Sunday, September 30, 2007
A Collection of Fine Stories by Timothy Anderson Posted by olvlzl.
Timothy Anderson’s stories of what it's like to be a gay trucker and growing up in the West are not like any other gay literature you’re likely to have read. He’s a pretty good writer who should be more widely known. Does anyone know what he’s up to these days? I hope he’s well and writing.
Think You'd Hate To See Their Worse Side? Posted by olvlzl.
If this article is accurate, you will. You will.
In Catholic churches today the gospel is Lazarus and the Rich Man* , this is relevant because also in today’s Boston Globe magazine Jake Halpern gives us a depressingly awful look at the up and coming crop of selfish young things America's education system is turning out. While a few of the would be cream of their generation seem like they might not be so bad, the article is in praise of some really horrid brats. Halpren and a host of psycho-business babblers think that these self-centered little creeps are just what the world needs. Why doesn’t really become clear though there is some mention of how corporations are outsourcing new labs and such. Why these bright-young-brats, once they become successful owners of corporations wouldn’t follow the same profit-driven path as their elders in Me-Generation I isn’t much mentioned. The article says that it’s their narcissistic qualities and sense of entitlement are the best thing about them. Why theirs will prove to be less of a disaster for the world than the George W. Bush generation's cocky selfishness is far from obvious.
Are these little snots the face of the future ruling class? I doubt it will turn out as Halpern and his experts predict, though any prediction in a decaying empire is difficult. Some of us were predicting that eventually the evangelists of the bottom line would discover that India and other countries were producing a potential white collar class who would do at least the same quality of work as those living in the U.S. for much less money. I’d thought that this would lead white collars here to find the virtues of unionization and protecting jobs here. Maybe that will happen, though if the Globe Magazine has laid aside it’s current favorite subjects of conspicuous consumption of the home and fashion kind for this kind of rumination, it’s not going to be easy. Those who have every reason to know they’re not going to climb to the top are still being encouraged to blow life into the burned out tinder. They’ll have to give up that pipe dream before they’ll sign the union card.
As far as I’m concerned, selfish creeps of any generation can go to hell. Nothing good is going to come of them.
Update: An e-mail complains that the reference is too obscure and excessively religious. Without further comment.
In Catholic churches today the gospel is Lazarus and the Rich Man* , this is relevant because also in today’s Boston Globe magazine Jake Halpern gives us a depressingly awful look at the up and coming crop of selfish young things America's education system is turning out. While a few of the would be cream of their generation seem like they might not be so bad, the article is in praise of some really horrid brats. Halpren and a host of psycho-business babblers think that these self-centered little creeps are just what the world needs. Why doesn’t really become clear though there is some mention of how corporations are outsourcing new labs and such. Why these bright-young-brats, once they become successful owners of corporations wouldn’t follow the same profit-driven path as their elders in Me-Generation I isn’t much mentioned. The article says that it’s their narcissistic qualities and sense of entitlement are the best thing about them. Why theirs will prove to be less of a disaster for the world than the George W. Bush generation's cocky selfishness is far from obvious.
Are these little snots the face of the future ruling class? I doubt it will turn out as Halpern and his experts predict, though any prediction in a decaying empire is difficult. Some of us were predicting that eventually the evangelists of the bottom line would discover that India and other countries were producing a potential white collar class who would do at least the same quality of work as those living in the U.S. for much less money. I’d thought that this would lead white collars here to find the virtues of unionization and protecting jobs here. Maybe that will happen, though if the Globe Magazine has laid aside it’s current favorite subjects of conspicuous consumption of the home and fashion kind for this kind of rumination, it’s not going to be easy. Those who have every reason to know they’re not going to climb to the top are still being encouraged to blow life into the burned out tinder. They’ll have to give up that pipe dream before they’ll sign the union card.
As far as I’m concerned, selfish creeps of any generation can go to hell. Nothing good is going to come of them.
Update: An e-mail complains that the reference is too obscure and excessively religious. Without further comment.
Luke 16:19-31
‘There was a rich man who used to dress in purple and fine linen and feast magnificently every day. And at his gate there used to lie a poor man called Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to fill himself with what fell from the rich man’s table. Even dogs came and licked his sores. Now it happened that the poor man died and was carried away by the angels into Abraham’s embrace. The rich man also died and was buried. ‘In his torment in Hades he looked up and saw Abraham a long way off with Lazarus in his embrace. So he cried out, “Father Abraham, pity me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.” Abraham said, “My son, remember that during your life you had your fill of good things, just as Lazarus his fill of bad. Now he is being comforted here while you are in agony. But that is not all: between us and you a great gulf has been fixed, to prevent those who want to cross from our side to yours or from your side to ours.” ‘So he said, “Father, I beg you then to send Lazarus to my father’s house, since I have five brothers, to give them warning so that they do not come to this place of torment too.” Abraham said, “They have Moses and the prophets, let them listen to them.” The rich man replied, “Ah no, father Abraham, but if someone comes to them from the dead, they will repent.” Then Abraham said to him, “If they will not listen either to Moses or to the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead.” – The New Jerusalem Bible
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Will Sully and Breitbart Pooh-pooh the Murder of Emmett Till Next? Posted by olvlzl.
Roger Ailes (the great blogger, not the FOX slag) has been calling out Andrew Sullivan and Andrew Breitbart for being water carriers of the "Matthew Shephard wasn't a victim of a hate crime" campaign. You should look at the links he gives in today's post. Roger's Thursday post is a good short summation of the anti-Shephard effort.
Art For Art’s Sake For Pete’s Sake Posted by olvlzl.
Note: I wrote this after thinking about the art incident at Logan Airport last week, little did I think that the right wing columnist Jeff Jacoby would write on the same subject. Reading his piece made me think twice about posting this, it could be said that we come to the same conclusion and I don't want to share anything with Jacoby. But that isn't the case at all. I would encourage anyone who is interested to look at his column and see where we come out. It's not remotely in the same neighborhood. I should point out that my title is taken from the Marc Blitzstein opera The Cradle Will Rock. As you can see we started out from different places too.
Just about anyone who tries to be a musician ends up doing lots of odd jobs. Back when I used to occasionally tune pianos to make a bit of extra cash, I tuned one for a woman who had been a friend of the artist Lee Krasner. It took me twice as long to tune her piano as it normally would have because she was a wonderful conversationalist. She really wanted conversation more than a tuned piano. Since I’d met her through attending political meetings, we mostly talked politics. After excoriating the political and social right, she liked to name-drop her acquaintances from back when she lived on Long Island.
I asked her if Krasner’s famous husband, Jackson Pollock was as much of a drunken, violent, misogynist, jerk as they said. She was happy to be in a position to tell me that, if anything, he was worse. She told me that Krasner was a much better artist than her mega-famous husband and a much nicer person. Not being very familiar with Krasner’s paintings but having never seen anything to Pollock, I was willing to take her word for it.
An important question someone once ask about the abstract expressionists is why would anyone care about the expression of the inner life of a bunch of self-absorbed, drunken, woman-hating jerks? Another interesting question about the abstract expressionists that comes to mind is why it is possible, perhaps likely, that someone looking unprepared at the work of Pollock or most of the abstract expressionists without gaining an insight into their “inner personality”, the basic conceit behind what they were doing. If that’s true, what does that say about the purpose and intellectual basis of their school*?
That was years before Frances Stonor Saunders’ book “Who Paid The Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War” was published. The book showed that Jackson Pollock wasn’t the rebellious genius against the established order that the entirely out-of-date romantic fairy tale requires, he was providing THE ESTABLISHMENT exactly what it wanted, art without content that could be promoted through good-old capitalist style PR into a major “intellectual movement” to counter art whose subject matter opposed the established order. The purpose of the promotion of Jackson Pollock, through the Henry Luce empire of establishment propaganda among other venues, had nothing to do with art. It was an intellectual con job, taking advantage of the fact that fads and their commercial opportunities exist within even the allegedly pure realms of artistic creation for its own sake. Pollock’s work was promoted because it was meaningless. He was made famous because his work suited the purpose of the establishment through one of its most repressive arms, the CIA.
Saunders did a pretty good job of showing how art with no meaning was promoted because art became entirely too interested in real life to suit the powers of the CIA in the first half of the twentieth century.
After reading Saunder’s book I’ve come to suspect that the promotion of “art” that is free of real content, of any connection to reality and which didn’t even have the utility of craft has led to decorative, boring, useless, purposeless, parasitic “art”*** that the greater public finds irrelevant and ignores in large numbers. It’s the equivalent of bland wall paper. I’ve wondered if the joke that much of art has become wasn’t the result of the establishment undermining the greatest artistic potential of art, it’s subversive quality.
But I'm not telling you that you shouldn't like what you do. For anyone who likes Pollock now, my advice is to go on liking him.
* What does it mean when art that was inspired by a discredited intellectual theory outlives its stated theoretical basis? The art created by the basis of various discredited psychological systems, for example. Does what is now considered discredited matter in the response to the art? I don’t have an answer except that it probably depends on the overriding quality of the art and the kind of artistic meaning that goes beyond even what the artist could have known about.
The music of the past might provide some clues. You can listen to Bach’s cantatas and other works without believing in 18th century Lutheranism and get a lot out of it, probably much of it just what Bach intended to put there. But Bach was working intentionally through a long tradition of technique to achieve an effect. Schoenberg's expressionism might be an even better example to compare, his and the German expressionist painting was certainly not similar in content to the later "expressionists". The psychological theories that underpinned expressionism are certainly discredited as science, though there are still "therapists" seeing clients and charging them for putting them into practice.
* Willem de Kooning is an exception. It’s impossible to look at his not-exactly abstract paintings and not suspect they reflect how he regarded women.
The only two artists I know anything about related to abstract expressionism that I like are Robert Motherwell and Mark Rothko. From what I understand, Rothko had issues, himself. The pictures I’ve seen by Motherwell are meaningful to me exactly because of their associations with reality.
*** With the prices paid for a lot of their paintings it would be pointless to claim that they didn’t have value if of a largely non-artistic type. Their status as items of commerce will ensure that Pollock’s and other’s art will retain their esteem in the world of “art”. And there are people who enjoy looking at them. I don’t begrudge their fans whatever they get out of looking at them, though I suspect what they get out of them is no more than what the viewers, themselves, supply. I’m just pointing out that they weren’t painted with the intention of having intellectual content, they had the advantage of government support excactly for the reason that they didn’t have intellectual content and they were painted out of a dubious psychological, theoretical assumptions. I guess this is my way of declaring that I’m on the side of their non-establishment rivals of the time, Jack Levine and Antonio Frasconi for example.
As for the esteem of the art market and how it is bestowed, it would be fun to know just how much of it runs as deep as the fashion clothing market. And it’s not just a matter of the failed-would-be cutting edge. I’ve got a very strong suspicion that sooner or later someone will get a PhD for writing a dissertation about the artistic virtues of Thomas Kinkade.
Just about anyone who tries to be a musician ends up doing lots of odd jobs. Back when I used to occasionally tune pianos to make a bit of extra cash, I tuned one for a woman who had been a friend of the artist Lee Krasner. It took me twice as long to tune her piano as it normally would have because she was a wonderful conversationalist. She really wanted conversation more than a tuned piano. Since I’d met her through attending political meetings, we mostly talked politics. After excoriating the political and social right, she liked to name-drop her acquaintances from back when she lived on Long Island.
I asked her if Krasner’s famous husband, Jackson Pollock was as much of a drunken, violent, misogynist, jerk as they said. She was happy to be in a position to tell me that, if anything, he was worse. She told me that Krasner was a much better artist than her mega-famous husband and a much nicer person. Not being very familiar with Krasner’s paintings but having never seen anything to Pollock, I was willing to take her word for it.
An important question someone once ask about the abstract expressionists is why would anyone care about the expression of the inner life of a bunch of self-absorbed, drunken, woman-hating jerks? Another interesting question about the abstract expressionists that comes to mind is why it is possible, perhaps likely, that someone looking unprepared at the work of Pollock or most of the abstract expressionists without gaining an insight into their “inner personality”, the basic conceit behind what they were doing. If that’s true, what does that say about the purpose and intellectual basis of their school*?
That was years before Frances Stonor Saunders’ book “Who Paid The Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War” was published. The book showed that Jackson Pollock wasn’t the rebellious genius against the established order that the entirely out-of-date romantic fairy tale requires, he was providing THE ESTABLISHMENT exactly what it wanted, art without content that could be promoted through good-old capitalist style PR into a major “intellectual movement” to counter art whose subject matter opposed the established order. The purpose of the promotion of Jackson Pollock, through the Henry Luce empire of establishment propaganda among other venues, had nothing to do with art. It was an intellectual con job, taking advantage of the fact that fads and their commercial opportunities exist within even the allegedly pure realms of artistic creation for its own sake. Pollock’s work was promoted because it was meaningless. He was made famous because his work suited the purpose of the establishment through one of its most repressive arms, the CIA.
Saunders did a pretty good job of showing how art with no meaning was promoted because art became entirely too interested in real life to suit the powers of the CIA in the first half of the twentieth century.
After reading Saunder’s book I’ve come to suspect that the promotion of “art” that is free of real content, of any connection to reality and which didn’t even have the utility of craft has led to decorative, boring, useless, purposeless, parasitic “art”*** that the greater public finds irrelevant and ignores in large numbers. It’s the equivalent of bland wall paper. I’ve wondered if the joke that much of art has become wasn’t the result of the establishment undermining the greatest artistic potential of art, it’s subversive quality.
But I'm not telling you that you shouldn't like what you do. For anyone who likes Pollock now, my advice is to go on liking him.
* What does it mean when art that was inspired by a discredited intellectual theory outlives its stated theoretical basis? The art created by the basis of various discredited psychological systems, for example. Does what is now considered discredited matter in the response to the art? I don’t have an answer except that it probably depends on the overriding quality of the art and the kind of artistic meaning that goes beyond even what the artist could have known about.
The music of the past might provide some clues. You can listen to Bach’s cantatas and other works without believing in 18th century Lutheranism and get a lot out of it, probably much of it just what Bach intended to put there. But Bach was working intentionally through a long tradition of technique to achieve an effect. Schoenberg's expressionism might be an even better example to compare, his and the German expressionist painting was certainly not similar in content to the later "expressionists". The psychological theories that underpinned expressionism are certainly discredited as science, though there are still "therapists" seeing clients and charging them for putting them into practice.
* Willem de Kooning is an exception. It’s impossible to look at his not-exactly abstract paintings and not suspect they reflect how he regarded women.
The only two artists I know anything about related to abstract expressionism that I like are Robert Motherwell and Mark Rothko. From what I understand, Rothko had issues, himself. The pictures I’ve seen by Motherwell are meaningful to me exactly because of their associations with reality.
*** With the prices paid for a lot of their paintings it would be pointless to claim that they didn’t have value if of a largely non-artistic type. Their status as items of commerce will ensure that Pollock’s and other’s art will retain their esteem in the world of “art”. And there are people who enjoy looking at them. I don’t begrudge their fans whatever they get out of looking at them, though I suspect what they get out of them is no more than what the viewers, themselves, supply. I’m just pointing out that they weren’t painted with the intention of having intellectual content, they had the advantage of government support excactly for the reason that they didn’t have intellectual content and they were painted out of a dubious psychological, theoretical assumptions. I guess this is my way of declaring that I’m on the side of their non-establishment rivals of the time, Jack Levine and Antonio Frasconi for example.
As for the esteem of the art market and how it is bestowed, it would be fun to know just how much of it runs as deep as the fashion clothing market. And it’s not just a matter of the failed-would-be cutting edge. I’ve got a very strong suspicion that sooner or later someone will get a PhD for writing a dissertation about the artistic virtues of Thomas Kinkade.
The Stink Isn't Bad Enough Yet Posted by olvlzl.
Being one who regularly thumbs through Molly Ivins books for morale building (I. F. Stone is another) I was glad to be reminded of one of her more memorable pieces by Jon Ponder of Pensito Review. Molly said that the only way to break of dog of killing chickens was to:
take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around the dog’s neck, good and strong. And leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so bad that no other dog or person will even go near that poor beast.
The idea was that the dog would be cured of the habit. My experience is that a stout fence makes a better solution to the problem, it’s been a long time since one of our dogs killed a chicken. Not that it’s for lack of desire. But the prediction that George W. Bush was going to stink like a month old chicken carcass and make the Republican party about as welcome as the miscreant dog at an afternoon tea may be coming true. Jon Ponder makes a good case which is nice to think about, though I wouldn’t count on that alone to win the next election.
But the Republican Party is only half of the problem. The American Corporate media imposed George W. Bush on the United States, first through their endorsement of him during the 2000 campaign, then in his and his crime families’ theft of the election, then again when through the most stunning example of incompetence in national security and the power grab that took the place of securing the country, then through his trumped up invasion of Iraq and his stunningly incompetent occupation.... Is the smell bad enough for you yet? Apparently it isn’t for the media since they’ve had that stinking thing on for eight years now. Without the corporate media, and I'd certainly include NPR in that, the worst presidency in the history of the country would still be a toss up between Bush I and Nixon.
take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around the dog’s neck, good and strong. And leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so bad that no other dog or person will even go near that poor beast.
The idea was that the dog would be cured of the habit. My experience is that a stout fence makes a better solution to the problem, it’s been a long time since one of our dogs killed a chicken. Not that it’s for lack of desire. But the prediction that George W. Bush was going to stink like a month old chicken carcass and make the Republican party about as welcome as the miscreant dog at an afternoon tea may be coming true. Jon Ponder makes a good case which is nice to think about, though I wouldn’t count on that alone to win the next election.
But the Republican Party is only half of the problem. The American Corporate media imposed George W. Bush on the United States, first through their endorsement of him during the 2000 campaign, then in his and his crime families’ theft of the election, then again when through the most stunning example of incompetence in national security and the power grab that took the place of securing the country, then through his trumped up invasion of Iraq and his stunningly incompetent occupation.... Is the smell bad enough for you yet? Apparently it isn’t for the media since they’ve had that stinking thing on for eight years now. Without the corporate media, and I'd certainly include NPR in that, the worst presidency in the history of the country would still be a toss up between Bush I and Nixon.
Will Clarence Thomas Ask Rush About His Verbal Lynching
Of U.S. Servicemen who speak the inconvenient truth?
Why is he rehashing the lies that got him confirmed to the court now?
Why is he rehashing the lies that got him confirmed to the court now?
Limbaugh Could Eat The Head Off A Baby, Live On Camera
and he wouldn’t get the flack that Move On did. Posted by olvlzl.
Being on record as having said that, despite it's being entirely true, “General Betray Us” was dumb political linguistics, and that George Lakoff and Move on going on the slimy NPR was even stupider politics, I’ve got to ask, where will the phony outrage be for Limbaugh’s latest? He refered to soldiers who have seen what’s happening in Iraq and who say that it’s a disaster are “phony soldiers”. It’s only one in decades of the hypocritical, serial-polygamist, drug addicted, draft dodger’s string of outrageous lines. But you’ll wait forever if you expect to hear the DC media Heathers slam him.
In related matters, Scott Simon has declared that Larry Craig is a victim of a liberal lynch mob. Scotty, boy, where’s your outrage for the gay men and lesbians who are the victims of Larry Craig’s voting record and even worse record of political hypocrisy? Isn't it nice when the DC media takes a poor victim of leftist discrimination under its wing?
Being on record as having said that, despite it's being entirely true, “General Betray Us” was dumb political linguistics, and that George Lakoff and Move on going on the slimy NPR was even stupider politics, I’ve got to ask, where will the phony outrage be for Limbaugh’s latest? He refered to soldiers who have seen what’s happening in Iraq and who say that it’s a disaster are “phony soldiers”. It’s only one in decades of the hypocritical, serial-polygamist, drug addicted, draft dodger’s string of outrageous lines. But you’ll wait forever if you expect to hear the DC media Heathers slam him.
In related matters, Scott Simon has declared that Larry Craig is a victim of a liberal lynch mob. Scotty, boy, where’s your outrage for the gay men and lesbians who are the victims of Larry Craig’s voting record and even worse record of political hypocrisy? Isn't it nice when the DC media takes a poor victim of leftist discrimination under its wing?
Plumbing Emergency
the house, not the geezer. I'll be busy with the plumber, if he ever gets here. I hope to post later today.
Oh, yeah, Posted by olvlzl.
P.S. Anyone know a good book about beginning plumbing that doesn't have the word Dummies or Idiots in the title?
Oh, yeah, Posted by olvlzl.
P.S. Anyone know a good book about beginning plumbing that doesn't have the word Dummies or Idiots in the title?
Friday, September 28, 2007
Visiting Sylvia's Restaurant
Bill O'Reilly did, and he was shocked (shocked!) to find that a restaurant operated by people of color was ... a restaurant. A funny take on this can be found on Crooks&Liars.
Onwards, Christian Soldiers
Beliefnet interviews Senator John McCain. You can watch him talking about how this nation is a Christian nation, for example. A transcript is available at the link, too.
McCain is not the only presidential candidate Beliefnet has interviewed. John Edwards and Sam Brownback have also given their views on faith. What struck me most about Brownback's answers was the very last one:
What's the one thing that you want people to know about Senator Sam Brownback's run for President that they don't know about either who you are or what you would do? Why they should support you?
Well, it's why I'm running is what I would want them know, and I'm running to rebuild the family and renew the culture.
I will take, and have taken, a position on a broad set of issues, which I think are all very important. But, at my core, why I'm doing this is to rebuild the family and renew the culture. And that's what I'd want them to know.
Note the repetition. Note the ominous term "rebuild the family". And note that this means something very specific for Brownback. It's the patriarchal family he wants to rebuild and that is what he is offering to do as the president.
The Kyl-Lieberman Iran Amendment
Is it just a symbolic slap as the Fox News website reports? Or can it be interpreted as the Senate authorizing the use of war against Iran as Senator Jim Webb suggests? Senator Joe Lieberman tells us not to worry:
Lieberman said Webb was off-base on his interpretation of his proposal.
"Our colleague (Webb) has given the darkest possible interpretation ... There is no intention of declaring war," Lieberman said.
Let me get this right. We have an amendment which is not clear enough to immediately tell us whether it authorizes war against Iran or not? And we should instead take the reassurances of Joe Lieberman on this issue?
Could it possibly be that all those Democrats who voted for the Kyl-Lieberman Iran Amendment were fully guaranteed its symbolic nature? Nothing about it smelling like the first step in the propaganda campaign to get the U.S. entangled in yet another war which can only be "won" with the use of nuclear weapons or something of equal horror?
Sure, it could be that the Democrats as the poor and embattled majority had no choice but to vote for this amendment which may or may not be symbolic. It could also be that someone mislaid all those Democratic spines.
More on Burma/Myanmar
It is an isolated country run by a military junta which does not care about the rest of the world, with the possible exception of China, because Burma falls within China's sphere of influence. It is a country with very little infrastructure, a very high rate of inflation, totally inept public management and great poverty, the latter despite the great natural resources the country also has. It is a very devout country and the leadership of the Buddhist monks in the most recent demonstrations is therefore important.
The people are, however, without weapons and without real power to influence the outcome of the situation unless they are willing to be slaughtered in large numbers. The military is in power and the military has all the weapons.
Whether the current unrest is just one of those times when the pressure kettle that is Burma is allowed to let off some steam before the pressure returns is unclear. It seems to me that the Burmese people cannot cause change without foreign assistance and that this assistance should be something different from a trade embargo which mostly hurts the poor.
But if I am wrong and the protests turn into a revolution, who is there in Burma with the expertise to manage a government? Aun Sang Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for over a decade, and in many ways her major role now is a symbolic one. This is not a trivial role at all, but being under house arrest is not the way to get the required training for running a country. Most of her closest allies are imprisoned if not dead.
I wish I could write something more positive about these events. Freedom is not on a march in Burma.
Friday Cat Blogging
This is FeraLiberal's Emma. She's wondering what Henriette (who belongs to plum p) is doing in the next picture:
She has a drinking problem!
You have a problem with that?
Wars As Video Games
To see how that works, check out this video on Fox News. It's all blustering and game plans and comparing whose is bigger.
Is this part of the publicity campaign for the next Bush Wars? And if so, is this the Empire Strikes Back?
Thursday, September 27, 2007
You Tarzan, Me Nuts
Yes, there used to be a Friday cat blogging post up here. And, no, it's not Friday today. I'm going nuts. Or more nuts than usually. What fun!
Added later: I read all the Tarzan books when I was an itty-bitty goddess, because my uncles had saved them. Even then I thought the guy who wrote them was fairly nuts. I didn't have the proper vocabulary for describing what bothered me in those books or the Mars series. But reading them or all the other stuff I read seems to have done no permanent damage to me. Or so I tell myself when looking into the "goddess-mirror" with the snake scales frame.
Ooh! A Chris Matthews Post!
Now your week will be complete. Chris Matthews decided to share with his audience the qualms he has about women, once again:
Transcript:
MATTHEWS: Do you find it difficult to debate a woman?
DODD: No, not at all. I haven't faced one in the eight elections I've been involved in, but I think here this is a question of looking for leadership. There's no more important election, Chris, in our lifetime than the one that's going to be conducted about 14 months from now. […]
RUSSERT: What I want to hear is the conversation tonight between president Clinton Hillary Clinton about president Clinton's comments last year on MEET THE PRESS that we ought to have an exception that if we know the number three guy in Al Qaeda knows a bomb is going off and where it's going off, it's okay to beat the hell out of him. Have a presidential (inaudible).
MATTHEWS: Let me tell you how short Hillary's leash is. She was asked by you, sir, about whether we're going to get full disclosure of contributors to presidential libraries. And she did not feel that she had the latitude in her husband's absence to give you an answer. She said, you'll have to ask my husband, as if you're a guy going door to door trying to sell someone and says you'll have to wait for my husband to get home. It was unbelievable that she wouldn't answer that. Never mind, let's drop this.
Now do a reversal. Think of a woman with such complicated views of men talking as a fairly mainstream political pundit, opining that men are sorta too aggressive to be leaders or something similar to that. What do you think would happen to her?
The point, which I'm hammering here very hard indeed, is that a female pundit with mirror-image problems to those Matthews appears to have would never, ever in a million years be regarded as "mainstream". She'd be so far in the distant planet of feminazis that nobody would mention her without some involuntary shivers.
On Burma/Myanmar
I have been listening and reading on the current protests, doing some learning, but I'm not yet ready to say anything very useful yet. In the meantime, check out the work brownfemipower has done in putting together lots of sources on the events, together with some pictures.
Verizon e mobile!
I was all prepared to write a long and interesting post on Verizon's decision to block text messages from Naral Pro-Choice America, but then Verizon changed its mind:
Saying it had the right to block "controversial or unsavory" text messages, Verizon Wireless last week rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon's mobile network available for a text-message program.
But the company reversed course this morning, saying it had made a mistake.
"The decision to not allow text messaging on an important, though sensitive, public policy issue was incorrect, and we have fixed the process that led to this isolated incident," Jeffrey Nelson, a company spokesman, said in a statement.
"It was an incorrect interpretation of a dusty internal policy," Mr. Nelson said. "That policy, developed before text messaging protections such as spam filters adequately protected customers from unwanted messages, was designed to ward against communications such as anonymous hate messaging and adult materials sent to children."
Mr. Nelson noted that text messaging is "harnessed by organizations and individuals communicating their diverse opinions about issues and topics" and said Verizon has "great respect for this free flow of ideas."
The other leading wireless carriers had accepted the Naral program, which allows people to sign up for text messages from Naral by sending a message to a five-digit number known as a short code.
Text messaging is a growing political tool in the United States and a dominant one abroad, and such sign-up programs are used by many political candidates and advocacy groups to send updates to supporters.
But legal experts said private companies like Verizon probably have the legal right to decide which messages to carry. The laws that forbid common carriers from interfering with voice transmissions on ordinary phone lines do not apply to text messages.
I still think that the whole debacle gave as a foretaste about what might happen when carriers get the right to determine the content they carry.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
What To Write
My ideas file is empty right now, probably because this front page has lots of good stuff that used to slumber in the ideas file. Perhaps you could just read the front page again, and then send me some chocolate?
Can I hold a candle to myself? I looked up the "can't hold a candle to" phrase to find out its roots. It is all about apprentices once holding the candle while the master worked. Neat, and it means that I can't hold a candle to myself. Unless I hold it with the snake tail, naturally.
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