outside, discriminatory and also wholly punitive. The underlying problems of poverty and unemployment are not addressed by it at all. This summarizes the main trouble with the action very well:

The plan angered some Aboriginal leaders, who said it was the kind of government behavior that has disenfranchised Aborigines and created the problems in the first place. They also complained they had not been consulted; the government had not previously indicated it was considering such action.

You can't feel ownership in a policy if you were never consulted.

On Pigs and Condoms

Amanda at Pandagon wrote about a condom advertisement that has been rejected by Fox and CBS. You can see the ad on Pandagon. It uses pigs. More about that later. But the point Amanda makes is an important one:

Okay, when I first read about this Trojan ad, I thought it would probably be at least mildly offensive. But I found it vaguely amusing.

It trades in the same gender stereotypes common to ads like this, but overall, I didn't think it hit on them too hard. The ad doesn't argue that men are de facto pigs, but it does suggest that men who push for condom-less sex are pigs, and that's a pretty fair assessment of that behavior. But the stereotype issues aside, the issue with this ad is that Fox and CBS rejected the ad and not because it peddles in the same stereotypes that their programming uses. No, they took issue with advertising condoms as being used for what they are used for.

Which is for contraception. It isn't clear why those networks rejected the ad, or not clear to me, at least. If it really is because of fear of the fundamentalist anti-contraception crowd, well, that is very bad news indeed. The first and foremost function of condoms is to prevent undesired conceptions. The second, though also a very important function of condoms is to protect the users against some sexually transmitted diseases.

It could be that the ads were rejected because they are pretty unflattering to men. I found them sexist, even if Amanda did not. See how feminists don't have a hive mind? I read the ad as saying that men are pigs except the one who gets the condom from the bathroom machine and miraculously transforms into a guy. Yes, I know that it's sort of funny. But it's still sexist. It's also sexist in another sense: It assumes that all those men in that bar are there just to get some pussy as rude bloggers might say, and that the woman picks the lucky recipient by the condom rule.

I hate to do this prudish feminist bit but sometimes my inner prude requires it.

On the Democratic Candidates' Speeches

I wrote one of those gut-reaction reports on how Obama, Edwards and Clinton came across to me at the Take Back America conference. You can read it on the TAPPED blog. The idea is to show that I can do the Chris Matthews type of journalism. And then I will get loads of money for chocolate from the mainstream media.

Digby Revealed

You can see her speak here at the "Take Back America" conference where she accepted the Paul Wellstone Citizen Leadership Award we (the venomous rabid lambs of the left blogosphere as David Brooks once so memorably put it) were given.

Who Are You Gonna Believe?

Byron York of the conservative National Review says that the "Take Back America" conference booed Hillary Clinton when she praised the American military:

"We're going to end the war in Iraq and finally bring home the troops," she said as a number of Code Pink protesters stood up in the audience. When she declared, "The American military has done its job," boos began to be heard around the room. As the boos increased, Sen. Clinton raised her voice. "The American military has succeeded," she said, to more boos. "It is the Iraqi government that has failed to make the tough decisions." Still more boos.

Bill Scher posted what actually happened here.

Now, the funny thing is that I was there, sitting among the journalists, pretending to be one hot babee journalist and stuff. And so I was actually present when the boos started and know what they were about. As Scher states, York is mistaken:

That's flat wrong. The Politics on the Hudson blog gets it right: "They jeered the Democratic presidential hopeful when she blamed the Iraqi government for the continued violence that has bogged down U.S. troops."

Indeed. Clinton used the moderate Republican argument that what has caused the war to bog down is the inability of the Iraqi government to take charge. There was nothing at all wrong with the planning of the invasion (assuming that it was planned at all), there was nothing wrong with dismantling whatever civil society Iraq used to have, and the new Iraq government is somehow supposed to be in control of a civil war which includes among the fighters many members of its own military and police forces.

The argument is weak as lukewarm water and really beneath Hillary Clinton's intelligence. That's why there was booing. I didn't boo, by the way, as I was just then devouring a cold bagel.

It's interesting to ponder why Clinton is so adamant about her pro-war stance and about the way she voted for the war to begin with. Everybody knows that not supporting Bush was political suicide in those days of solemn patriotism, and her vote is fully explained by that. Most people don't say it, but the reason lots of politicians voted to hand over the warkeys to Bush was because that's what the Americans, on average, wanted at that point of time. I remember.

Now, it's one of those slimy politician things to vote a certain way just because that might get you elected, and you might decide not to support politicians who do this in the future. Still, we mostly tend to forgive them for their inconstancy. Take Mitt Romney, for instance. His beliefs are swiveling around faster than a Utah weather vane, but mostly people don't seem to mind very much.

This brings me to the question why Hillary Clinton refuses to change her explanation about why she voted for the war to begin with. Perhaps she plans to continue the heroic effort George Bush began. Or perhaps she does not plan to do so, but believes that a woman can't change her mind. La donna e mobile, you know. My personal pet theory is that she thinks the danger from the latter option is greater than the danger of looking like a warmonger. I may be wrong.

Effete, Effeminate and At Risk of Emasculation

This is the American Man, at least in the opinion of many right-wing and anti-feminist writers and bloggers. I came across these adjectives in reading what right-wing columnists and blogs worry about in the male presidential candidates, indeed in the American men. Glenn Reynolds, for instance, is most concerned about the feminization of the American culture (don't laugh). He recommends, repeatedly, a new book entitled A Dangerous Book for Boys. The idea of this book is to teach boys how to be boys, not the effete and effeminate wimps us feminists would wish to make out of them. Honestly.

Glenn Greenwald has an interesting post on the whole topic. He notes that the right-wingers think America is being emasculated, and they want to fight back before it is too late. Notice how the terms pile up: effete, effeminate and now emasculated. It is the testicles of boys that are at great risk, it seems.

The fragility of masculinity is an odd and important topic. I have never quite understood how masculinity can be so immensely fragile and at the same time so immensely powerful in the minds of some people. It is such a paradox: First, the traditionalists believe that men and women are biologically very different, in fact extremely so, and these "innate" biological differences are proposed as the explanation for anything at all that women might not excel at.

Why so few women in sciences? It's because women can't do math and don't find it interesting, silly. Evolution has built that into our genes. Or why do women get paid less than men, on average? Well, women "choose" to focus on children and the family. This is a biological imperative and nothing much can be done about it unless we want the Western civilization to collapse. Hidden in all this is the assumption that it would be similarly biologically impossible for men to take on some of those childrearing tasks. Because men and women are innately different and intended for different tasks. In a complementary way, natch. For instance, the low earnings of women compensate for the higher earnings of men. And so on.

But then suddenly this very concept of masculinity is at risk, threatened, something that needs to be taught to boys who would otherwise grow up to be something totally different. Turtles, perhaps.

This makes no sense, no sense at all. Either masculinity is biologically determined and will take a certain form in any case or it is not. You can't have it both ways, but the anti-feminists insist on this impossible combination.

Hence the need to change the education, upbringing and environment of boys (by, say, having them read books about how boys should act). Changing education, upbringing or the environment of girls is seen as totally futile, given the biological imperatives these folks embrace.

But of course this nonsensical view tells us much about what really lies behind the fear of the emasculation of American men. The fear is that men might end up not being any better than women are, and given the hierarchical world we still mostly inhabit, this would be a real loss for the men who currently stand on a high rung of the power ladder and also for the women who depend on these men. One of Ursula le Guin's books contains a snippet of conversation about this between Tenar and Ged. When Tenar wants to know why women in that book can't do men's magic, Ged answers by arguing that if women could do the same magic as men then men would be nothing but women who can't give birth.

I found that fascinating, because it is such an insulting statement and also such a revealing one about how women might be viewed. Note first that all women who live long enough will at some point be women who can't give birth and that some women are never able to give birth. Ged sees these women as something without purpose or without use. Then note how Ged defines women by their ability to give birth. This is revealing, because at its most extreme misogyny allows women now other area but the one in which men can't substitute for them. In a sense, the definition of femininity becomes the ability to give birth and this is then the totality of what it means to be a woman. In such an extreme case masculinity is pretty much everything else; all other abilities, characteristics and traits. Only female sexuality and fertility and practical tasks associated with them will be viewed as properly feminine.

This long preamble is to explain why I find the wingnut worry about the emasculation of American culture so frightening. To me it looks like yet another attempt to hoard all sorts of human characteristics under the title of masculinity, and to the extent this succeeds the allowable spheres for women's lives become smaller and tighter and meaner.

Consider the terms "effete" and "effeminate". I looked them up on the Internet and found this definition of effete:
depleted of vitality, marked by self-indulgence, trivial, decadent, overrefined, effeminate

Effeminate, in turn, is defined as follows:
having qualities or characteristics more often associated with women than men;
characterized by weakness and excessive refinement

The antonym of "effeminate" is "manly", which is defined as
having qualities traditionally attributed to a man;
courageous, strong

See the problem? The definitions of effete and effeminate are both circular, being based on what one deems as typical for women or men. But then the additional definitions assign good things to masculinity, such as courage and strength. By definition, then, femininity will lack those.

And this is why Glenn Reynolds worrying about the masculinity of American men and boys directly affects me and other women.


-----
My apologies for the writing. It's hard to do any at this conference. I promise I will rewrite this later on. Heh.

Guest post by Kay: Pedro Guzman

This is a story that's been floating around for the past week. Penny covered it, and Belledame at Fetch Me My Axe has too. From the ACLU press release:

U.S. Citizen Illegally Deported From Jail Is Missing in Mexico

ACLU and Law Firm Seek Federal Help to Find Developmentally Disabled Man

Monday, June 11, 2007

LOS ANGELES — Federal immigration officers and the L.A. County Sheriff's Department illegally deported a U.S. citizen last month, the ACLU/SC has learned. He is missing in Mexico, and today the ACLU/SC and the law firm of Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court seeking his safe return.

Pedro Guzman, 29, was born in Los Angeles and raised in Lancaster, California. He was serving time at Men’s Central Jail for trespassing, a misdemeanor offense, when he was deported to Tijuana May 10 or 11. Mr. Guzman is developmentally disabled, does not read or write English well, and knows no one in Tijuana. He declared at his booking that he was born in California.

He spoke to his sister-in-law by telephone from a shelter in Tijuana within a day of his deportation, but the call was interrupted. Family members traveled to the city in an attempt to find him and have remained there, searching shelters, jails, churches, hospitals, and morgues.

There are no circumstances under which government officials may deport a U.S. citizen. Federal officials have refused requests by family members and a private lawyer to assist in the search for Mr. Guzman.

"This is a recurring nightmare for every person of color of immigrant roots," said ACLU/SC legal director Mark Rosenbaum. "Local jail officials and federal immigration officers deported the undeportable, a United States citizen, based on appearance, prejudice, and reckless failure to apply fair legal procedures."

"What has happened to Pedro Guzman is a tragedy," said Stacy Tolchin of Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale. "His life may be in danger, and the government must act immediately to locate him and return him to the United States."

Jail and Department of Homeland Security officials failed to identify Mr. Guzman’s disability and improperly obtained his signature for deportation from the United States. "The procedures for determination of legal status implemented by Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs … fail even minimal criteria for constitutional due process," the lawsuit states.

Sheriff's deputies trained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conduct immigration checks at L.A. County jails. The ACLU and immigrant-rights groups warned that involving local law enforcement in immigration policing would lead to mistaken deportations and violate the due-process rights of inmates.

Anyone with information about Mr. Guzman can call the ACLU/SC at (213) 977-9500.

As noted at And We Shall March:

Guzman, a Southern California native, was abandoned in a place where he knows absolutely no one, with no money and without cognitive ability to get himself back to his home. As of right now our government won't even formally ask Mexican officials to search the morgues. That's how little care is extended for someone who is not a missing white girl.

There are no circumstances in which government officials may deport a U.S. citizen.

Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade

Guest post by Kay/Blue Lily: Kevorkian's Big Lie

I'm the guest blogger that just won't go away, eh? With Echidne busy at that conference, I once again get a chance to share some more thoughts with her readers. Thanks.


This is written by Diane Coleman, president of disability rights organization Not Dead Yet, from an op-ed in the North Country Gazette:

Every time the courtroom doors opened during Jack Kevorkian’s weeklong trial in 1999, security guards allowed two wheelchair users to enter and sit in designated spaces, as well as three disabled but walking advocates, all representatives of the group Not Dead Yet. We rotated the opportunity to be in the courtroom among about 40 disability activists who came from several states to represent the majority of Kevorkian’s body count, people with non-terminal disabilities.

Kevorkian had been quoted in Time Magazine to say he would love to debate the critics who charge that he is too hasty in deciding who may die. “I will argue with them if they will allow themselves to be strapped to a wheelchair for 72 hours so they can’t move, and they are catheterized and they are placed on the toilet and fed and bathed. Then they can sit in a chair and debate with me.”

In response, our leaflets simply stated, “We’re here, and we demand the equal protection of the law: Jail Jack.”

Kevorkian claims involvement in over 130 deaths, and it’s been irrefutably documented in such respected publications as the New England Journal of Medicine that over 70% were not terminally ill, and 70% were women. Many disability rights advocates view him as a serial killer of people with disabilities.

Read the rest here.

Why is this important now? Because Kevorkian was recently released from jail and the misinformation about his actions and motives continues.

I do believe reasonable people can disagree about the issue of assisted suicide, provided they understand fully the inequality of providing the "freedom to die" for a class of people routinely denied basic freedoms to live. But Kevorkian has no place being named a hero for his actions.

Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade

Facebook Feminism And Conferencing

Check this out: If you search for feminist pages on Facebook you get many more anti-feminist sites than feminist ones. Given the average age of those using Facebook, this suggests that we don't have a very big third wave going at the present time. More like the backlash from the second wave is still hitting the shoreline. This is a topic which deserves a much longer post, and it will get one in the future.

I'm still attending the conference and collecting famous presidential candidates. This morning I saw Governor Bill Richardson, and this afternoon I will add Barack Obama and John Edwards to my collection. Wanna trade?

It's really hard to write proper posts in this setting. The bulk of my ideas will probably have to wait until I'm back home at the Snakepit Inc.. On the other hand, my muse has a hangover and might decide to work tonight. To atone, you know.

Who’d o' Thunk It?

A paper reports the news and the people read it. Posted by olvlzl.
Spending so much of my time bemoaning the media it was good to read a Buzz Flash piece by Rory O'Connor about a small paper that did some reporting, The Post Register in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

The people at that paper did something like what the Boston Globe did in breaking and pursuing the clergy sex abuse scandal but it was the Boys Scouts and they went up against the Mormon establishment instead of the Catholics.

Here's what happened: after receiving a tip that a pedophile caught at a local scout camp in 1997 had not two victims (as the paper reported at the time) but actually dozens, Post Register reporters went to the courthouse to look for a civil suit filed by victims, only to be told that there was no such case. They later learned that the national Boy Scouts of America and its local Council had hired two of Idaho's best-connected law firms to seal the files -- thus covering up the entire affair.

Or so they thought... But the Post Register went to court and "dragged the case file into the light of day." What reporters found astonished them; scout leaders had been warned about the pedophile years earlier, but hired him (again!) anyway. Lawyers for the Boy Scouts knew about more victims, but never told those boys' parents. Top local and national leaders of the Mormon Church, which sponsors almost all area scout troops, had also been warned.

The Post Register ran a six-day series about the affair. The first story featured a 14-year-old camper -- "the son of a Mormon seminary teacher and a cinch to become an Eagle Scout" -- who forced adult leaders to call the police about the pedophile.

Then the backlash began. Mormon church members were among the first to complain, characterizing the paper's coverage as an attack on their faith. "The drums banged, and we were flooded with calls and e-mails and letters to the editor from readers who told us that holding the Grand Teton Council accountable was Mormon-bashing," Miller recounted.

The backlash came as well from advertisers, and the economic pressure built everyday the paper ran the series. "It's one thing to lose an account when you're an employee," Miller wrote. "It's quite another when you're also a stockholder; 140 employees hold close to 49 percent of the company's stock. For many families, this is their retirement." Nevertheless, he recalled, "Most of what I heard inside our building were words of support." Publisher Roger Plothow was also staunchly unapologetic throughout, "standing up with a stoic and clear-eyed defense... for the values of journalism."

The attacks weren't just financial, but personal as well -- including the outing of a gay staff reporter, Peter Zuckerman, by a local multimillionaire who bought full-page ads devoting several paragraphs to establishing that Zuckerman is gay. "Strangers started ringing Peter's doorbell at midnight,"

The local paper stood up for the right of their readers to be informed over what would seem likely to be a pretty severe punishment, financially and personally for its staff. Like what Bogart did in [“The Front Page”ct] Cut that, make it "Deadline".

But unlike in the movies and beyond what you, and the media itself, might expect, the paper that reported the news doesn’t seem to be suffering.

"One of the sweeter moments of our year occurred when we received figures from our circulation audit. While the sales numbers of other U.S. newspapers were in free fall, we were among the nation's faster growing daily papers."

Now that's a surprise ending. A story of a courageous newspaper staff and ownership that doesn't end in bitter-sweet cynicism and the paper closing. Maybe other papers should stop the presses and do a rewrite of their own story. Makes you wonder why they think people buy papers in the first place.

Update: My thanks to the poster who pointed out that I somehow got Charles MacArthur's play mixed up with one of Bogart's least appreciated movies. If you can rent "Deadline", it's worth watching.

Take Back America

I've been enjoying Washington, D.C. today, at the "Take Back America" conference. From my window I can see that phallic symbol of patriotism. More seriously, Washington is a pretty city, and I love the absence of tall buildings. What I don't love so much is the amount of street harassment I underwent in about thirty minutes. No, I don't want to get naked with you. And no, I'm not a sad young lady who needs some company. I'm an old grumpy goddess and ever so slightly drunk.

The conference has been interesting, though I arrived too late to attend the early sessions. I found today's deeper message to be the need to take care of the poor first. If we do that the middle classes will be propped up, too. More substantial posts tomorrow when I'm not quite so tired.

The More Things Change...

I recently posted on the stupid idea that one can make a tool or a gadget female-friendly just by painting it pink. Well, it seems that the marketing folks figured this out fifty years ago:

The Dodge La Femme was a product of the Chrysler Corporation's Dodge division between 1955 and 1956. The La Femme's Raison D'être stemmed from Chrysler's marketing department's observation that more and more women were taking interest in automobiles during the 1950s, and that women's opinions on which color car to buy was becoming part of the decision making process for couples buying an automobile. The La Femme was an attempt to gain a foothold in the women's automobile market.

...

The interior of the car also received attention and features. La Femme interiors were upholstered in a special tapestry material featuring pink rosebuds on a pale pink background and pale pink vinyl trim. The La Femme also came with a rectangular purse that coordinated with the interior of the car. The purse could be stowed in a special compartment built into the back of the passenger seat. Each purse was outfitted with a matching set, which included a compact lipstick case, cigarette case, lighter and change purse, all by designed and made by "Evans".

It didn't work then, either. I'm very saddened by this total lack of progress, perhaps because it implies that the group "women" are still not worthy of actual study by the marketing departments.

Honour Killings in the U.K.

Thanks for Jules for the link to this awful topic:

Dedicated teams of senior prosecutors are to be deployed in the UK's honour killing hotspots in the wake of the failings exposed this week by the case of a young Kurdish woman murdered by her family.

The prosecutors, who have all had experience of complex organised crime cases, will start work this month as part of an overhaul of how cases are handled. The move is designed to boost conviction rates and improve protection for victims.

...

The changes come after Banaz Mahmod, a 20-year-old Kurd, was murdered by her father and uncle because they disapproved of her boyfriend who was not a strict Muslim and was not of their tribe.

She was found dumped in a suitcase, with the shoelace used to kill her around her neck. She had repeatedly told police her family were trying to kill her. In one instance where she had escaped from her father, she was not taken seriously, and described as melodramatic and manipulative by an officer who interviewed her.

It is a horrible topic, and there isn't anything very bright I can say about it. I could say a lot about the feelings of despair that overtake me, the insistent disbelief I have that someone could do this to their sister or daughter or niece and yet be regarded as a good person, and what this all says about how the humanity of women is viewed in vast areas of the world.

But perhaps the wider lesson is that no family should ever be regarded as owning its members, that no family's honor should ever be regarded as lodging inside someone's vagina and that the police should not assume that families always want the best for their members, especially the women.

Happy Fathers' Day!

Good fathers matter. So enjoy the ties and the baseball games and the monogrammed golf balls and the hugs.

What Comes Next After A Quarter Of A Century Of Right-Wing Dominance?

Posted by olvlzl.
One of the early posts I did talked about Victor Berger and the long lived, successful progressive-Socialist movement he was a part of in Milwaukee. I’m sorry to have to report that things don’t appear to be the same there anymore.

Next month in Milwaukee:

George L. Wilson of Children Need Heroes and Drew Heiss of Street Preach are planning to honor Paul Hill in a series of events called "Paul Hill Days" in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 26th - 29th -- "to honor him as God's man and our hero."

For those who have forgotten Paul Hill, he’s the murderer of the abortion provider Dr. John Britton and his escort James Barrett in Pensacola Florida in 1994. He also seriously wounded June Barrett in the attack. The “honoring” is timed to the week of the anniversary of Hill’s attack.

People everywhere should be putting pressure on political, community and religious leaders to condemn this, especially Catholic Bishops and Cardinals who have injected themselves into politics over the issue of ‘the right to life’. The three days of festivities is to include a 'Reenactment of 7-29-1994' (the murders of Dr. Britton and James Barrett and the wounding of June Barrett) we shouldn’t let them get away with a few mealy mouthed regrets. This is incitement to murder and recruitment of children into their ranks seems to be the primary motive of one of the cults involved. This is Jesus Camp-xtra. Let’s see how they really feel about the right to life.

Passage From An Unwritten Film Noir Script (Apparently)

Committed and posted by olvlzl.
(S)he was so cool, icy, so logical. But that was only like the hard geometrically cut surface over a blazing gem stone. It made the fire inside brighter. The only way (s)he’d ever be wrapped around anyone’s finger was if it was the best way to catch the light for her(him)self.

Stuck in a 1974 notebook.

Did you ever come across something in your own notebook, in your handwriting many years later and wonder what the hell you could have been thinking? Please, share.

Truth Has Consequences, Wing-nuttery Has Advancement Possibilities.

Posted by olvlzl.
Steve Colbert mentioned the great heroine of sexual realism, responsibility and so of morality, Dr. Joycelyn Elders on his show the other night, I’m told. He contrasted her hisory with the Holsinger nutcase Bush has nominated for the post of Surgeon General. Even if you didn’t see his quite funny piece you know, of course, that the subject was “self-abuse”. It was the famous answer she courageously gave to a direct [set-up?] question with the camera rolling and the administration she was a part of under full media attack.

[masturbation ] "is a part of human sexuality, and it's a part of something that perhaps should be taught."

She didn’t lie, she didn’t dodge the bullet she must have known the question was, she didn’t put her job or even her boss first, she took it on behalf of public health. She did the job she had been asked to do. It was the kind of raw of political courage that has become almost unknown in this country. A woman of her brilliance couldn’t have failed to know the entire consequences, the firestorm on hate talk radio and the cabloids, the pursed lips and disapproving squint of the “legitimate media”. She probably knew that it would cost her the position of Surgeon General, she’s no one’s fool. That doesn’t excuse Bill Clinton in her case. Not backing her up over what he must know was true was one of the most dishonorable things Bill Clinton did in office.

I think what Dr. Elders meant was that children should be taught that it was normal and nothing to be ashamed of and that it was a safe and uncomplicated means of dealing with sexual tension. She certainly knew that just about every one has, does or will do “it” anyway. It really wouldn’t have an impact on “incidence”. Actually, unless the person doing it is unusually careless I don’t think you could exactly call masturbating an “incident”.

Since Dr. Elders has had a long career of public service with many accomplishments I always felt kind of embarrassed that it was that one answer that would define her public life. But then there is this other quote from her:

"Our country talked about masturbation more in December of 1994 than they ever have in the history of the country - and you know, people would think you'd be embarrassed about that. I'm not embarrassed about that."

Only a true heroine could hold her head up and be unashamed to tell a politically inconvenient truth and promote the public’s welfare in performance of her duties and at her personal cost.

Who knows how much misery has been avoided over the centuries because of the near universality of masturbation? Unwanted pregnancies, venereal disease, fruitless yearning and the rash behavior that could be dissipated without anyone getting hurt? Hardly anyone really believes that it’s immoral, it harms no one so how could it be? Those benefits should be promoted and not suppressed. What other sexual practices are taboo anymore?* It’s really more of a housekeeping problem, when it comes down to it. The issue should be taken out of the hands of hypocritical conservative moralists** and handed over to people with an advanced knowledge of stain removal. The shame around it is just about the only health issue involved. Pretending anything else is simply a lie.

So, as a tribute to Dr. Elders, it is a duty to talk about masturbation and to make it accepted as valid a sexual practice as intercourse. The reason it’s always been such a school yard joke and a shame is because everyone was doing it, they didn’t know everyone else was and they didn’t want anyone to rank them among the “dubbers”. If they felt more comfortable with continuing to masturbate instead of engaging in sexual intercourse before they are wise enough to protect themselves or experienced enough to know a con when they see one many personal disasters could be averted. That’s what we should be working towards.

For another appreciation for Dr. Elders you can read this recent post by Kate Harding at Feministing.

Note: In a discussion on a thread on Eschaton about the Holsinger crack pot, it was speculated that given the disparity in numbers and the fact that a large percentage of gay men don’t practice anal sex, there might actually be more heterosexual anal sex than gay. I have been wondering how you would figure that out. Since he’s obviously quite interested in the subject perhaps Dr. H. might like to spend a little bit of his obviously too abundant time to expand his hobby research. His 1991 “paper” went into quite baroque detail about the possible tissue damage that can result from gay anal sex. To deny that some damage is possible is sometimes is, of course, dishonest. But maybe he isn’t as concerned with what happens to heterosexual women’s lower digestive tract as long as it’s a straight man doing it. Given the reports of the increase in unprotected heterosexual, anal sex among “chastity” teens, it could turn out to be quite acceptable to the chastity industry. Or it might be profitable to pretend it’s not happening.

*There are the controversies about “frottage” among some gay men. Some react with surprising vehemence to the suggestion that mutual masturbation is a more sensible alternative than anal sex. Some even claim that those who promote “frottage” as an alternative to anal sex are homophobes. That is an absurd idea. About a quarter of gay men surveyed in the mid-70s said that they didn’t engage in anal sex. Since that was before AIDS emerged you might imagine that an even large percentage doesn’t engage in anal sex now. I don't have any idea if the figures then were accurate, well, you've heard what I think about polling. But, don’t adults get to decide what they do among themselves, in private?

All of these decisions about sex have to be taken out of the hands, not only of the phony “chastity” industry but they also have to be taken out of the hands of those who are the reaction to the traditional moralists’ disapproval. These are personal decisions. Personal decisions will be different but they should be based on mutual respect and consent and with full knowledge of what will promote continued health, not on “doing it the real, right way” or on coercion. Luckily, the law isn't involved, for the time being.

** Who, exactly like the school yard bullies, all either did, does or will masturbate and they should know we know about it. If they deny it we should question them about their abnormality.

My Thanks,

To Echidne a great blogger, her hard work has produced one of the best blogs I know. It was a complete surprise to me last August when she invited me to be one of the guests covering her during her vacation, a great honor. And it was an even greater one when she took me on here weekends. It has to be noted that I've got some different ideas about things and there were bound to be some fireworks. Life doesn't follow the prescribed definitions and roles given to us by the media, social institutions or pop-culture. And then there's the length issue. I never felt less than entirely free to explore even the most off-the-wall seeming ideas and to call into question any commonly accepted idea. For that I thank the owner of this blog.

And I thank the members of her community who have read and commented on my ideas. Some have pointed out flaws in my arguments, some have shown me that I expressed myself badly. It's better to be corrected than to continue in error, even if it doesn't always feel that way.

And I thank those who have wished me well in my illness. It’s really more obnoxious and annoying than dangerous so don’t worry too much.

I didn’t, however, share with Echidne an even more painful and arduous trial which is about to overtake me, it is certain and it is guaranteed to happen on schedule. Within the week I am going to be under assault by a child who will harangue me to read her “the seventh book”. A word of warning. Think twice before agreeing to read a pre-literate child the first in a projected series of seven books. It won’t make any difference that she turns out to be in the top percentile of readers of her age group before the end of the series is published. Except she can catch your mistakes.

History in Pictures

Al-Askari shrine loses its minarets. Shiaites are upset and enraged.





Then a Sunni mosque is bombed. Sunnis are upset and enraged.

And so it goes.

Thank You, Ovlzl!

This weekend is the last one when olvlzl will blog regularly here. He has a recurring (but not life-threatening) health problem which must be seen to, and while he recovers he will not be able to write regularly.

I owe olvlzl a lot, especially given that I have paid him exactly zero dollars for his work. I have enjoyed his posts and the debates and discussions they provoke and the different ideas and thoughts that have entered this blog with him. His sense of humor is almost as nutty as mine and his knowledge in the fields of music, politics and other topics has enriched what goes on here.

He is always welcome to write here on weekends and I hope that he will do that when he is able to write again.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Friday Critter Blogging

First, there is a turtle. FeralLiberal snapped a picture of it before it had a chance to snap back.





Next, there is William, a very zen cat. William belongs to Doug Watts. Or perhaps Doug Watts belongs to William.





Henrietta the Hound is happy, on the whole, though she would like to see more meal times and better quality snacks. She no longer runs, but we have very enjoyable leisurely strolls down the local woods. She's hard of hearing. Oddly, this only affects her when I give commands. If I whisper something about "walkies" in the other room, she has no trouble hearing. Curious.

Dan Rather and Katie Couric

You may have been following the debate about what Dan Rather said concerning Katie Couric's low ratings as the head anchor (in the position that used to be his):

From the June 11 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:

SCARBOROUGH: You know, Dan, the thing that Chris Licht [executive producer of MSNBC's Scarborough Country] was talking about -- maybe you read in the Times, or I don't know where you read it -- but there was, seemed to me, this terrible miscalculation by Rome Hartman and a couple of CBS News execs that they were going to soften up the news, and that way they could expand their viewership. Yeah, I would think that if I'm sitting down at 6:30 to get the news, to see what's happened in the day, I don't want fluff stories. Do you think that's one of the problems that Katie Couric's had coming in -- that maybe they tried to re-brand the Evening News in a way that Americans just didn't want to accept?

RATHER: Well, I totally agree with you, Joe. That -- I want to make very clear that I have nothing against Katie Couric at all. She's a very nice person, and I have a lot of friends at CBS News. However, it was clear at the time -- and I think it's become even clearer -- that the mistake was to try to bring the Today show ethos to the Evening News and to dumb it down, tart it up in hopes of attracting a younger audience. And I just don't think people at 6:30 or 7 o'clock at night, or even 5:30 in the Central Time Zone or 6 o'clock when it's seen, that that's what they want. This is the continuation of a trend that we've talked about before, Joe and Mika [Brzezinski] and John [Ridley], and that is the combination of what I call the corporatizing of the news, has led to the trivializing the news.

I bolded the crucial sentence in that quote. Now, what happened next is that the well-known feminist and supporter of women everywhere, Russ Limbaugh, chipped in:

LIMBAUGH: Yeah, this is a clever technique, folks. I myself have used this technique. I love Katie Couric! Oh, I love CBS -- I've got friends at CBS News. A lot of respect for what goes on over there. And then you slam them. Tarting up the news. Dumbing it down and tarting up the news. The Today show ethos.

Now, when I saw this last night -- I was talking about this -- I said this is -- that's sexism. Dan Blather [sic], this is pure sexism -- dumb it down and tart it up. So we went back today. Here's a montage of Dan Rather on the air on election night November 2000. This is a montage of Dan Rather's coverage. And let's listen to dumbing it down and tarting it up.

And the public debate has been framed! Dan Rather is sexist! But Rush Limbaugh is not. I want to crawl into my bed and pull the pillows over my head. Wake me up when a saner world has been born.

Luckily, Jennifer Pozner has presented a more nuanced view of all this, and her arguments are available on video.

Here is my recap on the issues: There are two separate questions floating about in this discussion. One is about what the tone and contents of the news should be. The other is about whether women are up to presenting evening news and whether the audience wants to watch a woman in that role in general. It is quite feasible to keep the two questions separate for analytical purposes, and I intend to do that. But in terms of the actual decisions of the CBS they are rather deeply intertwined, and I intend to address that, too.

First, the selection of Katie Couric for that post was partly because the CBS wanted the news to become something different, something more like what Couric's morning program achieved. Perhaps the idea was that this would appeal to women, say. Or perhaps the idea was to just do something new, in the hope that people would be interested. Let's keep in mind that Couric wasn't the only woman CBS could have picked. There were several other possibilities, many of them very qualified indeed. That she was picked means that a certain tone and approach was preferred.

Now, this tone and approach is something I don't like in the evening news, and neither do many other people, I've noted. But this does not mean that it is Couric's gender that I would disapprove of. I disapprove of the way the program does the news.

Second, it is probably true that some viewers disapprove of Couric's gender, in that place of authority. Perhaps even many viewers do. Does Dan Rather? There is no way I could tell, but I haven't noticed him talking in the same way as Rush Limbaugh does about the dangers of "chickification" of the American culture. So perhaps Rather's statement should be interpreted with a certain amount forgiveness here. He may just have been carried away with his disappointment over the recent developments.

But here's where the two arguments must be brought back together: CBS must have known that picking a new approach to news and then picking the first female anchor for the evening news will cause the two decisions to be united in many minds. If the approach fails, then Couric can be blamed for that, or rather the sexism of the audience can be blamed for the failure, not the bad plan to begin with. And Rather's use of "dumbing down and tarting up" certainly contributed to the identification of what is wrong with the CBS evening news with the gender of Katie Couric. It also slapped lots of women right in their faces, whether he intended that or not.

Pope Benedict and His Boys

In the Catholic church don't think that women who get pregnant from rape should get abortions:

A senior Vatican cardinal said yesterday that Catholics should stop donating to human rights group Amnesty International because of its new policy advocating abortion rights for women if they had been raped, were a victim of incest or faced health risks.

Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, accused Amnesty of turning its back on its mission to defend human rights.

"The inevitable consequence of this decision, according to the cardinal, will be the suspension of any financing to Amnesty on the part of Catholic organisations and also individual Catholics," said a statement from Cardinal Martino's office yesterday.

"AI has betrayed its mission," Cardinal Martino told the US National Catholic Register in an interview.

Cardinal Renato Martino may sincerely believe in the message he conveyed. But then he also will never get pregnant after having been raped or possibly even gang-raped.

If you read the whole article I linked to (via No Capital), you have already realized that Cardinal Martino is playing straight into the rapists' hands:

Amnesty changed its neutral stance on abortion in April, but its Italy chairman Paolo Pobbiati insisted its new position had been misinterpreted by the cardinal.

"This has nothing to do with legitimising abortion as part of a campaign for human rights, it is to do with combating violence against women," he said.

"It was partly inspired by our experience in Africa where soldiers rape women in communities they attack to force them to have their children. We also believe women who have had abortions should benefit from medical care regardless of the reason for the abortion. Moreover we aim to promote education and contraception to reduce abortion rates."

So if the good cardinal has his way, the rape of women in African wars will be more likely to pay off in producing forced childbirth and children. Not so nice. On the other hand, his rule would also mean that no woman can ever be sure that she won't be forced to bear children. All that requires is one rapist at the right time. So there is that.

I am slightly bitter today, because the majority of African women have very hard lives and few rights and Cardinal Romano doesn't want them to have the right to refuse a rapist's child. He prefers to leave them permeable by the first successful sperm, even if it comes from the testicles of someone filled with hate.

I don't share Romano's views of conception as the onset of a separate human life. (You might remember that my theory is an older one which posits that it is the sperm cells which contain the life and that women are just fields for the men's seeds. This means, not-so-accidentally, that it is men who commit abortion every time they masturbate or have nighttime ejaculations.) But even if I did I would find an all-male hierarchy a horrible way of deciding when a woman should give birth or even possibly die giving birth.


-----
In other religion news, Southern Baptists today approved a resolution which admits that global warming is real but questions the idea that humans are responsible for it. So.

Today's Action Alert

From an e-mail I received today:

Today is one of those days when our work has especial significance. I just
learned that Martha Solay, the woman who so bravely told her story to
support the liberalization of abortion in Colombia , passed away. She died
because she was poor, because she was a woman, because her sterilization did not prevent a new pregnancy, and because having cancer she was not allowed to interrupt her pregnancy in order to begin chemotherapy and save her own life. She left orphaned four girls of 17, 6, 5, and 2 years old. They do not have a place to live, help us build a house for them. You can [read] her full story following this link (pdf).

You can send your donations (with a note to Martha's house) and/or buy the
t-shirts used during the process in Colombia , now part of the National Museum, to:

United States: Women's Link Worldwide, P.O. Box 415 Northfield , Vermont
05663 USA , or

Colombia : +57 (1) 345 1489, or

Send an email to info@womenslinkworldwide.org asking for more information.

The e-mail has been translated from Spanish. I think that you should add a note to your donation with the message that it is for Martha's house.

Teacher's Pet

That would not be Jonah Goldberg, whose recent article recommending the end of public schools made Ezra Klein point out earlier that many of Goldberg's preferred alternatives don't do even as well as the public schools in Washington, D.C.. And those public schools are indeed not doing well as Goldberg states:

HERE'S A GOOD question for you: Why have public schools at all?

OK, cue the marching music. We need public schools because blah blah blah and yada yada yada. We could say blah is common culture and yada is the government's interest in promoting the general welfare. Or that children are the future. And a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Because we can't leave any child behind.

The problem with all these bromides is that they leave out the simple fact that one of the surest ways to leave a kid "behind" is to hand him over to the government. Americans want universal education, just as they want universally safe food. But nobody believes that the government should run 90% of the restaurants, farms and supermarkets. Why should it run 90% of the schools — particularly when it gets terrible results?

Consider Washington, home of the nation's most devoted government-lovers and, ironically, the city with arguably the worst public schools in the country. Out of the 100 largest school districts, according to the Washington Post, D.C. ranks third in spending for each pupil — $12,979 — but last in spending on instruction. Fifty-six cents out of every dollar goes to administrators who, it's no secret, do a miserable job administrating, even though D.C. schools have been in a state of "reform" for nearly 40 years.

In a blistering series, the Post has documented how badly the bureaucrats have run public education. More than half of the District of Columbia's kids spend their days in "persistently dangerous" schools, with an average of nine violent incidents a day in a system with 135 schools. "Principals reporting dangerous conditions or urgently needed repairs in their buildings wait, on average, 379 days … for the problems to be fixed," according to the Post. But hey, at least the kids are getting a lousy education. A mere 19 schools managed to get "proficient" scores or better for a majority of students on the district's Comprehensive Assessment Test.

It's possible that bad bureaucrats are causing some of these problems. But Goldberg fails to point out another reason, and that is the poverty level of Washington, D.C.. Poor families are unlikely to send their children to private schools. Poor children come to school saddled with more problems than children from more affluent families. To gather a large number of poor children into one public classroom is not going to create an easy educational experience for the students or the teachers. Comparing the achievement levels of these children to those of children going to private schools fails to standardize for the income differences. It also ignores the fact that private schools can refuse students they don't want to have but public schools have no such luxury. This means that school comparisons of the sort Goldberg wants to use suffer from selection bias. (To give an example of this bias from the field of higher education, Harvard is good at least partly because its incoming students are good. )

Goldberg's piece is an opinion column. Perhaps it's acceptable in that context to pick the worst possible example as a snapshot of how public schools in general are doing. But it's still a little bit odd to summarize the theories explaining why public schools exist as "bla, bla, bla" and "yada, yada, yada" , though of course it makes writing the piece much easier. Likewise, to state that "the simple fact that one of the surest ways to leave a kid "behind" is to hand him over to the government" is quicker to type than any evidence for this argument. It also has the additional bonus of hinting that parents who have a child in a public school are "handing the child over", as if they'd never see the poor mite again. The horror!

And what about the general argument Goldberg makes that schools shouldn't be run by the public sector? He states that the government can't provide services and should provide money instead. A comparison between the Veterans' Administration system of health care (government operated and funded) and the Medicare system (only government funded) might suggest the opposite. But in reality the government provides certain services well and the private markets provide other services well. Which system to use depends not on some ideological statements but on the empirical facts in each particular case, though it's also worthwhile to point out that the countries with the best educational results rely mostly on a publicly funded and operated system, though it might not look like the American public school system.

Time to address Goldberg's "bla, bla, bla" abbreviation for the theories which try to explain why education is so often carried out by the public sector or at least by the not-for-profit sector, rather than by profit-making firms. There are at least four reasons for this.

The first one has to do with the fact that an educated nation provides better living conditions for everybody, not just pride and pleasure to the child and his or her parents. For a thought experiment, imagine a United States in which the majority of the people could not afford an education for their children. What would this do in a generation or so? The country would become a Banana Republic, with the wealthier few living in gated communities and the poor masses trying to get in. Labor would be cheap, true, but without many skills or abilities to acquire them.

In short, the benefits of education fall on a wider group than the students and their parents. But markets can't really enforce payments from that wider community of beneficiaries. Governments can, because they have the power to tax.

This explanation is sometimes used as a justification for publicly funded education. But public funding of education can also be justified by the desire to provide all children with equal opportunities for education. Its absence would mean that the children of the poor start the race several hundred yards behind other children, and might never be able to catch up, however hard they raced.

Now, Goldberg isn't arguing against the public funding of education, only its public provision. One might argue that public provision gives the taxpayers more control over the quality of the education they subsidize. If there is a public interest in the basic education of all children it is pretty unlikely that the government would ever limit its role to just writing blank checks. Some level of control and supervision would be required and the step from that to public provision of the services is a short one.

What makes it even shorter are the characteristics of the "output" of the school system. This output is difficult to measure. It depends not only on the teachers and the teaching tools but also on the child's talents, efforts and family participation, and in most cases years go by before the final effects of schooling are visible.

Whenever the product of some industry (education, health care) has this problem of verifiability (a particular type of informational asymmetry), we find that the industry tends to consist of a large number of not-for-profit firms. Perhaps the reason is that for-profit firms can't attract enough customers when selling products that are hard to verify. Perhaps not-for-profits and the public sector are better suited when the trust consumers have in the product is crucial. Whatever the reason, it is unlikely that a for-profit industry of educational firms would ever take over the schools in this country, never mind that such industries exist in the restaurant, bar and supermarket industries. If Goldberg wanted to offer an alternative to the current public schools a better example might be the U.S. health care industry.

Sigh. I now know why it's more fun to write "yada, yada, yada."
-----
Cross-posted on the TAPPED blog.

More Bad News from Iraq

From the BBC:

The two minarets of the al-Askari shrine in Iraq, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, have been damaged by two explosions, officials say.

According to witnesses the minarets collapsed completely after being hit by bomb blasts around 0900 (0500 GMT).

The shrine houses one of two tombs in Samarra for revered Shia imams.

The bombing of the dome at the mosque in 2006 is widely believed to have set off a continuing spiral of sectarian violence in which many thousands died.

The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad says there are obvious fears now that this might give it yet further impetus.

Embroidery Blogging

I haven't had one of these for ages, mostly because I no longer have time to embroider, except with words. Or perhaps I've been having one of those creative pauses. Who knows? But I have a new idea in mind for a large wall hanging:

An Angry Chicken

It's going to have really frightening teeth and glowing eyes, while marching from right to left across the field. Very muscular and long-legged, with electric feathers and the talons should be frightening. It will leave an egg behind as it marches.

What do you think? A different kind of femininity? Or female power? Chicks and so on.

The more mundane reason is all those buttons I have, from always buying up old sewing baskets with their contents at yard sales and flea markets. I have ended up with a lot of buttons, and a pointillistic chicken might be a good way to use them in some creative way. I even have some rhinestone buttons which might work for the glowing eye. Or eyes. But I think a profile view is better.

Sigh. I haven't even finished the happy devil family yet.

And Another Thing

Katha Pollitt has started a blog at the Nation magazine. It's called "And Another Thing". Her first blogpost is up today. Let me just say that the trolls there are unusually trollish. I'm quite envious.

Just kidding. But you might check out the blog. Also Pollitt's most recent column.

Anchorwoman Wanted

No experience in news required but must have DD cups in bras.

Now you think that I have finally fallen off the tightrope between so-so sanity and honest insanity. But you are wrong. I'm no more insane than I ever am. This is how a Texas television station has decided to address the job specifications of a female newsreader:

Some might say KYTX president and general manager Phil Hurley has decided to pull his station's news ratings out of the toilet by stepping into the gutter.

The Tyler, Texas, CBS affiliate will premier its latest news anchor next week – Lauren Jones, an actress, bikini model and former World Wrestling Entertainment wrestler with no journalism training or experience.

While Hurley admits his decision to hire Jones will attract criticism, he sees it as a smart business move.

"We think this will accelerate our growth and that people will see this as entrepreneurial," he told the Longview, Texas, News-Journal.

Jennifer Pozner addresses the feminist points about this experiment. It really is like spitting in the eyes of women who actually work in the field. It denigrates their work and their experience. It makes the assumption that women are on television in order to be eyecandy for guys. In an odd way this is not that different from the radical Islamists' argument that women shouldn't be on television because they are eyecandy.

Why not have naked men read the news? I bet quite a few women would check that one out.

On Genarlow Wilson

This case passed me by when it happened. Even goddesses don't spot every single thing. But I remember reading about it on various feminist blogs and the consensus everywhere was that Wilson had been treated very poorly indeed. The short explanation of the Wilson case is this:

A Georgia Superior Court judge today ordered the release of Genarlow Wilson, who has served two years of 10-year prison sentence for having consensual oral sex with another teenager at a party when he was 17. Prosecutors said they would appeal the order.

...

The case began three years ago when Mr. Wilson was arrested for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a New Year's Eve party in 2003. Under Georgia law, that offense qualified as aggravated child molestation, a felony charge largely intended for use against adult sexual predators, not teenagers like Mr. Wilson, who was 17 at the time of the incident. He had no prior criminal record and was an honors student and star athlete.

Critics pointed out that if Mr. Wilson had engaged in full sexual intercourse with the girl instead of oral sex, under Georgia law he could have been charged only with a misdemeanor, because of an exemption written into the molestation law specifically to cover contact between minors. But because that exemption did not mention oral sex, when Mr. Wilson was convicted, he received a mandatory sentence of ten years in prison without possibility of parole.

Mr. Wilson was also charged with rape for being one of several people at the party to have sex with a 17-year-old girl, but he was acquitted of those charges.

The 10-year sentence was widely criticized — including by former President Jimmy Carter — as disproportionate, and Ms. Bernstein likened it to "cruel and unusual punishment."

Which it is, of course. Now that Georgia law has been amended, and just because of this case. But the amended law didn't help Genarlow Wilson. Hence the order for his release.

Added later: Scott Lemieux says that Wilson has not been released, after all. And yes, Wilson is most likely not an angel at all. But ten years is too much for what he was found guilty of.

President Bush in Albania

They like him real good over there, as you can see from this video. Diane pointed out that Bush seems to lose his watch during the greeting ceremonies. Someone really wanted to have a piece that had touched his skin.

I'm becoming a vituperous blogger, I am. The watch most likely just fell off.

Seeing Pink

The way to market tools and technology to women is by painting it pink. Honest. Here is one example:

Not so long ago, pink was a colour reserved for little girls. It was the colour of Barbie and bubblegum, of plastic tat that parents were pestered into buying, of pre-teen bedrooms and pocket-money accessories.

Then, suddenly, it was everywhere - and being targeted at grown women. Next month, for instance, sees the launch of Fly Pink, a "boutique airline designed especially for women" which plans to operate from Liverpool's John Lennon airport. The airline will offer flights to Paris for "shopping breaks" in customised pink planes, and, to complete the experience, will also provide pink champagne and complementary manicures before take-off.

Which just underlines the fact that it is now possible for women to experience their entire day in pink. You can work out with a pink yoga mat and weights; adorn your windscreen wipers with pink wiper wings; cook dinner on a pink George Foreman grill and style your hair with hot-pink hair straighteners. You can even see off would-be attackers with a powder-pink Taser gun.

I don't want a pink computer keyboard, say. I don't even like the color pink especially, and in any case I think of it as "light red". I'd like a keyboard that I could clean without spending twenty years in isolation with Q-tips and saliva as my only weapons. And no, you can't have a look at my keyboard. It's mostly not visible under the various fossils.

The article I link to above makes a very good point. When marketers focus on some group, such as businessmen, they try to improve the product based on what the members of that group say. But when marketers focus on women, all they can come up is PINK! Girls like pink! Yes, that's the ticket.

Immigration Judges Wanted: Democrats Need Not Apply

An interesting article in the Washington Post explains how one can become an immigration judge under the Bush administration:

The Bush administration increasingly emphasized partisan political ties over expertise in recent years in selecting the judges who decide the fate of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, despite laws that preclude such considerations, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.

At least one-third of the immigration judges appointed by the Justice Department since 2004 have had Republican connections or have been administration insiders, and half lacked experience in immigration law, Justice Department, immigration court and other records show.

Two newly appointed immigration judges were failed candidates for the U.S. Tax Court nominated by President Bush; one fudged his taxes and the other was deemed unqualified to be a tax judge by the nation's largest association of lawyers. Both were Republican loyalists.

Justice officials also gave immigration judgeships to a New Jersey election law specialist who represented GOP candidates, a former treasurer of the Louisiana Republican Party, a White House domestic policy adviser and a conservative crusader against pornography.

These appointments, all made by the attorney general, have begun to reshape a system of courts in which judges, ruling alone, exercise broad powers -- deporting each year nearly a quarter-million immigrants, who have limited rights to appeal and no right to an attorney. The judges do not serve fixed terms.

Neat. Even after this administration is but history, those judges will decide on immigration issues.

You really should read the whole article. It has sex or race discrimination as well. But this quote should get your juices going:

A few months earlier, another failed tax court nominee, Francis L. Cramer, a former campaign treasurer for Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), was appointed as an immigration judge. Cramer's bid for a seat on the tax court foundered after the American Bar Association's taxation section wrote a rare letter to the Senate Finance Committee, saying: "We are unable to conclude that he is qualified to serve."

Cramer was then hired by the Justice Department's tax division and was briefly lent to the department's Office of Immigration Litigation. Ashcroft approved him as an immigration judge in March 2004. The Government Accountability Office, a legislative watchdog, criticized the appointment, saying, "Converting a Schedule C [political] appointee with less than 6 months of immigration law experience to an immigration judge position raises questions about the fairness of the conversion."

Never give up.

The Forced Birth Movement

Reading about Sam Brownback's speech at the National Catholic Men's Conference made selecting a title for this post difficult, but finally I chose the same headline as Cliff Schechter. Among the many I considered (A Taste of Wahhabism, A Preview of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, Catholic Boys' Treehouses, Every Sperm Is Sacred) my favorite was "Rapists' Fatherhood Rights" -- but that's just too shrill. Well, it isn't, not really, when you consider the setting: A man giving a speech to a roomful of men. No women allowed at these conferences. And the speech includes this:

"Rape is terrible. Rape is awful. Is it made any better by killing an innocent child? Does it solve the problem for the woman that's been raped?" the Kansas Republican asked at the St. Joseph's Covenant Keepers gathering.

"We need to protect innocent life. Period," Brownback said, bringing the crowd of about 500 to its feet.

Remember that nobody in that audience has to worry about getting pregnant after rape or the possibility that he might die giving birth to the rapist's child. There is something extremely distasteful about the combination of the all-male audience and this particular topic, a topic about forcing women to give birth whether they wish to do so or not.
----
Cross-posted on the TAPPED blog. See Scott's response for some interesting arguments.

Chinaman, Laundryman

"Chinaman!" "Laundryman!"
Don't call me "man"! I am worse than a slave.
Wash! Wash! Why can I wash away the dirt of
others' clothes, but not the hatred of my heart?
My skin is yellow, does my yellow skin color the clothes?
Why do you pay me less for the same work?
Clever boss! You know how to scatter the seeds
of hatred among your ignorant slaves.
Iron! Iron! Why can I smooth away the wrinkle of
others' dresses, but not the miseries of my heart?
Why should I come to America to wash clothes?
Do you think Chinamen in China wear no dresses?
I came to America three days after my marriage:
When can I see her again?
Only the Almighty Dollar knows!
Dry! Dry! Why do clothes dry, but not my tears?
I work twelve hours a day.
He pays fifteen dollars a week.
My boss says: "Chinaman, Go back to China, if you
don’t' feel satisfied! There, unlimited hours of
toil: Two silver dollars a week.
If you can find a job."
Thank you, Boss, for you remind me I know bosses
are robbers everywhere?
Chinese boss says, "You Chinaman, me Chinaman,
come to work for me.
Work for your fellow countryman!
By the way, You 'Wong', me 'Wong', Do we not
belong to the same family! Ha! Ha! We are cousins!
O yes! You 'Hai Shan', me 'Hai Shan'
do we not come from same district?
O come work for me, I will treat you better:
Get away from here! What is the difference
when you come to exploit me:
"Chinaman!" "Laundryman!" Don't call me Chinaman
Yes, I am a "Laundryman"! the Workingman!
Don't call me "Chinaman," I am the Worldman.
"Chinaman!" "Laundryman!" All of you workingmen!
Here is the brush made of study,
Here is the soap made of action.
Let us all wash with the brush!
Let us all press with the iron!
Wash! Brush! Dry! Iron!
Then we shall have a clean world.

H.T. Tsiang from the Daily Worker, Aug. 15th, 1928

You can consider this my comment on the G8 Meeting, The World Bank and the continuing disasters that flow from them. And you can throw in the present day government of China as well as the United States and Lou Dobbs.

Hear Also: Ruth Crawford Seeger Two Ricercari performed by members of Contiuum on
Naxos: 8.559197

Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead.*

Posted by olvlzl.
We still have hemlock trees here, though it’s probably just a matter of time before the woolly adelgids kill them off. I can't imagine New England without hemlock trees, I don't know if I want to experience it.

The destruction of native species by invasive organisms isn’t much talked about, it’s just let to happen, treated like a minor matter in the religions of free trade and market economics. But even in the most pious activities of those faiths, the analysis of costs and figuring of monetary value, the losses are a major factor. The losses to the world in other terms hardly figure at all in the considerations of our corporate state which seems hell bent on reducing everything to a depressing half-life based on commerce and mind-killing entertainment.

You get the feeling that the reason they don’t talk about these kinds of things more is because people presented with enough information might come to the conclusion that giving up a huge amount of the biosphere for the enrichment of a tiny minority of the mega-rich isn’t worth it? Isn’t that fight, to save the living diversity we have now, worth more than the one over the analysis of dead fossils? Isn’t at least as important as the hundreds of thousands of words wasted over deploring the museum of superstition in Kentucky? The best way to fight that would be to turn it into a joke, and the people in charge of it seem to be doing their best to make that job easier.

Some of my friends in the life sciences resent the attention and resources that cosmologists and some of physics can command. More than one of them has talked derisively about “The Lords of Creation” in relation to the glamor attached to the search for the earliest particle of time in the universe while their research into living beings struggles for money. Maybe more emphasis should be placed on the living than on the dead and the inert. Without life the rest of it doesn’t matter.


* William Blake, Proverbs of Hell.