Reading Newspaper Comments on the Internet Can Turn You into an Elitist

You would think that one the internet would do would be separate the knuckle draggers from the somewhat more evolved. After all, one has to be literate and moderately coordinated to type words into a browser. However, a simple perusal of the comments section of the Washington Post articles will disabuse you of that notion rather quickly.

Racism, long vanquished in many quarters to private homes and (homogenous) neighborhood bars, is in full throat in the comments section. It's one thing to have to explain to your integrated co-workers and other parents at your kids' school events and extracurricular activities why you keep a dog-eared copy of The Turner Diaries in your car and a photo of Hitler in your wallet, let alone your swastika tattoo; it's quite another to copy and paste blog posts from Stormfront on some public news forum under an assumed name (hey, I'm not dogging assumed names...I'm just suggesting that it's a bit more comfy being a racist when no one can call you out in person).

Of course, it isn't only racism. If only it were that simple. Conspiracy kooks of the first order hang out on these sites. Look, anything can be true when the burden of proof is that someone saw a youtube video showing how to knock down a building using magnesium shavings filed from a bicycle frame.

You people are morons.

And I'm sick of it.

I'm sick of having to explain the difference between registration and confiscation, and how slippery slope arguments are logical fallacies.

I'm sick of having to demonstrate that you can't compare a Watergate scandal that took two years to develop to impeachment level, with clear paw prints leading straight to the Oval Office, to last week's news, especially when it doesn't lead anywhere yet, and maybe never will. In other words, talk of impeachment is rather premature. Yes, I'm looking at you, George Will.

And I'm damn sick of people posting links to nutcase sites and claiming they "prove" anything other than that the person who posted the link is information illiterate. I spend a good chunk of my time trying to teach students the difference between scholarly sources and junk sources. If you have a link to a site purporting to have the inside scoop on Benghazi, and the site you've linked also has a story about how the moon landing was a hoax and crap about Hitler actually being a leftist, then you've failed the information literacy test.

And while I'm at it, let me talk to my besties on facebook. You may think it's clever to share pictures that match images of Obama with Nixon and claim Nixon was impeached for using the IRS for political ends, but then again you probably think the Civil War was actually a battle over states rights.

And seriously, stop posting twenty picture-slogans in a row. It's damn tedious.

Fox News, predictably carrying water for Murdoch, Inc.

Fox News, Murdoch's heavy hitter, has come out swinging in defense of the embattled criminal who heads their parent corporation. This coverage from the Guardian:

On the Fox and Friends show[*], Fox journalist Steve Doocy wondered just what the fuss was all about: "The company has come forward and said: 'look, this happened a long time ago, at a tabloid, in London, somebody did something really bad,' and the company reacted. They closed that newspaper, all the people got fired, even though 99 percent of them had nothing to do with it."

Doocy's guest, public relations consultant Robert Dilenschneider, was in agreement:
"If I am not mistaken, Murdoch, who owns it, has apologised but for some reason, the public, the media keeps on going over this, again and again. It's a little bit too much."

"The bigger issue is hacking and how we as a public are going to protect outselves," said Dilenschneider, who earlier listed a number of US companies which had recently become the targets of hacking.

Doocy added later: "One of the things about the media, you look at some sites and you would think that martians had landed in New Jersey - again"

Right. Because hacking over an extended period of time into the voice mail of celebrities, royalty, politicians, crime victims, and dead soldiers really isn't a big deal. Forget the fact that the people responsible for these crimes were rewarded with promotion within their criminal organization. Let's focus on the fact that we're all in danger from hacking...not that Murdoch's minions are the ones who have been caught doing the hacking.

And what the hell does he mean by "a long time ago"? For most people, "a long time ago" is in a "galaxy far far away." We're talking last decade.

And "somebody did something really bad"? Is he explaining this event to a five year old (well, given the IQ of the Fox audience, maybe)? And it wasn't "somebody": it was "somebodies," including but not limited to the head of Murdoch's UK News International. We aren't talking about the secretary stealing office supplies. We're talking about corporate criminals engaged in ongoing illegal invasions of privacy and electronic eavesdropping.

Absolute scum.

Seriously, Steve Doocy can't be called anything resembling a journalist. Dog shit is actually too noble to be muddied by association with that scumbag's name.

How stupid are Americans that Fox News can continue to dominate news ratings?

[*following long-standing policy, I tend not to link to hate groups]

A slow boat to nowhere.

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.

Like looking for a particular piece of hay in a haystack.

Reminiscent of the old anti-war activities of the Vietnam era, the military recruiting station prominently placed in New York City's Times Square was bombed early this morning (3:45 a.m.). Much like the Weather Underground bombings of the 1970's, the intent seems to be damaging infrastructure/sending message without causing casualties. Of course, back in those days, the WU sent communiques and ran a newsletter...

Anyway, the bombing itself isn't really what I'm interested in. Apparently in this blast and in two others in the past three years in NYC, a bicyclist was seen nearby. The response by the brilliant anti-terrorist minds has been to stop and question bicyclists. Not a bicyclist on a red bike, or a mountain bike, or anything like that. In New York City, that's kind of like stopping all cabs because a cab was spotted in the area.

Or stopping all Black men because a Black man was a suspect. Oh, wait. You mean that happens?

Here's another of my long, unreadable screeds...

The Washington Post gave over half the front page of their Outlook section on Sunday to a free advertisement for libertarianism, penned by the editors of (un)Reason Magazine. Libertarianism is a widespread philosophy that's pretty to think about but bears about as much relation to reality as World of Warcraft (or, as I'm discovering, Webkinz).

According to the authors, libertarianism boils down to "1. a person who believes in the doctrine of the freedom of the will; 2. a person who believes in full individual freedom of thought, expression and action." Sounds good, right? In fact, it's so broad that it becomes utterly meaningless and fairly soon libertarians themselves have to discard the feel-good rhetoric and qualify it: "full freedom of thought, expression and action" morphs into full freedom etc so long as you don't impact another's rights...so with this slogan, we're basically back at ground zero for any philosophy that has emerged after the Enlightenment...including the bete noir of libertarians...socialism/Marxism/communism (you have to remember, that like libertarians, we're talking about the philosophy of the movements, not of the governments that actually called themselves by those names -- for instance, while the German Democratic Republic held itself to be communist and called itself Democratic, I would argue that in fact it was neither). But to get back to the point, what exactly distinguishes libertarians from the unwashed masses who also happen to believe in individual rights (so long as those individual rights do not impact the rights of others)?

First, there's a completely naive belief in what they like to call the "free market," which as anyone with half a day's time spent on Wall Street will tell you is about as "free" as a crooked roulette table in Vegas (is there any other kind?). Markets are simply objects to be manipulated: learn the rules of the game, understand the symbols that produce fear or confidence, and manipulate them.

However, if you'd like to delve deeper into what libertarianism is, you shouldn't bother to read the Washington Post article, because it's mainly about 31 year government employee Ron Paul's run for the highest government position in the land and how this man who's been collecting government paychecks for nearly half his life is a rebel against government. In the moments when the authors aren't talking about Ron Paul, they're busy avoiding explaining what libertarianism entails, except to call it "freewheeling fun" and "a live-and-let-live ethos" and -- in the only descriptor that even comes close to a philosophical statement -- "the fundamental notion that a smaller government allows individuals the freedom to pursue happiness as they see fit."

Unfortunately for all of us who aren't in the military industrial complex, a smaller government usually means going after the social benefits that we enjoy in this country (and that other countries enjoy to a much greater extent), from the big bugaboo of welfare to the several other programs that fund libraries, public schools, national parks, and the like. To be fair, a certain brand of libertarians aren't even interested in maintaining the military, but then again, you are getting into the question of whether libertarianism isn't such a big tent that it's essentially meaningless as a label (if you want an example of that, check out the wikipedia article on libertarianism -- more flavors than Baskin-Robbins).

For libertarians, personal choice is all there is: you choose to be a drug addict, you choose to be a welfare bum, you choose to be homeless; conversely, you choose to be a CEO, you choose to be a K Street lawyer, you choose to be a middle-manager. Fundamentally, libertarians do not believe in society -- we're all atomized individuals running around on our own and we bump into one another, but that's not really important -- my only interaction with you is an economic interaction (unlike Marxists, who tend to believe that economic relations form the basis of social relations, libertarians like to believe that economic relations signify nothing more than a matter of choice). Essentially, it's everyone for him or her self (the most absurd manifestation of this tendency can be found in Ayn Rand's Objectivism, which her devotees liken to a philosophy).

So we've entered fantasyland, in which the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and there are no consequences. We're all equal of course, so long as you don't mind the fact that I inherited Daddy's factory and stocks and you inherited a crack habit...personal choice, don't you know.

Hugo's Les Miserables is a comedy compared to the selfish, smug, and utterly unrealistic version of social relations held by your typical libertarian.

But it's all freewheeling good fun.

UPDATE: I read through the nearly useless WashingtonPost.com live online discussion with Gillespie and Welch, and noticed they're repeating that tired old mistake of arguing that the Nazis were simply socialists who espoused nationalism:

Nick Gillespie: In fact, Mussolini started as a communist and then became a fascist (best understood as a nationalist variation on communism; hence National Socialism uin Germany).

Yawn. This supposed similarity breaks down as soon as you realize that Hitler didn't nationalize industry -- in fact, while the US government and US businesses shunned the Soviet Union, they invested heavily in Nazi Germany...ask our current president's dead granddaddy, Prescott Bush. Fascism isn't best understood as a "nationalist variation on communism" but as the logical progression of capitalism as it asserts control at the state level (before replacing the state -- the period in which we are currently, where multinationals seem beyond government control mechanisms).

Ticketmaster = Teh Evil

It's not like this tidbit is breaking news, but Ticketmaster is a grand example of the evils of monopoly power in any industry. I was browsing about for DC United tickets, and I discovered that you have to buy them through this criminal outfit (unless of course you can still buy them at the stadium in person), and it's true that pretty much any ticket you want to buy online for a major sporting event or concert goes through the abyss of shit known as Ticketmaster.

I remember the heady days when banks were trying out their new found power to charge you to take out your own money from ATMs, when fees were something like $1. Sounds quaint, right? At least the little competition that remains in the banking industry keeps those institutions from charging five or ten bucks a pop. With Ticketmaster, with no discernible competition or regulation in sight, you will find yourself being levied a "convenience charge" that would make a loanshark blush with shame.

For instance, I looked at the cheap seats for DC United. The published price is $18. Sure you're in the corner so pretty much you have a great view of the ass of the player taking the corner kick, but little else. Ticket-Disaster tacks a $4.65 charge on that ticket. Without getting too technical, that's roughly a 25% surcharge for the ticket. In what way is that convenient?

If you're an oldster as I am you remember Pearl Jam's ill-fated attempt to thwart the ticketbroker monopoly, and you'd be hard pressed to argue that their quixotic attempt didn't contribute to their descent from one of the more powerful bands of the 1990's to has-beens.

"I fought the law, and the law won."

FU, ticketmaster, FU.

Generation gap or cultural shift?

On occasion I go to the gym on campus to play a little basketball, and when I do that I use the locker room to store my stuff and also to shower afterwards. I grew up doing this, since I went to public school and phy-ed was required every year and after phys-ed, whether you actually did anything sweaty or not, the sadistic gym teacher, who'd been there for I kid you not 40 years, demanded that you shower.

The gym showers were typical: one large shower room with shower jets mounted on the walls and/or central columns.

In college, I usually trudged home to the dorm rather than shower at the gym, but I can tell you the shower stalls there were the exact same way: one big room with a bunch of shower nozzles.

I am, by the way, getting to a point of some sort.

Anyway, the university I'm working at now recently built a fancy new gymnasium and I go there to play ball as I've mentioned. When this building first opened, it too had one big room with several shower nozzles. I would say within a few months of opening, each of those nozzles became enclosed in a stall. I suppose perhaps someone felt it was nice to provide privacy to people showering, even though it is a locker room for christ's sake (my own theory is that the administration views the students not as students but as "customers," and the "upgrade" was based on what's available at fancier private gyms around town -- having never been in one, I wouldn't know) .

Those stalls remained untouched for a while, then one day I found that all the doors had been removed from the stalls. This development I chalked up, as I did the previous one, to rampant homophobia and someone being concerned that the stall doors could lead to too much privacy, if you know what I mean.

Then suddenly the doors were back.

All of this narrative is what I call preamble.

Here's what I'm getting at: I take my towel with me to the shower room and I used to hang it on towel hooks placed on the wall for that purpose, but now with the stalls I place it on stall door. I shower, dry off, and head back to my clothes. I'm noticing a rising trend in which my fellow gym rats not only take their towels to the shower, but also a change of clothes. Perhaps this shouldn't bother me, but I have to wonder why everyone is so uptight about their naked bodies these days. Oh, I should mention this trend applies mainly to younger men (I'm 38; let's say people in their twenties and under); the old dudes who frequent the gym have no problem engaging you in extended conversations while wearing nothing other than the skin they were born with. I have a theory on this phenomenon:

Growing awareness of gay and lesbian issues has caused an increased awareness among straight jocks that they most likely are sharing the locker room with ho-mo-sex-uals, and they're utterly terrified of having their junk displayed like fruit on a tree. And a little excited.

Discuss.

The stink just gets ranker and ranker...

Many pundits, conservative and liberal alike, use the term "cesspool" when referring to federal government corruption here in Washington, D.C., and the Bush administration is doing everything it can to vie with Nixon for most corrupt administration in living memory.

You'd have to say BushCo got off on the wrong foot, what with having to steal the election in 2000 and all (perhaps the most jobbed election since Tilden-Hayes), but once in power they made haste to f*ck everything up as much as possible, with plans to dismantle public education, public healthcare, and assistance to anyone in need. Even September 11, 2001, was seen as an opportunity: rather than concentrate on Osama bin Laden, the self-professed perpetrator of the attacks, BushCo seized the chance to go after Saddam Hussein, a hamstrung dictator who'd been on the outs since 1990 with the US government who'd been willing to see his regime through chemical weapons use and other bloody reprisals all through Reagan's 1980's. Pretty much everyone except the most die-hard idiot wing of the Republican Party understands that BushCo engineered the evidence for that "preemptive war" and Scooter Libby's conviction confirms that they then went about on a campaign of intimidation and character assassination to silence dissent about their fabricated evidence.

Even being embroiled in two foreign wars hasn't kept BushCo from their neoconservative agenda of hate at home, though. While talking a good game about supporting the troops, BushCo has been embarrassed by the shoddy conditions of the services -- medical or otherwise -- afforded the returning troops. The Walter Reed Hospital scandal highlights the administration's shortcomings when it comes to "supporting the troops," a jingoistic catchword that the right wing has long deployed syllogistically to imply that opposing the war means supporting the enemy or opposing US military personnel.

But the scandals keep coming. Attorney General Alberto "I Support Torture" Gonzales decided it was time for a few US attorneys who didn't toe the BushCo line well enough to go. In his eight politically motivated firings, Gonzales might have thought he could slip under the radar, but nothing could be further from the truth. Last week we learned that Republican legislators had called at least one of the now-fired attorneys to try to fast track investigations into Democrats. Now it appears that the seeds for the plan originated in the White House. Harriet Miers, she of the failed nomination to the Supreme Court, had wanted a wholesale purge of US attorneys as Bush's second term began. History, apparently, teaches these fools nothing.

Unfortunately, history rarely teaches most of the electorate anything, as we continue to vote fools into power. Democracy only works with an informed, educated, and active electorate.

It is a sad time for the Republic.

Another thing that pisses me off.

I work in an building with one of those automatic door openers that's clearly marked with a handicapped signal, because it's intended for use by people who have motor function issues that would make it difficult for them to open the door manually.

It is not intended for lazy fucks who probably would park in handicapped spaces if they weren't afraid of the fines.

And for heaven's sake, when someone in front of you has already opened the door and is holding it open, don't be such an asshole that you pound on the automatic open button, you lazy privileged fuck.

Thanks. I'm done.