Echidnegate

The title is to tease one of the smart commenters on this blog! I'm going to build a gate to my garden. Proposals as to its shape are eagerly desired. Right now I'm vacillating between a Chinese moon gate and a simple solid gate with eyeballs painted on it. The eyeballs are to stare at any invaders and send them shrieking back to their lairs. Of course they will have no magic in them at all, but the repetition of many eyeballs should make them seem magical, if the repetition of political Bushisms makes us believe in them.

A snakegate would be nice, too, but that would require metalwork and I want to use my tablesaw skills on this gate.

On Monsters, Princesses and Cruella DeVille

They are sometimes all the same, as in the case of one Lynndie England, the poster-girl for everything that has gone wrong with the U.S. military in Iraq. The photographs of her leading a naked Iraqi detainee on a leash received frontpage coverage in all the best papers. What's the world coming to, the message seems to be. How can women abuse people? And how can the same women then get pregnant? Where did we go wrong?

As Richard Goldstein points out in the Village Voice, England is the symbol of the Torturegate even though the vast majority of those accused of torturing the detainees were male for the very reason that many don't associate women with the ability to commit violent acts. It's the man-bites-dog view of what's newsworthy, or as Goldstein expresses it: the bitch-bites-man.

The overall reaction to the women in Torturegate is naturally sexist in the sense that it is based on the assumptions that violent acts are not something the group 'women' engages in and that all women act the same in this respect. But there is also a subtler kind of sexism in some of the articles about England: that women should know better, given that women so often are the victims of sexual abuse. This is sexism because it implies that men would not have such moral prior knowledge.

What does the media make of the fact that some women played an integral role as torturers at Abu Ghraib? You can probably guess that it depends on the political slant of the writers: the right-wingers see in this the evidence of what eight years of Clinton administration and the don't ask - don't tell policy have wrought. Feminists are widely blamed for now celebrating the utter humiliation of men by women. George Neumayr in the Spectator goes on a wild and totally illogical rant about the whole escapade being a science-fiction movie created by Betty Friedan, and Elaine Donnelly, that little girl who doesn't want any other little girl to play with her guns, is quite sure that some feminists in the academia are salivating over the England pictures. I have not found a single feminist source for such celebrations, and I doubt that Friedan had anything to do with the Iraq war in general. But this doesn't matter in the wingnut world.

In fact, evidence in general doesn't matter there: the earlier right-wing argument against having women in the military at all was based on women's inability to act violently. Yet when the reverse seems to have been proved, it is this very reverse which is attacked as proof of the earlier argument. I guess that's why they are called wingnuts. It's the conclusion that matters, not how to get there, and the conclusion is always that women should not be in the military, but if this cannot be avoided they should be totally segregated from men. Otherwise the evil spectre of sex will appear somewhere in the forces, and we all know what comes from that: detainees on leashes, pregnancies and rapes. This point was repeatedly brought up by Deborah Simmons in Washington Times and Gary Aldrich at the townhall.com. Never mind that the military has always somehow obtained access to women for sexual purposes, just consider the prostitutes around the Philippine bases for an example, and never mind that abuse and torture of military prisoners has been common for centuries; ruling out unisex military forces would miraculously cure all these problems.

The left-wing writers don't arrive at the same conclusion, of course. But neither are they totally able to stay away from the question of gender and torture: Goldstein's article argues that the pictures of women as torturers allow the readers to engage in homo-sadistic enjoyment while somehow transforming this into seemingly heterosexual musings. He also links the pictures to the idea of the evil dominatrix, the Cruella deVille, if you like. Ta-Nehisi Coates believes that the Torturegate is bad news for women in the military, because it allows people like Linda Chavez to argue that women don't improve the tone of the military at all and that unisex troops were a big mistake. But Coates also wonders if women shouldn't have known better, given their victim status in the sexual field, and suggests that maybe the masculine ethos of the military makes women act much tougher than they otherwise would, just to be accepted as 'one of the guys'. One of the experts interviewed in this article thinks that women might be inherently less likely to torture than men, though no evidence is brought to support this claim.

Why is it that we can't focus on the torture as a whole, whether committed by men or women or both? What is it about Lynndey England and the other women accused of torture that pricks our curiosity so much? I don't think that the man-bites-dog explanation is adequate alone. I suggest a slightly wider reading of the whole phenomenom: a certain mythology of the genders which is well and flourishing in the extreme political right, but which also has subtler effects on all of us through tradition and popular culture.

This mythology assumes that women and men are defined by a small set of simple and extremely dualistic characteristics. While reality is, I believe, complicated, messy and full of exceptions and overlaps, the sex mythology doesn't allow for these. Rather, it defines a man by what is defined as 'not-woman' and vice versa. The easiest way to describe the relevant myths are by looking at what the extreme right believes to be true about men and women, as it is there that the myths have been retained in their purest forms. Their support bases are two: fundamentalist Christianity and a sort of quasi-scientific theory of evolutionary psychology. Somewhat astonishingly, these result in the same convenient view of the purpose of men and women in this world:

-men are protectors and providers, women are birth-givers and nurturers
-men are meant to be dominant over women, and women are meant to be submissive to men
-men are naturally more sexual than women
-men can't control their sexuality; thus, women must do it for men

I call these myths because of their power on the believers, and because of their extremist either-or formulation. Whether there is any scientific truth in any of them, in terms of tendencies, is clearly an empirical question almost impossible to answer given the simultaneous influence of culture, environment and any biological basis for behavior. What can be safely said, though, is that none of these dual classifications is true as a general unchanging rule.

Consider now the questions of women as torturers and of a unisex military force in the light of these myths: If women are supposed to give birth and nurture, how can a woman abuse someone? It's not nurturing. And how on earth can she then get pregnant? Moreover, what does it do to our definition of men if women act as protectors? (An abuser is a protector gone wrong, after all.) Also, if men are meant to dominate women, what does a picture of a woman leading a naked man on a leash do to us? Where does this woman belong in our classification? Either the classification falls apart, which is very painful for the believers in the mythology, or the woman must be labelled as a pervert, a deviant, a 'not-woman'.

And if men are naturally more sexual than women, yet can't control this sexuality, what will happen when women and men serve together in the military? The men will 'naturally' attack the women all the time. It is up to the women to refuse this, somehow, and if they can't then the idea of a unisex force has failed. Moreover, it is the women's fault that it failed.

I think that these ideas are in the air when people discuss Lynndey England and the other women involved in Torturegate. They explain most of the right-wing articles I have read and even some of the left-wing views. They explain why women's ability in the military is all the time questioned: women can't be good providers and protectors, because this is not in the mythology, and should they actually prove to be good at the job this will affect the definition of masculinity, take away the basis on which 'a man' is defined. Either way, the news are bad for those who believe in the myths.

The news are also bad for the women in the military. Practically everything they do, whether actually a success or not, will fail the mythology and provide grounds for getting rid of them or at least for isolating them from the 'real military'. They'll all be seen as monsters who torture men or as princesses incapable of hurting a fly, yet far too delicious to be let out alone.


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Thanks for the links to feministing.com (a good new blog) and mousewords (also a good new feminist blog).

How Bush Chose Stupidity

This post is supposed to suffice while I work on something much longer and more boring to harass you with. But it's interesting, full of deep educational and psychological dilemmas:

Bush may not have been born stupid, but he has
>achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. What makes
>mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least
>once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has
>discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time
>for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on
>name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by family
>connections. The most obvious expression of Bush's choice of ignorance is
>that, at the age of 57, he knows nothing about policy or history. After
>years of working as his dad's spear-chucker in Washington, he didn't
>understand the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, the second- and
>third-largest federal programs. Well into his plans for invading Iraq, Bush
>still couldn't get down the distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims,
>the key religious divide in a country he was about to occupy. Though he
>sometimes carries books for show, he either does not read them or doesn't
>absorb anything from them. Bush's ignorance is so transparent that many of
>his intimates do not bother to dispute it even in public.

Read the whole thing here.

We might disagree about the good looks, of course. But I am concerned that he couldn't tell Medicare from Medicaid (the first funds certain types of health care for people 65 and over, the latter funds nursing care for the elderly poor and health care in general for poor families), especially as one is a federal government program and the other is based on states. I suspect he carries books to work on his arm muscles. I prefer to put them on top of my head for posture improvement purposes.

A Very Important Post

Which ice-cream flavor do you like best? This is the time of the year to start seriously considering this fundamental existential question. Your answer will reveal your innermost secrets to all and sundry, so think carefully.

Strawberry ice-cream is for people who are unaware of the true taste of a virgin strawberry, straight from the fields. This may indicate a general tendency to be oblivious.

Vanilla is not as bland as it is painted in some nearby fields of enjoyment, though the flavor must come from real vanilla pods. Still, unless you only dip into it occasionally, you might be a little predictable.

Chocolate. I bet you think I'd choose this one, but I don't, and the reason is that a chocolate ice-cream is not chocolatey enough for me, yet it's too far from the generic flavor of ice-cream. If you choose chocolate, you might be yet undecided about your life values. Or you might have found a better version of the ice-cream than I have.

Peach, banana etcetera: See above for comments on strawberry. I don't like bits of fruit in other foods, so I'm prejudiced of course.

Licorice ice-cream: not generally available but I've had it once. If this is your choice, you are an adventurer or come from a foreign country where people routinely snack on licorice.

Garlic: it does exist. Anyone who prefers this is certainly a loner.

Mint with chocolate chips. This is my darling amongst all the flavors. If you pick this one you're a god or a goddess for sure.

Any real ice-cream lover is always ready for new flavor experiments, though. What are your favorites?

F*cked by the F*CC by Jeff Jarvis

Howard Stern is suffering in the claws of the FCC for the use of offensive language in the media. Jeff Jarvis in a recent Nation article argues that Democrats should take Stern's side in this row because a) censorship is wrong, b) Stern could deliver as many as eight million angry white male viewers to the Democratic Party and c) Jarvis likes to listen to Stern's shows.

All this is perfectly ok, even part c). We all have our little peccadilloes, though we usually don't advertize them in public. But Jarvis can't stop when the going is good; no, he has to try to prove to the reader that Stern is actually a really nice guy:

Let's be honest: We don't all talk like Hallmark cards and human resources directors. When we sit in the bar with friends, we gossip about people we hate; we joke about sex. And on our couches, when we watch the news, we think thoughts we won't admit. Stern admits them. Is he sexist? By many definitions, sure. But unlike many a wolf in sensitive-man clothing, he's straightforward about it. Is he racist? No. He has racists on the show, and he ridicules them because idiots are entertaining. Admit it: When you watch reality shows, you love to make fun of the fools on them, and that's not necessarily something to be proud of--but making fun of racist bozos is. Stern gives us credit for knowing they're offensive; he doesn't have to explain that to us or protect us from it. The nannies and the PC police only insult our intelligence when they think they need to save us.

Yep. Howard is a very nice guy. He's a sexist, ok, but at least he isn't a closet sexist: a pretend-sensitive new age guy. Howard's stuff hangs out in the open. And he isn't a racist, either. If you think so you are not very smart, not as smart as Jarvis is. And what a relief to know that the nannies and the PC police don't have to save "us". If only I knew who the "us" in the article might be: women? minorities?

Nope. I'm not going to lead a liberation army for Howard Stern, however many voters he might be able to deliver. Even if I was the Lady Liberty herself, Howard would only want to know about my cup size.

The Gifts of Cyberspace

So much to be thankful for! Here are some of my favorite things about participating in the cybercommunity:

1. I have met wonderful people, people whose road would never cross mine in real life.
2. I have also found out that some people are truly, truly crazy, which is also interesting.
3. I have learned zillions of new facts without paying for this learning or without having to go back to boring university or college.
4. I have learned that there are people who know nothing, and are proud of that.
5. Many people in the cyberspace have excellent manners: I get the courtesy and worshipping that a goddess expects.
6. Someone just called me a moron on another blog. It's fun to be called something totally new after all these centuries.
7. There are proper-thinking lefties in the cyberspace: a big, happy family!
8. There are also horrible meanie righties out there: it's good to know your enemy.
9. Cyberspace is a great excuse to procrastinate from life's boring aspects (work, vacuuming, talking to your in-laws).
10.It also reminds me of how nice real life can be: after hours of staring at the screen I lift my eyes up and see trees in full flower, hear birds singing and feel the slithering of hungry snakes clamoring for attention. We have lots of senses (especially us divines), and cyberspace only feeds a few of them.

Anti-feminist News of the Day

I've put on my bright-red two-piece suit with a very short skirt and I'm ready to be a media pundit. Imagine a big red mouth and very sharp white teeth, too.

Here we go: According to FAIR, the March for Women's Lives in 2004 wasn't worthy of the same coverage in the news as the Promisekeepers' March in 1997, despite the fact that the more recent march had many more participants:

A Nexis search of the week surrounding the women's march found a total of eight stories from the broadcast networks (not counting incidental mentions of the march): ABC, CBS, and NBC all ran two stories the day of the march; CBS also ran two stories the next morning. CNN, as a 24-hour cable news outlet, gave more extensive coverage to the event, running several reports on Sunday. But even CNN failed to treat the march as the historic occasion that it was, running just a small handful of brief march-related stories on Saturday and Monday.

Other cable news outlets focused not on the march itself but on abortion opponents, a few hundred of whom held a counter-protest at the march. Of three Fox News stories found on Nexis related to the march, two focused on anti-abortion activists (Special Report with Brit Hume, Hannity & Colmes, 4/22/04). Special Report examined anti-abortion opposition to the National Education Association's endorsement of the march-- a story that MSNBC also covered in that network's only march report found in the Nexis database. (Fox and MSNBC do not transcribe their news coverage as thoroughly as CNN does, so the amount of coverage on the three cable channels cannot be compared.)

To put the women's march coverage in perspective, FAIR conducted a similar Nexis search of the week surrounding the Promise Keepers march in 1997. The Promise Keepers, an evangelical men's organization that has been widely accused of promoting misogyny and homophobia, drew an estimated 480,000-750,000 demonstrators to Washington-- roughly three-quarters the size of the women's march. Despite its somewhat smaller size, the Promise Keepers received much more media attention: Stories began appearing on network news three days before the march and continued for two days afterward, with a total of 26 stories between the three broadcast networks-- more than three times the coverage the networks devoted to the women's march. Was the Promise Keepers march three times more newsworthy than the March for Women's Lives?

Was the Promise Keepers' march three times more newsworthy than the March for Women's Lives? But of course. What a silly question from FAIR. The Promise Keepers are for traditional values: the supremacy of men in the family, and traditional values are much more newsworthy (I initially wrote mewsworthy) than anything to do with those nasty dirty feminists. Who is it that owns the news networks, may I ask? Right, and this country is founded on ownership. Sheesh!

And in any case, according to Kathleen Parker all those women marching were so unladylike: why did they have to yell and scream when a suitably timed whisper in the right ear would have gotten better results and in a more traditional way? Sorry, Kathleen. We'll do better next time: the Ladies' Powder Puff and Whisper Convention next year, and Kathleen can lead us all. Now that'll guarantee us the necessary news coverage.

Elsewhere in the anti-feminist news, Spain is going to the dogs as we all well know. Not only are the Spaniards bowing to the terrorists and doing their bidding, but they're also quota queens! Think of this, half of the new cabinet consists of women, and the Prime Minister of Spain has vouched that his government will finally crack down on domestic abuse. Poor Kathleen Parker, will she get any sleep now?

Well, it's perfectly obvious what's going on in Spain: white Christian males are being oppressed, and nobody there lifts a finger. Domestic abuse is a private matter between consenting adults, and in any case families are sacred institutions and not to be tampered by outsiders. But then we all knew that this would follow after the Spaniards pulled out if Iraq.

I'm sure glad that I live in a country where truth still gets freely expressed. Like here in our very own anti-feminist news. And now a word from our sponsors: the Promise Keepers on how to get the checkbook away from the little wife...

Courtesy of TheaLogie

This is an interesting article about the spread of global warming abstinence in sex:

A group of US virgins and an evangelist are urging British teenagers to abstain from sex before marriage.
The Silver Ring Thing encourages young people to buy a silver ring and pledge to remain celibate.
The scheme has sold 20,000 of the $12 rings to US teenagers and is planning a British tour, preaching the beliefs and selling the rings for £10 each.
It is funded partly by the Bush administration, which is a strong supporter of abstinence.

But I was disappointed to read that the rings are to be worn on the fingers...

On Torture

Is torturing detainees un-American? Are those that torture just a few bad apples that ruin the whole barrel? Is the recently revealed torture in Iraq and Afghanistan some new perversion that has only now infected the armed forces of the United States and Great Britain?

Yes and no, naturally. It wouldn't be surprising if torture has become more common in the last few years, given the tenor of the war on terror and the simplified messages we have been fed about the responsibility for the 9/11 atrocities, and it's probably true that the worst cases of torture shown all over the newspages and television screen are not representative of the whole armed forces. In that sense torture may indeed be seen as traditionally un-American or un-Western.

But. Human beings have the capability to torture other human beings and animals as we well know. If a situation is carefully constructed to induce torture, that's what we will observe. Consider the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971. It picked a group of young male students, carefully vetted for good mental health and 'normality', and it then randomly assigned some of them to be prisoners and some of them to be guards. The prisoners were expected to participate in the experiment for its whole duration of two weeks, while the guards worked eight hour shifts.

The prisoners were housed in rooms made to look like a real prison, they were arrested by real police officers and taken to real police stations. They were searched, stripped and deliced before being committed.

The guards were told that it was their duty to maintain prison order but that they should not use violence.

The experiment had to be discontinued after only six days, because the prisoners (who first had revolted) had become depressed and the guards cruel. In particular, the night shift engaged in gratuitous abuse of the prisoners. This was the shift with no oversight by the experiment's creators.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is well known, both for its findings about the fragility of what we regard as 'civilized' behavior and as an example of the ethical problems inherent in this type of research (four of the participants suffered mental breakdowns). What it tells us is that torture can be induced, and quite rapidly, if the circumstances are correct: dehumanization of the other side, anonymity and strict hierarchical structures all increase the likelihood of abusive behavior.

This is not meant to serve as an apology for those who torture, but to point out, as the creator of the Stanford Prison Study did, that it might be the barrels that ruin good apples. Maybe almost all of us are capable of torture under the right circumstances?

And what would those circumstances be? I suspect that a war far away from home in a totally different culture might contribute to the necessary feelings of alienation, especially as it is combined with continuous attacks by the other side and an implicit justification of the whole campaing as a revenge for even worse butchery three years ago. Maybe some people can go out and kill others logically, coolly and rationally, and then simply remove all the necessary instincts like a uniform that needs laundering. Maybe. I doubt that this is very common, however.

What is likely to be much more common is exactly what we are now observing: a real life repetition of the Stanford Prison Study.

Nicer Greetings from the East Coast

Sorry for my outburst last night. I was tired. This post will serve to make partial restitution for it by telling about some of the interesting things to do in Philadelphia and New Jersey.

Philadelphia Museum of Arts has wonderful collections, including the best collection of Pennsylvania Dutch taufscheins and frakturs. These were baptismal and marriage certificates painted by local schoolteachers and ministers as well as itinerant painters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Pennsylvania. They burst with color and weird birds, flowers and monsters. The Pennsylvania Dutch were of course really of German origin (Dutch comes from 'Deutsch').

You can also see Rodin's The Kiss there. If you have seen it only in photographs, its small size will astonish you. The combination of power and diminutiveness is a good reminder not to trip over stereotypes in general.

It's just a few hours drive from Philadelphia to the seashore. Cape May diamonds are very affordable and have no link to wars, terrorism or the use of slave labor. They are quite lovely, or you can just pick up the pebbles as they come from the ocean. Cape May also has a fantastic bird sanctuary. It serves as a half-way resort for migrating birds, and in one day it's possible to see more different birds than some of us see in a lifetime.

And then there is the sea. The mother of us all. If you are lucky you can see the dolphins dancing their mystical messages in the far horizon. I wish I could understand what they are saying.

Greetings from Joisey

I've been to New Jersey. Now I'm totally fulfilled. I also saw Philadelphia. Lots of people there, and the food is not good, but I like the name. The city was named after Filip Adolph, a poorly known Swedish prisoner who was sent to the newly discovered continent to populate it along with other Swedish prisoners and prostitutes. Actually, I made this up but it could be true, one never knows. The Swedes did send prisoners and prostitutes to the area, though probably not all the way to Philadelphia.

That's the nice thing about history: whoever gets to print something first is regarded as a valid source.

I took the little snakes to see the sea. They liked the sand, but not the water. We collected lots of interesting pebbles with good vibrations, and had a very good time. Except for the fact that there are no real coffee beans in the state of New Jersey, or if they exist, they are kept carefully guarded from tourists. The snakes didn't mind the absence of coffee as they gorged on taffy, which meant that I had a bunch of extremely sticky snakes to take home with me. The smog from the factories stained them dark gray. The combination is less than fetching.

They're in the bathtub right now. The snakes, I mean. Now, tell me where the garden state is. I missed it somehow. But I did see lots of churches advertizing themselves as "independent, fundamental". How's that for a paradox?

Don't mind me, especially if you live in New Jersey or Philadelphia. I write equally nastily about every single place I visit, especially when I'm tired, dirty and coffee-deprived. I'm an equal-opportunity hater! Tomorrow I'll write about all the nice things that I saw and experienced!

Happy Mother's Day!

It's not today, but as I may not stay sugary-sweet all through the post I decided it would be nicer of me to post my greetings a little early, so there's time for the wounds I inflict to close by Sunday.

The Sunday that is the one day of the year when mothers are celebrated. The second Sunday of May as the Mother's Day began as something totally different from today's celebrations: it was created in the United States 150 years ago by one Anna Jarvis to organize a day to raise awareness of poor health conditions in her Appalachian community. Julia Ward Howe (the author of the lyrics to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic) borrowed the idea fifteen years later for peace rallies. She felt that mothers were especially suited for this work. It was the daughter of Anna Jarvis (also called Anna) who finally got the day made into a national holiday by Woodrow Wilson in 1914, though she supposedly regretted all her work later on when Mother's Day became increasingly commercialized.

Not all countries celebrate Mother's Day or celebrate it at the same time. The United Kingdom has its Mothering Sunday earlier in the spring. It began as a day when young women who worked as domestic workers could go home to see their mothers. It is an older holiday than the American one, but the earliest Mother's Day of all is probably the spring festival the Greeks dedicated to Rhea, the mother of some of the gods and goddesses that I know so intimately. Never met Rhea, though.

A special day for mothers sounds such a nice idea that I'm immediately suspecting some sort of a heinous plot. And there may be one: if you see enough Mother's Day commercials and ads you will soon learn that mothers are all-sacrificing and completely trustworthy; that's why they need a box of chocolates once a year. This heinous plot, and I don't mean the commercial one, makes all less-than-perfect mothers feel guilty, and that's 99.9% of us. What's more, the impression these ads and commercials give (me at least) is that any mother who doesn't think that one day off each year is a sufficient compromise for all the unending sacrificing and trustworthiness must be an ungenerous mean-spirited harridan.

As you may notice, I'm not too keen on Mother's Day. Yes, it's lovely when small children give their mothers home-made presents and scorched breakfasts, but it gets a lot less lovely when the whole society writes mothers off by having them fanfared for a period of few days and then forgets all about the job of mothering for the rest of the year. Besides, the media always uses the Mother's Day as an opportunity to bash women: either not enough of them are becoming mothers or too many of them are out there working rather than at home with their children or they fail in one of the zillions of other ways that journalists can think up. What we need is a reversal of the time spans allowed for Mother's Day and the rest of the year: one day a year that is not a Mother's Day.

I am a mother myself, though the rules for goddesses are somewhat different. For one thing, nobody dares to criticize me for the excess heads and tails that my children have. My offspring have all done very well, if I say so myself. The only one I worry about a little is Cerberus. He is such a yes-monster, always kowtowing to Hades and always working, working. He can't even come to see his poor old mother on this one day of the year when mothers are celebrated; no, he has to guard the entrances to the Underworld. Who would try to sneak in on Mother's Day, I asked him. George Bush? But my pleas fell on deaf ears. Cerberus would stay away, again. He sent me the same old card, of course, all about the all-sacrificing mother who now gets a card in return. Rubbish, total rubbish. I had a ball bringing him up, and when I needed a break I took it. No self-sacrifices there.

I probably should not have shared this with you, my dear readers. Anything mothers do will be used against them, and I can already see the headlines: "Goddess mother out gallivanting; son develops three heads."

The National Prayer Day

Today is the day. We are all supposed to pray today, even those of us who are atheists. I'm going to crash the local town prayer circle as a whirling dervish. The stitches were taken out today, and my hand is ready for some more enlightenment. I'm going to whirl right next to the mayor!

So what are you going to pray for? The recommended things in the newspapers are to pray for the Bush administration and the troops in Iraq. The administration sure could use some help, and the troops need to be brought home safely. But it would also be good to pray for the Iraqis and for all people of this world. Pray that honor killings (like this horrible one in Turkey) will end. Pray that AIDS will stop ravishing this world. Pray that we all finally get some brains and start talking to each other instead of killing each other. Pray that the powers-to-be on this planet get some of the humility that is excessively the lot of the poor and the oppressed.

Pray for the animals. Pray for this planet in its hour of crisis. Pray for a second chance, or a third one. And then get up and get active. That's how prayers are answered.

Does Donald Know?

Donald Duck, that is, and what he might not know is this:

In yet another case of corporate media censorship, executives at Disney have decided not to distribute filmmaker Michael Moore's new documentary entitled, "Fahrenheit 911". Moore's new film is highly critical of the financial ties between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family as well as the action taken by the government in secretly evacuating relatives of Osama bin Laden out of the country immediately after the attacks on September 11.

Published reports indicate that although the movie is ready for release, Miramax studios have been told by parent company Disney that it has decided to ban distribution of the film.

Why? According to one Disney executive, "It's not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle".

This according to Common Cause. Donald might be interested, given that he runs around without anything on his lower body, and this is regarded as perfectly acceptable by the Disney executives. Also, all the nephews hate Donald, and Uncle Scrooge is a really sick example of what capitalism can do to warp a person (or a duck). Not good publicity for either family values or capitalism, one might think.

So what's one more film by Michael Moore compared to decades of anti-parental, anti-money, pro-nudity indoctrination by Disney? Come on guys, give Michael's film a chance to be assessed at its own merits or the lack of them.

Oh Atrios!

I love to visit Eschaton and poke my nose into the comments threads. It's like going to a big leftie carnival. But now I can't go there. Atrios has an ad about tortured chickens with a picture. As I mentioned in the previous post, torturing living creatures is horrible, and that includes chickens. Let this serve as a warning for anybody else who is equally lily-livered. Let me know when that particular picture is further down the screen.

There is a larger point to this post, I think, which is the way in which we tend to preach to the converted. Who gets all the letters about abused and tortured animals pictured on the envelopes? Answer: those kind-hearted souls who have already given money to stop animal abuse. Not the torturers. Who gets letters telling about human rights abuses and AIDS in Africa? Probably not the people committing abuses or enabling the spread of the disease, probably not even the people who are indifferent. No, the recipients are the ones who are already involved in trying to stop bad things from happening.

I understand why this happens, but it stinks, nevertheless. We should find a way to fix this, or alternatively, have the senders of these letters come around once a week to pick up the hundred pounds or so of Bad News Mail I get during the average seven days. The senders should also apologize, if not to me, then to the trees that have been transformed into unnecessary paper. I'm already giving what I can, do you hear me!

I even give to chicken-causes, so there's no need to remind me how ineffective I have been.

Vacationing in the Liberal Coalition, Part II

More places to visit, to escape the stresses and disappointments of life, to get reinvigorated and informed and even to laugh a little. Here are our current suggestions (our as in Echidne's Travel Agency, our motto being: SSSmooth as a SSSnake):

-Bushland: Here you can learn all about our president and his life. May I offer Tony Wright's enjoyable discussion on Bush and racism? or Wanda's interesting theories about why Bush dumbed down and holied up? (and no, Wanda, he won't suddenly turn all normal). Or something a little further in the wilderness? How about some time with Rush Limbaugh? Thomasblog gives us Rush as the ridiculer of people with Aspergen's Syndrome, and Mercury visits David Brock's new site to learn more about the horrible things that routinely slither out of Rush's mouth. For those who like ideas more than people, I recommend archy on how even in Italy evolution and schools don't mix that well all the time, or Bryan on how the right sees attacking business interests as a really cruel thing to do, or musing's musings on Christian spam (among other funny stuff).

-Women as torturers: A topic in the news for obvious reasons. Kick the Leftist tells how one right-winger argues that the news about detainee abuses in Iraq must be false, as everybody knows that women make inept torturers. Edwardpig doesn't doubt that women can be torturers but he's nevertheless disappointed in finding this to be possible. And he's disappointed in finding out about his own disappointment. I don't really know what to say here. Nobody should torture other creatures, but everybody has the potential of doing so, given the indoctrination and emotional stress that produces torturers out of otherwise fairly normal people. To assume that women are exempt from this is not that different from assuming that women as a group are exempt from things like intelligence. In other words, women are not mythological creatures (with the exception of yours truly).

-Other interesting destinations: Victoria has a good survey article on some of the issues that have to do with the current EU enlargement. American readers should read this one. Chris Brown has started a new series of interviews with 'ordinary' people (nobody is really ordinary), and the first one is very interesting. Rubber Hose has a fascinating glimpse into what it means to have visited a distant hard-to-reach-locale, and then to find it in the news (Siyu), and Invisible Library gives an excellent discussion on codes in human life. Finally, Rick Blaine reveals how he has dropped lawyering and taken up standup comicing and poker playing!

Good News Only, Thank You Very Much

How well is the Bush administration working for women? Consider women in the labor force. What information can they get from our government? Here is a list of books and fact sheets which were available in 1999 but which have vanished in 2004:


Books:

Don’t Work in the Dark, Know Your Rights
1993 Handbook on Women Workers

Fact Sheets

Domestic Violence:A Workplace Issue
Earning Differences Between Women and Men
Women Who Maintain Families
Hiring Someone to Work in Your Home
20 Facts on Women Workers
Facts About Asian American and Pacific Islander Women
Work and Elder Care:Facts for Caregivers and Their Employers
Women in Management
Child Care Workers
Outlook on Women Veterans
Black Women in the Labor Force
Women of Hispanic Origin in the Labor Force
Worth More Than We Earn:Fair Pay for Working Women
Wage and Occupational Data on Working Women
What Works:Fair Pay for Working Women
Meeting the Needs of Today ’s Work Force:Child Care Best
Practices
Equal Pay:A Thirty-Five Year Perspective
First National Working Women ’s Summit
Working Women Count
Care Around the Clock:Developing Child Care Resources
Before Nine and After Five
Median annual earnings for year-round full -time workers by
sex in current and real dollars,1951-1997 (Statistical Report)
Women ’s Jobs 1964-1996:More Than 30 Years of Progress
(Statistical Report)
Women ’s Earnings as Percent of Men ’s 1979 -1997 (Statistical Report)


Here are the still available and any new fact sheets:

Hot Jobs for the 21st Century
Women Business Owners
20 Leading Occupations for Women
Nontraditional Occupations for Women
Women in High Tech Jobs (Statistical Report)
Trafficking in Persons
Occupational Outlook Handbook (Bureau of Labor Statistics)


What do you think? That we no longer need to worry about fairness and justice in the workforce? No longer need to know our rights? No longer need to have information on minority women as a separate category? Are all the news now good news (with the exception of trafficking)? Or is the government just trying to save us money by cutting back on publications of interest mainly to women? Hmmm.
________
The source for these statistics is a pdf file which you can download here.
Postscript: Trish Wilson (in the comments) shows that the disappeared materials are back! This ruins my post, of course. Oh well, I guess on balance it's positive that the materials are available again.

Silly, silly,...

There is a time for everything on this earth, including being silly. In other words, my muse has a hangover.
Silly 1: Men who look like Kenny Rogers
Silly 2: A gift for someone who has everything
Silly 3: Test your IQ (a silly concept) with the question below:

There is a mute who wants to buy a toothbrush. By imitating the action
of brushing one's teeth he successfully
expresses himself to the shopkeeper and the purchase is done. Now if
there is a blind man who wishes to buy a pair of sunglasses, how should he
express himself?

The answer will be in the comments section.

My Recent Conversion

You read it here first! I've become a conservative anti-feminist. I'm going to join the Independent Women's Forum and the Republican party's extreme right edge. I'm going to turn into a commentator for Faux News, and I'm going to have my hair beautifully permed. Everything in this snakepit will be ladylike and smell of violets, and the heels in my shoes will be so high that just looking at them will make people go dizzy.

This is part of my new career plan. This is the way to make lots of money and to become a famous woman. Then, after a few years of getting my face into every single news-related show in this country, and after writing several best-selling woman-hating books I shall recant my conversion and start a feminist website with two million dollars worth of grant money from all kinds of very kind leftie billionaires. And this will naturally make me famous and rich all over again.

It worked for David Brock, with some obvious adjustments:

David Brock, the former right-wing journalist turned liberal, describes himself as once having been a rather large cog in the machinery of the conservative media.
Now Mr. Brock is starting a new endeavor built to combat the very sector of journalism that spawned him, with support from the same sorts of people (Democrats) about whom he once wrote so critically.
With more than $2 million in donations from wealthy liberals, Mr. Brock will start a new Internet site this week that he says will monitor the conservative media and correct erroneous assertions in real time.

His original claim to fame was the smearing of Anita Hill in the early 1990's:

For Mr. Brock, 41, the project is yet another considerable step in his public evolution from conservative muckraker to liberal activist. That evolution began after Mr. Brock began publicly apologizing in the late 1990's for reporting that brutally criticized Anita F. Hill and a report that Arkansas state troopers had helped Bill Clinton procure paramours when he was the governor of Arkansas, the veracity of which he is no longer sure.
Mr. Brock has also said that he knowingly lied in an article he wrote for The American Spectator in 1992 that raised doubts about the credibility of Ms. Hill. The article formed the basis for a later book about Ms. Hill, whose charges of harassment almost derailed Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court.

What do you think? Will this work more than once? If it does, I had better hurry before someone else gets the same idea. The first change on this blog will be in its name: From 'Echidne of the snakes' to either 'Mrs. Typhoon' (though I never actually married him) or 'Cerberus' Mom'. Or both: 'Mrs. Typhoon, Cerberus' Mom'. That should please the family values crowd as I have nicely erased any reference to me as a goddess or a person. The second change will be in the layout and color. I need to get lots of pink stuff and pictures of lambs. The third change will be the hardest: some extreme right-wing anti-women reporting. Would it be too unethical to steal it from mensnewsdaily.com?

How to Report on Religion

Barbara Bradley Hagerty is the religion correspondent for the NPR, the National Public Radio. She works in the very middle of the dreaded liberal media, at least according to our friends on the right.

What qualifies someone to be a religion correspondent? I was curious about this, especially after the storm Hagerty has caused in our little blogosphere (more about that later). It seems that Hagerty was trained in economics and law and that her prior experience is largely in covering legal affairs and crime as well as politics. She seems not to have had any special training in religion. Is this the customary way of selecting religion correspondents? What qualifies Hagerty to report in this area?

My guess is that it is her own fervent faith. She is quite open about her own religiousness, and used to be affiliated to the now-famous World Journalism Institute. The WJI once had this interesting mission statement:

To accompany reporting with practical commentary on current events and issues from a perspective committed to the final authority of the Bible as the inerrant written word of God (2 Tim. 3:16-17; 2 Peter 3:14-16).

but after Atrios wrote about them and Hagerty in some detail, the mission statement was diluted to the usual wishy-washiness. Nevertheless, it's pretty clear that the WJI has a fundamentalist flavor. Of course, Hagerty's one-time association with them doesn't necessarily mean that she subscribes to fundamentalism.

But she sure does subscribe to Christianity. Which is interesting, as the media in general frowns upon journalists who take an activist role in the fields that they report. Things are different in religion, the last bastion of immunity from critical reporting in the media. Not only doesn't the reporter need any training in the area, being fanatically invested in one side of the debate might be an asset. Hmmm.

The blogosphere of the left doesn't like this. Neither do I, actually. That's why I'm grateful for Atrios and his readers as well as Body and Soul for doing some critical research and reporting on Hagerty's research and reporting. Consider this direct excerpt from Hagerty's program on John Kerry and the Catholic Church (thanks to Atrios):

HAGERTY: Last week some 300 people protested church doctrine on birth control in front of the Vatican embassy in Washington. Frances Kissling was there. She's the president of Catholics for a Free Choice.

Ms. FRANCES KISSLING (President, Catholic for a Free Choice): Catholics are no different than the rest of Americans. They vote on their pocketbook, they vote on the economic issues, Social Security, Medicare, crime, education and health. They don't vote on the abortion issue.

HAGERTY: Surveys from Georgetown University show that the number one issue for Catholics in 2000 was the economy. Taxing, spending and government programs came in second. Moral issues were a distant third.

(Soundbite from a Mass)

HAGERTY: But tell that to the worshipers at the 8:00 Mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington. All but one interviewed there on a recent morning said they won't vote for Kerry. They said they knew he personally thought abortion was wrong but that his stand on abortion rights had a larger meaning. Here's Philip Monos(ph), Carrie Gress(ph) and Ted Flynn.
>

Mr. PHILIP MONOS (Worshiper): It's really character and personal integrity, and a man who does not seem committed to his faith, I don't see why he would be committed to his ideas or necessarily even his country.

Ms. CARRIE GRESS (Worshiper): It seems that he doesn't take his faith seriously, and it's something that it seems like he's using as a political card instead of something that he deeply believes in and is committed to.

Mr. TED FLYNN (Worshiper): I would work very hard against Senator Kerry because I think he is actually, from start to finish, a four-star phoney.

HAGERTY: Another early worshiper, Charles Loveless, a union official, downplayed the abortion issue.

A straightforward both-sides-are-covered story about the religion, one might think. Of course, one side has a famous named leader of the group interviewed (Frances Kissling), whereas the majority of the other side consists of the 'ordinary people's views, random opinions from the actual church pews. Too bad that only one of the nonfamous people told Hagerty his job (the union guy).

Quite innocent, isn't it. So where's the storm? Well, it turns out that St. Matthew's Cathedral doesn't have 8 a.m. masses on Sundays but on weekdays. People who go to mass on weekday mornings may quite safely be seen as more religious than those who only attend on Sundays, don't you think? It also turns out that the randomly selected congregants might not in fact be so randomly selected, but just could be quite well-known people from the Catholic right.

Hagerty is very good in subtly flavoring her reporting with the True Word of God. Maybe God told her to find out that the only congregant who downplayed the abortion issue was a union official, but forgot to ask her to check about the jobs of the others she interviewed? Maybe God told her that the average run-of-the-mill Catholic can be found attending a weekday morning mass?

Maybe. But this reporting does make me a little worried about Hagerty's impartiality as a correspondent on religion. I think that the NPR should hire me as their correspondent on heathenism, and let me write shadow articles on all these god-and-goddess issues. This would be good for religious diversity and would frighten the right wing. It would also increase my budget for nectar. All good causes.