Okay, seriously, once health reform is passed I will go back to telling stories about Ted cheating at Harvard and hitting on high-school girls after his divorce, and seeing him walk down a Boston street in February eating an ice-cream cone, which is one of the field signs of a true Bostonian but probably did not help him keep his girlish figure. But even my cynicism isn't ready to go there yet. Instead, here is a call to action in Sen. Kennedy's honor, from Joe Conason, who is not usually this good, perhaps because passion and decency really do trump worldliness and ironic detachment. At least some of the time.
Ted Kennedy wanted the public option
"...It is true that Kennedy, the friendly warrior, excelled in bipartisanship. Nearly all of the domestic reforms mentioned here were sponsored by at least one Republican senator. But in every case, those stodgy conservatives were cajoled and whispered (and perhaps shamed) into venturing much closer to Kennedy's perspective. He drew them toward him, invariably against their own habits, not by selling out his progressive goal, but by appealing to the decency he perceived in them.
... [But we] know that he could shout as well as whisper — and that he could be partisan as well as bipartisan. He believed that the time for incremental changes had passed. He was ready to fight. The tragedy of his death is not only that he didn't see the triumph he had dreamed, but that he fell before he could lead the nation to that final victory. Now that victory will have to be won in his name."
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
I *heart* Barney Frank
Barney, Barney, if you weren't gay and I weren't 51 I would ask to have your children:
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Scary thoughts on race
Frank Rich, as always a bit too honest for comfort, today holds forth on what he's calling "racial and nativist panic" among the likes of Brit Hume, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and William Kristol, in reaction to the demographic and political fact that "an entire country is changing faster than these white guys bargained for".
The piece is, as usual, insightful, well-reasoned, and sharply written. And it made me pause for a moment to realize that I don't really have a clue which aspects of my life are made possible entirely by what sociology departments used to call "white privilege". That's the problem with privilege; you get to take it for granted. It's hard enough to cope with age and injury, the way those things disrupt what I thought was just the way the world worked and always would. It's hard enough to cope with the changes in my profession, and the devaluation of some of my best skills. I hadn't sat down lately and thought about what happens when the issue isn't, "how fair am I to ethnic minorities?" but, "how fairly can I be expected to be treated when I am the ethnic minority?"
My one experience in this role, being among the 10% of white kids bused into the city's one all-black elementary school in fifth grade, in 1968, to meet integration quotas, was not pleasant: it included being beaten up on the playground, having my lunchbox stolen, being mocked for my facial asymmetry, and once getting punched into my desk in math class by a classmate who thought I was laughing at him.
It also included having to go back to school after Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, dressed irremediably in my white skin. I wished the weather would stay cold so I could keep wearing mittens and a hat, to cover my face and hands and hair, and maybe not be a target from quite so far away. It gave me the revelation that this was probably something like what my black classmates felt every time they left their neighborhood and set foot in the rest of the city; 15 years later, it allowed me to respect the way my husband went on alert in some parts of Boston. In situations with the potential for racism to turn violent, you are the race you look like from 50 feet away.
One inherent benefit of fairness as a system is that it offers the hope of decent treatment when you are not the one in power. Even if you lack empathy, at some point self-interest ought to suggest at least considering what happens when the table is turned. But I guess if you have enough privilege to draw on, you can pretend there isn't even a table. Anyway, Brit, Rush, Newt, Bill, et al should calm down. They'll be dead before they have to give up very much.
But Rich's essay also included an historical reference that grabbed me.
So I'm thinking there's one thing that Rich got wrong. His conclusion was this:
The piece is, as usual, insightful, well-reasoned, and sharply written. And it made me pause for a moment to realize that I don't really have a clue which aspects of my life are made possible entirely by what sociology departments used to call "white privilege". That's the problem with privilege; you get to take it for granted. It's hard enough to cope with age and injury, the way those things disrupt what I thought was just the way the world worked and always would. It's hard enough to cope with the changes in my profession, and the devaluation of some of my best skills. I hadn't sat down lately and thought about what happens when the issue isn't, "how fair am I to ethnic minorities?" but, "how fairly can I be expected to be treated when I am the ethnic minority?"
My one experience in this role, being among the 10% of white kids bused into the city's one all-black elementary school in fifth grade, in 1968, to meet integration quotas, was not pleasant: it included being beaten up on the playground, having my lunchbox stolen, being mocked for my facial asymmetry, and once getting punched into my desk in math class by a classmate who thought I was laughing at him.
It also included having to go back to school after Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, dressed irremediably in my white skin. I wished the weather would stay cold so I could keep wearing mittens and a hat, to cover my face and hands and hair, and maybe not be a target from quite so far away. It gave me the revelation that this was probably something like what my black classmates felt every time they left their neighborhood and set foot in the rest of the city; 15 years later, it allowed me to respect the way my husband went on alert in some parts of Boston. In situations with the potential for racism to turn violent, you are the race you look like from 50 feet away.
One inherent benefit of fairness as a system is that it offers the hope of decent treatment when you are not the one in power. Even if you lack empathy, at some point self-interest ought to suggest at least considering what happens when the table is turned. But I guess if you have enough privilege to draw on, you can pretend there isn't even a table. Anyway, Brit, Rush, Newt, Bill, et al should calm down. They'll be dead before they have to give up very much.
But Rich's essay also included an historical reference that grabbed me.
"The escalating white fear of newly empowered ethnic groups and blacks is a naked replay of more than a century ago, when large waves of immigration and the northern migration of emancipated blacks, coupled with a tumultuous modernization of the American work force, unleashed a similar storm of racial and nativist panic."When I was in pop culture school I did a bunch of research on the way panics about drug abuse coincided with nativist and racist panics. The temperance movement was, to some extent, a reaction to wine-drinking Southern European immigration; anti-Chinese and anti-black sentiments were exploited in support of the Harrison Act; later rounds of anti-drug legislation parallel waves of black American relocation to Northern cities. There's some kind of panic that connects drug use with demographic change; and the measures introduced in an attempt to control drug use and trafficking also get used to control non-majority populations. It is not entirely a coincidence that the US currently has the highest incarceration rate and largest prison population in the world, nor that our prison population quadrupled since the 1980s as a result of mandatory sentencing enacted as part of the "war on drugs"; nor, finally, that some 70 percent of those imprisoned are "non-white"--including 10% of black males in the United States between the ages of 25 and 29.
So I'm thinking there's one thing that Rich got wrong. His conclusion was this:
The one lesson that everyone took away from the latest “national conversation about race” is the same one we’ve taken away from every other “national conversation” in the past couple of years. America has not transcended race. America is not postracial. So we can all say that again. But it must also be said that we’re just at the start of what may be a 30-year struggle. Beer won’t cool the fury of those who can’t accept the reality that America’s racial profile will no longer reflect their own.But it looks like a certain segment of the white establishment has been working on its response for 30 years already. And maybe it's time conclude that this is not the path that will keep us safe on the playground in 2042.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Is this a good which or a bad which?
Women police officers issued with uniform hijab
From Times Online, July 28, 2009:
The £13 headscarves are embroidered with the West Country force's name and logo, and come in two colours — black for police officers and blue for community support officers. A spokeswoman insisted that they were not intended purely to cater for Muslim cultural sensibilities but were multi-faith."They are designed to be used in any place of worship and can be used to cover the head or the shoulders. For example, plain clothes officers could use them to cover their shoulders in a Catholic Church, or they can be used to cover the head in synagogues," she said.
Monday, July 27, 2009
In other news
I finished chapter 3 of the manuscript I'm ghosting this morning at 7:52 am. I've now done the front matter, chapters 1 - 3, and chapter 6, for a total of 357 manuscript pages. This makes me feel less bad about it having taken a month; that's a lot of channeling what somebody else would write if they could, um, write. I have about 48 hours left to finish the rest of it, and of course I had to sleep all day today. I know I can make it coherent; I just don't know that I can make enough of it coherent enough fast enough.
And, yes, not only can I rant endlessly about the news business, I have some good rantation stored up about book publishing, too. Mainly, I was trying really, really hard to make this not be one of those books where, um, chapters 1 - 3 are coherent and then the whole fucking thing just falls apart. However, no such luck. Because it is, as always, more important to get the book out in time for the New Year, New You promotions than to have a coherent book.
The folks in charge keep telling me I shouldn't be trying to make a perfect book. When did maintaining alphabetical order become perfectionism?
And, yes, not only can I rant endlessly about the news business, I have some good rantation stored up about book publishing, too. Mainly, I was trying really, really hard to make this not be one of those books where, um, chapters 1 - 3 are coherent and then the whole fucking thing just falls apart. However, no such luck. Because it is, as always, more important to get the book out in time for the New Year, New You promotions than to have a coherent book.
The folks in charge keep telling me I shouldn't be trying to make a perfect book. When did maintaining alphabetical order become perfectionism?
Sunday, July 26, 2009
In today's periodicals
OK, neither of these items is news but then, it is Sunday, and everybody knows world events observe the Christian sabbath.
Nonetheless, here is yet another example of why Heather Havrilesky is my all-time favorite TV reviewer. Just the right mix of mean, realistic, and humane, with a good ear for the turn of phrase that will make me laugh involuntarily out my nose.
From Embrace the reality TV underdogs!
TV experiments with the unbearable importance of looks, from "More To Love" to "Dating in the Dark"
Salon, July 26, 2009
"Obviously size is a central issue in these women's lives. But if you took a group of medium-size single women in their 20s and asked them the same questions about how successful they've been at finding love, you'd hear variations on the same theme. Average-looking women would claim that their cute friends get all the guys. Women with incredible figures would worry that men only like them for their big racks. Women with advanced degrees would say that men reject them because they're smart and successful. Assertive women would claim that men don't like assertiveness while timid women would say that they're too shy to charm good men.
The real problem is that most men in their 20s aren't all that serious about finding love, period. They would not like it in a boat, they would not, could not, with a goat. Sadly, though, instead of identifying the real cause -- flinchy, commitment-phobic young men -- most women assume that there's some fatal flaw that prevents them from finding true love." (My emphasis, there.)
I must also yet again recommend the estimable former drama critic, Mr. Frank Rich, this time with his attempt to deflate the pompous journalistic hypocrisy on the occasion of the death of Mr. Walter Cronkite.
From: And That's Not The Way It Is
New York Times, July 26, 2009
"What matters about Cronkite is that he knew when to stop being reassuring Uncle Walter and to challenge those who betrayed his audience’s trust. He had the guts to confront not only those in power but his own bosses. Given the American press’s catastrophe of our own day — its failure to unmask and often even to question the White House propaganda campaign that plunged us into Iraq — these attributes are as timely as ever.
That’s why the past week’s debate about whether there could ever again be a father-figure anchor with Cronkite’s everyman looks and sonorous delivery is an escapist parlor game. What matters is content, not style. The real question is this: How many of those with similarly exalted perches in the news media today — and those perches, however diminished, still do exist in the multichannel digital age — will speak truth to power when the country is on the line? This journalistic responsibility cannot be outsourced to Comedy Central and Jon Stewart."
Not, you know, that Jon doesn't do a good job with it. And somehow this makes me want to insert, "They would not like it in a boat..."
Nonetheless, here is yet another example of why Heather Havrilesky is my all-time favorite TV reviewer. Just the right mix of mean, realistic, and humane, with a good ear for the turn of phrase that will make me laugh involuntarily out my nose.
From Embrace the reality TV underdogs!
TV experiments with the unbearable importance of looks, from "More To Love" to "Dating in the Dark"
Salon, July 26, 2009
"Obviously size is a central issue in these women's lives. But if you took a group of medium-size single women in their 20s and asked them the same questions about how successful they've been at finding love, you'd hear variations on the same theme. Average-looking women would claim that their cute friends get all the guys. Women with incredible figures would worry that men only like them for their big racks. Women with advanced degrees would say that men reject them because they're smart and successful. Assertive women would claim that men don't like assertiveness while timid women would say that they're too shy to charm good men.
The real problem is that most men in their 20s aren't all that serious about finding love, period. They would not like it in a boat, they would not, could not, with a goat. Sadly, though, instead of identifying the real cause -- flinchy, commitment-phobic young men -- most women assume that there's some fatal flaw that prevents them from finding true love." (My emphasis, there.)
I must also yet again recommend the estimable former drama critic, Mr. Frank Rich, this time with his attempt to deflate the pompous journalistic hypocrisy on the occasion of the death of Mr. Walter Cronkite.
From: And That's Not The Way It Is
New York Times, July 26, 2009
"What matters about Cronkite is that he knew when to stop being reassuring Uncle Walter and to challenge those who betrayed his audience’s trust. He had the guts to confront not only those in power but his own bosses. Given the American press’s catastrophe of our own day — its failure to unmask and often even to question the White House propaganda campaign that plunged us into Iraq — these attributes are as timely as ever.
That’s why the past week’s debate about whether there could ever again be a father-figure anchor with Cronkite’s everyman looks and sonorous delivery is an escapist parlor game. What matters is content, not style. The real question is this: How many of those with similarly exalted perches in the news media today — and those perches, however diminished, still do exist in the multichannel digital age — will speak truth to power when the country is on the line? This journalistic responsibility cannot be outsourced to Comedy Central and Jon Stewart."
Not, you know, that Jon doesn't do a good job with it. And somehow this makes me want to insert, "They would not like it in a boat..."
Another inch further from shore
Since I was laid off in April I have been writing longer and longer, and more and more, um, didactic, pseudo-column posts on my LJ page. This is probably some kind of abuse of LJ. So I think I am going to switch that activity over here. If I can just consistently remember my passwords and stuff...
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