Lingual Tremors

The Big Fat Hillary Post You've Been Asking For: I'm Not Ready To Make Nice

I get it.  You want to know what I think about Hillary Clinton conceding the Democratic party's nomination for president to Barack Obama.  You can stop with the "whaddaya think" e-mails already.  Here goes.  I'm angry. I'm not ready to make nice.  And I'll vote for whomever I damn well please.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is the picture from today's concession speech:

Hillary is smart.  Hillary is tough.  And, Hillary is an inspiration to the generations who follow in her footsteps.  For those of you who cross country ski, you know that breaking a trail for those who follow you is a tough role to have on a trip.  Hillary has created a fine trail for the rest of us to follow.

But as we watched her do so, her struggles mirrored our own struggles.  The sexism she confronted was our own battle for equality, our own battle to be taken seriously, our own battle to break through all of the glass ceilings that lie in our way, our own battle to demand a government that represents us, or own battle to feel truly represented. 

How can you truly say thank you to Hillary for that? 

In her concession speech yesterday, Clinton said:

I ran as a daughter who benefited from opportunities my mother never dreamed of.  I ran as a mother who worries about my daughter's future and a mother who wants to leave all children brighter tomorrows. To build that future I see, we must make sure that women and men alike understand the struggles of their grandmothers and their mothers. 

The 2008 contest for the Democratic nomination was eye-opening at best, and a horrific testament to our current misogyny as a nation at its worst.  On one level, I feel like I just watched a woman get bitch-slapped by the world for 16 months.  The great "Hillary smack down" took the form of:  the sexist husbandry of the media, the hypocrisy of the rhetoric of "equality" and "change," the farce of a liberal community that fought dirty on-line battles, and the rampant verbal diarrhea that exposed a national fabric built on resentment of women and the gains women have made in the twentieth century.

Moreover, the nomination revealed a deeply fractured feminist community split by race, age, political affiliation, class, sexuality, and relationship to motherhood.  We are not a sisterhood united for a better world.  We are a bitchy sorority willing to sacrifice one of our own to the gods of popular opinion.

And all of the "wow, Hillary's just swell!"  and "Didn't she run a great campaign" news items of the past week aren't going to assuage my anger any time soon.  It's a disingenuous attempt to pander to the angry feminist vote.  Those bloggers and news commentators and fellow candidates who now seek to compliment Hillary on a campaign well run after trashing her in one of the dirtiest election seasons ever can, in my humble opinion, take a long walk off a short cliff, leaping to their own deaths like the bunch of lemmings they are.

I think it's going to take some time to digest the election, but here are some preliminary thoughts:

ACLU Pizza

Have you seen the ACLU pizza order?  If you haven't you should.  It's old--2005 or so, but really, really great (and accurate). 

Hat tip:  The Quixotic Tremor

Very nice commentary on ACLU pizza

In the Valley of Elah

This weekend finally brought me some much needed down time (you know, squeezed in among everything else...).  I actually accomplished getting groceries AND getting the house cleaned.  I'm like Mrs. Cleaver here!  Anyway, I also got a change to see In the Valley of Elah.  It's the first in a spate of Hollywood films that are taking on the war right now, critiquing it in sync with the war actually happening.

Tommy Lee Jones is probably in the running for an Oscar for his performance of an emotionally restrained former army sargeant whose son goes AWOL upon returning from Iraq.  What the film does rather well is to hone in on the ways in which soldiers have to divorce themselves from the violence they see (and commit) everyday as part of their "work" so that they can continue living "normal" lives.  The film ominously portrays what happens when those two worlds come together and the violence cannot be compartmentalized (think echoes of the Vietnam-era film Jacob's Ladder).  It's an awful and tragic film that questions what happens to soldiers when they are asked to perform horrendous acts of violence in a morally ambiguous war. 

There are a lot of problems with the film (like, for instance, the contrived "on base" vs. "off base" action and the annoying tangential story of Charlize Theron's character who faces gender discrimination at work.  Ho hum.).  That said, the film is really about Jones' journey from the past to the present.  His character is so baldly from another generation.  He truly believes what he's been told about the war and the need to send his son into harm's way.  His life is dictated to by the conventions of life he learned early on and the discipline of the military.  In short, he is very recognizable--in all the good ways--as a "good American".  Hard-working, loyal, patriotic, and frugal.  To watch him unravel as he realizes the ways in which the country has changed and the ways in which the concept of "fighting for democracy" has been bastardized, is painful.  I'm certain that some viewers will see the last scene as over the top, but it has a certain poignancy for me that resonates with the character's changing understanding of our contemporary society.  His final move in the film is the ultimate patriotic act, the meshing together of past and present, and a call for new times and new thinking.  The movie takes a hard, moral stand on the moral ambiguities of our current administration. 

What I like about the film even more is the way it is raising issues that we don't often talk about.  Hollywood is doing a full court press on the war and the administration as it tries to provoke conversation and thought about our times.  With all of its virulent consumption and materialism and rampant excess, when Hollywood becomes the moral compass for the United States, you know we're in trouble. 

Hmmmm... Word of the Day

Eisegesis:  "reads into the text what the readers want to hear instead of seeking to hear what the text actually meant in historical context."  Hmmmmm....

~C. Joseph Sprague, Affirmations of a Dissenter (24)

What "Good" Education Means Today

L.A. teachers Marisol Alba and Sean Strauss, of the Celerity Nascent Charter School, were fired after supporting students who wrote a letter of protest about the school's decision not to let students read a poem about Emmett Till during a school-wide assembly for Black History Month.  In defending the decision to both censor the students and fire the two teachers, the executive director of this "school" said:

"Our whole goal is how do we get these kids to not look at all of the bad things that could happen to them and instead focus on the process of how do we become the next surgeon or the next politician," said Celerity co-founder and Executive Director Vielka McFarlane. "We don't want to focus on how the history of the country has been checkered but on how do we dress for success, walk proud and celebrate all the accomplishments we've made."

Welcome to "No Child Left Behind" schooling in the United States:  you need to drill and skill to learn information for standardized tests, creativity isn't welcome, and history, when ugly, need not be part of the curriculum.  Because nothing says "Let's Celebrate Black History Month" like erasing the ugly history of racism and deluding kids into thinking the racism they see everyday isn't in any way connected to the history of the U.S. 

Read the whole disgusting incident here.

An update to this post, on 3/26/07, is here.

Melancholy Musings on Hubris and History

We had a quiet day today and tonight I ended up knitting and watching Titanic. I've seen the movie so many times; when it first came out, I was entrhalled with the extensive research and reproductions that Cameron built. It was amazing to see the Titanic "real" in its splendor. And it was amazing to watch it go under. Since I was a kid, after reading Walter Lord's canonical A Night to Remember, I have always been fascinated by the Titanic. Watching the movie (which is clearly interested in portraying the class differences), I was struck again by how much we often want to believe in our infalliability. There's an unwavering belief that we can always conquer everything through technology and science. And we are always so startled, over and over again, when science or technology fails, when our efforts fail. Where would we be without the advances of science and technology? Where would we be without pioneers? In my own research, I'm indebted to those who have made medical and scientific advances. But I am also consumed with the question, why can't we learn from our hubris? Why does every advance have to be unveiled as the be all and end all? Tonight, I was so struck, again, by watching the pride in the ship and its amazing construction and the shock on the faces of those proud men as the ship began to sink.

The RMS Titanic Site
Images of the Titanic at rest
National Geographic Photo Gallery

It's Not "Pleasant" Weather! It's Global Warming!

An ancient ice shelf breaks free in the Arctic, polar bears are drowning, and cherry blossoms are blooming from Brooklyn to D.C., but aren't you happy that, if you live in the Northeast, you don't have to wear a coat?

A few days before Christmas, I was walking (in shorts!) down the street and a woman hurried up to me.  As a good New Yorker, I eschew all forms of contact with others--who knows what they want!  However, the woman approached me on the empty street and demanded "What do you think about this weather?"  I replied, "I miss the snow."  She said, "It's that goddamned global warming."  And then she got in her car and drove away.  This is exactly the kind of random conversation we New Yorkers often have.  But, she had a point.  Her observations were a little bit like saying a hockey puck is very important in hockey.  Exactly.  Global Warming.

I am going to smack the next newscaster who says "you can enjoy unseasonably warm temperatures today."  It's not pleasant--it's global warming.  Do not smile at me and say that.  Instead, purse your lips, furrow your eyebrows and say "clearly these unusually warm temperatures are something we should be very, very concerned about.  And now, here's a special report on how you can help prevent global warming."  But no, the local idiot box "speakers of the house" want me to ENJOY! the nice weather.  I'd rather have snow anyday.

I've written very long posts about global warming before (An Inconvenient Truth and It's Getting Hotter Than Hell Here), but yet again I find myself in that odd dichotomy between people's rhetoric and their understanding of what they actually say.  There seems to be a disconnect between "global warming" and "catastrophe the likes of which you really, really can't imagine."  People are comfortable with the explanation "It's El Nino," without ever considering how El Nino might relate to global warming.

Here is tomorrow's weather forecast for New York City from weather.com:

Tomorrow: Rain showers early with some sunshine later in the day. Record high temperatures expected. High 67F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%.

But instead of spending the day researching global warming, writing to Congressional representatives, learning how to green their houses, or something of that ilk, people will go out and "enjoy the weather."  At what point do people actually understand their future as directly linked to our actions?

The Union of Concerned Scientists, in their analysis of the Northeast Climate Changes, report:

• By the end of this century, winters could warm by 8 to 12°F and summers by 6 to 14°F.
• Historically, major cities in the Northeast experience 10 to 15 days per year when temperatures exceed 90oF. By mid-century, cities such as Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston could experience 30 to 60 days of temperatures over 90°F each summer. By late in the century, most cities in the region are likely to experience more than 60 days with temperatures over 90oF, including 14 to 28 days with temperatures over 100°F (compared with one or two days per year historically).
• As winter temperatures rise, more precipitation will fall as rain and less as snow. By the end of the century, the length of the winter snow season could be cut in half.
• The frequency of late summer and fall droughts is projected to increase significantly, with shortterm droughts (lasting one to three months) becoming as frequent as once per year over much of the Northeast by the end of the century.
• The character of the seasons will change significantly, with spring arriving three weeks earlier by the end of the century, summer lengthening by about three weeks at both its beginning and end, fall becoming warmer and drier, and winter becoming shorter and milder.
• Sea-level rise will continue, reaching anywhere from a few inches to more than one foot by midcentury. By the end of the century, global sea level could rise from eight inches up to nearly three feet, increasing the risk of coastal flooding and damage from storm surges.
• Higher global temperatures also imply a greater risk of destabilizing the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. It is possible, particularly under the higher-emissions scenario, that warming could reach a level during this century beyond which it would no longer be possible to avoid rapid ice sheet melting and a sea-level rise of more than 20 feet over the next few centuries.

Sigh.  I have to go dig out my summer clothes to get dressed for work today.  More later.

Some of the best, most accessible web resources include:

Global Warming:  Early Warning Signs

a joint project of:  Environmental Defense, World Wildlife Fund, National Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, World Resources Institute, and the U.S. Public Research Interest Group

Climate Choices
Union of Concerned Scientists:  Global Warming Overview
The New York Times archive of articles on Global Warming
Climate Change/Global Warming (The Guardian)

Why Adrienne Rich Rocks

Because she wrote an article in Saturday's Guardian entitled "Legislators of the World" arguing for poetry's place in this cruel world:

Poetry has the capacity to remind us of something we are forbidden to see. A forgotten future: a still uncreated site whose moral architecture is founded not on ownership and dispossession, the subjection of women, outcast and tribe, but on the continuous redefining of freedom - that word now held under house arrest by the rhetoric of the "free" market. This on-going future, written-off over and over, is still within view. All over the world its paths are being rediscovered and reinvented.

Because it's about the ability to RE-envision what's before you.  That's what art does;  it reaches out and grabs you and makes you pay attention.

I've long been a fan of Rich because of her ability to articulate what poetry should do;  Rich is among the more articulate contemporary poets who can discuss the importance of a poetry that witnesses the political.  Not only does she write wonderful poetry, she is an advocate for the art who seeks a place for poetry beyond the aesthetic richness of language, image and emotion.  Rich understands language at its root;  language=power.   

Oh, yeah.  And she just won the National Book Foundation's 2006 Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.  (Just in case you wanted to argue with me that she rocks...)

The Gringo is Back

In May of 2005, I briefly mentioned indie director Gregory Berger, of "Gringothon" fame in a longer post on the war in Iraq ('cause aren't we always writing about Iraq?).

Good news!  Berger has a new teaser up on youtube for his film on Bolivia.  It looks GREAT!  Called The Gringomobile Diaries (click to view the video), the humorous proposition is that North Americans have to voluntarily become slaves of the Bolivian people because of the impact of transnational capitalism.  You have to watch the clip to fully appreciate the "Gringo's" attempts to solve the disparities between the Bolivian people and the United States.

On a more serious note, Berger's work is some of the most innovative stuff dealing with the effects of globalism in Latin America.  As I've said many times before, what I believe we need right now are fresh, innovative voices taking on the tought issues.  Berger is definitely one of those voices. 

He has done a series of award-winning documentaries on everything from abortion to cocaine use in Bolivia among miners to gay life in Morelos, Mexico to the water wars.

And his two newer projects, the Gringothon\Gringotón and Gringomobile Diaries are experimental narratives that play with the concepts of what it means to be a global citizen.  As you see in the Gringomobile Diaries, the "Gringo" takes on personal responsibility for U.S. policies that affect other countries.

Berger's work is definitely worth a look.  If you're a teacher, please consider ordering some (or all!) of his work for your media library.  If you're a film-buff, consider hosting a showing of Berger's work, or bug your local theater to do a showing. 

More Reading:

About Berger (filmography appears on the side)

You can view "Gringothon" and "Chew on This" here at Salón Chingón.

What I Love About the Net

Hanging out at The Fat Lady Sings this morning, I noticed some great graphics in one of her posts from The Project for the Old American Century.  Here are a few awesome images from their galleries:

I encourage you to explore their whole site, but here's more about their project and their philosophy:

We are in danger of squandering the opportunity and failing the challenge. We are endangering not only the world, but ourselves. The right wing extremists who came to power through media manipulation and questionable elections have begun an assault on our nation from the inside. Our main points of focus are:

• The democratic process
• Foreign policy
• Media
• Civil liberties
• Environment
• Separation of church and state

 

It is a time to call for the way things were planned by the Founding Fathers. They way things were planned in the Old American Century.

The project for the OLD American Century represents no one political party, as they have all sold out to the highest bidder; but stands for the Bill of Rights; the Constitution; the working class, as well as all those the new religion of free market capitalism leaves behind; and the people serving in our armed forces if and when it is serving the people of this nation and not just the corporate interests it now paves the way for.

We believe the only imperial stance this great nation should take is that of peacefully encouraging freedom, equality, and civil liberty here at home and around the globe. Not just in words, but in deeds. The ideals of the OLD American Century knowing that those ideals were not then nor have they ever been achieved—but were at least, before now, strived for and what we at the Project for the Old American Century strive for now.

Perpetual war for perpetual peace and profits over people cannot be allowed to continue. The cost has been, is continuing to be and will be, much, much too high.

Motherhood: An Instrument of the State?

Have a baby.  Get a medal.  Sometimes nationalism is that easy.  8 kids= a gold medal, 5-7 kids= silver, 4 kids=bronze

It's a quantifiable patriotism and a clear message:  breed for the state.

(Photo via No Beliefs)

I went to D.C. this week to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.  I've been there before and I highly recommend it to one and all.  It's an amazing meditation on the Holocaust and ways that Hitler irrevocably altered our understanding of the world.  Since I'd seen the permanent collection before, I had a chance to spend time in the Deadly Medicine exhibit. 

Sometimes, in depth exhibits like this allow me to put a variety of theoretical and practical politics into play because they allow me to revisit a "known" topic, for example eugenics, in a different way and with a specific focus  (the older I get, the more I love metonym--scrutinizing the part to better understand the whole) . 

While the Deadly Medicine focused on eugenics, and in part on the T-4 program to euthanize the mentally retarded and physically handicapped, there was a tiny, but chilling part of the exhibit that focused on German women as mothers.  Since this blog often comments on the relationship between womanhood and state, I found the exhibit fascinating in light of my previous post, "Forever Vessel." 

While the comparison necessarily comes up short at a certain point, the construction of German women as mothers who literally embody the state had some chilling lessons for women living in the United States today.

Reverse Manifest Destiny

(Photo via the 24 Hour Museum)

The Minutemen are back again.  As part of their on-going attempts to secure the U.S.-Mexico Border, they are sending an ultimatum to President Bush:  erect a fence NOW! 

Their philosophy?  Screw Manifest Destiny.  Let's put up a huge barbed wire fence all around the contiguous states of the U.S. to clearly define what's ours!  Clearly defined borders mark who is "out" and who is "in."

Via Yahoo and AP News:

Minuteman border watch leader Chris Simcox has a message for President Bush:  Build new security fencing along the border with Mexico or private citizens will.

Simcox said Wednesday that he's sending an ultimatum to the president, through the media, of course — "You can't get through to the president any other way" — to deploy military reserves and the National Guard to the Arizona border by May 25.

Or, Simcox said, by the Memorial Day weekend Minuteman Civil Defense Corps volunteers and supporters will break ground to start erecting fencing privately.

In a sense, the struggles over Mexican-U.S. immigration is a form of reverse Manifest Destiny.  As our Mexican neighbors try to enter the U.S. to determine their own economic future, they represent a tangible threat for people like the Minutemen.  But the immigrants who enter the United States continue to see promise and potential in the U.S.  They are coming in the pursuit of a dream that will allow them access to material security (whether or not they can actually achieve that is another matter).

And, as the pioneers pushed west through previously Native American lands (and Mexican lands...), weren't they doing the same thing? 

So, let's hear it for reverse Manifest Destiny!  The United States set the precedent for M.D., so let's forget about that fence. 

And, seriously, my tax dollars had better not go towards this ridiculous fence!

Of Patriotic Babies and Other Madness

This, I get:

(Brought to you via Superman TV)

And, of course, this, I don't:

(Brought to you via Nrlc.org)

Whilst I am often an ambivalent patriot at best--American by birth, not by choice, I cannot help but recognize the powerful idea of "The United States" for my largely immigrant students.  And so, I "get" the Superman image.  I get the idea of patriotism and power merged together.  Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay made me a comic book convert (well, okay, not full fledged--but I DO love graphic novels), it also helped me to understand the relationship between comic book icons and national identities in a way that I had totally dismissed before.

However, babies wrapped in flags?  For kicks, try doing a google search for any of the following search strings:  patriotic baby, baby wrapped in American flag, or American flag baby.  This morning, I was looking for patriotic images for a poem I am working on.  I often like to work in the ecphrastic fashion, merging image and text.  And, I simply cannot believe how many people have posted pictures of their babies wrapped in American flag paraphernalia. 

More to the point, while I "get" the inflammatory aspect of the NRLC picture, I truly don't get the idea behind it.  Why does motherhood=patriotism?  Yes, birth = citizenry (usually), but few of the mothers I know think of their motherhood as an imperative for their civic and state responsibilities.  They aren't raising future patriots, or future soldiers, they are raising children.

But perhaps I too easily dismiss the connection between motherhood and state because, as a study of motherhood and law suggests, the moment one becomes pregnant, one's body is monitored, surveilled, and ceases to be, in any sense of the word, one's own.

Just a few early morning thoughts, brought to you by the phenomenon of google image searching.  More on our Handmaiden State later!

Looking for a Heroine: Who is the Next Voice of the Feminist Movement?

Friedan protesting for the E.R.A. in 1971

The suburban housewife--she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife--freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth and the illnesses of her grandmother. She was healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned only about her husband, her children, her home. She had found true feminine fulfillment.
    ~Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique

It's been a rough week:  Wendy Wasserstein, Coretta Scott King, and now, Betty Friedan, have all died.  Fire Dog Lake, DiAnne at Democracycellproject, Rox Populi,   Tennessee Guerilla Women all have lovely pieces on Friedan.

If you've never read The Heidi Chronicles or The Feminine Mystique, you owe it to yourself to go out and buy copies.  Now. 

Sometimes, when people die, you find yourself celebrating their legacy and mourning their loss.  The elegy, that perfect encapsulation of grief articulated, serves as a way to mark what has been lost.  But tonight, for those of us who have read these seminal, feminist works, I find myself wondering, in the midst of a phenomenal backlast against feminism, against women, against the very world many of us inherited from thinkers like Friedan and represented in writings by playwrights like Wasserstein, who are the leaders who can help us change the world, again?  How can we even begin to articulate what we have lost?

Washing History Away

Okay, okay.  Taking a break from Bush-bashing for the moment.  The Guardian reports that some of the pyramids at Luxor, in Egypt are disintegrating:

The temples of Amun, Luxor and Karnak, designated World Heritage Sites, have survived 4,000 years of arid desert heat but are now being destroyed by rising ground water.
....
The crisis has been caused by several factors, including climate change and the breakdown of the area's ageing sewer system. However, the most important threat has involved the recent, massive intensification of farming along the Nile and the widespread planting of sugar cane, a plant that flourishes in saturated soil.

It's disturbing to think about the number of historical events these temples have lived through and now they are succumbing to development.  At least the cornfield commandos and McMansions take out cornfields, not 4,000 years of architectural history.

Live State of the Union Blogging 6

THE REASON THERE HAVE BEEN FEWER ABORTIONS IS BECAUSE YOU KEEP LIMITING THE WAYS WOMEN CAN GET ABORTIONS.

You can invoke the kind of fantasy, patriarchal country you'd like, but that isn't going to make it so. 

And you can invoke "activist" judges with derision all you want, but you just did the same damned thing.  Grrrrrr......

Technorati Tags:  State of the Union, Women's Rights, Abortion

Live State of the Union Blogging 5

It's the economy, stupid:

Spend more money, or China will take over the world (again, implied threat)
Spend more money (on health care, on the benefits you used to receive from the government)
Spend more money on research (but only approved research, without stem cells, with approved co-researchers from countries on the "approved" list)

The best United States is one that spends money.  "Our greatness is not measured in power" but in how much we spend and spend and spend.

Technorati Tags:  State of the Union, Economy

Live State of the Union Blogging 4

Sorry, you don't get to take money away from UNAIDS and call your own, parallel fund, that denies funding to agencies that do family planning for women progress.

Funding the Fight Against AIDS

Technorati Tags:  State of the Union, HIV/AIDS,Global AIDS Fund

Live State of the Union Blogging 3

Who is fighting this war?  He talks and talks about the "costs" of the war and the need for the war.  He also emphasizes that we need to be united, chastizing those who criticize the government.  His point?  We are in this for the long haul.  Yet, we are neither committing to fully fighting this war by providing our troops with what they need, nor are we setting up what we need to do to pull out.  We are not recognizing the considerable sacrifices of the military with the rewards and benefits they deserve.  VA health benefits are increasingly hard to receive.  The United States promises much to get our young men and women to put their lives on the line.  But, how are they really rewarded when they come home?  What does thank you look like?  What does freedom mean?

Mr. Bush, this is what democracy looks like:  the freedom to disagree with you and to criticize your leadership.

Notable Quotes from the first 1/2 of the State of the Union:

"Strong accountable institutions" and the "protection of minorities"--because we're doing well with that in the United States.  Again, Katrina.  What a message about strong institutions and protection.  Perhaps safety and democracy should begin at home.

"Democracy in the Middle East will not look like our democracy."  No, it might look like Hamas.

Setting the grounds for a new war:

As Bush promised Iran that someday we will be "the closest of friends," he also invokes his right to take the offensive.  Here we go again.  Can anyone say troops stretched to the limit?

Give them their benefits!

Technorati Tags:  State of the Union Address, Criticism, Iraq War

Live State of the Union Blogging 2

Who is fighting this war?  He talks and talks about the "costs" of the war and the need for the war.  He also emphasizes that we need to be united, chastizing those who criticize the government.  His point?  We are in this for the long haul.  Yet, we are neither committing to fully fighting this war by providing our troops with what they need, nor are we setting up what we need to do to pull out.  We are not recognizing the considerable sacrifices of the military with the rewards and benefits they deserve.  VA health benefits are increasingly hard to receive.  The United States promises much to get our young men and women to put their lives on the line.  But, how are they really rewarded when they come home?  What does thank you look like?

Mr. Bush, this is what democracy looks like:  the freedom to disagree with you and to criticize your leadership.

Notable Quotes from the first 1/2 of the State of the Union:

"Strong accountable institutions" and the "protection of minorities"--because we're doing well with that in the United States.  Again, Katrina.  What a message about strong institutions and protection.  Perhaps safety and democracy should begin at home.

"Democracy in the Middle East will not look like our democracy."  No, it might look like Hamas.

Setting the grounds for a new war:

As Bush promised Iran that someday we will be "the closest of friends," he also invokes his right to take the offensive.  Here we go again.  Can anyone say troops stretched to the limit?

Give them their benefits!

Technorati Tags:  State of the Union Address, Criticism, Iraq War

Live State of the Union Blogging 1

Cindy Sheehan started off the State of the Union speech by being arrested.  What's that about?

Bush began his speech by invoking the life of Coretta Scott King and imagining her reunion with her husband.  But, 38 years after Martin Luther King's death, how might King react to today's administration & leadership?  How might King himself, a leader in the non-violence movement for Civil Rights view an unjust war and racial inequality so vividly portrayed by horrific images of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Fact and Fiction: What's all the Hullaballoo?

I started this yesterday, but gave up in a postmodern haze of fever dreaming and exhaustion.  Yes, dear readers, I have been sidelined by the evil flu, a fever, and a total loss (!) of my voice (!).  So, I have been quarantined by Lingual Y to the couch for 2 days (and counting) of feverish napping, popsicles, and t.v.

Yesterday, I book ended my day with fact and fiction, and was trying to decide if I was living on the edge of a fever dream or if I actually saw what I did...

So, while I settled onto the couch yesterday, I was distraught to find that Ellen's birthday bash was interrupted by a press conference by President Bush for no apparent reason!

During the press conference, Bush weighed in on the now infamous wiretaps calling them "legal" and done "to protect civil rights".  He looked at the camera and said "legal" and "to protect civil rights" without blinking.  Oh, and the legal wiretaps, to protect your civil rights, are also "necessary." 

It was one of those "get down with the President" moments when he tells the American people (whoever is home at 10:30 in the morning) the "truth."

I book-ended my day with the live evisceration of author James Frey on the Oprah Winfrey show as Frey faced accusations (now widely published) that large portions of his memoir are not true.

So, since when have Americans become consumed with the idea of truth? 

The Lysistrata Campaign to Save Roe v. Wade

Still singing the Alito Blues?  Well, back in 411 B.C., Aristophanes gave us the right idea.  In the midst of the Alito/pharma/Roberts/anti-womangate era, I humbly suggest the Lysistrata Campaign to save Roe v. Wade.

Let's have a little sex war!  While the original intent of Aristophanes' comedy was to interrogate war, from which we derive the lovely sentiment of "Make Love, Not War," I believe that the same idea is applicable for us today.  Our bodies have become a war zone.

With apologies to Dr. Seuss:

I will not have sex in a box.
I will not have sex with a fox.
I will not have sex in a house.
I will not have sex with a mouse.
I will not have sex here or there.
I will not have sex anywhere.

I will not have sex with a man.
I will not have sex with a fan.
I will not have sex with a pharmacist.
I will not have sex since I'm pissed.
I will not have sex with a Democrat,
'til we have a little "pro-choice" chat,
I will not have sex with a Republican,
'cause I'm a part of the Lysistrata sex -ban!
I will not have sex with a judge.
I will not, will not, will not budge.

We won't have sex until we have our birth control pills filled at pharmacies.  We won't have sex until we have the right to make decisions about our bodies.  We won't have sex until our health care and our health rights receive equal attention and protection to men's health and health care.  We won't have sex until there are health care, day care, and child-friendly policies in the United States that make it possible to raise a well-cared for child.  We won't have sex until we have an educational system worthy of our children.  We won't have sex until No Child Left Behind is repealed.  We won't have sex until the money we've spent on Iraq is put into education and women's health.  We won't have sex!   

Alito, Sigh.

As a mild continuation of the last post, I think that many American women simply can't remember a time before abortion.  I certainly can't.  Therefore, the insidious danger represented by a conservative Alito/Roberts ascendancy to court rule seems to pass many people by.  When Alito says things like "not an inexorable rule," in connection with prior Supreme Court rulings, he is clearly suggesting that previous court decisions need not hold.  Not inexorable, in other words, means something that can be changed and "influenced by persuasion," an interesting choice of words.  Our entire history of legal codes, from the 13th, 14th, and 19th Amendments and the Civil Rights Acts of both 1866 and 1964 are all up for grabs, among other things like abortion! 

While I think we generally understand changes in rules of law as concomitant with a changing, and one would hope, advancing, sense of civilization and culture, I don't think that's what Alito means.  For slavery to be a "not inexorable rule" is a good thing;  in 1865, the law made slavery illegal.

But overturning something like Roe vs. Wade is returning to past precedents in a different way;  we continue our march backwards, moving our understanding of Civil Rights, from the legal attacks on Affirmative Action to the legal attacks on the rights of women, to a rigidly codified, often theocratically based, sense of "right" and "wrong."  Of course, I'm not arguing as a legal scholar here.  I highly suggest a little light reading in the coming weeks:  What Roe V. Wade Should Have Said: The Nation's Top Legal Experts Rewrite America's Most Controversial Decision edited by Jack M. Balkin.  This interesting collection argues both for and against Roe, but basing Roe on other arguments that might have been invoked at the time. 

Also, keep an eye on Mad Melancholic Feminista.  Aspazia headed out on the 10th of January to interview the children of an early abortion doctor.  Her discussions and analysis of the trip, when she returns, promise to be really interesting!  I think this kind of work (see previous post on archival memory) is key because we need to remind people of what "before" was like.

I think Alito will be confirmed.  In the meantime, it's up to us to keep the pressure on!  Do make sure that you participate in the 22 January 2006 Blog for Choice Day (or join Bitch Ph.D. in Blog for Choice Month!)

Some Blogging for Choice highlights today:

Bitch, Ph.D. on Why Pregnancy Kills
Pseudo-Adrienne has non-stop commentary on the hearings
Bush Vs. Choice
Democrats Voice Frustration with Alito's Answers

Fact and Fiction Continue: Archival Desire

Echidne of the Snakes had a great post yesterday on the relationship between "fact" and "fiction" in our current administration, something I have also been keenly following.  She writes: 

George Orwell's 1984 has the protagonist, Winston Smith, work in a job where he changes the past newspaper records to accord with the newest interpretation of events. Anything that actually happened but is no longer deemed desirable to have happened goes into the Memory Hole: a slit in the wall of Winston's office. When the government starts a new war any evidence of the fresh foe having once been a bosom buddy is erased. Hence the famous quote from the book: "We have always been at war with [add the name of the current enemy]."

This is all chillingly familiar in the new faith-based world George Bush has built us. "Facts" change overnight, and nobody seems to remember the old ones. It is not that many years ago that conservatives thundered about the big government. It was the Democrats who were seen as the spendthrifts. Today the situation is reversed and this causes little astonishment or surprise.

Echidne hits the nail right on the head, as usual.  As a culture, the United States has become so time crazed, rushing from one thing to the next that we have lost the ability to reconcile the "facts" of today with an archival memory that would allow us to accurately track and ask for accountability.  What's perhaps worse is that when significant moments of disjunction are revealed, no one seems to care.  As the now cliched example suggests, few people are concerned about the lack of WMDs in Iraq.

Echidne's  invocation of Orwell's "Memory Hole" is also similar to Walter Benjamin's theories about the ways in which history serves the ruling class:

History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogeneous, empty time, but time filled the presence of the now [Jetztzeit].  Thus, to Robespierre ancient Rome was a past charged with the time of the now which he blasted out of the continuum of history.  The French Revolution viewed itself as Rome reincarnate....

Universal history has no theoretical armature.  Its method is additive;  it musters a mass of data to fill the homogeneous, empty time.  Materialistic historiography, on the other hand, is based on a constructive principle.  thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well....("Theses on the Philosophy of History").

While Benjamin is quite clear on how "history," or more specifically, historical materialism can function in the service of a Marxian revolution, I'm too tired for a revolution this morning.  So perhaps we might ask how we might create and advance an archival memory that serves as a counterpart to Bush's "Memory Hole."  I think that in many ways blogging has certainly served as a compelling counterpoint to the hegemonic narrative being scripted by the administration.  I would add to Echidne's concern my own compelling obsession:  how to get people to pay attention and to act (of course, in another post, I might discuss how teaching fits into that call for activism...).

image from Peggy Seeger

National Voter ID: What's Next? National ID Implants?

The U.S. Department of Justice has some interesting statistics on the effects of the  Voting Rights Act of 1965.  The gap between black and white voters, between 1965 and 1988, closes considerably after the VRA.

You have to be an idiot to think that the U.S. election process today doesn't need reform.  While the Voting Rights Act of 1965 fixed the historic racial inequalities, today's system needs attention from almost every angle.  After every election--both local, state, and national--we continue to hear increasing coverage of the problems with access to voting.  Whether its fraudulent information about polling sites, blocked access to polling sites, broken voting machines, or the voter cards in Georgia that cost $20.00, an economic barrier to voting for the poor, the U.S. Electoral system needs some serious attention and it seems that everyone across the two party system agrees.

Unfortunately, the Baker-Carter Commission on Federal Election Reform didn't get their recommendations quite right;  perhaps their recommendations are a good start because they document the problems in the system from a non-partisan point-of-view.  However, some of their recommendations--specifically the REAL voter card--are problematic and potentially disenfranchising.

Roberts + Miers: A Photographic Anamnesis