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It's going to get worse before it gets better.

2009-11-06T08:58:00.003-05:00

Well, this shooting spree at Fort Hood will send the nation into a tizzy for a few days, and set right-wing shitheads off for far longer. Already, the Washington Post's comment boards are filling up with assholes opining that Muslims should be barred from military and police duty, among other things. Here's a fine example:

We should not have muslims in the armed forces, police departments and anywhere they can cause the havoc they live by. Matter of fact, after knowing that several groups of muslims and mosques such as the one depicted spread hate and anti western rethoric we should put them on a watch list. If they find our system draconian then they can go back to the Middle East. After all, the United States of America belongs to Americans, not the rest of the world. I as an American cannot simply go and live in any muslim country safely, thus why should they be safe here. Time to stand up and state: Respect our country or leave. And spare me the "he was born here" routine, time to judge Americans by their allegiance to this country and not by simple birthright. Take a look at Obama, he may have been born here but is the biggest traitor to our nation.

Note the final shot: Obama, for some reason, is the "biggest traitor," although the poster allows that he "may have been born here." Other posters repeat false quotes attributed to Obama that they claim emboldened the shooter. It's insane. I didn't realize so many right-wing retards read the Post. I thought they hated it and read the Times. I mean, I don't go hanging out on the pages of the Washington Times all day long commenting about their race-baiting stories.

The shooting is horrific: a long-time officer shooting his fellow soldiers should be troubling to everyone. The victims died at the hands of a colleague, and while we've become somewhat immune to the notion of workplace shootings, since this workplace happens to be a military base, we're paying more attention. The fact that he's Muslim, of course, is the only thing the right wants to hear, and it is the loudest noise in the media. It's convenient, too, for the racists and ethnocentrists -- the descendants of those who wanted to deport African Americans to Africa and round up the Japanese Americans in World War Two (Yes, FDR, I'm looking at you...) -- who like to believe that the U.S. is a white, Christian nation. They have little understanding of the difference between having a majority population of a certain race and creed and basing your government on racial or religious factors.

But it's going to get worse. It was bad enough for American Muslims after 9/11. Major Hasan's actions will only elevate the calls for state-sponsored religious and ethnic discrimination to more "legitimate" levels. In other words, instead of being the province of racists like David Duke, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh, this bile will also issue from the mouths of politicians in positions of legislative power (for instance, from more polite proto-fascists like Michele Bachmann). Look for bans on Muslim garb (but not cargo shorts or mumus) in certain public places, under the guise of their ability to conceal weapons/explosives. Look for legislation to prevent Muslims from joining the military or working in public safety positions including police and transportation. Look for legislation seeking to prevent Muslims from owning firearms (a bit farther out there, because the NRA would likely withdraw their financial support from any right-winger floating any sort of gun law).

As far as the news cycle goes, I'm expecting a few things:

A few more days of focus on Hasan's religion and politics.
A few days of examination of the stress of being psychiatrist to returning soldiers traumatized by war (aka transference). This aspect will be accompanied by a reassessment of motive.
A proliferation of right-wing (and perhaps even left-wing) conspiracy theories: from the right, the usual "Obama is a Muslim" tripe alongside a more inventive "Obama generated this massacre to distract everyone from the Republican electoral victories on Tuesday"; from the left, "Obama generated this massacre to justify more troops in Afghanistan."

It's really a depressing scenario, but I remain firm in my belief that the racists and fascists, despite temporary surges, remain on the losing side of history.

Weekend preview.

2009-10-28T13:29:00.002-04:00

Man, it's Wednesday, and I'm jonesing for Saturday. The problem is, there literally aren't any good games. Penn State v. Northwestern. Ohio State v. New Mexico State. I won't even have the satisfaction of watching Notre Dame lose, as Washington State is probably the second worst team they'll play all season (and that includes their usually conveniently cushy run through the service academies). Probably the highest quality game will be Florida v. Georgia, but given Georgia's woes this season, it'll most likely be over by halftime.

Pretenders to the throne have little to fear this week. Cincy (8...WTF...8th ranked?) plays Syracuse, a team that continues to sink further into oblivion and should probably be stripped of D-1 status. TCU will have little trouble with UNLV. Boise State will blow out San Jose State. Speaking of TCU, their blowout win of then-16th ranked BYU only proved that BYU, which already had a loss to a very mediocre Florida State team, didn't belong anywhere near the rankings. Seriously, I don't know why the hell BYU gets ranked most years. Let's be serious...the Mountain West sucks, yet they clog up the rankings and the bowl games because the one or two teams that would be perennial doormats in real conferences feast on the perennial doormats of their conference...the doormats that everyone clamors to schedule for early season tune-ups or mid-season breathers.

We'll probably have to wait until 8 p.m., when USC v. Oregon and Texas v. OK State come on, in the only matchups of ranked teams. It'd be nice to see OK State lay one on Texas, but that'd be hoping for too much. Given that USC barely beat Notre Dame, the Ducks could win this one.

Anyway, this weekend will most likely be a very disappointing one, because it looks so very predictable.

Please don't mind my public therapy...

2009-10-27T17:23:00.003-04:00

I have been disappointed many times this season, my friends, at the blasted luck -- yes L U C K -- of the Irish, who continue to snap victory from the jaws of defeat. Yes, I could complain about the mysterious increase in yellow laundry flying when the Irish are down and driving, but who really cares? The win goes in the books (although I did take some solace that the refs, despite their best efforts, were unable to award ND the win in their contest against USC). Now the Irish, who should be 2-5, are 5-2.

Unbelievable.

Cheating Charlie has the Irish ranked, even if at 23, but I look forward to those sweet, sweet words: "Dropped from rankings..."

Truth be told, I don't really hate Notre Dame. During the Gerry Faust era, I pitied them (I was at that laugher of a miserable weather game in 1985 when PSU pounded them 36-6). During the Lou Holtz era, I respected them. During the Bob Davie and Ty Willingham eras, I ignored them. However, in the Charlie Weis era, I despise them.

Part of it's the arrogance of a man who claimed that he would bring Notre Dame a "decided schematic advantage," essentially claiming he could outcoach any of his opponents. Even after it turned out that his "decided schematic advantage" at New England was illegal videotaping of defensive signals, Cheating Charlie still maintains his arrogance, even if the mythical advantage never materialized.

So it'd be nice to say that I'd go back to being indifferent about Notre Dame once Chuck left, but unfortunately during his era I've read the espn fan boards and now realize that Notre Dame fans have to be the most delusional around. It's amazing. Year after year, they are going to crush every opponent they face...no one will be able to withstand their offensive onslaught or penetrate their defense (actually that's a tune they were talking more at the beginning of this season...now it's mainly their offense they talk about). Year after year, they are going to play for the national championship. It's hilarious, sad, and disgusting all at once.

Here's an excellent example. ESPN runs ridiculous bowl projections every week, basically trying to generate content and comment in our era of always-on, always-update media. This week, they have ND going up against either Miami or Virginia Tech in the Gator Bowl. Either team would most likely rip ND apart. Yet here's what the fools on the board say:

As to the bowl projections! This is my wish-list for possible match-ups, as I think Notre Dame has the best chance against these teams because they match-up well; Bama, VaTech, Boise-I'd LOVE to see them play Boise, TCU, Texas-(only if we learn to block the speed rush), Penn State, Iowa-(They'd blow out Iowa. NO OFFENCE, LIBERTY!!), LSU, Cal, Ole Miss, and Ohio State. Teams that I don't want to see ND go up against- MIAMI is the number 1 team I don't want to see ND play, GaTech, Oregon, Florida, and Cincy-Tony Pike worries me.

Some guy named 07BestBet says that. I'm trying to find a team on that list that ND could beat. Maybe TCU. Now granted, he got called out by a few of his compadres for living in fantasyland, but the general euphoria generated by squeaker wins over teams with near or sub- .500 records is bizarre.

Wow. I've wasted a lot of time talking about this sad subject. And while it's been therapeutic for me, I'm sure it's all wasted on a Domer...kind of like talking to a Birther.

Another business failure, part 2.

2009-10-12T01:04:00.005-04:00

I thought I might follow up my post on the bankruptcy of the business model as applied to education with a little more bankruptcy of the business model as applied to education. After all, I was only able to address the overuse of adjunct labor as a cost-savings measure -- that is, the increasing casualization of the faculty. From a business model perspective, the faculty are more or less obstacles to the university, because they demand things like sabbaticals, travel and research grants, and are always trying to get the library to order things like books and journals. All of which, in the administration's opinion, are not terribly related to packing 35 students into survey courses that only exist because of some quaint notion that universities are supposed to produce well-rounded individuals, which by the way is my second point.

The business model hates the core curriculum, which is not to say that the business model doesn't find a use for the core curriculum.

The core curriculum -- that nebulous thing that goes under the name of general education requirements and in my long ago days of undergraduate triumph and tragedy, baccalaureate degree requirements -- is one of the things that keeps humanities departments in business in the corporate university. Since there are far fewer English and history and philosophy majors than there used to be (percentage-wise), the core is one of the only times the bulk of undergraduates come into contact with these "useless" disciplines that don't seem to have any relation to their ability to figure up spreadsheets or create colorful pie graphs for business meetings. In other words, these core courses lie outside the job-training major classes that the students, thinking that they'll forever be doing some static job in one field, crave. It therefore provides these humanities and hard sciences departments (although research dollars often save hard sciences the scrutiny and disdain afforded the humanities) with influence and faculty numbers that administrators find altogether disproportional to their importance in making the university money.

To the business model, the core is a somewhat necessary evil, because it's the most visible vestige of the fact that the school is more of a college and not simply a trade school. In other words, the core is a useful image improving tool, a marketable commodity in that it makes the degree a bit more prestigious than one from DeVry or most schools with "technical" in their name (with of course notable exceptions).

The core's other main use for the administration is to divide and conquer. By monkeying around with the core -- and what by the way could be further from the administration's purview than core education -- the administration generally maintains a constant state of infighting and distrust among departments, all of whom are scared they'll lose their slice of core pie and therefore are more concerned with protecting turf than getting together to demand a bigger pie.

Another business failure.

2009-10-05T09:20:00.004-04:00

If anyone wants to know what the dominance of the business model in higher education means, they need look no further than today's Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required for full story), which is reporting that the United States' role as a leader in higher ed is now fading.

Sure, the rise of other nations such as India and China contributes to the leveling of higher education across the globe, but that in itself is part of the reason that the corporate university fails so miserably: like their counterparts in Enron, Lehman Brothers, and Countrywide, the self-congratulatory CEO-styled university heads believed their own hype and felt that "they'd changed everything." That's a phrase usually heard before a colossal failure of some sort -- whether it's from an internet start-up, a political hack, or a fossilized CEO.

The rise of the corporate university (and I'm talking here about the aggressive importation of a business model to university governance as well as the replacement of academic university presidents with "business leaders") displaces learning -- whether through research or teaching -- as the central priority of the university, replacing it with customer service and profits. The goal of the university becomes filling seats; if something educational happens once that seat is filled, well, that's a happy by-product.

The business model has resulted in the growing casualization of the faculty, a relentless assault on core curriculum, and an increased attention to style over substance. Because of space restraints, I'll only deal with the first issue today.

As Marc Bousquet has pointed out on numerous occasions, the growing army of adjuncts that now account for the majority of college teaching are not simply being exploited by the university administration; they're also threatening the continuation of the comparatively cushy tenured and tenure-track positions that professors so covet. For a business model, it's a no brainer to hire three adjuncts at $2500 each with no benefits (total cost per year, 2 courses a semester: $15,000) instead of a tenure-track full-time professor at $45,000 plus benefits.

And those adjuncts will be hired, because it's not as if the work isn't there. For all its complaints about the need for flexibility, the corporatized administration ignores the fact that adjunct use is relatively steady or growing. Many adjuncts remain for decades at a school, and for those schools that rely heavily on their own graduate students to provide TA and adjunct labor, the faces may change but the need remains, year in and year out. In other words, the so-called over-production of PhDs (a familiar trope to anyone involved in an academic job search) is simply a fallacy. It's a manufactured crisis that has everything to do with the business model's disrespect for the traditional role of the university as a center of research and learning. As former George Washington University president Stephen Joel Trachtenberg so elegantly put it once, "Professors are like elevator operators; no matter how good they are, you can only fit the same amount of people in it."[1] The attitude that faculty members contribute little to the institutional memory or governance of the university is palpable.

As a result, at many larger universities, freshman may never encounter a full-time professor except as a peanut standing at a lectern on a stage.

[1] I have been searching for the source for this quote. I heard it on WAMU back in the mid-1990's, but can't turn up the source (Derek McGinty Show? Talk of the Nation? Diane "The Idiot" Rehm?). However, in 2007 Trachtenberg sat down with Kojo Nnamdi and an interesting moment came up about 40 minutes into the show, when a caller described her experience at GW as "training" -- in a positive way. She felt she had been trained. Not educated. Trained. Seals are trained. People should be educated. OMG. At 51 minutes he claims Gelman is one of the best libraries in the city. I suppose that's true, if you don't want to do any research, since GWU cut off many of its journal subscriptions in the 1980's, although the chairs and desks are nice and photograph well for brochures.

Reading choices.

2009-09-22T20:03:00.001-04:00

I'm currently wondering if it's worth the time to read some Heidegger. I'm mostly through the introduction to Being and Time and I'm not sure I can stand reading much more than that. It seems dense without the beauty of Derrida and very very repetitive.

I wrestle, with your conscience...You wrestle, with your partner.

2009-09-18T11:01:00.003-04:00

"Wrestling Millionaire Runs for Senate"

When I first read the headline, I really had my hopes up. I thought, well it worked for Jesse "The Body" Ventura. I thought it might spice things up a bit in the Senate to have Bobby "The Brain" Heenan or maybe Rowdy Roddy Piper smashing chairs over the heads of their adversaries, or better yet, giving speeches with that patented pro-wrestling bravado shout.

How would you like to be represented by The Undertaker?

If my wrestling references seem dated to you youngsters, it's probably because most of what I know about wrestling comes from middle school when my friends would talk about it, and of course the small things I glean from ads for the Pay Per View Wrestlemanias.

But imagine my disappointment when I found out the person in question wasn't even a wrestler, and not even Vince McMahon, but Vince McMahon's wife, Linda. There's no flavor in that story. If it were Vince M., the circus would be in town from now until the election. If it were Ric Flair or one of those Killer B's or Mr. Fuji, then you'd have a story. A carnival even. Questions about steroids. About faking it. About outfitting the Senate chamber with a steel cage.

Unfortunately, this story has the lifespan of a fruit fly.

Never have so many known so little about so much.

2009-09-16T11:20:00.002-04:00

I've read some dumber arguments, but usually they're on freshman comp papers. Here's John Feehery, a supposed professional consultant trying to foist off the teabaggers as a populist movement that's concerned about big government:

Instead, they are mostly motivated by out-of-control spending, towering debt, and the pervasive feeling that government is too big, too powerful, too unaccountable and too cozy with Wall Street.

Huh? Where were these bozos when Bush was turning budget surpluses into deficits that would make even Reagan blush? Let's just go through each of Feehery's claims about the teabaggers and see how they match up with BushCo:

Out of control spending: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least one of which was completely unnecessary, have accounted for most of our spending over the short 21st century.
Towering debt: See above, especially since Bush refused to include war spending as part of the normal budget.
Government too big, powerful, unaccountable, and cozy with Wall Street: Bush created another cabinet position, expanded the appointments at what the media so cleverly calls the "czar" level, refused to regulate Wall Street, and spied on U.S. citizens.

So where the hell were the teabaggers through the last four years of Bush (I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on the first four years, in part because the Iraq War doesn't start until 2003 and in part because they're not really that bright to begin with)? Apparently out of control spending, towering debt, and a big, unaccountable government with a cozy relationship with Wall Street were A-OK while Bush was in office. The irony of the whole situation is that if anything the government's relationship with Wall Street is far worse now, because Wall Street would like nothing better than to be free of regulation (of course, they'll take free money if they can get it).

However, when given the chance one on one to explain their positions, teabaggers clearly have limited information and limited ability to process what information they do have. They stand as an indictment of our education system, since so few of them can grasp differences between political systems and have no sense of our own government's history.

And they can't spell for shit.

One of those moods...

2009-09-14T10:41:00.002-04:00

I'm in a funk. Every now and then I get this way when I spend too much time reading the comments on news stories, because I soon conclude that we are by and large a nation of morons.

Now that, my friends, is a depressing thought.

To think that over 200 years ago we created a modern democracy that relied on an educated electorate, and to that end we've developed compulsory education, financed state-run institutes of higher learning, and increased literacy rates to amazing levels. These are great achievements that are always under attack from regressive forces (maybe not the literacy rates, but equal access to education has never served those wishing to preserve power for a small elite).

However, we have to realize a few things:

Literacy does not equal comprehension or critical thinking. I've taught too many students who can read the words on the page, but can't tell you what they mean in their own words. At the extreme, some students will actually tell you the opposite of what the sentence states; many students fail to distinguish the writer's own position from the writer's gloss of another author's work.
Knowing how to surf the web does not equal information literacy. Too many users have no skill in differentiating the reliability or validity of sources. They don't understand that peer-reviewed journals are better overall as sources of reliable information than publisher or company claims or fan pages. The critique of mainstream media has disintegrated into a thoughtless assertion that all sources are equal. Even if people don't believe it in theory or are willing to say it, in practice that's exactly what we've lost. Cousin Joe who lives in his mom's basement and wears a tin foil hat has as much validity to the internetters as the New England Journal of Medicine.
The medium may in fact be the message. Television is passive; the internet is interactive. At least that's the story we tell ourselves, but the growth of streaming capabilities means that the internet is increasingly being used as another method for viewing television shows or movies. Being able to comment on said shows and movies is not exactly revolutionary. "Real life" simulacra like Second Life and fantasy worlds like "World of Warcraft" may in fact create rich experiences for their users, but the fact remains that they more or less recreate the same social conditions and interactions as the real world while all the time removing the users for greater and greater periods of time from the real world. To borrow from a movie -- and yes I realize the irony in that and also in blogging about this phenomenon -- that's the real matrix -- the illusion of life.

How do we explain the widespread popularity of frauds like Glenn Beck? What does Glenn Beck supply his audience that works for them? Does he make them laugh? (this component should not be overlooked: plenty of people will do strange things "for the lulz") He doesn't provide reassurance that all is right with the world -- in fact he does just the opposite, pronouncing that we are more or less one inch away from establishing "worker re-education camps" and that at any moment a government secret police squad is about to come through each and every one of our doors taking away our guns, our presses, and claiming the right of jus primae noctis.

So since he isn't providing reassurance that all is right in the world, what is he giving them? Reassurance that they are right and the world is wrong? Both of these impulses are fairly powerful, so it isn't all milk and honey people want to hear about (I mean, the US of A would be a very different place if a few malcontents weren't convinced that the Church of England was dead wrong). Is it the seduction of the easy solution? In other words, he provides simple remedies that seem to make sense?

I like the latter explanation mainly because we are fairly intellectually lazy as a culture. Reading long boring things like history or laws isn't a popular pastime. Showing an interest in such pursuits is likely to get you branded as a snob, a geek, or (especially if you're a boy) a homosexual (and let's be honest, in the world of the school-age, where homophobia rules and homophobes haven't yet learned to disguise their hatred, the label is the kiss-of-death socially). This anti-intellectualism pervades our culture, which explains the contempt we have of the universities (the "ivory tower," not part of the "real world," populated by "eggheads") and our inability to support extended inquiry into issues (it's no mistake that the best news program on television is the PBS NewsHour, because that format wouldn't survive in a commercial situation

Exploring issues takes time, and anyway, shouldn't we already "know what's right"? I mean, if you have to think about it, then you must be a terrorist or a communist. Or a communist terrorist. Doesn't taking the time to compare and contrast ideas, or heaven forbid trying to understand someone's motivation, simply reveal a lack of certainty and therefore an absence of morality? It's always better to be quick with an answer and assert that it's the only right answer available.

Do you take one cube or two on your planet?

2009-09-13T00:27:00.005-04:00

Well, if the teabaggers have made anything clear, it's that they're not only confused on the whole idea of what communism or socialism (oh, and yes, Virginia, they are different) might be, but they're as a group motivated by racism.

I'm not going to circulate the image popular among the "concerned" citizens whose dinky-by-DC-standards 30K rally was described as "massive" by CNN. Suffice it to say you only have to do an image search for Obama and a witch doctor to get at the heart of the teabagger movement.

Let's take a quick look at teabagger rhetoric:

Use of Nazi symbols, check.
Use of Communist symbols, check.
Understanding that fascism and communism are two opposing ideologies, um not so clear. Apparently teabaggers don't actually know anything about either system except that the symbols are scary.
Use of racist imagery (usually in combination with either a swastika or hammer and sickle), check.

It doesn't take Roland Barthes to figure out the mythology behind the teabaggers, and I take solace in realizing that their reliance on unreconstructed racist tropes signals a residual system, a force still present but in serious decline and inevitably doomed. They function on fear and ignorance, and not always as mere manipulators of those qualities: many of their leaders seem quite earnest about their ignorance, actually believing, among other things, that telling students to stay in school is a socialist plot.

Some of the traveling charlatan teabaggers also seem to think that they speak for the armed services. In some really creepy and disgusting pronouncements reminiscent of Walter Sobchak's schtick in The Big Lebowski about "not watching his buddies die face down in the mud," a teabagger speaker pukes out this strained bit of hyperbole to her clueless audience:

"The men and women in our military didn't fight and die for this country for a communist in the White House," asserts Deborah Johns.

No, technically, they haven't fought and died for any particular party or ideology to be in the White House; they've presumably fought and died for democracy, a concept Johns has trouble understanding. However, when you're so hopelessly out of touch with reality that you think Obama is a communist, there's really little point in anyone trying to bring you back to earth.

You've slipped the orbit and are now lost in space.

Ticket to ride.

2009-09-02T13:39:00.003-04:00

I had to laugh at the Washington Post story about the Laurel, Maryland, NFL franchise that sold their tickets to brokers rather than to the deluded fan base. Ever since moving to the District in 1993, I realized that even though Washington had three professional sports teams (remember, 1993 is before soccer, baseball, and women's pro leagues in some sports came to or returned to town), it really was (and remains) a one sport town. God forbid the Capitals or the Wizards or some other team win a playoff game on the same day that a Toughskins reserve stubs his toe in the shower, because there will be no coverage of that playoff win in the sports pages.

Anyway, I digress, but it should be apparent that I have no love for this monstrosity of a team, this pretender to the name "Washington," whose leadership under Jack Kent Cooke was good for a joke or two, but whose leadership under Dan Snyder is nothing but a string of insults to the fans (of which I'm not one). However, you can't argue with the fact that Snyder knows his audience, and he knows he can treat them with utmost disdain and squeeze every penny he can from them, because they're idiots. Absolute idiots.

So his ticket office is selling tickets to ticket brokers instead of the fans who may wait years to see his subpar product strut and fret their three hours upon the stage. It's hilarious. But Snyder, through a spokesperson, does not like this practice:

Donovan said Redskins owner Daniel M. Snyder was unaware of sales to brokers. When he found out, Donovan said, "he was livid" and tried to have the accounts canceled immediately.

Well, of course he was livid. He wasn't getting a cut of the action (and I can all but guarantee you that the ticket agent or agentss responsible for the brokers getting their tickets was probably receiving a nice finder's fee for their services). He's probably sitting in his mansion fuming at the fact that for years he could have been pocketing a few extra bucks by selling to the secondary market.

California Dreaming.

2009-09-01T09:39:00.003-04:00

These California fires are amazing, but like earthquakes, I think we out East consider them part and parcel of the California lifestyle. Yes, it's very sunny out there, but it's also a place for earthquakes and wildfires. The wildfire threat has grown mainly because so many remote areas are now subdivisions. As Americans, maybe as humans, we tend to disregard the power of nature and stretch our limits with little care for the long-term effects.

Not only California, but also the entire western United States, has seen massive population growth, with much of it occurring during a period in which the suburbs and then the exurbs were created and sprawl hadn't come to signify a long-term negative. The massive explosion of building around Las Vegas in the 1990's and early 2000's indicates that despite the lessons learned from half a century of sprawl in southern California, we still haven't learned that lesson.

In Chinatown, the plot revolves around the sinister possession of water rights in a thirsty LA that essentially gets its water from northern California. Phoenix, Las Vegas, and the massive LA metroplex all rely on the same water that farmers and fish rely on. As we push further into the hillsides and forests, we occupy land that is either subject to landslide or brush fire. So far we have water, earth, and fire. Maybe air is the Santa Ana winds.

We've essentially built a theme-park style dream of uninterrupted development, of perfectly landscaped cookie-cutter living boxes as deceptively laid out as any Disneyland. We turn on the tap and out comes water. We drive through the canyons and only encounter the occasional roadkill coyote or wandering scrub brush, and we convince ourselves that nature has been pacified.

In Ecology of Fear, which I have to revisit because it's been a long time, Mike Davis makes the argument that southern California is a disaster not only waiting to happen, but also already happening. He might push his point a bit far, but in general it's hard to argue with the thesis that hubristic overdevelopment has exposed us to a wrathful return of the repressed (to sneak a bit of Freud in), a reminder that we are not all.

Utterly Pathetic.

2009-08-30T22:07:00.002-04:00

Our former Vice President for Torture, Dick Cheney, maintains a steady pace on his attempts to derail and de-legitimize any investigation into possible (ha!) criminal activity under ~~his~~ the Bush administration. From a purely selfish standpoint, I can't say I blame him. If you were one of the major players -- in fact probably more culpable than the President himself -- in crafting policies in direct violation of established laws, both domestic and international, and you suddenly found yourself out of power, you might be more than a bit apprehensive about the extent of your criminality finding the light of day.

So his latest charge (really just a refrain he's been humming for several months now, only this time he's enunciating it a bit more clearly) is that "the process is political." Well, to an extent everything is political. His decision while a U.S. Representative in the 1980's to side with the Apartheid regime in South Africa was a political decision. His decision to reject a national holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., was a political decision (in 1978 he rejected it; in 1983 he voted for it -- so some measure of growth). So sure, on one level, of course it's political, because -- duh -- we're talking about our government.

However, on another level, we're talking about accusations -- and some significant proof even from the culprits themselves -- that some very illegal and very un-American (if "American" is meant to indicate adherence to the U.S. Constitution) activities were pursued under the former administration. Here's Cheney:

He criticized Obama for allowing a review considering the president previously said that CIA operatives involved in the interrogations would not be prosecuted. "I think he's trying to duck responsibility for what's going on here, and I think it's wrong," Cheney said.

What exactly is Obama ducking responsibility for? Obama wasn't the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania when these crimes allegedly occurred. It's fairly easy to tell that Cheney's trying to employ a classic bait-and-switch, in which he implies the target of the investigation is CIA operatives, when it should be apparent to anyone with a pulse that the real criminals are a bit further up the torture food chain, like maybe, I don't know, the VP himself. That way it's Obama who looks bad for going back on a promise, and not Cheney who looks bad for advocating torture.

However, my favorite Cheney argument against investigating his alleged criminal activity is this one:

"The fact of the matter is the Justice Department reviewed all those allegations several years ago," Cheney said. "They looked at this question of whether or not somebody had an electric drill in an interrogation session. It was never used on the individual -- or that they had brought in a weapon, never used on the individual."

So the Bush Administration Justice Department reviewed whether or not the Bush Administration had violated the law. I certainly see how that works, because I served on a grand jury once, and if the defendant said he or she was innocent, we naturally took his or her word for it, and voted not to bring charges.

MWF 8:00 - 8:50

2009-08-28T07:43:00.000-04:00

Ah, the new semester is upon us.
Feel the fresh grass, soon to be tipped with frost,
the murmurs and shuffles, busy fingers
on minute keypads. Baseball hats and ponytails
remind us eight a.m. is too early to shower.

If books' pages still came uncut
many would remain so, their words dumb,
their covers staring back at their owners,
the two like teenagers being introduced
as distant cousins at a funeral.

RIP Ted Kennedy

2009-08-26T08:29:00.003-04:00

With the death of Senator Kennedy, the U.S. Senate has lost one of the last true liberals, and certainly the last with any sort of charisma. Unlike Paul Wellstone's unexpected death in 2002, Kennedy's illness made each legislative session he made seem an astounding act of endurance.

He will be missed.

Ultimate Evil

2009-08-25T12:55:00.001-04:00

Ultimate Evil.

All the world's a stage.

2009-08-18T12:10:00.002-04:00

Call me a simpleton, but I don't understand the connection between packing heat and health care. I've been to a lot of protests in my life -- anti-war, anti-corporate globalization, anti-xenophobia, pro-peace, pro-equal rights, etc. -- but I've never even thought it necessary to carry a gat, nor would I have seen a connection between any of these causes and my right to bear arms.

I suppose if you go back to the 1960's with the Black Panther Party for Self Defense you have the same sorts of images, but even in that case there are few parallels; after all, the Panthers were calling attention to the lack of protection they were getting from the government and the need for self-defense. They weren't protesting health care; in fact, they were often providing social welfare services.

The similarity in both cases, I suppose, is that the gun functions as a prop, a bit of costume. In the Panthers' case, it was to promote an image of strength and self-reliance in the face of nearly 400 years of racist oppression that at the moment seemed particularly virulent, what with assassinations of prominent Black figures and the mass murder of less-prominent blacks.

So in this more recent case, what's the prop represent?

Short.

2009-08-12T20:54:00.003-04:00

My guess is that if the internet had been around in the 1930's, there wouldn't have been a New Deal, because even half-literates with no grasp of issues or reality can be freepers.

13 ways of looking at a lamp post.

2009-08-10T17:58:00.003-04:00

I love the whole "town hall" flare-up. Unlike President Bush's so-called "town hall" meetings, where only carefully selected party faithful were allowed to attend, legislators have been holding meetings that are presumably open to all their constituents (and probably in a more realistic sense, the general public, whether they happen to live in the representative's district or not), and the results apparently are newsworthy for their lack of producing any sort of informed discussion.

Whether from the Right or Left, whether noble causes or not, protesters always speak louder than their numbers, and the main reason for that is that it takes an awful lot of energy and an awful lot of passion to break your normal routine to hike out to a protest, and one of the tried and true protest maneuvers is to block debate, although it's normally a tactic reserved for situations in which you aren't invited to the table (G8, World Bank, etc.).

What's interesting about the reporting is that not enough is being done to talk to the protesters (no surprise there -- in general reporters would rather have the police spokesperson or some political figure explain from their perspective what's going on...it's much easier to republish press releases), most of whom probably couldn't explain the details of the health care plan they're protesting. It would also be interesting to see how posters of Obama with a Hitler mustache relate to health care. Apparently, Hitler was for health care. Who knew?

At any rate, it seems that the Right has the fervor of the Left with the information of the tin-foil hat brigade. The real story, if reporters were interested in doing their jobs, would be to trace misinformation like the euthanasia red herring back to its source and try to hold the source accountable for making up shit. Then, once that's done, the real story would be how some sentient beings are quite capable of looking at a lamp post, touching the lamp post, perhaps even gripping it tightly and banging their heads against said lamp post, and then when all is said and done telling you that indeed, it's not a lamp post....it's Hitler's mustache.

A slow boat to nowhere.

2009-08-09T23:22:00.002-04:00

Yeats has a line in "The Second Coming": "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." It fairly well sums up the Democrats and Republicans in our era, with the Dems having absolutely no spine to pass meaningful legislation, and the Republicans chomping at the bit for a chance to ride herd over international and domestic law.

President Obama is a great example of the failure of the middle-ground. Back when there used to be liberals, you could count on actual legislation having a bite to it. However, we haven't had a critical mass of liberals in power for at least thirty years, and the few who remain (Wellstone is gone; Kennedy is going...don't even consider Pelosi or Reid liberals...if you do, you have no idea what the word means) can be counted on a single hand with a few leftover digits.

Did George Bush II give a rat's ass about his detractors' whining about the Constitution and individual rights and international treaties? Hell, no. His administration had a goal, and no amount of facts were going to stand in the way of attaining that goal. Fake some evidence, lie to other governments, start a war, torture a few (thousand) prisoners...bold steps in pursuit of your goals.

Obama campaigned on promises of shutting down Bush's illegal, embarrassing, and ultimately counterproductive enterprises, but once in power he seems to have lost his resolve. Critics -- both the nutty Right and the well-paid comfortable lap dogs of the corporate Democrats -- like to argue that he's had to confront the "reality" of the situation. Bullshit. The reality of the situation is that as long as we operate in opposition to our Constitution and its principles, we are not the United States of America...we're some banana republic proving that words on paper are worth nothing more than the pastel patterns on your toilet paper.

When confronted by millions of people clogging New York City's streets on a cold day in February 2003 in protest of the Bush Administration's lurch toward an evil, illegal, and worthless war in Iraq, did BushCo pause to hem and haw and massage the message? Hell, no. They plowed forward with the most implausible, irrational, and ignoble course of action they could think of. Now Obama finds that the pundits of the Right are (predictably) comparing the U.S. to Moscow circa 1917, and pasty-faced radio personalities are (again predictably) trying to cast his every move as either 1) America hating, 2) white hating, or 3) freedom hating, and so he's worried about them and getting caught up in the details of trying to win over a faction of the U.S. population that wouldn't believe he was born in the USA even if they could go back in time and be present in the maternity ward at the birth.

Let the losers go. It's painful to say it, but there are some Americans who don't take to heart the values embodied in the Constitution. They're the reason it took nearly 100 years (after the founding of the nation...longer if you count the colonial era) to eliminate slavery, and why it took 100 more to do away with legal discrimination, and why it took until 1920 for women to get the right to vote, why several states maintained laws on the books against interracial marriage, why many social clubs restricted membership, etc. etc. etc. They simply don't care about the Constitution (except the part about guns), and no amount of appeals to that document will change it. No amount of appeals to evidence will change their opinion.

They'll just have to get used to it, because history won't stop for them and the era of minorities and women not voting and not holding elected positions are over, at least in this country. The US government getting involved in health care is nowhere near as revolutionary as the US government busting up the trusts 100 years ago. It's nowhere near as revolutionary as the government deciding that industries should be regulated to ensure the safety of the nation's citizens.

Have some guts and do it. But go the full monty, don't settle for some compromised second draft.

Analogies always limp.

2009-07-13T08:49:00.002-04:00

Mary Matalin claimed on CNN yesterday, in regards to the latest item on the CIA torture scandal that implicates then-VP Dick Cheney as mastermind behind covering it up, that Dick Cheney was no Darth Vader. Here's a small snippet from CNN's ticker:

“Every time they get in trouble . . . they dredge up a Darth Vader story,” Matalin also said, making a reference to past comparisons between Cheney and the villain in the “Stars Wars’ movies.

And of course she threw in the obligatory fear-talk that revealing the extent of BushCo corruption would give information to "the enemy." Of course, I tend to see corrupt governments that undermine the basic principles of our nation as "the enemy," but apparently Matalin thinks it's more important to defend eight years of misrule than 220 years of our little "American experiment."

However, Matalin does have a point in the comparisons between Cheney and Darth Vader. In the end, Darth Vader does renounce his association with evil and helps Luke defeat the power-mad emperor. I don't see Cheney doing that.

The dream of purity.

2009-07-12T11:26:00.003-04:00

Ah, that sceptered isle...you know, for all our racial problems, at least in the U.S. a political party so forthrightly racist as the British National Party would never be a serious political force...oh who am I kidding? If we had parliamentary representation instead of a winner-take-all two party duopoly, we'd probably have the same proportional amount of right-wing wackos in Congress. I mean, Trent Lott managed to get re-elected numerous times.

So Nick Griffin, the leader of the UK's heir to the even more virulent National Front (a good comparison would be David Duke before he shed the sheets and David Duke in a three piece suit), has come out with the seemingly surprising statement that even the BNP doesn't want an all-white UK...which of course gives us the easy punchline of "after all, who would fill the servant ranks..." ba-dum-dum.

Here's Herr Griffin himself on the BNP's position:

Mr Griffin, who is due to take up his seat as an MEP for the North West, said the idea of a UK without ethnic minorities was "simply not do-able".
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Griffin said: "Nobody out there wants it or would pay for it."
He said claims that he was a fascist were "smears" but said the European Union was "very close to fascism".
Mr Griffin told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that the BNP would put more money into voluntary repatriation programmes for members of ethnic minorities "who want to go back to their lands of ethnic origin".

Ah yes, "simply not do-able," so the real objection is that it's not practical to practice large scale ethnic cleansing in the UK, because, as he astutely notes, no one "would pay for it" (the final bit of that sentence heavily qualifying the "want" portion -- as in "I don't want it at that price."

Now his pledge -- should the BNP manage some sort of hellish miracle and take control of the UK -- to fund voluntary repatriation programs is most interesting and begs the question of where they draw the line at "ethnic minority," since the history of the UK is the history of invasion and immigration. The Welsh are an ethnic minority, except in Wales, but I'm wondering if he's offering to pay moving expenses for the Welsh living in England, Scotland, or the north of Ireland? And speaking of that other island, who's the ethnic minority over there in the six counties? Should they all leave?

And that's only the beginning...going back to the Norman Invasion as a good example, let's see if the BNP is hoping to repatriate those of Norman descent to France. Or maybe the Anglo-Saxons to Germany. But maybe they're the majority now, and it's the Britons who should be repatriated. It's getting too confusing. Maybe they should all just wear gold stars or pink triangles or some sort of identity markers...

24/7/365

2009-07-08T10:05:00.004-04:00

It's time to put some serious government regulation on "always on" media. That means television (network, cable, satellite), radio, and their associated streaming sites on the internet. But especially on the so-called news channels. In fact, I'm in favor of an outright ban on any stations that pretend to offer 24 hour news coverage.

You think I'm joking.

OK, I might be. But only a little.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't watch these channels. In fact, I haven't watched CNN on a regular basis since the 1st Gulf War, and I never watched Fox, MSNBC, or CNBC on a regular basis. The 1st Gulf War was really a turning point for these channels. Back then CNN was the only game in town, but that war coverage led the way in making war into entertainment. While Vietnam coverage brought the war into the living room to show its horror, the Gulf War coverage was there to show the power and the glory of technology and American military might (never mind that the US v. Iraq was basically the equivalent of an early September pre-conference football game for Penn State or Florida State).

Now before I get too Baudrillard on everyone, let me cut to the chase: the 1st Gulf War showed that it was the presentation of spectacle and not the importance or lack thereof of the object itself that mattered. It also showed that you could talk about one subject 24 hours a day if you just pretended you had different takes on it...so panels of experts appear out of nowhere, hour long pundit shows spring up to vary the delivery of the same information. And it doesn't only work for wars: the OJ Simpson chase and trial, Monica Lewinsky, etc. and now the Michael Jackson death can all be given the same treatment.

Enough is enough. Has anyone seriously reported on the G8? The length of time spent on unraveling actual stories that affect the world in a real way, like the G8 summit or Darfur or unrest in China? No, and the reason is that these stories aren't sexy. And they're dangerous. Sure war is dangerous, too, but the payoff is too great to ignore if it's a U.S. war. G8 summit coverage takes too much time, what with having to explain all the complex financial and political implications of a small cabal of industrialized nations getting together to decide how to maintain their influence. Darfur is, well, kind of dangerous, and so, well, 2008. And who wants to anger the Chinese government with coverage of internal unrest when China may decide to buy controlling interests in your news channel next year (OK, I jest on that last one, but only a little).

Complex analysis doesn't sell. You will learn more in one hour of the PBS NewsHour than you will in 24 hours of CNN or Fox. In other words, you don't need 24 hours of coverage to cover stories well, and you certainly don't need companies whose main goal is to fill 24 hours of time with about two hours worth of news (if that) fluffing stuff up like super-whipped butter on the IHOP buffet.

I'm willing to bet there's a direct correlation between how little you know about a lot of things and how much you watch cable news. And in the case of Fox, I'm willing to bet there's a direct correlation about how much you don't know and how much you watch Fox.

I think I've vented my spleen sufficiently.

I can't quit you baby...

2009-07-07T10:36:00.003-04:00

It's an odd thing to announce the week after you've announced that you're quitting, but Sarah Palin, the governor every Democrat hoped Obama would be running against in 2012, declared as much looking folksy in her hip waders on a family fishing trip. The soon-to-be ex-governor told CNN:

"I am not a quitter. I am a fighter," Palin told CNN on Monday while on a family fishing trip, on the heels of her Friday bombshell announcement that she was resigning as Alaska's governor.

Catchphrases are cheap, but deeds are often a bit more lasting. Let's assume that there's no real reason for her quitting (no tawdry sex scandal, no federal ethics investigation, no details emerging that she planned all along to secede from the Union and join her friends in the Alaska Independence Party). Let's assume that she simply quit -- can I say that? she's not a quitter...um what exactly did she do? Is "resign" essentially different than "quit"? -- to recharge her batteries for the 2012 push.

Well, actually she did give CNN a few reasons during the interview:

She resigned because of the tremendous pressure, time and financial burden of a litany of ethics complaints in the past several months, she said. The complaints were without merit and took away from the job she wanted to do for Alaskans, Palin said.

Now, she may have a little short-term sympathy from her supporters over the pressure etc. of the, as she says, unfounded ethics complaints, but I'm willing to bet that all she's doing is adding to the burden of any 2012 run. Can you imagine the Democratic debate prep experts sitting around salivating over comparing the pressure of being President of the United States of America to being President of a single state, and despite its size a relatively remote and low populated state at that?

On top of that, does failing to serve out your term really inspire confidence in the masses whom you need to vote for you (let's set aside the 25% of the population who still thought Bush was doing a good job at the end of his term and therefore are never going to vote for anything but a Republican even if said Republican is a sock puppet)?

Obama's been in office for about 6 months. There's a long time to go until the next election and I don't think getting yourself out of active politics is a bright move no matter how you cut it.

Cast out of Eden...

2009-05-22T22:56:00.003-04:00

The oddly named Liberty University has decided not to recognize the College Democrats as a student organization, apparently because they believe the Democrats stand against the moral principles upon which the school was founded.

I'm trying to figure out how many College Democrats there were on a campus that's mainly a breeding ground for didacticism and denial. I mean, if you were a young person feeling so political that you wanted to join the spiffy, earnest young person's wing of the Democratic Party, why the hell would you go to a school that more or less stands against everything the Democratic Party stands for? I can understand there being a large contingent of College Republicans at Liberty, and a fair number of College Fascists (not really an official group, but they're trying...), as well as several other groups whose main plank in their charter calls for rounding up Democrats, longhairs, beatniks, and other pinkos and shipping them off to Gitmo, but I'm having trouble believing there was a vibrant contingent of College Democrats at the School that Hate Built.

The College Republicans are just lucky that starting wars, killing foreign civilians, neglecting the poor, and lying through your teeth aren't against the moral principles on which Liberty was founded.