fat-phobic hipster intelligentsia, grrrrr.
and in other t-shirt news, i couldn't help myself. i bought it.
28 June 2006
pertinent random summer reading
a couple of nights ago i stayed up late to finish all the president's men, and wow. i don't care whether there's a(nother) conspiracy in this administration that "goes all the way to the top." i do care that the tactics the bush administration is using today -- namely, 'liberal media' ire focused on a particular newspaper -- sound so much like the ones that the nixon administration used then. [prospect story via atrios.]
27 June 2006
verminhouse kids in foster care
anybody want to sublet bonnie and clyde for a year? it sort of breaks my heart, but they cannot come to california with me.
i'd like to write something longer about the anguish of rootlessness for the change-resistant, but there's no time. in the next two weeks i need to sell most of my furniture, figure out what to do with the cats, and move. again! (june 1 to summer sublet, august 1 to fall sublet, january 1 or thereabouts to palo alto.) funny how things work out and yet totally fail to work out: back when i started grad school, i looked at it as a wonderful opportunity to [finally] be in the same place for a long time. to be -- it must be said -- something approximating a "real adult." i bought a kitchen table, for chrissakes! then along comes a great opportunity and utterly rearranges all my lifestyle expectations. i'll miss my red couch and my split box spring and my nice desk, but i can't really complain.
i haven't even unpacked my boxes this summer. they're just sitting there in the basement, waiting for the next bout of transportation.
25 June 2006
tough episcopal times
i had an emotional early evening reading fr. jake's updates on the general convention's capitulation on queer issues. ironically enough, i was listening to sweet honey in the rock: balm in gilead ("sometimes i get discouraged, and i think my work's in vain. but then the holy spirit revives my soul again."), and then a short time later "ella's song" ("we who believe in freedom cannot rest."). it puts me in mind of the way that christian conservatives once found room in their theology for racism. this place we're in right now? no better.
the language "we" ratified at the convention (old news, but i figure most of my fan base isn't really up on the doings of the general convention of the episcopal church):
Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, that the 75th General Convention receive and embrace The Windsor Report's invitation to engage in a process of healing and reconcilation; and be it further
Resolved, that this Convention therefore call upon Standing Committees and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.
best response i've seen so far: t-shirt (suitable for mass attendance i daresay!) proclaiming "my manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church."
the language "we" ratified at the convention (old news, but i figure most of my fan base isn't really up on the doings of the general convention of the episcopal church):
Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, that the 75th General Convention receive and embrace The Windsor Report's invitation to engage in a process of healing and reconcilation; and be it further
Resolved, that this Convention therefore call upon Standing Committees and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.
best response i've seen so far: t-shirt (suitable for mass attendance i daresay!) proclaiming "my manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church."
22 June 2006
luxury caffeine
here's a very cool thing about being a graduate student at yale: our grad student cafe, the somewhat troublingly named blue dog, sells intelligentsia coffee at absurdly subsidized prices. this came about because of a friend of mine who is (a) obsessed, and i mean obsessed, with coffee and (b) involved in student government. intelligentsia is featured in the nyt today, trumpeting its "buy high, sell high" philosophy and its support of direct relationships with local growers in latin america and africa. however: i'm going to want to know more about fair trade standards and the role of grower cooperatives. it seems that intelligentsia buyers are buying high -- incredibly, insanely high; more than twice the going fair trade rate -- but are buying high from particular farmers who produce particularly brilliant crops. which, ok, much more carrot than stick in that little incidence of capitalism, so yay. but what's the effect on a grower co-op when one member is paid twice as much?
20 June 2006
"should i be afraid of new haven?"
this is a question i've been asked quite a lot by new yalies, both male and female. i think the answer is no-with-a-caveat-or-two, but i'm impressed at the variety of responses i've heard. everything from "absolutely -- never walk alone, anywhere, anytime" to a flat "nope." like bitch phd, though, i'm struck by how the complex of beliefs and behaviors known as "afraid of new haven" is tied to a whole slew of uncomfortable identity politics. new haven is, first, a specific instance of the general phenomenon in which women are trained to be afraid of various sorts of independence. second and more specifically, the "common sense tips" and information we hear so much about have the consequence, intended or not, of definining yale as against (poor, black) new haven. which means that neighborhoods do not become more integrated with time. which means that many public spaces are deserted at night. which means that these public spaces are then actually much more dangerous. i miss norris square, and the way that (poor, minority) neighborhood policed itself: not through collective avoidance but through socializing on the stoops, in the streets, at the playground.
19 June 2006
AMEN SISTER
katharine jefferts schori, bishop of nevada, is to be our new presiding bishop. for all you non-episcopalians out there, that's the person who heads up the church in this country. so it's a fairly big deal. strike that. a really big deal. as fr. jake notes, this is the first female primate of any anglican province. prayers of thanksgiving!! i am thrilled for my church.
less happily: i'm appalled at what i've heard of the behavior of the ultra-conservatives at the convention. (apparently, they walked around in cassocks and refused table fellowship with others. oy.) bp. duncan, of the diocese of pittsburgh, says that the election of bp. jefferts schori "speaks for itself," and he doesn't mean that in a positive way. his comments speak for themselves too. i don't mean that in a positive way either.
in other general convention news, john danforth's speech was apparently quite good, although i haven't found a complete transcript yet. certainly the rector of christ church new haven, who spent time at the affirming anglican catholicism booth, was impressed. i tend to worry that moderates in this church underestimate the problems that are caused by lackadaisical definitions of "tolerance," however. understanding that many conservatives are neither well-meaning nor reflective, i know that the majority of conservatives, who are both well-meaning and reflective, often feel that the church is "tolerant" toward acts and beliefs they find unChristian -- but that this "tolerance" does not extend to what they perceive as serious theological and moral debates.
my question is whether conservatives who feel marginalized would feel better if they were taken seriously in debate, or whether their definition of "marginalized" is more akin to "no longer in control." so far the balance of the evidence lies with the latter possibility. our tradition in the anglican communion is that common prayer is the tie that binds; theologically much remains unseen and debatable. i've always felt that this sort of humility is a perfect response to both general human falliblity and sinfulness and the specific tendency towards the sin of pride. we are invited to understand that there is an ultimate Truth out there -- specifically, the trinity -- and that we are called to witness our convictions about that Truth as best we can -- AND that we might be wrong.
in any case, refusing table fellowship is an act of spiritual warfare that bespeaks a serious misunderstanding of the christian mission. why not find a theological opponent you know and like, and have a conversation? failing that, why not at least be polite?!
less happily: i'm appalled at what i've heard of the behavior of the ultra-conservatives at the convention. (apparently, they walked around in cassocks and refused table fellowship with others. oy.) bp. duncan, of the diocese of pittsburgh, says that the election of bp. jefferts schori "speaks for itself," and he doesn't mean that in a positive way. his comments speak for themselves too. i don't mean that in a positive way either.
in other general convention news, john danforth's speech was apparently quite good, although i haven't found a complete transcript yet. certainly the rector of christ church new haven, who spent time at the affirming anglican catholicism booth, was impressed. i tend to worry that moderates in this church underestimate the problems that are caused by lackadaisical definitions of "tolerance," however. understanding that many conservatives are neither well-meaning nor reflective, i know that the majority of conservatives, who are both well-meaning and reflective, often feel that the church is "tolerant" toward acts and beliefs they find unChristian -- but that this "tolerance" does not extend to what they perceive as serious theological and moral debates.
my question is whether conservatives who feel marginalized would feel better if they were taken seriously in debate, or whether their definition of "marginalized" is more akin to "no longer in control." so far the balance of the evidence lies with the latter possibility. our tradition in the anglican communion is that common prayer is the tie that binds; theologically much remains unseen and debatable. i've always felt that this sort of humility is a perfect response to both general human falliblity and sinfulness and the specific tendency towards the sin of pride. we are invited to understand that there is an ultimate Truth out there -- specifically, the trinity -- and that we are called to witness our convictions about that Truth as best we can -- AND that we might be wrong.
in any case, refusing table fellowship is an act of spiritual warfare that bespeaks a serious misunderstanding of the christian mission. why not find a theological opponent you know and like, and have a conversation? failing that, why not at least be polite?!
18 June 2006
sucks (ha ha!) to be a christian heterosexual feminist
holy shit friends! i know i'm late in the game to be commenting on all this...and indeed my "commentary" may add anything to my collection of links on the topic. however. as a regular (if entirely abstract) object of the scorn (or is it pity?) of some smart and entertaining feminist bloggers, i feel it only right to weigh in on this one. these ones, rather.
why the plurality, you ask? because, while everybody else is ranting about the blowjob blowup instigated recently by the inimitable twisty faster (and then commented upon, to good effect, at pandagon and feministe), i'm less ranting and more nostalgiafying. (there's gotta be a better verb form than that, but...what?) to me this little imbroglio reads quite a lot like twisty's posts on religion in general and christianity in particular. or...lots of radical feminists' posts on godbaggy stuff.
by way of example, a couple of favorite twisty posts are here (actual sentence: "You know, even if you’re moron enough to "believe" that God exists, it’s gotta be clear by now that the guy’s a fucking psychopathic menace and needs to be taken out.") and here (actual sentence fragment: "a chick priest is like a Log Cabin Republican.")
ouch!
were i to take pretty much any of these posts, be they fellatio posts or opiate-of-the-masses posts, seriously, i would be one unhappy feminist. but to take these posts seriously, i think, would be a serious mistake. twisty seems too smart, in most of her writing, to endorse the Inquisition-y orthodoxy she brings out in some of her commenters. the real question, which is discussed at some length in the feministe post i've linked to above, is whether a subset of radicals, in launching this brand of hyperbole at the sex lives and faith lives of other self-identifying feminists, can produce forward motion of some sort. other than the forward motion of my forehead smacking the keyboard in frustration, that is.
there are points in their favor. after all, i've just spent nearly an hour reading the collected wisdom of something like 600 commenters on the issue, all of them compelled to respond directly or indirectly to twisty's not-actually-comical assertion that blow jobs are Bad, hence a Good Feminist would not engage in such an act. i think most folks disagree with the assertion, and possibly even more disagree with the language used to make the assertion. nobody's running for the hills except for a couple of people who were just looking for the escape hatch anyway. ("you're telling me that i'm a bad feminist for doing this act? well, then i guess i can't be a feminist any more. ann coulter, soothe my troubled brow!") but have we hashed anything out? come up with new ways of speaking about these problems? realized that the creative solution to the Patriarchy's stranglehold on sex and faith might be mitigated with x, y, z?
i'm not so sure about that. the discussion reminded me, uncomfortably, of the way that yale union folk reflexively accuse university administrators of malfeasance and mock the utility of the 'sanctioned' student government body. it reminds me, uncomfortably, of the way that 'sanctioned' student government folk assume that they are the only agents of change, and that absence of imminent crisis means that everything is fine in our corner of the ivory tower. people get all sanctimonious and pissy -- and hurt -- and everything goes to hell. nothing gets accomplished, because neither "side" (note: SAME FUCKING GOALS.) is willing to admit the necessity, or even the acceptability, of the other. the strongest critique of twisty's rhetoric, both in her original post and in her followup, is that it serves as an invitation for women to insult other women. there's nothing like internecine warfare to really fuck up a cool movement.
which brings me to The Whole Point: while it's all well and good (probably) for the feminist blogosphere to engage in a big, passionate project about What It Means to be a Feminist, we should probably retain some connection to the fact that the Patriarchy does not live in the internets and therefore cannot be eradicated in the internets. connection to that fact implies connection to lots of things that are outside our own personal interests and predilections. that is to say, connection to that fact implies that feminism still needs to be a movement, as opposed to some sort of catch-as-catch-can personal betterment scheme. i've bitched before about the fact that one of the most insidious problems facing the feminist movement is free-riding: maureen dowd and her kitten-heeled ilk getting all the advantages that less conventionally palatable women dreamed up and sacrificed for. thus an appropriate critique is not "that icky act you purport to like is inherently bad for women." likewise it is not "that stupid bullshit you believe can never be feminist." more useful: "have you fully considered why you like performing that act/believing those things? do you understand their implications for other women?"
a good decision rule about acts we perform as part of a feminist movement should probably not come down to our feelings about jesus (or even paul). it should not come down to our affective responses to penises. instead it should place your preferences alongside the preferences of others: does the fact that you like or believe (or "like" or "believe") some patriarchy-sanctioned thing make it more difficult for other women to live full and equal lives (i.e., to live as they prefer even if they prefer non-patriarchy-sanctioned ways of living)? if yes, well, quit it already. if no, well, at very the least you cannot be deemed a traitor to the cause. thus: sex of type x, y, z between people who respect each other and aren't kidding themselves about where the pleasure comes from? fine. closely held religious belief in an inclusive, activist, non-prosyletizing, feminist theology kind of way? fine. calling other people stupid, thereby winnowing the mass movement down to an exclusive cadre of party faithful? NOT FINE.
why the plurality, you ask? because, while everybody else is ranting about the blowjob blowup instigated recently by the inimitable twisty faster (and then commented upon, to good effect, at pandagon and feministe), i'm less ranting and more nostalgiafying. (there's gotta be a better verb form than that, but...what?) to me this little imbroglio reads quite a lot like twisty's posts on religion in general and christianity in particular. or...lots of radical feminists' posts on godbaggy stuff.
by way of example, a couple of favorite twisty posts are here (actual sentence: "You know, even if you’re moron enough to "believe" that God exists, it’s gotta be clear by now that the guy’s a fucking psychopathic menace and needs to be taken out.") and here (actual sentence fragment: "a chick priest is like a Log Cabin Republican.")
ouch!
were i to take pretty much any of these posts, be they fellatio posts or opiate-of-the-masses posts, seriously, i would be one unhappy feminist. but to take these posts seriously, i think, would be a serious mistake. twisty seems too smart, in most of her writing, to endorse the Inquisition-y orthodoxy she brings out in some of her commenters. the real question, which is discussed at some length in the feministe post i've linked to above, is whether a subset of radicals, in launching this brand of hyperbole at the sex lives and faith lives of other self-identifying feminists, can produce forward motion of some sort. other than the forward motion of my forehead smacking the keyboard in frustration, that is.
there are points in their favor. after all, i've just spent nearly an hour reading the collected wisdom of something like 600 commenters on the issue, all of them compelled to respond directly or indirectly to twisty's not-actually-comical assertion that blow jobs are Bad, hence a Good Feminist would not engage in such an act. i think most folks disagree with the assertion, and possibly even more disagree with the language used to make the assertion. nobody's running for the hills except for a couple of people who were just looking for the escape hatch anyway. ("you're telling me that i'm a bad feminist for doing this act? well, then i guess i can't be a feminist any more. ann coulter, soothe my troubled brow!") but have we hashed anything out? come up with new ways of speaking about these problems? realized that the creative solution to the Patriarchy's stranglehold on sex and faith might be mitigated with x, y, z?
i'm not so sure about that. the discussion reminded me, uncomfortably, of the way that yale union folk reflexively accuse university administrators of malfeasance and mock the utility of the 'sanctioned' student government body. it reminds me, uncomfortably, of the way that 'sanctioned' student government folk assume that they are the only agents of change, and that absence of imminent crisis means that everything is fine in our corner of the ivory tower. people get all sanctimonious and pissy -- and hurt -- and everything goes to hell. nothing gets accomplished, because neither "side" (note: SAME FUCKING GOALS.) is willing to admit the necessity, or even the acceptability, of the other. the strongest critique of twisty's rhetoric, both in her original post and in her followup, is that it serves as an invitation for women to insult other women. there's nothing like internecine warfare to really fuck up a cool movement.
which brings me to The Whole Point: while it's all well and good (probably) for the feminist blogosphere to engage in a big, passionate project about What It Means to be a Feminist, we should probably retain some connection to the fact that the Patriarchy does not live in the internets and therefore cannot be eradicated in the internets. connection to that fact implies connection to lots of things that are outside our own personal interests and predilections. that is to say, connection to that fact implies that feminism still needs to be a movement, as opposed to some sort of catch-as-catch-can personal betterment scheme. i've bitched before about the fact that one of the most insidious problems facing the feminist movement is free-riding: maureen dowd and her kitten-heeled ilk getting all the advantages that less conventionally palatable women dreamed up and sacrificed for. thus an appropriate critique is not "that icky act you purport to like is inherently bad for women." likewise it is not "that stupid bullshit you believe can never be feminist." more useful: "have you fully considered why you like performing that act/believing those things? do you understand their implications for other women?"
a good decision rule about acts we perform as part of a feminist movement should probably not come down to our feelings about jesus (or even paul). it should not come down to our affective responses to penises. instead it should place your preferences alongside the preferences of others: does the fact that you like or believe (or "like" or "believe") some patriarchy-sanctioned thing make it more difficult for other women to live full and equal lives (i.e., to live as they prefer even if they prefer non-patriarchy-sanctioned ways of living)? if yes, well, quit it already. if no, well, at very the least you cannot be deemed a traitor to the cause. thus: sex of type x, y, z between people who respect each other and aren't kidding themselves about where the pleasure comes from? fine. closely held religious belief in an inclusive, activist, non-prosyletizing, feminist theology kind of way? fine. calling other people stupid, thereby winnowing the mass movement down to an exclusive cadre of party faithful? NOT FINE.
16 June 2006
tights and ankle boots
in addition to calling to mind a generationally mismatched winter fashion conversation in des moines, and making me love jack black just a little bit more, the nyt review of nacho libre refers to "the film's liberating vision of identity as a performance space, an existential wrestling ring, if you will, in which each of us, if only given the opportunity, can cavort freely in the mask and colored tights of our choosing."
now, all day long, i will be thinking about the mask and colored tights that i would choose for my turn in the existential wrestling ring. what color? how elastic is our definition of "colored tights"? are we talking a kabuki sort of mask, or one of those rubber reagan things? would a simple black eye covering in the style of zorro do?
now, all day long, i will be thinking about the mask and colored tights that i would choose for my turn in the existential wrestling ring. what color? how elastic is our definition of "colored tights"? are we talking a kabuki sort of mask, or one of those rubber reagan things? would a simple black eye covering in the style of zorro do?
15 June 2006
things that i have been thinking recently
1. recently read.
cloud atlas is a really good book. also really good if waaaay more disturbing: the rules of attraction. slightly less recently but still worth mentioning anyway: the plot against america; the nanny diaries; into thin air; the hours. in a more general way: graduate students should read more novels.
2. the impostor phenomenon
"an internal experience of intellectual phoniness among high-achievers." there's precious little real data here -- it was described first in a nonrandom sample of academic women who had sought psychotherapy for other reasons -- but there is at least one reliable and valid instrument for "diagnosis," and a hell of a lot of hey-that-sounds-like-me among successful folks, especially successful women.
but oh! horror! i have been describing my knowledge of the phenomenon with outdated data! according to everything i could dredge up, the jury is still out on whether this is a "women's" phenomenon (in some domains men report impostor feelings at least as frequently as women do). indeed, it remains to be seen whether this "phenomenon" is actually just another name for low self-esteem. more college women than college men report impostor feelings, but more tenured men than tenured women. the impostor scales are highly (negatively) correlated with self-esteem scales, but less highly correlated than many other separable concepts.
my question from these data: does the tenure ladder, from grad school onwards, weed out impostor women more efficiently than impostor men? and why?
3. prospect theory and student loans.
laurel reports that she used the content of this article in the process of kicking the GRE's ass the other day (woo hoo!), but that is not the only reason to read it. in particular, note how economists' old habits die hard: despite being thoroughly outgunned by the evidence, one recalcitrant rationalist notes that "If you graduated from college, and you could be a social worker or an investment banker, the fact that you have $20,000 in student debt is hardly a deciding factor...It would be irrational to make a lifetime decision based on that." maybe irrational, yeah, but...when was the last time you had to repay loans on twenty grand a year, fundamentalist economist lady? it sucks to give up a million bucks in earnings over a lifetime, but it sucks more not to make rent. (note that i realize that this is not an illustration of the insight of prospect theory so much as yet another instance in which "rationality" is a privilege of the relatively well-off.)
4. vocation, schmocation.
i'm pretty sure i'll be going to california in january, assuming all kinks iron themselves out. pretty sure. not totally sure. in fact still kind of ambivalent. on the other hand, if i waited until i was totally sure to make all major decisions, i'd never make any decisions at all. all i know at this point is must. avoid. job market rumor mill. at! all! costs!
this last because (1) the job market sucks, so it's tempting to make substantive decisions based on disciplinary faddishness but (2) you gotta go where your interest lies and (3) markets, even dysfunctional academic job markets, change; hence the "good subfield" this year will probably not be the "good subfield" in 2009 or 2010.
5. i like the gym in the summer: nobody there.
6. mmmm....
i am pretty sure that my favorite part of accidentally moving to wooster square for the summer will be the farmer's market that takes place about two blocks from my house every saturday morning. as i've probably mentioned here before, one of the most frustrating things about moving from philly to new haven has been the lack of good local produce. or at least, the lack of good local produce that can be accessed without a car. anyway, i am totally psyched to evade the pallid, tasteless crap at stop'n'shop for the rest of the season.
cloud atlas is a really good book. also really good if waaaay more disturbing: the rules of attraction. slightly less recently but still worth mentioning anyway: the plot against america; the nanny diaries; into thin air; the hours. in a more general way: graduate students should read more novels.
2. the impostor phenomenon
"an internal experience of intellectual phoniness among high-achievers." there's precious little real data here -- it was described first in a nonrandom sample of academic women who had sought psychotherapy for other reasons -- but there is at least one reliable and valid instrument for "diagnosis," and a hell of a lot of hey-that-sounds-like-me among successful folks, especially successful women.
but oh! horror! i have been describing my knowledge of the phenomenon with outdated data! according to everything i could dredge up, the jury is still out on whether this is a "women's" phenomenon (in some domains men report impostor feelings at least as frequently as women do). indeed, it remains to be seen whether this "phenomenon" is actually just another name for low self-esteem. more college women than college men report impostor feelings, but more tenured men than tenured women. the impostor scales are highly (negatively) correlated with self-esteem scales, but less highly correlated than many other separable concepts.
my question from these data: does the tenure ladder, from grad school onwards, weed out impostor women more efficiently than impostor men? and why?
3. prospect theory and student loans.
laurel reports that she used the content of this article in the process of kicking the GRE's ass the other day (woo hoo!), but that is not the only reason to read it. in particular, note how economists' old habits die hard: despite being thoroughly outgunned by the evidence, one recalcitrant rationalist notes that "If you graduated from college, and you could be a social worker or an investment banker, the fact that you have $20,000 in student debt is hardly a deciding factor...It would be irrational to make a lifetime decision based on that." maybe irrational, yeah, but...when was the last time you had to repay loans on twenty grand a year, fundamentalist economist lady? it sucks to give up a million bucks in earnings over a lifetime, but it sucks more not to make rent. (note that i realize that this is not an illustration of the insight of prospect theory so much as yet another instance in which "rationality" is a privilege of the relatively well-off.)
4. vocation, schmocation.
i'm pretty sure i'll be going to california in january, assuming all kinks iron themselves out. pretty sure. not totally sure. in fact still kind of ambivalent. on the other hand, if i waited until i was totally sure to make all major decisions, i'd never make any decisions at all. all i know at this point is must. avoid. job market rumor mill. at! all! costs!
this last because (1) the job market sucks, so it's tempting to make substantive decisions based on disciplinary faddishness but (2) you gotta go where your interest lies and (3) markets, even dysfunctional academic job markets, change; hence the "good subfield" this year will probably not be the "good subfield" in 2009 or 2010.
5. i like the gym in the summer: nobody there.
6. mmmm....
i am pretty sure that my favorite part of accidentally moving to wooster square for the summer will be the farmer's market that takes place about two blocks from my house every saturday morning. as i've probably mentioned here before, one of the most frustrating things about moving from philly to new haven has been the lack of good local produce. or at least, the lack of good local produce that can be accessed without a car. anyway, i am totally psyched to evade the pallid, tasteless crap at stop'n'shop for the rest of the season.
09 June 2006
file under misdirection, various guises of
guise the first:
angry black bitch has an awesome post up today that says in part:
"What if…oh, maybe a bitch had better stop…fuck it…
What if finding a cure for breast cancer was as crucial an issue as keeping some folks from getting hitched?
Oh no she didn’t!"
[pointless tangent: if a feral hat were here now, i would say something like "damn straight!" and then la's robot voice would chime in with "correct." and then there'd be a very slight pause before al asked, "is this the future?"]
oh, but she totally did, and so will i, and not only because i am hopping, spitting mad at the republican machine right now. i'll start with the being mad stuff, though. first thing: WHAT IS THIS 49-48 BULLSHIT?!? breast cancer is on abb's mind just now, but i can also think of about a trillion and one other things that i'd rather the senate be doing with its time. like clubbing baby seals.
i do not intend to claim that this is news, or that this represents some watershed moment in the conduct of american politics. i've been writing about misdirection for at least as long as george bush has been screaming, stuttering and smirking about this thing called the "war on terruh." but abb's piece this morning really touched a nerve for me. i've been trying to deal with my (monopolistic university-administered) HMO through some briefly scary (eek!), then merely annoying (woo hoo!), health issues, and it's been awful. how awful must it be for people whose problems are actually scary, and whose docs nevertheless refuse to (or cannot due to time constraints; there's an observational equivalence problem there) explain what the fuck is going on? how much worse must it be for folks without health insurance who don't have the money to find out whether their problems are scary or merely annoying in the first place?
...and so on. point being, i hope that there comes a day when "christian" conservative elites in this country repent of the fact that they've sacrificed queer folks directly, and many, many others indirectly (think: poor folks, sick folks, folks who gotta get to work at $3.00 a gallon 'cause there's no public transportation, kids trying to get an education, so on. i won't even mention women. oh wait, i just did.) in order to get and maintain power. i am still waiting for the data that say homosexuality is a greater threat to This Great Nation than localized endemic poverty. also still waiting for the copy of the Bible in which jesus finally makes it clear that it's more important for His disciples to punish sodomy than to feed the poor, house the homeless and care for the sick.
of course, while i wait, large chunks of the american population are being successfully misdirected. is it because they're dumb? (at this point, i refuse to rule such a thing out.) or is it because The Gays seem solvable while big questions like how-to-provide-health-care are confusing? cognitively, i guess it's a lot easier to hate on the sodomites than to endure your Hillary Clinton Flow Chart flashbacks. come to think of it, this is a pretty standard finding in american politics research: elites aren't going to waste their time actually solving problems when the solutions are incremental, complicated, and costly. given the choice, they're going to publicly denounce the loving relationships of my friends instead, because that is discrete, costless, and direct.
guise the second:
how 'bout those big fucking framed photos of deader-than-dead zarqawi? that shit is beyond fortuitous. the iraq war, it has always seemed to me, evolved as a highly sophisticated misdirection strategy. unfortunately, while the misdirection was highly sophisticated, the actual war was not, and now we need occasional misdirection from the misdirection. thus, when we finally kill this one evil dude, we get to see large colorful demonstrations of his deadness, and we get to hear about how this is a big victory, and we get to ignore even more successfully the tens of thousands of non-evil iraqis who have also died in the last three years and change. does this mean somebody's gonna win this conflict now?
guise the third, in which i tell you something you don't already know:
i think i might be moving to the left coast for a while come january. the last week has been an exercise in joyful confusion as i contemplate a really awesome offer from my really awesome advisor: go get trained in some quantitative techniques that are really important to one of my two possible dissertation topics. go get my hands on some data that are not only important but probably vital to this same topic. go have the opportunity to co-author pieces with great people. basically, get my dissertation started early and get the cash required to do so.
HOWEVER. there is this other dissertation topic, the one that i had been mostly contemplating for the last several months as the data i needed to move further on topic-the-first had been largely un-forthcoming. the other topic places me in a different subfield, sets me up for different sorts of jobs, almost completely changes the makeup of my committee, requires a very different set of technical skills. the two are nearly as mutually exclusive as it's possible for two topics to be. and now, well, now i need to decide quickly. i was telling la (who was, yay!, briefly in town this week) that this is a boring week, an average week, a week full of rain and domestic tranquility and reading and no obvious turmoil, and that it is the week that will likely determine the shape of my life for a pretty long time to come.
this third guise comes in the form of "what am i going to do about housing?" and "where will my cats live?" and "what about my teaching requirement?" and various other burning questions that should be completely insubstantial. the real question is really: which topic? but even "which topic?" has more and less important sub-questions. currently my "dimensions to consider" list includes
Interest Level
Data
Design
Methods
Plan
Feasibility/Risk
Funding
Primary Advisor/s
Committee
Time to Finish
Job Prospects
Subfield Placement
Possible Second Projects
...and so on. everyone is pretty sure that "interest level" should be the overriding consideration, but i'm having a very very hard time separating that from everything else. to me it makes sense that there is no independent, separable concept of "interest." i am *interested* in writing a good dissertation that will help me get a good job. i am *interested* in having solid, friendly, hands-on advising. so on and so forth. aside from putting the logistical cart before the which-coast horse, i'm finding plentiful room for misdirection in the list of actually-pertinent variables above. i need to make meta-decisions (decide on a decision rule) right quick, but most of the advice i've gotten is pretty squarely in the mushiness-prone "follow your heart" camp. arrrgh.
yesterday a realtor told me that i should pay attention to my stomach. if it feels bad i've made the wrong decision. a friend suggested that i consider which decision i am at peace with, but i'm not sure i have a working operational definition of being at peace these days. plus, i'd probably go for peace to church which, given the nature of the debate, definitely represents an unfair advantage for a particular path. it truly does put me in mind of the news: since i can't decide how to go about choosing a course, or which course will actually be best, i find myself extremely susceptible to simple, overstated pieces of advice.
please, somebody: give me a piece of simple, overstated advice.
angry black bitch has an awesome post up today that says in part:
"What if…oh, maybe a bitch had better stop…fuck it…
What if finding a cure for breast cancer was as crucial an issue as keeping some folks from getting hitched?
Oh no she didn’t!"
[pointless tangent: if a feral hat were here now, i would say something like "damn straight!" and then la's robot voice would chime in with "correct." and then there'd be a very slight pause before al asked, "is this the future?"]
oh, but she totally did, and so will i, and not only because i am hopping, spitting mad at the republican machine right now. i'll start with the being mad stuff, though. first thing: WHAT IS THIS 49-48 BULLSHIT?!? breast cancer is on abb's mind just now, but i can also think of about a trillion and one other things that i'd rather the senate be doing with its time. like clubbing baby seals.
i do not intend to claim that this is news, or that this represents some watershed moment in the conduct of american politics. i've been writing about misdirection for at least as long as george bush has been screaming, stuttering and smirking about this thing called the "war on terruh." but abb's piece this morning really touched a nerve for me. i've been trying to deal with my (monopolistic university-administered) HMO through some briefly scary (eek!), then merely annoying (woo hoo!), health issues, and it's been awful. how awful must it be for people whose problems are actually scary, and whose docs nevertheless refuse to (or cannot due to time constraints; there's an observational equivalence problem there) explain what the fuck is going on? how much worse must it be for folks without health insurance who don't have the money to find out whether their problems are scary or merely annoying in the first place?
...and so on. point being, i hope that there comes a day when "christian" conservative elites in this country repent of the fact that they've sacrificed queer folks directly, and many, many others indirectly (think: poor folks, sick folks, folks who gotta get to work at $3.00 a gallon 'cause there's no public transportation, kids trying to get an education, so on. i won't even mention women. oh wait, i just did.) in order to get and maintain power. i am still waiting for the data that say homosexuality is a greater threat to This Great Nation than localized endemic poverty. also still waiting for the copy of the Bible in which jesus finally makes it clear that it's more important for His disciples to punish sodomy than to feed the poor, house the homeless and care for the sick.
of course, while i wait, large chunks of the american population are being successfully misdirected. is it because they're dumb? (at this point, i refuse to rule such a thing out.) or is it because The Gays seem solvable while big questions like how-to-provide-health-care are confusing? cognitively, i guess it's a lot easier to hate on the sodomites than to endure your Hillary Clinton Flow Chart flashbacks. come to think of it, this is a pretty standard finding in american politics research: elites aren't going to waste their time actually solving problems when the solutions are incremental, complicated, and costly. given the choice, they're going to publicly denounce the loving relationships of my friends instead, because that is discrete, costless, and direct.
guise the second:
how 'bout those big fucking framed photos of deader-than-dead zarqawi? that shit is beyond fortuitous. the iraq war, it has always seemed to me, evolved as a highly sophisticated misdirection strategy. unfortunately, while the misdirection was highly sophisticated, the actual war was not, and now we need occasional misdirection from the misdirection. thus, when we finally kill this one evil dude, we get to see large colorful demonstrations of his deadness, and we get to hear about how this is a big victory, and we get to ignore even more successfully the tens of thousands of non-evil iraqis who have also died in the last three years and change. does this mean somebody's gonna win this conflict now?
guise the third, in which i tell you something you don't already know:
i think i might be moving to the left coast for a while come january. the last week has been an exercise in joyful confusion as i contemplate a really awesome offer from my really awesome advisor: go get trained in some quantitative techniques that are really important to one of my two possible dissertation topics. go get my hands on some data that are not only important but probably vital to this same topic. go have the opportunity to co-author pieces with great people. basically, get my dissertation started early and get the cash required to do so.
HOWEVER. there is this other dissertation topic, the one that i had been mostly contemplating for the last several months as the data i needed to move further on topic-the-first had been largely un-forthcoming. the other topic places me in a different subfield, sets me up for different sorts of jobs, almost completely changes the makeup of my committee, requires a very different set of technical skills. the two are nearly as mutually exclusive as it's possible for two topics to be. and now, well, now i need to decide quickly. i was telling la (who was, yay!, briefly in town this week) that this is a boring week, an average week, a week full of rain and domestic tranquility and reading and no obvious turmoil, and that it is the week that will likely determine the shape of my life for a pretty long time to come.
this third guise comes in the form of "what am i going to do about housing?" and "where will my cats live?" and "what about my teaching requirement?" and various other burning questions that should be completely insubstantial. the real question is really: which topic? but even "which topic?" has more and less important sub-questions. currently my "dimensions to consider" list includes
Interest Level
Data
Design
Methods
Plan
Feasibility/Risk
Funding
Primary Advisor/s
Committee
Time to Finish
Job Prospects
Subfield Placement
Possible Second Projects
...and so on. everyone is pretty sure that "interest level" should be the overriding consideration, but i'm having a very very hard time separating that from everything else. to me it makes sense that there is no independent, separable concept of "interest." i am *interested* in writing a good dissertation that will help me get a good job. i am *interested* in having solid, friendly, hands-on advising. so on and so forth. aside from putting the logistical cart before the which-coast horse, i'm finding plentiful room for misdirection in the list of actually-pertinent variables above. i need to make meta-decisions (decide on a decision rule) right quick, but most of the advice i've gotten is pretty squarely in the mushiness-prone "follow your heart" camp. arrrgh.
yesterday a realtor told me that i should pay attention to my stomach. if it feels bad i've made the wrong decision. a friend suggested that i consider which decision i am at peace with, but i'm not sure i have a working operational definition of being at peace these days. plus, i'd probably go for peace to church which, given the nature of the debate, definitely represents an unfair advantage for a particular path. it truly does put me in mind of the news: since i can't decide how to go about choosing a course, or which course will actually be best, i find myself extremely susceptible to simple, overstated pieces of advice.
please, somebody: give me a piece of simple, overstated advice.
01 June 2006
back!
three things, in no particular order:
1. laurel and i went to eleven states, ten of which were awesome. (ohio sucks.) i flew to salt lake city, she picked me up, we spent five days in and around zion national park, then drove leisurely-like through bryce canyon and escalante. one night we ate TUMBLEWEED ENCHILADAS YES TUMBLEWEED ENCHILADAS at hell's backbone grill in boulder utah (population 180). in case you wondered, tumbleweed shoots look like fatter, flatter, softer pine needles and taste rather a lot like spinach. they are great with goat cheese and cherry-chile sauce.
everything on this trip worked out. i can't really even explain the extent to which everything just worked out, but...it all did. case in point (and the point of origin for a new shorthand phrase for la and me, as if we needed more of those): on the very first night of the adventure, we drove into zion at about 10 pm, only to find that the campsites were full up. well, said laurel, we'll just turn around and see if there's a likely spot by the side of the road. the best place, she went on to say, would be a turnout that goes a little distance back, has reasonably good cover from road noise and gawkers, and has flat spots for setting up the tent. "yeah," i said, "and our free, empty campsite also has to have rainbows. rainbows and unicorns."
guess what we found? rainbows and motherfucking unicorns.
later on we found more rainbows and unicorns, including another great free camping spot, the ideal back country permits at zion, an awesome coffee shop in the touristy ickiness of springdale, utah, the aforementioned hell's backbone grill, deer in our campsite, beer and enjoyable silliness in valentine, nebraska, and apologies to the queen mary, which laurel had never heard before i cranked it up for her. we also drove about 1200 miles in just under 19 hours to end the excursion, which is pretty rad.
to quote another of the songs on my road trip mix: AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!
2. i have added ryan sheely's spectacular kenya adventures, including mosquito-net-taping and possible encounters with pirates, tribes, and/or pirate-tribes, to my list of friends' blogs. click "ryan" at right.
3. i have passed all my classes for the spring semester (yes, i was worried), which means that i can officially go on to the third year just as soon as i finish my [string of expletives here] field exams in august. political psychology august 23, american politics (redux) august 28, and then it's prospectus-and-teaching time for me. all of which is a long way of saying: NO MORE CLASSES FOR ME!!! in other sort-of-academic news, we have received our end-of-year evaluations, known as fortune cookies for the usually extremely enigmatic "comments" section. in a startling break with past form (and with some of this year's comments), my fortune cookie was less delphic than one might hope (if one's hope were tied directly to one's ability to make fun of the uselessness of these documents). which is a simpler way of saying that they wrote something that was actually useful. my hat's off to you, mr. dgs.
apparently there is a "disconnect" between my exam performance and "faculty evaluations" of my "competence and promise." "people expect great things of [me]!!"
i leave you with an image of laurel and i, blaming the patriarch(y)s, on which, a whole nother post is forthcoming soon, with apologies to twisty faster.
1. laurel and i went to eleven states, ten of which were awesome. (ohio sucks.) i flew to salt lake city, she picked me up, we spent five days in and around zion national park, then drove leisurely-like through bryce canyon and escalante. one night we ate TUMBLEWEED ENCHILADAS YES TUMBLEWEED ENCHILADAS at hell's backbone grill in boulder utah (population 180). in case you wondered, tumbleweed shoots look like fatter, flatter, softer pine needles and taste rather a lot like spinach. they are great with goat cheese and cherry-chile sauce.
everything on this trip worked out. i can't really even explain the extent to which everything just worked out, but...it all did. case in point (and the point of origin for a new shorthand phrase for la and me, as if we needed more of those): on the very first night of the adventure, we drove into zion at about 10 pm, only to find that the campsites were full up. well, said laurel, we'll just turn around and see if there's a likely spot by the side of the road. the best place, she went on to say, would be a turnout that goes a little distance back, has reasonably good cover from road noise and gawkers, and has flat spots for setting up the tent. "yeah," i said, "and our free, empty campsite also has to have rainbows. rainbows and unicorns."
guess what we found? rainbows and motherfucking unicorns.
later on we found more rainbows and unicorns, including another great free camping spot, the ideal back country permits at zion, an awesome coffee shop in the touristy ickiness of springdale, utah, the aforementioned hell's backbone grill, deer in our campsite, beer and enjoyable silliness in valentine, nebraska, and apologies to the queen mary, which laurel had never heard before i cranked it up for her. we also drove about 1200 miles in just under 19 hours to end the excursion, which is pretty rad.
to quote another of the songs on my road trip mix: AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!
2. i have added ryan sheely's spectacular kenya adventures, including mosquito-net-taping and possible encounters with pirates, tribes, and/or pirate-tribes, to my list of friends' blogs. click "ryan" at right.
3. i have passed all my classes for the spring semester (yes, i was worried), which means that i can officially go on to the third year just as soon as i finish my [string of expletives here] field exams in august. political psychology august 23, american politics (redux) august 28, and then it's prospectus-and-teaching time for me. all of which is a long way of saying: NO MORE CLASSES FOR ME!!! in other sort-of-academic news, we have received our end-of-year evaluations, known as fortune cookies for the usually extremely enigmatic "comments" section. in a startling break with past form (and with some of this year's comments), my fortune cookie was less delphic than one might hope (if one's hope were tied directly to one's ability to make fun of the uselessness of these documents). which is a simpler way of saying that they wrote something that was actually useful. my hat's off to you, mr. dgs.
apparently there is a "disconnect" between my exam performance and "faculty evaluations" of my "competence and promise." "people expect great things of [me]!!"
i leave you with an image of laurel and i, blaming the patriarch(y)s, on which, a whole nother post is forthcoming soon, with apologies to twisty faster.
09 May 2006
away!
as previously mentioned, laurel and i are going to paradise. i will be back blogging in a couple of weeks.
04 May 2006
done writing!
...for a few weeks, at least. turned in my american religious history paper yesterday with thirty minutes to spare, then slept for almost thirteen hours last night. now i just need to survive my game theory exam tomorrow and i'm home free.
in the meantime, a picture from political science skit night on monday. i wrote and acted in the obligatory "brokeback mountain" skit and co-wrote our faux-anthropological "tribes of the department" skit.
here i'm in costume for the one, explaining the major prop for the other:
and, for no particular reason except they're funny looking, paolo and ryan at rehearsal:
in the meantime, a picture from political science skit night on monday. i wrote and acted in the obligatory "brokeback mountain" skit and co-wrote our faux-anthropological "tribes of the department" skit.
here i'm in costume for the one, explaining the major prop for the other:
and, for no particular reason except they're funny looking, paolo and ryan at rehearsal:
02 May 2006
liberal arts poster children
i can't resist pointing to this article, originally printed in the new republic -- and written by tnr editor jason zengerle, a swat alum himself -- about the genocide intervention network.
along with war news radio, gi-net is one of the more exciting things to come out of swarthmore college lately. (apparently all that "ethical intelligence" talk is really getting somewhere.)
it's alternately pleasing and distressing to watch this happening from my current vantage point: yale undergrads seem not to be undertaking these sorts of projects. there are a million and one vanity journals to edit here, but despite the big and exceptionally talented undergrad population, risk-taking and big thinking seem somehow frowned upon or disregarded...at least as far as advocacy work goes. with all appropriate caveats in place (my friend circle from swat is not especially oriented toward traditional measures of achievement, so my sample is biased; i don't know everything that goes on among yale activists; etc., etc.) i think the following generalization holds, at least at the margins: swat is doing a pretty good job educating for citizenship, for difference-making, and yale is doing a reeeeally good job educating for success and prosperity.
along with war news radio, gi-net is one of the more exciting things to come out of swarthmore college lately. (apparently all that "ethical intelligence" talk is really getting somewhere.)
it's alternately pleasing and distressing to watch this happening from my current vantage point: yale undergrads seem not to be undertaking these sorts of projects. there are a million and one vanity journals to edit here, but despite the big and exceptionally talented undergrad population, risk-taking and big thinking seem somehow frowned upon or disregarded...at least as far as advocacy work goes. with all appropriate caveats in place (my friend circle from swat is not especially oriented toward traditional measures of achievement, so my sample is biased; i don't know everything that goes on among yale activists; etc., etc.) i think the following generalization holds, at least at the margins: swat is doing a pretty good job educating for citizenship, for difference-making, and yale is doing a reeeeally good job educating for success and prosperity.
30 April 2006
serious case of mush-brain
one down, two to go, or something like that.
i have finished all but the very last edits on my second-year paper. ten thousand words! can i get an amen?
now i have to write a short (four thousand words) paper on the history of christian activist organizations in new haven,
and study for an exam,
and then i can pack up my house, put it in storage, and go off to paradise. (after paradise i'm going to the pig farm. also awesome!)
does anyone want two incredibly wonderful cats for ten incredibly wonderful weeks?
i have finished all but the very last edits on my second-year paper. ten thousand words! can i get an amen?
now i have to write a short (four thousand words) paper on the history of christian activist organizations in new haven,
and study for an exam,
and then i can pack up my house, put it in storage, and go off to paradise. (after paradise i'm going to the pig farm. also awesome!)
does anyone want two incredibly wonderful cats for ten incredibly wonderful weeks?
26 April 2006
rent makes me feel old
rent just celebrated the tenth anniversary of its opening. interestingly, while i obviously don't remember that opening (because what fourteen-year-old north dakotan keeps track of all the broadway openings?), i heard about it very soon after. i think "obsession" is probably an appropriate term for what came next. i think "holy shit" is probably an appropriate term for my feelings on the fact that 1996 was a decade ago.
i've never been entirely comfortable with the way the AIDS pandemic was romanticized for mass publics, or at least, the way that the only mass media representations available to fourteen-year-old (straight, middle class) north dakotans were somehow romantic. it was all angel and pedro zamora, maybe a moment's attention to ryan white. some of us even saw philadelphia. most of the teenagers i knew at the time had a vague idea of AIDS as an element of a grand bohemian passion rather than AIDS as a terrifying illness involving a lifetime of quotidian frustration and pain.
on the other hand, most of the (straight) teenagers i knew at that time also learned their first lessons about queer issues from the real world, or from rent. stultifying articles about gays in the military -- probably the single other manifestation of queer politics on our radar in the early and mid nineties -- didn't arouse anyone's sympathy or anyone's interest. we wouldn't have learned about AIDS in africa until later, when we either started reading internet news or moved places where the newspapers actually covered the world outside american borders. so, ok, we got this flawed romantic picture of AIDS, of "gay rights," of a million other things that we never should have learned from MTV. but it sparked a certain amount of passion and rethinking and involvement, and for the place and the time it was fairly radical, and...
...well, rent was really fun to sing. still is.
i've never been entirely comfortable with the way the AIDS pandemic was romanticized for mass publics, or at least, the way that the only mass media representations available to fourteen-year-old (straight, middle class) north dakotans were somehow romantic. it was all angel and pedro zamora, maybe a moment's attention to ryan white. some of us even saw philadelphia. most of the teenagers i knew at the time had a vague idea of AIDS as an element of a grand bohemian passion rather than AIDS as a terrifying illness involving a lifetime of quotidian frustration and pain.
on the other hand, most of the (straight) teenagers i knew at that time also learned their first lessons about queer issues from the real world, or from rent. stultifying articles about gays in the military -- probably the single other manifestation of queer politics on our radar in the early and mid nineties -- didn't arouse anyone's sympathy or anyone's interest. we wouldn't have learned about AIDS in africa until later, when we either started reading internet news or moved places where the newspapers actually covered the world outside american borders. so, ok, we got this flawed romantic picture of AIDS, of "gay rights," of a million other things that we never should have learned from MTV. but it sparked a certain amount of passion and rethinking and involvement, and for the place and the time it was fairly radical, and...
...well, rent was really fun to sing. still is.
23 April 2006
in which i read my archives
double-posting is so lame, but really my research and writing paper is even *more* lame. so i will favor you with an almost unbearably prescient entry from exactly three years ago, when i was just about to finish college.
i wrote:
"at some point...January, i think...i wrote here about how, as we get older, more and more things about our lives begin to be irrevocable, or at least practically so. this is one of them: i can't any more decide that i don't want to be a social scientist. i'm not going to wake up and decide that no, i really should have been pre-med. there are no take-backs on an investment of four years and immeasurable exhilaration, stress, worry and developmental turmoil. i don't have the will or the hundred and thirty grand to do this again...which is fine, as it turns out. mostly, i've done the things i wanted to do here.
there's just always going to be a part of me that wonders how the whole course of my life would be different if i had stayed a math major."
not entirely seriously: i wonder what the take-back rules are on an investment of six years and a bunch of opportunity costs?
i wrote:
"at some point...January, i think...i wrote here about how, as we get older, more and more things about our lives begin to be irrevocable, or at least practically so. this is one of them: i can't any more decide that i don't want to be a social scientist. i'm not going to wake up and decide that no, i really should have been pre-med. there are no take-backs on an investment of four years and immeasurable exhilaration, stress, worry and developmental turmoil. i don't have the will or the hundred and thirty grand to do this again...which is fine, as it turns out. mostly, i've done the things i wanted to do here.
there's just always going to be a part of me that wonders how the whole course of my life would be different if i had stayed a math major."
not entirely seriously: i wonder what the take-back rules are on an investment of six years and a bunch of opportunity costs?
i like this woman
apparently madeline albright can leg press "up to 400 pounds." which is, just let me say, really awesome. but also, note how condi rice's gift on the occasion of josef korbel's death (i.e., the death of albright's father, who was also rice's mentor) was entirely about rice (ooh! a piano!) rather than, for example, an expression of sympathy with those who were grieving. this was in 1977. i'm not gonna say it's indicative of rice's entire trajectory, or indeed of everything that's wrong with the bush administration, but it evidences a very particular focus, no? (NB: in the course of trying to figure out whether, perhaps, piano was an interest rice shared with korbel -- the answer is no -- i found alan gilbert's characterization of rice as a "great performer" whose quest for success has paved over a lot of moral bearings. it's an interesting read.)
19 April 2006
'american politics 2006'
that was the title of the incredibly stupid talk i just heard by michael barone. i like to try and hear conservatives speak relatively often because otherwise, well, otherwise i can't even begin to understand them. often i learn something valuable. in this case, however, my comprehension level actually went down.
barone endorsed the concept of 'culture war,' stated that the goal of 'the mainstream media' is to see the united states 'lose the war on terror,' and came out with the following (closely paraphrased) howler:
have you ever read daily kos? it is just so full of hate, so full of vitriol toward the right. the right blogosphere is much more focused on policing the mainstream media. i mean, if you go to freerepublic or little green footballs, you just don't see that sort of hatred.
there's a long answer too, but for the moment all i can say to that assertion is WTF!?!?!
also, mr. barone, excellent journalist that he is, clearly had not done his homework on the scholars he would be speaking to. certainly he failed to recognize any of them. two moments tied for most fun bit of the entire q&a: (1) barone presumes to lecture jacob hacker about social insurance and health care policy. hacker tries not to laugh or spit as barone smooshes facts around to suit his purposes. everyone else in the room nods bovinely, waiting for the embarrassment to cease.
(2) barone lectures a roomful of american politics specialists, all of whom have read the data and some of whom were responsible for analyzing it in the first place, on the effects of GOTV and 'media bias.' apparently all democratic 'volunteers' are paid, while all republican campaigning occurs through down-home social networks, and that is why democrats are always 'out of touch' or 'taken by surprise.' also, the primary goal of all mainstream media sources is to bring down george bush by any means necessary. that includes reporting the incompetence of the federal government response to hurricane katrina instead of focusing more carefully on the failures of local and state officials. funny, that's not what *i* remember hearing in the mainstream media.
[side note: barone believes that new orleans school bus drivers should have been required to report to work in order to drive residents to safety, rather than evacuating themselves.]
extra special bonus: gender trouble! heeeeelarious joke about hillary clinton 'throwing her broom in the ring' and two completely random remarks including the phrase 'some woman reporter.'
yicccccchhhh, i feel dirty.
barone endorsed the concept of 'culture war,' stated that the goal of 'the mainstream media' is to see the united states 'lose the war on terror,' and came out with the following (closely paraphrased) howler:
have you ever read daily kos? it is just so full of hate, so full of vitriol toward the right. the right blogosphere is much more focused on policing the mainstream media. i mean, if you go to freerepublic or little green footballs, you just don't see that sort of hatred.
there's a long answer too, but for the moment all i can say to that assertion is WTF!?!?!
also, mr. barone, excellent journalist that he is, clearly had not done his homework on the scholars he would be speaking to. certainly he failed to recognize any of them. two moments tied for most fun bit of the entire q&a: (1) barone presumes to lecture jacob hacker about social insurance and health care policy. hacker tries not to laugh or spit as barone smooshes facts around to suit his purposes. everyone else in the room nods bovinely, waiting for the embarrassment to cease.
(2) barone lectures a roomful of american politics specialists, all of whom have read the data and some of whom were responsible for analyzing it in the first place, on the effects of GOTV and 'media bias.' apparently all democratic 'volunteers' are paid, while all republican campaigning occurs through down-home social networks, and that is why democrats are always 'out of touch' or 'taken by surprise.' also, the primary goal of all mainstream media sources is to bring down george bush by any means necessary. that includes reporting the incompetence of the federal government response to hurricane katrina instead of focusing more carefully on the failures of local and state officials. funny, that's not what *i* remember hearing in the mainstream media.
[side note: barone believes that new orleans school bus drivers should have been required to report to work in order to drive residents to safety, rather than evacuating themselves.]
extra special bonus: gender trouble! heeeeelarious joke about hillary clinton 'throwing her broom in the ring' and two completely random remarks including the phrase 'some woman reporter.'
yicccccchhhh, i feel dirty.
18 April 2006
dude.
you know that i am serious when i start a sentence that way. last night, saw wolf parade at toad's place, and despite a stress-induced tummy ache and my general distaste for the venue, i managed to forget completely, if briefly, about the game theory waiting for me on the other end. dude, that was awesome.
i think it likely that i do not grin like and idiot and bounce up and down nearly enough to ensure optimum psychic well-being.
but the show: was preceded by the incomparably well-named holy fuck. did not sound too too much like the album, mostly to pretty good effect. [which is to say, some ragged vocals and a rather different instrumental balance.] featured all the good songs, as well as a mid-set beer run. oozed a particular could-give-a-flying-fuck, no-banter-whatsoever charisma. (talk to the crowd? they don't even talk to each other!)
in particular, although most of the band looks like normal people, guitar/vocal dude dan boecker looks like a debauched hipster rockstar. which i guess is to say, looks like what he is. ill-fitting tshirt and greasy mullet and waytooskinniness and all. and i thought, who does this remind me of? and then he smoked a cigarette through an entire verse (which, i gotta say, leads to some interesting enunciation issues), and it dawned on me: this is totally rufus wainwright's evil twin.
i think it likely that i do not grin like and idiot and bounce up and down nearly enough to ensure optimum psychic well-being.
but the show: was preceded by the incomparably well-named holy fuck. did not sound too too much like the album, mostly to pretty good effect. [which is to say, some ragged vocals and a rather different instrumental balance.] featured all the good songs, as well as a mid-set beer run. oozed a particular could-give-a-flying-fuck, no-banter-whatsoever charisma. (talk to the crowd? they don't even talk to each other!)
in particular, although most of the band looks like normal people, guitar/vocal dude dan boecker looks like a debauched hipster rockstar. which i guess is to say, looks like what he is. ill-fitting tshirt and greasy mullet and waytooskinniness and all. and i thought, who does this remind me of? and then he smoked a cigarette through an entire verse (which, i gotta say, leads to some interesting enunciation issues), and it dawned on me: this is totally rufus wainwright's evil twin.
17 April 2006
smart friends are good
see? check out the comments to this long and, on a second reading, nearly incomprehensible post about gender in academia. my favorite theme of the comments so far is "what are they getting from you?" i'll have to mull that one a bit more...
12 April 2006
ps
yesterday's post seems to have *just* published, and i'm sort of keen for people to read it. so keep scrolling down. (warning: i think it's totally incoherent. but the question's important!)
'moral hazard' my ass
i missed the nyt op-ed by the administration flunky, although i did realize that bush was in bridgeport recently hyping his health-care nonsense. but here, in part, is what the op-ed said:
"Health care is expensive because the vast majority of Americans consume it as if it were free. Health insurance policies with low deductibles insulate people from the cost of the medical care they use—so much so that they often do not even ask for prices."
the quotation is courtesy of hendrik hertzberg's new yorker commentary of this week. as many people have pointed out -- some of the best examples, like a malcolm gladwell piece on dentistry from earlier this year, are also in the new yorker -- no one consumes health care 'as if it were free,' at least not in the sense the administration is trying so desperately to sell.
let's do the blogger thing and illustrate with personal examples, shall we?
(1) my primary care and reproductive health care are basically free through yale's insurance. i suppose that, in some sense, i am "insulated from the cost" of that health care. to be sure i do not ask for the price of a visit for antibiotics, or check that yale health plan uses the cheapest lab to process its pap smears. i go to the doctor when i am good and sick, or when it's time for a checkup. problems get avoided.
indeed, i have a tough time thinking about moral hazard counterfactuals in this context. if i paid, would i really opt for the wal-mart pap smear? would i, carless, make my way to another town in order to save x bucks on my yearly checkup? (would i bother with a yearly checkup?) are there people out there who are living unhealthy lives because they won't be paying for their open heart surgery? are there people out there who spend every third day in the doctor's office because that seems fun to them?
(2) my mental health care is only sort-of-covered. there have been times in my life when it's been less stressful to be in fairly serious distress than to look for the cash for a good therapist, or when thinking about mental health in a preventative-health-care kind of way was just not done (HELLO, adolescence-in-the-midwest!). the result? in 1995 the result was that i ended up physically sick, requiring specialists, surgery and a hospital stay. in 2004 it was another round of specialists and a pretty incredible loss of work productivity.
(3) i have a relative whose mental health problems are much more serious and who, if she had money, would probably be monitored daily. instead she is part of a vicious cycle of inpatient stays, poor aftercare, ineffective-but-expensive meds. in addition to being really fucking expensive, this merry-go-round, having already destroyed her quality of life, is going to kill her.
she's not unique.
(4) i have no dental or vision coverage. perhaps unfortunately, my dental problems (such as they are. who knows!?!?) and my changing contact lens prescription don't really impinge on my day-to-day life. the fact is, though, that i haven't been to a dentist since i left college, and i know -- i KNOW! -- that i am courting disaster. if i were consuming dentistry "as if it were free," i'd be getting a checkup every six months, not investing in a platinum grill. as it is, i consume dentistry as if it were precisely what it is: an extremely expensive service provided by well-educated professionals, a cost that doesn't fit comfortably into my budget.
i'll go to the dentist soon, and i'll probably put it on a credit card, and that will be that. (i can almost guarantee that the process, what with fillings and such, will be more expensive than three years of regular cleanings.) but there are people out there who can't do that. i will not wait until my teeth are rotting and i require surgery to go in. but there are people out there who can't make that decision. when their situations get dire, they will either receive emergency care, which is exponentially more expensive than a lifetime of regularly scheduled checkups, or they will go without. either way they will be marked as poor by their teeth.
SO: i suppose 'moral hazard' makes a certain amount of sense when insurance covers property that you can neglect at will. but applying the concept to health care of any sort is...well, it's wrong. it's factually wrong, because american health care is expensive due to poor preventative care and paperwork. it's a moral outrage, because it implicitly assumes that poor people deserve to be in pain. it is, in short, thoroughly representative of the general attitude and quality of bush administration policy proposals.
"Health care is expensive because the vast majority of Americans consume it as if it were free. Health insurance policies with low deductibles insulate people from the cost of the medical care they use—so much so that they often do not even ask for prices."
the quotation is courtesy of hendrik hertzberg's new yorker commentary of this week. as many people have pointed out -- some of the best examples, like a malcolm gladwell piece on dentistry from earlier this year, are also in the new yorker -- no one consumes health care 'as if it were free,' at least not in the sense the administration is trying so desperately to sell.
let's do the blogger thing and illustrate with personal examples, shall we?
(1) my primary care and reproductive health care are basically free through yale's insurance. i suppose that, in some sense, i am "insulated from the cost" of that health care. to be sure i do not ask for the price of a visit for antibiotics, or check that yale health plan uses the cheapest lab to process its pap smears. i go to the doctor when i am good and sick, or when it's time for a checkup. problems get avoided.
indeed, i have a tough time thinking about moral hazard counterfactuals in this context. if i paid, would i really opt for the wal-mart pap smear? would i, carless, make my way to another town in order to save x bucks on my yearly checkup? (would i bother with a yearly checkup?) are there people out there who are living unhealthy lives because they won't be paying for their open heart surgery? are there people out there who spend every third day in the doctor's office because that seems fun to them?
(2) my mental health care is only sort-of-covered. there have been times in my life when it's been less stressful to be in fairly serious distress than to look for the cash for a good therapist, or when thinking about mental health in a preventative-health-care kind of way was just not done (HELLO, adolescence-in-the-midwest!). the result? in 1995 the result was that i ended up physically sick, requiring specialists, surgery and a hospital stay. in 2004 it was another round of specialists and a pretty incredible loss of work productivity.
(3) i have a relative whose mental health problems are much more serious and who, if she had money, would probably be monitored daily. instead she is part of a vicious cycle of inpatient stays, poor aftercare, ineffective-but-expensive meds. in addition to being really fucking expensive, this merry-go-round, having already destroyed her quality of life, is going to kill her.
she's not unique.
(4) i have no dental or vision coverage. perhaps unfortunately, my dental problems (such as they are. who knows!?!?) and my changing contact lens prescription don't really impinge on my day-to-day life. the fact is, though, that i haven't been to a dentist since i left college, and i know -- i KNOW! -- that i am courting disaster. if i were consuming dentistry "as if it were free," i'd be getting a checkup every six months, not investing in a platinum grill. as it is, i consume dentistry as if it were precisely what it is: an extremely expensive service provided by well-educated professionals, a cost that doesn't fit comfortably into my budget.
i'll go to the dentist soon, and i'll probably put it on a credit card, and that will be that. (i can almost guarantee that the process, what with fillings and such, will be more expensive than three years of regular cleanings.) but there are people out there who can't do that. i will not wait until my teeth are rotting and i require surgery to go in. but there are people out there who can't make that decision. when their situations get dire, they will either receive emergency care, which is exponentially more expensive than a lifetime of regularly scheduled checkups, or they will go without. either way they will be marked as poor by their teeth.
SO: i suppose 'moral hazard' makes a certain amount of sense when insurance covers property that you can neglect at will. but applying the concept to health care of any sort is...well, it's wrong. it's factually wrong, because american health care is expensive due to poor preventative care and paperwork. it's a moral outrage, because it implicitly assumes that poor people deserve to be in pain. it is, in short, thoroughly representative of the general attitude and quality of bush administration policy proposals.
11 April 2006
'make friends and influence people'
so, it turns out that i spend a lot of time hanging out with boys. sorry, "men." a LOT. there are the boys with whom i work on game theory; the boys with whom i go to movies and hang out at bars; the boys with whom i cook and converse and brainstorm and whatnot.
this is odd. i am worried that it may also be unfeminist. no, strike that. i know it's unfeminist; the question is what i, personally, should do. after all, on the level of consciousness i know who i want to hang out with and who i am satisfied to 'just run into' once in a while. i need the friends that i have, and i'm not certain that i have the energy to develop new friendships with women i don't naturally seek out. but i'm aware that this sort of thinking is precisely the kind of free-riding that i often decry from 'pretty girls.' relatedly: academic friendships are not just friendships. they are mechanisms of information-gathering, opportunity-sharing, professional solidarity -- and they are vital to one's success in this institution.
my class is relatively evenly divided between men and women. my program is relatively evenly divided between men and women. but my second-level friend circle? not so evenly divided. this may have something to do with the fact that my first-level friend circle is almost entirely female. the people i call in the middle of the night are female. the people i call on a whim are female. the people i go to visit because i love them and miss them, you guessed it, female. does that mean that i've filled my female-togetherness quota and that the grad-school-friends inequity is just some sort of equilibration?
maybe a little. but truly, i think that what it really means is that academia -- the context in which all my second-level friendships take place -- pushes women apart from one another. not inevitably, and not overtly. but in lots of ways [that i am about to try and describe], my department and my discipline make 'only girl in the boys' club' the ultimate marker of success. in ways that men do not, women denigrate other women and their work. the support networks that are necessary to survival in grad school seem to develop between men and women; between men; and between women who are lucky enough to know each other in a non-departmental (i.e., only abstractly academic) way.
this sucks: if 'only girl in the boys' club' is somehow the thing to be, then girls' clubs lose their value and women continue indefinitely to constitute 1/n of The Successful.
i can imagine several mechanisms contributing to, and acting in concert with, this phenomenon. or rather, "these phenomena," because i'm relatively certain that [my grad school friend circle being predominantly male] and [the more general male-normed-ness of academia] aren't exactly the same. in no particular order:
1. elective affinity. two related forms: (1) women who choose graduate school are not women i prefer to hang out with. (2) women who choose grad school are women who are comfortable playing by the rules of the academic game. either or both of these leads to some sort of disconnect between me and many of the women i encounter here. we may share academic interests, but they don't want to sit on washing machines and explore the nature of friendship. they don't want to rock the boat if it means not getting a job. of course, all that is true of the men around here as well. [which leads to the even stranger question "what if i have different standards about friendship with males than about friendship with females?"
and, um... i am *also* a woman who chose grad school. not wanting to hang out with myself could probably lead to some serious Issues.
2. norm of machismo. it is not ok, in many academic settings, to worry aloud that you are getting screwed because the culture is mean instead of nice, or because the culture supports no balance in life. you are not supposed to want nice! you are not supposed to want balance! it is evident that 'rigorous' and 'masochistic' have become inextricably entwined in a lot of book-learnin'-type institutions -- and that the only acceptable way of dealing with that is to grin and bear it. the problem, of course, is that "nice" and "balance" are in many respects things that are associated with having been socialized as female. somehow, this does an excellent job of getting in the way of a lot of the topics over which women in academic settings might bond. (more so, perhaps, because many women are particularly vigilant about policing themselves for signs of [inherently girl-like] wussiness.)
3. male = meritorious. presently i am confronting the fact that it's easier for me to see the men around me as competent-and-cool. and of course, i want to be hanging out with competent cool people, people whose intellectual work is exciting and whose social worlds are intriguing. of course. but...the results are predictable, cf. the seemingly dubious academic status of many fields dominated by women and minorities.
4. networking matters. this is an easy one to explain: you want to be friends with men because men often know what's up. (you should totally go read megan's post.) obviously, it's seldom as cut and dried as "men know and women don't" or "nobody tells women," but i believe there's an aggregate-level argument to be made that, when men are the majority of power-holders in a given environment, it pays to be friends with them whether or not there is any overt, conscious or systematic exclusion going on.
5. fundamental attribution error. this goes to a more general problem with elite social scientists, and it has much more to do with politics as a "science" than with problems of gender. i state it this way: people who end up in the higher reaches of higher education often believe that they are The Shit, and that their success is due to their own merit rather than any privilege that might have accrued to them along the way. paralleling this sense of self is a particularly individualist idea about choice. the result is a politics, that while often nominally leftist, tends to say "i made it; why can't you?" to any and all claims about disadvantage that do not rest on overt acts of hindrance. all of which is to say: there's not a lot of room for movement feminism in positivist social science.
ok. i appear to have wandered fairly far afield from why-my-friends-are-boys. but there is some connection there, no?
this is odd. i am worried that it may also be unfeminist. no, strike that. i know it's unfeminist; the question is what i, personally, should do. after all, on the level of consciousness i know who i want to hang out with and who i am satisfied to 'just run into' once in a while. i need the friends that i have, and i'm not certain that i have the energy to develop new friendships with women i don't naturally seek out. but i'm aware that this sort of thinking is precisely the kind of free-riding that i often decry from 'pretty girls.' relatedly: academic friendships are not just friendships. they are mechanisms of information-gathering, opportunity-sharing, professional solidarity -- and they are vital to one's success in this institution.
my class is relatively evenly divided between men and women. my program is relatively evenly divided between men and women. but my second-level friend circle? not so evenly divided. this may have something to do with the fact that my first-level friend circle is almost entirely female. the people i call in the middle of the night are female. the people i call on a whim are female. the people i go to visit because i love them and miss them, you guessed it, female. does that mean that i've filled my female-togetherness quota and that the grad-school-friends inequity is just some sort of equilibration?
maybe a little. but truly, i think that what it really means is that academia -- the context in which all my second-level friendships take place -- pushes women apart from one another. not inevitably, and not overtly. but in lots of ways [that i am about to try and describe], my department and my discipline make 'only girl in the boys' club' the ultimate marker of success. in ways that men do not, women denigrate other women and their work. the support networks that are necessary to survival in grad school seem to develop between men and women; between men; and between women who are lucky enough to know each other in a non-departmental (i.e., only abstractly academic) way.
this sucks: if 'only girl in the boys' club' is somehow the thing to be, then girls' clubs lose their value and women continue indefinitely to constitute 1/n of The Successful.
i can imagine several mechanisms contributing to, and acting in concert with, this phenomenon. or rather, "these phenomena," because i'm relatively certain that [my grad school friend circle being predominantly male] and [the more general male-normed-ness of academia] aren't exactly the same. in no particular order:
1. elective affinity. two related forms: (1) women who choose graduate school are not women i prefer to hang out with. (2) women who choose grad school are women who are comfortable playing by the rules of the academic game. either or both of these leads to some sort of disconnect between me and many of the women i encounter here. we may share academic interests, but they don't want to sit on washing machines and explore the nature of friendship. they don't want to rock the boat if it means not getting a job. of course, all that is true of the men around here as well. [which leads to the even stranger question "what if i have different standards about friendship with males than about friendship with females?"
and, um... i am *also* a woman who chose grad school. not wanting to hang out with myself could probably lead to some serious Issues.
2. norm of machismo. it is not ok, in many academic settings, to worry aloud that you are getting screwed because the culture is mean instead of nice, or because the culture supports no balance in life. you are not supposed to want nice! you are not supposed to want balance! it is evident that 'rigorous' and 'masochistic' have become inextricably entwined in a lot of book-learnin'-type institutions -- and that the only acceptable way of dealing with that is to grin and bear it. the problem, of course, is that "nice" and "balance" are in many respects things that are associated with having been socialized as female. somehow, this does an excellent job of getting in the way of a lot of the topics over which women in academic settings might bond. (more so, perhaps, because many women are particularly vigilant about policing themselves for signs of [inherently girl-like] wussiness.)
3. male = meritorious. presently i am confronting the fact that it's easier for me to see the men around me as competent-and-cool. and of course, i want to be hanging out with competent cool people, people whose intellectual work is exciting and whose social worlds are intriguing. of course. but...the results are predictable, cf. the seemingly dubious academic status of many fields dominated by women and minorities.
4. networking matters. this is an easy one to explain: you want to be friends with men because men often know what's up. (you should totally go read megan's post.) obviously, it's seldom as cut and dried as "men know and women don't" or "nobody tells women," but i believe there's an aggregate-level argument to be made that, when men are the majority of power-holders in a given environment, it pays to be friends with them whether or not there is any overt, conscious or systematic exclusion going on.
5. fundamental attribution error. this goes to a more general problem with elite social scientists, and it has much more to do with politics as a "science" than with problems of gender. i state it this way: people who end up in the higher reaches of higher education often believe that they are The Shit, and that their success is due to their own merit rather than any privilege that might have accrued to them along the way. paralleling this sense of self is a particularly individualist idea about choice. the result is a politics, that while often nominally leftist, tends to say "i made it; why can't you?" to any and all claims about disadvantage that do not rest on overt acts of hindrance. all of which is to say: there's not a lot of room for movement feminism in positivist social science.
ok. i appear to have wandered fairly far afield from why-my-friends-are-boys. but there is some connection there, no?
i am still awake
it totally sucks that i am still awake. however, i think my research and writing paper is actually getting better rather than worse, which is different than what happened the last time i edited it. so, on balance...good, i think.
06 April 2006
even uglier
here's a copy of the probable cause affidavit from the duke lacrosse rape case, courtesy of the smoking gun. it's worth noting that none of the big news outlets are willing to carry the entire text of the email reprinted in the affidavit. that's probably because it contains the following:
"i plan on killing the bitches as soon as the [sic] walk in and proceeding to cut their skin off while cumming in my duke issue spandex."
"i plan on killing the bitches as soon as the [sic] walk in and proceeding to cut their skin off while cumming in my duke issue spandex."
03 April 2006
the name of the game is
ready, set, FIND ME A SUBLET!
i'll be in philly from about june 1 to about july 15 (or possibly august 1, if that makes things easier). i need a place to live that costs $400 per month or less, inclusive of utilities.
...GO!
i'll be in philly from about june 1 to about july 15 (or possibly august 1, if that makes things easier). i need a place to live that costs $400 per month or less, inclusive of utilities.
...GO!
31 March 2006
intersectional atrocity
one wonders how this story would be different if practically any salient fact about the (alleged) assaulters or the assault survivor were different. what would we be hearing in the media if there were a rape case involving a predominantly black team and a white woman? both white? both black?
around the blogosphere, i've heard all sorts of supposition: races reversed, these men could be anywhere from (a) dead to (b) paraded in orange jumpsuits and shackles. if all the parties involved were black, would we know about this assault at all? if all the parties were white, how much would we be hearing about class? (and how would my thinking change if i didn't have such an elementary-school concept of race in my brain?) the case turns my stomach more than it piques my interest in intersectionality, but i'm not entirely certain that it's good for me, or for anyone, to just-be-disgusted about this. if i were just disgusted it might appear as if this incident were somehow novel.
when of course it's not.
on how many dimensions is it not? well, there's a world history, in which our country participates, of the brutalization of women. and the specific american history of the brutalization of black women. and the common-though-not-universal phenomenon of social and economic disempowerment leading to sex work. and the idea that sex workers deserve what they get. and the finding that small groups of males who train for combat (of whatever sort) are more prone to brutalize women. and the bizarre privilege accorded college athletes everywhere in this country, and the bizarre misogyny pervading (men's) (college) athletics. the list goes on. this rape, to misappropriate some statistical language, is overdetermined.
what really gets me is the extent to which (and the manner in which) this sort of thing was just waiting to happen. the lacrosse team has been menacing its community (see the comments at the alas post linked below) for some time, but nevertheless was allowed by its coaching staff and the university to build a community of privilege, inside whose walls the assaulters (yes, i know, still alleged. let's deal in hypotheticals for the moment.) cannot and will not be "ratted out." there's an icky funk of entitlement surrounding this group, from its prep-school background to its neighborhood-terrorizing off-campus house to its "elite" status within lacrosse. they close ranks, they keep practicing, they hire lawyers, they go drinking.
thank God the city of durham is so angry right now. i don't think that duke itself, at least not the administration, is angry enough. what sort of institution feeds a subculture that malignant? probably one that celebrates its athletes (whether white or male or not) while slamming doors on the city it occupies. and why might it celebrate athletes while shutting out local communities? probably because it feels beholden to (rich, white) alumni money more than to its (poorer, blacker) neighbors. you wanna talk intersectional politics and university funding? talk fighting sioux.
i guess the idea is that, chilling racial counterfactuals aside, this story has a context that ought to be chilling in and of itself.
final word: the source for all updates on media coverage is justice 4 two sisters, which has a great compilation of local and national news sources, blog and print commentary. another good discussion is at alas, a blog. read up, kids.
around the blogosphere, i've heard all sorts of supposition: races reversed, these men could be anywhere from (a) dead to (b) paraded in orange jumpsuits and shackles. if all the parties involved were black, would we know about this assault at all? if all the parties were white, how much would we be hearing about class? (and how would my thinking change if i didn't have such an elementary-school concept of race in my brain?) the case turns my stomach more than it piques my interest in intersectionality, but i'm not entirely certain that it's good for me, or for anyone, to just-be-disgusted about this. if i were just disgusted it might appear as if this incident were somehow novel.
when of course it's not.
on how many dimensions is it not? well, there's a world history, in which our country participates, of the brutalization of women. and the specific american history of the brutalization of black women. and the common-though-not-universal phenomenon of social and economic disempowerment leading to sex work. and the idea that sex workers deserve what they get. and the finding that small groups of males who train for combat (of whatever sort) are more prone to brutalize women. and the bizarre privilege accorded college athletes everywhere in this country, and the bizarre misogyny pervading (men's) (college) athletics. the list goes on. this rape, to misappropriate some statistical language, is overdetermined.
what really gets me is the extent to which (and the manner in which) this sort of thing was just waiting to happen. the lacrosse team has been menacing its community (see the comments at the alas post linked below) for some time, but nevertheless was allowed by its coaching staff and the university to build a community of privilege, inside whose walls the assaulters (yes, i know, still alleged. let's deal in hypotheticals for the moment.) cannot and will not be "ratted out." there's an icky funk of entitlement surrounding this group, from its prep-school background to its neighborhood-terrorizing off-campus house to its "elite" status within lacrosse. they close ranks, they keep practicing, they hire lawyers, they go drinking.
thank God the city of durham is so angry right now. i don't think that duke itself, at least not the administration, is angry enough. what sort of institution feeds a subculture that malignant? probably one that celebrates its athletes (whether white or male or not) while slamming doors on the city it occupies. and why might it celebrate athletes while shutting out local communities? probably because it feels beholden to (rich, white) alumni money more than to its (poorer, blacker) neighbors. you wanna talk intersectional politics and university funding? talk fighting sioux.
i guess the idea is that, chilling racial counterfactuals aside, this story has a context that ought to be chilling in and of itself.
final word: the source for all updates on media coverage is justice 4 two sisters, which has a great compilation of local and national news sources, blog and print commentary. another good discussion is at alas, a blog. read up, kids.
28 March 2006
(practically) no fat chicks
my therapist and i keep fighting about empirics; namely, am i or am i not fat? now, the fact that we need to have this fight is telling on a number of levels, but the import of the fight is really not about the particular question being asked. in fact -- as i have attempted on a number of occasions to express -- the real question is about (1) the causes and extent of anger, suspicion and disgust towards fat people (especially fat women) in a given society, and (2) the extent to which it's rational to acknowledge that anger, suspicion and disgust. acknowledgement, it must be said, might be a matter of seeing it and fighting it; of making your peace with it because other things are more important; or even of attempting to understand the science (and "science") surrounding fat, fatness, fat people. the thoroughly unscientific study here asked anonymous (mostly male?) craigslist denizens why they might or might not be willing to date a fat woman. perhaps a different population might give different (for example, more literate) answers -- but the consistency across the dozens of responses reprinted is scary and telling.
24 March 2006
sometimes it's funny
to think about the days when 3,000 words was the length of a paper, rather than the amount added to a paper on revision. i turned in the public-consumption draft of my second year paper just now, twelve hours late. it's currently at 10,000 words. i'm currently at total exhaustion. oy!
23 March 2006
the good, the bad, and worrisome constructions of the ugly
the good:
yesterday, i received an email from swat pal eileen that said, in part, "I'm hosting a political parlour game night this weekend for Traction, a group here in North Carolina working to create a fun social space for progressives in their 20s and 30s (with a long term goal of effecting behavior change). Hence our dodgeball team (dodgeLeft), a party called 'Drop Beats not Bombs', and slightly more serious events, like a hands-on workshop on how to weatherize your house."
she went on to ask for ideas for politically oriented adaptations of parlour and party games. anybody? anybody?
i think traction has the right idea about how to do progressive politics in cynical or otherwise difficult times. i particularly like the way that eileen phrased this: "a fun social space...with a long term goal of effecting behaviour change." there are other groups somewhat like this: drinking liberally is one, and lord knows that's a concept i endorse. but traction, so far only a north carolina group, seems more geared towards creating real social networks of the type you might find in, oh, say, a church. this is non-trivial. shooting the shit in a bar once a month or so, when it's convenient, etc., might make you feel better, but it's the creation of mutual concern and obligation that actually gets the political job done. furthermore it's the creation of mutual concern and obligation of the sort that fulfills rather than depletes that gets the political job done. activists who are somehow putting themselves through paces are ineffective. [just ask my union organizers. sigh.]
the bad:
or rather, the cool calling of attention to a particularly bad phenomenon. behold the STRAWFEMINIST! (found that link via bitch, ph.d.) aside from the amusing illlustrations (stick figures downing buckets of drink! hott!), it's a good, short introduction to the wild contradictions that characterize lots of thinking about feminists and feminism.
...and how fat is still a feminist issue:
there are ninety-seven comments and counting on i blame the patriarchy's "hot mama" post. the post itself is a response to a particular, ayelet waldman-inspired brand of mommyblog that laments the ickiness of the children and celebrates the wonder of the husband. interestingly, those two threads are all bound up in some seriously disturbing ideas about how women should look. that is to say, some poor woman argues that if she gains weight at any point after her marriage, then she has committed the mortal sin of "false advertising." that's gross. but more interestingly, the comment thread, at a brief glance, seems not to have taken up the following hypothetical:
what if she and her husband had mutually agreed to be that particular brand of shallow? or: what if this "false advertising" concern miraculously became gender-neutral?
in comments, terry says in part: "...I have the opposite problem. I got pregnant, and it apparently tripped some binge-eating circuit in my husband. Long story short - he has gained about 140lbs in the past 2 1/2 years. When he was, say, 70lbs overweight, it really didn’t bother me a lot. But now, I really can’t stand it. ...the other part of it is that he is still steadily gaining weight. He’s 35 years old, and within a year will likely weigh 400lbs. I want very much to believe I am not this superficial, although perhaps that is the reality."
twisty responds: "The solution to the problem you describe is, I think, beyond the scope of the radical feminist blog. Your reaction to your husband’s sudden weight gain and the weight gain itself are separate issues. The fat acceptance gang at Big Fat Blog may have a few insights for you."
my questions, as yet un-worked-through, are: where does terry get her idea that she has an "opposite" problem? is twisty right that fat acceptance, per se, is beyond the scope of radical feminism (or at least, of the radical feminist blog)? what are the different meanings of fat*woman and fat*man? are they actually different? certainly it's obvious that judgments about body size affect women to a greater extent than they affect men. women are less realistic about their body sizes than men (biased upward, duh) and less happy with their body sizes at any weight. in the world we live in right now, women are (generally) expected to worry about "false advertising" and men are (generally) not. but is it somehow a problem that can be fixed by concentrating on those who are most oppressed by it? and, being as body and gaze are pretty much inescapable, how do we think seriously about whether and when we continue to love the bodies that our partners' souls are attached to?
yesterday, i received an email from swat pal eileen that said, in part, "I'm hosting a political parlour game night this weekend for Traction, a group here in North Carolina working to create a fun social space for progressives in their 20s and 30s (with a long term goal of effecting behavior change). Hence our dodgeball team (dodgeLeft), a party called 'Drop Beats not Bombs', and slightly more serious events, like a hands-on workshop on how to weatherize your house."
she went on to ask for ideas for politically oriented adaptations of parlour and party games. anybody? anybody?
i think traction has the right idea about how to do progressive politics in cynical or otherwise difficult times. i particularly like the way that eileen phrased this: "a fun social space...with a long term goal of effecting behaviour change." there are other groups somewhat like this: drinking liberally is one, and lord knows that's a concept i endorse. but traction, so far only a north carolina group, seems more geared towards creating real social networks of the type you might find in, oh, say, a church. this is non-trivial. shooting the shit in a bar once a month or so, when it's convenient, etc., might make you feel better, but it's the creation of mutual concern and obligation that actually gets the political job done. furthermore it's the creation of mutual concern and obligation of the sort that fulfills rather than depletes that gets the political job done. activists who are somehow putting themselves through paces are ineffective. [just ask my union organizers. sigh.]
the bad:
or rather, the cool calling of attention to a particularly bad phenomenon. behold the STRAWFEMINIST! (found that link via bitch, ph.d.) aside from the amusing illlustrations (stick figures downing buckets of drink! hott!), it's a good, short introduction to the wild contradictions that characterize lots of thinking about feminists and feminism.
...and how fat is still a feminist issue:
there are ninety-seven comments and counting on i blame the patriarchy's "hot mama" post. the post itself is a response to a particular, ayelet waldman-inspired brand of mommyblog that laments the ickiness of the children and celebrates the wonder of the husband. interestingly, those two threads are all bound up in some seriously disturbing ideas about how women should look. that is to say, some poor woman argues that if she gains weight at any point after her marriage, then she has committed the mortal sin of "false advertising." that's gross. but more interestingly, the comment thread, at a brief glance, seems not to have taken up the following hypothetical:
what if she and her husband had mutually agreed to be that particular brand of shallow? or: what if this "false advertising" concern miraculously became gender-neutral?
in comments, terry says in part: "...I have the opposite problem. I got pregnant, and it apparently tripped some binge-eating circuit in my husband. Long story short - he has gained about 140lbs in the past 2 1/2 years. When he was, say, 70lbs overweight, it really didn’t bother me a lot. But now, I really can’t stand it. ...the other part of it is that he is still steadily gaining weight. He’s 35 years old, and within a year will likely weigh 400lbs. I want very much to believe I am not this superficial, although perhaps that is the reality."
twisty responds: "The solution to the problem you describe is, I think, beyond the scope of the radical feminist blog. Your reaction to your husband’s sudden weight gain and the weight gain itself are separate issues. The fat acceptance gang at Big Fat Blog may have a few insights for you."
my questions, as yet un-worked-through, are: where does terry get her idea that she has an "opposite" problem? is twisty right that fat acceptance, per se, is beyond the scope of radical feminism (or at least, of the radical feminist blog)? what are the different meanings of fat*woman and fat*man? are they actually different? certainly it's obvious that judgments about body size affect women to a greater extent than they affect men. women are less realistic about their body sizes than men (biased upward, duh) and less happy with their body sizes at any weight. in the world we live in right now, women are (generally) expected to worry about "false advertising" and men are (generally) not. but is it somehow a problem that can be fixed by concentrating on those who are most oppressed by it? and, being as body and gaze are pretty much inescapable, how do we think seriously about whether and when we continue to love the bodies that our partners' souls are attached to?
14 March 2006
both of my families
just back from spring break, during which i traveled to chicago and then to philly and in the course of it all managed to see most of the people that i care about. the weather was entirely appropriate to the errands. every single day it dawned worrisomely grey and every single day it got warm and relatively sunny. in chicago, aside from the usual family excitements (amelia is a vegetarian! amelia is still single! amelia's work is abstruse!), i managed to get in some very nice running around evanston, some relatively successful cooking and a lovely walk on the beach with mom, dad and donny.
and also, some arts and crafts, and a truly inspiring voicemail from abram.
in philly i stayed with al (thanks al!) and saw la (happy birthday la!) and went boot-shopping and ate well and generally kicked back. i was disappointed with exactly one thing in three days, and that was the gooseberry wheat ale in our mix-a-six. in a bizarre turn of events, it got hot yester(mon)day, which meant homemade pizza on the deck and then gelato on the sidewalk, with a whole crowd of wonderful folks. this afternoon, met up with ben for the first time in ages, and we talked about all the neat stuff that would happen if there were 10,000 or so people in the house of representatives, and about how repulsive dating-in-grad-school is. and then i took amtrak back to new haven, where it is appropriately cold and blustery.
alas.
things to accomplish in the next several days: read about catholics and race; find some primary sources for my crazy-fundies paper; two game theory psets; keep editing "beyond body count" (snappy title, eh?) for research and writing; read political psych stuff; think about summer. where will i be? what will i do? how will i afford it?
for tonight, i aim to avoid working (and the above questions) for another few hours; continue listening to "jesus: the missing years" and read some hardy; go to bed early.
and also, some arts and crafts, and a truly inspiring voicemail from abram.
in philly i stayed with al (thanks al!) and saw la (happy birthday la!) and went boot-shopping and ate well and generally kicked back. i was disappointed with exactly one thing in three days, and that was the gooseberry wheat ale in our mix-a-six. in a bizarre turn of events, it got hot yester(mon)day, which meant homemade pizza on the deck and then gelato on the sidewalk, with a whole crowd of wonderful folks. this afternoon, met up with ben for the first time in ages, and we talked about all the neat stuff that would happen if there were 10,000 or so people in the house of representatives, and about how repulsive dating-in-grad-school is. and then i took amtrak back to new haven, where it is appropriately cold and blustery.
alas.
things to accomplish in the next several days: read about catholics and race; find some primary sources for my crazy-fundies paper; two game theory psets; keep editing "beyond body count" (snappy title, eh?) for research and writing; read political psych stuff; think about summer. where will i be? what will i do? how will i afford it?
for tonight, i aim to avoid working (and the above questions) for another few hours; continue listening to "jesus: the missing years" and read some hardy; go to bed early.
08 March 2006
blogcrush!
every so often i develop a blog crush. this is a little bit like a crush-crush, but a whole lot more like a friend crush. anyway, my current object of affection is angry black bitch. abb is special in that -- among the posts i've read -- most of the political insight comes as a direct result of actual work that abb has actually done trying to help her mentees live better lives. it kicks my ass a little bit: which of the people that i evince so much concern for here on the internets have i actually spoken to recently?!
...and also i'm still in the phase where the consistent use of the first person pronouns "a bitch" and "my ass" has me rolling on the floor. it sounds like the old journalistic first person of "this reporter" -- with profanity!
...and also i'm still in the phase where the consistent use of the first person pronouns "a bitch" and "my ass" has me rolling on the floor. it sounds like the old journalistic first person of "this reporter" -- with profanity!
07 March 2006
where are the south dakotans?
the thing that has consistently amazed me about witnessing the asshattery in south dakota from the friendly confines of the liberal east is the extent to which the blogosphere, at least the left-blogosphere, is commenting on the mess without the input of actual south dakotans.
i'm sure the right wing blogs are all lit up with south dakotans similar to the utterly repellent bill napoli expounding on their power-hungry, virgin-rape-fetishist "family values." but very few south dakotans are in evidence, either in links or in comments, on the lefty blogs. in an effort to figure out why, i googled futilely for many a long weary minute, turning up plenty of south dakota democrats but not so many south dakota feminists or south dakota leftists. (um, and all the bloggers i found were men. which is not to say that y'all shouldn't be commenting on this stuff. you should. but come ON -- somebody show me the angry radical south dakota women!)
most quoted approvingly the dreary statement from sen. tim johnson. listen to this "voice of moderation:"
"The South Dakota abortion legislation would deny individual women, even under the most extreme circumstances, their current right to prayerfully determine for themselves whether to have an abortion. This denial would be without regard to whether the pregnancy has been only one day in duration; whether it has been the result of rape or incest; or whether its continuation would cause profound injury to the woman. I believe this law is an extreme and radical approach to a very difficult and personal subject, and I do not support it. This legislation goes beyond what is acceptable to President Bush...[snip] I do not believe that the judgment of politicians should be substituted for the painfully difficult and very personal decisions of women and their families. Just as I oppose criminalizing abortion for victims of rape or incest, I also have opposed procedures commonly referred to as "partial birth abortion" and I have helped organize a bipartisan Senate caucus on adoption, while promoting programs which assist pregnant mothers. I believe my approach reflects the broad mainstream values of South Dakota, and that our country needs thoughtful moderation over extreme alternatives."
maybe i've forgotten what the mainstream is...or maybe everybody back in flyover country has forgotten what the mainstream could be. johnson's statement is everything that's wrong with pro-choice equivocation. apparently in johnson's world abortion is ok as long as the pregnancy somehow wasn't your "fault," and allowing women to face their own moral dilemmas in late pregnancy is as "extreme" as forcing a twelve-year-old to have her father's kid.
so i'm worried. i'm worried because this "debate" is going nowhere fast if johnson's view is somehow as far left as folks in-state are willing to publicly go (or indeed, as far left as folks in-state have even had occasion to consider). i'm worried because i know how easy it is to be pragmatic and accommodationist to the point of surrender when you're midwestern and middle-class. i'm worried because left bloggers, by and large, have had neither the experience of growing up with well-intentioned, good-hearted religious conservatives nor the experience of growing up with a daylong drive and a two-day wait for an abortion in a clinic that can't keep a provider.
so the patriarchy-blamers and bitches (angry, black, phd, whatev) among us continue to flame away at the idiocy of south dakotan males -- who of course are the visible actors in this disaster -- without regard to whether the rhetoric we're using makes any sense to someone in vermillion or pierre or rapid city. are we only talking to ourselves? and is that ok?
hello? south dakota? anybody out there?
i'm sure the right wing blogs are all lit up with south dakotans similar to the utterly repellent bill napoli expounding on their power-hungry, virgin-rape-fetishist "family values." but very few south dakotans are in evidence, either in links or in comments, on the lefty blogs. in an effort to figure out why, i googled futilely for many a long weary minute, turning up plenty of south dakota democrats but not so many south dakota feminists or south dakota leftists. (um, and all the bloggers i found were men. which is not to say that y'all shouldn't be commenting on this stuff. you should. but come ON -- somebody show me the angry radical south dakota women!)
most quoted approvingly the dreary statement from sen. tim johnson. listen to this "voice of moderation:"
"The South Dakota abortion legislation would deny individual women, even under the most extreme circumstances, their current right to prayerfully determine for themselves whether to have an abortion. This denial would be without regard to whether the pregnancy has been only one day in duration; whether it has been the result of rape or incest; or whether its continuation would cause profound injury to the woman. I believe this law is an extreme and radical approach to a very difficult and personal subject, and I do not support it. This legislation goes beyond what is acceptable to President Bush...[snip] I do not believe that the judgment of politicians should be substituted for the painfully difficult and very personal decisions of women and their families. Just as I oppose criminalizing abortion for victims of rape or incest, I also have opposed procedures commonly referred to as "partial birth abortion" and I have helped organize a bipartisan Senate caucus on adoption, while promoting programs which assist pregnant mothers. I believe my approach reflects the broad mainstream values of South Dakota, and that our country needs thoughtful moderation over extreme alternatives."
maybe i've forgotten what the mainstream is...or maybe everybody back in flyover country has forgotten what the mainstream could be. johnson's statement is everything that's wrong with pro-choice equivocation. apparently in johnson's world abortion is ok as long as the pregnancy somehow wasn't your "fault," and allowing women to face their own moral dilemmas in late pregnancy is as "extreme" as forcing a twelve-year-old to have her father's kid.
so i'm worried. i'm worried because this "debate" is going nowhere fast if johnson's view is somehow as far left as folks in-state are willing to publicly go (or indeed, as far left as folks in-state have even had occasion to consider). i'm worried because i know how easy it is to be pragmatic and accommodationist to the point of surrender when you're midwestern and middle-class. i'm worried because left bloggers, by and large, have had neither the experience of growing up with well-intentioned, good-hearted religious conservatives nor the experience of growing up with a daylong drive and a two-day wait for an abortion in a clinic that can't keep a provider.
so the patriarchy-blamers and bitches (angry, black, phd, whatev) among us continue to flame away at the idiocy of south dakotan males -- who of course are the visible actors in this disaster -- without regard to whether the rhetoric we're using makes any sense to someone in vermillion or pierre or rapid city. are we only talking to ourselves? and is that ok?
hello? south dakota? anybody out there?
06 March 2006
kirby puckett
a whole generation of upper midwestern kids doesn't know what to think right now. at least, i don't. he was a hero, and then not, but...who could possibly forget those series? those big fat home runs? that grin? he was only forty five.
not what it's really like
new haven is a lot less colorful than this article would have you believe. (although it is sort of fun that i knew exactly who about half the characters were. the flower lady complimented my coat the other day!)
as the blurb attests, this place suffers from serious delusions of grandeur. even a midwesterner such as myself understands that, with a population of about 120,000, it cannot and will never qualify it as a "minor major" american city, despite clam pizza, the cotton gin, or the vast number of powerful people who spent four years here.
also, if i were in fargo i wouldn't be looking at spending $750 a month on a one-bedroom apartment. sigh.
as the blurb attests, this place suffers from serious delusions of grandeur. even a midwesterner such as myself understands that, with a population of about 120,000, it cannot and will never qualify it as a "minor major" american city, despite clam pizza, the cotton gin, or the vast number of powerful people who spent four years here.
also, if i were in fargo i wouldn't be looking at spending $750 a month on a one-bedroom apartment. sigh.
05 March 2006
why i'm glad i left the midwest
so i finally read the entire text of the thing. my favorite bit is the last bit:
"Section 12. This Act shall be known, and may be cited, as the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act."
what an orwellian mindfuck THAT is! given the text of the bill, i can see a few problems with that proposed title. but here are some creative ways to get around them. the biblical literalists among us will be familiar with this strategy of harmonizing text with life.
(1) for women, "health" is now defined by the state of south dakota as including all states of being except for stone cold dead. blind? healthy! disabled? healthy! vegetable-ized? healthy! stuck in an abusive relationship she can't leave? healthy! hopeless and dependent? you guessed it: healthy!
(2) a woman's life is inferior to other classes of "human life." now, it is not necessarily true that a woman's life is never a human life. if there's no particular conflict of interest between a woman's human flourishing and the human flourishing of the speck of cells in her uterus, then the state of south dakota's not gonna take sides. but by god, if there are fertilized cells in there, south dakota recognizes the conflict of interest and takes the side of the cells.
seriously, though. i don't feel as if even this court is going to take this opportunity to overturn roe. unfortunately, stomach-turning has a much lower threshold: given this text, and the utter mistrust and disregard that it displays toward women as a class, and the fact that it is probably supported by at least a near-majority of three quarters of a million people, can i ever go back to the midwest? i'd bet that the same provincial patriarchal bullshit is afoot in north dakota, also home to exactly one abortion provider and, more pertinently, still home to a lot of women that i care about.
whether or not any of those women think that they would choose abortion (most of them would probably say no, i'd venture), i'd like us all to live in states where wacky pseudo-christian misogynists didn't get to institutionalize their sense that females have no capacity for moral reasoning.
"Section 12. This Act shall be known, and may be cited, as the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act."
what an orwellian mindfuck THAT is! given the text of the bill, i can see a few problems with that proposed title. but here are some creative ways to get around them. the biblical literalists among us will be familiar with this strategy of harmonizing text with life.
(1) for women, "health" is now defined by the state of south dakota as including all states of being except for stone cold dead. blind? healthy! disabled? healthy! vegetable-ized? healthy! stuck in an abusive relationship she can't leave? healthy! hopeless and dependent? you guessed it: healthy!
(2) a woman's life is inferior to other classes of "human life." now, it is not necessarily true that a woman's life is never a human life. if there's no particular conflict of interest between a woman's human flourishing and the human flourishing of the speck of cells in her uterus, then the state of south dakota's not gonna take sides. but by god, if there are fertilized cells in there, south dakota recognizes the conflict of interest and takes the side of the cells.
seriously, though. i don't feel as if even this court is going to take this opportunity to overturn roe. unfortunately, stomach-turning has a much lower threshold: given this text, and the utter mistrust and disregard that it displays toward women as a class, and the fact that it is probably supported by at least a near-majority of three quarters of a million people, can i ever go back to the midwest? i'd bet that the same provincial patriarchal bullshit is afoot in north dakota, also home to exactly one abortion provider and, more pertinently, still home to a lot of women that i care about.
whether or not any of those women think that they would choose abortion (most of them would probably say no, i'd venture), i'd like us all to live in states where wacky pseudo-christian misogynists didn't get to institutionalize their sense that females have no capacity for moral reasoning.
27 February 2006
blogroll
so i finally updated the outdated patriarchy-blaming link. thank goodness!
i also got rid of the christian right people, because frankly, i don't have time or energy to be that frustrated right now.
i also got rid of the christian right people, because frankly, i don't have time or energy to be that frustrated right now.
swarthmore republicans then and now
at the gym this morning, i finally finished the last few pages of jane mayer's article on alberto mora, who was until very recently the general counsel of the united states navy. here is a man who served as a political appointee under several republicans and is a staunch conservative, but who nevertheless understood that bush administration directives for guantanamo (and detainee centers in iraq) amounted to a license to torture and were consequently (a) illegal and (b) wrong.
mora's memoranda, the most thoroughgoing of which the new yorker has posted here, narrate chronologically the instances of abuses at guantanamo and argue, according to mayer's account, "that a refusal to outlaw cruelty toward U.S.-held terrorist suspects was an implicit invitation to abuse."
none of this is surprising to me. this isn't the most ground-breaking of mora's stories for the new yorker on iraq, on torture, on any of the war on terror bullshit. what i suppose made the article stand out was the extent to which mora acted with both courage and naivete. it is somehow less surprising that the son of a refugee hungarian and a refugee cuban would become a conservative with a distaste for government abuses than that this particular conservative believed that by authoring memos and confronting his bosses, he could change the way this administration conducted its affairs. in most senses, though--despite his position--he was simply a rock in a river. they sent memos around him. they double-tracked the torture discussions. so on and so forth and, again, none of it should be surprising.
but then this: "Mora had never met anyone who opposed the Vietnam War until he enrolled at Swarthmore College, a school that he chose after reading an S.A.T.-preparation booklet that described it as small and especially rigorous. He also had never met a feminist before going to hear Kate Millett speak at Bryn Mawr, during his freshman year; her talk infuriated him. After growing up in the South among friends who played sports, drank beer, and had a good time, he found the Northeastern liberal élite curiously “nerdish.” The girls had thrown away their skirts—if they’d ever had them, he joked—and there were no parties. Yet he loved the intellectual environment. “You just had these intense discussions,” he recalled. “I revelled in it.” Mora said that he was the only person among his friends who wasn’t a conscientious objector to the war."
AHA! a conservative who went to school with quakers!
but what would the college republicans of the current era do with mora, i wondered. by the time i left swarthmore, about thirty years after mora graduated in 1974, the republicans there had decided that they were embattled and/or otherwise disadvantaged. they *were* a tiny minority on a vocally lefty campus. but i was appalled by the way that only the wingnuttiest of them gave voice. i was appalled by their largely (though not entirely) self-imposed social isolation, by their weird, inflammatory rhetoric, and most of all by their anti-anti-war, anti-anti-bush cant. i often doubted, given the dailyjoltification of their public speech, whether any would have the courage to make friends with the lefties.
perhaps that is neither here nor there. what i'm getting at, i suppose, is just my wish for a conservatism less wedded to party lines. or at least, less wedded to this party and its lines (and hooks and sinkers). i will continue to disagree with them and find many of their ideas morally implausible, but i can at least speak with (well, write coherently about) a mora, or a chuck hagel, or a john mccain. indeed, many of the most conservative people i know, in the sense of being wedded to the fundamental propriety of individual action for social betterment, are now ex-republicans. but the swarthmore republicans of 2002 and 2003? i bet none of them will be "ex" any time soon -- like most supporters of this administration, they're too wedded to their triumphalist culture war (on "terror" and gays and the women of south dakota, for example) to question individual policies or individual people.
the end of the mora story? he left the pentagon and is now working for wal-mart international. so, i guess he's batting about .500 on ethical intelligence.
last thing: did you know that john conyers has called for impeachment proceedings? yeah, i didn't either, until i read the overstated but well-argued impeachment polemic in this month's harper's. the report on which conyers' request is based is 182 pages, 1022 footnotes, all public record.
mora's memoranda, the most thoroughgoing of which the new yorker has posted here, narrate chronologically the instances of abuses at guantanamo and argue, according to mayer's account, "that a refusal to outlaw cruelty toward U.S.-held terrorist suspects was an implicit invitation to abuse."
none of this is surprising to me. this isn't the most ground-breaking of mora's stories for the new yorker on iraq, on torture, on any of the war on terror bullshit. what i suppose made the article stand out was the extent to which mora acted with both courage and naivete. it is somehow less surprising that the son of a refugee hungarian and a refugee cuban would become a conservative with a distaste for government abuses than that this particular conservative believed that by authoring memos and confronting his bosses, he could change the way this administration conducted its affairs. in most senses, though--despite his position--he was simply a rock in a river. they sent memos around him. they double-tracked the torture discussions. so on and so forth and, again, none of it should be surprising.
but then this: "Mora had never met anyone who opposed the Vietnam War until he enrolled at Swarthmore College, a school that he chose after reading an S.A.T.-preparation booklet that described it as small and especially rigorous. He also had never met a feminist before going to hear Kate Millett speak at Bryn Mawr, during his freshman year; her talk infuriated him. After growing up in the South among friends who played sports, drank beer, and had a good time, he found the Northeastern liberal élite curiously “nerdish.” The girls had thrown away their skirts—if they’d ever had them, he joked—and there were no parties. Yet he loved the intellectual environment. “You just had these intense discussions,” he recalled. “I revelled in it.” Mora said that he was the only person among his friends who wasn’t a conscientious objector to the war."
AHA! a conservative who went to school with quakers!
but what would the college republicans of the current era do with mora, i wondered. by the time i left swarthmore, about thirty years after mora graduated in 1974, the republicans there had decided that they were embattled and/or otherwise disadvantaged. they *were* a tiny minority on a vocally lefty campus. but i was appalled by the way that only the wingnuttiest of them gave voice. i was appalled by their largely (though not entirely) self-imposed social isolation, by their weird, inflammatory rhetoric, and most of all by their anti-anti-war, anti-anti-bush cant. i often doubted, given the dailyjoltification of their public speech, whether any would have the courage to make friends with the lefties.
perhaps that is neither here nor there. what i'm getting at, i suppose, is just my wish for a conservatism less wedded to party lines. or at least, less wedded to this party and its lines (and hooks and sinkers). i will continue to disagree with them and find many of their ideas morally implausible, but i can at least speak with (well, write coherently about) a mora, or a chuck hagel, or a john mccain. indeed, many of the most conservative people i know, in the sense of being wedded to the fundamental propriety of individual action for social betterment, are now ex-republicans. but the swarthmore republicans of 2002 and 2003? i bet none of them will be "ex" any time soon -- like most supporters of this administration, they're too wedded to their triumphalist culture war (on "terror" and gays and the women of south dakota, for example) to question individual policies or individual people.
the end of the mora story? he left the pentagon and is now working for wal-mart international. so, i guess he's batting about .500 on ethical intelligence.
last thing: did you know that john conyers has called for impeachment proceedings? yeah, i didn't either, until i read the overstated but well-argued impeachment polemic in this month's harper's. the report on which conyers' request is based is 182 pages, 1022 footnotes, all public record.
23 February 2006
meme: narcissism
wowee, this johari thing is kind of fun. totally full of weird response bias (my guess is that people shy away from giving positive-sounding assessments of themselves and others shy away from negatives), but really interesting. anyway, all three of you who read this blog should go click buttons (and be honest!) over here.
21 February 2006
ah, the insecurity of the untenured
[[EDIT EDIT EDIT -- for what it's worth, tim burke says what i foolishly attempted to say in five minutes much more clearly. (here's hoping he didn't write his in five minutes; that would be really embarrassing.) more interestingly, meg worley has a rejoinder up on her blog. if she was as stunningly misquoted and/or decontextualized as she claims, then: wow, nyt sucks. then again, i guess that shouldn't be surprising. they do like to confuse their mountains with their molehills.]]
so it's been more than a month! guess what: i'm not sorry. sometime soon, i will update you all on the total suckiness that is failing a field exam. (i will also expound upon the implications of the fact that i have just admitted to the internet [=posterity?] that i failed a field exam.) on the whole, i am surviving quite well, although any and all pity/righteous-anger-on-my-behalf/gifts will be accepted.
but what i'm actually pointing to today is this amazing article on faculty -- mostly junior-faculty -- responses to student emails.
get this:
[[Meg Worley, an assistant professor of English at Pomona College in California, said she told students that they must say thank you after receiving a professor's response to an e-mail message. "One of the rules that I teach my students is, the less powerful person always has to write back," Professor Worley said.]]
i suppose that we can thank professor worley for making the nature of the undergrad/prof relationship abundantly clear -- but do her students really need that? i have been an undergraduate, and i really do not believe that there are undergraduates who do not understand the professor's position of power. this sort of high-handedness, it seems to me, is often the result of some factually incorrect feelings of powerlessness on the part of the powerful. how is professor worley feeling about her colleagues and her tenure process when she drafts missives that inform her undergraduate students of their subordinate position?
more generally: setting out rules that are about power, or about who is authorized to make demands, misses the point entirely. is your purpose as a teacher of undergraduates to assert power over those undergraduates? no -- your purpose, one might hope, is to educate, inform, enlighten, blah blah blah. in order to do this, both of you need to be courteous to one another. that's a good basis on which to make rules. no, students are not just like other consumers. no, teachers are not expected to market their bending-over-backwards abilities in place of their academic expertise. but i'm pretty grossed out by the assertion that many of the profs in the article are making, which is that they have little or no responsibility toward their students as people, and/or that students have nothing useful to offer the relationship.
anyway, read it and weep. or giggle at the insecurity of the junior professor (or lecturer, in another case). which insecurity i will giggle at for another three years or so, at which point i'm certain i will write something reflecting my own need to pull rank on a bunch of nineteen-year-olds.
so it's been more than a month! guess what: i'm not sorry. sometime soon, i will update you all on the total suckiness that is failing a field exam. (i will also expound upon the implications of the fact that i have just admitted to the internet [=posterity?] that i failed a field exam.) on the whole, i am surviving quite well, although any and all pity/righteous-anger-on-my-behalf/gifts will be accepted.
but what i'm actually pointing to today is this amazing article on faculty -- mostly junior-faculty -- responses to student emails.
get this:
[[Meg Worley, an assistant professor of English at Pomona College in California, said she told students that they must say thank you after receiving a professor's response to an e-mail message. "One of the rules that I teach my students is, the less powerful person always has to write back," Professor Worley said.]]
i suppose that we can thank professor worley for making the nature of the undergrad/prof relationship abundantly clear -- but do her students really need that? i have been an undergraduate, and i really do not believe that there are undergraduates who do not understand the professor's position of power. this sort of high-handedness, it seems to me, is often the result of some factually incorrect feelings of powerlessness on the part of the powerful. how is professor worley feeling about her colleagues and her tenure process when she drafts missives that inform her undergraduate students of their subordinate position?
more generally: setting out rules that are about power, or about who is authorized to make demands, misses the point entirely. is your purpose as a teacher of undergraduates to assert power over those undergraduates? no -- your purpose, one might hope, is to educate, inform, enlighten, blah blah blah. in order to do this, both of you need to be courteous to one another. that's a good basis on which to make rules. no, students are not just like other consumers. no, teachers are not expected to market their bending-over-backwards abilities in place of their academic expertise. but i'm pretty grossed out by the assertion that many of the profs in the article are making, which is that they have little or no responsibility toward their students as people, and/or that students have nothing useful to offer the relationship.
anyway, read it and weep. or giggle at the insecurity of the junior professor (or lecturer, in another case). which insecurity i will giggle at for another three years or so, at which point i'm certain i will write something reflecting my own need to pull rank on a bunch of nineteen-year-olds.
18 January 2006
until i read the news again
...very little posting. i mean, i read the news. i do. i swear. nyt daily and some of the good blogs and my weekly new yorker fix at the gym. but i find that all my analytical capacity is being sucked up by other endeavors, so that there is little sense in pretending that i am engaged enough with the real world to write about it. watch this space, but not too closely.
09 January 2006
done! (for.)
totally exhausted, but totally exhilarated. just turned in a 7,000-word draft of my second year paper. current title: 'repertoires of violence: theoretical and empirical gains from 'variation in covariation.'' if that sounds like bullshit, it's because it (sort of) is. on the other hand: done! done! done!
except, not so much done because second-semester classes started this morning. whatev.
except, not so much done because second-semester classes started this morning. whatev.
03 January 2006
5100 words
...in five hours.
i answered one on ideas-as-institutions compared to organizations-as-institutions; one on party-induced preferences in congress; one on welfare state politics.
hoo boy.
i answered one on ideas-as-institutions compared to organizations-as-institutions; one on party-induced preferences in congress; one on welfare state politics.
hoo boy.
02 January 2006
good morning prayer
lately i've been trying to read through morning prayer (rite II, courtesy of mission st. clare) every day before i get down to work -- it's both a good and hopeful grounding for the day and a way to get my mind moving before the caffeine really hits my system.
today is the day before my exam, and the old testament reading is from kings: solomon asks for the discernment to do what is right, and God, seeing that solomon is good, grants him "a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you." the fame, fortune and long life are incidental.
ok, so: if i sit around meditating on justice and my place in the world, do you think God will appear to me in a dream and grant me a wise and discerning mind? because honestly, i'm pretty sick of studying actual content.
today is the day before my exam, and the old testament reading is from kings: solomon asks for the discernment to do what is right, and God, seeing that solomon is good, grants him "a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you." the fame, fortune and long life are incidental.
ok, so: if i sit around meditating on justice and my place in the world, do you think God will appear to me in a dream and grant me a wise and discerning mind? because honestly, i'm pretty sick of studying actual content.
31 December 2005
happy new year
for 2006: let's really kick ass in the congressional midterms. let's do something, anything, right in iraq. let's be less crazy and more grounded. let's work a little less. let's not lose the boring, and proverbial, ten pounds. let's be honest with ourselves and others, even if we are policymakers. let's continue to jeer at "intelligent" "design." let's pass our comps and write our prospecti. let's go to church, or wherever it is we go for peace and comfort, more often. let's read more nonfiction from other disciplines. let's finally finish a russian novel. let's think about how we can make academic labor movements that don't suck. relatedly, let's think about how we can make institutions that let women do that whole [life + work] thing a little more easily. let's call our families and pay attention to what they are saying. let's bike more and drive less. let's do something about health care, finally. relatedly, let's make an agenda to get a democrat back in the white house. let's be frank about the moral bankruptcy of american conservatism. let's save our activist souls even if we are in grad school. let's learn a new language. let's keep thinking about how badly the whole country fucked up in new orleans. in a wide variety of contexts, let's blame the people responsible instead of the victims. let's read more children's fiction. let's learn to cook something new. let's read the news.
and so on.
and so on.
13 December 2005
that's rich
if you should happen to add "body outlaws: rewriting the rules of beauty and body image" to your cart at amazon.com, you will be informed that the "recommended accessories" for this book of feminist essays are (1) "tinted moisturizer" and (2) lip gloss.
ah, capitalism at its finest.
ah, capitalism at its finest.
09 December 2005
tragic! beautiful! ooooooh!
NYT hearts gay cowboys. (actually gay shepherds, if you must know.)
i'm told that north and the fb and various others are going to see it this very night, and i am so jealous of their little cadre. as it turns out, the damn thing opens nowhere in new haven (or the surrounding suburban disaster) tonight; indeed, opens nowhere near here for another two weeks. OH THE HUMANITY!
it doesn't really matter, in any case. tonight i have a hott date with anthony downs and an economic theory of democracy.
i'm told that north and the fb and various others are going to see it this very night, and i am so jealous of their little cadre. as it turns out, the damn thing opens nowhere in new haven (or the surrounding suburban disaster) tonight; indeed, opens nowhere near here for another two weeks. OH THE HUMANITY!
it doesn't really matter, in any case. tonight i have a hott date with anthony downs and an economic theory of democracy.
05 December 2005
think nelson muntz
HA ha!
in other news, i recently calculated that i've read just over half of the 140 items on the american exam list. things that i learned from the super ultra bad comparative politics experience include STRATEGERY. hence i will be focusing on congress and theory/APD, each of which was key to at least four of the nine possible questions on last august's exam (of nine, three are required). then, in descending order of question frequency, [elections and parties and the presidency], [bureaucracy, policy, public opinion], and dead last as usual, the really interesting stuff: courts and social movements.
anyway, if i disappear for a while, you all know why.
in other news, i recently calculated that i've read just over half of the 140 items on the american exam list. things that i learned from the super ultra bad comparative politics experience include STRATEGERY. hence i will be focusing on congress and theory/APD, each of which was key to at least four of the nine possible questions on last august's exam (of nine, three are required). then, in descending order of question frequency, [elections and parties and the presidency], [bureaucracy, policy, public opinion], and dead last as usual, the really interesting stuff: courts and social movements.
anyway, if i disappear for a while, you all know why.
27 November 2005
thanksgiving weekend in pictures
donny took this picture of mom, ray, me, and dad at t'giving dinner: [why am i making that face?] [also, for anyone who has heard my anecdote about encyclopedias being read at the dinner table, the proof is right there behind my mother.]
at the christmas-tree farm, friday mid-day:
decorating said christmas tree, in our classiest headwear:
saturday, late afternoon, walking across norway lake: [it's not that we are miracle workers, but rather that it has been clear and still and dry, so there is a lot of very smooth ice and no snow.]
in more unsettling news, i went to see rent on wednesday night with ray, and the brokeback mountain trailer was greeted with a mixture of gasps and boos and snickers and giggles. from the audience that had COME TO THE THEATRE TO SEE RENT WHICH HAS WAY MORE GAYS THAN BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. what the fuck, people! i floated a theory to alyssa that the rent gays are somehow less threatening than the proulx gays, but it doesn't really signify. nobody's giggling at that preview in new haven. i'm coming home tomorrow.
16 November 2005
ralph fiennes as voldemort!
now this i gotta see. in addition, saith manohla dargis, the movie itself is pretty durn good too.
11 November 2005
church love
i ignored christ church for a full year, until i realized that unlike a lot of anglo-catholic congregations, this one was staunchly and outgoingly progressive. i've been to four sundays now, and while the smells and bells and slightly difficult hymn tones are still occasionally daunting, i'm feeling more at home than i have in any of the other new haven churches i've tried.
from today's parish newsletter: "A couple of other notes-this Sunday the Forum begins a series on the issues in the re emerging science/religion debate, though I really don't like to phrase it that way. A couple of months back someone asked me how Episcopalians dealt with the problem of evolution and I was rather taken aback. We hadn't really thought of it as a problem in sometime, I said. Indeed, Charles Gore and the writers of Lux Mundi were able to see evolution as more than consistent with a serious theology of the Incarnation. But the questions have returned-with popular preachers threatening God's wrath on towns who don't want school boards teaching evolution and pressure on text books authors. This is an issue that needs our thoughtful attention. Progressive Anglo-Catholics have a voice that needs so badly to be heard and, as scripture asks, we need to be able to give a reason for the hope that is in us. Oddly, this too points to why it is important that the parish thrive, so that in Forum and Inquirer's Class, in sermons and other settings, we can think the faith through together."
RIGHT ON!
from today's parish newsletter: "A couple of other notes-this Sunday the Forum begins a series on the issues in the re emerging science/religion debate, though I really don't like to phrase it that way. A couple of months back someone asked me how Episcopalians dealt with the problem of evolution and I was rather taken aback. We hadn't really thought of it as a problem in sometime, I said. Indeed, Charles Gore and the writers of Lux Mundi were able to see evolution as more than consistent with a serious theology of the Incarnation. But the questions have returned-with popular preachers threatening God's wrath on towns who don't want school boards teaching evolution and pressure on text books authors. This is an issue that needs our thoughtful attention. Progressive Anglo-Catholics have a voice that needs so badly to be heard and, as scripture asks, we need to be able to give a reason for the hope that is in us. Oddly, this too points to why it is important that the parish thrive, so that in Forum and Inquirer's Class, in sermons and other settings, we can think the faith through together."
RIGHT ON!
07 November 2005
sometimes sleep deprivation is totally worth it
last night i went to see the hold steady at bar -- for FREE i tell you! -- and there was lots of rocking. (the evidence: i was bobbing and weaving and doing that funny rhythmic nod thing and everyone else, including all the people whose appearance suggested they hadn't yet transitioned to the post-ironic phase of hipsterdom, was too.) it was incredibly loud and incredibly fun and i'm really glad i occasionally get up the gumption to go to one of these things.
the hold steady is (are?) especially rad because, although they have been in brooklyn for a while now, they are originally from the twin cities. so there were lots of references for me to catch and gloat over.
the openers were pretty durn awesome too, although they had those annoying forward-brushed haircuts that make me instinctively want to smack people. my goodness, but their arrangements were tight and cool and sophisticated, though. and approximately the most manic, infectious stage presence i've seen. anyway, if you get a chance check out thunderbirds are now!.
anyway, then i went home and slept for a mere five hours, and now i am trying to write something smart about fundamentalists. sorry for the lack of posting of late, friends.
the hold steady is (are?) especially rad because, although they have been in brooklyn for a while now, they are originally from the twin cities. so there were lots of references for me to catch and gloat over.
the openers were pretty durn awesome too, although they had those annoying forward-brushed haircuts that make me instinctively want to smack people. my goodness, but their arrangements were tight and cool and sophisticated, though. and approximately the most manic, infectious stage presence i've seen. anyway, if you get a chance check out thunderbirds are now!.
anyway, then i went home and slept for a mere five hours, and now i am trying to write something smart about fundamentalists. sorry for the lack of posting of late, friends.
01 November 2005
alito and ppsp v. casey
something smells here. it strikes me as more than worrisome that conservative federal judges, and according to the article the bush administration as well, are engaged in a project that involves allowing potentially over-burdensome laws to go into effect before they are declared unconstitutional, because the actual burdens of the law have yet to be demonstrated.
leaving aside for a moment the issue of whether a parental notification law is unconstitutional on its face, this seems like a highly inconsistent use of "social facts" to me. it seems to me that conservative jurists usually get the most mileage out of claims that social facts, no matter their magnitude, are inconsequential where laws are facially neutral. you know, the old "it's not the law's fault that only women get pregnant" argument. or, hey, separate but equal. if the number of women who face an undue burden because of an abortion restriction might be small, then alito would uphold?
this is a poor articulation of my worry. perhaps it's more direct to say that alito's position in casey is both stone-age and dishonest. if you don't believe there is a constitutionally protected right to choose abortion, then for heaven's sake write opinions that say so. don't try to pretend that some me-tarzan you-jane tarzan-own-jane's-uterus provision doesn't pose an undue burden.
leaving aside for a moment the issue of whether a parental notification law is unconstitutional on its face, this seems like a highly inconsistent use of "social facts" to me. it seems to me that conservative jurists usually get the most mileage out of claims that social facts, no matter their magnitude, are inconsequential where laws are facially neutral. you know, the old "it's not the law's fault that only women get pregnant" argument. or, hey, separate but equal. if the number of women who face an undue burden because of an abortion restriction might be small, then alito would uphold?
this is a poor articulation of my worry. perhaps it's more direct to say that alito's position in casey is both stone-age and dishonest. if you don't believe there is a constitutionally protected right to choose abortion, then for heaven's sake write opinions that say so. don't try to pretend that some me-tarzan you-jane tarzan-own-jane's-uterus provision doesn't pose an undue burden.
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