30 October 2005

dilemmas of feminism, my ass

i would like to register my intense disapproval of the terminally vapid maureen dowd essay in this morning's nyt. i'm not even going to link to it, that's how bad it is. but i will note that she (1) repeatedly generalizes about all women in their mid-twenties, (2) appears to live in a hermetically sealed environment consisting only of times employees and their uppercrusty pals, (3) totally fails to consider whether it's ok for her to be privileged because she owns a measure of traditional feminine attractiveness, (4) promotes a vision of movement feminism as a bastion of ugly radicals, and (5, 6, 7, ..., n) makes up a lot of dumb, tendentious dichotomies.

none of this is to say that there aren't a number of points of light in the essay. i like the fact that she begins by noting that she was part-and-symptom of a major collective action problem, assuming that activist feminists (i.e., ugly radicals) would do the dirty work while she played nice and got ahead. but, and this is what irks me the most, she fails on the most obvious and accurate generalization, which is that movement feminism has given way to individualist non-feminism. fewer women today are willing to be ugly radicals on behalf of their neo-traditionalist sisters, because they're just going to get steamrolled.

i think there's good evidence out there that hard-headed feminists, especially ones who violate appearance norms or take seriously the problems of chivalrous manners, are likely to be less successful than their neotraditionalist/third-wave friends, and that both groups, because of the abandonment of movement feminism in favor of individualism, are likely to be less successful than their male friends.

anyway, aaaaargh.

not teaching yet

but i still love this, which i stole from laura.

29 October 2005

i [heart] fitzie

really, you should all read the transcript of the press conference. it's fascinating. not to mention rather damning:

"QUESTION: Mr. Fitzgerald, the Republicans previewed some talking points in anticipation of your indictment and they said that if you didn't indict on the underlying crimes and you indicted on things exactly like you did indict -- false statements, perjury, obstruction -- these were, quote/unquote, technicalities, and that it really was over reaching and excessive.

And since, when and if they make those claims, now that you have indicted, you won't respond, I want to give you an opportunity now to respond to that allegation which they may make. It seems like that's the road they're going down.

FITZGERALD: I'll be blunt. That talking point won't fly. If you're doing a national security investigation, if you're trying to find out who compromised the identity of a CIA officer and you go before a grand jury and if the charges are proven -- because remember there's a presumption of innocence -- but if it is proven that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story about how he learned this information, how he passed it on, and we prove obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements to the FBI, that is a very, very serious matter."

25 October 2005

rosa parks

read the nyt obit here. (from the main page, there's also a link to a collection of pictures.)

what an extraordinary woman.

21 October 2005

news flash: sexism not dead

holy crap! twisty over at i blame the patriarchy links to an astounding article about a news anchor's on-air assertion that his female colleague should stay home with her kids. holy fucking shit.

he needs his dinner

key bit from this article on senate testimony regarding the bush-administration-aided katrina disaster. why didn't fema work? well...

[[On Aug. 31, Mr. Bahamonde decided to send an e-mail message directly to Mr. Brown.

"I know you know, the situation is past critical," Mr. Bahamonde wrote. "Hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water."'

An aide to Mr. Brown responded hours later that the director would need a restaurant in Baton Rouge that night. "It is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner," the message said."]]

18 October 2005

dirty, dirty

kitchen porn. ohhhhh yeaahhhh.

and while i would sort of like to also register my disapproval at this sort of conspicuous consumption, i mainly just want to register my ooooooooh, aaaaaaaah.

17 October 2005

active minds

megan reminds me that i should have blogged active minds long, long ago.

an acquaintance from jpsm -- best penn kid i've ever met outside of the grand forks ones! -- started active minds at penn about a year after her brother committed suicide. as healing projects go, this one has turned out better than most.

are you reading this at a college or university? are there a lot of people whose issues are under the table 'cause therapy and diagnoses and psych visits and whatnot aren't cool? think about starting a chapter.

tony kushner: still my hero

beginning my response to mark smith's american business and political power for tomorrow, i thought of tony kushner's commencement address at vassar in 2002: "you are the citizen of a flawed but actual democracy," he said.

i went back to read the thing again and it is as good as it has always been, which is to say: really fucking good. so smart and inspiring!

and also, the perfect frame for my beef with smith, who manages to show (golly, what a surprise) that americans live in an actual democracy, then basically refuses to address the extent to which that democracy may be flawed. seriously: are there people out there who doubt that public opinion influences policy in the US? how is that an interesting thesis for a book? and would it not be more productive, not to mention more debatable, to investigate control of public opinon?

yeeeeeeesh.

14 October 2005

list arithmetic

so you may have noticed my posts getting shorter and shorter, or at least less and less well thought out. wanna know why? it's because i have to take the american politics exam during the first week of january. you may have noticed that i am also engaged with silly things like classes.

so if i take one day off each week, that leaves me with three days to work on class work and three days to work on exam reading.

there are 140 exam readings.

i have eleven weeks total in which to read them, assuming that i take the final week before the exam to practice essay-writing, a necessary bit of strategy since i sucked so hard on the comparative exam in august.

eleven weeks and three days per week equals thirty-three days. 140 readings in thirty-three days equals four or five readings during each day of exam reading.

today is day two of the thirty-three, and i'm already about 500 pages behind. i'm going to bet, perhaps over-optimistically, that this does not mean i will be more and more behind as time goes on. i think it's just a reflection of the fact that american political development, the most verbose of the sub-subfields, is first on the list. hence four items from this week is equal to something like 800 pages, while 4 items from next week constitutes a more manageable 300-400 pages.

yes, that's per day.

but never fear! happily, this list also includes a large number of things i've read before. thank God for rick valelly. my only real worry at this point is that this exam will turn me back to the dark side, which is to say, back into an americanist. we'll see how it goes.

10 October 2005

loyal opposition

note that i've finally updated my blogroll to include some christian conservative types. also, for my own convenience and maybe yours as well, i've added links to the NIV (blech) and the NRSV (yay!). and changed the headings on my blogroll. and ditched the stupid profile box. and and and. enjoy, and remember to play nice.

gospel in odd places

every so often i check out waiter rants, this fantastic (harrowing, caustic) collection of vignettes written, it seems, to blow off steam at the worst bits of restaurant life. this morning i was scrolling down and -- hey! -- there's a very nice little explication of the scary exorcism scene from mark 5. i love it when stuff like that happens.

as a side note: that passage always makes me think of learning about buffalo jumps in north dakota history. mr. gorman, i salute you.

08 October 2005

i have needs!

type "amelia needs" into google, and you come up with the following (idea due to ben, see link at right):

Amelia needs to turn her attention to regaining her husband's love.

Amelia needs constant support and encouragement and this can be achieved with outside help and financial aid...

Amelia needs a human willing to work with her on creating and sharing trust, especially when it comes to her food bowl.

Amelia needs a big, strong man, not simply in her bed, but to help her fight a demon.

Amelia needs a bit of help staying upright.

Amelia needs to learn impulse control.

Amelia needs her space.

Amelia needs to be installed in a directory with no spaces anywhere...

Amelia needs to get back more of the old spunk.

07 October 2005

institutional design

i feel so meta today: large meetings each day this week with a group of faculty who are investigating "departmental reforms," and the process is all about the incentives that our course sequences and exams create. so of course the question becomes one of institutional design: how do we design institutions that unify the goals of smart, creative scholarship and cool, marketable professional political scientists?

my own answer is that you get people who are very intelligent and very excited about research-writ-large (whether or not they know that they are going to work on projects x, y, z, or be the proteges/lapdogs of professors a, b, c). then you direct their excitement to particular projects, which you support both methodologically and conceptually, at the same time as you force a large amount of general field knowledge down their throats. finally, you take your scholars with their gobs of knowledge and their kick-ass projects, and you make it clear that they cannot succeed unless they know how to behave in a job talk. the end.

easy, right? well, no. consider the exams. we all know that i had a very bad experience with my comparative politics exam. what i guess i didn't realize was that i had only one of many possible bad experiences. there were people who studied strategically, learned very little, and did ok, but still don't feel as if they know comparative politics. there were also people who studied hard and did well and don't feel as if the exam covered the right materials.

but exams are actually the easy part. i just fired off a two-page letter to the reform committee in which i discussed the current mismatch between our recruitment (no need to specify; just be creative!) and our guidance structures (based on individual advising, but without a formal structure for that advising, so that people who come in as b's lapdog working on z do best and others tend to get lost).

it's funny, though, to think about how marginal all of this institutional stuff is in the end. the quality of your work and your self-presentation will win or lose you the jobs, and your talent and industry are what largely determine quality and self-presentation. no matter how smart and industrious we all are (very, very, very), some are smarter than others; some have cottoned on to research projects that 'catch on;' some have invested in skills that happen earn a large return.

but institutions are what the department can control, and given the current state of the political science job market, i'll take a five- or ten-percent bump in my chances any day.

06 October 2005

"cruel, inhuman, degrading"

even the unbelievable cronyism of bill frist fails to defend the president on this one, though i don't know who's worse in that sentence construction. is it the white house, which seems to believe that torture should be completely unregulated, or frist, who doesn't really care about torture at all? (he killed this same amendment back in july when mccain and graham first offered it, because the white house pressured him to do so. now he's voting for it. meh.)

anyway, congratulations to ninety senators for having their heads on a little bit straight for once. having read the amendments when they were first offered, though, i'm not sure this is cause for jubilation:

1. the ranger manual is currently being revised and, to my understanding, will contain a (secret?) section regarding "enemy combatants." the following is from senate debate on 25 july:

"Mr. GRAHAM: [...]We are at a point where we can actually accomplish something that will be good for this country, good for the military, and help win this war on terror. Part of this war is about image.

Mr. SESSIONS. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes, I yield.

Mr. SESSIONS. It did say ``not authorized in the field manual.'' But the Senator from South Carolina interprets that to mean that the military could amend it at any point in time.

Mr. GRAHAM. Absolutely.

Mr. SESSIONS. I think that is more acceptable, but even then the policies in the field manual should reflect the executive branch, it seems to me, being able to use extraordinary events and extraordinary circumstances.

Mr. GRAHAM. And it will be. There will be a section that is specific for unlawful enemy combatants. That is not a traditional way to deal with them versus POWs."

2. the mccain-graham amendment, which is what passed yesterday, was basically a move to undercut carl levin's language, which would have both imposed tighter regulation on military interrogation and institutionalized investigative bodies re: torture, 9.11, etc.

all in all, though, a good day. i would LOVE to see public reaction to the white house vetoing this bill or otherwise trashing john mccain, the one senator who has actually been tortured.

05 October 2005

so about that miers woman

if i hear that ridiculous(ly sexist) "pit bull in size six shoes" comment one more time, i am going to scream.

also, like many in bush's inner circle, she appears to have had some sort of evangelical conversion experience. it's hilarious to me to imagine a partner calling an associate into the corner office in order to tell him said partner is ready to accept jesus christ as her personal savior -- but according to both miers and her good friend (sometime boyfriend, saith the article) justice hecht, that is precisely what happened.

so basically, just to paint with an extremely broad brush, either she hasn't thought seriously about her faith or she isn't suitable for the supreme court or both. why? well, first things first: fundamentalists are not pluralists any more. according to the statement of beliefs at valley view christian church, "We try not to be dogmatic about matters on which believers hold divergent views. Our core beliefs are centered in Christ and His message as supported by Scripture. More obscure doctrine, as well as controversial issues about which the Bible is silent, are left to believers to sort out on their own..." HOWEVER, in the next sentence: "We believe the Bible to be the only infallible, inspired, authoritative Word of God. As such it is our final authority for all matters of faith and Christian practice.( 2 Timothy 3:14-16)"

the question that needs to be asked is whether a life of "faith and Christian practice" as directed by the Bible as the "infallible, inspired, authoritative Word" is in any way compatible with a life of public service under a Constitution that, whatever antonin scalia thinks about our judeo-christian heritage, specifically enshrines the freedom of religion and makes no mention of God.

miers can make claims about the compatibility of her brand of christianity and the united states constitution in two ways. the first is more palatable but less credible: she can cite to the individual voluntarism that characterizes evangelical conversion experiences. she can claim, essentially, that she believes it to be incorrect for her to attempt to enshrine her own faith as, or in, the law of the land, because of her sense that "matters of faith and Christian practice" are fundamentally individual and consequently fall outside the realm of public service and public debate. (indeed, that is the tack she and her friends seem to have taken.) but i question whether that is appropriate to a reading of the bible as "infallible."

if miers is really reading the Bible as "infallible" and "authoritative," she will probably have noted with some dismay the passages that require us all to confess our faith both in public and in private, to make disciples of all people, and to open our earthly lives and vocations to God. THERE IS A REASON that the valley view christian church has, during miers' involvement there, specifically opposed the legality of abortion rather than simply counseling its members about moral horror. if the corner office conversion was in earnest, and she ascribes to an infallible Bible and an evangelical theology, then her christian responsibility as she sees it must include bringing God's laws (as set down by her theology) to all.

miers' second out is a little more crass, and will probably make the social conservatives angry: she can back away from her fundamentalist theology. indeed, she cannot back away from the call to earthly evangelism unless she disavows the valley view dogma on infallibility. she will have to admit, in the inimitable phrase, to being a "cafeteria christian."

there is perhaps a-whole-nother post to be sketched in here, about the changing role(s) of evangelicals in public life, and the (to my mind, related) sense in which we are all, traditionalists and crazy lefty revisionists alike, cafeteria christians. the bible is an immensely conflictual document, and if one is serious about living one's life to its purposes, choices must be made. certain passages must be privileged over others. certain passages must be privileged above all.

the somewhat uncomfortable conclusion that i reach in thinking about all of this is that, as far as public service goes, revisionists and mainline folks have it easy. i think that it must be very difficult (and this goes back to the "fundamentalists aren't pluralists" line of reasoning above) for a person who is serious about the gospels as the infallible word of God to advocate honestly for anything other than theocracy.

04 October 2005

(white)hott shit

things i have done in the last ten days, a selected list:

written: 6,000 words on comparative political psychology(ies); 2,000 words on american party ideologies (do they exist?); 2,000 words of research design on international interventions in domestic institutions; 2,000 words of a grant proposal; 1,000 words on the microfoundations of public opinion

prepped: searchable database of information for said grant proposal; financial aid and faculty support statistics for said grant proposal.

read: gerring, party ideologies in america; zaller, the nature and origins of mass opinion; erikson, mackuen, stimson, the macro polity; ten articles on political decision-making; asad, formations of the secular; geertz, "ideology as a cultural system;" lewis, ecstatic religions; james, varieties of religious experience (portions); mcadam, political process and the development of black insurgency (portions); gill, "rendering unto caesar? religious competition and catholic political strategy in latin america;" rowling, harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban; tolstoy, anna karenina (100 pages to go); kidder, mountains beyond mountains (yes, again); the new york times; the economist; the atlantic monthly; the blogs; the anthropologie catalog.

seen: cronenberg, a history of violence; 15 minutes of alias.

drunk: gallons of water; gallons of coffee; 2 miller high life; some fancy ass martini thing; 2 cape cods (see below at "been to").

been to: political economy lunch; qualitative methods workshop; eight hours class; six hours rehearsal; rudy's (three times -- see above at "drunk"); caffe bottega; cafe adulis (overpriced and underspiced); the beach; stop & shop; trinity episcopal.

sung: mahler, "resurrection;" mader, "the fifth mystery;" several hymns; wilco, lucinda williams and eastmountainsouth, out loud, along with my ipod, on my way home late at night, uptight people in my neighborhood and their weird looks be damned.

run: 12.5 miles (five times out).

organized: kickass swat alum potluck.

felt: trampled; exhilarated; whatever the adjective form of "protestant work ethic" is.