Friday, March 27, 2009
Into the wild with BSG (by Suzie)
Even if you never watched the new “Battlestar Galactica,” you may find the following interesting. I want to comment on gender, ethnocentrism and disability in the finale.
Spoiler: The remnants of a human civilization and their Cylon (cyborg) allies settle on our Earth. They break into groups around the planet. Of the main characters, one woman dies of cancer, as expected. Another vanishes into thin air, not as expected. One goes off with her husband and child. Another is with her husband. A third is with a male lover. Three men end up on their own, but no woman does. Our society has a hard time imagining women on their own, not in relation to men.
A man alone in the wilderness can prove his “masculinity,” i.e., traits that have been associated with men, such as strength and independence. Women may explore nature for various reasons, but they usually do it despite traditional notions of femininity.
Artists often have depicted women in nature, usually for the pleasure of the male viewer, such as a naked nymph bathing in a stream. A fascinating commentary on this is Swedish photographer Annika von Hausswolff’s series “Back to Nature,” crime-scene-style photos of dead women in natural surroundings. Her work, which I saw as part of the Global Feminisms exhibit, may remind men that women in the wilderness can become prey because of their gender. Men may attack other men, but their gender is unlikely to be the main reason.
Once, when I found myself in the neighborhood, I visited Yellowstone National Park in the late fall. I remember looking back on a trail, seeing a man ascending, and feeling a moment of panic. I was relieved when a ranger came along. Not all women think this way, but there are enough of us to make it an issue. For example, Melissa McEwan at Shakesville writes about TV shows that make some women uncomfortable by ignoring the risk of sexual assault.
Back to BSG: The humans and Cylons decide to give up technology before heading into the wild, except for a few tricks they will teach the preverbal humans already inhabiting the planet. For more on the colonialism of the Colonial fleet, check out Hoyden About Town.
It might seem odd for cyborgs to give up technology, but these wanted to be more human, and some felt love and devotion for humans. They already had given up the ability to reproduce and resurrect through technology. One of the show's themes was how enemies could leave war behind. In the end, the Cylons who had remained at war and who valued themselves as creatures of technology were all killed, and no one seemed to mourn this huge loss of life. The robots that looked less human went off on their own, but again, no one seemed to care.
Amanda at Skepchick brings up the disability angle:
And then 39 thousand people all together decide to give up all technology? … In one fell swoop, they created new disabled people and guaranteed deaths for others. What happened to those without good vision or hearing that was previously fixed with glasses and hearing aids? What about the diabetics? What about those with curable cancer?Without my glasses, I can’t find my glasses. And I hate the thought of whittling a catheter for myself. I have incurable cancer, but I’d still like to live a bit longer. Although there are people with disabilities who head into the wilderness and give up technology, we can’t afford to valorize and romanticize it the way others do. The BSG finale would have been no happy ending for the likes of me.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Interesting Times...
The new unemployment numbers are out:
Showing the labor market's considerable strain, the number of people collecting state unemployment benefits reached yet another new record, jumping 122,000 to a seasonally adjusted 5.56 million, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
The four-week average of these claims rose 123,750 to stand at 5.33 million -- in itself a record high since the U.S. began compiling these statistics -- also as of in the week ended March 14.
So is this piece of news concerning IBM:
Reports of deep job cuts at International Business Machines (IBM) come at a potentially delicate time for the company—just as it is hoping to secure money from the federal stimulus package. The company will lay off as many as 5,000 U.S. workers in its Global Business Services unit, transferring some of the work they performed to India, according to media reports.
IBM spokesman Mike Fay declined to confirm or to comment on any job-cut plans, which were reported on Mar. 25 by The Wall Street Journal (NWS) and Bloomberg News. The cuts will affect mainly information technology and consulting work in such areas as customer relations management and supply chain management, says Lee Conrad, national coordinator of Alliance@IBM, a group that is seeking union representation at IBM and is allied with the Communications Workers of America Local 1701.
Substituting cheaper Indian workers for the more expensive American ones may make sense for IBM. But should a firm like that get subsidized by the U.S. taxpayers?
An interesting question, don't you think?
Odd Bedfellows...
What a difference a president can make! During the era of George Walker Bush the United States were in bed with the Saudis, the Iranians, the Pakistanis and the Vatican in all conferences having to do with women's rights. This may surprise those of you who have read about the Iranians, say, as a possible U.S. enemy. But when it comes to the proper roles of women the fundies of all religions agree!
Which is scary. But at least that odd symbiotic arrangement doesn't function under the Obama administration. The U.S. fundies don't have the weight of the U.S. government behind their views. I'm grateful for that.
Well-Aimed Anger
I wrote about the dearth of women among Op-Ed columnists not that long ago. This beautifully angry letter to the Washington Post makes that point and a few others:
Sunday's editorial pages are presumably the most-read of the week. They should represent the most critical and varied thinking of the week and set the standard for editorial pages. Help me understand the thinking behind the selection of the March 15 writers:
Eleven white guys, one white woman. At least six are more than 60 years old. Four are elected Republicans, but none are elected Democrats, even though the Senate, the House and the White House plus a majority of the governorships are controlled by Democrats. I do not remember Democrats being overrepresented on your pages during their "wilderness years." Quite the opposite.
The letters chosen for publication show the same lack of diversity: six letters by five men and one woman.
Do you think that men submit eleven times as many manuscripts to WaPo than women do? And five times as many letters to its editors? Because one might make some sort of a case in WaPo's defense if that were the case. But I veryvery much doubt that the differences in submission rates are that vast.
I still think that what we are seeing is the odd way women count in the public sector: as a representative of the group 'women'. Hence the soap operas where we have the funny guy and the serious guy and the nasty guy and the old guy and --oh-- a woman or two.
This is not something only newspapers or television shows do. It's almost everywhere! Honest. I've been entertaining this flu by reading books and magazines and newspapers, by listening to foreign news radio stations and by watching television fluff, and the Incredible Invisible Women are everywhere! We are even invisible to ourselves!
Thus, William Saletan is the great expert on liberal views on abortion, Nicholas Kristoff is the go-to-guy on helping the women of the world and the most famous child-rearing experts and chefs are men, too, even though women do most child-rearing and cooking in this world. If this is true in such clearly female-dominated fields, how audible do you think women's voices will be outside those fields?
So I'm angry. Or at least discontented. And yes, I know that the reasons for all this are complicated and not amenable to instant correction, and I also know that matters are much improved from the past in this country. But I'm beginning to suspect that anger is a very important and useful emotion, because it's harder to treat angry women as invisible.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Hedging Your Bets
The New York Times tells us this lovely morning that some hedge fund managers are still rolling in it:
As major markets and economies careened downward last year, 25 top managers reaped a total of $11.6 billion in pay by trading above the pain in the markets, according to an annual ranking of top hedge fund earners by Institutional Investor's Alpha magazine, which comes out Wednesday.
James H. Simons, a former math professor who has made billions year after year for the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, earned $2.5 billion running computer-driven trading strategies. John A. Paulson, who rode to riches by betting against the housing market, came in second with reported gains of $2 billion. And George Soros, also a perennial name on the rich list of secretive moneymakers, pulled in $1.1 billion.
Of course, their earnings were not unscathed by the extensive shakeout in the markets. In a year when losses were recorded at two of every three hedge funds, pay for many of these managers was down by several million, and the overall pool of earnings was about half the $22.5 billion the top 25 earned in 2007.
Remind me to do an economics 101 post on those odd labor markets for 'financial geniuses' when I feel better. I'm not quite up to making it juicy and fascinating right now.
Instead, I'd like to draw your attention to an earlier post of mine, one about a study which argued that aggressive and risk-loving men have an edge in financial trading. It's a fun study to contemplate now that the markets have truly exploded. Some people even suggest that it may have been the macho corporate culture of financial firms that landed us in this mess.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Good News
This is:
Exerting its authority under the Clean Water Act, EPA notified the lead federal permitting agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, yesterday that it planned to review permitting for two coal mining operations in West Virginia and Kentucky.
In a statement, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said her agency "will use the best science and follow the letter of the law in ensuring we are protecting our environment."
EPA plans to assess the Central Appalachia Mining's Big Branch project in Pike County, Ky., and the Highland Mining Company's Reylas mine in Logan County, W.Va.
Mountaintop mining involves the removal of summit ridges to expose coal seams and the dumping of debris into valleys, a practice EPA says is likely to pollute water and severely damage or destroy streams.
EPA said it found the companies' plans for mitigating environmental damage in the two projects inadequate. The agency said it would meet with representatives of the Army Corps and the mining companies to discuss additional protective measures.
Imagine the Environmental Protection Agency actually protecting the environment!
The recession has taken over the news coverage to such an extent that it's easy to walk by all these other good news. But they do matter, especially because they are trying to reverse some of the damage done during the eight Bush years.
Now, if we only could regulate the financial markets....
Did You Know
That women in Hollywood give birth really young? Like before they were born themselves:
The common belief that one dog year is equal to seven human years could just as easily be applied to female actors as Alsatians. It must be down to the Californian water, but something seems to happen to the women in LA so that they speed through the years at a far swifter rate than that of their male contemporaries. According to film casting agents, anyway.
It is all too easy for a female actor to find herself cast as the mother of someone who once played her boyfriend as soon as she blows out the candles on her 35th birthday cake. This has long been an accepted fact of Hollywood life, and one that most women keep schtum about as they know they should be grateful to get any roles at all in their decrepit post-30s.
But last weekend, Hope Davis finally broke ranks to admit she was somewhat "peeved" when she was recently offered a role playing the mother of Johnny Depp, a concept that would have tested the skills of the most talented special effects department, seeing as Davis was actually born the year after Depp.
Astonishing. And I never realized this:
Rewind to The Graduate. Unfortunately, that ultimate older woman, Anne Bancroft, was older than Dustin Hoffman by a mere five years.
So how common is this particular type of ageism/sexism? And how does it affect male actors? Do they get cast into fatherly roles too young? Heh.
Reading While Sick
Not necessarily a good idea. I surfed the net inbetween coughing fits only to come up with stuff like this:
SHE may have the most talked-about forearms in US political history, but Michelle Obama revealed yesterday that she has a weakness for hamburgers and chips and is more concerned about her hips.
After a national discussion about her taste for sleeveless dresses - and the consequent exposure of her toned biceps – the wife of President Barack Obama appears to be having a little more trouble keeping other parts of her anatomy in trim.
Mmmm. And sigh. A big sigh.
Then I came across yet another article about Weird Stuff Women Do. They hump poles in front of men and this humping has increased with the lack of non-humping jobs. But that's really great news for the women because they make humongous amounts of money:
As a bartender and trainer at a national restaurant chain, Rebecca Brown earned a couple thousand dollars in a really good week. Now, as a dancer at Chicago's Pink Monkey gentleman's club, she makes almost that much in one good night.
The tough job market is prompting a growing number of women across the country to dance in strip clubs, appear in adult movies or pose for magazines like Hustler.
Employers across the adult entertainment industry say they're seeing an influx of applications from women who, like Brown, are attracted by the promise of flexible schedules and fast cash. Many have college degrees and held white-collar jobs until the economy soured.
...
Brown, meanwhile, has a ready answer for those critical of her career choice.
"I have job security," she said.
But does she have job security? Health insurance? I wonder, given this explanation of how the women are paid:
Dancers are independent contractors, paying clubs a nightly flat fee depending on how long they work. At the Pink Monkey, for example, dancers who arrive at 7 p.m. Sunday through Thursday pay a $40 "house fee," while women who don't arrive until midnight pay $90. And they keep their tips.
That's not a description of an employee. So why are the clubs called employers in the earlier quote?
I should have stuck with Terry Pratchett.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Idle Thoughts
This could be because I have the flu (after getting the shot, too), but I see a connection between the kind of culture that results in 'honor' killings and what quite a few guys here say to each other when they get angry.
An example of the latter from Eschaton comments threads:
You know, your sister gives lousy blowjobs.
Toothy.
But you knew that already, didn't you?
Z
----
That's the Z we all know and love! Good to have you back.
(I sort of feel like the guy who dangles a drink in front of the recovering alcoholics nose.)
And that thing I said earlier about your mother, I didn't mean it. After 8yrs in the ground, her puss doesn't smell half as bad as it did when she was alive. The necrophilia fetish was her idea, though...
E
Note how the attacks are against the other man's female relatives and their sexuality? You insult a man by insulting the sexuality of his mother or his sister or his wife. Probably his daughter, too. But you don't insult the sexuality of his father or his brother or his son. Interesting, is it not?
These slurs are not the same as a culture which assigns women the whole burden of honor in the family, but it's not that terribly different, either. Same roots, perhaps? It would be an interesting study to see how many people actually hold those views, clutched deep inside their puny hearts or something, and to look at their cultural backgrounds. The view of family honor as lodged within the women's genitals is supposed to have been prevalent around the Mediterranean.
O'Reillery
This is very weird, unless one thinks of it as bullying. Which it is. Also an attempt to make everybody so scared of 'sudden interviews' that they won't say anything unpleasant about old Bill:
According to a summary posted on the website of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, on the program's March 23 edition, host Bill O'Reilly will address "why ... the far left, in cahoots with NBC News, hurt a rape victim and her family." The post appears to be a reference to an "ambush" interview of Center for American Progress deputy research director Amanda Terkel reportedly conducted by Factor producer Jesse Watters. In a March 1 post to the blog ThinkProgress, Terkel noted that O'Reilly was scheduled to speak at a fundraiser for the rape survivors group Alexa Foundation and wrote that he "has made controversial comments about an 18-year-old woman, Jennifer Moore, who was raped and murdered, implying that it was partially her fault." In a March 23 post, Terkel wrote: "This weekend, while on vacation, I was ambushed by O'Reilly's top hit man, producer Jesse Watters, who accosted me on the street and told me that because I highlighted O'Reilly's comments, I was causing 'pain and suffering' to rape victims and their families." But O'Reilly has previously suggested that the "ambush journalism" conducted by his producers is limited to targeting "public servants" and stated that prior to those "ambush" interviews, subjects would either be asked on the program or asked "to issue a clear statement explaining their actions."
Amanda Terkel presents her statement of the events here. Much of it sounds icky.
Pseudo-trendlettes
I'm so fucking tired of these so-called* social trends. They are always about women and how hard it is to be one. Honest. The New York Times specializes in them, though this particular example is from USA Today:
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 67% of women with children under 18 work, and women make up 46% of the labor pool. But this recession could soon make women a majority of America's workforce: 82% of the 2.5 million jobs lost since November were held by men.
Behind that cold statistic is an often heated rearrangement of the family dynamic. With gender roles and responsibilities being radically redefined, wives now face the pressure inherent in being the sole breadwinner while also retaining their household responsibilities. Meanwhile, husbands must reconstruct their definition of contributing to the family enterprise, often swapping a paycheck for a broom.
Read through that a few times. It doesn't get any clearer, actually. Somehow the suggestion is that if 46% of the labor pool is female we have a patriarchal home for the majority of people, a home where women do the sweeping and such, but if that percentage rises past 50%, the sky will fall! Menz will have to clean! They will become depressed because of the loss of status and so on.
I'm not ridiculing the people in these stories. Losing a job is a very unpleasant experience. But this making up of silly trends is such an insult to all those 67% of women with children under 18 who have jobs outside the home. Actually, it's an insult to everybody.
----
*So-called trends, because there's usually no follow-up of any of these astonishing trends and when someone carries out such a follow-up the trend turns out not to have been a trend at all (Remember the large bump in births which was supposed to happen after 911? Never happened.) Also so-called trends, because there's never any attempt to define how many people might be affected by the said trendlette. All that are usually offered are anecdotes. As we all know an anecdote is not hard to find on anything.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
The Insoluble Problem of The Rights of People With The Most Severe Mental Illness by Anthony McCarthy
Sometime this month would have been the 37th birthday of one of my nieces, if she hadn’t died several years ago. Her death certificate didn’t state the cause of her death which was complications of severe mental illness. We don’t know what mental illness, she’d had about as many diagnoses as she had psychiatrists, psychologists and clinical social workers over a period of twenty-two years. And those are just the ones I remember.
Her life started out with such promise, she was, in many ways a very fine person. She was very talented in many things and she was very intelligent. Unfortunately, that intelligence matched with an incomprehensible maze of diseased thinking, which made any attempt at treatment even less effective. She resisted everything, she turned everything into a maze of frustrating games, guessing, dodges and deceptions. Her father abandoned her when she was quite young, my sister did everything possible in the two decades that she went from being difficult to being impossible and then on into a spiral that ultimately led to her death. Until the last months of her life just a simple change of behavior would have saved her but even that possibility entered into the spiral of manipulation. And no one was more manipulated by the madness than she was. She wanted to be well. She wanted to be able to function and have a better life.
One of the few times she improved in the last decade of her life was when she was involuntarily admitted to the state hospital. It could have been the enforced order or just the desire to get out but she came out in a lot better shape than she went in, she kept herself together for more than a year afterwards. When the engine of madness that killed her started up again the psychiatrists and psychologists and clinical social workers all seemed to be more interested in pleasing a client than they were in saving her life. She was a danger to herself, we all knew that she belonged in custodial care. I was and am convinced that the refusal of the mental health professionals she dealt with was largely due to the fashion for dumping the severely mentally ill out of the state hospital to save money. After watching her deteriorate over the following years, it was clearly not done in her best interest. She was desperately unhappy out of the hospital, she was the toy of her illness and of the people who took advantage of her diminished state. We were shocked how many people are low enough to prey on the mentally ill, we hadn’t suspected there is a class of slime that seems to look for them.
My sister and the rest of the family did what we could, she lived with four of us in those years. There were several of the 28-day clinic stays, which did no good except to run up huge bills that my sister is still paying off. I’m sure the length of those has something to do will billing insurance companies. Those never paid the full cost, even at that. Some helped more than others. The worst one provided her with models of self-destructive behavior learned from other patients and buzzwords with which to assert an independence that was illusory. The week before her 18th birthday her pediatrician, who was a friend of mine, told me that once she was legally an adult that no one would be able to help her, that the law would prevent that. That advice, given from lengthy experience with treating mentally ill children was spot on.
So she died a long, horrible and unnecessary death.
That experience, lasting two decades, leaves me very ambivalent of assertions of the “rights” of people suffering with severe mental illness. Part of that problem comes from the term being used as a blanket to cover so many different conditions. Many of those with mental illness are able to cope with life and to make sensible and rational decisions, some of them can intermittently. For those people the concept of rights to autonomy make complete sense. But for others, like my niece, the slogans become tools of the illness, the resulting madness, self-destruction and predatory exploitation of their incapacity is anything but an exercise of autonomy. My niece belonged in a very long term custodial care facility, life outside one was impossible for her. It would have been a sad life but it would not likely have been as sad as the life she had on the street and her horrific death.
Pretending that someone as sick and irrational as my niece was can exercise autonomy and make rational choices when they so clearly can’t is a denial of their most basic right, the right to be protected. The attempts to give her the language of rights was twisted by her disease and became a hurdle she couldn’t pass.
For another view, you might want to read this interview from today’s Boston Globe.
Update: Thanks to the commenters for your condolences, it's still an open sore after six years. A family doesn't get over something like this.
If you haven't experienced something like this, you really can't imagine what it's like. I've never seen a literary description of the reality that we faced, not in either fiction or non-fiction. What I said is the merest of outlines of what played out for more than twenty years. I can't tell you of the list of horrible degradations and worse that she was exposed to while she was "enjoying her liberty". I will tell you that included a period in jail, the one institution that didn't turn her away on the basis of not being covered by insurance.
Believe me when I say that we tried everything that was legally possible including just about everything mentioned in the comments.She was under some form of professional supervision just about the entire time. It became clear, as those professionals came and went, that more than a few of them dumped the case out of frustration with her worsening condition that resisted any kind of treatment. It was the most frustrating aspect of her illness that she could understand everything that was tried and it was turned and became part of the web of irrationality. This was not a mild to moderate case of mental illness. Let me remind you, it proved to be fatal.
As we had to face that fact that she was dying and up to now, we wonder if she had been put under involuntary commitment in the state hospital - where, as mentioned, she had improved - if she might not have outlived the disease or even just the worst part of it. She died quite young. It's possible that an effective treatment could have been found within her life time and she might have managed outside of an institution. With her death that possibility ended. I think she had a right to that possibility to the possibility that she might have been able to survive and to have had a life that was denied to her by those claiming to be champions of her "rights". I don't think any of us who knew her and loved her would have made that mistake. But, then, we knew her, we knew the reality of her life and her situation while they only knew her as a political abstraction. As has been said, you can't know what the reality of this kind of fatal mental illness is unless you have experienced it directly.
Her life started out with such promise, she was, in many ways a very fine person. She was very talented in many things and she was very intelligent. Unfortunately, that intelligence matched with an incomprehensible maze of diseased thinking, which made any attempt at treatment even less effective. She resisted everything, she turned everything into a maze of frustrating games, guessing, dodges and deceptions. Her father abandoned her when she was quite young, my sister did everything possible in the two decades that she went from being difficult to being impossible and then on into a spiral that ultimately led to her death. Until the last months of her life just a simple change of behavior would have saved her but even that possibility entered into the spiral of manipulation. And no one was more manipulated by the madness than she was. She wanted to be well. She wanted to be able to function and have a better life.
One of the few times she improved in the last decade of her life was when she was involuntarily admitted to the state hospital. It could have been the enforced order or just the desire to get out but she came out in a lot better shape than she went in, she kept herself together for more than a year afterwards. When the engine of madness that killed her started up again the psychiatrists and psychologists and clinical social workers all seemed to be more interested in pleasing a client than they were in saving her life. She was a danger to herself, we all knew that she belonged in custodial care. I was and am convinced that the refusal of the mental health professionals she dealt with was largely due to the fashion for dumping the severely mentally ill out of the state hospital to save money. After watching her deteriorate over the following years, it was clearly not done in her best interest. She was desperately unhappy out of the hospital, she was the toy of her illness and of the people who took advantage of her diminished state. We were shocked how many people are low enough to prey on the mentally ill, we hadn’t suspected there is a class of slime that seems to look for them.
My sister and the rest of the family did what we could, she lived with four of us in those years. There were several of the 28-day clinic stays, which did no good except to run up huge bills that my sister is still paying off. I’m sure the length of those has something to do will billing insurance companies. Those never paid the full cost, even at that. Some helped more than others. The worst one provided her with models of self-destructive behavior learned from other patients and buzzwords with which to assert an independence that was illusory. The week before her 18th birthday her pediatrician, who was a friend of mine, told me that once she was legally an adult that no one would be able to help her, that the law would prevent that. That advice, given from lengthy experience with treating mentally ill children was spot on.
So she died a long, horrible and unnecessary death.
That experience, lasting two decades, leaves me very ambivalent of assertions of the “rights” of people suffering with severe mental illness. Part of that problem comes from the term being used as a blanket to cover so many different conditions. Many of those with mental illness are able to cope with life and to make sensible and rational decisions, some of them can intermittently. For those people the concept of rights to autonomy make complete sense. But for others, like my niece, the slogans become tools of the illness, the resulting madness, self-destruction and predatory exploitation of their incapacity is anything but an exercise of autonomy. My niece belonged in a very long term custodial care facility, life outside one was impossible for her. It would have been a sad life but it would not likely have been as sad as the life she had on the street and her horrific death.
Pretending that someone as sick and irrational as my niece was can exercise autonomy and make rational choices when they so clearly can’t is a denial of their most basic right, the right to be protected. The attempts to give her the language of rights was twisted by her disease and became a hurdle she couldn’t pass.
For another view, you might want to read this interview from today’s Boston Globe.
Update: Thanks to the commenters for your condolences, it's still an open sore after six years. A family doesn't get over something like this.
If you haven't experienced something like this, you really can't imagine what it's like. I've never seen a literary description of the reality that we faced, not in either fiction or non-fiction. What I said is the merest of outlines of what played out for more than twenty years. I can't tell you of the list of horrible degradations and worse that she was exposed to while she was "enjoying her liberty". I will tell you that included a period in jail, the one institution that didn't turn her away on the basis of not being covered by insurance.
Believe me when I say that we tried everything that was legally possible including just about everything mentioned in the comments.She was under some form of professional supervision just about the entire time. It became clear, as those professionals came and went, that more than a few of them dumped the case out of frustration with her worsening condition that resisted any kind of treatment. It was the most frustrating aspect of her illness that she could understand everything that was tried and it was turned and became part of the web of irrationality. This was not a mild to moderate case of mental illness. Let me remind you, it proved to be fatal.
As we had to face that fact that she was dying and up to now, we wonder if she had been put under involuntary commitment in the state hospital - where, as mentioned, she had improved - if she might not have outlived the disease or even just the worst part of it. She died quite young. It's possible that an effective treatment could have been found within her life time and she might have managed outside of an institution. With her death that possibility ended. I think she had a right to that possibility to the possibility that she might have been able to survive and to have had a life that was denied to her by those claiming to be champions of her "rights". I don't think any of us who knew her and loved her would have made that mistake. But, then, we knew her, we knew the reality of her life and her situation while they only knew her as a political abstraction. As has been said, you can't know what the reality of this kind of fatal mental illness is unless you have experienced it directly.
Aren’t These Obvious Questions? by Anthony McCarthy
Having never heard any explanation of derivatives or credit default swaps or any of the other myriad “new financial instruments” that doesn’t sound like a complex scheme of theft, considering the havoc they’ve played with the world’s well being and our own security, why is just about no one suggesting making them illegal?
These “new financial instruments” seem to be just another way to wring value out of the labor of those who actually produce something or provide a real, necessary service. They should be made illegal and possibly void. Wouldn’t getting rid of these drive investors away from the piratical economy and in to real investment in something productive?
These “new financial instruments” seem to be just another way to wring value out of the labor of those who actually produce something or provide a real, necessary service. They should be made illegal and possibly void. Wouldn’t getting rid of these drive investors away from the piratical economy and in to real investment in something productive?
A Place Where The Needs of The People Come Last Isn’t Our Country by Anthony McCarthy
In all the media and governmental talk about the depression we are in there is a curious assumption of priorities. Why is it domestic spending on services and benefits to The People of the United States that are considered to be the optional frills? Why is it that spending on healthcare, environmental preservation, education, programs preventing or alleviating poverty, housing, etc. are the things that are held up to the coldest of lights and the first things that “have to be cut”? I think we won’t get out of this without facing up to the very unpleasant truth that we can’t afford the overhead that our elites have erected and I don’t mean Social Security and the such.
Let’s put a few of the details of that overhead on the table for examination and ask about those.
Military spending, and I don’t mean support for the troops. The People of the United States cannot police the world. First, our spotty history of sending in our military with the motive of doing actual good to people in other countries disqualifies our various elites from the position. That is the moral disqualification and the most important. The practical one is that we’re broke. We can’t sustain that position no matter how much those elites and Hollywood enjoy the idea that we can control the world. After the two wars under the Bush years and the debts incurred by theft, incompetence and criminal ambition in Iraq and to a lesser extent in Afghanistan we are ruined. And notice where the bulk of that treasure was spent, in the country which so conspicuously didn’t attack us. You have to wonder what we’ve got left to conduct even a defense if there is another attack on us.
The idea that the United States can unilaterally end evil in other countries is a delusion. A delusion on top of the one which holds that is what our military has been used for in every instance. We start out with the decided disadvantage of not living in those places and having a direct ability to govern them. We can’t determine the governments that are possible and behavior of the people who can. We have severely limited abilities to change bad behavior in the corruptible governments that have been bought. We definitely have limited abilities to rapidly change the cultures which lead to bad behavior. Look how long it takes to make that kind of change in our own country.
Most apropos to us who write for this blog is that the ability of the United States to affect the continuing oppression of women in the two countries we invaded during the past decade is clearly limited. The evidence is that the position of women in Iraq has plummeted due to the invasion and change of government. The position of women in Afghanistan might be more mixed but from what I understand, the women in Afghanistan didn’t enjoy anywhere near the freedom or benefits that they had under the former Iraqi regime. Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator but in the context of Islamic countries, his regime was relatively good for women. Clearly the facts of that context matters for the position of women in that country. George Bush didn’t invade on behalf of women there. The pretext that Bush and, more to the point, Cheney cared about the status of women in Iraq was the emptiest of PR.
Bailing out the financial sector is another area which it is understood comes before the direct welfare of The People. That is an unspoken assumption among of our elites, most aggravatingly, in our media elite. Notice who has gotten dibs when it comes to spending in this economic collapse. The bankers, the insurance companies and Wall Street. Notice that it was the stimulus bill intended to benefit us directly as well as the domestic spending in the appropriations bill that was the occasion of deepest scrutiny and objection. Notice what programs are called “entitlements” in a clear attempt to elicit envious criticism of them. In the emergency adoption of the TARP program, at the most urgent insistence of the Bush Treasury department, there were some unstated truths. Things were falling apart. Credit was freezing and with that the entire funding base for the economy was going to go. That was considered an acute emergency, action on which was unquestioned. The continuing, even chronic emergency of the uninsured, the ill housed, the ill educated, the financially ruined citizens of the country, are optional and of little interest to our real governing elites.
I don’t think much more of that is sustainable, certainly not now that the media have finally noticed that the thieves are stealing a not inconsiderable part of the money that has already been given to them. It is interesting and was entirely predictable that it wasn’t the money handed over to them during the Bush administration that is getting the most mention but that’s not the point of this piece. Considering how much money AIG was given by Bernanke and the FED without congressional approval, you would think he’d be in more hot water than Geithner and Summers over it. Though any criticism of Democrats who protected the bonuses of those crooks is earned and should be taken as such.
But in the renewed interest by our media in looking at the ugly truth of our economic elite, we need to go a lot deeper than the easily understood and relatively petty scandals.
In the crisis adoption of TARP there seemed to be a fear of calling the situation what it was, the collapse of the financial system. Calling it what it was would cause panic which would make the collapse worse. It could have killed off the all important Christmas season spending which, it was hoped, was already starting. And that wasn’t to mention the election. Not being a fan of denial of reality, I thought the opposite was necessary. We needed to know how bad things had been allowed to get under deregulation and other assumed boons of market capitalism. And there was nothing that needed to be known more than how much money had been stolen and who stole it.
I got the feeling that there was an unmentionable aspect of treat in the situation, unstated blackmail which explains a lot about the behavior of otherwise good and sensible members of congress. I got the feeling that the people in control of the financial industry would crash the economy, holding it hostage if they didn’t get what they wanted. What they wanted was, clearly, the rest of the money. Facing the prospect of possibly heading off, perhaps an even greater depression and the certain disaster to their constituents Democratic members of congress cooperated with Paulson and others they had no reason to trust based on ideology and past performance.
Faced with Republican opposition and opportunism, they clearly have done some bad things out of necessity. Trusting the likes Paulson was one of those. But even that folly pales in comparison to two others. Believing that bankers and other executives would do the right thing was one of those. With what they’ve observed in the past six months from the highest reaches of management, that is a delusion that should be dead. The managers don’t even care about their companies, never mind the country. They’ve rigged things so they benefit no matter how badly they damage both. The other is that conservatives in business, finance, the media or in the government itself, are patriotic enough to put country over personal benefit.
The cold truth is, neither the fat cats, nor their conservative assets in the government, actually care about the country. That is except as a PR slogan. That is if by “the country” you mean The People of the United States, the land and environment that we depend on for our lives. That is the true meaning of the period of conservative ascendancy and dominance. They have changed the meaning of “The United States” away democratic idealism to the empty and dishonest rhetoric of an imperial oligarchy. They have created a fictitious cover of televised glamor and feigned glory to cover up sordid, systematic theft and negligence. And, holding the media, controlling the message, they can thwart even the best of our elected leaders.
I don’t think we can afford this elite anymore than we can another unprovoked military adventure. Considering that the big bang of exploding debt is largely caused by them and on their behalf, that the invasion of Iraq was for their benefit and its massive thefts their direct benefit, we clearly can’t afford the wealthy elite we’ve got.
By “we” I mean us, the ones who are supposed to really own the United States and its government. That our government puts our needs behind the insatiable greed of the economic elite is the clearest of all signs that our legal and governmental system is entirely gone awry. That our clearest needs and our ability to force our government to address those needs are constantly undermined by the mass media is the fact that they are the servants of that economic elite. The judiciary and legal orthodoxy which enforces a system that protects both a lying, propagandistic media and the direct theft of our money is another basic aspect of the ruin of our country and our lives.
The crumbling empire is not The real United States, it is not a country created by the more idealistic of our founders and the continuing, two-hundred plus years of struggle by our democratic idealists. It is not the country we have a stake in. It is the product of an elite supported by the various elites in even our most would-be scared institutions. It is imposed on us through a system of phony PR and corroded piety. It has been propped up with legal rulings by a distant and compromised judiciary and hireling crooks in the legislative and executive branches. It is crumbling and those very elites it is created for are sticking us with the cleanup and the bills into the distant future. We have got to face that truth and find the real United States which is OUR country. We’ve got to give up the flickering, celluloid delusion and embrace the hard work of that real country.
I believe that President Obama will have to face up to this and abandon the present course, I think that the proposed solutions of the Treasury and others will not be even legislatively sustainable. President Obama was not elected to keep the horrible truth from us, he was elected to tell it and to deal with the consequences.
In my more suspicious moments, I think the timing of this financial crisis was too just a bit too convenient. By the time it was announced, well into everything falling apart, it was pretty clear the Bush era wouldn't be continuing under John McCain. Things were almost certainly going to change. The massive change necessary to address the common good of The People, the chance that Barack Obama might do that most horrible of all things, govern on behalf of the common people, is most certainly not what our elites really want.
I expect that eventually there might be evidence that supports that suspicion, though it is possible that the timing was just how things happened. It certainly made President Obama’s agenda a lot harder to achieve. Our stake is in his administration, our right is to pressure him and his administration, as well as our representatives in congress and the balky Senate to put our needs before the crooks in the financial sector. And the judges, those who can be counted on to observe executive contracts even as they abridge those of fire fighters and teachers, have to feel the full pressure on them to serve The People. They, no less than the meanest member of congress or town official, are paid to be PUBLIC SERVANTS. It's time the judges are required to serve us and not who has the most money.
Ultimately, it is our most basic civic responsibility to insist on our needs, on the needs of the entire population of the country be served. We are the real foundation of the government, not those we hire. We have seen the results when we don’t insist on our rightful priority. As good Americans, assuming THAT burden of self-government should be a welcomed relief, a justification of well earned self-respect for doing what is really essential.
Let’s put a few of the details of that overhead on the table for examination and ask about those.
Military spending, and I don’t mean support for the troops. The People of the United States cannot police the world. First, our spotty history of sending in our military with the motive of doing actual good to people in other countries disqualifies our various elites from the position. That is the moral disqualification and the most important. The practical one is that we’re broke. We can’t sustain that position no matter how much those elites and Hollywood enjoy the idea that we can control the world. After the two wars under the Bush years and the debts incurred by theft, incompetence and criminal ambition in Iraq and to a lesser extent in Afghanistan we are ruined. And notice where the bulk of that treasure was spent, in the country which so conspicuously didn’t attack us. You have to wonder what we’ve got left to conduct even a defense if there is another attack on us.
The idea that the United States can unilaterally end evil in other countries is a delusion. A delusion on top of the one which holds that is what our military has been used for in every instance. We start out with the decided disadvantage of not living in those places and having a direct ability to govern them. We can’t determine the governments that are possible and behavior of the people who can. We have severely limited abilities to change bad behavior in the corruptible governments that have been bought. We definitely have limited abilities to rapidly change the cultures which lead to bad behavior. Look how long it takes to make that kind of change in our own country.
Most apropos to us who write for this blog is that the ability of the United States to affect the continuing oppression of women in the two countries we invaded during the past decade is clearly limited. The evidence is that the position of women in Iraq has plummeted due to the invasion and change of government. The position of women in Afghanistan might be more mixed but from what I understand, the women in Afghanistan didn’t enjoy anywhere near the freedom or benefits that they had under the former Iraqi regime. Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator but in the context of Islamic countries, his regime was relatively good for women. Clearly the facts of that context matters for the position of women in that country. George Bush didn’t invade on behalf of women there. The pretext that Bush and, more to the point, Cheney cared about the status of women in Iraq was the emptiest of PR.
Bailing out the financial sector is another area which it is understood comes before the direct welfare of The People. That is an unspoken assumption among of our elites, most aggravatingly, in our media elite. Notice who has gotten dibs when it comes to spending in this economic collapse. The bankers, the insurance companies and Wall Street. Notice that it was the stimulus bill intended to benefit us directly as well as the domestic spending in the appropriations bill that was the occasion of deepest scrutiny and objection. Notice what programs are called “entitlements” in a clear attempt to elicit envious criticism of them. In the emergency adoption of the TARP program, at the most urgent insistence of the Bush Treasury department, there were some unstated truths. Things were falling apart. Credit was freezing and with that the entire funding base for the economy was going to go. That was considered an acute emergency, action on which was unquestioned. The continuing, even chronic emergency of the uninsured, the ill housed, the ill educated, the financially ruined citizens of the country, are optional and of little interest to our real governing elites.
I don’t think much more of that is sustainable, certainly not now that the media have finally noticed that the thieves are stealing a not inconsiderable part of the money that has already been given to them. It is interesting and was entirely predictable that it wasn’t the money handed over to them during the Bush administration that is getting the most mention but that’s not the point of this piece. Considering how much money AIG was given by Bernanke and the FED without congressional approval, you would think he’d be in more hot water than Geithner and Summers over it. Though any criticism of Democrats who protected the bonuses of those crooks is earned and should be taken as such.
But in the renewed interest by our media in looking at the ugly truth of our economic elite, we need to go a lot deeper than the easily understood and relatively petty scandals.
In the crisis adoption of TARP there seemed to be a fear of calling the situation what it was, the collapse of the financial system. Calling it what it was would cause panic which would make the collapse worse. It could have killed off the all important Christmas season spending which, it was hoped, was already starting. And that wasn’t to mention the election. Not being a fan of denial of reality, I thought the opposite was necessary. We needed to know how bad things had been allowed to get under deregulation and other assumed boons of market capitalism. And there was nothing that needed to be known more than how much money had been stolen and who stole it.
I got the feeling that there was an unmentionable aspect of treat in the situation, unstated blackmail which explains a lot about the behavior of otherwise good and sensible members of congress. I got the feeling that the people in control of the financial industry would crash the economy, holding it hostage if they didn’t get what they wanted. What they wanted was, clearly, the rest of the money. Facing the prospect of possibly heading off, perhaps an even greater depression and the certain disaster to their constituents Democratic members of congress cooperated with Paulson and others they had no reason to trust based on ideology and past performance.
Faced with Republican opposition and opportunism, they clearly have done some bad things out of necessity. Trusting the likes Paulson was one of those. But even that folly pales in comparison to two others. Believing that bankers and other executives would do the right thing was one of those. With what they’ve observed in the past six months from the highest reaches of management, that is a delusion that should be dead. The managers don’t even care about their companies, never mind the country. They’ve rigged things so they benefit no matter how badly they damage both. The other is that conservatives in business, finance, the media or in the government itself, are patriotic enough to put country over personal benefit.
The cold truth is, neither the fat cats, nor their conservative assets in the government, actually care about the country. That is except as a PR slogan. That is if by “the country” you mean The People of the United States, the land and environment that we depend on for our lives. That is the true meaning of the period of conservative ascendancy and dominance. They have changed the meaning of “The United States” away democratic idealism to the empty and dishonest rhetoric of an imperial oligarchy. They have created a fictitious cover of televised glamor and feigned glory to cover up sordid, systematic theft and negligence. And, holding the media, controlling the message, they can thwart even the best of our elected leaders.
I don’t think we can afford this elite anymore than we can another unprovoked military adventure. Considering that the big bang of exploding debt is largely caused by them and on their behalf, that the invasion of Iraq was for their benefit and its massive thefts their direct benefit, we clearly can’t afford the wealthy elite we’ve got.
By “we” I mean us, the ones who are supposed to really own the United States and its government. That our government puts our needs behind the insatiable greed of the economic elite is the clearest of all signs that our legal and governmental system is entirely gone awry. That our clearest needs and our ability to force our government to address those needs are constantly undermined by the mass media is the fact that they are the servants of that economic elite. The judiciary and legal orthodoxy which enforces a system that protects both a lying, propagandistic media and the direct theft of our money is another basic aspect of the ruin of our country and our lives.
The crumbling empire is not The real United States, it is not a country created by the more idealistic of our founders and the continuing, two-hundred plus years of struggle by our democratic idealists. It is not the country we have a stake in. It is the product of an elite supported by the various elites in even our most would-be scared institutions. It is imposed on us through a system of phony PR and corroded piety. It has been propped up with legal rulings by a distant and compromised judiciary and hireling crooks in the legislative and executive branches. It is crumbling and those very elites it is created for are sticking us with the cleanup and the bills into the distant future. We have got to face that truth and find the real United States which is OUR country. We’ve got to give up the flickering, celluloid delusion and embrace the hard work of that real country.
I believe that President Obama will have to face up to this and abandon the present course, I think that the proposed solutions of the Treasury and others will not be even legislatively sustainable. President Obama was not elected to keep the horrible truth from us, he was elected to tell it and to deal with the consequences.
In my more suspicious moments, I think the timing of this financial crisis was too just a bit too convenient. By the time it was announced, well into everything falling apart, it was pretty clear the Bush era wouldn't be continuing under John McCain. Things were almost certainly going to change. The massive change necessary to address the common good of The People, the chance that Barack Obama might do that most horrible of all things, govern on behalf of the common people, is most certainly not what our elites really want.
I expect that eventually there might be evidence that supports that suspicion, though it is possible that the timing was just how things happened. It certainly made President Obama’s agenda a lot harder to achieve. Our stake is in his administration, our right is to pressure him and his administration, as well as our representatives in congress and the balky Senate to put our needs before the crooks in the financial sector. And the judges, those who can be counted on to observe executive contracts even as they abridge those of fire fighters and teachers, have to feel the full pressure on them to serve The People. They, no less than the meanest member of congress or town official, are paid to be PUBLIC SERVANTS. It's time the judges are required to serve us and not who has the most money.
Ultimately, it is our most basic civic responsibility to insist on our needs, on the needs of the entire population of the country be served. We are the real foundation of the government, not those we hire. We have seen the results when we don’t insist on our rightful priority. As good Americans, assuming THAT burden of self-government should be a welcomed relief, a justification of well earned self-respect for doing what is really essential.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Inspiration (by Phila)
David Bossie and his group Citizens United have been trying to convince the Supreme Court that their film attacking Hillary Clinton is a documentary, rather than a piece of wingnut agitprop that's subject to the McCain-Feingold Act, as federal judges ruled in 2008.
That's as perfect an example of the modern conservative's approach to the rule of law as I've ever seen.
Bossie also provides a neat summation of the modern conservative's approach to history:
Citizens United appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that "Hillary: The Movie" should not be considered a political ad. The group says there is nothing in the movie urging people to vote against Clinton. The group says the film is more of a documentary comparable to critical television news programs such as "Frontline," "Nova" and "60 Minutes."That's kind of amusing. But here's the really funny part:
"The fact that 'Hillary' presents a critical assessment of Sen. Clinton's political background, character, and fitness for office does not convert the movie ... into an appeal to vote against Sen. Clinton," said Theodore Olson, Citizens United's lawyer.
This isn't the first time documentary filmmakers have been questioned in relation to campaign finance laws. Citizens United in 2004 sought to keep filmmaker Michael Moore from advertising "Fahrenheit 9/11" — which was critical of President George W. Bush — in the run-up to the presidential election.So after acting outraged at the possibility that Moore might violate McCain-Feingold by running ads for his documentary during the 2004 election season, Bossie was "inspired" to make a movie-length attack ad, and hoped to avoid McCain-Feingold entirely by broadcasting it as a documentary during the 2008 election season.
The Federal Election Commission, charged with enforcing the McCain-Feingold law, dismissed the complaint after Moore said he had no plans to run the ads during election season.
Bossie said Moore's success is what inspired him. "Michael Moore forced me to recognize the power of documentary film," said Bossie, who was involved in the House's investigation of Bill Clinton that led to the president's impeachment and trial.
That's as perfect an example of the modern conservative's approach to the rule of law as I've ever seen.
Bossie also provides a neat summation of the modern conservative's approach to history:
Bossie expects to produce at least 15 movies at his Washington-area studio by the next presidential election in 2012. Among them, he says, will be "Stimulate This," an indictment of the recently enacted economic stimulus package.The script's already written, I hear. Now, they just need some pictures to go with it.
Notice of Foreclosure by Anthony McCarthy
Those who are defending Timothy Geithner from the tidal wave of criticism over his handling of the financial rescue might have a point or two. The guy didn’t single handedly cause the pretty shell of the banking and insurance industries to crumble like a hollow Easter bunny. And he is doing what his expensive education and his received morality have told him to do. I’m sure, by the dim lights of economic orthodoxy, he has been a model of rectitude. But, if I might kill off a tragic metaphor, the flash that catches Geithner in full panic are the headlights of reality caught up with him. It’s going to crash. If he’s incapable of moving to safety makes no difference, the consequences of his ideology are here and how. It’s not only the prestige of his position, won by adherence to the principles of market orthodoxy, that is about to splat, it’s the entire phony world resting on the underpinning of un-illegalized theft and swindle.
Anyone who is relishing the just deserts that time is about to serve is crazy. The Great Depression wasn’t the comeuppance of the wealthy thieves and the high priesthood of market capitalism, it was a long period of misery and death that culminated in the unprecedented blood letting of WWII. It was only by luck that we escaped the worst of what Europe and Asia suffered. By and large, the plutocrats who had brought us the Depression weren’t the ones who lost their lives. If anyone needs a refresher in that fact of life, just watch what happens to any attempt to raise the taxes of the rich to pay for TARP and the rest of the bailout.
Geithner, Summers, etc. should be informed, before they make any more stupid decisions benefitting the well spoken and perfumed crooks they are used to dealing with, that their position is dependent on that most vulgar of realities, politics. Politics, the necessity of consulting the great unwashed, the hoi polloi, We The People. Unlike the mandarins of the Fed, their position isn’t cushioned from the will of The People.
The People’s freshest experience of contracts is that they are legalized instruments to cheat them and rob them. We are not in the mood to hear Larry Summers’ pious citation of their sanctity. We are losing patience with that most isolated branch of the government, the judges, acting as a protective levee between the oligarchic con men and us. The constitution, we are told, guarantees the rights of those contracts. Well, there is no contract contained in the constitution more basic than that of representative government, of the rights of We The People to have laws that protect us from exactly the kinds of crooks that have destroyed the economy by stealing everything in sight. Everything which they, the money managers, have so conspicuously not produced with their hands and toil. We might joke that the law is an ass, but when it’s an instrument of robbing us it earns more than our contempt.
The AIG bonuses, the redecoration of the Citibank offices and, no doubt, multiple outrages yet to be disclosed will prove to be too much to be sustained. If the clunky, constitutional framework, set up as a cushion against too much democracy, won’t rectify the situation, it will, eventually, be destroyed.
I don’t look forward to the consequences of that, I don’t want to gamble on us having better luck setting up something better. Most revolutionary change results at best in something as bad as it replaced or something worse*.
We’re in the habit of thinking that the American constitution is the bedrock we can rely on being there but its provisions aren’t laws of nature, they are political instruments. POLITICAL instruments. None of it, including the guarantees of the enforceability of contracts, is not, ultimately, dependent on at least the acquiescence of The People. The constitution itself is a contract, one superior to any made under its authority. That is the real contract, the contract that the government of the United States is valid only so long as it is of, by and for The People. And that contract has come to be in a state of continual breach by the governing class and most clearly by the economic elite. Now, that breach of contract is more vulnerable to action than at other times.
Decisions made in the federal government have consequences that don’t become obvious for a long time. I think just that kind of thing happened in 2000. The wall of sanctity around the constitution was breached by the five Supreme Court members who issued the decision in Bush v. Gore, after that there is no solid wall. The vote was the action that made any decision made by any politician or bureaucrat or, yes, even Supreme Court Justice legitimate. Unless the vote of The People is not secure, if we don’t have that stake in the constitution. If the constitution doesn’t guarantee that the government is of, by and for The People none of its articles carries the weight of moral authority. That the government that results acts against our interest is only evidence of the truth of the theory of democracy. Government not of The People, will inevitably become the enemy of The People.
The outrage of The People over the insulting bonuses given to thieves, the bill for the luxurious accommodations and entertainments of bankers and other crooks are just the most recent in a long string of proofs that the government doesn’t work in our interest. The clergy of capital, experts in the mythology and theology of market economics, living in the world created by and for those very crooks, might not notice but the world is changed.
The confluence of disasters that led to his election have given President Barack Obama the chance to remake the contract between The People and the government under that constitution. I don’t think he realizes yet how basic the change will have to be. If he does not change things fast and in ways that his financial experts won’t like he will lose that chance. It’s our job to pressure our president, the man we have chosen, to make that change. His success will depend on his ability to change the course that his economic team has chosen. I still think he will do that but it must be done soon.
* Successful revolutionaries know better than anyone else that it’s entirely possible to overturn established authorities. It’s how they come to power. The resulting rulers know better than most their own vulnerability to toppling and the results are seldom democratic. Most don’t take that way and the results are even more blood shed and corruption.
Anyone who is relishing the just deserts that time is about to serve is crazy. The Great Depression wasn’t the comeuppance of the wealthy thieves and the high priesthood of market capitalism, it was a long period of misery and death that culminated in the unprecedented blood letting of WWII. It was only by luck that we escaped the worst of what Europe and Asia suffered. By and large, the plutocrats who had brought us the Depression weren’t the ones who lost their lives. If anyone needs a refresher in that fact of life, just watch what happens to any attempt to raise the taxes of the rich to pay for TARP and the rest of the bailout.
Geithner, Summers, etc. should be informed, before they make any more stupid decisions benefitting the well spoken and perfumed crooks they are used to dealing with, that their position is dependent on that most vulgar of realities, politics. Politics, the necessity of consulting the great unwashed, the hoi polloi, We The People. Unlike the mandarins of the Fed, their position isn’t cushioned from the will of The People.
The People’s freshest experience of contracts is that they are legalized instruments to cheat them and rob them. We are not in the mood to hear Larry Summers’ pious citation of their sanctity. We are losing patience with that most isolated branch of the government, the judges, acting as a protective levee between the oligarchic con men and us. The constitution, we are told, guarantees the rights of those contracts. Well, there is no contract contained in the constitution more basic than that of representative government, of the rights of We The People to have laws that protect us from exactly the kinds of crooks that have destroyed the economy by stealing everything in sight. Everything which they, the money managers, have so conspicuously not produced with their hands and toil. We might joke that the law is an ass, but when it’s an instrument of robbing us it earns more than our contempt.
The AIG bonuses, the redecoration of the Citibank offices and, no doubt, multiple outrages yet to be disclosed will prove to be too much to be sustained. If the clunky, constitutional framework, set up as a cushion against too much democracy, won’t rectify the situation, it will, eventually, be destroyed.
I don’t look forward to the consequences of that, I don’t want to gamble on us having better luck setting up something better. Most revolutionary change results at best in something as bad as it replaced or something worse*.
We’re in the habit of thinking that the American constitution is the bedrock we can rely on being there but its provisions aren’t laws of nature, they are political instruments. POLITICAL instruments. None of it, including the guarantees of the enforceability of contracts, is not, ultimately, dependent on at least the acquiescence of The People. The constitution itself is a contract, one superior to any made under its authority. That is the real contract, the contract that the government of the United States is valid only so long as it is of, by and for The People. And that contract has come to be in a state of continual breach by the governing class and most clearly by the economic elite. Now, that breach of contract is more vulnerable to action than at other times.
Decisions made in the federal government have consequences that don’t become obvious for a long time. I think just that kind of thing happened in 2000. The wall of sanctity around the constitution was breached by the five Supreme Court members who issued the decision in Bush v. Gore, after that there is no solid wall. The vote was the action that made any decision made by any politician or bureaucrat or, yes, even Supreme Court Justice legitimate. Unless the vote of The People is not secure, if we don’t have that stake in the constitution. If the constitution doesn’t guarantee that the government is of, by and for The People none of its articles carries the weight of moral authority. That the government that results acts against our interest is only evidence of the truth of the theory of democracy. Government not of The People, will inevitably become the enemy of The People.
The outrage of The People over the insulting bonuses given to thieves, the bill for the luxurious accommodations and entertainments of bankers and other crooks are just the most recent in a long string of proofs that the government doesn’t work in our interest. The clergy of capital, experts in the mythology and theology of market economics, living in the world created by and for those very crooks, might not notice but the world is changed.
The confluence of disasters that led to his election have given President Barack Obama the chance to remake the contract between The People and the government under that constitution. I don’t think he realizes yet how basic the change will have to be. If he does not change things fast and in ways that his financial experts won’t like he will lose that chance. It’s our job to pressure our president, the man we have chosen, to make that change. His success will depend on his ability to change the course that his economic team has chosen. I still think he will do that but it must be done soon.
* Successful revolutionaries know better than anyone else that it’s entirely possible to overturn established authorities. It’s how they come to power. The resulting rulers know better than most their own vulnerability to toppling and the results are seldom democratic. Most don’t take that way and the results are even more blood shed and corruption.
Friday, March 20, 2009
A minister on Obama (by Suzie)
An example: He recalls working with a Catholic priest in Tampa. “If people came to Introduction to Unitarian Universalism, and their natural language was Catholic, but it had been shoved down their throat,” he would recommend they talk to the priest to see if they could still find a place in Catholicism. Similarly, the priest would recommend people to the UU church if they told him, “I can’t believe any of this shit.”
"The other Catholic priests in town were idiots."
Young left Tampa to become pastor of the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu, where the service was held for Madelyn Dunham.
“The most interesting part was dealing with the Secret Service. I expected the Men in Black.” Instead, he said, “it was much more like a fraternity party. They were relaxed, friendly, chatty” but still thorough, including four sharpshooters on the roof, with rifles assembled from suitcases.
Obama attended the only UU church in Hawaii for several years as a child. Previously, his grandparents and mother had attended a UU church in the Seattle area. Doesn’t Young want Obama to return to his UU roots? No, Mike is too UU for that.
“People should go where their spiritual and intellectual path leads them.”
Young, known for his social activism, voted for Obama.
“In the primary, I had a choice between the first woman and the first non-white, both of whom I could support. And it was the first time since I turned 21 that I voted for, rather than against, a presidential candidate.”
He refers to Obama as Barry. “That’s who he was here [in Hawaii]. No one here called him Barack.” At the memorial service, the 70-year-old minister saw Obama as “a tall skinny kid.”
“The person who was the most impressive was not the president or Michelle. They were just folk.” Instead, Young was intrigued by how “bright and articulate” Maya Soetoro-Ng was. She is Obama’s half-sister and a local high-school history teacher. Young also learned from his director of religious education, who is an anthropologist, that Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, had been, not just an anthropologist, but “she was a damn good one,” who was instrumental in recovering traditional art and artisan skills in Indonesia. “She’s a person of significant standing in her own right.”
If you're interested in more information about the service for Madelyn Dunhan, read what Young wrote under the Amazon listing for his book “A Preacher’s Poems.”
"The other Catholic priests in town were idiots."
Young left Tampa to become pastor of the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu, where the service was held for Madelyn Dunham.
“The most interesting part was dealing with the Secret Service. I expected the Men in Black.” Instead, he said, “it was much more like a fraternity party. They were relaxed, friendly, chatty” but still thorough, including four sharpshooters on the roof, with rifles assembled from suitcases.
Obama attended the only UU church in Hawaii for several years as a child. Previously, his grandparents and mother had attended a UU church in the Seattle area. Doesn’t Young want Obama to return to his UU roots? No, Mike is too UU for that.
“People should go where their spiritual and intellectual path leads them.”
Young, known for his social activism, voted for Obama.
“In the primary, I had a choice between the first woman and the first non-white, both of whom I could support. And it was the first time since I turned 21 that I voted for, rather than against, a presidential candidate.”
He refers to Obama as Barry. “That’s who he was here [in Hawaii]. No one here called him Barack.” At the memorial service, the 70-year-old minister saw Obama as “a tall skinny kid.”
“The person who was the most impressive was not the president or Michelle. They were just folk.” Instead, Young was intrigued by how “bright and articulate” Maya Soetoro-Ng was. She is Obama’s half-sister and a local high-school history teacher. Young also learned from his director of religious education, who is an anthropologist, that Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, had been, not just an anthropologist, but “she was a damn good one,” who was instrumental in recovering traditional art and artisan skills in Indonesia. “She’s a person of significant standing in her own right.”
If you're interested in more information about the service for Madelyn Dunhan, read what Young wrote under the Amazon listing for his book “A Preacher’s Poems.”
Friday critter blogging (by Suzie)
Here are Deacon and Chloe playing in my sister's backyard. Deacon is the white German shepherd, and Chloe is a St. Bernard. It would not be wise to get between them. Chloe is an old woman - about 9 years old. We think Deacon is about 2. Chloe is trying to teach Deacon manners. For example, if he tries to eat food off of the table, Chloe will bark as if to say, "Young man! We do not eat food off of the humans' table! We sit beside them and stare pitifully until they give us their food."
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Today's Echidne Thought
Echidne thoughts are thoughts which I get, as it were, from outer space, suddenly, and usually this means that Echidne stuck them into my hat. After suitable censoring (no, sheep shears are not the new fashion accessory for women everywhere) I either jot them down for further digestion or let them loose here. This one is of the latter kind.
You know how the media discusses something controversial by picking some people from each end of the opinion-line to fight each other, bare-fisted and ready-fanged, in front of us all? That's in theory, of course, and even then the approach has a problem, because the most correct opinion might lie in the middle of that long opinion-line. Broccoli is not necessarily greater than Viagra-for-angels or worse than Dick Cheney's wet dreams. It may just be a vegetable.
Where was I? Oh yes: The second problem with this approach is that the representatives for the extreme opinions are selected oddly. Far too often I see the end-points defined by a rabid right-winger yelling and screaming at a Mr. or Ms. Milquetoast-Middle-of-the-Road (think of Hannity and Colmes). But there's a second odd selection criteria, and that's the topic of today's Echidne Thought:
Think of the way we debate gender roles. The two end-points are often seen as someone with Talibanesque views on women on one side and someone who'd let women go out and run for the President of the United States, sure (as long as the dinner is still on the table when the hubby comes home). Well, perhaps not quite, but you get the point: There's nary a radical feminist anywhere in sight.
More importantly, the two end-points of this opinion line are seen as 'Kirche, Küche und Kinder' for women, at one end, and 'legal equality of the sexes' at the other end. Or 'men should dominate' vs. 'everybody is equal'. Note what's missing there, as is missing from all the other debates about women's essential nature or whatnot?
The symmetrical end-point to the view 'men should dominate'. The effect of this one is to make 'compromise' appear something inbetween full equality and absolute male domination, and the effect is also to make someone like me come across as an extremist, when in fact arguing for equality should be the middle position. Don't you think?
Pope. The Soap Opera.
By Issouf Sanogo, AFP/Getty Images
It's hard not so see Pope Benedict's recent attempts to stuff both of his Prada-shod feet in his mouth as anything but soap opera. He would be excellent mental dissection material for a good satirist, except for the fact that what he says and does can kill people. Every word that manages to get out of his mouth past those Pradas becomes a rule for some Catholic person somewhere, a bullet which can kill.
So now this excellent Pope tells us that condoms are not the answer for Africa dying of AIDS. It's like saying that surgery is not the answer for cancer. Sigh:
Pope Benedict XVI said on his way to Africa Tuesday that condoms were not the answer in the continent's fight against HIV, his first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with AIDS patients.
...
Benedict said that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against AIDS.
"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."
The pope said that a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease.
About 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV, according to UNAIDS. In 2007, three-quarters of all AIDS deaths worldwide were there, as well as two-thirds of all people living with HIV.
Rebecca Hodes with the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa said if the pope is serious about preventing new HIV infections, he will focus on promoting wide access to condoms and spreading information on how best to use them.
"Instead, his opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans," said Hodes, director of policy, communication and research for the action campaign.
While she said the pope is correct that condoms are not the sole solution to Africa's AIDS epidemic, she said they are one of the very few HIV prevention mechanisms proven to work.
Deep under all those feminine layers of frockery lies Benedict's heart, I suspect. Wonder what's there? One guess:
Why does the Church persist in such a manifestly immoral doctrine? One suspects that it must be the usual twisted thinking about sex and women. The Church's opposition to birth control is largely an outgrowth of its all-male composition and those males' attempts to degrade women's physical powers by asserting that women and the intercourse into which they supposedly tempt men are necessary evils ("It is well for a man not to touch a woman," Paul instructed the Christians of Corinth), the only purpose of which is procreation.
Misogyny may not be "the Church's one foundation," but it is a major part of the base on which it was constructed.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
And The Winners Are....
The National Book Critics Circle awards for the best books:
The co-winners were Juan Felipe Herrera's Half the World in Light: New and Selected Poems (University of Arizona Press) and August Kleinzahler's Sleeping It Off in Rapid City (Farrar, Strauss), who both offered capstone books to important careers—works that were resonant, weighty, and accomplished.
Roberto Bolaño's monumental 2666 (Farrar, Straus), a tale of love and violence set within the framework of the fictional town of Santa Teresa, Mexico, that's widely regarded as the late author's masterpiece, won the fiction award.
...
The general nonfiction award went to Dexter Filkins's The Forever War (Knopf),
...
The biography award went to Patrick French's The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul,
...
The autobiography award went to Ariel Sabar's My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq (Algonquin),
...
The criticism award went to Seth Lerer's Children's Literature: A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter (University of Chicago Press),
...
The evening ended with a fitting memorial tribute to John Leonard.
Bolds mine.
The list of nominees did include women writers, and women have won various categories in the past. But it's odd to read this list (and even odder to scroll down the videos of the recipients, starting here) and then to muse over the argument that women are so rare among mathematicians and scientists because their talents are verbal and literary. I also suspect that if every single winner had been female people would have talked about that, and I think that the reverse situation is also worth some talk.
Happy Saint Patrick's Day
In its honor the background of this blog is green today. Heh.
P.S. Not celebrating the myth of snake killing in Ireland or the guy himself, but those who celebrate their Irishness today.
Some Headlines
The Austrian case of a man holding his daughter a prisoner under his house for decades has come to court. Some headlines from yesterday's papers:
Incestuous Austrian Father Admits Wrongdoing in Court
Incest trial begins for man charged with imprisoning daughter for 24 years
Austrian incest father pleads not guilty to murder
Trial for Austrian Incest Dad Begins
And so on. I understand that he is probably being tried for the incest part first, but those headlines still grate me because they suggest that it might somehow have been better if this man had kidnapped a total stranger, raped her 3000 times and kept her imprisoned underground for over two decades. The incest part appears to be the very least of his crimes.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Monday Critter
Because there are two long posts right below this one and because these are great pictures of Pippin, the intrepid explorer (by FeraLiberal, as usual).
Beckiples. Part II.
This post looks at the last five of the nine principles of Beckianism. Before I start on number five let me point out another neat trick that presenting the list and asking whether people agree with the principles does: It implicitly assumes that if you don't agree with what's written, then you agree with its opposite.
For example, to reject the principle #3, about striving to be ever more honest, doesn't mean that the reader doing the rejecting is intent on getting more and more dishonest day by day. But simplistic statements usually get their power from that invisible shadow side: the fear of appearing to agree to something unwholesome.
Keeping that in mind, here's the fifth Beckiple:
5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
The distinction between normative and positive statements is crucial when looking at these sentences. The statement is clearly a lie as a positive statement: The rich get away with softer punishments and so do white-collar criminals in general, while African-Americans are often punished out of proportion to the crimes they have committed.
It's a nice normative statement, on the whole (though I'd like to give justice some new eyeballs). But the Republican Party hasn't exactly fought for these principles in practice. Rather the opposite.
Beckiple number 6 is a beauty:
6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
This normative statement is so deep that I need a diving bell to respond to it. Who is the "I" in the principle? Glenn Beck? Or his reader? Probably the latter. What does this 'right' consist of? How is it guaranteed to exist? Do all people have the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
For instance, suppose that a person is born with a handicap of such severity that she or he can never make an independent living. How do we guarantee the opportunitites of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to this person? What do we do? Or rather, what should the government do? And if not the government, then who? Charity? How does that guarantee the right Beck argues to exist, given that charity is a fickle source of funding?
The point I'm trying to make (from a diving bell) is that people don't just 'have' the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, especially if this right is intended to be something more than lip service by the rich Beck. Some people will have much more of this right than other people, simply on the basis of luck, genetics, societal prejudices and so on. For this right to be meaningful, the starting line of this great capitalist race should be made the same for every person.
Beck doesn't mention that. I'm not even sure what he means by 'life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.' It could be something very minimalist, such as letting people who look like Glenn Beck be the winners in the race of life.
But of course I know what Beck is really trying to say with this principle, and it's all about unequal outcomes being just fine because they are caused by what people deserve. Rich people deserve to be rich because they worked hard. Poor people deserve to be poor because they were lazy. And so on. Never mind that some rich people are rich because they inherited their money or because they did something deeply unethical (if not illegal) in the market place, and never mind that many poor people are anything but lazy. Women, using the same argument, 'choose' to have children, and if this puts them at a disadvantage, well, it was their own 'choice' that made them trip on the hurdles in the race. Forget about the societal needs for the next generation; it's all a choice similar to picking an ice-cream flavor.
Now we move into the conservative bread-and-butter statement:
7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
The Axiom Of Greed. But is this statement a positive one or a normative one? It looks like a real mongrel. The second sentence is false as a positive statement, because the government can indeed force us to be charitable through its power to tax us. The first statement might also be intended to be a positive assertion, but then it might not be true for all readers, some of whom don't work at all or very hard. So that's one way of viewing the seventh principle: as a positive assertion which is mostly false.
But I think it's probably meant as a normative rule against income redistribution through the government, combined with a value judgment that the person agreeing to it is also a fantastically hard worker (and rather mean-spirited). Would it be OK for the government to force people to be charitable if those people didn't work very hard? I'm not sure.
Mmm. I'm turning all dry-and-academic here. Still, note the term 'charity' in this context and the very clear separation of the 'I (who works hard)' from 'the government'.
To call income redistribution 'charity' disguises some aspects of the former which distinguish it from charity. Beck sees the recipients of such redistribution as 'the others', the ones that he might support by throwing a quarter into a hat in the street. But income redistribution is much more than that. It's a social insurance system which might one day cover someone like Glenn Beck should his life fall apart. Or the grandchildren of Glenn Beck.
Income redistribution also has immediate benefits for those who are paying for it. A society with extreme income inequality can easily become a banana republic where the rich live in armed enclaves while the poor roam the streets. I don't want to live in that kind of America, but it probably would suit Beck just fine.
The Beckian world doesn't have a government which is 'of the people, for the people, by the people'. Instead, the horrible villain-government can come and try to force obligatory charity on hard-working people. That the government is elected by the people, as its representatives, doesn't enter the discussion at all.
I'm almost done with the Beckiples (and no, that wasn't so funny, after all). Only two more to go:
8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
I sincerely hope you didn't die laughing after reading that one, given the last eight years of the conservatives telling us that criticizing the Bush administration amounted to treason! But I whole-heartedly agree with this new interpretation of the conservative dogma, and show it by trying to chew our Glenn into little pieces here. Metaphorically speaking, natch.
Finally, the last principle:
9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.
I thought the government worked for me? And you. And you. And so on.
The government doesn't work just for Glenn Beck and it doesn't answer just to Glenn Beck, or to any one of the people reading through these principles. To the extent the government is 'of the people, for the people, by the people', any one of us can indeed be made to answer to it (such as in a court of law). But it's certainly true that the government is the servant of The People. However, 'The People' does not equal one conservative talk-show host or any one reader of his website.
Beckiples. Part I.
Glenn Beck (the famously rabid conservative media pundit) has listed Nine Principles on his website. These are supposed to be the principles a conservative holds, and if you, the reader, agree with at least seven of them, well, then you are a Beckian conservative! And you memorize the Nine Beckiples. Aren't I cute today?
I'm going to discuss those nine statements in some detail. But before I do that, it's important to distinguish between positive and normative statements/value judgments. A positive statement expresses something which supposedly is. For example, "Echidne is a blogger" is a positive statement and it happens to be a true one. "Echidne is a three-pronged fork" is also a positive statement, but it happens to be a false one.
A normative statement is an evaluative one or one which argues that something should be. "Echidne is an asshole" is a normative statement, assuming that we use 'asshole' in the non-concrete sense. Whether this statement is true or not is something that depends on the value judgments of the person making it or responding to it.
The distinction between positive and normative statements is sometimes a slippery one. But it's never a great idea to mix the two types in all sorts of odd combinations and that's what Beck does in his Nine Beckiples.
Let's look at the first four principles in greater detail. The first one goes like this:
1. America is good
I bet you immediately noticed that this is a normative sentence, in the sense that the reader is supposed to agree to the basic idea that America is good. At the same time, it would be possible to write a long book about the goodness of America in all sorts of different political, social and economic fields, to see if America indeed comes out smelling of roses in all of them. That's not what Beck intends, naturally. What he means is that only the dirty-fucking-hippies 'hate' America.
Yet any thinking person can easily swallow the contradictory concepts that America might be absolutely fantastic in one area of life and not-so-great in some other area of life. Such a thinking person could even accept the idea of patriotism and love of one's country while acknowledging its flaws and problems. But Beck doesn't like shades of gray.
The second Beckiple:
2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life
This is clearly a positive statement by our Glenn. He's telling us that he believes in a god and that his god is the center of his life. He invites you to join the Beckians if you also believe in a god and have him as the center of your life.
But nowhere is it specified which god this might be. I suspect it's a Christian god, of the male sex. What if the reader is a very religious Wiccan or Buddhist? Are those types of people welcome among the Beckians or not? Atheists certainly aren't. Then there's the whole question of what Beck's god's beliefs are. There are people who believe in gods who want them to do stuff which to outsiders looks pretty awful and wrong, and before I'd commit myself to having a permanent god lodger in my house I'd like to know a little more about His dogma.
We learn even more about Beck in the third principle:
3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday
A great principle! But what does 'honesty' mean in this context? Honesty to yourself or towards others or both? Does it mean opening your mouth ever wider and stuffing in a bigger wingtip every day? Or does it mean self-examination, meditation and humility? And why is this particular quality listed so early in the principles? What about loving your neighbor like thyself, for instance? Still, I might be on the way towards becoming a Beckian, because I certainly think Glenn Beck should become more honest every day.
The fourth Beckiple is where the dog of anti-feminism lies buried:
4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government
These are normative statements. The first one takes a religious concept, 'sacredness', and applies it to the nuclear family. What does it mean to say that the family is sacred? And based on which religion? Fundamentalist Christians argue that men are the heads of the family. Islam argues the same, with the addition that the male head of the family may have multiple female spouses. Is Beck telling us that these particular family arrangements should never be changed?
Or perhaps he uses the term 'sacred' to imply that the government should keep its paws off family matters? This becomes a real problem when a member of the family is abused or killed by other family members, doesn't it?
The second statement, also normative, tells us that families are not democracies but tiny dictatorships where the dictators are the parents. Funny that he wrote 'my spouse and I are the ultimate authority', given what I stated about the patriarchal family above.
So much for the first four principles. The other five principles will take a post of their own.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Chronicles of A Dying Culture: Hooter’s Swim Suit Pageant Edition by Anthony McCarthy
A fellow insomniac told me last week about flipping through the cable stations in the early, early morning to see women in bikinis having stuff sprayed to their bottoms. It turned out to be a contest sponsored by what is widely considered to be the mildly pornographic restaurant chain, Hooters. My friend noticed something familiar about the spray can, though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was spray adhesive that he’d used on the job to attach Formica to wood. He showed me a can he had in his basement. It looked distinctly dangerous and considering the kind of solvents and other chemicals those kinds of things contain, it probably is.
Here’s what a “FOX Sports Blogger” says about it.
The Secrets of the Pageant
The girls have this magic concoction that keeps the bottoms of their bikinis in place. They call it butt glue. In actuality it's an acrylic adhesive that they're getting sprayed onto their posterior. I wonder if the manufacturers know that what their making is being used to hold bikini bottoms in place. That would make for a whole new marketing campaign. Do you need to attach lightweight foam to something? Do you need to prevent your bikini from riding up? Use our adhesive. And apparently it's not fun to take off. I can't imagine why. I mean it seems natural that you're supposed to apply it to your skin and then rip it off.
Bring something like Hooters up in the blogs and you'll get yelled at for infantalizing women, for "disrespecting their choice". Does anyone really believe that thinking, informed adults would do this as a matter of choice?
Do read the blog and count the number of men associated with this mentioned by name as opposed to the women. It's a good indication of who are considered people in this and who are considered interchangeable objects.
Comments please?
Here’s what a “FOX Sports Blogger” says about it.
The Secrets of the Pageant
The girls have this magic concoction that keeps the bottoms of their bikinis in place. They call it butt glue. In actuality it's an acrylic adhesive that they're getting sprayed onto their posterior. I wonder if the manufacturers know that what their making is being used to hold bikini bottoms in place. That would make for a whole new marketing campaign. Do you need to attach lightweight foam to something? Do you need to prevent your bikini from riding up? Use our adhesive. And apparently it's not fun to take off. I can't imagine why. I mean it seems natural that you're supposed to apply it to your skin and then rip it off.
Bring something like Hooters up in the blogs and you'll get yelled at for infantalizing women, for "disrespecting their choice". Does anyone really believe that thinking, informed adults would do this as a matter of choice?
Do read the blog and count the number of men associated with this mentioned by name as opposed to the women. It's a good indication of who are considered people in this and who are considered interchangeable objects.
Comments please?
Why ask, “Why Do Women Try To Change Men”? by Anthony McCarthy
Would you forgive an uncle for bragging? Without coaching, my twelve-year-old niece was outraged last year when she saw the movie of My Fair Lady. She hated the ending when Eliza went back to Henry Higgins in the end of it and found the big baby’s slippers for him. It is the inherent sexism in the assumption that Eliza Doolittle would submit to his tyranny that outrages her, being informed that it was a distortion of Shaw’s original is just confirmation that the Hollywood treatment of the ending was all wrong.
Marianne Jacobbi makes a similar mistake in her short piece which asks today “Why do girlfriends and wives keep trying to change their men”?
In the movies, love changes people for the good all the time. After Henry Higgins gave his pupil Eliza Doolittle an extreme makeover, she morphed into a fair lady and they fell in love. Imagine how it might have played out had there been a sequel, My Fair Gentleman.
Love Higgins? Who couldn't take Eliza at her word when she says she doesn’t love Higgins after he proposed to adopt her and marry her off to Pickering. More to the point there is this:
LIZA. Freddy's not a fool. And if he's weak and poor and wants
me, may be he'd make me happier than my betters that bully me and
don't want me.
HIGGINS. Can he MAKE anything of you? That's the point.
LIZA. Perhaps I could make something of him. But I never thought
of us making anything of one another; and you never think of
anything else. I only want to be natural.
And shortly after that:
HIGGINS [wondering at her] You damned impudent slut, you! But
it's better than snivelling; better than fetching slippers and
finding spectacles, isn't it? [Rising] By George, Eliza, I said
I'd make a woman of you; and I have. I like you like this.
LIZA. Yes: you turn round and make up to me now that I'm not
afraid of you, and can do without you.
HIGGINS. Of course I do, you little fool. Five minutes ago you
were like a millstone round my neck. Now you're a tower of
strength: a consort battleship. You and I and Pickering will be
three old bachelors together instead of only two men and a silly
girl.
It’s too bad that Jacobbi doesn’t have the time to go into it farther because she has some mildly interesting observations to make on the subject, though she really began with the wrong question. Considering her use of the film distortion of Pygmalion* she should have asked why people try to change other peoples’ behavior. Going into the eternal stereotype of women nagging men should be an occasion for more interesting exploration than she can fit into the tiny last page of this Sunday magazine treatment. And you can begin by asking why men who nag are eternally let off the hook.
Higgins proposal that they be “three old bachelors together” is interesting for two reasons. One is his inability to see the liberated Eliza as a woman, the second is his idea that their menage a trois will produce independence. Given the way he condescends to Pickering it’s hardly going to be a marriage of equals. And the idea contains an almost universally accepted lie. Any man who is honest would tell you that even someone who isn’t married or as much as a bachelor as Higgens can hardly escape men who nag, pressure, bully, browbeat and actually beat on other men to try to change them. And I am certain that some men do worse to women to enforce change in their lives. And I know many women who just don’t try to change anyone’s behavior, either because they know, perhaps from experience, it’s likely to be futile or because they won’t demean themselves by doing it.
So what do you make of the eternal issue of “nagging women”? And, considering how much nagging men put up with from other men, why it’s only an issue when women do it?
* If she would do herself the favor of forgetting Hollywood and Broadway and going to Project Gutenberg to read the original along with the long post script Shaw added explaining the further history of Eliza, Higgins, Freddy, Pickering and, Clara (Freddy’s sister, as one is apt to forget). Of course Eliza didn’t fall in love with Higgins. Who could? She married the more pliable Freddy. Shaw goes into a lot of detail about how the marriage and the subsequent poverty and move into “trade” changed both of the young couple. The picture of the struggles and compromises they are forced to accept are a lot more interesting than the play. It’s a lot more interesting than the movie and musical “romantic” ending. Though it really shows that Shaw had a real mean streak in him. I don’t think he could have written Higgins without it.
Though it’s his treatment of the liberation of Clara from first the conventions of upper middle-class conventions, then the ridicule of her new crowd that are really interesting. Maybe it’s because she’s not saddled with the responsibility of a husband like Freddy.
Marianne Jacobbi makes a similar mistake in her short piece which asks today “Why do girlfriends and wives keep trying to change their men”?
In the movies, love changes people for the good all the time. After Henry Higgins gave his pupil Eliza Doolittle an extreme makeover, she morphed into a fair lady and they fell in love. Imagine how it might have played out had there been a sequel, My Fair Gentleman.
Love Higgins? Who couldn't take Eliza at her word when she says she doesn’t love Higgins after he proposed to adopt her and marry her off to Pickering. More to the point there is this:
LIZA. Freddy's not a fool. And if he's weak and poor and wants
me, may be he'd make me happier than my betters that bully me and
don't want me.
HIGGINS. Can he MAKE anything of you? That's the point.
LIZA. Perhaps I could make something of him. But I never thought
of us making anything of one another; and you never think of
anything else. I only want to be natural.
And shortly after that:
HIGGINS [wondering at her] You damned impudent slut, you! But
it's better than snivelling; better than fetching slippers and
finding spectacles, isn't it? [Rising] By George, Eliza, I said
I'd make a woman of you; and I have. I like you like this.
LIZA. Yes: you turn round and make up to me now that I'm not
afraid of you, and can do without you.
HIGGINS. Of course I do, you little fool. Five minutes ago you
were like a millstone round my neck. Now you're a tower of
strength: a consort battleship. You and I and Pickering will be
three old bachelors together instead of only two men and a silly
girl.
It’s too bad that Jacobbi doesn’t have the time to go into it farther because she has some mildly interesting observations to make on the subject, though she really began with the wrong question. Considering her use of the film distortion of Pygmalion* she should have asked why people try to change other peoples’ behavior. Going into the eternal stereotype of women nagging men should be an occasion for more interesting exploration than she can fit into the tiny last page of this Sunday magazine treatment. And you can begin by asking why men who nag are eternally let off the hook.
Higgins proposal that they be “three old bachelors together” is interesting for two reasons. One is his inability to see the liberated Eliza as a woman, the second is his idea that their menage a trois will produce independence. Given the way he condescends to Pickering it’s hardly going to be a marriage of equals. And the idea contains an almost universally accepted lie. Any man who is honest would tell you that even someone who isn’t married or as much as a bachelor as Higgens can hardly escape men who nag, pressure, bully, browbeat and actually beat on other men to try to change them. And I am certain that some men do worse to women to enforce change in their lives. And I know many women who just don’t try to change anyone’s behavior, either because they know, perhaps from experience, it’s likely to be futile or because they won’t demean themselves by doing it.
So what do you make of the eternal issue of “nagging women”? And, considering how much nagging men put up with from other men, why it’s only an issue when women do it?
* If she would do herself the favor of forgetting Hollywood and Broadway and going to Project Gutenberg to read the original along with the long post script Shaw added explaining the further history of Eliza, Higgins, Freddy, Pickering and, Clara (Freddy’s sister, as one is apt to forget). Of course Eliza didn’t fall in love with Higgins. Who could? She married the more pliable Freddy. Shaw goes into a lot of detail about how the marriage and the subsequent poverty and move into “trade” changed both of the young couple. The picture of the struggles and compromises they are forced to accept are a lot more interesting than the play. It’s a lot more interesting than the movie and musical “romantic” ending. Though it really shows that Shaw had a real mean streak in him. I don’t think he could have written Higgins without it.
Though it’s his treatment of the liberation of Clara from first the conventions of upper middle-class conventions, then the ridicule of her new crowd that are really interesting. Maybe it’s because she’s not saddled with the responsibility of a husband like Freddy.
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