November 2009 ArchivesNovember 24, 2009Open Thread At NoonIt's yours...Sarah Palin Will Never Be PresidentVia Andrew, some real talk from David Frum:The cliche says never say never. Whatever. You can't be a female candidate, and have only a quarter of all American women think you're qualified. You can't be a female candidate and have half of all American woman in your own party think you're unqualified. Frum points to a lack of respect, and I think he's right. But I also think there's also a pride issue. Black people took great pride in Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson. We took great pride in Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King. We took great pride in Jesse Jackson when he was running in the 80s, and Barack Obama, now. We felt, in the words of old, like these people represented. But Sarah Palin is to women what Alan Keyes is to blacks--embarrassing. The prospect of a disastrous Palin presidency, one which confirm every stereotype, fills them with dread and repulsion. There simply is no way that American women will allow her to be their ambassador. Some of us like to talk about how much Palin annoys liberals. But that's mostly because we're still so caught in the defensive crouch that we can't see her for what she is. Whenever that ends, Sarah Palin will take her rightful place as a laughing stock. Deep down, Palin knows this. (What else to make of her laundry list of resentments?) Moreover, most women--conservative or not--know it too. UPDATE: Oh well. Looks like I showed up on the google newspage. Time to close comments. As an aside, if you see trolling in other threads please don't get sucked in. There's no reason to do that here, guys. If you want to have it out with trolls there are plenty of other sites. Respect the community. Welcome To The PartyThere's a cool piece on the conservative critique of the criminal justice system in the Times. Two things caught my eye for different reasons. First this from Ed Meese:In an interview at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group where he is a fellow, Mr. Meese said the "liberal ideas of extending the power of the state" were to blame for an out-of-control criminal justice system. "Our tradition has always been," he said, "to construe criminal laws narrowly to protect people from the power of the state."It's true that a lot of Democrats supported the War on Drugs. But this strikes me as willfully ignorant of conservatism, with its regard for tradition, order and institutions, more authoritarian impulses. I'm sure some of you have the specific math on Meese. And then this:
This was left dangling. I didn't get a sense of how Scalia or Thomas actually have changed things, short of swinging way too far right on criminal justice. Or too far left, according to Meese. November 23, 2009A Great Day In Harlem Last Friday, me and the boy trooped down to the Upper West Side so I could have him further indoctrinated in the ways of effete liberalism. All that football is turning him into a ruffian. After some soccer in the park, a soy latte, and some musings over New Yorker cartoons ("So then pig says, 'One of us is clearly in the wrong movie...'") we headed to Whole Foods to check the price on arugula. But what I found, instead, was so much better. Dog Fish Raison D'Etra--my favorite beer. I've had this in a few bars, but haven't been able to find a six. I loaded up, got some tofurkey, organic sprouts and a few other things that they don't eat in normal America, and returned, unburdened, to my apartment in Harlem. Because the best thing about that Whole Foods is that they deliver. Beer. To Harlem. All hail gentrification. All hail The Wine Track. Except when it's Dog Fish. Make Of This What You WillLiberals think Obama is lighter than he is, conservatives think he's darker. Or some such. I looked at the pictures and it looked like "brightness" issue as opposed to dark-skin/light-skin issue. I don't know.Look, you know me: I'll never undersell the significance of racism in human beings, and specifically the power of anti-black racism in America. It's as old as the country. Having said that, I don't know what to make of this study. I guess there are people who don't think racism is much of a force in American life. I doubt that this will change that. For my purposes, I'm pretty much done with debating them anyway. We overrate "dialouge," "conversation" and "debate." Feed Me Hip-Hop And I Start TremblingIn my memoir, I talk about a buddy who, whenever he was about to get jumped, use to recite the last half of Rakim's Microphone Fiend. It was like armor for his nerves. I think about that whenever I hear society mocking the mask which young black boys don in urban America. We manufacture the conditions, and then rail at kids for creating a code of survival in response. In my time, hip-hop was an art-form based on that code. If you were a kid living in a city, and thus acclimated to the rules of that city, if you spent time trying to understand which blocks were off-limits, if you ever assembled friends, in the manner of land-lords assembling vassals, if you never went to see your girlfriend solo, if, in other words, you lived with the threat of random violence, then hip-hop was the language of your life. Hip-Hop, at that point, took the pose and iconography of the streets and melded it with the traditional job of the party MC--moving the crowd. From that fusion, you got a mythological figure--the MC as a literary swordsmen who, in a violent world, dispatched his enemies with words. Rakim, to me, was the first person who really took that imagery, that melding, off into the stratosphere. When I heard this... I'm everlasting, I can go on for days and daysAnd this: So follow me or where you thinking you were first?...it was one of those moments that clarified what I wanted to do. I can't tell you how many afternoons I spent, as a kid, trying to write something like that and then taking it up to Wabash, with my brother Bill, and struggling with the beat. Here's the thing: I was a horrendous MC. I mean just abysmal. But those were basic lessons about writing, that stick with me to this day. Constrained by form, be it blog post, sonnet, or the beat, how do you say something original and beautiful? How do you do it with potency and economy? There's a reason why "I can take a phrase that's rarely heard\Flip it, now it's a daily word," is, perhaps, the most hailed couplet in all of hip-hop. It's two lines of braggadocio which are worth about ten verses from your average battle rapper. But it's also a beautifully circular statement about the power of words. Open ThreadBetter late than never. Sorry guys.Photos For College AppsI don't want to side-track the Morehouse thread with this, but I want to take this a little further. It was always rumored that HBCUs, back in the day, asked for photos to enforce their brown bag policy. I have no idea as to the truth of that, but it's the sort of thing that's said in discussion about classism and intra-racism. A commenter in the Morehouse thread, says that Stanford required a photo when he applied years agoThese leads to a couple of other questions. How many of you had to submit photos for college apps and in what year? I applied to Howard in 93, and a photo wasn't part of the application. Not sure if it ever was. I could see the Ivies requiring it in like pre-1960s, and I guess the same for black schools. ChangedMassimo Calebresi and Michael Weisskopf's story on Greg Craig's resignation is really really depressing. For all of us who hoped that Obama would lead us out of the War on Terror dark years, the increasingly answer appears to be, sorta. For me, here is the key exchange:
It's amazing that we're still discussing ticking time-bombs. But here's something else: It's increasingly become my conclusion that most of want to live in a free society, as long as it's inexpensive. I don't mean that to be dismissive--our lives are all we have, and some diligence about how, and when, they're risked is natural. Catastrophe inspires a particular fear, and catastrophe at the hands of foreigners, for whatever reason, feels like an existential threat. There is a natural inclination, when you remember how those people died on 9/11, to want to do whatever you can to make sure it never happens again.
But everything costs. I hoped that, as president, Obama would expend some capital making us aware of the long-term costs of sacrificing our values for a kind of short-term security. Conversely, I hoped he'd remind people that long-term interests and deeply-held values, often exact a short-term costs. Perhaps these are the limits of electoral politics. What politician wants to remind Americans that the threat of terrorism--domestic or otherwise--is the cost of a free society? Morehouse's New Dress-CodeSaul Williams doesn't like it. I think I'd probably care a lot more, had I went to Morehouse (as Saul did.) It's a little hard for me to get upset about a small, elite college enforcing a dress-code. I don't think this sort of thing what have worked at a lot of the larger HBCUs. I just can't see them even attempting this at Howard. All of that said, this is the sort of thing that would have kept me from applying to Morehouse--not that I was anywhere near qualified. College was my time to figure out who I was and what I wanted. The last thing I needed was someone else trying to dictate that to me.I don't think any of us like profanity on tee-shirts, or seeing some dude's boxers because his jeans are on his calves. I understand why shades at convocation, and Yankee caps at graduation may be annoying. But I think folks should be very clear about what they're trying to achieve and why. Is the literal quality of Morehouse graduates declining? Are they less successful now then they were thirty years ago? How, specifically, will a dress-code change that? I think people often take to complaining about how people dress, when they're actually bothered by something else. Dress is a kind of intellectual short-cut that allows you to get around hard problems--either real or perceived. Of course short-cuts often lead to other unforeseen problems. As Williams notes, the school has banned cross-dressing. Some of the school's gay students are, understandably, pissed.' On another note, I have a question for Morehouse and Hampton grads. Is it true that applicants have to submit photos? Did they ever have to in recent memory? I keep hearing this, but never first-hand from anyone who went there. November 22, 2009NFL Open ThreadWhat we looking at today? As always the Indy v. B-more game will be interesting. I'm watching Dallas take on the Skins. Even in a season like this, it's always nice to beat Washington.November 20, 2009New MoonedI don't really have anything intelligent to say about Twilight. But as always, Alyssa does. Read the whole thing:
So You Ig'nant Voters Hear Me...Nate Silver offers the prognosis:For starters, I'd somewhat dispute Tom's unspoken assumption that Palin is liable to be looking at this decision through such a narrowly rational prism. Was quitting the Alaska governorship -- particularly in the sudden and disorganized way that Palin did it -- a decision characteristic of someone who carefully ponders all the facts and circumstances before jumping to a conclusion? Not hardly. Palin is impulsive, impatient, ambitious, thrill-seeking: not the type of politician to prudently wait for a better moment.Add on to that painfully, painfully unself-aware. Thinking about Sarah Palin in 2012, makes me think back to being a kid when all your friends, after school, would pump your head up, in hopes of getting you to step to some big-ass Walbrook Junction kid, who'd failed eighth grade twice. You'd end up getting your feelings hurt--and your Starter snatched. There are people pumping up Sarah's head, and she's just ig'nant to take the bait. She will run in 2012--and get destroyed in the primary. She needs to talk to Ziggy Sobtka. It all ends with her stranded up on one of those cans... Open Thread At NoonThe world is yours...Again, Am I Missing Something?Is there serious evidence that political correctness led to Fort Hood? Is there real evidence that the military didn't look into Hassan for fear of offending Muslims? I'll gladly post that evidence, but right now, this is all I can find:
I find that last graph really suspicious. It's not a quote, and I can't actually tell who said what. Please help me. Is there more to this? Of Course The Only Frog-Prince I Care About......is Susan Mitchell's. This is one my all-time favorites, and if I had a daughter I'd give this to her right when she went on the pill. I'll give it to Samori as soon as voice starts deepening.I no longer tremble.On the basics of word-play, it's a beautiful poem. (It's displayed after the jump.) But on another a level it says so much about boredom. I mean, the dude is dreaming of mud... Continue reading "Of Course The Only Frog-Prince I Care About..." » Not That I'll Be Going To See It......but a reader sent along the trailer to The Princess and The Frog. It's amazing how much shit has changed. Doesn't mean it's all changed. By as a kid who came up on 80s cartoons, it's shocking to see them doing this in New Orleans with black folks.November 19, 2009Giuliani Out Of The Gov RaceThank de lawd. Had he won, I might have had to relocate. I can deal with a GOPer after Patterson. But not Giuls.Holder Wants KSM To Go FreeDahlia Lithwick on the AG's testimony before Congress:You read something like this, and as fucked up as this sounds, you start to doubt the actual intelligence of folks. If no one reps these people, the legal system fails. Right now, there's a woman, in North Carolina, who evidently tried to sell her kid into slavery. I hope she gets competent counsel. And then I hope the prosecutor kicks the shit out of her and puts her in jail for the rest of her life. Somehow--much like KSM--I think she's facing worse. Seriously though, why even have a tribunal? Why not just shoot them all? Pick Em RatingsRead em and weep, folks. Last week really hurt. Dwayne is fucking running away with this one. Don't forget to get in you early pick for tonight's game.Be SeriousShockey's right. Lebron can't play in the NFL.Open Thread At NoonGo for it.Rambling...Sticking with the theme, I find Community to be hit or miss--it has a kind above-average funny quality that's always there humming. From time to time you get an episode that goes further. I thought "Home Economics," for instance, was hilarious. But Community, with its rather diverse cast, also brought something else out for me--the notion of finally "getting past it."TV takes it's share of hits for not having enough characters of color, but I think, over the past five years or so, they've done a decent job. Part of the problem is we want television to be better than us. Gawker has a piece up criticizing Hollywood for its lily-white male writing corps. I can't actually gauge the criticism, because I'm not familiar with what Hollywood is or isn't doing to attract a more representative group of writers. But whenever I read that XX field isn't diverse enough, I don't so much doubt the truth of it, as I think the charge deeply underestimates exactly the price being exacted for white supremacy in this country, and the length of time for which it went unchecked. We're 50 years into a truly democratic, non white-supremacists America. Congratulations. But we we spent some 150 years in which the country's major institutions--its government, its business, its churches, its block associations, its military, its police force, its labor unions--in the main, aided and abetted white racism. There are certainly exceptions, but I tend to think that the long-term damage done is incalculable and has a lot to do with how we live today. I'm reporting out a story now in which I had to talk with older black folks who'd grown up in an industrial city in the 40s and 50s. One of the things that comes through from them is that being smart and black, during that time, was really scary. I keep hearing these tales of black people with degrees in electrical engineering, who ended up working in the post office, driving cabs, or worse, running numbers. This is toward the end of Jim Crow, and after slavery, both of which did their best to exact a toll on uppity nigras, who though they were above their station. I don't think I would have made it past fourteen in that world. Teh LeagueI just want to say I was prepared to hate this show, but I love this show. It reminds me a lot of the Apatow formula, but without the whole "good woman civilizing immature man" trope. They're all immature on the show--just in different ways. Anyway, here's a clip from the second episode. It ain't suitable for work. But, that never stopped anybody.Not Pro-Life EnoughFrom Stephanie Mencimer:
November 18, 2009The Weather DominatorMan. China is inducing snow storms. Incredible. Looks like a job for Shipwreck.The Wire's Greatest QuotesI'm divided over whether to post this, but i think I have to. You know the show was so great that I'm actually sick of hearing about it.Open Thread At NoonTake it away...Dragon Age And The Art Of Story-TellingStud gamer Evan Narcisse did this interview with Dragon Age developers Ray Muzyka and Greg Zezchuk. Here they are on doing the hard and necessary work of narrative:You have to invest in the world, in the history of the world that a player [n]ever gets to see. It's like an iceberg; it's there and has weight, yet all the players see is this top part. But the top part feels real because of the other stuff under the water. You have to invest in a whole bunch of stuff to make that happen. You have to make sure the characters comment on the world, the exploration, the combat and interactions amongst themselves. You actually multiply the possibility space of what you have to manage and test exponentially, when you add a dimension like deeper story.I had rather mundane, yet powerful, realization while reading this--these cats are writers, and that's why I love their games. One of the reasons why I don't spend much time fretting over newspapers--or even magazines--is that I've always been platform agnostic. From my days as a toddler digging the Last Poets and Gil Scott, through Rakim and Margaret Weiss, through Zora Hurston and Christopher Nolan, through David Levering Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald, through Jim Owsley to Christopher Priest, my mandate was the same--Tell me a story. I never really worried much about the mechanisms or tools. I just wanted the writer to work for my trust, in his particular form. That notion of the iceberg which Muzyka offers is really the core of writing. It's what makes it so hard--all the extra work which no one ever sees--and also what makes your audience offer their trust. Yes, It's Sexist I haven't seen the print edition of Newsweek, but according to Media Matters and Michelle Malkin (wow, there's a link you don't see here everyday) the cover is just one of three shots focusing on Sarah Palin's body. This is the image accompanying Christopher Hitchens' essay. You can read the Hitchens' piece (which I liked a great deal) and make of the pairing what you will. From my humble vantage point, taken together, the focus on Sarah Palin's body is creepy, and yeah, sexist. I can't imagine them doing this with any male politician, no matter how devoid of ideas. UPDATE: Wanted to give props to SapphireCate for the catch. And also promote this comment from Deborah, which says, what I could not: Freedom Of Speech, Just Watch What You SayI think it's worth seeing the photo in its original context. Here's the shoot--where Palin took a variety of photos, in a variety of garments. And here's the piece. The photo in the shorts is just one of many. Here's Runner's World on the photos:On the cover of this week's issue of Newsweek is a photo that was shot for the August 2009 issue of Runner's World, in which Sarah Palin was featured on the monthly "I'm a Runner" back page. Runner's World did not provide Newsweek with the image. Instead, it was provided to Newsweek by the photographer's stock agency, without Runner's World's knowledge or permission.One more thing--I think if you're really concerned about equality, be that gender, ethnic, religious whatever, you have to come terms with the fact that this means equality even for individuals you don't much like. It means equality for people who you feel consciously exploit inequality for their own individual gain. You don't get to infer that Juan Williams is a porch monkey because you disagree with him. You don't get to objectify Sarah Palin because you think she's an awful person. Not if you expect people to take your concerns seriously. I said this already, but it bears repeating--a principle applied only to people you like, mocks that principal. We don't raise these questions about gender for Sarah Palin's benefit--we do it for our own. That Sarah Palin Cover I've been looking this shot since yesterday, trying to get past initial impressions--those being that Sarah Palin has a legitimate grievance. But, for me at least, there really is no getting around it. The claim that two women were behind the cover means almost nothing to me. Newsweek editor Jon Meacham's defense isn't much better. "We chose the most interesting image available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we always try to do," Meacham said. "We apply the same test to photographs of any public figure, male or female: does the image convey what we are saying? That is a gender-neutral standard." I don't really understand how Sarah Palin, in running gear, conveys either the headline, or the two stories. (I read both.) I've been trying to decide where gender fits here--Would they have done this to, say, Dan Quayle? John Edwards? I don't think that's knowable. I do think that this photo, used in this context, objectifies Sarah Palin. I get why she's pissed off. It feels like a cheap-shot.
November 17, 2009I Usually Don't Like Books With Overblown TitlesBut I can't recommend Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything enough. I was joking with Kenyatta the other day, saying I was going to title this post "Even Kenyatta Can Cook With This Book." Mercy stayed my hand. Kind of.Anyway, I've mostly cooked from a weird mix--impromptu training garnered from my Dad, Cooks Illustrated, and Mastering The Art Of French Cooking. My Dad doesn't really use cookbooks, he just has a great eye. I've tried that and the results have been--in the main--disastrous. I don't have the touch, I need to measure. I like Cooks Illustrated and Mastering a lot, but they're best for people who don't really care about time. I mostly work from home, and have decided that putting some time into what you put in your body can't be wrong. But that's a decision made out of luxury Bittman's recipes really tend to go a lot faster, without a no real drop-off in quality. So far I've done leg of lamb, cauliflower with anchovies, french fries and a cranberry walnut loaf. I've been really pleased with all of them. And I've discovered that I don't have to boil my potatoes for home fries--just cook them longer, and watch the heat. I'm sure some of the other recipes will be more intense. But if you're one of those people who's reads the cooking threads here, thought you wanted to cook, but have found yourself intimidated, cop Bittman's book. It's killer. I know I'm late to this, but hey, I'm a professional amateur. May I be that for the rest of my days. Further Thoughts On Dragon Age1.) Man go Mage, or don't go at all. That's what John Cole told me, and damn was he ever right. At the moment, I'm running a three mage, one warrior group--Me, Wynne, Morrigan and Alistair. I'm going for Shale as soon as I can.2.) I just finished up with the tower and I have to say this is the best and worst game that I've played in a long, long time. It's the best because its ambition, again in terms of story-telling, is pretty incredible. I can't say much more, as we all aren't proceeding at the same pace, or even in the same way. I just want to say that Morrigan and Wynne actually feel real. It's the worst because I feel like the game doesn't break with convention enough. It's like they walked up to the cliff, and in several instances they took the leap, but in other instances they looked down and said, "Nah." 3.) Unquestionably, it's a great game, though--and one that I actually hope more women will play. I've actually had to split time with Kenyatta--she's rocking the female dwarf warrior--and she's really been sucked in. I've had to teach her some basics, like the mechanics of kiting, but beyond that she's doing great. Again though, I think the big hook for women gamers will be the story-telling, the sense of immersion, as opposed to straight blood and swordplay--though they'll like that too. 4.) Getting back to point two, I think my ideal RPG would dispense with this tank/healer foolishness and give all your characters some ability to heal. It also would dispense with the notion of grand events keyed by royalty. Like, maybe the grand events would be initiated by kings, by the story would be more bottom up with royalty at a remove from the actual heroes. Dissension In The RanksApparently the White House is in a tiff because Melody Barnes said she supported gay marriage:So when one of Obama's top advisers, Melody Barnes, suggested that she personally supported gay marriage before a crowd at Boston College last week, it could have been a minor story. But it became a bigger one when the White House press office responded defensively, first insisting that no such support for gay marriage had been offered and then not signing off on the release of the video of Barnes's appearance until the dead-news hours of Friday afternoon.Leaving her position aside, this strikes me as an instance where things like "message discipline" get in the way of what makes sense. I would expect--indeed I would hope--that people in the Obama White House differ over a range of issues. And to the extent that they were asked their personal views, I'd like to see--from time to time--one of them say, "This is what I believe," and have the press office say something like "We have a range of opinions in the White House. This administration's position is XXX. But we believe intelligent debate is essential to governing." Or some such. Condie Rice differed with Bush over affirmative action. The world didn't end. Open Thread At NoonTake it away.35 Percent Of All Women Of Reproductive Age......have had an abortion. I can't recommend Jeffrey Toobin's take on Stupak enough.Another WorldEzra fishes this self-mocking bit out of Matthew Continetti's endorsement of Palin presidential bid:Yet Ms. Palin isn't as unpopular as John Edwards, and she has a higher approval rating than Nancy Pelosi. As Hillary Clinton's career shows, public perception changes over time. Ms. Palin remains highly popular among Republicans (69% favorable). But the Democrats' striking antipathy to the former governor--she has a 72% unfavorable rating among them--drives down her overall approval.Right. Because both Edwards and Pelosi will be running in 2014. And Hillary Clinton is president. Back over to Ezra: The sole attraction to Palin -- aside, I guess, from a literal attraction to Palin -- is that she annoys liberals.Word up. And allow me to expound. There are times, in this business, when I am incredibly aware that I'm the black dude in the room. One of those moments is whenever I hear conservative writers announcing that Sarah Palin has been persecuted, or that one of her virtues is that she annoys liberals. You see that sort of thing and it occurs to you that Palin attachment, has little to do with Palin, and a lot to do with intellectual insecurity. I feel like I've stepped into someone else's fight, like I'm watching people who couldn't win the respect of their Harvard professors, or couldn't cut it on the Yale debate team, exact a quixotic revenge. It's in all the rhetoric--Palin represents "real America." Obama represents effete, Merlot-sipping braniac "elites." But I'm from Baltimore. Howard University, too. I started with 20/20 and black and milds, then graduated to Heineken and Dutch masters.* I voted for Obama. What the fuck does a beer track/wine track mean to me? I can't call it. Where I'm from, we would tell you we were elite in a second. And ghetto too. *I'm on Ron Zacapa, these days. November 16, 2009Couple Of Killer CommentsThey're on two different subjects, but they're both really awesome. Here's Polwogy responding to a query as to whether the phrase "powerfully connected" is grammatically corrected:
And, for those who didn't see, here's Darth Thulhu on Andrew and Sarah Palin:
Keep it up guys. Rachel Maddow is watching you! What The World Is Coming To...I'm taking lesson's from Alyssa on Howard's marching band:Heh the "Ooh La La Girls." Man, in my day, Howard's entire campus could haved called the "Oh La La Girls." Never in the history of creation have so many dimes assembled in one place, for one cause--driving Ta-Nehisi Coates out of his mind. A buddy of mine graduated, and came back a year later. I found him sitting on a bench on the outskirts of the yard. "I had to sit down man," he said. "You see all these women?" Yup. Like everyday. Anyway, much as I loved HU's band, I always thought the lower-profile black schools were the ones that really brought the noise. It was my unscientific, unverified belief that the further South you went, and the smaller the HBCUs got, the more the band kicked ass. Anyway, check out the Mecca over at Alyssa's place. I Keep MCs Looking OutWas in a livery cab with Kenyatta and the boy on Friday, headed to Londell's for jazz and dinner. Hot 97 was banging ODB joint after ODB joint, and it finally dawned on us that he'd died five years ago. Talk about feeling old. Can't believe it's been that long.One of the most surreal events of my life was seeing him, in a press conference, with Damon Dash and Mariah Carey. ODB was fresh out a mental hospital, if I recall correctly. Either that or jail. Him and Mariah were, evidently, just really cool with each other. She came to support. She was shockingly beautiful in person. I say shocking because I instinctively downgrade the looks of anyone I see on television or on a magazine cover. But she was the truth in that respect. More beautiful in the flesh than on the screen. Anyway, RIP Osiris. And yeah, Dirty is always NSFW. Open Thread At NoonTake it away...Do We Believe The Colts, Now?I actually missed it, as I had to go to bed. I don't think they're the Super Bowl favorite yet--they're pretty banged up. If they were healthy I'd pick them in a sec. But you're talking about a really tough, gutsy--and by all appearances--well coached team.And Now Your Sentence Of The WeekI'm halfway through Ian Parker's entertaining profile of self-promoting Egyptologist Zahi Hawass. You gotta buy the dead tree New Yorker to get it, which will be hard, because it's last week's. If you subscribe you can read it online. Sorry folks, I'm behind on my reading.Anyway, on Friday I came home and read the lede aloud to Kenyatta. I think this graph describing Hawass' steez, and Parker's initial impressions is, well, beautiful: He appears to be enlivened and empowered by battles with enemies, real or imagined: overseas archeologists, foreign museums, amateur theorists who speculate that the Pyramids were built by lizards, other "assholes." And he enjoys making provocative announcements in which his force of character must carry listeners past skepticism, as when he says he is about to find the body of Cleopatra, or make a German museum return its bust of Nefertiti, or somehow copyright the shape of a pyramid. When I met him, this summer, his dominant conversational tone was rebuttal laced with invective and self-regard, built on the premise--it has some merit--that the international standing of Egypt is powerfully connected to the standing of Zahi Hawass. He has no doubt that his fame is a national asset.Powerfully connected. Kenyatta made a good point that I'd missed while waxing about this graff--the word choice doesn't just directly mirror Hawass, it mirrors him indirectly also. His "dominant conversational tone" his "force of character" and, again, the notion that Egypt's standing is "powerfully connected" to Hawass. The words "dominant," "force," and "powefully" aren't directly describing the subject--but they actually mirror him. Anyway, I love the muscle on display here. What can, I say, I'm a word-geek. Not big words and vocabulary geek, but a rhythm, texture and color geek. (The phrase "powerfully connected" just sounds good to me.) Read the piece. There are precious few great reporters in this business. And there are even fewer who can be bothered to with finer points of sentence-making. Looks Like A Job For...From Matt:I particularly like the point about how the "war not crime" frame actually buys into the the narrative of Al'Qaeda. I think there' also something to be said about what war does for national identity. The notion of supporting our troops as the make the world safe for democracy gives you a kind of missionary edge that simply protecting the citizenry from murderous thugs (international murderous thugs, to be sure) doesn't. The latter is a duty that any second-tier nation must try to before, the former is the business of paladins. The "war not crime" narrative is a natural extension of the "America can do anything" narrative. November 15, 2009NFL Open ThreadWho we got today? Indy game will be interesting. I actually can't call that one.November 13, 2009Jay CutlerMan, how wrong was I about this dude?2. It's bad news when the quarterback opens his post-game remarks by apologizing to the defense. But that's what Cutler did. Cutler became the league leader in interceptions on Thursday night -- and that was just in the first half. His five interceptions give him 17 for the season, putting him well ahead of Jake Delhomme, who has 13. Open Thread At NoonIt's Yours.I'm Not CrazyOK, yeah a little bit, but this struck me too:Call it overanalyzing, but is it a coincidence that Precious' dark-skinned mother is physically and verbally abusive, her dark-skinned father is a drug addict who rapes her, and the main character herself is a dark-skinned 16-year-old mother of two? Meanwhile, the teacher, social worker and nurse who uplift and bring positivity into her life are all light-skinned. A Really Small Human BeingSarah Palin on why she's still in 10th grade, or rather gave Katie Couric an interview:The A.P. says that in the book, Mrs. Palin also accuses the McCain campaign of keeping her away from reporters, which fed a perception that she was ignoring the media. She writes that she sat down with Katie Couric in part because she felt sorry for her, after Nicolle Wallace, a McCain aide, said Ms. Couric suffered from low self-esteem.I still think the greatest charge against John McCain is that, in his world, Palin could have been president. A man who claims to put "Country First" was actually willing to put that country in Sarah Palin's hands. It's still incredibly shocking. What's Really HoodVia Ezra two rather amazing stats about my old town. This:Baltimore is, statistically, the second-deadliest city in the USA; only in Detroit are you more likely to be murdered. Last year there were 234 homicides in the city, which has a population of 650,000. It was a 20-year-low, but still meant that one in every 2,700 people was murdered. In Britain, that figure is about one in 85,000.And then this:
That second stat is amazing, but not very surprising. It's one of the many reasons why a "dangerous neighborhood" often feels more dangerous to outsiders. I'm not discounting the innocent bystander--it certainly happens. But a lot of the "survival" that goes on in the neighborhood involves who you hang around, and where you hang within that neighborhood. Everyone there knows certain blocks are hot, and certain young fools are even hotter. That, of course, is the trick of being young--the 16-year-old with the 24-year-old drug dealer boyfriend sees the car, but doesn't necessarily get that she's raising her chances of being murdered. The 16-year-old boy wants to be up in the mix and the excitement, even if he isn't really a crook. He doesn't know that by merely hanging out he's playing with his mortality stats. Or maybe he does, and that's the point. Khalid Sheik Mohammad To Federal CourtsGlad to see this:Khalid Sheik Mohammed -- the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks -- and four co-defendants will be tried in federal court in New York instead of a military commission, a federal official said early Friday.Though I worry that Mohammed's torture may come into play. November 12, 2009Read Em And Weep--This Week's Pick Em RatingsWow. Blood on the walls. Mostly mine. Sg and Dwayne are still killing it. I liked to take this opportunity to hype Dwayne's book. My man isn't just a master of the spread--he's sick with the word-play, too.Continue reading "Read Em And Weep--This Week's Pick Em Ratings" » Challenging Olympia Snowe......strikes me as a really bad idea:
We've got some time before this thing shakes out, and those numbers could change. But unless the want to basically be the party of the white South, this just seems stupid. Party Like It's 1899Lotta blackface lately. I see this stuff, and I don't so much get upset, as I don't really get it. Like, I have no desire at all to dress like Mickey Rooney in Breakfast As Tiffany's, or put on a sombrero and fake a Speedy Gonzales accent. I'm not even sure why that would be funny.
Open Thread At NoonGo for it, folks.Apropros Of Nothing...Have we ever discussed Howl? No? Awesome.One of the things about being being 17-23, at least for me, was the sheer wonder of the greater world. In my case it mostly took the form of the literary--I guess for others it could have been paintings, music, food, business, the opposite sex, whatever. But for me, in wanting to write, it was the sheer notion of assembling words in ways that didn't always make literal sense but felt emotionally true. I was a hip-hop head before I got into poetry, and so for me, it was, like, Mobb Deep saying, "Your crew is featherweight\My gunshots will make you levitate." I thought that was such a powerful, unexpected image. I loved the contrast in connotation--the idea of being shot, paired with something as mystical as levitation. Or Rakim constructing this entire fantasy world around the mythology of the warrior MC. And then of course Nas claiming to "wear chains that excite the feds." I used to listen to these guys playing with words and think, "Damn, you can do that??" It was an incredible, incredible feeling--like discovering a new language, a new way to express the beauty of the world. And then I got to college and read Howl. It's cliche to write this, but I can only tell what's true of me. And being 19, and seeing lines like this: Or:who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene Or:who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on Was almost religious. I just read all that and thought, "Windows of the skull? Purgatoried torsos? Turbercular sky? My God, You can do that???" I later found that there were a lot of people who think Howl isn't a very good poem, but I don't know how much I cared, or care now. I loved Howl because of what it did for my imagination.who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame This hit me, last night, when I was thumbing through my copy. When I wrote the memoir, I was trying hard to do something that evocative of the 80s, and Baltimore, and Divine Styler, and Ric Flair. I didn't much care whether people got it, because I really didn't get Howl when I read it. But I liked the "not getting it." I liked letting my imagination fill in what I couldn't understand. We Knew This Was ComingWell Dollhouse is done. Defamer sneers:
Hehe, "throat-clearing prelude to its afterlife." I can't actually judge Dollhouse, because I never tried--I just couldn't get past the premise. The whole idea of erasing a beautiful woman's memories really weirded me out. Here's Alyssa on the cancellation: I'm sorry Dollhouse is dead. But I'm not sure its cancellation warrants the same outrage as the premature plug-pulling on Firefly, which was remarkable from its first episode. I just hope this opens up some space for Whedon and company to move on to other strong--and perhaps stronger--projects.
November 11, 2009The Sort Of Thing That Makes Me Wish I Was 15...Dragon Age just released their toolset editor. I really would love to use to remake the Caves of Chaos, Against The Giants or some such. I just don't have time. I remember back in the day making RPGs with if/then commands on my C-64. Man, so much has changed. I would have gone into game design. I wish I could have seen the path.So, Yeah...I'm a year late, but I'm listening to this Scarlett Johansson album. So weird to hear her doing Tom Waits. Anyway, I got taken in by Dave Sitek's production. Anyone else heard this? I'm just forming an opinion as I'm only halfway through my first solid listening. I like the music. I'm very undecided about her voice. I keep compering her to Karen O...Anyway, here's a sample. What 9/11 RevealedFrom Andrew:
I've obviously talked quite a bit this week about Fort Hood. I think there are two things at work in our foreign policy, both of the traceable to the citizenry. 1.) A consistent overestimation of American might. The notion that American "can do anything," and what it fails to do is a reflection of its leadership, not its people. 2.) And related to that, the human inclination toto search for solutions in the wake of tragedy, to find that one thing that we could have been done differently. This is useful, I guess, but only up to a point. Open Thread At NoonIt's yours...The Case Of The Child RapistAmy Bach brings us, via Joe Harris Sullivan, something much tougher than Cameron Todd Willingham:Here's what we do know happened. One May morning in 1989, Sullivan, then 13, and two older teens, Nathan McCants, 17, and Michael Gulley, 15, burglarized a home in Pensacola, Fla. They left with jewelry and coins. Later that day, someone returned to the house and found a 72-year-old woman, threw a black slip over her head, made her lie on her bed, and raped her orally and vaginally--so brutally that she had to have corrective surgery.Sullivan was sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole. He had some pretty bad legal representation, as well as a judge and prosecutor who seem below standard and it also seems possible that one of the other boys actually committed the rape. It's very hard for me to sort my way through this toward a definite point. The crime is horrendous. And you can't really guarantee that everyone ever charged is going to have a great lawyer, a great judge, and an ethical prosecutor. But there is a central question here--Does a civilized society sentence children to prison for life? We know from neuroscience that a child's brain is different from an adult's brain, in terms of weight consequences. Yet I look at the details of this case, and I find it hard to muster sympathy. And even as I say that, I know that sympathy should be beside the point. Anyway I don't post this as a fully formed opinion, but as something worth discussing. Let's try to be respectful and not jump down people's throats, on this one. UPDATE: Amy Bach wrote this piece, not Dahlia. Sorry Amy! Obama At Fort HoodI don't know who saw this, but it's worth watching. I don't know if I've seen anybody in my adult life-time who better articulates what this country, at its best, aspires to be. It often falls short, and like all things built by humans, it is tainted. Still, Obama has this incredible gift for articulating our best aspirations, and that we have those aspirations means something about who we are. Exceptional? No. I reject that and I've had my fill of nationalism, no matter who's waving the flag. Bold and Remarkable? Always. I embrace that.Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy November 10, 2009On Contacting Al QaedaI used this story in my post below. Apparently, it's cooked. Bad on ABC. Worse on me for thoughtlessly employing it.With that in mind, it's worth reconsidering this: It does seem clear that the military ignored some pretty obvious warning signs. But just like there's significant difference between being an intelligence officer with the last name Silverman, and being an intelligence officer who repeatedly lies to his superiors, there's significant difference between merely being a Muslim in the Army and being a soldier attempting to cooperate with Al Qaeda.It actually doesn't seem clear to me that there were many warning signs that this guy was going to turn homicidal. He probably shouldn't have been in the Army. But that's different than saying it was obvious that Hasan was about to go postal. The Big ThingI'm going to take a moment to mull over Jeff's response, because frankly, some of it is beyond my rather basic knowledge of events. Anyway, I wanted you guys to see it, and offer some immediate thoughts. I'll revisit this in a day or so, with some more thorough reasoning.I was asking for the "big thing." Jeff offers a parable before the "big thing." Let me use an example from my own religious group (I'm Jewish, in case any of you were wondering) to illustrate a possible answer to this question. Jonathan Pollard, an intelligence analyst for the Navy, was convicted of spying on behalf of Israel in 1986. Pollard's actions cast a shadow over many Jews working in the American national security apparatus. Loyal Americans were questioned, and sometimes denied security clearances, simply because they were Jewish, or had visited Israel. The FBI pursued some dubious cases, including the recently-aborted prosecution of two former AIPAC employees, in large part because of fears that another Pollard was lurking somewhere inside the American government.This actually helps crystallize a few things for me. Ceding that events did unfold this way, (I'm only loosely up on the Pollard case) I strongly disagree with Jeff. I think it's very wrong to deny someone a security clearance, and question them, as Jeff says, "simply because they were Jewish or had visited Israel." Morality aside, it doesn't even strike me as very smart. We can't whittle down a class of suspects anymore than "is Jewish?" What about people who are spying for money? What about the hostility you earn by interrogating people strictly because they have the wrong last name? I took a cursory look at Pollard's Wikipedia entry, and from what I can tell, there are many reasons why Pollard should have been flagged that go beyond ancestry and travel itinerary: Again, I'm not up on all the facts, and maybe this entry is off, but I can't see how you conclude from this that the answer is to profile Jewish agents. And according to Jeff's own example, it wasn't the answer. The upshot was that we ended up prosecuting two people on a really flimsy case and the FBI was embarrassed, no? That's what we don't want, right? AwseHeh, it's Jem! Jem is excitement! What? You thought I was all Tiamat, Roadblock and Galvatron? Come on. Jem is probably one of the most progressive cartoons of its era. Plus she's outrageous. In any language. Kenyatta says the Misfits had better songs, though.In Which I Agree With Stanley CrouchOn Precious star, Gabourey Sidibe:
This is basically true, but it's important to acknowledge some other truths. Doing more than cardboard cut-outs in Hollywood is always tough. Furthermore, women--in general--are always hurting for decent roles. It's true that there is no black Meryl Streep, but I really can't think of another white one either. But more than race, Sidibe is actually compromised by her size. I highly doubt that there will be very many roles for any woman, of any color, who is 300plus pounds. This is why I'm pretty numb to all the celebration of Precious's willingness to defy Hollywood's norms in terms of body image. The girl's size is part of the story. When I see Sidibe cast in a "normal" story, I'll be impressed. One last thing--it's important to acknowledge why people go see movies. Escapism is part of it. In some respect, people want to live in a world where everyone is "pretty" or "handsome." Hollywood could probably loosen its standards, some. But in large measure, I don't think Hollywood is much worse than the audience it serves. Open Thread At NoonGo for it, folks.Black ElvesAlso, am I the only African-American gamer who makes his toons look as black as possible? It's the weirdest thing. My younger brother takes this to laughable extremes--in WoW he made his tauren druid as dark as he could. Even on my blood elf pally, I made sure he had a tan. Still got the shock of red hair though. I need that.Dragon-Age--Preliminary Thoughts Someone asked, last week, about my favorites computer role-playing games, ones which I thought did a solid job of narrative. Like all old people, I think everything great that ever happened in the world, happened when I was young. Thus I have a romantic attachment to the era of Might and Might II, the Bard's Tale series, and Ultima. The Gold Box games are the pinnacle for me--I think Pool of Radiance might be the most incredible gaming experience I've ever had. It wasn't just the game, it was seeing actual D&D played out on screen. Before that, Ultima/Bard's Tale/M&M all felt like knock-offs of what we all knew we wanted--an elven Fighter-Magic User, a halfling thief, and dwarf fighter. Of course we're all knock-offs of Lord Of The Rings, so there. A few other mentions of role-playing games from the 80s--Below The Root, Mobius and Legacy of the Ancients. Legacy was particularly well done. The mid-late 90s crop are almost certainly better games--Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale are just stellar. I really wish they had made BG a trilogy. Might and Magic 6 and 7 are both really underrated games--the sheer sprawl of the world, the number of options, are all overwhelming in a good way. But the sad thing is that after I went to MMOs, I stopped playing single-player games, so there's a gap in my RPG experience. I'm actually deeply tempted to go back and play The Longest Journey, which is supposed to be just incredible. All of this is a long way of saying I just started Dragon Age: Origins, and frankly, it's a miracle I'm here blogging right now and not hacking my way through Darkspawn. Oh who am I kidding, by the time you read this I will almost certainly be hacking my way through Darkspawn. Seriously though, I haven't really had much time for WoW lately--work has been rather insane, so I've had to go back to the single-player joints. I find it easier to jump in, get my fix for 30 minutes, and then get back to work. Not To Push The Point......but Yglesias pulls out this statement from United States Conference of Bishops on the murder of George Tiller:"Our bishops' conference and all its members have repeatedly and publicly denounced all forms of violence in our society, including abortion as well as the misguided resort to violence by anyone opposed to abortion," Cardinal Rigali said. "Such killing is the opposite of everything we stand for, and everything we want our culture to stand for: respect for the life of each and every human being from its beginning to its natural end. We pray for Dr. Tiller and his family."Now, Jeff was talking about folks here at the Atlantic, not American Islamic groups, so this is only tangentially related to his original point. But the issue of political correctness was raised in comments. I have my own biases. Still, the USCB effectively equated Tiller's murder with abortion. Fair enough. But, to take Matt's point a little further, it's very hard for me to imagine CAIR issuing a statement like this in which they fold in, say, the murder of innocent Afghan children by American Predator drones with the Fort Hood massacre. November 9, 2009About Pick Em...Anybody else get wrecked this week? I think I won two games. I did call the Cowboys, but I lacked the courage of my convictions--I put two points on the game. Damn.Whoa..No Need To Resort To Ugly StereotypesAlec Baldwin awesome-sauce...I agree with Alyssa. 30 Rock is having a meh season. The writers really need to take a vow to not a make a joke about Liz Lemon's digestive track for at least another five years.I'm still watching, though. There's always this sense that you can't make fun of black people--or maybe that sense just exists among talentless white comedians. But 30 Rock does some of the best race humor on TV. Heh--"Balanka! Balanka! Balanka!" Jane Krakowski goes all in though. I think after Baldwin, she's the champ. It Was All Good Just A Year AgoDavid Plouffe talks to Terry Gross. It's interesting, and she pushes him as always. But, no disrespect to Plouffe, I find that listening to political operatives to be unrevealing. They're always selling. It's why I can't watch cable news. It's like watching two used car salesmen fight it out on MILF Island. How's that for mixed metaphors.Hail CaeasarYeah, I'm a week late, but I wanted to highlight this piece by Rick Hertzberg. It really gets at the complexity of submitting to Bloomberg:The truth is that Michael Bloomberg has been a very good mayor. The record is mixed, of course, but the mixture is largely positive. Crime is down. Public education is better, owing mainly to the Mayor's takeover of the system. The racial rancor of Giuliani Time is gone. People are healthier and longer-lived, and it would be rash to suggest that the Mayor's nanny-state initiatives--his smoking bans, his banishment of trans fats, his posted calorie counts--have had nothing to do with this happy development. He has fought the good fight for congestion pricing and gun control. His plans for a West Side football coliseum were thwarted, thank God, and his new stadiums for the Yankees and the Mets cost the city a bundle and are unfriendly to fans of modest means, but his bike lanes are terrific and his transformation of Times Square into a people's piazza was visionary, fun, and cheap.It would all be much easier if he were more Giuliani-like. Open Thread At NoonGo for it...M00slim-Lovin Media ElitesMy buddy Jeff Goldberg thinks Atlantis isn't pushing hard enough on Islam and Ft. Hood:A consensus seems to have formed here at The Atlantic that the Ft. Hood massacre means not very much at all. Megan McArdle writes that "there is absolutely no political lesson to be learned from this." James Fallows says: "The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre 'mean'? A decade later, do we 'know' anything about Columbine?" And the Atlantic Wire has already investigated the motivation for the shooting, and released its preliminary findings. Of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Wire states: "A 39-year-old Army psychiatrist, he appears to have not been motivated by his Muslim religion, his Palestinian heritage (he is American by nationality), or any related political causes...I think this mostly hinges on what "means" means. If we grant that Hasan was motivated by religion, what does that actually tell us? What is there beyond the fact that people will, at times, interpret religion as a justification to commit heinous acts? Jeff asks what we'd say if a devout Christian had attacked Planned Parenthood. Fair enough--we have a pretty good corollary in George Tiller. I could be wrong, but I don't recall a lot of "media elites" trying to divine what Tiller's death said about Christianity, itself. Again, beyond the fact that some wacko interpreted Christianity to mean he had the right to shoot people, what else would there be to say? That's really my issue. What is the big "thing" that we should be seeing, in this case? What are those elite blinders preventing us from seeing? UPDATE: This post was unclear--George Tiller was the victim, not the killer. Scott Roeder was the killer. Sorry about the confusion Mad MenBe serious. No one wants to talk about your "health care bills."November 8, 2009NFL Open ThreadYou know what I'm watching--Philly v. Dallas. But I guess that isn't till tonight. Baltimore v Cincy should be a good one.November 6, 2009They Always Remember YouThe great Mos Def...Pick Em Standings!Here they are folks. Props to D-Sel for getting these out. Sg and Dwayne are just murdering.Open Thread At NoonGo for it.You Sir, Have Offended My HonorVia Andrew, Brian Chase gets what seemingly, to this day, eludes people about bigotry:
And yet it's true. I'm sorry, I have loved--and love--many people in my time. Many of them were bigoted against some group, somewhere. This expectation that "good people" won't be bigots is rather amazing. I came up in a world where it was nothing to hear the word "faggot" bandied about. Where those people awful human beings? Nah. Were they bigots? Yep. And I will tell you, without a moments hesitation, that I was one of them. Catch The BallI don't really think Roy Williams is T.O. in the drama-sense, and I doubt they'll be much of a distraction. Still, they aren't particularly self-aware:"I'm the No. 1 receiver," Williams said. "But things are just going No. 2's way."There are a few problems here. It should be said that, especially early on, that Romo was off and he hung Williams out there for a brutal hit against Denver. That said, I think anyone who watches the Cowboys knows that Williams isn't "doing everything." Roy Williams has caught only 38 percent of the passes thrown his way this season. That's worse then Patrick Crayton who was benched a couple weeks ago. I think worse than that is veiled unwillingness to take responsibility, the notion that he's doing everything, but the football thrown to him are everywhere. I was just googling around and found this old Football Outsiders post at the time of the trade which pretty much predicted what Williams would be. Herm Edwards was on ESPN this morning discussing Wiliams, and as usual, broke it down to the essentials--"Just catch the ball. And when you catch the ball, run with it." I think Roy will have a big game this week. I'd be shocked to see him come up small after all of this. November 5, 2009Off-LineSorry guys, I'm riding around reporting today. The house is yours. Be cool.Oh, and I just saw that Blindside trailer again. I think part of the problem is a structural one. The movie really seems centered on Sandra Bullock's character. Having read the excerpt, but not the book, I didn't get the sense that she was the protagonist. She was a very important character, but the story felt a lot more collective. At the time, the Times Magazine literally had a cover with all the people, black and white, who'd made Oher possible. Mass market movies just tend to be more reductionist. Steve Harvey Is Giving Marriage AdviceAnd he ain't half-bad. Man, Good Morning America is another world. It's amazing to see this dude cross-over, and see the times. You got this black dude giving relationship advice to black, white, Asian women. Perhaps it shouldn't be that shocking. But I was born in 75, we didn't really have that in the 80s. We had more in the 90s. But now...Anyway, Good for Steve. RihannaYou know I just watched her on GMA, and she came off really well. I don't mean like she "made you feel sorry for her" well, just sharp and really honest about why she went back.I've talked some about this case, and the broader issues it raised. I feel a little stupid about doing that now. In one post I used nationalism to explain why I tended to focus on agency and responsibility. But what I missed is how community works in the notion of responsibility. Abuse, from what I know, often works in concert with isolation and shame. The slave may be ashamed. The oppressed black person may be ashamed--but he isn't isolated from other slaves or other oppressed black people. Moreover he isn't surrounded by other apparently free and unsegregated black people. In other words there's a community of oppressed people. How do you have responsibility without community? Perhaps, you can, but I can't really imagine it for myself. What so often keeps me in line, and has kept me in line over the years, is not my own expectations, but the expectations of family and friends. These are people who are, for all intents and purposes, like me. In some cases they're carrying burdens that I didn't. My Dad grew up dirt poor in West Philly. My Mom grew up in the projects of West Baltimore. Out of my father's seven kids, five of them grew up in single parent homes. Out of those five, three of them grew up, for some period, in the projects. But six out of seven of them graduated from college. (I'm the seventh. I'll tell you about shame.) The point is that I've been surrounded by people who were "like me" or, in the eyes of society, "worse off then me" and they achieved. That community empowered me and allowed me to exercise what I so now arrogantly claim to be "individual agency." If my Mom, raised in the projects can do it, if my Pops, who lived on a pick-up truck after his father was evicted, can do it, then I better make it happen. But what am I without those expectations? Without that community? Watching Rihanna actually talk about being ashamed and going back, it became clear to me that for the abused, women, as a whole, are probably not the empowering community, other abuse victims are. And through shame, abused women are cut off from that community, and often from any community, and sucked into a world orchestrated by the abuser. Put differently, it's very hard to be a nationalist when you are isolated from other co-nationals. Individual agency isn't very individual at all. It depends on the village. November 4, 2009AwseHeh, from comments:Why are posters here, and the media generally, ignoring the fact that these results were driven by Maine's overwhelming number of black churches? Some Real Mature Women, And Some More Of They Friends...David Brooks on romance:I deeply suspect that social life, in the realm of romance, always resembled economics, if not always a free market. I don't mean to be glib, or assert that there have been no changes in how people date. I haven't been on the market in over a decade, and very few of my friends are out there, so I really wouldn't know. But, and there is no kind way to say this, I don't actually believe David Brooks knows either. Do people mostly meet through texting today? Are schools, friends and work largely irrelevant? Is it true that there are no social scripts for young people? Or is Brooks merely unfamiliar with them? Did people not meet at jazz clubs back in the 50s, at the Drifters show, or at the beach? And taking Brooks' point, has the actual essence of dating changed that much? Are young people better or worse of for it? I read Brooks's column and thought of the 80 and 90 year old slaves interviewed by the WPA. There is a lot in those oral histories that is, as they say, old and true. But there's a lot that's old and false. A constant refrain is the notion that the "moving pictures" were ruining young people, and the next generation wasn't worth anything. To be clear, that would be the same generation that gave us Martin Luther King, and effectively finished the Civil War. This is a theme residing in the conservative soul--a professed, thinly-reasoned skepticism of the fucked-up now, contrasted against a blind, unquestioning acceptance of the hypermoral past. This is a human idea--most people, like those slaves, believe some point in the past was better. And indeed, in some case the past was demonstrably better. But the writer who would argue such has to prove it. He can't just accept his innate hunch. He has to bumrush and beat down his theories of the world, And should they emerge unbroken, that writer might have something to tell us. It's got to be more than justifying your prejudice. It's got to be more than those meddling kids. Continue reading "Some Real Mature Women, And Some More Of They Friends..." » Open Thread At NoonGo for it.Apropos Of EverythingIsley Brothers version after the jump for ya'll still on that "The Black Man Is God!" tip.A Thought On Gay Marriage In MaineFrom Rod:
I probably wouldn't use the word "bigot." I don't think, for instance, that half this country thinks hate crimes against gays is a good thing. But I have no problem believing that half the country--maybe more--is deeply prejudiced against gays. This generally fits into my view of all -isms. I think prejudice is part of who we are as humans, and thus as Americans. Following from that, I think prejudice is one of the many forces that influence how we vote. Hence the notion that half this country is deeply prejudiced against gays really doesn't shock me. The obvious parallel is civil rights. It's quite clear to me that Jim Crow in the South could not have been struck down by a majority vote; interracial marriage was banned in Alabama until 2000, and even then, some 40 percent of Alabamans voted to keep it. It's quite clear to me that Jim Crow in the North, enforced through housing segregation, restrictive covenants, block-busting realtors, and the federal government red-lining could not have been defeated by a majority vote. But more than that, the sense that prejudice is actually not a common and potent force among straight people today, and white people then, that the group intent on discriminating is "essentially good" is the most remarkable parallel. Rod believes that most of the people voting against gay marriage aren't prejudiced against gay people per se. That reminds me of National Review, in 1957 arguing that most of the people intent on preventing blacks from voting weren't actually anti-black: The central question that emerges--and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal--is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically?Thus those who are known to be primarily motivated by ethnic prejudice were, in their time, seen by conservatives as guardians of civilization. Likewise heterosexuals now are presumed to be about something more than base prejudice. Conservatives pride themselves on their skepticism, and generally dismiss liberals as soft-headed Utopians. But in so many ways, political conservatism is Utopianism for the powerful. It isn't broadly skeptical of human nature, so much as it's broadly skeptical of people its agents don't particularly like. Hence the sense that Americans are intrinsically "good people," that this country "is the best nation that ever existed in history," that the South is home to "the greatest people that have ever trod the earth," and that the murder of four little girls in Birmingham was the work of a "Communist" or "crazed Negro," which had "set back the cause of white people." Hence the notion that those voting against gay marriage, are not actually, in the main, motivated by bigotry, but a belief in tradition and family. But very few people would actually ever describe themselves as bigots. We think we know so much about ourselves. This is a country--like many countries--which is deeply riven by ethnic bias, and gender discrimination. And yet we don't seem to know any of the agents of that discrimination. November 3, 2009Without BiasI'm looking forward to the ESPN joint tonight on Len Bias. I was a kid in West Baltimore when he ODed. I had no game, but you had to play around my way. There just wasn't much choice. We had a milk crate nailed to a telephone pole that we used to play on. My older brother Damani (Big Bill, if you read the book) used to invoke Bias's name whenever he shot the ball. When Bias died, it broke all of our hearts. Around our way, it was like someone had killed the president. In all honesty, given those times, and give that the president was Reagan, it was worse.But more than that, I think Bias's death was one of the reasons that, for black folks in my generation, coke wasn't something played with. Between that, and the crack epidemic, we tended to regard coke as the province of addicts. We had our thrills--a 40 and and a blunt--but coke usage was something we felt people should be ashamed of. (Not coke-selling, mind you.) Don't take this the wrong way, but we thought of coke as some dumb-white-shit. That's not a point of moralism, as a kind of prejudice. We thought of it as along the lines sky-diving, mountain-climbing, and ski football. I don't know if the numbers even back this up (though I'm sure someone is about to tell me.) But this was more about the attitude of the time (late 80s to mid-90s) and the particular group of black people I ran with. The attitude was basically one of, I have no problem rotting my liver out with Mad-Dog and Cisco, but that coke shit ain't for me. When I got to Howard, you almost never saw people using coke at parties. People did shrooms, and some adventurous cats would pop E. But coke would get you laughed at. You might even catch a ass-whipping for bringing out some coke at a house-party. The shit just wasn't cool. Even now whenever people mention recreational coke usage, I kind of instinctively bristle. I don't really understand coke as a recreational drug. Call it cultural bias. Election Day, Meh...Josh Green on the overhype:
HehThat DoubleX post got me reminiscing...UPDATE: And may I add, what a weird time it was. Racist!Politico reports:
There really isn't much you can say about this story because it's almost entirely anonymously sourced. I can't really speak too much about the ethics of Congress, but the ethics of running a piece like this, with an implicit claim of racism but no actual on the record accusers, rubs me wrong. Maybe there is some racism here, but I really have no idea, in part because I can't evaluate the credibility of the accusers. I think these sorts of stories run because "racial disparity" generates a lot of hits, and lots of links (yep, I'm guilty) and a lot of heat. The actual veracity of the claim is pretty irrellevant. What If....?No not The Watcher on Spiderman and the Fantastic Four, DoubleX is wondering what the world would be like if Hillary Clinton had won. Here's Hanna Rosin:I had a twinge of regret, when I was reading that White House as frat house piece last week. It's not that I think Obama needs to play co-ed basketball, God forbid, or have more people who look like me in his inner circle, as Dee Dee Meyers boringly suggested. Obama seems perfectly familiar and postfeminist just like me and all my friends. It's just that there are laws of nature no amount of bean counting or feminist revival can change. And those include the fact that a pack of boys in the workplace will blithely interrupt their work day to play basketball, or watch soccer, and a pack of girls will routinely watch out for how each one is feeling every day, and that's just how it is. I know that now, because for the first time I work at a women's magazine. It's neither good nor bad, although I like it better, and it would have been surprising and cool to see it play out in the White House.Not a bad impersonation of Uatu. The "throw more women at the problem" idea struck me as unimaginative, also. There seemed to be something deeper at work. Anyway, that's kind of what I like about this comment. While eschewing, as Hanna says, a kind of "bean-counting" diversity, it points out that putting a women in charge would, almost necessarily, make some things different culturally. I think that's true of Obama--I just don't think you have poetry slams at the White House if Hillary wins. Open Thread At NoonIt's yours.To Be ClearIt needs to be said, very loudly, that the post on The Blind Side, is not taking a shot at the book. It's looking at what sort of stories make to the screen, and in what form. No one is arguing that book isn't more nuanced. Having only read the excerpt, I wouldn't dispute that at all.Speaking Of Which...The Avatar trailer is really visually stunning. I'm not really feeling much beyond that, though. To the extent that effects enhance a great narrative, I'm all in. To the extent that it becomes a show in and of itself, I'm all out.Story-telling is actually one of my long-standing beefs with MMOs. WoW did a good job of pushing story-telling forward, but it's hard to go as deep as some of the great single player games. I'd like to see the next big MMO go a little further in terms of story-telling. There has to be a way to do something more than kill xx number of orcs, a better way to hide the architecture. Should they not tell you about XP and levels? Should the process of "leveling up" be a little more mystical? I don't know... Anyway, here's the trailer. I don't think I can take another "good white man save the natives" story. When do the natives save themselves? When the natives start investing in cameras. A Totally Uninformed, Utterly Prejudiced NotionI recoiled when I saw the poster for The Blind Side. I didn't read the book, but I did read the excerpt in the NY Times, which I liked a lot because Michael Lewis is, well, brilliant. But when I found out the film was coming all I could think was "No way am I seeing that." To some extent I think it has to do with a longstanding beef about how blacks show up in movies. So many of our roles involve us as these kind of disconnected aliens without much attachment to a community. In a lot of those roles we're often "saved" by the benevolence of white folks.Denzel is probably one of the most popular black men in black America, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that, in his movies, he so often has his ties to black people on display. His wife is usually black, or he may have kids or a brother who's black. In The Pelican Brief he even rocked the Howard Law sweat-shirt. The sense has been that, though he's walking into the world of "them," he's always repped for "us." He's always been about demonstrating that there's a black community that produced him. It's not fair to bring that kind of prejudice, or these kinds of expectations, to bear on The Blind Side. First and foremost, there is no one story, no one kind of narrative. Everyone doesn't find that kind of support in their community. Some people are, indeed, "saved" by white folks. (You could make an argument for me.) People have the right to tell those stories. I do think, to an extent, this is about how whites often encounter blacks--as individuals and not in the presence of their full community. More than that, I think it's about how I see the world, and the desire to see films that reflect that. But like I said, it isn't right to put that sort of pressure on people who are just trying to tell a story. If I don't like it, I should go tell my own. Meh. I guess I have to go see the film, now. November 2, 2009JoeidiocyOpen Thread At OneGo for it.The Dead Tree EditionSpend some time with Nadya Labi's fascinating account of a mother and a step-father to take child kidnapping:
It's a really good piece, and it's important to recognize that a lot of the cases apparently come about when mothers flee abusive husbands. In the other cases, the story strikes at something elemental in all parents. A child kidnapping is a violent act perpetrated against the parental bonds. I never understand people who get it in their head that thier child doesn't "need" the other parent. I understand when their issues of, say, abuse. But I've seen this a lot in my life, where parents use custody as a weapon. It's an incredibly selfish act, and in the cause of raising children, it's sabotage. I Have To AdmitThat Gladwell article changed how I watch football. It just did. I can't relish the big hit the way I used to. It's weird, because I think this is the argument that football is about more than just smashing into some dude. I still love watching the game. I still like the quarterback play, the sacks, the running back play etc.But I watched Felix Jones lay some defensive back out yesterday. Normally I would have been leaping up in the air. But it just didn't feel the same. I don't see football going away. But I do see change coming. November 1, 2009NFL Open ThreadI just watched this piece on Tom Cable and domestic violence on Outside The Lines. Wow. I don't see this dude being in the NFL next season. That probably doesn't have much to do with domestic violence.Anyway, let's go folks. Pick 'Em Ratings!Check it out guys and gals... |
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I'd love to hear Deborah's thoughts on the doll...