Archive for Politics

Why It Matters

February 16, 2006 / / 2 comments

Some co-workers were wondering over lunch why the Deadeye Dick story matters. Isn’t it just fluff? No one really believes it was a malicious shooting, why is an accident more than a humorous puff piece, distracting us from real news?

AmericaBlog has a good answer (emphasis added):

It matters because this is our government. And when our government starts acting all Soviet, pretending like they’re untouchable gods and we’re just small children who wouldn’t understand, that’s a problem. When the vice president almost kills a man – and the verdict is still out on whether this will turn into a negligent homicide case – the public has a right to know what happened. Was Cheney drunk? Is he ill? Are his cognitive abilities slipping?

With all due respect, it was cute that the Republicans kept Strom Thurmond propped up, Evita style, for years after he was no longer a functioning Senator, but with our vice president we have the right to know if he’s still got his wits about him or not – especially when our vice president is really our president.

And in terms of Cheney’s “interview,” Crooks & Liars has the Cafferty smack-down:

BLITZER: First of all, Jack, what did you make of Dick Cheney’s interview today?

CAFFERTY: Well, I obviously didn’t see it ’cause it hasn’t been released in its entirety yet, but I — I would guess it didn’t exactly represent a profile in courage for the vice president to wander over there to the F-word network for a sit down with Brit Hume. I mean, that’s a little like Bonnie interviewing Clyde, ain’t it? I mean, where was the news conference? Where was the — where was the access to all of the members of the media? I don’t know. You know? Whatever.

Miss Manners Advises Darth Cheney

February 15, 2006 / / Comments Off on Miss Manners Advises Darth Cheney

When apologizing for injuring someone, it is not appropriate to describe how badly you feel. Your concern and your expression of sentiment belong entirely with the injured party.

That is all.

Spin Art

February 15, 2006 / / Comments Off on Spin Art

Bob Harris is way smart. I never would have caught this.

I guess it’s a matter of assuming there’s a spin and then working your way backwards.

Decorators, Dancers, and Figure Skaters

February 15, 2006 / / Comments Off on Decorators, Dancers, and Figure Skaters

A few of years ago (probably four years ago, in relation to the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics) I read an article about young male figure skaters in the U.S. Seems they are subject to harrassment and even gay bashing because they skate. There was an interview with a teenage skater who had come here from Russia, and he just couldn’t understand it. In Russia, skating is a sport like any other.

Indeed, this is something that strikes close to home, as my son is a heterosexual dancer, and while there has been no bashing or danger, there have been…remarks. And for him, there was a difficult choice: His love of dance won out over the discomfort of being thought gay; not an easy experience when you’re eleven or twelve.

There’s a wonderful article in the New York Review of Books that said a great deal of what I want to say about whether or not Brokeback Mountain is a “gay movie.” A parenthetical remark in that article really struck me:

Had this been the story of, say, the love between two closeted interior decorators living in New York City in the 1970s, you suspect that there wouldn’t be full-page ads in the major papers trumpeting its “universal” themes.

» Read more..

Interview with Dan Savage

February 9, 2006 / / 6 comments

Dan Savage writes a weekly advise column for The Onion‘s AV Club. This week, AV Club interviews him. It’s a joy to read from start to finish. It’s smart, it’s weird, it’s funny, it’s incredibly diverse. In fact, I insist you read the whole thing.

Here’s an excerpt.

I actually think the solution to homophobia is eradicating misogyny. I think a lot of homophobia is hatred of women repackaged, ’cause gay men seem to preoccupy homophobes the most. It’s usually about anal sex, and gay men are perceived as taking on the woman’s role, and women are despised. The woman’s role is less-than. And in a male-supremacy culture, men who take on the woman’s role willingly kind of freak out some of the dudes. If you could eradicate misogyny, homophobia would evaporate. That’s why I always tell women, “If you’re dating a homophobe, you’re dating a guy who’s secretly a misogynist, who secretly hates you. And you shouldn’t.”

The Back of the Vegetable Truck

February 9, 2006 / / Comments Off on The Back of the Vegetable Truck

I don’t normally do this sort of post, but this just cracked me up.

AmericaBlog has this excerpt of CNN’s Jack Cafferty discussing Boehner.

CAFFERTY: These guys are either arrogant or stupid and neither of those is a good thing if you’re going to be the House majority leader–am I missing something here? Where’s the reform part? I wonder how long this guy is going to last.

WOLF: You did hear Ed Henry say that it is a basement apartment which is not necessarily all that desirable—

CAFFERTY: Yea…and pigs fly upside down and the moon is made of green cheese and there’s no quid pro quo from a lobbyist who is also your landlord? Do I look like I just fell out of the back of a vegetable truck to you?

Vegetable truck! LOL! The lovely thing is all those eggplants and cabbages in the Republican party will believe it.

Yahoo provides Chinese police with dissident data

February 9, 2006 / / Comments Off on Yahoo provides Chinese police with dissident data

Reporters Without Borders is reporting that Yahoo has been turning over information (email addresses, attachments) to the Chinese government, leading to the arrest and imprisonment of political dissidents. » Read more..

It Just Feels Right

February 7, 2006 / / 6 comments

One of the hardest things to learn is that your gut feeling is not my gut feeling.

Don’t trust your gut.

Okay, go ahead and trust your gut for you. That’s good sense. That’s using your intuition wisely. But your gut feeling is not an indicator of human gut feeling. How you feel doesn’t tell us how “all men” or “all women” or “all parents” or “all teenagers” feel. (When I see the ubiquitous “What do women want?” “What do men find attractive?” message board plaint, I am often tempted to ask if the poster really believes that all men/women/girls/boys are the same.)

No one seems to know this, yet the knowledge is crucial. So get this: Just because homosexuality squicks you out, doesn’t mean it is against nature. It just means it squicks you. Just because polyamory offends your sensibilities doesn’t mean it is inherently offensive. Just because your gut says “wrong, wrong, wrong” when you think of aborting a fetus, doesn’t mean that this is the right and normal way for a woman to feel.

Years ago, I got into an abortion argument with a friend and I said that to me it felt, viscerally, really violating to have anyone tell me what to do with my uterus (in fact I said it felt as bad to be told not to have children as to be told not to abort). He said it was all well and good that I felt that way, but his wife’s viscera were every bit as trustworthy as mine, and she felt differently.

He was right. Basing an argument about choice on my gut feeling was wrong. But the thing is, lots of arguments are based on that. The whole anti-gay propoganda machine is all about that it feels unnatural to straight people. And it does feel unnatural; if you visualize screwing someone you don’t want to screw, that feels ew yuck oh no no way no. (It feels especially unnatural to people in denial about their own gayness, but that’s another story.)

What’s needed in our world, in many arenas, is for people to unhook from the idea that they can predict nature, right, wrong, and all of human society based on what makes them go “ick.”

Liberal Hollywood

February 3, 2006 / / 9 comments

In a previous post, I suggest that Westerns are an iconically conservative movie genre, and suggested The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as something like the conservative movie. I wondered what an iconically liberal genre might be, and what movies were quintessentially liberal.

Despite all that “liberal Hollywood” talk, it hasn’t been an easy exercise. Lots of genres tend to embody conservative values; many “law & order” action movies, all those Rambo and Death Wish things, and there’s a strong punish-the-slut current in most horror.

In the previous post and its comments section, we came up with a short list of liberal movies:

  • To Kill a Mockingbird
  • 12 Angry Men
  • All the President’s Men
  • Inherit the Wind
  • Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
  • Silkwood
  • Dances with Wolves

Over dinner, I thought of a few more:

  • The China Syndrome
  • Erin Brokovich
  • Norma Rae

(and here comes the one I think is quintessential)

  • The Grapes of Wrath

This starts to look like the courtroom drama is the liberal genre, with the battle for an underdog’s rights being the liberal theme.

So, now it’s your turn. What do you think are the quintessential liberal genre(s) and movie(s)?

Freedom is on the March. With stirrups jangling.

February 3, 2006 / / 4 comments

One of the things that drives me (and indeed, many on the left) batshit crazy about those on the right is that they claim to love freedom yet seem to hate any displays of that freedom. I’ve wondered my entire life what, exactly, conservatives define as “liberty.” They hate the ACLU! How can you love freedom, and hate the defense of civil liberties? How can you love freedom, and applaud restrictions on free speech, on free assembly, or on a free press?

This latest rant on my part arises from a combination of two news stories. Not the news stories, really, but the wingnut reaction. First, the ongoing revelations about the NSA spying on ordinary Americans without a warrant. Now, some right wing folks understand the gravity of this. But the wingnut reaction in many places is more or less: Rah, cheer, we’re defending freedom.

Then there’s Cindy Sheehan’s arrest at the State of the Union. The wingnuts I was conversing with (on a message board) were adamant that it was right, and good, and proper, that her freedom be curtailed at the SOTU, because after all, she was breaking the law! (And not one of them bothered even to backpeddle, let alone apologize, once the police admitted she wasn’t.)

So my question is, at it has always been, how do the right wing define freedom? And I think I figured it out.

» Read more..

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