it's a scandal, it's a outrage. (and yes, rogers and hammerstein DID write a, not an, outrage. just fyi.)

seriously, though, the marriage-amendment sponsors infuriate me, occasionally (now, for example) to the extent that i can't even say anything coherent about it.

check out the argument, seemingly central to the republicans' thinking on this, that queer people can't, don't or shouldn't raise children. where do they get this stuff? have any of them ever read anything regarding queer families that didn't come from dr. dobson?

there's also the sponsor's opinion, which would merely be charmingly antiquated if it didn't seem to be gaining some sort of foothold, that evangelical christians' "personal interest" in a queer-free america somehow outweighs barney frank's "personal interest" in HIS OWN LIFE.

aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrggghhhh!

interesting article in the nyt about hunger among the working poor. it reads, in part:

"Hunger in the suburbs is far from a new phenomenon. But today, those showing up at suburban food pantries and soup kitchens throughout the metropolitan region are more likely than ever to include working families, experts say.

"There's a changing face of hunger, in the sense that more working people need help now than before," said Meara Nigro, a spokeswoman for the Community Food Bank of New Jersey."

the article goes on to describe just who these folks might be: full-time workers, often without benefits, for grocery and retail stores, restaurants and other establishments. while the corporate hierarchy of these organizations rakes in the bucks (think wal-mart's healthy earnings this past year), their workers -- described as "invisible people" by one shelter worker -- go hungry.

in a sense, hungry people in suburban areas are lucky: the food cupboard in the story sometimes stocks meat, as well as fresh fruit and vegetables. i have strong and disturbing memories of cupboards in kensington stocked with entenmann's products as far as the eye could see. hungry people in center cities are often obese, and suffer terribly from dental problems associated with too much sugar and processing and too few nutrients. it's paradoxical, and it's wicked.

and of course -- how could i NOT point this out? -- the sorry state of the working poor, whether in cities or in the suburbs, has much to do with "compassionate conservatism." regressive taxation, the privatization of welfare, the failure of the economy to produce any living-wage jobs...thank you very much, bush administration.

I HAVE RETURNED!

...although not to posts with substantive content. sorry about that. michigan was a nonstop whirl of beer, handshakes and schizophrenic weather. it was as fabulous as berkeley and deeply, interestingly different. which, damn it, means that the decisions don't look to be getting any easier by virtue of the recruitment weekends.

a non-exhaustive list of convenient dichotomies one might pair with 'berkeley -- michigan' if one were not too fond of complicated thinking:
no requirements -- lotsa requirements*
historical institutionalism -- scads of numbers
all over-ers -- midwesterners
bars with no roofs -- bars with televised sports
not so much with the electoral system design -- ever so much with the electoral system design**
hella expensive rent -- ann arbor, MI rent
berkeley bowl -- whole foods
swatties -- no swatties

* the real question is which end of this spectrum i might actually prefer. the berkeley kids are still very, very cohesive, but there's nothing like being forced through a first year stat sequence to bring grad students together.

** i prefer the methodological variety at berkeley to the methodological hierarchy at michigan. i think. but there are people at michigan specifically interested in electoral systems and voter choice, whereas berkeley faculty approach my (current) interests more tangentially. DAMN IT!

i'm also having a hard time with this because i had a lot more time and energy to get to know people at michigan than i did at berkeley (where i was sick/exhausted for the entire time). the truly scary part of all this, of course, is that i haven't even been to yale yet.

berkeley was fabulous. (which i guess is rather like saying, "berkeley was berkeley.") they told me things i wanted to hear, provided me with free alcohol, and offered to ramp up the finances a bit. also, it was 75 degrees and sunny, there were a million flowers in full, glorious bloom, and the swatties in the department are lovely. i mean, so is everyone else, but it certainly is nice to get to your first grad school visit and have a built-in social group waiting.

no one told me it was unfashionable to use american politics as a comparative case. folks agreed with me that there hasn't been much interesting work in electoral system design lately and that a new approach might be in order. everybody, even the quant people, were excited about using lots of different methodologies.

i hadn't expected to be so bold, but i walked up to the director of graduate studies at a wine and cheese event and (only a little apologetically) told him we needed to talk money if i was going to be serious about the possibility of coming to berkeley. and it worked! so now, headed to michigan (tomorrow) and yale (on the 28th) with this weekend under my belt, i will finally have some sort of perspective. thank goodness.

also, can i just say, with reference to the aforementioned wine and cheese event? drinking fancy wine out of plastic cups with famous academics in an open-air log cabin with dirty plank floors in the middle of a major research university after several days of not enough sleep? it doesn't get a whole lot weirder.

also, more on the grad school front: i'm heading to berkeley tomorrow afternoon, and will be there until monday night. then two days at home, and off to michigan on thursday. then a week at home, then three days in new haven. whew. i am now *thoroughly* pissed at harvard for their snobbish refusal to do something as simple as sending a letter. well, fine. i didn't really want to go to harvard anyway.

each of the departments i'm considering has an incredibly different feel to it. berkeley's weekend has practically no plans -- just pizza parties, mexican lunches, wine and cheese 'gatherings.' students are happy and profs seem laid-back. there are an awful lot of swatties there. at michigan, i haven't heard from any students, happy or otherwise. the weekend is planned, not to the minute, but something like that. and i received an e-mail from allen hicken -- all the way from manila! -- that was (a) incredibly friendly and (b) incredibly specific to my interests. seriously, that one piece of communication made mich a contender again. and there's yale. i haven't heard much from them since the original plans. the money is still the best. the people seem nice, i get to stay in a hotel for the visit (and yes, i do realize that that would be the mother of all lame reasons to choose a ph.d. program), i think the profs' work is interesting, the department is the smallest...the list goes on.

gaaaaaaad...how to compare places that defy comparison? (i think the answer might be, "financially.")

after spluttering/steaming at bush yesterday, today i'm just sad. the california supreme court has called an at-least-temporary halt to gay marriages in san francisco. the right is crowing. schwarzenegger is spouting inanity (oh wait, that's normal).

i hope that kate kendell is right when she characterizes this as "just a pause."

and i KNOW that gavin newsom's got it when he said, "I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't other setbacks in this process. This is the beginning of a struggle, hardly the end."

splutter. steam. growl. shriek. what a terrible president. what a painfully lackluster Christian. how ironic that he's still clinging to the word "compassionate."

i was totally going to blog about kerry and dean, and how i'm excited about their cooperation, but instead i got all fixated on this.

maybe you know this story already. a crooked (white) cop in tulia, tx, names 40 black people -- 17% of the town's african-american population -- as members of a drug ring. the drug ring is entirely fictitious, as are the illegal actions of every single defendant. nevertheless, the cop is backed up by his (also white) superior officers, as well as the task force for which he works. (the task force is federally funded. it is a joint effort of several cities and counties, and the state of texas.)

there is no physical evidence, but on the cop's testimony, sentences range from 20 years (no previous offenses) to 435 years. let me emphasize again that these are all innocent people.

they were recently exonerated, and the cop indicted on perjury (among other) charges. and now a civil suit has been settled: a cool $5 million to be split between the plaintiffs.

problem is, that's not actually all that cool. plaintiffs' attorneys often take about thirty per cent of the gross, but let's say twenty, just to be nice. that leaves the plaintiffs with $4 million. here's the real problem, though: try dividing $4 million by 46 (the number of defendants in the lawsuit). the result is about $86,956.52, and i think it's eminently fair to say that that's just not enough. not when you've had your freedom and your reputation stolen, and that action sanctioned by the whole machinery of the state.

the state, i might add, of which george w. bush was governor at the time. the really cool part is how bush chose to complain, in the midst of the tulia operation, that the clinton administration hadn't been tough enough on drugs. where by "drugs," considering bush's own past, we have to assume he means "people who aren't white like me."

bush hasn't commented on this settlement.

guess what. making a chastity pledge doesn't keep you from having sex! it does, however, keep you from being prepared for sex and its consequences. in fact, you're just as likely to have sex as the next teenager, but more than half of you won't use a condom, and you will be tested for std's at roughly half the rate of the non-pledging group. you're also going to marry younger.

sounds like a recipe for empowerment to me.

the continued use of "abstinence only" sex ed is yet another alarming sign that our friends in the bush administration hate facts. they can't make an accurate employment forecast to save their lives; yet they continue to view the world through rich-people-colored glasses. "abstinence only" doesn't save lives. it doesn't promote greater sexual health. it doesn't even promote abstinence -- but we're still not teaching kids to be prepared. and let's not even bother detailing the politicization of the war in iraq. point is, these folks will do anything to promote policies they like, no matter the actual effects (or causes, for that matter) of such policies.

egad. this is the week before the week in which i visit two schools in seven days, and i am Very Busy. it's a good thing, really.

while you're waiting for something substantial, here's a list of places that are performing gay marriages (courtesy of laurel, who currently has time to think about such things and then e-mail them to people):

"San Francisco, CA
Sandoval County, NM (but that may not hold up)
New Paltz and Nyack, NY
Multnomah County (Portland), OR
Asbury Park, NJ
Massachusetts is coming soon
Seattle is in court
Vermont has civil unions"

she also writes

"maybe this should be a game. we can place bets on the next jurisdiction to start marrying gay folks. whoever wins gets a toaster."

the toaster joke is an old one. remember the coming-out episode of ellen?

in addition, a good times article on transgender issues at colleges (i know, i'm kind of shocked too). it seems to me that there are an increasing number of trans-people at swarthmore these days, which is quite a development given the generally centrist social/cultural/political/aesthetic shift of the college population. it is amusing to me to remember just how new trans issues were to me when i first arrived at swat, and how difficult they can be. "ze" and "hir" and bathrooms and biographical problems with tenses remind us continually of just how limited our usual notions about gender are -- many of the kids profiled in the article seemed to face more challenges from androgyny, transformation, and indeterminateness than from living entirely inside a new identity. in any case, interesting stuff.

oh Lord, i'm blogrolled on Progressive Protestant under "Religion" (it says "Amelia Hoover," not "overpoliticized"), not "Politics." which is flattering, if a little intimidating. if you have come here looking for profound spiritual insight...i apologize.

as long as i'm (kind of, sort of) on that topic, however...

lent is going well. giving up a little bit of sleep in order to write a few paragraphs in the prayer journal has been very interesting (and i've only missed it twice). it has allowed me to be a little nicer to people with whom i was frustrated, appreciate a few more of the small wonders in my life, and perhaps most importantly, articulate some of the ways in which my worldview is formed by my faith (and, um, i have to admit, vice versa).

---

i am still entertaining the idea of taking classes at yale div if i end up at yale for the ph.d., as seems likely. i am very interested in how little settled i am in the idea of being "just a professor" -- and indeed, how little settled in the idea of being "just a priest," when that seemed to be a likely path. at some point back in the dim distant past (december 2002?) i wrote here about realizing that certain of the adult choices we make are more or less permanent. i suppose that all the career doubts and dual degree dreams and whatnot constitute pretty solid evidence that i haven't yet accepted that realization. oh well.

---

entirely tangentially -- is it odd, and/or not good for me, to have three separate journals going at once? now that i've started the prayer thing, i've got this blog and volume five of the introspection/anguish/name-naming paper journal and the prayer journal. they all reference each other once in a while, but i'm actually very surprised at how little that happens. am i compartmentalizing? is that ok? or am i just incredibly verbose? [answer(s): yes.]

i have just received my first graduate school rejection. from the school that, by any objective measure, should have been the first to beg me to come. but i suppose that my application essay's barely-concealed rejection of that department's dominant methodology didn't do much for my chances.

well, y'know what? i didn't want to live in SAN DIEGO ANYWAY YOU BIG STUPID REPUBLICAN DOMINATED SEASONLESS WASTELAND, YOU.

i shall greatly enjoy my recruitment trips to ANN ARBOR and BERKELEY and NEW HAVEN. so there.

jobs numbers for february came out today...only 21,000 new jobs created last month, which is roughly a sixth to a quarter of the number needed to talk about a "recovery." the unemployment rate remained steady, largely because people stopped looking for work. and the january job gains were revised down to 97,000.

WHERE is this economic recovery the bushies are talking about?

oh, i see...right there in the pockets of the leisure class, where it belongs. silly me.

justice blackmun's papers were released today, on the fifth anniversary of his death, as he had directed. what an astounding packrat! the nyt story notes that the papers are contained in over 1,500 boxes. as always, i'm very moved by blackmun's leftward progress during his years on the supreme court. somewhat differently, it is also rather moving to find tidbits of the real lives of the justices: notes passed during oral argument documenting everything from world news to baseball scores; blackmun's personal anguish over death penalty cases; letters outlining the decline of his friendship with warren burger.

blackmun is the person who, having dissented from the court's original death penalty abolition in 1972, thinking it a matter for legislatures rather than courts, later repented: in callins v. collins, he outlined the multitude of ways in which the death penalty evades fairness and concluded, "i no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death."

and roe. as much as i admire justice blackmun, it seems increasingly clear that the legality of abortion is not really a privacy issue. i don't agree with catherine mackinnon on much of anything, but cutting through the hyperbole, i've always thought her largely correct in her criticisms of roe. namely, that by placing abortion rights in a strictly private sphere, the decision casts reproductive choice as a convenience to men and a negative, rather than an affirmative, right. because abortion is a private choice, the government may only interfere to a certain extent, but it need not in any way facilitate that choice. in general, the protection of "privacy" seems less worthy than the protection of equality when weighed against a potential life. this, i think, is what has allowed roe's steady erosion even as it is nominally upheld.

the article doesn't mention, and i don't know, whether blackmun considered an equal protection foundation for roe, or whether such an opinion could have garnered any support among other justices. at this point, the question is whether similar substantive results can be re-established on different theoretical grounds. i hope they can be, and soon, because whichever way you look at it, the bare majority of pro-choice justices is dwindling, and the right is busy consolidating its power in the political process which, like it or not, emphatically does include the judiciary. it is frightening to consider the return of days when women shouldered the entire risk and burden of sexual freedom, weighing all their independence and ambition against the conduct of their relationships. sadly, whatever rhetoric anti-choicers may use about "life" and the sanctity thereof, it is ever more clear that such a time is exactly what these people have in mind.

i'm back, it's march, and...

wow, what a pile of crap this woman's book is.

i would never in a million years defend the women's magazine industry -- but the very thought of a Ladies Home Journal exec bitching about supposedly left-leaning chick mags sent me into paroxysms of extremely bitter giggles. she claims, as you'll see in the article, that magazine articles playing to women's fears are actually part of a liberal bias.

it's just. so. absurd. as if a hundred million articles designed to make women feel entirely beholden to their personal appearance and their ability to please men could possibly, ever, in any universe, be anything other than conservative.

i'm just confused as to how a thesis this stupid could end up with such a large first print run...i suppose it's probably the katie-couric-bashing.

it's old news, but i saw yet another link to this story and about burst with midwestern pride.

sometimes i make a startlingly poor episcopalian.

for all my proclamations that i love and feel comfortable with the liturgy, it took me many minutes of thinking, searching, bcp-browsing and the like to remember that the daily office is on a two-year cycle, not a three-year cycle. i had *finally* determined that it was year c, and was all ready to look up the thursday readings for 1 lent, when i realized that what i actually should have determined was that it was year 2. leave it to the anglicans to have not one but two more-or-less mechanized systems for chunking up the bible.

...and then i skipped the OT reading, and was bored by 1 corinthians, and accidentally read next thursday's gospel instead of yesterday's. so basically i'm going to hell.

before that happens, however, i'm enjoying this year's "daily lent thing," which is to spend some time each day writing down a prayer. my mother sent me a pretty embossed blank book with a magnetic trifold cover, which is home to these little musings.

i wish that i were one of those people who could just effortlessly concentrate, and live a perfectly fulfilling internal-only prayer life, but i always end up thinking about other things. lately it's been grad school and the prospect of future public-intellectual status; sometimes i agonize, or fantasize, about food; occasionally i end up composing rebuttals to people with whom i've disagreed in the course of the day. in any case, i'm not so great at the whole prayer-focus thing. hence the book, and the writing.

as an aside: lent is such an interesting season out here. in grand forks, lent is just one more component of winter. i've missed easter services due to blizzard. but in pennsylvania, while it's not spring yet, you can tell it's coming, which makes for a much nicer symmetry with the season's purpose, which is preparation.

in an effort to be more specific...

thanks in large part to cps in comments, i spent a chunk of yesterday thinking about why i was so upset at alan greenspan's comments regarding social security. in deference to those who think the nyt coverage was unfair, i'm just going to pick on this, as i did in comments yesterday: greenspan aptly located the source of our incredible budget deficit -- in massively increased military spending. so how to trim this deficit? interestingly, the answer was not to curtail military spending, but rather to cut entitlement programs.

[i should point out that i'm actually a supporter of a reconsideration of some entitlements. means-testing in social security, for example, does not seem like a terrible idea to me. obviously, this is a program that needs some revamping if my parents and their baby-booming ilk aren't going to bankrupt it entirely.]

greenspan's answer is an exceedingly common answer in the bush administration, and a fully conscious one. conservatives have attacked social spending from a hundred angles in the past several years, but the two modes of attack that have emerged most victorious of late are (1) "lucky duckies" (not my term) and (2) "musical deficits" (the best term i could come up with). both are designed to screw poor and working people, in order to confuse poor and working people, in order that poor and working people might be convinced henceforth to screw themselves.

the "lucky duckies" are those high rollers earning $12,000 per year or less, and they were so named by the wall street journal in a 2002 editorial. they are lucky because they pay only 4% per year in taxes. (they are "duckies," apparently, because that's the most demeaning thing the wsj people could invent.) according to the wsj, the problem here is that paying so little in taxes, while obtaining so much government largesse, prevents these folks from feeling enough rage against the government to hold it in check. the editorial, released in late 2002, led the bright minds in the bush administration on a long quest for a convincing argument that the rich are overtaxed and the poor undertaxed.

what i've called musical deficits is the conservative practice of running up huge deficits, then somehow removing the sources of those deficits (military spending or tax cuts) from the game. the deficits land on social welfare programs instead, and such programs end up getting cut. do the social welfare programs actually account for the deficits? no. however: can conservatives convince americans that they do? maybe. greenspan appears to have moved from military deficits to social welfare cuts without blinking, and startling numbers of the working poor have been convinced to vote for candidates who promise only to give money back to their bosses.

in both of these frames the ultimate goal is disembowelment of any government program designed to help people other than the already rich, and the recruitment of the intended beneficiaries of those programs as footsoldiers in the war against their own quality of life.

1. ben schak, what in god's name are you doing reading the inquirer? c'mon, we all know it sucks.

2. ben schak, you are my hero.

on the other hand, this is good news. a 7-2 majority that includes rehnquist is pretty robust...and further marginalizes scalia and thomas, which is fine by me.

ash wednesday, and the news is pretty bad. alan greenspan thinks the right way to deal with our budget deficit is to cut social security. mel gibson's anti-semitic trashfest arrived in theatres at midnight. president bush is "keeping faith" with his conservative base by attempting to institutionalize discrimination based on sexual orientation.

it all seems a little overwhelming, and very prideful, and i can't help thinking that if bush or gibson, for example, were really thinking about the meaning of ash wednesday (and consequently the meaning of lent), he could not continue to act or speak in such ways. greenspan, perhaps, is another matter. rather than blustering about religion and morality, he has couched his argument in arid economic terms. nevertheless, it's difficult not to see a person who asks the elderly and unfortunate to pay for excesses of corporate and military might as something less than a paragon of virtue.

are bush and gibson giving anything up for lent? if they are, do they know why? i have always understood this season as one of repentance, humility and identification with suffering. i don't eat sweets in lent, largely because it keeps me mindful. (what can i say -- i really like sweets. not having any requires a conscious effort at least a couple of times a day.) my uncharitable mind sees bush foregoing the candy in the interests of a trim waistline, and gibson cutting out dessert just because he's supposed to, and both of them feeling very smug indeed.

um, PS: i feel compelled to explain that "blows goats" is an in-joke in my household. things and people that are particularly bad "blow goats. and don't enjoy it." we're also fond of tools, toolboxes, asshats, assclowns and other ass-related (yet non-homophobic, non-misogynistic!) insults. there's also the all-purpose "LAAAAME!"

president bush blows goats, too.

i have no words, or at least none readily accessible, to describe the utter perversion that is a constitutional amendment to define marriage. except maybe "utter perversion."

if such a thing were to be passed (and i don't actually think it would, in the end), i would certainly want to leave the country. perhaps i would try seriously to leave the country. and despite my sense that i'd like to get married at some point, i would sure as hell never, ever get married in this country. why are americans like this? what is wrong with us? why do we insist upon treating people this way?

my goodness, ralph nader certainly does blow goats. i don't care about his egomania or his stridency or any of his policy stances. what i'm more scornful of is this: nader thinks that he is qualified to be the president of the united states, and nevertheless fatally misunderstands the workings of american democracy.

either that, or he actually doesn't care a whit about progress, which is an interesting problem in a supposed progressive.

here's the deal: because we have a single chief executive and a congress based on single-member winner-take-all districts, we are going to have a two-party system. period, the end. occasionally the character of the two parties will change, and at times of crisis one of the parties may be demolished and replaced. there may even be serious and well-supported attempts at third parties. but all such attempts will either cause the demolish-and-replace phenomenon above, or remain marginal, or fade away entirely.

i could engage in a stream of relentless citation here; after all, this is My Thing About Which I Can Blather Forever. i could tell you about the ways this is good and bad and ugly and interesting and whatnot in comparison to, say, the proportional parliamentary system in sweden or the mixed member proportional system in germany. but i won't, because that could be seriously long and boring.

what i'm really interested in expressing is the need for leftists (self included) to be active and vocal *within* the democratic party. i know that many of us aren't too excited about accepting political reality, but unless the united states undergoes some very serious constitutional change in the near future, we'll just have to get over that. the christian right, certainly a fringe, gained a surprising amount of power in the republican party by proving its loyalty, taking over local organizations, and pressing from within. naderites might have the best intentions in the world; they might be really fucking virtuous and highminded; they might have some sort of visceral aversion to compromise of any sort -- but unless they follow the lead of the christian coalition on this one, they're destroying their own cause and the democrats'.

if nader hadn't run in 2000, al gore would have won and things in this country would be very different today. would they be ideal? HELL NO. al gore is (at the very least, was) a centrist. but maybe we wouldn't be stealing workers' money, distributing it amongst the superrich, and flexing our stupidity muscles all over the world scene.

i feel supremely confident that nader will fail to have any substantive impact upon the campaign -- i don't think he's going to turn it the way he did in '00. also -- because he's not supporting the viable-left party, the viable-left party is going to ignore him. because it ain't a proportional system, he's not going to gain any personal or partisan power. his supporters, rather than pushing a large and established party leftward (as they could if they stuck around), are going to look increasingly radical. who's going to benefit? nobody. great strategy!

AWESOME. the *more* conservative of the two CA judges hearing gay-marriage stays this week announced that there would be no immediate halt to the marriages. it was an easy ruling, actually. try this -- which rights are more violated? the voting rights of the californians who voted for an unconstitutional proposition, or the actual couples who stand to lose their chance at matrimony?
like i said, easy.

oh Lord, please find me an academia-related blog (and specifically, one aimed at people in the grad admissions process) that is not full of bitter, condescending whiners telling folks in my position why they should never ever choose to be in my position. it's not just the overlooked adjuncts or the people who went without funding and didn't finish and work in a coffee shop -- it's also people who are in lovely tenure-track positions at nice four-year colleges. people like tim burke, for example, whose blog intrigues and frustrates me no end. burke works at swarthmore and still tells people never to go to grad school. huh?

leaving the blogosphere for the real world isn't much better. it's nice feeling elated right now because of the dizzying rocket-launch from my drastically lowered expectations. but did all my advisors really have to tell me that it would be a long shot to get into *any* of my programs? did they stop to consider how important this might be to me? did they consider that they almost caused me NOT to go through with the applications (and thereby, NOT to follow through on a major dream)?

the answer, of course, is that no, they didn't. they could simply have given me the admissions stats and really, actually worked with me on improving my essays and application materials. instead, every single one of them, with one notable exception, basically seemed to be telling me, well, sure, i did fine, but you'll never make it. most of them told me these things for purportedly institutional reasons (too many people, too few spots). but too often, it sounded as if these folks, whether at swat or on the blogs or elsewhere in my life, were trashing me, and academia as an culture, without ever considering their own position in that culture. i hope that, when i get a decent position at an at least moderately well-respected college or university (because i will, damn it!), i will be honest without playing Defending the Keep on my mentees.

congratulations to sandoval county, NM, the most recent place to announce that it will begin issuing same-sex marriage licences.

the past week has been wondrous and important and historic, and i consider "backlash" concerns both warranted and realistic, but would like to note some counterarguments.

san francisco's move was the tipping point of a debate that has been moving steadily in the right direction for a long, long time. civil unions in vermont were a step forward, though not enough. the massachusetts supreme court recently went farther afield with its mandate of marriages by may 17. san francisco mayor gavin newsom took an unprecedentedly bold step last week, and was promptly supported by chicago mayor richard daley and, as noted above, the powers that be in sandoval county. i feel certain that more is coming, that this sort of progress can't be put back.

courts around the country, seeing these precedents, will rule in favor of counties and municipalities that make this choice. (already, in san francisco, judges expected to issue cease and desist orders immediately have delayed, circumspectly approving the move, and the city has sued the state for the right to marry its citizens.) i see no constitutional argument, related to federalism or practically anything else, that would allow the us supreme court to reverse. where the federal constitution is silent, state constitutions with broad guarantees of equal treatment will speak. they will supersede state laws that discriminate or overdetermine (as with laws "defining" marriage), and unless a conservative majority on SCOTUS decides to get nakedly political (see bush v. gore), that will be that. then there will be a move for a constitutional amendment to define marriage, and it will fail...

because, in addition to new legal understandings of gay marriage (and marriage in general), cutting the crap and actually marrying these folks has produced a beautiful and groundbreaking stream of images and testimonies that collectively will win the "hearts and minds" battle of this war. [disclaimer] i'm fully aware of all the arguments about the evil inherent in a "we just want to be like straight people," white-picket-fence approach to this problem: it leaves a whole lot of queer people out in the cold. marriage isn't a cure-all, and it shouldn't be so normative, and there's gotta be room for transgression, etc. [/disclaimer] the pictures we see from san francisco are going to help straight people in the heartland understand that they have, to a degree, been seeing queer people as freaks precisely because queer people have been excluded from institutions like marriage. it's going to do people like my parents (just as an example) a world of good to see people who look and live just like them, who are together for life and have raised a family and whatnot, walking down the courthouse steps with their long-overdue marriage certificates. like i said in a previous post, love is good, and i think that biting the bullet in san francisco will make that known.

AWOL

sorry, a little, about the (clearly not entirely serious) generalizations below. here is much better news: beautiful photos of more SF marriages, and happy news in the same vein from definitely-catholic chicago mayor daley. [thanks to nuttylibrarian for the daley link.]

it sure is a shame that football players are discriminated against so horribly at colleges like swarthmore. after all, we know that college sports, football in particular, are actually harmless. in fact, they're character-building! they make all the real leaders! because y'know what? it takes a coach to really show a kid how to behave like a man.

from the nyt (NB: hnida was a placekicker; barnett was her coach; hoffman is the university pres):

"Hnida told Sports Illustrated that she was assaulted in the summer of 2000 at the home of a teammate while attending Colorado. Asked why she didn't tell police, she said she was afraid of the player and didn't want a ``media mess.''

Barnett later that day snapped at a reporter who asked him about her abilities. ``It was obvious Katie was not very good. She was awful,'' he said. ``Katie was not only a girl, she was terrible. OK? There's no other way to say it.''

During a brief news conference in Boulder late Wednesday, Barnett apologized ``for answering that question in a manner where I must have come across as insensitive.''

He said his remarks were taken out of context or misinterpreted.

Hoffman, who was not present for Barnett's press conference, said the coach ``was not apologetic'' when she discussed his remarks with him earlier. ``It was my feeling ... that he did not understand the seriousness of the comments he had made the day before,'' Hoffman said."

no shit, sherlock.

i'm proud of these scientists -- including the guy who remembers the nixon years as a golden age at the EPA (!) -- for making some noise about president bush's politicization of science and information. bush's behavior in this respect, from environmental policy to intelligence-gathering on iraq to marriage-as-social-cure-all to "2.6 million jobs this year," goes beyond mere anti-intellectualism and lands squarely in the realm of fraudulent, politically opportunistic fantasy.

the only question is why he hasn't been called on more of it, and sooner.

and more. more sigh.

sob sob.

dean is dropping out of the presidential campaign today (right now, actually). i'm ok, but i'm disappointed in the way LOTS of people handled this campaign. there's the irresponsible media coverage, the democratic establishment's obvious terror at the prospect of a dean candidacy..and, yes, some of the dean people. not all of them, and certainly not the ones who took a bus all the way to freakin' iowa, like my housemate, and not the ones who came to meetup and meant it -- but the ones who overestimated our popularity, and the ones whose support turned out to be soft and faddish. the weird polling numbers and dean's sudden decline put me in mind of junior high clique wars and left me Really Really Pissed at the soft dean people, who i would venture to guess are mostly members of my generation.

so this is depressing. but i think it's also the beginning of something. dean writes in his blog entry, and i agree, that his campaign changed the way(s) in which americans participate, and will continue to participate, in politics, and changed them for the better.

memories of the primaries always fade. i'm looking forward to working my ass off for the democratic nominee, whoever that is, and turning the party's undivided attention to the fight against george bush. but there had fucking well better be some acknowledgement of dean's contributions from the party and the other candidates, and there had fucking well better be some strong support of the party and the other candidates from dean supporters.

because as depressing as it is to lose dean's authenticity and anti-war conviction, it's going to be an awful lot worse if we let bush win this thing.

he was 19 and had never had any trouble with the law. he was heading for a party and decided to use a rooftop shortcut. he was unarmed. the officer was patrolling with his gun drawn, for no apparent reason. when they opened the same door from two directions, the officer shot him and he died. the officer will not be indicted on charges of criminally negligent homicide.

grand juries regularly charge folks who have left their guns in their homes with criminally negligent homicide (as they should) when others (often their own children) accidentally maim or kill.

i'm not sure it serves much purpose to indict this officer. he's clearly sorry about what happened. on the other hand, i'm not convinced that he shouldn't be made a whole lot sorrier.

and berkeley too! (but the money's not so hot.) free trip to california, here i come!

good article from the times about SF gay marriages.

because i am mean and snarky, my favorite part is the lawyer for the conservatives who said, "it's a mockery to democracy."

because i am from the upper midwest, my other favorite part is the couple who flew in from robbinsdale, MN, to get married.

because i am a human being, my really-favorite part is how city employees of every stripe, and volunteers, worked around the clock to keep the marriages coming before the (probably inevitable) order to stop.

academic culture wars! woo hoo! tim burke has a nice, clear-eyed look at the academic-blog debate over alleged anti-conservative bias in higher education. he ends with the following:

"I don’t understand why it is so hard to accept that self-identified conservative undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty report experiencing many similar forms of pervasive, subtle bias. What I'm seeing from many of those who dismiss these claims is a collective eye-rolling, a sort of "big deal, so your professor sneered at you, get over it". And yet few of those doing that eye-rolling would say the same to a student of color or a woman reporting similar experiences. The grounds on which many critics are doubting that such bias exists would have to, in all honesty, extend to all anecdotal, experiential or narrative claims of bias. The only way to salvage such claims would be if they could be profitably correlated with quantifiable evidence of discrimination—but in this case, we have some evidence to that effect. The only other way to salvage this point is to say, "It's wrong to be biased against people because of their race, gender or sexual orientation, but not because of their politics". A few seem willing to say just that: I can only say I think that's a big, fat mistake on a great many fronts."

to which i say: are you sure? really sure? i don't know what i think about this last, but i DO know that burke is making a mistake when he attempts an analogy between conservatism (a chosen ideological stance, generally powerful throughout history) and "race, gender or sexual orientation," as he puts it. discrimination against conservatives in academia might be very wrong, and unhelpful. but it is in no way the same as discrimination against people who come from historically underrepresented or marginalized groups, and who (often or even mostly) experience those identities not as choices but as circumstances.

it is also worth mentioning (and thinking about) the chicken-and-egg problem of liberal academia. that is, is it liberal because, having considered the issues, "it" thinks the left has hit upon what's really going on (i.e., The Truth)? or because there is discrimination going on at some level? or both? and what does all this mean about the search for truth (or whatever) that many argue should characterize academia? i REALLY dislike left-left-left folks who want to argue simultaneously that there's no truth to be found and that the only "real" way to think about issues is through their own ideological lens. however, my dislike for these people pales in comparison to the people on the right who claim, in each and every debate on these issues, that all the facts/data are on their side. i'd footnote some of the lovely quantitative data that supports--just for example--social democratic welfare states as predictors of broad-based enhancements of quality of life, but it's probably not worth the time.

anyway. now that i'm fairly certain that grad school is in the works, all the fights i've had with my dad on this one are coming back to haunt me. my guess is that, whatever the situation really is, i'll have enough sense to stay away from the ends of the ideological spectrum.

i will not, however, stop "discriminating against" conservatives when i think they're dead wrong. as was often noted at swarthmore, i know it's a shock to the system to find yourself in the ideological minority, or to find that people Just Won't Agree with you. but these are important issues, and staunch disagreement isn't discrimination, no matter how much they'd like it to be. there's a-whole-nother essay in me right now, having much to do with the right's success at casting itself as the underdog, but...i'm at work. hurray for capitalism.

well said.

interesting article over at the right christians, concerning james fowler and his research on "stages of faith." (fowler, btw, is a professor of theology and human development at emory, & did both div and ed grad work at harvard.)

it's funny: i guess i've been trying to say something like this for years now. fowler's work, broadly put, addresses heart/brain conflicts in believing christians and posits a development path that begins with brittle fundamentalism, continues to angsty (destructive?) questioning, and ends with a faith that embraces heart/brain conflict and appreciates mystery.

for me, fowler's rubric works well at articulating my wonder at all the fundamentalist friends who argued over the years that they would "lose their faith" if particulars like the genesis creation story or the virgin birth were disproved. it also reminds me of the conflict between, say, kohlberg and gilligan (and aristotle!) in describing moral development. certainly fowler's analysis agrees with gilligan's and aristotle's morality of complexity and context than with kohlberg's morality of inflexibly applied rules.

the real question is, why are there so many very smart people out there who are stuck in fowler's first stage? what keeps them there, and why? is it simply an "easier" place to be? is it a choice? what are the benefits? who gets the benefits?

...this deserves more development from me, but it's not going to get it today. i am researching defamation, woo hoo.

dear christian right:

perhaps you have forgotten this? anyway, i'm pretty convinced that love is good.

love,
amelia

the link above is to a huge archive of san francisco queer wedding pictures. seriously, go look. unless you don't want to be seen crying at work, which is what happened to me as i browsed. the link is courtesy of laura. thanks, laura.

women activists beware. you get too uppity, and mere association with you could bring down a liberal presidential campaign three decades from now.

in a particularly slime-ridden strategy, republicans both straightforwardly sleazy and straightforwardly, obsessively nuts are busy papering the internet with photos of john kerry next to "hanoi jane" fonda. i find it a little amusing, and immensely disturbing, that vets like the ones interviewed for the times story STILL have their knickers in a twist over jane's visit with the commies. in fact, they count kerry's same-time-same-place association with fonda their strongest weapon against him. why??

maybe it's because history has proven her right. [caveat here about how i'm not a communist and the VC were pretty bad too and blah blah blah, but for chrissakes just go see the fog of war.] maybe it's because she was supposed to be pretty, and show up in movies, and not have controversial opinions.

it's the same sort of mindless losing-battle bitterness that seeps out of right-wing editorials lambasting kerry for summarizing other vets' experiences with war crimes in vietnam. guess what, folks: it happened, it really did, and he was RIGHT to talk about it. the real shame here is that leaders of that era sold the soldiers so thoroughly on something so empty. they will never be able to see reason, and they will manifest that inability by paying $179 for the privilege of posting a fonda crowd shot with the future senator in it.

is this going to happen to the veterans of my generation, too? has it already?

gee, took ya long enough.

more than half of the american public finally believes that bush lied or exaggerated about the case for war in iraq. in further good news, this poll (abc/wapo) has kerry beating bush in a head-to-head matchup.

in more positive news (!!!), i have just received a phone call from stephen skowronek. if i want to, i can get my phd at yale.

Ho. Lee. SHIT.

federal prosecutors apparently think women are having d&ex abortions for fun, or something. this subpoena, served on several hospitals, seeks hundreds of patient records "to determine whether the procedure was, in fact, medically necessary."

i can't even dredge up the words to fully describe (1) how wrong this is and (2) the sort of contempt i feel for the ashcroft justice department and all its collaborators.

as michael moore would (and did) say, dude, where's my country? 'cause i sure don't recognize this shit as american.

back to politics.

horse race story from the times...like everyone else, they seem to have decided that kerry's the man. i don't really understand.

after the company with dan and abram last night, the three of us, plus laurel, ended up in an extended discussion of who the nominee would be/should be (yeah, super original, i know).

i referenced ben's site, which contains an amusing and well-drawn discussion (scroll down to february 4) of who can actually win the electoral votes (edwards, in his opinion). i'm almost inclined to agree, for several reasons: edwards can beat the pants off the skull-and-bones boys (bush and kerry) when it comes to american dreaminess. in the following ways: he's cute, he has good hair, he doesn't look like an organ-grinder's monkey, and he was born dirt poor and made all his own millions.

he's from the south, which seems to be the only way for dems to take southern states these days.

he's (relatively) soft on guns.

as referenced above, however, edwards is not happening. the media, in its inimitably self-fulfilling way, has decided to give this one to kerry. as laurel said last night, now that lieberman's out, there's no one i'd really have to hold my nose to vote for, and now that dean's basically done, there's no one i'm gonna stick my neck out for. edwards might be more electable in the general, but a nomination seems highly unlikely.

...which is a little scary, but basically fine. i'd have joyfully taken edwards over bush, but as far as experience and actual policy stances go, i'd rather have kerry be president. there is, or should be, something compelling about a bona fide war hero who later articulately opposed the war he fought in. i mean, hell, he was on nixon's enemies list. that's gotta count for something. he also has a ton of political and policy know-how that neither edwards nor bush can match. provided he remembers what he's been saying on the campaign trail (wrt iraq, no child left behind, jobs, economy, etc.), i think he'll do well. the only problem, as ben points out, may be actually getting him there.

so, commenters, considering all our demographics, which VP nominee is going to swing the most votes in kerry's direction?

...and in a radical departure from my usual fare, i shall now take a few moments to write about Death, or at least, about what happens when someone dies.

i mean at the funeral, not at the proverbial pearly gates. there's a times article about newfangled funeral practices today that ends with one of the least healthy statements i've EVER SEEN. as follows:

-- But that does not mean a funeral mass has to be grim. In churches that allow it, Father Wasielewski, the industry critic, drapes the pews with balloons and crepe paper. "I try to leave grief out of the funeral," he said. "St. Paul says, `Do not grieve unless you have no hope.' "

At the service, he said, he tells relatives and friends of the dead: " `How many of you think George here went to hell?' No hands go up. `Went to heaven?' All hands go up. `So let's have a celebration. We don't want anyone grieving. If anyone's going to grieve, we'd like them to leave right now.' " --

that's right, NO GRIEF ALLOWED. because it wouldn't be natural to grieve, would it. i am sorely tempted to make this into a broader argument about american culture and the way it ignores inconvenient realities...but that would probably be too easy. instead, this note: the worst funeral i've ever been to (of seven, so far) was a "celebration of life" with no liturgy and no space for sadness or anger. i never, ever, ever want to repeat that experience again.

remind me to steer clear of father [polish name].

check this out -- a federal subpoena to investigate "conspiracy" surrounding an anti-war forum.

why, you ask? well, the supposed reason is that someone who had attended the forum -- the topic of which was nonviolent protest ala king and gandhi -- later attended a protest at fort dodge, during which she may have attempted to climb a perimeter fence.

yes, that's all.

so what do they want to know? everything about the forum and its organizers, the drake u. chapter of the national lawyers guild. prosecutors are asking for attendance records not only from the forum but from all drake nlg meetings. they also want the names of all drake nlg board members and all agendas and other paperwork from all meetings in the past year or so. from drake itself, they supposedly want all room requests and organizational materials.

...and there's a "nondisclosure order" attached to the subpoena -- so drake can't speak about what it's being asked to disclose.

is there some way in which this sort of behavior is supposed to be allowable?

am i naive? (the answer is often yes. however:) john kerry surprised me yesterday by stating unequivocally that he does not support gay marriage, but rather full and equal civil unions.

all this sounds very plessy v. ferguson to me. if senator kerry thought a little harder, would he understand that it doesn't make sense to, first, state that you support the full participation of a class of people in american society, and second, state that you support the creation of a new institution so that those folks can't participate in one of the more fundamental institutions of american society? (none of this, btw, is to say that civil unions are bad.)

let's think about some other "suspect classes." seeing as i've already referenced plessy, let's try race first. "separate but equal" doesn't work constitutionally, hasn't for a long time. minority people, under the letter of the law at least, must be afforded full access to marriage and every other public institution in this country. in a situation perhaps more similar to gay marriage, one should also note that laws banning miscedgenation haven't been OK for quite some time either.

...this despite the fact that lots and lots and LOTS of people made claims about "God's law" in that context.

but what if sexualities were all nurture (or choice), no nature, as many conservatives have said? well, we can point to lots and lots of constitutional law guaranteeing equal rights to people who have made religious choices in direct contradiction of antonin scalia's fabled "judeo-christian foundations of our country" (see his outrageous dissent in romer v. evans). interestingly, however, muslims and hindus and atheists and santeria practitioners are all allowed to marry.

the list goes on. point is, obviously, if we claim we're about affording queer people full citizenship, and if civil marriage is in fact a secular rather than a sacred institution, then the massachusetts supreme court just made a gutsy and entirely correct decision.

UNRELATEDLY, dean has announced that he'll be dropping out if we don't take wisconsin. this is the right move. i was getting a little antsy, honestly, about division among the dems. although i have to say: the media is SO fucking this up. first the white house-scripted attacks on dean (who would, i think, have been the more appealing candidate in the general). then the pleasantly self-fulfilling annointment of kerry as the nominee. then the parroting of the "massachusetts liberal/just like dukakis" shit. anyway. i've been checking out position statements lately, and i'd be happy to support kerry there, mostly. let's just hope he can keep improving that stage presence.

eyes on the prize. yes indeed.

perfect. it's perfect. please, for the love of God, read this onion article. then you will finally understand all the *other* primary coverage.

more notes from my actual life: our kittens are coming home this evening -- after a 5.40 vet appointment. (i feel like a new mom, which i suppose i sort of am.) it's now 2.21, and i'm having some difficulty concentrating on work rather than the 'babies.' bonny (bonnie? i guess laurel will decide.) is an orange tabby and will be wearing the bright blue collar (with bell!). clyde is...well, clyde's gonna look like a target employee (khaki fur, red collar, also with bell). i will probably post a link to some pics tomorrow or saturday. YAY!

sure, he's married. sure, his sons are my age. but i still want to marry robert reich. in massachusetts, of course.

but seriously, folks...read this column. it's a nice indictment of the DLC and their republican-in-sheep's-clothing politics, and a well-reasoned plea for coherently stateable, overarching progressive themes.

reich names a few more "activist judges"-type phrases: "it's your money;" "tax and spend;" "political correctness."

what's (what're) ours?

the ACTIVIST JUDGES strike again!

george bush is all up on his high horse and shit, talking trash about "activist judges" and the massachusetts supreme court's recent "deeply troubling" (read: totally awesome) decision on gay marriage.

let me say, first, that i really cannot understand the desire, on anyone's part, for marriage to be an exclusive right of heterosexuals. i just can't. it's obviously related to my inability to believe that God is upset by love between certain people. i think a fair reading of the bible (i focus there only because that seems to be where dubya and his minions are focused, too) informs us that God is looking, first and foremost, for an increase of love. makes sense, being as that's what God is. and, as has been often pointed out, christians who are concerned about particular expressions of love had better not be wearing any cotton-blend fabrics.

[snark: having witnessed fred phelps's people, i can tell you that petrochemical-heavy cotton-poly blends are where they're at. i know the OT doesn't mention poly, but still. hypocrites.]

anyway, i don't understand the furor over gay marriage. or rather i do, but can't countenance it. it's not worth trying to analyze the issue here. i will say that the idea of a constitutional amendment formally enshrining this (any?) sort of discrimination is an unthinkably awful idea. it would be approximately as useful as prohibition, just without the roaring-twenties sense that we're all in it together. ugh.

what i'm more interested in at the moment is bush's indiscriminate (and clearly uncomprehending) use of the term "activist judges." he always says it (as in the state of the union) with his most pensive frowny-face, knowing that this time-tested conservative chestnut will win the day. the problem is that it often *does* win the day, because it smacks of...something. elitism, i suppose.

but that has always been the judiciary's job -- to give democracy a good slap once in a while, forcing it to rethink its priorities. given his logic, not to mention his politics, bush is probably no fan of _brown_, either. dessegregation, of education or marriage, is always a tough one.

here's a strategy question: is there a lefty rhetorical foil for the overtone (undertone?)-laden "activist judges"?

back from the dead

damn! that week was full of disasters. to round out the fun, i came down with the stomach flu on sunday night. i'm pretty much ok now, and feel as if i've done approximately 9 jillion crunches. oh yeah.

anyway, i'm sure there's been news, but i have too much back-work to comment, really. will try for something opinion-based tomorrow.

because you are desperate to know:

our water is back on.

yesterday our furnace broke. heat-leaking-ness meant that it was a balmy 40 degrees in the living room this morning. the three of us spent last night sitting on alyssa's floor in our coats next to a ridiculously weak space heater, eating bad chinese food and cheering every degree of the stupid heater's meager output. then we had a sleepover upstairs.

however: as of mid-afternoon, our heat is back too.

please Lord, no more house-related disasters.

give me more sympathy. or money. whichever.

here's something important. allen brill at The Right Christians has started a progressive christian meetup. it's the third thursday of the month, and i think i might be the ONLY PERSON IN PHILADELPHIA signed up. maybe you should come to the meeting (or tell your friends to) even if you're not a progressive christian. for example, if you're a christian wanting to think about progressivism, or vice versa. or if you're a progressive wanting to talk to christians. or whatever.

signup is at http://rightchristians.meetup.com/.

nori e-mailed me to say:

"Diebold says they've fixed the flaws pointed out by the geeks in
October, but the report finds that they have not been. Maryland's
election officials don't appear to care that they've spent $55 million
in order to systematically disenfranchise its voters.

"This is the company, you will recall, whose CEO has promised to
deliver the votes of his home state (Ohio) to Bush this November.
Ought we not to be skeptical? Ought there not to be public outcry?
And there it is, buried on page A fucking FOURTEEN, labelled
"technology"!! Jesus H. Christ."

and she's so, so right. the nyt article she's referencing is here, and it seems to have sunk-without-trace. and while there's clearly a lot going on in the world today (as there was yesterday, when the article was actually out), there's not so much going on that this shouldn't be front-page news. in fact, i want it to be front-page news every day until diebold goes out of business.

relatedly: did anyone else watch major network coverage of the NH primary? why do CNN and its cronies, along with the overwhelmingly white 1.4% of the american population currently living in iowa and new hampshire, get to decide who our nominee's going to be? obviously, it's not as literal as all that -- but it's close, and that's very depressing. folks who want to have an honest conversation about which candidate would be best, on any number of levels, are being denied that chance, as the networks have apparently decided that kerry should be our nominee because he's the least fucking threatening.

it ain't diebold, but it sure is equally disheartening.

my kitchen ceiling fell on my head this morning. or rather, grungy gooey chunks of my kitchen ceiling and a big splash of dirty water. at least i wasn't standing in the center of the room, where most of it fell. drywall is heavy stuff, even when it's wet.

genesis of this sob story:

january 8
alyssa: [landlord], our pipes are frozen. the shower doesn't work. fix it, please.
[landlord]: it will fix itself! also, this never happens!
alyssa: but didn't it happen to last year's tenants? and then didn't pipes burst?
[landlord]: [shifty eyes]

january 15th or so
alyssa: our pipes are frozen.
laurel: maybe we should call [landlord].
alyssa: but what would be the use?
amelia: you're right. just open the taps.

january 23rd or so
amelia: shocker! our pipes are frozen.
laurel: open the taps. don't bother calling that [expletives] [landlord].

two days later
amelia entering the kitchen: it's raining in here! oh wait. that doesn't happen. and the water is yellow! quizzically perhaps our pipes have burst...but didn't [landlord] say that would never happen? dials phone. hello, [landlord]? yes, i thought you should know that our pipes have burst and it's raining in the kitchen.
[landlord]: shit! i'll be right over! that never happens!
amelia: didn't it happen last year?
[landlord]: i'm on my way.

...and so on.

laurel wrote in comments, "it's really hard for most people (me included) to acknowledge that we've been actually fooled. I think we should all say the things we were fooled about/by, and maybe put that together as a website/ad/something. I'll go first.

"I've been duped. I believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I also believed that there were things the Bush administration would not do for reelection."

here's mine: i've been duped. i believed there were weapons of mass destruction in iraq, because the administration seemed so sure, and i couldn't believe they'd lie about something so serious.

i've been duped. i believed in bush's "compassionate conservative" rhetoric. i believed that he really cared about education, and i believed that the "texas miracle" had some sort of basis in reality. but now i know that the houston schools falsified records in order to bear out the "miracle," and i know that texas kids don't show any improvement on any test other than the one they're taught in texas schools. i care about education because i am a student and my parents are teachers, and that makes me mad.

you?

oscar nominations are out, and for the first time in a while i've seen all five best-picture nominees. in fact, i saw them all in the theatre.

thank you, thank you all. thank you to the academy. thank you especially to dan blim, without whose help i never would have seen all these movies.

however: if master and commander wins, i'm gonna eat my hat.

i'm incredibly excited about the possibility that bill murray could win best actor. he deserves it, in that field, despite sean penn's performance in mystic river.

here endeth my bout of film criticism.

remember last week, when i wondered how to show folks that bush lies on policy? well, it's obvious that paul krugman and i are soul mates. or, at the very least, that he reads me every day to mine my brilliant intellect. anyway -- he writes today,

"So the right has used deceptive salesmanship to undermine tax enforcement and push through upper-income tax cuts. And now that deficits have emerged, the right insists that they are the result of runaway spending, which must be curbed.

"While this strategy has been remarkably successful so far, it also offers a big opportunity to the opposition. So here's a test for the Democratic contenders: details of your proposals aside, which of you can do the best job explaining the ongoing budget con to the American people?"

that's the best challenge i've heard from a columnist in quite a while. i hope the dems are up to it. however: like i said last week, it's going to take more than explaining this particular con, or any particular con. we have to figure out how to unspin the magic armor of bullshit surrounding the administration before anybody's going to pay attention to niceties like facts.

laurel and i spent some time talking about what sort of advertising might do the trick. personal testimonials? easy-to-read graphs? i decided that, while people don't want to hear that they've been duped, they might be more receptive to hearing that someone with whom they identify feels duped. maybe?

professor burke's newest blog article is called "evil." i suggest you read it, because it raises some interesting points. for my part, i'd be incredibly interested to hear about burke's faith history -- just 'cause evil is such a tough word for us liberal christian types. he seems to have an easier time with it than i.

burke takes as a primary example the cover story in this week's new york times magazine, which i mistakenly tried to read while eating lunch. let me give you a clue: the headline includes the phrase "sex slave" and the cover photo is a nose-down shot of a girl in a catholic-school-esque uniform sitting on a bed. knees foreground. the article, even more than the cover, is an immensely disturbing look at something that is, yes indeed, evil. imprisoning a child, and then raping and abusing it for profit, is clearly evil.

like crashing passenger planes into civilian business centers is evil. like causing the deaths of thousands by orchestrating an unjustified war is evil? that's a harder one.

tim burke writes, "Most human suffering isn?t something that one person does willfully, with foresight and understanding of the consequences, to another...[E]vil is a term I?d reserve in this context for exceptional circumstances where the connection between particular actions and the serious suffering of particular individuals are clear and are known to the actor and known in advance by him or her to be morally indefensible."

i.e., systems can't be evil; concrete individual actions can. in a certain sense, this means that the more widespread the bad, the more difficult it is to define as evil. i don't know what i think about that.

relatedly (i think): i'm also not sure how to respond to burke's argument that mystifying or un-understandable acts and circumstances and motivations cannot be labeled evil. my sense is that he's wrong on this, but again, that might be my religious tradition speaking. i believe in evil as an active force in the world, and i also believe that i can discern many acts of evil -- but i lack the authority to label actors, themselves, evil. when burke discusses the difference between evil and not, he is suddenly speaking of persons rather than the "acts and ideologies" he refers to earlier.

if we restrict ourselves to acts (and maybe ideologies), do things get simpler? and can we make a case for evil that goes beyond the immediate -- beyond suicide bombers and serial killers and the logisticians of genocide and, yes, sex-slave traffickers -- and touches the conditions that make suicide bombers, serial killers, genocides, sex slavery? i think yes.

on that more diffuse definition, i'd say that willful misunderstanding of a sort that causes widespread death and suffering is probably evil, and that the bush administration has committed an evil act. just sayin'.

unrelatedly...man, catherine mackinnon is really not useful as anything other than a foil.

it's the capitalists' fault.

back again. our [string of expletives here] absentee landlord refuses to fix (i.e., insulate. it's not hard.) our bathroom pipes, so whenever it's under 20 degrees fahrenheit, no showers for us. i am sooooo tired of washing my hair in the kitchen sink.

straight up now tell me
laurel and i are going to make a political short that is also a music video. seriously. maybe.

we were sitting on the couch last night, talking as usual about what to do, when something, probably my recent concern with the treatment of reality in politics, caused the following crappop snippet to take over my head:

i've been fooled before/wouldn't like to get my love caught in the slammin' door/how about some information PLEEEEEEEAAAASE [please? a-pleaseplease?]

that's right, folks, paula abdul is going to save american democracy. dear george:

you are so hard to read/you play hide and seek/with your true intentions/if you're only playing games/i'll just have to say/buh buh buh buh buh buh bye

and

i don't mean to make demands/but the word and the deed go hand in hand/how about some information please (please please please)

and the image is going to be nice diverse american looking people lip-synching while some text about how they were screwed by bush rolls. yep.

please Lord, not my city

very little linking today, as work is a bit nuts (i.e., i've been paralyzed on this brief for like a week now, and it's got to get done.)

nyt has some amusement: a front-page article on googlebombing. oy. there's also a headline that refers to dean's third-place showing in iowa as a "loss," which is rather (intensely) dumb.

but here's what i've actually been thinking about lately: how does one start a movement to educate against political spin? can americans be retaught to consider policy results? and is it self-undermining to couch such an effort in advertising-style bites?

it's become increasingly apparent to me recently that someone somewhere is going to have to do some very serious conceptual work in order depose george w. bush this fall. i'm pretty sure that the content of that work has a lot to do with -- somehow -- helping americans understand that bush lies.

but here's the hard part: americans hate knowing they've been duped or misinformed. if you tell them the wrong way, they'll never EVER listen. like this: i know most people in grand forks, ND, aren't racists, or at least aren't intending to be racist. but, by and large, they support UND's extraordinarily offensive racist mascot. unfortunately, when someone says, "that's racist!" these folks hear "you're a racist!" i can't even describe how the heels dig in then, but it's astounding. not even the best evidence works any more.

it's the same deal nationally with dubya. how do we help people figure out that he's "leading" us down the primrose path?

for now, i'd advise checking out moveon.org, which has a new project devoted to developing campaign themes.

please keep reading that there SOTU post (two down). but also look at this! i'm going to reprint an entire message from alyssa, because it's just that cool. and important. (go laurel!) please comment?

-----Original Message-----
From: alyssa
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 2:03 PM
To:
Cc:
Subject: the new fate of swatties

last two paragraphs from the Weekly's Dean cover story:

Still, Dean has something none of the other candidates can claim: People
don't just vote for him--they believe in him. They get on buses and drive
a thousand miles to knock on doors in the snow. And they do it with a
smile. Which is something even a king's ransom worth of TV ads can't buy
and the dirtiest Republican tricks can't change. Laurel Eckhouse says as
much as we file out into the frigid Iowa night.

"This is bad for the Democratic Party. This could have been a chance for
unity," she says. "Dean bypassed the party gatekeepers, built his own
movement and came up with his own paradigm--and it's brilliant. And that
scares the shit out of them. His issues should be the heart and soul of
the Democratic Party: government of the people, by the people and for the
people. Instead we get government of the corporations, by the corporations
and for the corporations. No matter what, if he doesn't win the
nomination, in four or eight years, people are going to look back and say
Howard Dean was ahead of his time."

*****

i think this is remarkable. i think it's remarkable that my buddy l.r.e.
had the best and brightest insight of the philly4dean adventure and so
scored the conclusion of the Philly Weekly's cover story. la[urel], you did the
journalist's work for him. perhaps this is the fate of swatties: to have
the kind of understanding that sits at the poignant end of a news article.

what does that mean?

to begin with, it means that if we want people to be smarter and more
thoughtful than we already are, we're not going to find it in 95% of the
media. maybe we already knew this. it also means that we should WORK THE
NEWSPAPERS.

@#$%ing midwestern republicans.

or perhaps this is the appropriate time to use my old argument that ohio's not actually part of the midwest anyway.

bush's state of the union address last night was, as expected, a total disgrace. i called his language "orwellian" here a few days ago, but now i'm wishing there were some stronger word for what i heard last night.

back in the dim distant past, presidents often spoke in the SOTU addresses about things that were at least related to the country's experienced reality. now bush appears authorized to ramble about nothing for an hour and be considered a statesman of sorts. or worse, authorized to tell half-truths (and even a few outright whoppers) in order to project some sort of positive image of himself and his administration.

were i to fully discuss any of the myriad problems with that speech, i would be writing all day. also, my head might explode. so let me just make a list: continued conflation of war on terror with war on iraq; claims of success in iraq; claims of international cooperation in iraq war; claims of success in afghanistan; claims that women will be "fully equal" in the "new afghanistan;" no child left behind labeled effective; testing called only way to identify and help low-achieving students; anti-drug message, apparently first written for bush's unsuccessful seventh grade student council run; abstinence education labeled effective; will support constitutional amendment re: "sanctity of marriage;" more championing of "faith-based" social services...the list goes on.

later, i got all sputtery on the phone to my mom -- she probably thinks i'm nuts now. but honestly, i haven't any idea how i would deal with another four years of this homicidal bungling. what would i do? where would i go? could i responsibly leave the country? the solution, obviously, is to make sure he doesn't get reelected. i just wish i knew how to make my energy serve that purpose.

a final note: where have all the exciting leaders gone? pelosi's and daschle's responses were as unsatisfying as bush's speech was horrifying. and kerry, while he was classy as hell, didn't excite me either. i acknowledge the importance of grass-roots opposition, but i think the grass-roots opposition is in serious need of a charismatic leader. just...who the hell is that going to be?

check out the new progressive christian blogs i found. they're neat.

ok, so we didn't pull it off. on the other hand, i keep thinking back to this time last year, when i had no sense that howard dean would do anything but keep the eventual nominee honest. new hampshire will be better.

a new worry is what's going to happen now gephardt's out. he appears to have said that he'll endorse someone else quite soon. the only reasonable person for him to endorse (given the battle with dean and edwards's inexperience) is kerry, and that makes me nervous.

damn, the dean blog is hoppin' today -- comment threads climbing into the many-hundreds. i bet we can pull this thing off.

today is martin luther king day.

the mayor of atlanta, shirley franklin, had this to say to the president (from the times article): "Perhaps some prefer to honor the dreamer while ignoring or fighting the dream,'' she said. "For those of us who hold elective office, the public policy we advocate and adopt -- from foreign affairs to domestic budgeting -- tells the real story of our celebration of Dr. King's legacy. ... Can't we protect our borders and promote peace around the world?''

franklin's speech drew a standing ovation, as well it should have. coretta scott king, sounding a somewhat different note, spoke on the need to end, or at least moderate, acrimony in politics. is there a way to make politics less acrimonious without bowing to attempts, like bush's, to "honor the dreamer while ignoring or fighting the dream"? i don't know.

king's message of nonviolence and social justice seems as difficult and as radical today as it did in the '60's. and only some of the challenges are different. american schools are still segregated. i'm still working on race discrimination cases -- lots of them -- at work.

meanwhile, the challenges that are new are also *really* scary: the bush brothers making speeches to "honor" dr. king; war in the name of peace; destruction of our welfare state with a rhetoric of empowerment. it's this new sort of affront to the memory of dr. king that has me clicking back and forth between mlk day coverage and iowa caucus coverage. i'm hoping the dems will field someone who doesn't speak bush's orwellian language. obviously, i'd like it to be dean -- in fact, i think it will be. the important thing will be finding someone who's willing to risk charges of acrimony in order to point out the differences between bush's rhetoric and his policy.

...and i've hit 10,000 visitors. which is actually rather sad, considering that the blog's been up for almost exactly 18 months, but whatever.

there's a good discussion going on now at allen brill's the right christians about an attempt at making christian progressives(/progressive christians/whatever) more of an on-the-ground force. (as opposed to, say, just a bunch of bloggers who read each other often.)

some of the discussion (the comment threads, mainly) strikes me as a bit naive, or underthought. after all, here are a bunch of likeminded people who are probably minorities in BOTH their faith communities and their political communities. while it's important to celebrate the fact that we exist, i think that a big part of the "real mission" is getting progressives and christians who see themselves as opposed to talk to each other, or at least acknowledge each other.

honestly, the christian/progressive thing reminds me a little uncomfortably of my interest in dialogue between radicals and moderates in the anti-war movement. in both cases, the two "sides" (ugh) mistrust the others' motives and goals, although they may have many (nearly all?) of the same intermediate-level visions. particularly in the anti-war situation, such distrust can be very damaging. being more of a moderate than many in that movement, i experienced the behavior of some radicals as extraordinarily alienating and even damaging to the movement.

in any case, i think it would be a mistake to proceed blithely with any christian progressive community without ironing out some similar issues. how would a christian progressive group react to being told that it is not wanted as the ally of some progressive cause with which it agrees?

go bob herbert. this column is kind of obvious, but totally right.

apparently the stereotypes are all true. or maybe moving to society hill causes people to lose their souls. whatever the reason, i have to say that the 'young adults' party at our priest's house last night was approximately the strangest event i've ever attended.

first off, i was the youngest 'young adult' in the room. some of the 'young adults' were definitely pushing 40. i'm sorry, folks, but when you're forty you're a 'real adult,' also known as a 'regular adult.' do you live in a house you own? do you pull down $50,000 or more yearly? have you been MARRIED for more than a calendar year? chances are you're not a young adult.

so that was odd.

more importantly (this is the stereotypes-all-true bit), folks seemed totally uninterested in speaking about anything even remotely substantial. politics? nooooo, that would be divisive. religion? noooo, that would be....what? too religious? for a church group? eh? certainly nobody expressed desire to, oh, say, connect the two. the whole gathering reminded me of eddie izzard's bit on anglicans -- you know, the one about the "hobby church."

basically, this was not what i expected from any gathering sponsored by st. peter's. is it that people aren't listening to the sermons?

also, that guy bob was a total manarchist.

last thing today: HURRAY FOR ALYSSA! ALYSSA HAS A SUPERCOOL NEW JOB! ALYSSA IS WHITE HOTT!

so is she positioning herself for veepness? i'd be pretty cool with that, actually. not that it's ever going to happen.

here's something to make you want to never, ever read the times again. as is often the case, this particular bit of mean, senseless drivel comes from maureen dowd.

i don't know much about ms. dowd's life, but i bet it's fair to say that she's a "career woman."

...which only makes it harder to understand why she chose to write this piece about judith steinberg dean. really, you have to read it to believe it. first there's a pallid attempt at bush criticism (the phrase "national yenta" is involved. oy.) -- but then she reveals her real intent: trashing the nontraditional political spouse.

i love (read: hate) that the national media is so up in arms over the fact that dr. steinberg dean is not on the campaign trail with her husband, stumping at every turn. but what do they want? she's shy, she has a very successful career of her own, and she's not very interested in politics. also, according to our pal maureen, she (gasp!) doesn't care very much about appearances.

these are good things, but they don't make for an ideal campaign spouse. judith dean has stated and restated that she supports her husband, that he would make a great president. shouldn't that be enough? why is the political wife who doesn't adore her husband in the manner of a (rather more articulate) golden retriever always cast as cold, distant, uncaring? and how does that label get transferred to her husband so effectively?

God, i love gender(ed) politics.

so it's all marriage and space from here on out. it's as if the bush administration has decided it can't possibly win on actual issues and will therefore just pretend they don't exist:

"i didn't do it! i didn't lie about iraq! i was dead at the time! i was on the moon...with steve! or at least that's where i'll be in 2015!"

my suggestion is that we just send him up, like, tomorrow, and let earth do some healing.

also: can you believe this shit about ditching the international space station??? oy.

good Lord, how depressing. the times says that the bush administration is going to spend $1.5 billion promoting marriage, especially among low-income people.

i can't really even express how stupid and bad this idea is. maybe -- MAYBE -- if such a program were specifically aimed at eradicating domestic violence; if it were available to all couples who wanted it, queer or straight or what have you; if it somehow were less coercive and more empowering; if we as a country could actually afford it -- maybe then it might be something we could begin to think about.

at the moment though, as the times article notes, this is at best an empty sop to conservative groups. sadly, it's a very expensive sop with no history of improving the social maladies of poor communities. obviously it's better for kids to live in a household with more, rather than less, parental contact and supervision. but these programs have been around for a while now, especially in the conservative south, and there's never been any evidence that they do what they ought. none. as my father would say, show me the &%$#ing data.

the thing that really gets to me is the cynicism of it. this adminsitration is not going to make it possible for poor parents to actually spend time with their children. it's not going to push for meaningful job growth, and it's certainly not going to push for a more generous welfare state or more stringent labor regulations. instead it pretends that marriage solves the poverty problem, rather than the other way around.

such small, mean minds these people have.

god hates tennessee courts dot com -- this by way of atrios.

there is so much interesting news (& cetera) out there (where "out there" = "in the new york times") today -- jobless recovery news, it's-cold-in-minnesota news, a krugman column on enron, and, on the heavier side of things, some scary new attacks in iraq and a spate of dean-bashing. plus a shocking report involving wesley clark, women voters, and argyle sweaters. i want to write about all of it, but considering today's workload, i think it's more likely i'll write about none of it. check it all out, though.

the imf a bastion of sanity. who'da thunk it?

(just for starters, nearly every economist not directly attached to the bush administration.)

republicans, at least the ones in texas, have formally announced that they no longer have any scruples whatsoever about hijacking democracy for their own purposes. i commend them for their honesty.

here's the article from the times on the recent decision that the texas gerrymander will stand, and here are a few choice snippets:

of the three judge panel who made the decision: "They also found that politics — not illegal racial discrimination — prompted the redrawing of district lines." that's right, folks, our friends the judges have decided that racial discrimination has nothing to do with politics, and that politics has nothing to do with race. great!

or this gem: "Tom Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, called the ruling "a serious blow to the Democrats" and added, "It makes their already remote chances of taking back the House slimmer than ever.""

because after all, making sure the democrats don't take back the house is what democracy should be all about. [aaaarrgghh.]

so the eyebrow has bruised. don't worry, it's very subtle. in fact, it looks almost exactly like blue/purple eyeshadow. well, except for the part where it's starting to be yellow and green. seriously, though, you wouldn't know it was there unless i told you.

alyssa told me not to worry; it's still "white hott." oh yeah.

$3 million is not enough. it's nice that the diallo family gets some sort of resolution -- they probably have very few resources for lawyers and trials and whatnot, after all -- but i can't believe the city, and the officers involved, avoided their responsibility so completely. the "apology" quoted in the times sounds like the shooting fell out of the sky. like an earthquake or a hailstorm, it just "occurred." regrettably, but apparently uncontrollably.

the officers were found not guilty of all criminal charges. no federal civil rights violations were found by the justice department. there wasn't even any departmental discipline. apparently the penalty for murder is now "retraining."

...whereas the penalty for offering the police your ID (while black) is death.

another long hiatus. sorry. however, today i have happy news: bill bradley is going to endorse dean. this is not actually all that astounding -- bradley was a washington establishment type for years, but he positioned himself left of gore in 2000, and left politics thereafter. consequently it shouldn't be a surprise that he's decided to support dean, who is also (a) left of gore, or at least left of where gore was as a presidential candidate and (b) not (any longer, i presume) sensitive to dean's less-than-totally-respectful treatment of congressional democrats surrounding the iraq war. there's also the fact that politics has more peer pressure than any middle school: now that dean is the "front-runner" (whatever that means at this stage), folks are going to start endorsing him right and left, previous conflicts be damned.

thank goodness for bandwagons.

by the way: while this isn't astounding, it is great. i supported bradley in 2000 before i had to hold my nose and work for gore-lieberman, and his confidence in dean reinforces my own in a way that the gore endorsement didn't. so yay.

now watch the conservatives try to spin this as a black mark on dean, bradley, or democrats in general...

OH! AND! with my lovely housemates in tow, i made a trip to south street on friday. now i have an extra hole in my face. cool! because i'm extraordinarily vain, there is a picture here. i forgot to format said picture, so it's embarrassingly big, but...oh well.