Uppity-Negro.com

is because the pink tends to make some readers nauseous.

Currently, some of the comments are having a similar effect.

I got tired of one particular poster, and sent him the following note:

To: band@shoutingthomas.com
Subject: Ok, let's try it this way

Stephen,

Posting to a personal web site is a privilege, not a right.

Posting to my personal web site is a privilege I have chosen not to extend to you.

Thank you for your kind attention.

-Aaron

Apparently, deleting two comments and establishing an (admittedly, quite simple to circumvent) IP ban wasn't enough of an indication.

I'm confident that, in his own opinion, he's Speaking Truth to Power, and bringing the Light of Wisdom to these benighted pages, and blah de blah.

Of course, in my opinion, he's a troll, and not even a particularly creative or interesting one at that. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

If he decides to drop by again, just ignore him. I'll be too busy to waste time with him for a while.

Because I'm packing for my trip to Pismo Beach tomorrow morning. It's a bit of a drive, yes, but I've heard such good things about the place from one of my favorite actors, I figure it'll be worth it.

I mean, just check out the Visitor's Guide. Heck, check out the weather forecast. Highs in the upper 60s to upper 70s tomorrow! I'm not even gonna take a coat!

So long, suckers! Next time you hear from me, I'll be writing from a cybercafé on the beach.

Update: Suppose I should change the link for Interesting Monstah over there.

I'm just not sure when I'd have a chance to change it back once Laura's domain issues are resolved, what with being in Minneapolis Pismo Beach and all. . .

Posted by Aaron at 6:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

Oh sure, they're letting go of 700 people, but this is Something Completely Different:

Bank One 'Outraged' By Offensive T-Shirts

The University of Louisville banned credit card solicitors after students were offered racially offensive and sexually explicit T-shirts during an on-campus promotion.

The shirts were given away last week to students who applied for a credit card backed by Bank One. A caricature of a voluptuous black woman, a Bank One logo and "10 Reasons Why Beer is Better than a Black Man" appeared on the shirts.

[. . .] "Bank One is outraged that such a thing could happen," said Nancy Norris, a spokeswoman for the Chicago-based bank. "That offensive T-shirt was not approved by Bank One."

On Monday, Bank One fired FrontLine Event Marketing, the Philadelphia-based firm handling the promotion. Norris said Bank One is considering taking legal action because the T-shirts depicted the bank's logo without permission.

FrontLine president Ed Solomon said the shirts were not produced by his company, and believes they came from the two unauthorized workers who were hired by an independent contractor.

Everyone is outraged. No one is responsible.

It's a modern parable, it is.

I'm sure you could find a list of the reasons if you really wanted.

Just FYI, though? Not interested.

Posted by Aaron at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (1)

of making the right-wingers go the fuck away.

Saw this AP article, or a version of it, in the Sun-Times a few weeks back: Group helps Hollywood portray sex sensitively

Dr. Neal Baer, executive producer of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" and a pediatrician, is one longtime customer. He first used the group's resources in 1989, for an "ABC Afterschool Special" about a girl facing a venereal infection.

The association continued through Baer's years with "ER," when he sought details for stories including medical assistant Jeanie Boulet's (Gloria Reuben) AIDS virus and one about the sexually transmitted virus linked to cervical cancer.

"That was very big," Baer said of the February 2000 episode that cited the human papilloma virus. A follow-up survey showed that among "ER" viewers, knowledge of the virus had tripled from 9 percent to 28 percent.

The Media Project is invariably helpful but not intrusive, he said.

"A writer decides how to tell a story. I've never found they (the Media Project) have an agenda and said, 'Don't do a story about this or that,' " Baer said. "They're not pushing an agenda per se, unless you call an agenda of accuracy an agenda, which I don't."

[Media Project director Robin] Smalley said she has faced the opposite criticism, that Media Project is fostering the depiction of sex.

"Well, that's ridiculous," she said. "The fact is there's going to be sex. If there is going to be sex on television, would I like them (characters) to use a condom? Yes. Would I like them to show responsible sex rather than irresponsible sex? Yes, of course."

The organization under discussion is The Media Project, "a program of Advocates for Youth, [which] offers entertainment professionals the latest facts, research assistance, script consultation, and story ideas on today's sexual and reproductive health issues, including condoms, pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, abstinence, and abortion." Closed-minded type that I am, I automatically assumed going into the piece that they were pushing some sort of Agenda, or hacking at scripts to insert a Message. Not the impression I was left with at the end.

However, I might be wrong about this. Something to keep in mind.

Their. . . not sure "parent organization" is the right term, but let's go with it, Advocates for Youth, say in their Mission Statement/About page:

Advocates for Youth is dedicated to creating programs and advocating for policies that help young people make informed and responsible decisions about their reproductive and sexual health. Advocates provides information, training, and strategic assistance to youth-serving organizations, policy makers, youth activists, and the media in the United States and the developing world.

They're not alone in this, obviously, and I'm only slightly more familiar with them now than I was five minutes ago, but the Media Project's goals seem admirable, at least.

Again, there is potential wrongness.

Director's cut: I'm not thrilled with the tendency to run sexandviolence together as a word or a concept, which is one reason I didn't add the bit about the Static Shock episode dealing with gun violence. That, and I just remembered that I missed the third season opener on Saturday. Because I suck.

Posted by Aaron at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Picked up X-Men at the library, well, guess it was yesterday at this point. Hadn't seen the thing until now, out of a complete lack of interest in doing so.

Delusionally, perhaps, I'd thought the film would at least be more entertaining than watching that unelected blithering idiot giving the State of the Union.

Instead, I learned a very valuable lesson. Namely, that although there was a time I was willing to calmly accept that some people have much more emotional investment in the symbolic value of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty than I have any possible reason to, that time is long past. Instead, having someone make a blatant attempt at emotional manipulation using those symbols just annoys the fuck out of me.

I should point out that I don't think that's the lesson they were trying to get across.

While I'm working up the enthusiasm necessary to get through the no-doubt-thrilling final battle sequence, could someone be a perfect dear and ask the creature that runs a small victory to remove whatever link is bringing people here and causing that monstrosity to appear in the referrers list? I'd do it myself, but the mention of "pro-Saddam activists" made me realize that I don't ever, ever want anything to do with the little shit.

Oh, and Amish Tech Support? I want the link gone. I also want the dipshit asshole motherfucker responsible for that thing gone. No, scratch that. I want him to suffer. I want him in agony. I want to be able to create a mix cd consisting entirely of selected highlights from hours of his recorded screams of torment. I want him being tortured to be a permanent fucking installation at the Art Institute. I want people to be able to take their grandchildren there someday to look at him and say, "Oh, I remember this from when I was a kid. There was still some flesh left on the body back then."

On the plus side, I rather enjoyed Patrick Stewart's and Sir Ian McKellen's performances. And since I also have zero interest in seeing either the fucking Trek movie or the fucking Hobbit movie, it ain't like I can see either of them in anything that's out now. . .

Great. On top of everything else, CassieNewton.com is over the GeoCities bandwidth limit.

I think some poetry would be just the thing to cheer me up now, too.

Update: How to Spot a Tourist.

Ten-to-one "Aaron the Uppity Negro" is really one of those skinny, pasty white boys with fake sandy dreads or an orange 'fro. He's just mad because none of the girlies will say he's pretty fly for a white guy.

That was Andrea Harris, writing at A Small Victory.

I think Jhames sums all this up rather nicely, but that quote from her really defines their side completely.

At this point, I can't even feel insulted by them, to be honest. I just wonder who -- or what -- they're talking about.

It obviously isn't me.

If you're even considering whining here about X-Men 1.5, I'd advise against it.

Consider this a pre-emptive "Shut the fuck up."

Thank you for your kind consideration. And shut the fuck up.

Posted by Aaron at 1:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (91) | TrackBacks (8)

Their program Odyssey discussed

Rape
What we think of as rape can be determined by court decisions, political legislation and cultural representations. Gretchen Helfrich and guests discuss the social forces that shape our ideas of rape.
Guests:
Jill Hasday — University of Chicago Law School
Michelle Oberman — DePaul University College of Law
Pamela Barnett — University of South Carolina

The second participant, Michelle Oberman, is mentioned in The Resurrection of Statutory Rape Laws:

The reality is that the recent interest in reviving statutory rape prosecutions has been a response to teen pregnancy and more specifically to these girls getting on welfare. This is serious problem and understandably people are grappling for solutions. The catalyst for this renewed concern was as a result of a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute of 10,000 mothers between the ages of 15 and 49. The researchers discovered that 50% of the babies born to 15-17 year old mothers had fathers age 20 or older. Even more unnerving was the finding that generally the younger the mother, the older the father. Other studies confirmed similiar findings such as "Men over 20 years are responsible for five times as many births among junior high girls as are junior high boys." (Quinn 95) These and similar discoveries shattered many of the previous assumptions about teen pregnancy. Almost immediately, politicians started calling for prosecution of the men responsible. California took the lead and states such as Georgia, Delaware, and Florida followed suit.

Is the revival of statutory rape enforcement the answer or is this "a new way to sound tough on crime in the guise of social compassion"?(Gleick 96) Perhaps its a little bit of both. We know that 74% of girls who have sex before the age of 14 have experienced coercive sex , as well as 60% of girls who have sex before age 15.(Quinn 95) Its obvious that we are not doing enough to protect young people from sexual abuse and exploitation and maybe statutory rape laws are a step in the right direction. However, its also true that many respected experts in the field are worried about the adverse impact of "discouraging teens from obtaining prenatal or reproduction health care." (Donovan 97) Or as Michelle Oberman pointed out "drawing a connection between enforcing these laws and lowering adolescent pregnancy rates flies in the face of everything we know about why girls get pregnant and why they choose to continue their pregnancies."

Which appears at Age of Consent. The author, Annette Burrhus-Clay, states "My concerns are many and quite honestly I'm not even sure where I stand on this issue." Which is the position I'm going to take as well. Part of the conversation on the show revolved around the California Supreme Court decision described in this article at Contra Costa Times:

A man may be convicted of rape if his sexual partner first consents but later changes her mind and asks him to stop, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.

In a 6-1 decision, the justices said a man who continues sexual intercourse with a woman once she has retracted her consent can be charged with rape. The court ruled in a date-rape case involving teenagers at a party in El Dorado County.

"A withdrawal of consent effectively nullifies any earlier consent and subjects the male to forcible rape charges if he persists in what has become nonconsensual intercourse," Justice Ming Chin wrote for the court.

Other topics also came up, including making rape laws gender-neutral and fictional portrayals.

Oh, and race.

You're as shocked at this as I was, no doubt.

Did drive home the difference between Third Wave Feminism and earlier varieties for me, so there's that, at least.

Update: added links to the guests' faculty pages. There doesn't appear to be a copy of Oberman's "Regulating Consensual Sex with Minors: Defining a Role for Statutory Rape online, but truth be told, I'm not looking all that hard. And the audio for the show is available at that first link, if you'd like to give it a listen. Or even if you wouldn't.

Posted by Aaron at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (1)

They never tell the full story.

Think I'd avoided mentioning this yesterday -- Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Death Toll From Cold Rises in South Asia:

South Asians are particularly vulnerable to the cold because millions sleep in unheated homes or outdoors, usually without great risk as winters tend to be mild. For example, New Delhi's average temperature in January is 58 degrees.

A total of 1,935 people have died from exposure in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, where the poor live in flimsy, unheated shelters, and are already weak from being underfed or sick.

Had nothing to say about it, to be honest. Still don't, but noticed a link about Nepal at Ellis' place, which led me to Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Centre's web site:

Established in 1987, Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Centre (CWIN) is a pioneer organisation in Nepal for the rights of the child and against child labour exploitation. CWIN is an advocate organisation for the child's rights with focus on children living and working under the most difficult circumstances. CWIN's main areas of concern are child labour, street children, child marriage, bonded labour, trafficking of children, children in conflict with laws and commercial-sexual exploitation of children.

They were mentioned in the article Ellis had linked:

A report by nongovernmental organization Child Workers in Nepal (CWIN), said at least 146 children, comprising 40 girls and 106 boys, have died in the last seven years of Maoist insurgency, leaving 2000 orphans and 4000 without homes.

[. . .] Educational institutions, especially those in remote areas, have borne the brunt of the conflict. According to school organizations, rebels have bombed and destroyed nearly 100 school buildings across the country.

[. . .] Security forces on search operations in villages also often victimize little children.

As a large number of schools have closed down over the past few years, rural children are compelled to perform household chores or join the ranks of insurgents as child soldiers, messengers or porters.

Although the rebel leadership denied making child recruitments, reports said the number of child soldiers in Maoist ranks was spiraling, with about 1000 children alleged to be performing an active role in the conflict. " We have seen children used as soldiers, informers, porters and employed in hazardous tasks like fetching landmines and other explosives," said Subodh Raj Pyakurel, general secretary of Informal Sector Service Center (INSEC), a nongovernmental organization (NGO) working in the areas of human rights and social justice.

There's also bad news from neighboring Tibet, which is getting slightly more coverage here in the States despite involving fewer people:

The United States has condemned the execution of a Tibetan man accused of a series of bomb attacks in south-west China.

[. . .] Lobsang Dhondup, 28, was executed on Sunday, after being convicted in a closed trial in December of bomb attacks in Sichuan province between 1998 and 2002.

Activists have criticised the trial of Lobsang Dhondup and Tibetan monk Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche - whose suspended death sentence has been upheld - as unfair.

The US State Department said it was also "closely watching" reports that 10 other Tibetans had been detained in the same case.

I imagine this is because it gives us reason to criticize China and distract the world community from our own policy on the death penalty, but I imagine all sorts of unpleasant things sometimes.

Posted by Aaron at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Wandering around the remains of the Warren Ellis Forum, which I'd stopped reading regularly before the end. Because I suck.

Reminded of the thing by this quote:

Dogs are vermin. They must all die.

Which I think is as true today as it was when it were originally said, but, y'know, that's just my opinion.

Any questions?

Why does it seem that black people, particularly women, are afraid of dogs - even friendly ones?

That link also has answers:

My grandma alway kept all the pets outside. We had dogs, but they were for guarding the house, not to be play with. I know a lot of people have them as pets, but I still think of dogs as wild things that will tear your face off.

Being afraid of dogs is not a fear that I have, but it is a very common phobia. I don't speak for all blacks or women, but if you have ever examined footage from the Civil Rights Movement, you will see how dogs were used against black people, which justifies fears many may have concerning dogs. Although the Civil Rights Movement was 40 years ago, many people who experienced being savagely attacked and malled by dogs may have passed those fears on to their offspring.

Which may or may not apply for any given person, in any given situation.

Anyway.

Am half-listening to a discussion of the Chicago Defender on WBEZ's Eight Forty-Eight. From the second-to-last link there:

The Chicago Defender, which was founded by Robert S. Abbott on May 5, 1905, once heralded itself as "The World's Greatest Weekly." The newspaper was the nation's most influential black weekly newspaper by the advent of World War I, with more than two thirds of its readership base located outside of Chicago.

The topic of discussion is the recent sale, detailed in Crain's Chicago Business among other places:

Nearly six years after the Chicago-based newspaper chain went on the block, a group of investors has purchased Sengstacke Enterprises Inc., whose holdings include the Chicago Defender and three other papers serving African-American communities.

[. . .] In addition to the Defender—the only black-owned daily newspaper in the U.S.—Real Times' holdings include the Michigan Chronicle, New Pittsburgh Courier and Memphis Tri-State Defender. The deal also includes a merger with The Michigan FrontPage, which was not part of Sengstacke Enterprises.

“The black community needs a voice,” William Pickard, a Detroit-based investor and board member, said in a statement. “We intend to ensure our independent papers will have the necessary technologies, financial acumen and community commitment that will maintain their status as pillars in the black community.”

I'm blanking on the last time I read the Defender (which I guess I could italicize, for consistency's sake). Affection for it might be another holdover from the old days, like the dogs thing, but this would require more introspection than I'm up to at the moment.

Coffee. I think I shall make more coffee.

There have been edits. They weren't particularly interesting.

[Update: Not that that link actually works at this point. Bastard Delphi. Or Bastard WWWOFFLE, not sure which. Try this one. (Update 2: Or, better still, the message that should have been the original link, but the first attempt at a fix does provide some context for all this)]

See what I mean?

Posted by Aaron at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Over at the invaluable Eschaton , which anyone with manners would have added to the links list ages ago, I noticed the CNN.com transcript of Janeane Garofalo's appearance on Reliable Sources:

[ HOWARD] KURTZ: So why are you putting yourself on the firing line if you feel you are being condescended to?

[JANEANE] GAROFALO: Well, I actually -- it's a drag. I would much rather they talk to Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. I think that would be fantastic, and they certainly know a lot more than I do, but I have access to the media. I have been asked to be on some of these shows, and I for one am not going to let the Bush administration and the mainstream media roll right over me. And I'm not going to go quietly into this war, if we're going into the war, because I vehemently disagree with it and I disagree with a lot of Bush administration foreign policy.

And I feel like if I can give a voice to the millions of Americans who are in the -- who advocate peace and diplomacy, then I feel an obligation to do that.

Guess I could check the Democracy Now archives over at WebActive, or have a look at ZNet -- I'm sure both Chomsky and Zinn have made their opinions on current events clear, but somehow, I've managed to avoid any mentions of them in theliberalmedia. Must be a failing on my part.

Oddly, the first result in a date-sorted Google News search for Howard Zinn is an article in the Montreal Gazette. And the second is from Australia.

I could be tacky and claim the first result for a similar search on Noam Chomsky is also from Canada, but it only mentions him with regards to Mark Achbar, director of Manufacturing Consent.

The first actual mention of Chomsky is from the Guardian.

Insert snarky comment. . . here.

Update: Found at blogdex, there's also a Washington Post article about Janeane's. . . hang on, it's by Howard Kurtz, too. What an amazing coincidence.

But Garofalo isn't kidding when it comes to her disdain for the media: "These same corporate entities have an interest in war, have an interest in profiting from war. They represent corporate America. Corporate America dictates the news we are getting."

Does she really believe that anchors and correspondents are just following company orders? Too many, she says, "are willing to be a mouthpiece for the establishment and for White House propaganda."

While Garofalo believes Saddam Hussein is a menace -- but that U.N. weapons inspectors should be given more time -- she also tosses around the word "imperialism" and declares that "this is a manufactured conflict for the sake of geopolitical dominance in the area.

"There is no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. You never even get that idea floated in the mainstream media. If you bring it up, they hate the messenger. You've ruined everyone's good time."

Saying that some/many anchors and correspondents are "mouthpiece[s] for the establishment and for White House propaganda" isn't the same as saying they're "following company orders," in case that's unclear in the quoted bit.

Could'a sworn Dan Rather said something along those lines, but that was many, many news cycles ago, and hardly worth mentioning today.

Posted by Aaron at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Specifically, what he said in this entry about this article:

''A well-ordered multiracial society ought to allow its members free entry into and exit from racial categories,'' [Randall] Kennedy contends [in his latest book, INTERRACIAL INTIMACIES: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption], and his exploration of racial passing makes for compulsive reading.

Amazing. The more times I read that quote from Kennedy, the less sense it makes. Possibly because I think in a well-ordered multiracial society, no one would particularly care about racial categories.

It goes without saying that the US is not currently a well-ordered. . . okay, maybe it depends on how you define "well-ordered." If you mean segregated, there are some statistics suggesting that yes, it is, especially in Northern cities.

[A]bandoning his evenhandedness, Kennedy presents a one-dimensional account of the problem posed by half a million children in foster care, many of them black. Repeatedly -- and misleadingly -- he calls them ''parentless children.'' And he advocates their rapid, race-blind redistribution to adoptive homes that would be predominantly white, arguing that this would benefit both the children and American race relations.

Kennedy seems untroubled that these children's own parents are overwhelmingly poor and politically powerless, and that the new ones he seeks for them would be more affluent. Absent is any mention of recent cases in which courts found children had been wrongly removed to foster care because their mothers were battered, homeless or ineligible for public assistance. Nowhere is it more apparent that Kennedy's vision of a race-blind society has a blind spot for economic inequality.

Which is the other problem I had with that first quote. There's a long history of black people passing for white because, until fairly recently, our society didn't bother pretending there was equality between racial groups. Comparing that to a white person today deciding he or she would derive all sorts of affirmative action or tribal benefits from claiming to be black or Indian is. . . just a wee bit misguided.

And possibly not what Kennedy intended to say; I'd have to read the book to be sure, and I still haven't got 'round to his previous tome, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word.

I've had opportunities to do so.

I haven't taken them.

This can safely be assumed to indicate my complete lack of interest in doing so.

Bonus round: Looking for census information to back up that offhand remark about segregation, up came Color lines are fading in city neighborhoods, from my sister's former employer, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Early last month, the Los Angeles Times flew a reporter here to research a story about the high rate of segregation in Milwaukee.

The newspaper would have been better off covering its own metro area, considering the results of a new study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute. Metro Milwaukee ranks 43rd on the UWM study in the level of black-white integration - far ahead of Los Angeles, which ranks 89th out of 100.

Insert griping about restricting this to "black-white". . . here.

Posted by Aaron at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

From an apparently-not-online column by Larry A. McClellan, in today's The Star:

Charles Lindbergh, in an article in the Reader's Digest in the 1930s, wrote that the ability of whites to fly was "one of the priceless possessions which permit the White race to live well in a pressing sea of Yellow, Black and Brown."

The Star article is actually about aviation history in Robbins, but bastard I am I decided to focus on the quote instead. Which is from an article titled "Aviation, Geography and Race," I found out from a helpful post at Stormfront.org. Thanks, kids!

Anyway, guess who the main terminal at Minneapolis St. Paul airport is named for? No, go on, guess.

But I'm sure Lucky Lindy disavowed his racist beliefs and all that good shit at some point.

Our civilization depends on peace among Western nations, and therefore on united strength, for Peace is a virgin who dare not show her face without Strength, her father, for protection. We can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races.

He just sounds like an early warblogger in this particular article, is all.

I mean, Minnesotans would never go around naming stuff after an unrepentant. . . sorry, can't even finish typing that.

No reason to act like it only happens in Minnesota, after all. Isn't there a move to get something named after the late President Reagan in every state?

Wait, Reagan is dead, right?

And if not, why the fuck not?

Posted by Aaron at 6:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Sorry, but I can never remember what that actually stands for. Drug Abuse Resistance Education, according to the registration-required Chicago Tribune story, Now many `just say no' to DARE in schools:

Chicago Ridge dropped DARE last year because after 13 years of DARE education there was no corresponding decrease in drug arrests in the community, Police Chief Tim Balderman said.

"In fact, we had an increase in arrests, all DARE graduates," he said. "I can't tell you how many kids told me DARE introduced them to drugs. The problem with DARE, other than that it's a multimillion dollar conglomerate in the business of selling T-shirts, is that it takes the burden off parents to raise their kids."

Okay, maybe it does really stand for that after all.

The piece is about how the program is losing funding, since it doesn't seem to be having the desired effect.

In 2001, a National Research Council report commissioned by the White House surveyed research on DARE and concluded the program has "little effect" on kids' drug use. That same year, a report from the U.S. surgeon general's office concluded DARE has "little or no deterrent effect on substance abuse."

A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study published last month in Prevention Science concluded not only that DARE was ineffective, but also that it is "not a very good use of taxpayer money."

They should add some faith-based stuff. That's seen as a good use of taxpayer money these days, right?

And I'd written something snarky about Not Me, Not Now a few days ago, but couldn't bring myself to actually post it.

But I'm certain that they're just as good at keeping teenagers from having sex as DARE is at keeping them off drugs.

Posted by Aaron at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sorry, lots of running around today. And because I ain't gank that code from Anil like Jason did, lots of random stuff gets tossed into one entry instead.

First off, in the "sucking-up-to-Ginger Department," a story about the Angouleme International Festival of Comics Art, by Heidi MacDonald, at Comicon.com's Pulse.

The 30th annual Angouleme International Festival of Comics Art kicks off today and runs through Sunday. Attended annually by over 100,000 enthusiasts (they don't call them fans over there), this is generally considered the finest comics related show in Europe, and probably the world. Comics take over the entire own, with fabulous art installations all over the city, signings, and socializing, but all at a continental pace. Guests include the stars of comics worldwide, usually including a small but doughty American faction.

And there'd be something here about the larger audience for and more diverse content of comics in other parts of the world, possibly with a link to Matt Fraction's Poplife column at Comic Book Resources and a mention that I only read the column because somebody quoted a bit of it in a BAD SIGNAL mailing, but, again, rush job this. Make with the clicking.

Also comics-related, because it's a comic, get your war on | page eighteen. The last few would have been appropriate to mention the 22nd, if I'd been talking about that thing I wasn't talking about.

And everyone saw the link to English-language sample pages from Marjane Satrabi's Persepolis that Rostam posted a few days back, yes?

Huh. Hadn't meant to do a comics-centered entry. Maybe I should change the title and edit that first paragraph to reflect this.

Maybe I should hit the "Save" button and start collecting books for the trip to Powell's Bookstores Chicago. . .

Quick update (because really, I'm assembling a huge pile of books, not looking at people's sites): I actually wrote this yesterday, which was cartooning-slash-comics day at VASpider's as well.

Strange Coincidence, that. Will have to discuss that with Naked Tiny when we have lunch in Minneapolis in a week or two think about that. . .

Posted by Aaron at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (1)

Specifically, the use of language in political debate.

A brief, explanatory digression to begin: me younger sis told me about driving one day, tuning the radio to what she thought was NPR, and realizing with a shock that this was definitely not the case when the announcer calmly used the word "abortionist" in a story.

Yep, Christian radio station, hiding out at the lower end of the dial along with the public and college ones. You can usually spot 'em within a few minutes because of little things like that.

So, because I am a glutton for punishment, I searched Google News for the word abortionist, today of all days. Among the results?

You Say Choice, I Say Murder, from Christianity Today. It's actually a blast from the past,

This article originally appeared in the June 24, 1991 issue of Christianity Today.

But if they see fit to repeat it. . .

It is time for prolife advocates to understand the power of words and to go on the offensive. We have got to make our appeal for life, not just to the courts and legislatures, but to the hearts and minds of the American people. We have got to reach that 60 percent in the middle, those who are either uninformed, misinformed, unmoved, or undecided.

We are taking part in a great historic battle—a cultural battle—a social war to define what America is and what human life is as we enter the next millennium. And this battle is being fought not just with legislation and legal argumentation, but with words flowing to and from the public at large.

Why do I always worry when I see the phrase "hearts and minds" used like that?

From 1965 to the present, proabortion communicators have also worked at integrating the right to abortion with the aspirations of the women's movement. Again, they have worked at soliciting public support by using the most inclusive public vocabulary possible. Equal rights and discrimination now pepper the discussion. The newly created concept of "women's reproductive rights" has quickly gained popularity and usurped the fetus's right to life.

I didn't add any emphasis to that. And the sneer quotes are in the original.

There's more, like the usual comparison of abortion with slavery/segregation and "unborn children" with black people -- which is probably quilte illustrative of something, but I'd really prefer not to think about what -- as well as a call from the (presumably, are there women named Guy?) male author that "it must be women who voice the new vision in the public arena," along with this bit:

Meanwhile, prolife advocates have failed to capture public imagination as we make our plea on behalf of the unborn. The Gideon Project abortion-clinic bombings in Pensacola, Florida, on Christmas morning, 1984, show why. Their impact on public memory, as exploited by the rhetoric of abortion advocates, has lasted to this day.

The bombers described their action as being in accord with "God's will" and "a gift to Jesus on his birthday." Such language reinforced the activists' own commitment, but projected a public image of extremism and violence.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that blowing shit up "projected a public image of extremism and violence" more than the language used to justify having done so, but I'm just wacky that way.

There's a bit more info on Pensacola and the extremists in this AP story, in case anyone is masochistic enough to want to know more.

Sorry, don't have a decent conclusion for this. It happens when I get particularly disgusted. You should see the things I don't bother posting at all. . . any road up, another result from that Google News search points to a profile of Dr. Mildred Hanson from the Star-Tribune.

When Dr. Mildred Hanson started practicing medicine in Minneapolis in the 1950s, abortion "wasn't something that was talked about." But she remembers how women would show up in the emergency room, "bleeding like crazy" or feverish from infection, and a nurse would call her for help.

That experience, treating the casualties of illegal abortions, helped transform Hanson's life and career. Today, she's one of the few doctors in Minnesota who perform abortions -- and she campaigns tirelessly to keep the procedure legal.

At 79, Hanson has been thrust into the national spotlight. Her story is featured in a forthcoming documentary, book and traveling exhibition.

Her story -- of bending the law before Roe vs. Wade, and championing abortion rights ever since -- is one of 22 in the multimedia project "Voices of Choice: Physicians Who Provided Abortions Prior to Roe v. Wade."

Link added, obviously. There was another article about Dr. Hanson in City Pages a few years back.

Posted by Aaron at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Tried to see Keith Knight's latest strip at Salon, and was told it was Premium Content. And allowed to view it only after obtaining a Day Pass/cookie by sitting through a four-page Mercedes advert.

I don't even remember which model it was for, but eh. I loves that strip.

This also means I got to read Charles Taylor's glowingly enthusiastic review of "The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex," Salon.com Sex | Finally -- a great sex manual!

To understand the importance of what Winks and Semans have done in "The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex," I ask you to indulge me in a digression and an attempt to place all the varieties of unnecessary sexual guilt in their societal context. And to do that we have to be willing to acknowledge one simple truth: All the talk about our explicit, sexually open society is horseshit. Plain and simple. Horseshit. We are in the midst of a continuing public health crisis and we are still debating whether to provide people at risk with the most basic, lifesaving information. Condom manufacturers cannot get their products advertised on broadcast networks. We are living in a time when theocrats who would be more suited to living under the Taliban than in a free society have the unmitigated gall to call themselves "pro-life" when they push policies that will inevitably result in death, either for women who can't obtain abortions (poor women, of course, since the rich will always have medically safe options) or kids who can't obtain information about birth control.

Suppose some might feel a book review -- especially one about a sex manual -- is no place for political discussion.

These people aren't paying attention.

And tend to drive their Mercedes while chatting on their cell phones.

Oh, and I didn't notice that reference to abortion in the quote, or the nigh-class-warfare context in which it was mentioned, or I wouldn't have quoted that bit, would I? Seeing as I'm Not Talking About That.

Update: How terribly convenient.

What U.S. papers say about abortion, compiled by United Press International, with quotes from the New York Times, Boston Globe, Seattle Post-Intelligencer. . .

Update 2: How terribly convenient.

You can order The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex: The Indispensable Companion to a Happy and Healthy Sex Life from Powell's Books (I'd considered, and tossed, the notion of linking the title to Amazon, having heard yet more unflattering things about 'em lately), along with the R. Gay-approved collection Unruly Appetites, by someone I really owe at least one email at this point. . .

Posted by Aaron at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm Not Writing about the antiwar protests - International ANSWER thing. For a start, because Laura did it better than I possibly could.

And got a visit from Tacitus for her trouble. Always a pleasant experience, that.

I'm also

From a small television screen in the waiting room of the Midwest Medical Center, Dr. Dennis D. Christensen comes off as a cross between a high school biology teacher and a police officer reading the Miranda warnings for the ten-thousandth time.

His eyes never meet the camera as he recites how an abortion is performed, its dangers and the alternatives, like adoption. He offers, as the state requires, that a woman may listen to the heartbeat of her fetus and see it on ultrasound if she likes, that she may withdraw consent up to the moment the abortion is induced, that she has the legal right to continue her pregnancy.

Finally, he looks into the camera and jauntily declares, "This message is brought to you compliments of your anti-abortion, Republican State Legislature."

"That usually gets a smile," he said, watching himself on the videotape.

not writing

J'Vante Anderson is 16, the age her mother was when she had her first child. Growing up in one of Atlanta's poorest neighborhoods, she has seen the cycle: teenage girl has baby, drops out of school, goes on welfare and raises a child who in turn becomes a teenage mother.

"I want to break that cycle," she said, her turtleneck perfectly coordinated with her pink velvet jeans. "I have a life, and I do plan on living it." She does not believe in abortion, so she is choosing abstinence.

Newly 22 and newly married, Allison C. has just had her second abortion in a year, at a clinic near Tacoma, Wash. She does not think of herself as "one of those people" who use abortion as birth control. "But if it is, who cares?" she said.

Thirty years after Roe v. Wade, the rate of abortions has come almost full circle, declining to its lowest level since 1974.

The decline is largely because of a steady decrease among teenagers like J'Vante, who are avoiding pregnancy through birth control or abstinence. Increasingly, the common denominator for women having abortions is poverty. And, like Allison, they are using birth control unevenly at best.

Abortion is taken so much for granted in America today that most women surveyed by a group of clinics in Washington State did not know that it had ever been illegal. The rate of repeat abortions has risen slowly, so that nearly half the women who terminated pregnancies in 2000 had done so at least once before.

about that one issue

Teenage girls in Alabama who want an abortion without a parent's permission must go to juvenile court first, to get permission from a judge.

Some of these girls wind up before Judge Walter Mark Anderson III, a conservative Republican who says he hates abortion — and hates granting such petitions, which waive a state law requiring that at least one parent consent to an abortion for a girl under 18.

[. . .] A few years ago it occurred to Judge Anderson that if he could not stop some girls from having an abortion, he could at least make them reconsider. In 1998, he started appointing a lawyer, known by the legal term as a guardian ad litum, to represent the fetus in each hearing. Now, in his court, and in another of the three juvenile courts in Montgomery County, pregnant girls seeking consent waivers face cross-examination.

that's probably going to be all the rage today. Which is why those links are to stories from a few days back (and the last one was ganked from Eschaton), when I started writing something, and didn't.

Like today.

While we're not on the subject, you could have a look at Carol Lay's Story Minute from yesterday, or today's entry at News Dissector Web Log. Or give a listen to today's Tavis Smiley Show.

Or something.

Update: Sorry, forgot to mention I added emphasis to one of those quotes. Yes, children, this was illegal in the very recent past. If your school districts could afford history texts from the latter half of the 20th century that cover the issue, or the board didn't consist of right-wing twats who demand that any references to abortion be excised. . .

Sorry. Not talking about that.

Or linking an article at Scarlet Letters.

Or explicitly mentioning my position. Take a guess.

Update: changed the previous link, which had been to an article at Scarleteen, to one written for a more mature readership. Figure there aren't many younger people reading this site.

And would like to maintain that illusion, thanks.

Posted by Aaron at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Giles goes for the gold (or at least the buck fifty) with One Hundred Fifty Short Posts About Whatever the Hell He Wants.

For example, in Number 93

Fuck medieval -- let's get Darwinian.

He writes, regarding Rev. Sharpton joining the race for President.

"I think that the campaign that we are beginning to officially embark upon will change American politics," the civil rights leader said at a news conference after filing campaign papers at the Federal Election Commission.

Sharpton, 48, said he was the only candidate who was "anti-war, anti-death penalty, anti-tax cut across the board." Sharpton said he would reach out to disaffected voters, including Latinos, blacks, gays and lesbians, and young people.

Think that ranking is in order of importance -- or at least numbers -- seeing as Hispanics Now Outnumber Blacks As Largest U.S. Minority roup, Census Bureau Reports:

Hispanics now comprise nearly 13 percent of the U.S. population, which grew to 284.8 million in July 2001. That's up from 35.3 million, or 12.5 percent of the country's 281.4 million residents in April 2000.

Blacks make up 12.7 percent of the nation's population, up from 12.6 percent in April 2000. The black population grew by 700,000 in the 15 months after the census was released.

Whites remained the largest single population group, numbering about 199.3 million in July 2001, nearly 70 percent of all U.S. residents.

Asians are the next largest minority group after blacks and Hispanics, at about 12.1 million, or 4 percent of the population.

Want to know more? Check out the press release, Census Bureau Releases Population Estimates by Age, Sex, Race and Hispanic Origin.

Bonus round (subject line related): Five Technically Legal Signs for Your Library.

Posted by Aaron at 5:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (1)

Like the overwhelming majority of black people, I ain't vote for this clown:

"As we remember the dream of Martin Luther King, and remember his clear vision for a society that's equal, a society full of justice, this society must remember the power of faith," Bush said. "This government of yours must welcome faith, not discriminate faith, as we deal with the future of this great country."

That's the President, from his remarks at First Baptist Church of Glenade yesterday. I pulled that from The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, but it's an AP story, you can find it pretty much anywhere.

Not sure what to say about this version, from SunSpot.net:

The president took the opportunity to pitch his plan to open more federal funding to faith-based charities that provide social services. "This government of yours," Bush said, "must welcome faith, not discriminate [against] faith, as we deal with the future of this great country."

Since it seems like sticking the "[against]" in there doesn't make it clear that the original text wasn't quite English, and may not be what Bush intended.

I'm not sure what he intended. And he seems to have forgotten not only that there is separation of church and state in this country, but why such was considered a Good Idea.

Anyway. Complete text at the State Department, if you're interested.

It is fitting that we honor the life of a great American in a church who derived his inspiration from the church. It is fitting that we honor this great American in a church because, out of the church comes the notion of equality and justice. (Applause.) And even though progress has been made, Pastor -- even though progress has been made, there is more to do. There are still people in our society who hurt. There is still prejudice holding people back. There is still a school system that doesn't elevate every child so they can learn. (Applause.) There is still a need for us to hear the words of Martin Luther King, to make sure the hope of America extends its reach into every neighborhood across this land.

You can finish up playing "find-the-(agentless)-passives" in the text. I got bored after adding emphasis to a few, myself.

Maybe it's impressive out loud, and the speechwriter made a stylistic decision to phrase things like that. I expect I could look for audio of the remarks to check.

Yep.

Might could do that.

Posted by Aaron at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Had to use Google News to find this story from yesterday, for crying out loud.

Belafonte: Apathy betrays MLK:

In the days before he was assassinated, "Dr. King looked troubled,'' Belafonte said. "He said, 'Harry, we fought long and hard to end the laws of segregation that were so cruel and oppressive ... we're now in the midst of our struggle for integration, and in this moment I have come to a deep and troubling suspicion, and it is that I think we are integrating into a burning house--and it troubles me that I am leading us there."

Belafonte said he asked King: "'What would you have us do?'

"He said: 'Become firemen.' ''

Saw on some conservative blog or other -- don't particularly feel like wading through the morass to find the reference, but if anyone recognizes this, let me know -- where some child said he didn't know what MLK would think of current events, and neither did anyone else.

Which struck me as incredibly arrogant, since, you know, the people who actually worked with King might, possibly, have some small inkling, or at least a damn sight more than whoever wrote that. Even I'm willing to go out on a limb and say the activist for nonviolent social change would probably be in favor of nonviolent social change. Which makes any reference to him by the people who don't bother disguising their enthusiasm for war sound a wee bit disingenuous.

To me, anyway.

Had to find the Sun-Times writeup of Belafonte's appearance at St. Sabina's to find that quote; other news sources seemed far more interested in his statements about Powell. Nothing sells papers like a good feud, I suppose, but this doesn't strike me as a feud period.

Didn't notice them quote this bit either:

Despite America's flaws, [Belafonte] said: "I still think we're the best game in town.''

Doesn't fit the narrative they're constructing, I suppose.

Anyway.

Atrios quoted bits of Letter from a Birmingham Jail yesterday, as did Oliver. Linking/quoting from The Black Commentator (which in turn links to Peace Race), Dru has a bit of the overlooked-by-the-right-wingers speech, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence."

And there's a bit of "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" up at MediaChannel.org | News Dissector, in yesterday's entry.

Oh, and Darmon has a graphic, and the words:

Remember the Legacy.
Live the Dream.

I am debating whether it's worth the minimal effort involved in asking what the fuck he means by that.

Update: Well, thanks to s. melmoth for pointing to the source of the annoying sentiment, Will Wilkinson:

Am I the only one who finds it distastefully presumptuous to invoke Martin Luther King's memory for the anti-war cause? I have no idea what the man would have thought of our present situation, and I doubt others are in a much better position.

And then there's a bit about how he "think[s] MLK was a far more intelligent man than [Jesse] Jackson is, had a more independent mind, and a far more developed and discerning moral sensibility."

I'd ask the little shit how old he is, and how he felt about MLK while the man was alive if that's applicable, but again, there's that whole not giving a fuck issue to deal with first.

Bonus round: The Methods of Surveillance: Martin Luther King Jr.'s investigation by the FBI is still debated:

The FBI first investigated King and the [Southern Christian Leadership Council] in the late 1950s under its "racial matters” group. But it wasn't until 1963 that it wiretapped him, after it discovered that King's most influential white adviser was lawyer and businessman Stanley D. Levison.

FBI informants called Levison a key financier of the Communist Party USA and the FBI opened a probe of him, breaking into and bugging his home.

Because of Levison's close relationship to King, the 1977 Justice task force found the FBI was justified in initially placing wiretaps on King under rules then in place. But it said the FBI should have quickly pulled the plug because what he was doing was constitutionally protected activity.

Instead, the FBI retained the taps and illegally bugged King's hotel rooms to gather embarrassing personal information about his marital infidelities. Then the FBI used that information to smear King and even to suggest to him that he commit suicide.

Guess I could say something about the guilt-by-association stuff being tossed out regarding ANSWER in this context, but that would just be mean. . .

Posted by Aaron at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Odd. PBS' site is acting up this morning. . .

I didn't watch The Murder of Emmett Till last night on Network Chicago/Channel 11. There's a write-up at TV Barn if you're having the same problems getting through. . . I did see Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, though, which also got the Steve Rhodes treatment.

Source of the Quote of the Day at Ronn's, it was. And also of lots of things I really should have known or remembered, but didn't, because I suck. F'r instance:

1. Odetta (who's still working) performed at the March on Washington, as did Mahalia Jackson. Oddly, I did remember that Bob Dylan and Joan Baez did, but I'll evasively blame this on selective, um, selecting of footage by the editors of the usual summaries. Hadn't realized there was that much footage of the thing, to be honest.
2. France "carried out its first atom bomb test in the Sahara Desert of Nigeria" in 1960, and Rustin was part of a group headed to the site to protest. They didn't make it, and the test was performed, but somehow I don't recall ever reading about this. The ones in the Pacific, yes, but not one in Africa. No evasions here; I just suck.
3. No matter how much I suck, Strom Thurmond will always be suckier. The clip of him denouncing Rustin also managed to remind me of similar statements made not so long ago by some conservative rent-a-quote guy or another. Do the people paying them know they're getting pre-driven quotes?

Off to read the Hentoff pieces linked to in the TV Barn write-up. I'm sure they'll annoy the hell out of me -- Hentoff excels at that for some reason -- so best to post this beforehand.

Posted by Aaron at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

I spent part of yesterday finishing up George M. Fredrickson's Racism: A Short History. Well, trying to; haven't read all of the appendix yet. The prose style makes for slow going at times, but I'm hardly one to talk, seeing as mine is even worse. . .

You can read the Introduction at the Princeton University Press pages for the book, if you're interested.

The aim of this book is to present in a concise fashion the story of racism's rise and decline (although not yet, unfortunately, its fall) from the Middle Ages to the present. To achieve this, I have tried to give racism a more precise definition than mere ethnocentric dislike and distrust of the Other. The word "racism" first came into common usage in the 1930s when a new word was required to describe the theories on which the Nazis based their persecution of the Jews. As is the case with many of the terms historians use, the phenomenon existed before the coinage of the word that we use to describe it. But our understanding of what beliefs and behaviors are to be considered "racist" has been unstable. Somewhere between the view that racism is a peculiar modern idea without much historical precedent and the notion that it is simply a manifestation of the ancient phenomenon of tribalism or xenophobia may lie a working definition that covers more than scientific or biological racism but less than the kind of group prejudice based on culture, religion, or simply a sense of family or kinship.

Eschewing (note to self: never use the word "eschewing" again) the Racism = Power + Prejudice formulation, Fredrickson does maintain that only when differences between one group and another are seen as innate and unchanging, and used to justify unequal treatment of one group by another, should the term racism be applied. If that sentence makes any sense whatsoever. Basically, though, "mere" dislike of the Other doesn't rise to the level of racism, nor is the term generalized to apply to other forms of bigotry such as religious intolerance.

Antisemitism is included, concentrating on state-sanctioned discrimination and the notion of ethnicity/ancestry rather than religious difference. Again, if that makes sense.

Main reason I never went into teaching, right there. Utter inablility to convey complex ideas in bite-sized pieces. And why bother with the simple stuff?

Chapter Three, Climax and Retreat: Racism in the Twentieth Century, starts off with this:

To conceive of racism as a natural and virtually inevitable human response to encounters with strangers or aliens is to take the subject outside of history and into the realm of psychology or sociobiology. But if we continue to think of it as a historical construction associated with the rise of modernity and with specific national or international contexts, we have to conclude that it came to a hideous fruition in the century that has just ended. Its two most persistent and malignant manifestations -- the color-coded or white supremacist variety and antisemitism in its naturalistic or secular form -- both reached their logical extremes. White supremacy attained its fullest ideological and institutional development in the southern United States between the 1890s and the 1950s, and in South Africa between the 1910s and the 1980s, but especially after 1948. Antisemitism of course reached its horrendous climax in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. Several historians have made comparisons between the two versions of legalized white supremacy, but none to my knowledge has attempted in any systematic way to compare either or both with what the Nazis did to the Jews. All of these racist regimes have been overthrown, and the ideologies on which they were based have apparently been discredited. But a final issue that will have to be confronted in the epilogue is whether their demise also means that the virus of racism has been exterminated or that it has merely mutated into new and still-virulent forms.

Guess these could be considered leading questions, but since the author is not a pundit, he merely raises them and offers tentative answers, allowing the possibility of rational disagreement. Which might be why I read this rather than any of the blog discussion of MLK, affirmative action, Bush's judicial nominees, antisemitic violence in Europe. . .

Posted by Aaron at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Or category. I should use that category thing in MT. Turned on the autotrackback feature a few days back, after all. . .

From, oh, let's go with The Mercury News: Rice supports some use of race in admissions:

Friday's statement was an unusual foray into domestic policy for Rice, the president's top foreign-policy adviser. For one of Bush's most loyal aides, it also was an uncharacteristic expression of personal views at odds with the official White House line -- which could affect the national debate.

[. . .] Rice [like the President] also opposes quotas, she said in an interview Friday with the American Urban Radio Network.

``There are circumstances in which it is necessary to use race as a factor among many factors in diversifying a college class,'' she said. ``And so I've been a supporter of affirmative action that is not quota-based and that does not seek to make race the only factor, but that considers race as one of many factors.''

Guess asking folks to either specifically define or refrain from using the word "quotas" in this debate is pointless. . .

As for the other member of the administration generally pointed at to demonstrate their inclusiveness and wonderfullness, CNN.com: Powell defends affirmative action:

Calling himself a "strong proponent" of affirmative action, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday he believes race should play a role in university admissions.

"I wish it was possible for everything to be race neutral in this country, but I'm afraid we're not yet at that point where things are race neutral," Powell told CNN's "Late Edition."

"I believe race should be a factor among many other factors in determining the make up of a student body of a university."

[. . .] Powell said he had talked with the president on many occasions about affirmative action and believes him to be "committed to diversity in education," but that Bush felt Michigan's policy went too far.

"It's just that he found that the University of Michigan case did not meet what he believed was a constitutional test," Powell said.

In the past, Powell said he believed the university had a strong case, but he and Rice deferred Sunday to the court to make the final decision.

I'm not sure what "deferred. . . to the court" is supposed to mean. Didn't think Colin and Condi had been planning a military coup, although I'm sure the thought does cross their minds whenever they hear Bush speaking extemporaneously.

I'm also not sure their opinions on this domestic policy issue count for a hell of a lot, given that the administration doesn't seem particularly interested in what they have to say. Maybe it's supposed to be enough that they're permitted to publicly disagree.

You know. Like the thousands of demonstrators yesterday.

On a completely unrelated note, Colour still marks US job market according to a BBC writeup on that University of Chicago/Massachusetts Institute of Technology report from a while back.

Completely unrelated.

Completely.

Posted by Aaron at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (2)

From a (registration required) Chicago Tribune article, For all sides, still no easy `choice' (and if you can't guess what it's about from that title, hang it up and go home now. Please.):

Nationwide, abortion rates have been falling. But the Hope Clinic [in Granite City, IL] -- founded a year after Roe vs. Wade--has been at its busiest in recent years.

Many surrounding states have passed more restrictive abortion laws, many smaller providers have shut down, and abortion opponents have kept up their pressure. As a result, this massive fortress of a clinic now sees patients from 22 states, 7,000 women a year.

It also was one of the first clinics in the country to offer medical abortion--an alternative to surgery, approved in 2000, in which pills induce a miscarriage.

The opposition has changed too. While people still stand outside the clinic with Bibles and placards, trying to stop women from entering, a different kind of activism has sprung up down the road. There, a Christian woman runs a center for those who have decided to continue their pregnancies.

The patients at Hope range in age from 11 to 56 and come from all racial, economic and religious groups. "The only thing they all have in common is that they're pregnant," says Allison Hile, who has worked there for 23 years.

Well, they'are also all women. Which point seems obvious, but might be lost on Daniel Michael:

Just as dedicated and just as strong-willed [as the people actually working in the clinic] are the Michael family, who stand outside the clinic bearing poster-sized photographs of mangled fetuses and wearing T-shirts that say "Abortion is homicide."

All of the women who entered had to pass the family. The Michaels do not threaten the women, but the patients nevertheless rush into a security booth, sealed by bulletproof glass, where they are cleared to enter the building. Such measures have become a way of life since the early 1980s, when violence started nationally against providers.

In January 1982, the Hope clinic was firebombed less than an hour after closing. Eight months later, the owner, Dr. Hector Zevallos, and his wife were blindfolded and kidnapped, held at gunpoint for eight days. A group known as the Army of God claimed responsibility for the abduction.

Daniel Michael denounces violence, but says he'll do just about anything else to keep women from crossing into the "abortuary."

For 15 to 20 hours each week, Daniel and his wife, Angela, along with their 11 children, ages 5 to 25, plant themselves in front of the clinic.

"Hey, Mommy. Don't do it, Mommy," they shout at the patients, who look away.

Charming.

Also profiled is Kathy Sparks, "the executive director of New Beginnings--a crisis pregnancy center located 10 minutes from the Hope Clinic." She has nothing nice to say about the Michael family:

"I'm embarrassed by what they do," Sparks said. "No one ever changed their mind by being shouted at from a sidewalk."

Which I find admirable. But then she blows it all to hell by saying:

"Years from now, I think we'll look back on abortion in the same way we look at slavery or segregation," Sparks said. "We'll wonder how we possibly could have thought this was ever acceptable."

. . .

I'm sure she didn't mean to compare black people to. . . actually, you know what? I'm sure she did. And wouldn't understand why anyone would find the statement really fucking annoying.

Politics.

Or more accurately, the particular style of political debate in the U.S.

The article ends well, probably because it just has a quote from a patient, one who used RU-486:

Michelle is among the 67 percent of women having abortions who are unwed. Also, the majority of women who have abortions intend to have children in the future. But she didn't want to end up like some of her family members, who had children much too young.

"Accidents happen. I was not ready to make that commitment," she said. "Abortion is your choice. It's your body. It takes you through a lot. I'm still making that choice. Luckily, I still had that choice."

Then, fool that I am, I did a Google search on RU-486.

Don't do that.

Try Mifepristone instead; at least the first result there is the FDA's site, followed by Planned Parenthood. Perhaps I'm deluded, but they're probably just the slightest bit more reliable than why-am-I-even-fucking-linking-it? RU-486.org.

This entry may be heavily edited or vanish entirely in the near future. I really don't see that as a great loss to anyone.

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Listening to Norah Jones perform "Don't Know Why" live on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on WBEZ. Because I am a flake, I hadn't realized who she was for most of the interview/performance. Heard the name, but didn't connect it with anything. I just wondered who the child was.

Everyone sounds like a child compared to Marian McPartland. She's like Studs Terkel that way.

And this is the first I'd heard of Studs' web site. Like I said, flake.

This is from the section/book Race:

For this book Terkel interviewed a cross-section of Americans about their views on race. Though many interviews center in Chicago, people discuss experiences growing up in various locations, their migration experiences from the southern United States, and how they understood racial changes at different points in their lives. Terkel chose to interview people who regularly cross racial lines through their work such as physicians, nurses, and social workers; and those who have to lead others in their thinking such as teachers and preachers. He questioned activists in both national civil rights movements and grass roots assistance organizations. He interviewed students in integrated schools, welfare recipients, and homeowners who watched their neighborhoods change. He frequently inquires if their experience is based on issues of class or issues of race.

Emphasis added, natch.

I'd mention how that last point is crucial in discussing Affirmative Action, but meh. Politics.

Check out the Piano Jazz listing at PublicRadioFan to find out when the show is on in your area, or to stream it from elsewhere. You know the drill.

Posted by Aaron at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

From Voice of America:

President Bush has praised the late Martin Luther King, Junior as "a voice of conscience" whose words and actions continue to inspire courage.

[. . .] Mr. Bush said Dr. King's non-violent activities and contributions serve as reminders that people "should not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Quoting that phrase from the March on Washington speech automatically puts you on my shit list. Just so you know.

Our Lord President already occupies a high position. Jockeying for space at the very top with Lileks, he is.

At least you can make fun of Bush, though. Like the fun-loving scamps at WhiteHouse.org do. I especially liked President Bush Denounces Michigan Admissions Quotas: "Deserving Legacy 'C' Students Are Being Displaced by Uppity Negro Trash!":

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. It's a real pleasure to be here at Malcolm Shabazz High School. You know it's rare that I feel so totally comfortable and safe in the company of this many young coloreds. But then how could I not? Your school lobby has more metal detectors than O'Hare Airport.

Maybe it's possible to spoof Lileks, but I find it hard to even read the man anymore. I tried reading the god-I-hate-the-term "Fisking" of John Le Carré, because Eliot Gelwan linked it at Follow Me Here, and failed miserably, again. Annoying form plus annoying writer? Makes for one unreadable mess, as far as I'm concerned.

Nothing to say about National Sanctity of Life Day, either. Natasha covers the issue pretty well over at the watch, as does Lauren at Soapboxgirls, among many, many others.

And the global protests yesterday?

I sincerely hope no one got their heads kicked in. I don't think massive protests or civil disobedience are effective tools anymore, at least not for instituting large-scale changes. Or rather, for convincing our leaders, elected and unelected, to act in ways the demonstrators would prefer. Policy is too well insulated from politics for that at this point.

That's not all gloom and doom; I specifically said large-scale changes. They might change a few individuals' minds, and community building is always a Good Thing. And it isn't like the Civil Rights Movement mystically transformed the country overnight.

Sorry, heading towards gloom'n'doom again.

Um. Ronn mentioned the new blog from Farai Chideya a few days back. That's something to be hopeful about, I expect.

And there's some decent articles up at Pop and Politics. Not so sure about Yvonne Bynoe's "Reflections on , The New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop":

In his provocative new book, “The New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop,” University of Southern California film professor, Todd Boyd proclaims that the Hip Hop generation has eclipsed the Civil Rights generation as the arbiter of the “Black Experience.” Todd boldly states, “Hip Hop has rejected and now replaced the pious sanctimonious nature of civil rights as the defining moment of Blackness.”

But I'm skeptical about the notion of a, let alone the, "defining moment of Blackness" these days.

Eh. Wrote this last night, but didn't post it. I'd proofread it to make sure the tenses are right -- had to change "today" to "yesterday" in reference to the demonstrations -- but it's hard to work up the enthusiasm.

Basically, what Ginger said.

Posted by Aaron at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

. . . is that this came up searching Google News for Kathy Acker:

Kathleen Hanna's Fire

"I've always felt frustrated listening to a band and dancing, and there's some knucklehead who comes up and says, 'Oh, hey, I love how you dance,'" explains the 33-year-old Hanna, who's been the reigning feminist of the indie-rock scene since it exploded ten years ago. "I think, 'Did I ask for that because I was standing in front having such a good time?' And then, 'Maybe I'll stand in the back and dance,' or 'Maybe I'll stay home and listen to the record and dance in my room by myself.'... It's that sort of feeling that even in leisure time you're still on the clock and being looked at through the male gaze--to turn a little Feminist 101 phrase on you," she adds with a laugh.

Only did a Google search for Kathy Acker because I saw her name listed at Amazon for writing the introduction to Delany's Trouble on Triton.

If you were wondering how I find these things.

And there's always the official Le Tigre site if you wanted to, like, know more.

Like about keep on living:

Since we had recently read our friend Ann Cvetkovic's essay, Sexual Trauma/Queer Memory that talks about the intersections between "Incest, Lesbianism and Therapeutic Culture", it became apparant that KEEP ON LIVING could and should be about both forms of "coming out". Afterall the guilt, the shame,the socail stigma, and the fear of reaching out that many abuse survivors suffer thru is similar to what some kids who come out as gay, lesbian, bi or trans go thru as well.

To take one example.

Update: Forgot to mention that Kathy Acker is one of my favorite authors. And that she shares a birthday (April 18th) with someone who really deserves to get a Violet Wand for hers this year. . .

Posted by Aaron at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well, the magazine is called Black Issues Book Review. . .

The 4th Anniversary Issue is out at newstands, or at least in the library I visited yesterday. For reasons I'm still unclear on, I tried reading the article on Black Erotica, How to Get Your Literary FreakOn:

Not all romance is love, and not all sex is erotic. (And trust me, some of what’s being touted as erotica has surely strayed into what seems more like pornography.) A Supreme Court justice once said something akin to, “I can’t tell you what pornography is, but I know it when I see it.” I agree, and I’ve seen a lot of it lately in the covers of some erotica collections. But I’ll leave that for you to decide. Merriam-Webster defines erotica as “a literary work having an erotic theme or quality.” Sometimes subtle, sometimes bold, erotica is present when the written word arouses sexual desire. No matter how you categorize it, if the number of steamy new releases is any indication, erotic literature is here to stay.

Prominently positioned among popular African-American fiction, new collections are debuting at an astounding rate, with offerings from the sublime to sewer-like. If your libido is stoked by sexually explicit literature, there’s no shortage of books to entertain and entice you.

Um. Yeah.

The piece concentrates on short story collections, starting off with a mention of Erotique Noire and briefly describing a number of more recent anthologies (see the list at the bottom of the page). Seems fairly superficial, even to my dumb ass someone with very limited familiarity with the genre like myself.

Did make me to think about Delany's essay from Dark Matter again, and whether literary segregation of this sort is a positive thing. It does touch (again, briefly) on the mainstream publishers vs. independents issue, and LGBT authors/subject matter is mentioned. Sort'a. If you squint a little.

And Delany himself isn't mentioned, but that might be because he describes The Mad Man and Hogg as pornography rather than. . .

No, said I didn't want to have that discussion here.

Ah, screw it.

Discuss.

Update: I'm such a flake. See Delany's Dirt by Bellona Times' own Ray Davis for more on, um, Delany's dirt.

Smut.

I give up.

Update 2: Jhames, on the other hand, never gives up, and "contribute[s his] voice to the discussion about pornography." With, like, links and definitions and stuff.

Better you than me, pal.

And I'd solicit suggestions from "the creator/pundit of the Pornographic Majority," but let's have a serious, informed discussion instead.

Update 3: Eheh.

One of the things I try to do around here -- and possibly fail at -- is making quite clear that I don't know shit from Shinola.

In fact, I don't know what Shinola is. Let's have a look.

Shinola is a brand of shoe polish available in the USA.

Armed with this information, I find that Shinola is, in fact, no longer manufactured. Which doesn't necessarily mean it's no longer available, so the info from the first link might still be accurate. . .

I also employ ellipses-ending digressions rather than bold statements. Except for that last one.

Hardly punditlike behavior, you must admit. If you want to. Up to you, really.

Anyway, just wanted to make that clear before the hammer came down.

Update 4: Unsurprisingly, Oliver just doesn't get it, claiming Jhames "doesn't offer much in the way of refutation." Which is interesting, since Heather said pretty much exactly the same thing about his original "Emerging Pornographic Majority" post, but I'm confident Mr. Willis knows much more about such things than either of them. . .

Update 4.25: Maybe I'm trying to cover too much ground with this one entry. Ronn links to Mainstream Ahead in Black Publishing, an NYTimes article about, well, the publishing of books by/for black folks. It contains another reference to Zane. I'm starting to think this name should mean something to me.

There's an interesting comment from Lynne there, too.

Meanwhile, Team Murder notes that "Even porn hosts are becoming Linux activists."

And that's it. I'm going to bed.

Posted by Aaron at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (1)

Well, maybe that depends on where you spend the day. From Walter Mosley's An African-American Appeal for Peace:

All this is our responsibility. Every child wasting away under his mother's powerless gaze. Every Muslim burned by a Hindu. Every innocent citizen blown up by a suicide bomber or crushed by an onrushing, revenge-drunk tank. I know we are responsible because US dollars have found their way into, and out of, every battlefield, every hospital bed and every pocket of every terrorist in the world.

We--black men and women in every stratum of American society--live in and are part of an ecosystem of terror. We, descendants of human suffering, are living in a fine mansion at the edge of a precipice. And the ground is caving in under the weight of our wealth and privilege.

The piece appears in the January 27, 2003 issue of The Nation, but has been up on their site for a while; think I saw it linked at BlackElectorate.com, but they're not so much about the archives from what I can tell. . .

What's not seen often are references to the "wealth and privilege" of black people living in the U.S. Well, if you discount the odd conservative/libertarian insistence that we're the richest, most bestest well-off black people on the planet, which is always in the context of telling us to shut the hell up. So, yes, discount.

Something else rarely seen (again, depending on how you spend your time) are references to "we" by black authors. Or maybe I just got used to the McWhorter-style third person technique of black folks writing about black folks for a clearly-presumed white audience.

Or maybe I need more coffee, as this seems particularly half-developed a notion. . .

Posted by Aaron at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The current print edition of Book Magazine has longer, detailed descriptions of their Ten to Watch in 2003, which list includes Suzan-Lori Parks. She's got a novel coming out, in addition to the screenwriting and Pulitzer Prize winning plays.

I'd be very happy for her success, if I wasn't so damned jealous.

Also named, Marjane Satrapi (who I couldn't find a good English-language link for). [Update: wasn't looking hard enough] The name sounds familiar, and she actually looks familiar, but I've no idea why.

And more with the update. From that previous link:

Marjane Satrapi was born in Iran in 1969 in a modern family. When she was fourteen years old, she was sent to Vienna, to flee the dictatorial regime in Iran. She led a vagrant life for a while, and eventually moved to Sweden where she got married. In 1994, after a divorce, she moved to France. There, she began working on her autobiographical graphic novel 'Persepolis'. It was published by L'Association and became an instant success. Not only was this the first Iranese comic ever, she designed it especially to tell people about the real Iran, beyond the prejudices that surround a dictatorship. Marjane Satrapi has planned to release 'Persepolis' in four parts. Besides a comic artist, she is also a writer and illustrator of children's books.

That's her entry from Lambiek Comiclopedia, "an illustrated compendium of over 3400 international comic artists with biographies and artwork examples." Lambiek itself "is Europe's oldest and most famous antiquarian comic shop. Located in Amsterdam, Lambiek has a huge selection of old and new comics in many languages and is a hallmark in the world of comics."

I'd never heard of them before, naturally, because I suck.

More information (in Italian) and a sample page (with French text) in them link thingees you just read.

Posted by Aaron at 6:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Insight into Bardo, from Giles. And (today, at least) thoughts on meditation, from Daily Dharma/Jon Kabat-Zinn:

Every time you get a strong impulse to talk about meditation and how wonderful it is, or how hard it is, or what it's doing for you these days, or what it's not, or you want to convince someone else how wonderful it would be for them, just look at it as more thinking and go meditate some more. The impulse will pass and everybody will be better off—especially you.

I don't think I meditate nearly as often as I should, but probably shouldn't talk about that, either.

I'm also never sure how/if to talk working with Heather. Seems to go against the main theme of the place, you know? "Our supposed leaders are idiots, the Earth is doomed, and oh, there's a new gallery of erotica photos up at my paramour's site."

I'm also not sure how to include that on my resume, which should at least be updated to reflect that I no longer live in Minneapolis. . .

Sorry, thinking out loud. And avoiding writing anything about that business with Shaq and Yao Ming (something else the Good Twin mentioned recently).

Posted by Aaron at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBacks (0)

http://www.authenticallyblack.com/

It's the site for McWhorter's new book.

It advised me to "[l]ook for John McWhorter on `The O'Reilly Factor' on Friday, January 24th," and gives a heads-up on an appearance at 57th Street Books in Chicago on Wednesday, February 3rd, along with a few other media appearances.

There's also an excerpt:

As we passed into the 1980s and 1990s, the black presence on television increased so incrementally that had I been born later, it would have been impractical to try to catch everything blacks did on the tube. In the 1950s, a white racist could be content that he or she would only catch blacks on television in the very occasional series, a few supporting roles, scattered variety show appearances, and one-shot dramatic productions a racist could easily refrain from watching. Today, blacks are so numerous on television in all of its genres, and represented in such a wide sociological and psychological range, that the same racist would feel inundated by blacks every time he or she turned on the set, incensed at how sympathetically blacks are portrayed and how intimately they interact with whites.

I'm sure the actual book has, like, statistics and stuff. Because I could'a sworn I read somewhere that characters and viewing patterns were actually becoming more segregated of late.

Seeing as I only watch Buffy (currently, one black supporting character) and Angel (Gunn is a lead), and just realized that a) I've fallen into the trap of only thinking about this in terms of white & black, ignoring other people of color and b) *spoilers* they apparently killed the Korean guy on Angel last night, dammit, I shall have to give these matters more thought.

And have a look at the Daniel Dae Kim interview that WHEDONesque linked a few days back.

Posted by Aaron at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (1)

Finally got 'round to wandering around other blogs and comments sections. Unsurprisingly, Giles the Good Twin (whose permalinks hate me) isn't terribly impressed with John McWhorter, either. Also, in comment for that entry, my stalker/fan club president Dru mentions the article Resisting Erase-ism on the 'Net by Eleanor Russel Mason, which I can't remember if I saw/linked to before:

While these advertisement campaigns promote free-form interaction, exploration, and escapism (which can be desirable), they also fall in line with the growing social approach to dealing with racism, sexism, ageism, and other isms. Rather than continue confronting actual institutional inequities currently perpetuated in modern society, contingents of people like to purport we've "gone far enough." It is as if society has hit a mental wall with discussing how to deal with prejudice. The metaphor I like to use is trying to sit on Pandora's Box, afraid to let any more issues escape. This maneuver leaves society with only the infinite numbers of social problems that have been surfacing in the last several decades. In addition to trying to physically reverse civil rights achievements (like trying to eliminate Affirmative Action programs), claiming there is no need for special treatment anymore, there is great deal of lip-service given to the theory of color-blindness, or what I like to call the, "Oh, I didn't even notice you were a Chicano lesbian female" philosophy.

Bad on me if I didn't. See the article to find out which advertisement campaign she's talking about; I couldn't think of a decent way of editing that in.

Yes, I only make snarky editorial comments while quoting people I don't like. Anyone got a problem with that?

Posted by Aaron at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (1)

Over at artbomb.net, senior comics analyst Daniel Schorr Warren Ellis pens a review of Get Your War On: The Graphic Novel:

If you thought that Bill Maher actually had something to say about 9/11, this book will hurt your poor weak little brains. So you should probably buy this anyway, to find out what dissenting speech in comedy actually sounds like.

Which review is noted, along with much, much more, over at his blog sort of affair, Die Puny Humans.

And everyone has already heard about William Gibson's blog by now, right? Mentioned at Team Murder among other places ages ago. . .

Posted by Aaron at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

1. Drink Before the War, by Sinéad O'Connor, from The Lion and the Cobra.
2. Not a War from Emira at Soapboxgirls.
3. The Unseen Gulf War by Peter Turnley at The Digital Journalist.

Last link found at Sanitized War Redux, an ongoing discussion at Plastic. There was also a story on NPR back on Sunday. In the introduction to the photo gallery, Mr. Turnley writes:

The photographs that I made do not, in themselves, represent any personal political judgment or point of view with respect to the politics and the right or wrong of the first Gulf War. What they do represent is a part of a more accurate picture of what really does happen in war. I feel it is important and that citizens have the right to see these images. This is not to communicate my point of view, but so viewers as citizens can be offered a better opportunity to consider the whole picture and consequences of that war and any war. I feel that it is part of my role as a photojournalist to offer the viewer the opportunity to draw from as much information as possible, and develop his or her own judgment.

I'm not entirely convinced that the decison to display or hide those images isn't a political one. I also don't quite understand why the right wing gleefully celebrates when they learn the government has successfully deceived the media, since, you know, that's meant to be how those of us in the citizenry get informed.

Then again, I don't think theliberalmedia is particularly liberal, either. But that's arguing premises again, and that way lies madness.

Posted by Aaron at 2:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A reader who shall remain nameless emailed me a link to Salon.com Books | Another shade of black, featuring an interview with John McWhorter. In response to a question about the Trent Lott (Natalie) imbroglio and the Republican reaction to same, he says in part:

They don't want to be seen as racist because that detracts votes from them, especially those of female, middle-class votes apparently. [All the Women Are White; All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave - Ed.] It's not that Republicans are so in love with black people that they were bleeding about what Lott said. But they think of black people as a potential source for untapped votes, and Lott was standing in the way of that. As far as I'm concerned, and this is a big theme of mine, I'm not interested in white people loving me. It's an unrealistic expectation. Black people don't love anybody but themselves.

Think my main problem with the man is disagreeing with some of his basic premises (like the above, that "[b]lack people don't love anybody but themselves,", which is an obvious untruth), so there's not much point trying to argue any of his conclusions, which are based on those. . . have I written this before? I'd swear I've written these exact words before.

Either way, bored now.

I did appreciate the link, though, and have removed the Cunning and Subtle spamblock from the email address over yonder, if anyone else wants to send something along.

Several people I enjoyed hearing from have mentioned encountering problems sending me mail, but the spam has been arriving just fine.

Posted by Aaron at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

So, a few days back, Ronn mentioned the upcoming (Janurary 20th, check your local listings) broadcast of Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin. This week's (print) edition of Time Magazine features a column from, of all people, Andrew Sullivan, about Mr. Rustin. Standard stuff; he mentions that "Rustin went to New York City and, unfortunately, dabbled in Communist Pary activity before quitting in disgust in 1941." This is self-evidently unfortunate, so I'm not sure why I bothered adding emphasis. . .

There's also a bit where he writes:

Rustin never wavered in his belief in true racial integration. He saw the civil rights movement not as a protest against America or an indictment of it but as a way for America to live up to its own principles. In stark contrast to Malcolm X [you may now boo the villain - Ed.], with whom he civilly debated, Rustin emphasized not what white Americans owed blacks or what blacks could do in a separist ghetto [let it go, just. . . let it go - Ed.] but what blacks could contribute in a truly equal and integrated America. "I believe the great majority of the Negro people, black people, are not seeking anything from anyone," Rustin told [I said let it go - Ed.] Malcolm X in 1960. "They are seeking to become full-fledged citizens." The simplicity of that statement is as impressive as its moral clarity.

Luckily, the official site for Brother Outsider includes a Resources page, and one of the links there (A selection of writings by Bayard Rustin) includes the full text of Bayard Rustin Meets Malcolm X.

The response (from, it should be pointed out, Pre-Mecca Malcolm)?

Well, Mr. Rustin, let me say this about "full-fledged" or as they say "first-class" citizenship. Most of the so-called Negro leaders have got the Negro masses used to thinking in terms of second-class citizenship, of which there is no such thing. We who follow the Hon. Elijah Muhammad believe that a man is either a citizen or he is not a citizen. He is not a citizen by degree. If the black man in America is not recognized as a first-class citizen, we don't feel that he is a citizen at all. People come here from Hungary and are integrated into the American way of life overnight, they are not put into any fourth class or third class or any kind of class. The only one who is put in this category is the so-called Negro who is forced to beg the white man to accept him. We feel that if 100 years after the so-called Emancipation Proclamation the black man is still not free, then we don't feel that what Lincoln did set them free in the first place.

Which slightly undercuts that "moral clarity" Sullivan seemed so impressed with, I think.

The end of the piece includes something about how Rustin "had every right to be inflamed against the white establishment," but wasn't. Think I saw something similar in a piece about Mamie Till Mobley. If I was in a slightly worse mood, I'd point out that conservative & libertarian white folk only concede that right to people who refrain from exercising it. . .

Update: Almost forgot, the title of Sullivan's essay is "The `Invisible Man,'" and the first sentence reads, "He was, to purloin Ralph Ellison's phrase, the `Invisible man' of the civil rights movement." Which suggests to me that Sullivan never actually read Invisible Man (Dru, you re-read the novel recently, yes?). Seeing as the nameless lead character actually does get involved in a/the civil rights movement, and the Communits, if I remember a'right.

First read the book when I was 14 or so, and Woefully Ignorant of a Great Many Things. It's been about ten years since I re-read it, so maybe I should give it another go.

Oh yes, and none of this should be taken as a condemnation of Bayard Rustin, but rather of Sullivan's rather biased interpretation of the man and his place in history. Figure this point should be obvious, but I seem to have a very different definition of this word than most. . .

Posted by Aaron at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Being an instrumental track on Over the Rhine's cd Good Dog Bad Dog.

I have no idea where my copy of the thing is, of course. Don't think I would have tried selling it before I moved. . .

As Heather and Hanne (guess I should change that link over yonder at some point. . .) mentioned, t'was my birthday yesterday. Today's gift, a copy of last Tuesday's Buffy from Vibe correspondent and man-about-town Jason of NegroPlease.com. I'd use his nickname, but neither remember the last time I watched Angel, nor am I sure when the WB has moved the show to.

Senior moments. Annoying little things. I'll have a look at their site

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160 men and four women, according to the cover story in yesterday"s Chicago Sun-Times, plus three men who "received reduced sentences that could allow them to be released shortly."

The NAACP released a statement on the commutations, saying in part:

Congratulations to outgoing Illinois Gov. George Ryan for his brave action in pardoning four men forced to confess to crimes they did not commit and commuting to life in prison the sentences of 167 others on Illinois' death row. Ryan was convinced by evidence demonstrating the fallibility of the criminal justice system, where racial prejudice and human error can and do decide who lives or dies.

Still not that interested in domenstic reaction, to be honest. It's following some failry predictable lines, from what little I've read. I'm sure a little digging would bring up prosecutors and victims' families supporting the move, but why introduce needless complications to the narrative?

Almost tried listening to today's Democracy Now! on KFAI (since it's not broadcast locally), but I just reinstalled Debian over the weekend, and haven't got 'round to getting the sound recognized again. Remember, kids, back up the /etc directory before you do that sort of thing. . .

Update: And try checking Debian Help (one of the many fine links at Team Murder) if you don't, as they answer the musical question, "How Do I Setup Sound in Debian?"

Well, it doesn't have to be music you're listening to, but. . . never mind.

Short answer: apt-get install sndconfig.

Posted by Aaron at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

There are several articles on the page, all related to the top one, Young Africans Reject Genital Mutilation:

When Genet Girma and Addisie Abosie got married in Kembatta, Ethiopia, they did the unthinkable in their community. Genet wore a placard saying "I am not circumcised, learn from me" and her groom wore a matching one that said "I am very happy to be marrying an uncircumcised woman."

During a recent visit here, Genet talked about being the first known woman in Kembatta to marry in public who had refused the mutilation to her genitals that is considered a rite of passage for all girls and young women in that part of Ethiopia. Between the ages of 16 and 18, young women in that region are subjected to what is known as step-two female genital mutilation: the clitoris, as well as the inner and outer labia, is removed. This type of mutilation is also known as excision.

[Bogaletch Gebre, founder and director of the Kembatta Women's Self-Help Center], who herself was mutilated when she was 6 years old, was emphatic on the need for women's groups across the world to speak out against the practice and not mince words in deference to cultural relativism.

"When culture affects one's human integrity, when it violates it be it in terms of gender or in terms of ethnic group, I think that culture should be condemned because whenever one individual is affected, denied that right of whole being, denied of their integrity and human right, we're diminished as people wherever we are," Gebre said.

That's from Women's Enews, another site I've not been to lately. Think I remember why, now.

Medicaid for Medically Necessary Abortions Denied

The Texas Supreme Court ruled recently that the state can refuse to pay for women's medically necessary abortions.

Women with diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other conditions can experience severe complications as a result of pregnancy, making abortion medically necessary.

Texas refuses Medicaid payments for such abortions, paying for abortions only in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother's life is in danger.

Always sends me off looking for more information. Like the State Medicaid Abortion Policies page, and then I start wondering about how their map compares to voting patterns in the last Presidential election. . .

Update: Sorry, left out the link to the FGM Fact Sheet over at Equality Now, for those who actually want to know more.

Posted by Aaron at 6:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (1)

And here I almost forgot.

I am not against the men and women serving in the military per se; I am against the way in which they are used by the government to promote the interests of its richest constituents. My doctoral research on U.S. foreign policy also convinces me that when viewed through the lens of the deceptive process of military recruiting, our actions abroad are further exposed as corruptly violent. Furthermore, I have learned that rarely has our military been used for national defense in its 228-year history. We can remember the War of 1812 and WWII as possibly the only national defense wars, but mostly poor young men and women, for the cause of defending the interests of the rich and the politicians, have fought hundreds of other engagements both here and abroad. Every service member contributes their share, which is why I work hard to dissuade anyone from joining the military.

That's from Deceptions in Military Recruiting: An ex-Insider Speaks Out by Chris White, which I found at Liberal Slant while going through my old, sadly neglected bookmarks.

I'd forgotten I was going to try dealing with the VA again. The article does not fill me with enthusiasm about the prospect.

Also found the Daily Dharma link, filed under "News & Politics," for reasons which must have made sense to me at the time.

The First Noble Truth is Dukkha, the nature of life, its suffering, its sorrows and joys, its imperfection and unsatisfactoriness, its impermanence and insubstantiality. With regard to this, our function is to understand it as a fact, clearly and completely.

That'll be changing soon. Hence, Daily Dharma.

There is no relationship whatsoever between these two linked pieces.

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Not much to add to this, really.

Ryan issues blanket clemency (Chicago Tribune, registration may be required)

Gov. George Ryan [Republican; aren't party affilitions usually mentioned when elected officials are written about? - Ed] commuted the sentences of every inmate on Illinois' death row Saturday in an unprecedented action, saying the "demon of error" makes the state's death penalty process immoral.

Ryan's action less than two days before leaving office capped his three-year campaign to reform the death penalty process that began when he declared a moratorium on executions. On Friday, he pardoned four death row inmates who he said were wrongfully convicted.

Some of the men Ryan pardoned were in the audience for his nationally televised speech at Northwestern University law school, during which he framed the death penalty issue as "one of the great civil rights struggles of our time."

Ryan said three years of study since he declared a moratorium on executions in 2000 only raised more questions about the how the death penalty is imposed in Illinois. He cited problems with trials, sentencing, the appeals process and the state's "spectacular failure" to reform a system that has condemned innocent men to die.

"Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error — error in determining guilt, and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die," Ryan said. "Because of all these reasons, today I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates."

[. . .] "Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious — and therefore immoral — I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death," Ryan said.

There was a series in the Trib back in '99 detailing the failures of the system, and Ryan's announcement has already sparked some discussion at Eschaton .

Normally, at this point, I'd have a look around the right-wing blogs to see what damned foolishness they have to say about this, but I can't work up the interest right now.

At a guess, they're going to either maintain the polite fiction that race plays no role whatsoever in the courts, or insist that (all) black people actually support the death penalty, and (all) are opposed to this decision by the outgoing governor, etc.

All without bothering to speak to an actual black person.

The Trib also has a brief write-up on Emmett Till's recently deceased mother Mamie Till-Mobley, Rising from a mother's grief:

If anyone ever had a reason to hate somebody, it was the mother of Emmett Till. Yet Mamie Till-Mobley refused to do that.

Her only child was just 14 when she received word of his racially motivated murder in Mississippi in 1955. The Chicago teen was abducted at gunpoint in the middle of the night from the home of relatives he was visiting near Money, Miss. He was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River, shot in the head, beaten beyond recognition and tied to a 75-pound cotton gin fan. Why? His assailants thought he had whistled at a white woman, breaking an unwritten code of the segregated South.

His face and skull were so badly beaten that he was identified by a ring on his finger that had belonged to his late father.

Emmett Till's murder might not have attracted much more notice than hundreds of similar racial atrocities that preceded it in Mississippi, had his mother, in her anguish and grief, not demanded a glass-topped coffin so that the world could see her son's brutal disfigurement.

Her service was held earlier this afternoon, at Apostolic Church of God.

Her son's alleged killers, last I heard, were still free men.

Further proof that race plays no role in the courts, that.

Posted by Aaron at 4:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1)

From Racism and Science Fiction, by Samuel R. Delany, in Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora:

Racism for me has always appeared to be first and foremost a system, largely supported by material and economic conditions at work in a field of social traditions. Thus, though racism is always made manifest through individuals' decisions, actions, words, and feeings, when we have the luxury of looking at it with the longer view (and we don't, always), usually I don't see much point in blaming people personally, black or white, for their feelings or even for their specific actions -- as long as they remain this side of the criminal. These are not what stabilize the system. These are not what promote and reproduce the system. These are not the points where the most lasting changes can be introduced to alter the system.

References to "the system" obviously harken to Morpheus'/Laurence Fishburne's description of The Matrix, if you're in an SF frame of mind. Which you needn't necessarily be, despite the title of the essay and the volume in which it was (re)printed.

Said volume includes not only this and other essays, but also short stories and novel excerpts by Mr. (Prof.?) Delany, Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, Walter Mosley, Tananarive Due and, as the back cover copy says, "many more," including archvillain Amiri Baraka.

Somewhat ironically, given the focus of the book, the essay goes on to say,

I don't think you can have racism as a positive sytem until you have that socioeconomic support suggested by that (rather arbitrary [placement of walls]) twenty percent/eighty percent proportion. But what racism as a system does is isolate and segregate the people of one race, or group, or ethnos from another. As a system it can be fueled by chance as much as by hostility or by the best of intentions. ("I thought they would be more comfortable together, I thought they would want to be with each other. . .") And certainly one of its strongest manifestations is as a socio-visual system in which people become used to always seeing blacks with other blacks and so -- because people are used to it -- being uncomfortable whenever they see blacks mixed in, at whatever proportion, with whites.

[. . .] As such, [the system] is fueled as much by chance as by hostile intentions and equally by the best intentions as well. It is whatever systematically acclimates people, of all colors, to become comfortable with the isolation and segregation of the races, on a visual, social, or economic level -- which in turn supports and is supported socioeconomic discrimination. Because it is a system, however, I believe personal guilt will never repace a bit of well founded systems analysis.

Oliver mentioned the lack of diversity apparent in photos from a recent get-together of bloggers on the East Coast, where he and Tony (apparently) integrated the place, and Hanne touched on the sort'a-segregation (and general lack) of erotica by people of color in a piece in the recent issue of Bitch (he wrote from notoriously faulty memory rather than hunting down a copy to check, or just writing Hanne to confirm, because that would make sense. . .).

Applying "a bit of well founded systems analysis" to either of those situations -- or tying the two of them together, given the frequent appearances of sexualized text/imagery on Oliver's and Tony's blogs -- might produce some interesting results.

Remind me to try that after a bit more coffee.

And Hanne might'a said smut, not erotica. . . can we not have the erotica/pornography terminological debate here? Thanks.

Instead, um, I know I was going to work a reference to R. Gay into this, but have forgotten precisely how. Any suggestions, so it doesn't look like I'm just pushing Heather's sites for no reason whatsoever?

Posted by Aaron at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (0)

Which song you can hear at Parasol/Mud Records, or purchase at EMusic if you're so inclined.

Got back to The Greater Chicagoland Area yesterday evening. I'm still slowly settling in. Meaning I've not (re)added Ginger to the links over yonder, or caught up with reading her or anyone else's blogs. Or followed the news. But I do think I finally got all the latex off, and that's a definite plus.

Suppose I could write about the trip to Minneapolis to see Heather. Well, write more, at any rate. Or do a review of Rabbit-Proof Fence, with links to relevant historical background. Or explain why fast-growing dreads (recently done at Hair Is. . .) and old driver's license photos are not a good combination when going through airport security.

Why, I could even explain the current site title.

Or not.

Let's go with not for the moment. It's unseasonable warm out.

And my initial idea of doing the whole thing in faux-Prairie Home Companion style has been done already.

It's been a quiet week in Lake Minnesota. Pastor Engquist's wife, Lorna, sat in the hot dish again. This ruined Sunday supper at the church somewhat. But Bjorn Bjornsen went out on his boat, cast his rod, and soon pulled in 1,000 walleye, so everyone was feeling better within a matter of hours.

The regular customers at Ingemarr Johannsen's barbershop, Roy Royquist, Lars Larquist, and Casey Caseyquist, all showed up at the exact same time for their weekly haircuts. Lake Minnesota people, as you know, are patient, and the men alternated snips, one- third of their hair at a time, until they had spent a pleasant afternoon talking about outboard motors, Lutheranism, and Daunte Culpepper's rushing statistics.

Done pretty well, too (and I don't even like Neal Pollack that much), over at McSweeney's, something else I'll have to try catching up on one of these days. . .

Posted by Aaron at 5:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Okay, this stuff? Liquid latex?

When they claim that "moderate body hair" poses no risk of Deep Hurting when you peel it off?

The fuckers lie.

They lie, I tell you.

Far be it from me to deny that Sex is good for you, but remember to take proper precautions.

Like shaving.

Posted by Aaron at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (1)