Bitch. Ph.D.

The Great Recession

2010-02-09T11:23:00.004-08:00

I've repeatedly recommended this blog over on Twitter, but haven't done so Officially on my Own Blog yet.

So, allow me to recommend TheBoxCarKids: a homeless "Mom, 4 kids, 2 dogs and a cat" living in a 26-foot trailer--so maybe not "homeless"; the author prefers "alternatively housed." Apparently over the summer they were living in a tent. In any case, one of the things I like about the blog is the way it raises the question of what "homelessness" actually means--do you have to be living on the street or in a shelter? What if you're living in a motel? Or a tent? Or a travel trailer? Or your car?

One of my favorite recent posts talks about something I've been thinking about myself lately (and was asked by a friend in Minnesota, a financial planner, when I visited there)--what does the recession *look like*? Is there visible evidence of what's happening--and does what people see day-to-day really give those of us who haven't been directly affected by layoffs and foreclosures a sense of what's actually happening?

I ask this as someone who is lucky enough that, if it weren't for Pseudonymous Kid's school and my online friends & acquaintances, wouldn't really notice the economy much beyond what I hear on the news. Mr. B. works for the Department of Defense: his job is about as secure as jobs get. My dad is retired. My mom hasn't worked in years anyway. Mr. B.'s mom is retired. My sister hasn't lost her job, nor have Mr. B.'s siblings or their spouses--he has one brother who is having a really hard time finding employment, having moved to East Lansing, MI, but that might be writeoffable as an anomaly, or as somehow a function of said brother's lack of a college education, if I didn't know better.

Mr. B.'s schoolmates, though, clue me in a little more. Lots of the kids' dads work construction, and I've heard plenty of stories about lack of health insurance, lack of work, money being really tight. I know single moms who are on foodstamps, who are living with their parents. I know families with two jobs who are not-quite-making-ends-meet, families whose kids get pulled out of class to go "shopping" (i.e., the district has a program to give clothes to kids who are below certain income levels), families who have gotten boxes of food donations, also from the school district. Pseudonymous Kid is pretty aware that we are economically fortunate, and that some of his friends aren't--which by the way is one of the things I love most about public schools, the fact that "the less fortunate" aren't just an abstraction or a charity--they're friends.

In any case. You should check out that blog. The author is a displaced professional, obviously well-educated. (You can find out how she ended up homeless in the archives--among other things, it involves a kid with health problems. Quel surprise.) "One of us," as it were. Only, as she points out a lot, the line between "us" and "them" has pretty much vanished. If, indeed, it ever existed.

Mamas, Don't let your babies grow up to spread cervical cancer

2010-02-05T17:36:00.001-08:00

So. Psyched. The HPV vaccine is finally available for boys and men aged 9-26. I've been waiting for this. As soon as our doc has it available, Pseudonymous Kid will be first in line.

Caught Me Dreaming Like A Fool

2010-02-05T15:00:00.003-08:00

I have to tell you, this percocet is the shit.

It takes away the aches and pains, of course. It douses the heat of flayed tissues sliding over each other like fleshy tectonic plates. It tames the sensation of being pulled apart by wild ponies flogged east, west, north, and south.

Unexpectedly, it triggers the most vivid dreams. If I hadn't woken myself up soaking in my own sweat so many times in the middle of these opiated dramas, I would think I was hallucinating. That would really freak me out, though. To have wierd dreams is one thing. To have wierd visions while in the waking state would not be fun, I don't think.

I had a dream, about 2 in the morning, that all my brothers and cousins were sitting round my bed, talking and drinking. I knew everything they were going to say. That made me suspicious right in the middle of the dream and caused me to wake up. That and the liters of perspiration which chilled me.

When I woke up and they had all disappeared, I was struck with a feeling of such loneliness, such profound loss and grief that I couldn't stop myself from crying. And I mean bawling. Deep sobs. I cried so hard that I woke Meche. She came running into the sick room and held me until I got myself together.

Lately, I've found I can kind of direct my dreams. I look forward to many breakthroughs in this area.

I've been dreaming about things that made my happy when I was a kid. Here's one element that keeps recurring in those dreams.

Good times. Never forget them.

Feminist Weddingblogging Update

2010-02-04T18:18:00.003-08:00

I know you guys are like, freaking out, right? Okay, you're not. I'm getting married in about 5 months now. Am I FREAKING OUT?!?!

No.

I think the last time I blogged about the wedding I was faux-arguing with my dude over entrances and cake. And people really wanted to give me advice about entraces and cake. Even though, really, I posted because I thought I'd said something clever. As everyone knows, the whole point of blogging is to increase the number of people who are exposed to the clever things that you say. Duh. Since then, things are moving along swimmingly, with me doing shockingly little. I was worried that everything everyone said would turn out to be true, and I would be FREAKING OUT. And OHMYGOD is everything going to be perfect for MY?! SPECIAL?! DAY?!

So, to plan I have...uhh...looked at dresses online. Uhhh. Looked at some hotels. Asked my dude's parents to take pictures of the place we're getting married in because I don't even know what it looks like. And when B. was on the phone asking for said pictures, his mom started talking about doing X or Y in a different location, and I was thinking, oh god, they think I want the pictures because I want to make sure that it's up to scratch. Nonono. I don't care what it looks like. But since I don't think I'm going to get away with not decorating, I'm going to have to figure out what the decorations will be and it would be nice to know what I'm working with. But no no no it could be a linoleum floor with those styrofoam tiles on the ceiling? And I wouldn't care. I actually would kind of love to not decorate at all but if I don't someone else will and I hate things that are cheesy. Which is, anything involving flowers, anything "romantic", and basically anything thought up by someone who is not me. Of course, I may just end up not caring and not doing anything.

There will be three live bands. There will be a smorgasbord of food from local restaurants. I will not have to do anything on either of these fronts, which is awesome. I hope that no one will ask me about place settings. Because I hope people use paper plates. I want it to be that kind of shindig.

And the cake? I don't know. I think my dude's sister has volunteered to make cake. But there might end up being a ton of people who show up so maybe that would be too much cake for one non-pro to handle. I plan to leave cake ministrations to others.

The one thing that I know will not get taken care of by someone else is the damn dress. Since I don't want a "wedding dress", just a dress, honestly, I just want to buy something off the rack and (maybe, if it needs it) get it altered. I just don't care! Is that wrong? I do not understand the sentiment of brides everywhere that this is your ONE CHANCE to do it EXACTLY HOW YOU WANT and go totally nuts. But the problem is that, being a Woman of Size and all that, I can't find anything suitable. I have found plenty of lovely off the rack dresses in prices I want to pay (read: $100-$200) in straight sizes. Having someone custom-make a dress for me just seems...awfully fussy? And what if I don't like it? And I have shelled out five hundred bucks for something I don't like and a headache? Plus, what if the design I pick is total crap and won't look good on me, but only looks good on the waifish model who's wearing it in the picture? How will I know?

I wish I could just wear a tux. But I don't look that great in menswear.

Here are the things I care about: I want my family to be happy and comfortable. I want everyone I love dearly to be there. I want to not develop any strong opinions about things that don't matter, because that will make me lose my mind.

Should I hire a photographer? I'm torn. On the one hand, it is borderline sacrilege not to. I swear everyone hires one. And I like well-done photography. I like it a lot. But at the same time, it seems like people just end up living for the photos. Like you have to lose weight have the perfect dress get the perfect accessories decorate it just right have your hair done makeup done have a photo session on the beach....FOR THE PHOTOS. Has anyone else noticed how freaky it is that wedding and/or bridal-related websites call the photos "wedding porn"? I mean, really? Porn? I do not get off on it. It only makes me feel anxious. Plus a lot of the photos suck. It's all about celebrating the precious femininity of it. The dress, the heels, the ring, the flowers, the veil, the...vomit.

I kind of don't want to hire a photographer, because I don't want to care how the photos come out. And I will care, if I'm paying someone a bunch of money to take them. Unlike the food. Food is food. As long as it tastes pretty good I will be happy, because people gotta eat. But when things come to my aesthetic sensibilities I can be picky. And consequentially, I don't usually spend much money on things. Not dresses, accessories, shoes, art, furniture. Spending money on things makes me anxious, because I feel like I have to love it. So that's why I don't want to spend a bunch of cash on a photographer or a dress, because I don't want to care that much.

Am I making any sense? Or am I just totally insane?

Can I wear jeans and a tank top to my wedding?

Black History Month

2010-02-04T12:26:00.003-08:00

Long-time readers of this blog may remember that one of my priorities in Pseudonymous Kid's public school education is the importance of diversity--ethnic and racial, to be sure, but economic as well--and that my beliefs about education and public schooling were heavily shaped by my own experience at a school that deliberately made civil rights, integration, and social justice central to its curriculum.*

Since at PK's school the parents are expected to do a lot of helping in the class, I asked his teacher the other day what he had planned for Black History Month. I know that the 5th graders are doing report/presentations about Famous African-Americans (and was glad to see that the list was pretty comprehensive, including people like Stokely Carmichael and Barbara Jordan as well as George Washington Carver and MLK himself). So you can probably imagine my . . . distress when the teacher said that frankly other than the reports he doesn't intend to do anything and that his own personal opinion was that while it's important for the kids to know about slavery and the civil rights movement, "it's time to stop making excuses."

Ooooooookay.

Now, I work with this guy and want to actually get some good material into this classroom, which isn't going to be easy to do if I get written off as that p.c. bitch with an axe to grind. And if his sense of black history is that it's about "excuses" then frankly I'm just as glad that he isn't passing that along to the kids. But clearly *he* needs some educating along with the students.

So, knowing that he actually really likes history and social studies I kind of ignored the "excuses" remark and said that, to me, the reason I felt it was really important for the kids to get black history--as well as Latino history, and the history of indigenous Americans** and Chinese immigration and so on--because Black History is American history. I offered him one of my favorite illustrative anecodtes about this, PK's 4yo observation that Bugs Bunny is African-American. I got him to agree in principle that yes, African-American history = American history, and that "American history" still generally doesn't acknowledge that, and that this is something that should be part of public education.

And then after school I went and had a brief meeting with the head teacher to discuss the current work the school is doing on revisiting our philosophy, which it says includes issues like social justice and diversity right there on our web page (hence PK's presence in the school). Which without my prompting the head teacher, who has done some great work in the last couple years de-lilifying the parent and student body, said has "pretty much been forgotten about" and needs to start being brought back in. (Our current "social justice" focus is pretty much limited to environmental awareness, which is fine, but.)

So I said, well, look. There's been discussion of creating a teacher library of sorts, with books on pedagogy and the like, yes? And he agreed, and said, also books about parenting by the way. And I said, what would you think of including in the library files with curriculum plans and individual lessons? Things that subs, or parents who are helping in class could pull, or that teachers could use so they're not having to invent an entirely new curriculum from scratch? (Short version of long story: 3 out of our 5 teachers are new this year, and the school prefers to rely on non-packaged curriculum. Class instruction is offered in "parent-led centers," where 2-3 parents plus the teacher each lead groups of 5-7 kids, rotating every half hour, so that the students do a lot more hands on stuff than is practical in a standard classroom.) And he agreed that that would be an awesome idea.

So I have both the classroom teacher and the head teacher's "permission" to develop some material for Black History month (and anything else I think the school oughta be teaching, goddammit--I've already done some lesson plans for reading/writing, and am going to do a unit on Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins for next month in the 4/5 class). Since at the moment I'm doing the bulk of the writing and literature instruction in PK's 4/5 class, and the teacher has been asking me to teach "Responding to Literature" (which is part of the CA curricular standards for this age group, hence the O'Dell plans), I figure next week I'll do a stand-alone lesson about Bugs Bunny and Bre'r Rabbit, which will let me show the kids the African roots of an important part of their sense of American culture (as well as talk about literary influence and oral traditions and characterization, which we were already working on).

Then I think I want to do a couple lessons, maybe three, about Haiti. Like with Bugs, the genesis is starting with what the kids already know (what with Haiti being in the news and all). I figure I can counter some of the "excuses/victimization" associations with blackness that the TV coverage has been offering by talking about the Haitian revolution, and I know that doing some "here's the real facts about pirates and voodoo and zombies" stuff will keep their attention, and again reinforce the African-roots-of-Americana idea. (I'm using Bob Corbett's Haiti links to prep for this stuff, btw: anyone who has some *quickly digestible* sources you want to point me to, I'd be v. grateful.)

And I figure that's a good start for a seat-of-my-pants curriculum this year. But in preparation for next year, I'm finally reading the Taylor Branch series, starting with Parting the Waters (omg, have you guys read this? Vernon Jones is my new fucking hero.***). I picked up Ira Berlin's The Making of African America, which the cover copy says "challenges the traditional presentation of a linear, progressive development of black America"--IOW, the story of American history that I was taught. I ordered the one-disk version of "Eyes on the Prize" from Amazon (god I wish I could justify the $200 educators complete edition--maybe I'll recommend it for the school teacher's library).

I'd picked up for PK a couple biographies--Ruby Bridges, on the grounds that kids best identify with other kids, and Nat Love, because he watched Blazing Saddles the other day for the first time and I figured some actual history of actual black cowboys might be good to have there--and I'll take those in, along with the book he has with brief biographies of abolitionists white and black. The latter, I think, is important because the school is about 75% white with the remaining 25% being Asian/Mexican/mixed race, and I want the Anglo students to have role models for some approach to the subject matter other than white guilt.

If I can't find my own copy of the Anti-Bias Curriculum Handbook, I'll order one for the school--among other awesome things about this short, practical manual, it points out that "diversity" includes people with disabilities and gender as well as color, and that the way to teach this stuff to young children is to start with the kids in front of you, rather than talking as if diversity were about "those other people," which at best leads to pity and at worst gives rise to the "making excuses" paradigm. I've already laid some groundwork there by having the kids talk, at Xmas time, about their different winter holidays: we have kids in the classroom that celebrate Chalica, Solstice, and Christmas (no Jews), PK's family puts candles on our tree because his father's family is from Germany and they still do that there, etc. (The ABC handbook also emphasizes the importance of having white anti-racist role models, by the way.) It's also helpful that my best mama friend has been bringing in lessons to practice 64 days of non-violence with the kids--hopefully the kids will make some connections between what she's teaching about respecting each other's differences with some of the things I'll be doing.

One of the passages I highlighted in my copy of Parting the Waters is the description of Vernon Johns, who was the preacher at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church before MLK Jr. came in, as scolding his (relatively affluent, bourgie) congregation for not recognizing that "oppression, not labor . . . demeaned them." In the margin, I wrote a note: "Reflect on this in re. feminism & housework: oppression, not labor, =demeaning"). Certainly I'm starting to learn, vis-a-vis my own feminist life, that being an "unemployed housewife" doesn't preclude teaching, and needn't be a "failure" of my feminist ideals. And that my education, research skills and teaching background definitely make me better at my unpaid jobs as Mama and school volunteer. I look at my hands, and I'm still the same person.

*I recently got an email from a fellow King alum who had found my writing about the school online and wanted to say that s/he too remembered the school with great fondness and had memories exactly like mine. Awwww.

**I ought not to have been so surprised about his views on race, given that when he had the kids do projects on American Indians around Tgiving he had them do crafts that reflected the "all Indians lived on the plains in teepees" view of aboriginal folks. Luckily, however, because the 4th grade curriculum includes the mission period in California and the CA state standards are pretty right-on about including good information about the first contact and different CA tribes--and because I sort of pushed the school a couple of years ago to start correcting its lefty "Native Americans protected the earth" vagueness (shudder) by, among other things, regularly inviting a local Chumash educator to come speak to the kids a couple times a year--the kids by and large know better.

***Representative and totally awesome quotation, from when Jones was talking his way into Oberlin: "I want to know whether you [the Dean] want students with credits or students with brains." I intend to tell PK about this statemet, b/c he loves that kind of "screw your boring hoop-jumping" attitude.

Contrarian Opinions I Hold

2010-02-03T07:13:00.002-08:00

Is it just me, or are people missing the boat a lot lately? Maybe everyone is still down in the dumps since Scott Brown won the election. Or we're all getting a little antsy since health care reform is in serious danger. What's that pain? IS IT A TUMOR?

Without further ado:

1. The Citizens United decision was rightly decided. Read Glenn Greenwald. Before you get all in a tizzy, let me say a few things. First, the notion that corporations are individuals was not under attack and was not the issue being decided. Treating corporations as individuals has a long, long legal precedent. The issue was whether there was a "compelling state interest" serious enough to override the rights of corporations. Not whether they are entities who are, in general, entitled to those rights. Second, the question of whether money is speech was also not under attack and not the issue being decided. Again, long legal precedent. And as a practical matter, money is speech. It's not just speech for huge corporations. It's speech for me when I give campaign contributions. And it's speech for Planned Parenthood when they do, too. Third, like Greenwald said, the fear that the decision will make corporations take over elections is misguided. They already have a vast amount of influence, because they have the money to hire lawyers to figure out how to comply with the laws and still wield influence.

2. There was nothing wrong with Justice Alito's shaking his head and mouthing "not true" during the State of the Union. Lest you think I am some Greenwald flunkie, he is, as it turns out, dead wrong on this one. Look, Justice Alito's break with "decorum" was incredibly mild. Also, President Obama was criticizing their decision directly. Which, apparently, is rather unusual. Not that there's anything wrong with what Obama did. Similarly, I see no problem with Alito's momentary breach of the "Justices must sit silently and show no expression" rule. Did it cause any harm? Did it even give us any new information? We already knew what Alito thought about the case because he already ruled on it. Anyway, what Dahlia Lithwick said.

3. I fail to see what the big deal is with the CBS/Tim Tebow ad. Yes, the ad is stupid. The argument it presents is offensive and ridiculous. Look, when even William Saletan comes out against you, you know you're doing a shit job at being pro-life. But! Do we really want to say that it shouldn't be aired? No, what we want is for our ads to be aired, too. But saying that the Tebow ad shouldn't be aired doesn't further that objective. All it does is give fuel to the pro-lifers' whiny "they're trying to censor us!" fire. As Amanda says, things are actually a lot easier for them when they get censored. They get to raise a bunch of money, without having to spend a bunch of money. Finally, there's been a lot of talk on Twitter today about Dana Goldstein's reporting that CBS "collaborated" with Focus on the Family in the making of the ad. Color me skeptical. As I tweeted earlier today, it sounds like what was going on was a standard negotiation about what would be in the ad. Just like when CBS Dante's Inferno ad because it contained the tagline "Go to hell," they didn't just say "Ad rejected! Go away!" Instead, it looks like EA changed their commercial slightly so CBS would accept it. It looks like the Tebow ad has been in the works for a long time, which means that they had plenty of time to make sure that CBS would accept their ad. So I think people calling foul here are off base.

A little perspective

2010-02-02T17:56:00.002-08:00

From Leslie in CA, a couple of comment threads back: an awesome somewhat interactive animation of The Scale of the Universe.

I'm proud to say that Pseudonymous Kid knew not only the site on which the thing's hosted ("hey, that's a video game website!") but also most of the actual objects pictured, from neutrinos and quarks to the names of moons and stars and galaxies. I told him Leslie had told me about it because "she's a scientist too," and thought he'd be interested. He says, "wait, are you saying I'm a scientist?" I told him yes.

Healthy Sexuality is a Human Right

2010-02-01T07:14:00.004-08:00

It's Monday, which means we have a new column from Ross Douthat. Douthat apparently doesn't read Bitch, Ph.D., because dude I told you to stay away from any topics involving sex, women, and abortion.

Douthat's column is about sex ed. His argument: sex ed makes no difference one way or the other. But, teen pregnancy rates rising is the fault of Bill Clinton's abstinence-only agenda, not Bush's. But nevermind. Since sex ed makes no difference, Washington should stay out of it and local communities should do what they wish, which is to tell kids that contraception is a hoax in Mississippi, and give masturbation demonstrations (or whatever they do) in San Franscisco.

In “When Sex Goes to School,” her thoughtful history of the sex education debate, the sociologist Kristin Luker concluded that it is “surprisingly difficult to show that sex education programs do in fact increase teenagers’ willingness to protect themselves from pregnancy and/or disease.” This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s attended high school. What is taught in the classroom is vastly less important than the matrix of family, culture and economics: the values parents impart and the example that they set, the friends teenagers make and the activities they join, and the cross-cutting effects of wealth, health and self-esteem.

That is, of course, true. If you put something as meaty as "family, culture, and economics" against "what you learn in school," of course the former is going to come out on top. But where Douthat goes from here is absurd. If what kids learn in school is so unimportant, why is it so important that you and yours have the right to teach them falsehoods? Throughout Douthat's column, he never refutes his initial description of abstinence-only education as "contemptuous of experts, careless about public health and captive to religious conservatism."

His main point is a classic conservative one, which is that the federal government shouldn't get involved in such issues. Perhaps maybe he thinks that the federal government shouldn't be involved in education at all. But tell that to all the school districts in the country who rely heavily of federal funding to keep their programs running. As it turns out, kids have a right to a meaningful education. I can think of few things more important (besides, perhaps, learning to read) in an education than learning about one's own body, both in biology classes and health classes. Douthat is dishonest about what's on offer besides abstinence-only education. He represents that it's somehow encouraging kids to have sex. What non-abstinence only education does is not lie to kids. That's all. In my high school, we talked a lot about abstinence. A lot. But they didn't tell us lies, either. They taught us about contraception. They told us that a lot of cultures and religions believe that masturbation is wrong. And yes, they said, masturbating may cause you to feel conflicted because of your religious or cultural beliefs. But it won't, in fact, cause you any physical harm. Which, again, is true.

What Douthat and other conservatives want to do is lie to kids, to tell them that contraception doesn't work, so that they'll be so scared that they won't have sex at all. After all, if you can't avoid pregnancy and STIs no matter what you do, better abstain, right? Wrong. Because kids will always, always hear much more about sex than what they learn in class. And the extracurricular education they get about sex will always, always be chock-full of misinformation, because they're getting it from other kids and misinformed adults. But here's where I really get angry at Douthat:

But we should understand it more as a battle over community values than as an argument about public policy.

Seriously? I'm disgusted. And, I'm also surprised that he's willing to make it this plain. He's willing to admit that conservatives are more interested in using the bodies of teenagers to make political, religious, and cultural points than actually encouraging the well-being of those bodies. To Douthat and his ilk, teenage boys and girls might as well not be people. Instead, they are edifices that represent what we stand for. As Amanda Marcotte astutely noted, he subscribes to the conception that children are property, and we get to do with them as we wish, which includes telling them lies that may gravely impact their health.

UPDATE: Monsieur Bouie has a similar, but better-written take on Douthat. Here's what I was trying to get across with the "other kids and misinformed adults" bit:

Teens need to know how their bodies work, and they need to have accurate information about sex and contraception. There is a wealth of misinformation about sex — a lot of it spread by abstinence-only programs — and in the absence of any countervailing information, teenagers will turn to misinformation and distortions to inform their choices. The practical effect of de-federalizing sex education is that some kids will be given the truth about their bodies, and other kids will be lied to.

Big Day

2010-01-29T13:17:00.005-08:00

We finally get a new post to the blog. The man who killed Dr. Tiller is convicted of murder. Obama apparently followed up on the SOTU to tear the Republicans up at their own retreat.

And Lilly Ledbetter's back, on the one-year anniversary of the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, pushing for the Paycheck Fairness Act, which was always supposed to follow up its sister.

the job of ending wage discrimination in this country remains incomplete. The Lilly Ledbetter Act became law, but the Paycheck Fairness Act, its essential companion legislation, has stalled in the Senate.
...
The need for such a law is more urgent today than ever before. It's inherently unfair that the average woman in America makes, on average, just 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. Families today are more dependent on a woman's earnings for economic survival than ever before. But in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, pay equity is more than a question of fairness. It's a question of survival.

Paycheck equity isn't just morally right. And it doesn't just benefit women--it benefits families, communities, and the nation. Think about it: When women get equal pay for equal work and finally receive their rightful salaries, those dollars can flow more freely back into the larger economy in the form of consumer spending. Paycheck fairness for America's working women is itself an economic stimulus package.

By now you've got your senator's number on speed dial, no doubt. Celebrate Ledbetter's anniversary by giving her or him a kick in the pants: tell them to get off their butts and pass S. 182, the Paycheck Fairness Act, now.

Uncle Taddy is Sleeping

2010-01-29T01:54:00.009-08:00

ed. note: what follows was written by my nephew, Quinn, my brother Rory's youngest. I haven't changed a thing except to correct spelling and put it in paras.

He's a wonderful lad and my godson. He has been eager to help me get better. He was going to write down a post as I dictated but, well, read on and learn for yourself.

This is Quinn. I'm thirteen years old. I'm in the eighth grade at PDS Middle School. I play guard on our basketball team.

Uncle Taddy is my uncle. He's a pretty good man but he sleeps a lot. He just had surgery. He moves real slow. Its kind of funny. I know he's hurting but its still funny.

He came home from the hospital about two weeks ago. Not quite two weeks.

I asked my Dad if I could stay with Uncle Taddy and help him out when he came home but my Dad said I would be in the way. And what about school?

This week our teachers have been in meetings and Uncle Taddy talked to my Dad and said he could use my help. So, here I am.

My cousin Meche which is short for Mercedes does most of the stuff to take care of Uncle Taddy. She makes sure he has clean clothes and food and takes his medicine and stuff like that. She talks to the nurses and the doctors and tells them what's happening and how he's doing.

I get the mail and carry the garbage out and lift anything heavy that needs to be lifted. I carry the laundry to and from the laundry room and have learned how to fold laundry. I even learned to scramble eggs.

I'm glad to help out my Uncle Taddy. He's always been good to me and my brother. We've spent a couple summers at his farm in the mountains. That's a lot of fun.

What was supposed to happen now is I was going to write down what Uncle Taddy said to me. Then he was going to put up the article in the blog he belongs to.

But he talked for about ten seconds and then went to sleep. He sleeps a lot.

I wish my dog was here. She likes Uncle Taddy, too.

this american marriage

2010-01-25T06:58:00.000-08:00

If the past month and a half had been a play, my family and I would be together for a holiday gathering. We would live in a rambling old Victorian, a la August: Osage County, and M- would be an owl-eyed guest, utterly clueless to the cracks in our family facade.

At some point during the 2nd course, my sister and her husband’s obvious unhappiness would spill into the gravy, dragging the holiday spirit into the fire and sending ashes over the rest of us. Revelations would be made; hypocrisies exposed. Confessions spat out. Identities and roles would be forever reversed.

And I, the family black sheep, would emerge the well-adjusted one.

Because if I (anti-authoritarian, knee-jerk, shrill, tarty, boozy, feminist and well stocked with pharma) am well-adjusted, then you know some serious shit has hit the fan.
…

‘I had an affair,’ my sister L- said. Her text message had sounded urgent so I was huddled in the guest bathroom of a friend’s house with a glass of wine and my mobile, waiting for her to spill it. ‘The guilt was killing me so I had to tell him.’

‘Jesus Christ. You *told* him?? Why the fuck did you tell him?’ All I could think about were all those Dateline episodes of cheated upon husbands who killed their wives, dumping their bodies in places like the La Brea tar pits or a shrubby ravine somewhere in the canyons.

‘There’s more.’

‘Jesus fucking Christ, L-. If you tell me you got pregnant I will fly to LA and take you to Planned Parenthood myself.’

‘I couldn’t if I tried.’ Sniffle.

‘I don’t get it.’

‘It was a woman. I had an affair with a woman.’

*crickets*
…

My office phone rang yesterday and my father was on the other end. When he told me what he told me, at least he asked permission first.

I groaned. ‘Geez, dad. Every time you tell me something I need a drink after. Why can’t you write it in your journal and I can read it when you die?’

My family has always had secrets. My father’s family secrets read like a black southern gothic: drug use, prostitution, child abuse, mental instability, ‘passing,’ sexual abuse, old-time religion, and denial. Everywhere, denial.

On my mother’s side there’s just a giant question mark. In a reversal of the usual Filipino immigrant narrative, my mother never tried to bring over any of her family. While they wrote often, it was clear my mother’s family was glad to see my mom over here and keep themselves over there. When they wrote my father at the news of her death they said how sorry they were. They also said they were sorry for the hard life my mother had had in the islands and that they were glad she was finally at peace.

The reason for sending her away was never made clear to either my sister or me. If my father knew, he kept my mother’s secret. At least, that secret. Her other secret she was willing to spill on her own.

My sister and I had both been in college when, one afternoon, my sister was home, watching Geraldo with my mother. It was an episode about biological mothers being reunited with the children they had given up for adoption.

Mom nudged my sister. ‘That’s me.’

‘What?’

‘That’s me. Before you and your sister, I had to give up a baby. You have another sister.’

My sister watched the rest of the episode with tears in her eyes. A week later she told me while we were walking down Bruin Walk, on our way to sell back out books at the end of the quarter. We were both laughing and crying while all I could say was ‘What the fuck? What the fuck?!’

Somewhere out there, we have an older Filipino/Hungarian half-sister. With every tv show about reuniting families, I feel a lump of dread. I don’t want to know her. I don’t want her to find us; the family I grew up with is all I need. Or so I thought. Barely three weeks into the new year, it is becoming clear that the family I have may not resemble the family I grew up with.

Back in my office, my father’s voice thickened over the phone.

‘I just don’t want you to hate your mother or me. Don’t hate your daddy.’

‘Dad, I could never. There is shit in everyone’s life. I have shit in my life. I just don’t tell you because, you know –boundaries.’

There was a short bit of silence then he said, ‘Do you remember when your mother stopped sleeping in the bedroom?’

‘When she slept on the couch for two years? I always thought that was menopause.’

‘Menopause? I never thought of that.’ His voice got all viscous again. ‘Your mom and I had stopped being intimate for a long while. She just wasn’t interested in all that anymore. So I had a same sex affair with – ‘

‘Do not tell me.’ I could guess who it was and even if I couldn’t I didn’t want to go back to Los Angeles and bump into my father’s ex-gay lover and actually know it. If it was who I thought it was, my anger toward him had a different source and I wanted to keep that with me. I didn’t want it clouded with empathy or sympathy.

‘Your sister…she’s like your mom but she’s like me.’ He added. ‘Why do you think I’ve always said I’ll never marry another woman after your mom?’

I’ve always known this. Well, I’ve known this since my mother died. I’ve known that my father was curious, was testing the bars of his cage. My friends had always suspected my father was gay and we had laughed about it over wine after every visit. Even now, my friends are sending me joking messages: “OMFG! We knew it! He was too well-dressed for an old guy!”

And so the faded, sepia-tinted mental photos I carried in my head about my family have begun to curl and crisp around the edges. I predict that in about 6 months, they will be all but ash and I will have new, more complicated images of my family and my childhood to carry with me.
…

What is it about marriage? What is it that squeezes the life out of a person? I’m not talking about partnership or love or devotion. I’m not even talking about cohabitation. I’m talking about the whole blinking thing. The Marriage. What about it turns those who believe in it into clichéd versions of 19th century domestic dramas?

I can’t decide if my sister is experiencing The Awakening or Madame Bovary; my father is wobbling in some kind of Maurice of his own and I’m looking at both of them wondering if any of this would be happening to them if they hadn’t been married in the first place. What did marriage force them to postpone?

There is something wrong with the way our culture packages, practices and defines marriage. Maybe it’s the presumption of monogamous heterosexuality. Maybe it’s the irrational investment the rest of us feel when it comes to someone else’s marriage. I found myself resisting the fact that my sister’s marriage was not the perfectly manicured Garden of Marital Bliss. When she told me they had been having trouble for seven years, the voice in my head whined, ‘Nooooo!’ When she paused after I asked her if she still loved her husband, I answered for her. ‘Of course you do! You do!’

Why try and push her to say that everything was fine when everything was SO NOT fine?

I had been proud of the marriage my sister had made. I was proud of the fact that she and her handsome husband had proven all of the statistics wrong. I loved the optics of their marriage. They were professional, brown, young, attractive, educated, smart, popular, wholesome, Catholic, and socially liberal/fiscally conservative; they had bright, gorgeous Black-y-Mex-y-Pino kids. They were the perfect foil against our low-income childhoods in South Central and Santa Monica. I loved that I could compare my wacky life to it and say to myself, ‘Their marriage makes my un-marriage necessary.’

But the pride I’d taken in their marriage makes me complicit in its disintegration. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who took emotional and visual pleasure in their marital status. Both families saw them as a way of correcting the past. We heaped such expectations on them – not to be like our parents, to do things the ‘right’ way. So when my sister cries out that she feels like she is being crushed and her husband says his loneliness is killing him, I feel as if our families’ (and friends’) desire for someone to have that perfect marriage has been yet another weight upon their chests.
…
In my office I had been on the phone with my father for almost an hour, looking at the river, listening to his gay affair confession and his notion that all marriage reaches an inevitable point of impasse. It was depressing as hell to hear and to think that my father could only become the fuller person that he is now after his wife died. Is that what it takes to be happy and authentic? For your spouse to fucking die off?

‘LB [my brother in law] wants to have a three-way with you and me,’ my dad said.

‘What the hell?!’ I said. Had my brother in law snapped? Was he reaching out for any freaky opportunity for retaliation against my sister?

‘He really needs to talk to someone, Del. He’s been calling me for the past three days and I think he’d like to talk with you, too.’

‘Dad, the term is ‘conference call.’ He would like to have a conference call with us. Jesus.’

‘That’s what I meant, girl!’

I let it go.

I’m going to have to let everything go. Just like they are.

Do You Trust Women?

2010-01-22T12:50:00.000-08:00

I first wrote this a long time ago, and many of you have probably read it. I still think it's the best thing I've written on the subject.

The bottom line about abortion is this. Do you trust women to make their own moral judgments? If you are anti-abortion, then no. You do not. You have an absolute moral position that you don't trust anyone to question, and therefore you think that abortion should be illegal. But the second you start making exceptions for rape or incest, you are indicating that your moral position is not absolute. That moral judgment is involved. And that right there is where I start to get angry and frustrated, because unless you have an absolute position that all human life (arguably, all life period, but that isn't the argument I'm engaging with right now) are equally valuable (in which case, no exceptions for the death penalty, and I expect you to agonize over women who die trying to abort, and I also expect you to work your ass off making this a more just world in which women don't have to choose abortions, but this is also not the argument I'm engaging right now), then there is no ground whatsoever for saying that there should be laws or limitations on abortion other than that you do not trust women. I am completely serious about this.

Let me unpack a bit, because I know this sounds polemical, since I am clearly stating a bottom line. When pro-choice feminists like Wolf, or liberal men, or a lot of women, even, say things like, "I'm pro-choice, but I am uncomfortable with... [third-trimester abortion / sex-selection / women who have multiple abortions / women who have abortions for "convenience" / etc.]" then what you are saying is that your discomfort matters more than an individual woman's ability to assess her own circumstances. That you don't think that women who have abortions think through the very questions that you, sitting there in your easy chair, can come up with. That a woman who is contemplating an invasive, expensive, and uncomfortable medical procedure doesn't think it through first. In short, that your judgment is better than hers.

Think about the hubris of that. Your judgment of some hypothetical scenario is more reliable than some woman's judgment about her own, very real, life situation?

And you think that's not sexist? That that doesn't demonstrate, at bottom, a distrust of women? A blindness to their equality? A reluctance to give up control over someone else's decision?

Because if you cannot see that, then I don't care who you are. Male, female, feminist, reactionary asshole. You are acting as a conduit for a social distrust of women so strong that it's almost invisible, that it gets read as "normal." The fact that abortion is even a debate in this country demonstrates that we do not trust women.

Happy Roe day, everyone. And thanks to all of us who do, in fact, trust women we've never met to live their own lives and make their own decisions as best they can.

the perfect is the enemy of the, well, not really "good," but better than a sharp stick in the eye

2010-01-21T21:50:00.003-08:00

Like Ari, I'm not exactly thrilled to be writing this, but I'm doing it anyway. Call your Representative at (202) 224-3121 and ask him or her to just vote for the Senate version of the health care bill.

I don't like the bill any better than you do, but it's something. It'll make lifetime caps on coverage illegal. It'll prevent insurance companies from denying coverage based on "preexisting conditions." Yes, I agree that everything else in the bill is only "okay" at best, and that there's a lot--a LOT--that the bill doesn't even begin to deal with. But those two things alone--forcing insurers to take everyone, preventing them from yanking your coverage once you get sick--are huge.

Don't decide to tolerate the status quo out of pique, disappointment and anger. Because while the proposed changes are nowhere near good enough, they *will* save lives (and lower costs, and set a precedent for possible further changes someday maybe I hope). Please tell your representative that you want the to pass this bill, now, and keep on fighting to pass others in years to come.

review: the book of eli, or yay for the chinese!

2010-01-19T06:58:00.000-08:00

(spoilers galore)

So The Book of Eli is a post-apocalyptic fable about faith, the Word and, ultimately, the triumph of the printing press. Sure, Denzel has the knife, the mystical connection to The Book, defends women from predation, and can shoot a vulture from the sky with his handy bow and arrow. But believe me, the real hero of this flick is the printing press. (Which was invented by the Chinese! See? Get it?)

You can read this film in one of two ways: a religious fable about the enduring nature of the Word to triumph over godless evil or the triumph of humanism and print culture over the petty wrangling of global illiteracy and ignorance.

No doubt, Eli is a religious-ish man on a quest to save The Book. He prays. He resists the blandishments of the flesh; while kicking ass, he quotes Scripture, murmuring about accountability in the afterlife after shoving some dude’s nose into his skull; he reads the Book every night and protects it with his life. He gruffly explains to Solara (Mila Kundis) that faith is going where you don’t know where to go. (Or something like that. Whatever. It’s about as clear as ‘belief in things that are unseen.’) Ostensibly, this is a movie about good vs. evil, but exactly *what* is good and evil is sometimes unclear.

The irreligious psycho Carnegie (Gary Oldman) is also a man of faith. Like Eli, Carnegie is a man with a vision; he is a man who recognizes the patterns and traditions of prayer but wants to exploit it, in much the same way he exploits the fresh water springs he hides or the flesh of his blind concubine’s daughter. He's Progress, set against the Word.

The Word in The Book of Eli is an intangible and elusive thing, which makes me wonder if those calling this movie a piece of religious propaganda ever went to Sunday School. We actually don’t see much of its religious power. No one worships, no one preaches. Mostly, the Word (and the faith that it is supposed to represent) is a nice relic from the Old World, before the war - a nostalgic piece of behavioral oddity. It is, however, particularly effective when you’re about to kick ass or have yours kicked. Literally embodying the scripture that says the word of God must be written in your heart and mind, Eli quotes the Book from memory, an act that is supposed to separate him from those in Carnegie’s world.

But Carnegie knows the Book, too. Aptly named, he is part post-apocalyptic land baron and part religious ringmaster and old enough (like Eli) to remember that religion is used as a force of social control. With the Book, you don’t need henchmen, guns or weapons. The Book itself is a weapon to manipulate and soothe the ravaged populace into submission. This sounds familiar enough to me, with the likes of Pat Robertson and other crazy religious leaders going around urging violence on a god’s behalf today. In fact we learn that the cataclysmic event that burned the earth was perhaps caused by a global religious conflict, which led to the eradication of all books (especially religious books.)

In the movie’s climactic fight scene, Carnegie forces Eli to relinquish the Book and misquotes scripture as he fires a bullet into Eli’s belly to prove he is just a man and not the physical embodiment of the Word. It seems the Word has been defeated by gangrenous capitalism - or maybe not.

It's in the film’s last few minutes that the alternate reading of this film becomes clear and we see the true nature of Eli's quest. The Book itself is a burden. Once he is free of the oversized, leather-bound and locked Book, Eli remembers that it is not the Book that matters but the internalization of its message: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Doctrine has been reduced to manners. (Eli’s manners, by the way, are impeccable.) In sum, the Word is about being kind to one another. Carnegie, the most unkind of all, has the Book, struggles to unlock it but discovers it is all in Braille. (Neat twist! Eli is blind but he can ‘see’! How…like a parable he is.) Ultimately, the Word escapes Carnegie's grasp; his blind concubine refuses to read it to him and his corrupt world descends into chaos. We last see the Book laying open, unread and useless on Carnegie’s desk.

As a spiritual/religious document, the Book is useless but in the hands of those who are trying to preserve the printed legacy of Western culture (or any remaining culture at all) the memorized verses of the Bible are priceless. On a fortified Alcatraz, Eli recites the Book to an erstwhile cultural librarian who writes it all down and then prints it on an old school printing press. Eli’s version of the Bible is then bound and put on a shelf next to a copy of the Koran, the Talmud and other religious texts.

(Personally, I'm so glad the center of the lost art of bookmaking is a blighted San Francisco and not New York. West coast!)

So the sum of religious conflict and doctrine lands on a shelf on a shattered island in the hands of a few bibliophiles and blind Eli is dead, swathed in a white robe and shaved bald, literally becoming the Monk he was meant to be.

As for the Word? I doubt the culturally literate are saving the books and random pieces of art in an armed Alcatraz to create an afterschool literacy program. Keeping the artifacts of culture away from the rabble is a nice jab at cultural elites (folks like us?) and neatly rewrites the revolutionary power of the printing press – which actually removed literacy from the sole province of the privileged. The only other person who followed Eli is an illiterate urchin (Solara) who sets off toward home, carrying Eli’s damaged iPod, his sword and, we presume, his Word: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Upon this rock perhaps the world will be rebuilt. Amen.

[cross posted at Screed]

Acting Like a Man

2010-01-19T06:56:00.002-08:00

A few months ago, I had coffee with Ann Friedman, who writes for Feministing and edits The American Prospect. One of the things we talked about was the difference between the way men and women perform in job interviews. Friedman said that more often than not, women are surprisingly self-abnegating in interviews: uncertain, hesitant to promote themselves or say that they have a certain kind of experience or skill, or that they're qualified.

Having just arrived in DC and on the job hunt, I was listening carefully. Over the last several months, I've periodically reflected on her observation and what it means for me.

I'm a pretty confident person. I think most of my friends would probably say that I'm the most confident person they know, with the possible exception of knowing my fiance, who is also very self-assured. Of course, he and I both agree that I have better self-esteem of the two of us, so I think I win. But that's neither here nor there.

I couldn't help wondering, after talking to Ann, do I do it too? Am I another one of the legions of women who goes into a job interview wanting to kick ass and then comes out with a "Yeah, I guess I'm pretty good at that...I think."

Probably not. But I certainly could be stronger and do a better job of promoting myself. And I've been thinking about it even more in the last week. There's a dialogue rumbling around the internets since Clay Shirky published his Rant About Women, which is getting a lot of attention. For somewhat of a counter-point to what Shirky wrote, read Deanna Zandt's commentary.

Shirky says that female students aren't succeeding at the same rate as male students, despite having the same talent, because they refuse to promote themselves, tell white lies, or brag. He writes:

If you walked into my department at NYU, you wouldn’t say “Oh my, look how much more talented the men are than the women.” The level and variety of creative energy in the place is still breathtaking to me, and it’s not divided by gender. However, you would be justified in saying “I bet that the students who get famous five years from now will include more men than women”, because that’s what happens, year after year. My friend talking to the reporter remains the sad exception.

Part of this sorting out of careers is sexism, but part of it is that men are just better at being arrogant, and less concerned about people thinking we’re stupid (often correctly, it should be noted) for trying things we’re not qualified for.

That's a false dichotomy. Men being "better at being arrogant" is sexism. Zandt seems to accept Shirky's "acting like men" formulation and say that women shouldn't have to act "like men" to get ahead:

Asking women to be more like men (which is different than what Shirky claims we're doing when we ask men to be "sensitive" and "listen" — that's just asking for a little humanity, there) falls on a spectrum of prescribing feminine behavior that is dangerous and unhealthy. We're putting the onus on women to fit themselves into a culture that doesn't value them enough to begin with. It sounds a lot like misguided sexual assault prevention tactics ("how not to get yourself raped!"), and Shirky goes there himself when he points out the time colleges spend teaching women self-defense. Me? I cringed right there. Where are the colleges teaching men not to rape women?

I disagree with this. When did self-promotion, confidence, and even occasional arrogance become the exclusive domain of men? I believe that we can have a sea change in how women behave without it being a submission to the forces of patriarchy. And I firmly reject the notion that women are "naturally" inclined to be more collaborative, less arrogant, and less self-promoting than men. Zandt doesn't say that, but it's running as a subtext through what she wrote.

In order to answer the question of what behavior is "natural" to men or women, you need to look at girls. Pre-pubescent girls, girls who have had healthy childhoods in a loving environment and a stimulating education. They are not retiring. They do not deprecate themselves. If they are not shy (and some of them are) they will happily tell you all about the awesome things they've done and how great they are. They are just as arrogant as the boys, maybe even more so. They compete with each other and with boys, they try furiously to make themselves stand out.

I was one of those girls. And let me tell you, I was punished mightily for it, starting right about the time that puberty crept up. Teachers, friends, and friends' parents repeatedly told me I was "conceited." This was often not even for saying anything, but merely for succeeding in a given activity. I was lucky, though. These messages were never reinforced at home. My dad wasn't a cheerleader-type parent, but he never cut me down, either. I'd tell him about how girls at school shunned me after I succeeded at something, whether it was getting a role in a school play or winning the spelling bee, and he'd tell me that I didn't need to change my behavior. He didn't tell me I was better than them, either, or that they were "just jealous." He just said, you are all changing and growing up and maybe some of them will stay your friends and some of them won't. I know it hurts, and I'm sorry. (Ps, my dad is awesome).

So I managed to retain most of that childhood exuberance. But I'm still surprised by my instincts toward self-doubt. Not to say that self-doubt is bad. Self-doubt can be great, especially when it's justified. I'll never forget when I read my first deposition transcript of a deposition I'd participated in, and found myself reading the word "sorry" coming at the beginning of almost ever time I opened my mouth! Of course, in a room full of old white guy lawyers, it's no wonder I felt like an interloper. I still find myself looking back on job interviews and thinking "man, I could have given a better, more confident answer to that question."

I loved the example that Shirky gave in his piece:

When I was 19 and three days into my freshman year, I went to see Bill Warfel, the head of grad theater design (my chosen profession, back in the day), to ask if I could enroll in a design course. He asked me two questions. The first was “How’s your drawing?” Not so good, I replied. (I could barely draw in those days.) “OK, how’s your drafting?” I realized this was it. I could either go for a set design or lighting design course, and since I couldn’t draw or draft well, I couldn’t take either.

“My drafting’s fine”, I said.

That’s the kind of behavior I mean. I sat in the office of someone I admired and feared, someone who was the gatekeeper for something I wanted, and I lied to his face. We talked some more and then he said “Ok, you can take my class.” And I ran to the local art supply place and bought a drafting board, since I had to start practicing.

This isn't acting like a man, and I refuse to accept either Shirky's or Zandt acceptance that this behavior would be "crossing gender lines" for women (Shirky) or "asking women to be more like men" (Zandt). These are natural, human ways of behavior that women are pressured, cajoled, and outright prevented from engaging in, from puberty on. Humans are an ambitious bunch, and we're self-interested and selfish. I don't think we need to jettison that aspect of human nature in order to live in a more just, free, and collaborative society, as Zandt suggests. What about ambition that seeks power and authority in order to bring about justice? That's the kind of ambition I have.

As Anna at Jezebel notes, a major reason why women don't engage in self-promoting, ambitious behaviors is that when we do, we're punished for it. This is surely true. But this doesn't mean that the solution is not do it. It means that women and men need to work together to change the culture, particularly the workplace culture, so that ambition and overt confidence aren't a liability for women. The more women who put themselves out there, the more common the behavior will be, the less remarkable. And some of those women will succeed and find themselves in positions of power and authority. And they will teach the women below them how to take risks, and show them that there lie more than dragons.

I, for one, will pledge to pave the way for other women to be bold and take risks, even at the potential cost of my own success, or at least a bit of my pride.

Coakley II

2010-01-18T12:46:00.002-08:00

I've come under some pretty significant criticism from Radley Balko, who I linked to the other day when writing about Martha Coakley's history of involvement in the Amirault case.

(Aside: Doesn't Reason moderate their comments? Therein, I've been called a flaming cunt, a fascist, evil, and that's just in the first ten!)

I have a great deal of respect for Balko. His work on the Corey Maye case, in particular, was outstanding. Given his commitment to working on innocence issues, I know that he's not just blowing smoke here, unlike a lot of other people who are speaking out against Coakley's poor record as an advocate for justice. So I'm inclined to give what he's saying serious consideration.

Nevertheless, I think he's getting my point all wrong. I must admit that what I wrote on Friday was tossed off pretty hastily. I could have written what I wrote more clearly, more thoughtfully, and with a better explanation of my reasoning. When you write for a blog such as this one, where a lot of our posts don't get much attention, you fall into the trap of assuming that most of your readers are inclined charitably toward you and will give you the benefit of the doubt. That breeds laziness. Laziness which I would do well to steer clear of.

So let me be clear: I do not think Coakley should receive "a pass," as Balko characterized my opinion multiple times. Nor did I offer her political self-interest as a justification for her actions. I realize that because it came at the end of my explication, it could have seemed like one. Like I was saying "look, she did it for political reasons, so that's okay." That couldn't be further from the case, or further from my intention. Rather, I think it's important that we see these actions in a political context, because they illuminate our own responsibility for the actions of prosecutors and judges. I also think it's important that we see them in the context of systems, rather than just as the morally problematic choices of bad actors. As I wrote before:

What I find far more troubling is something mentioned later in the Balko article, which is that Coakley publicly opposed the creation of an innocence commission in Massachusetts. This, I find absolutely deplorable. Advocating for the state in any one case? That's the DA's job. But arguing that systems should not exist to investigate the actions of the state, to hold the criminal justice system accountable? That's a prime example of systems that disadvantage defendants. Innocence projects exist because it's extremely difficult for convicts to argue that they were wrongfully convicted. It costs of lot of money and often requires the use of experts. Experts are expensive. We're talking forensic experts, DNA testing, psychological experts in witness testimony, highly trained investigators.

A lot of the commenters seemed to think that I was giving Coakley "a pass" because I think it's more important that she win as a Democrat. But Balko's right, I didn't make that argument. I should have, though. The fact that she's a liberal was illuminating my comments because it seems to me that, all other things being equal, her election as a senator will do more good for the poor, disadvantaged people who find themselves in and around the criminal justice system.

Here's where I get overly cynical. And I'm not a cynical person. There are few things about which I'm jaded. But I have completely abandoned any expectation that politicians will act, vote, or legislate in ways that comport with my values when it comes to criminal justice issues. They almost uniformly don't, whether they're Republicans or Democrats. Frankly, sometimes Democrats are actually worse on criminal justice issues because they are constantly trying to protect themselves against allegations that they aren't sufficiently tough on crime. That This American Life piece I linked to was talking about how Gov. Schwarzenegger had paroled many more people than former Gov. Gray Davis, for precisely this reason.

I find that despicable.

But. Here's the part where I didn't do a good job of explaining myself. The lines I wrote that Balko, and a lot of commenters, seized on, are these:

So, what's the moral status of advocating that someone who is likely innocent remain in prison? It's a tough question.

Most readers seemed to interpret what I wrote as "What's the moral status of advocating that someone who you know to be innocent remain in prison?" But that's not what I wrote. I think the moral status of advocating that someone you know to be innocent remain in prison is not a tough question. It's morally reprehensible, unjust, worthy of scorn, discipline, reprimand, disbarment, removal from office.

But cognition is a funny thing. Can we really say that Martha Coakley knew that Amirault was innocent? We can't. We can't say something even less than that, which is that Coakley believed that Amirault was innocent. If she did, that's enough to make her a bad actor. Knowledge isn't required. My question was a deeper one: what's the moral status, absent firm cognition or belief, of advocating that someone who is in fact innocent remain in prison? There are lots of cases like this. Lots. Many people are wrongfully convicted where physical evidence is thin and witness testimony is far less problematic than in this case. I will not stand and say that any prosecutor who has ever advocated for the indictment, incarceration, sentencing, or denial of parole of every person who later turned out to be innocent is a moral bad actor. I doubt Balko would make that claim either.

Frankly, I'm not educated enough about the state of affairs in 1999 and what Coakley knew or didn't know, believed or didn't believe, to evaluate whether what she did meets the threshold for moral reprehensibility. And that's what I was trying to say, though I did so inartfully: the fact that she advocated for someone who is, in fact, likely innocent, is not in itself enough to disqualify her from serving as a senator. Nor would it be enough for a Republican candidate.

Balko and his commenters seem to think that voters should "send a message" to Coakley by not voting for her as protest for her actions in the Amirault case. If it were the case that that message might reach her or other politicians, I might actually be in favor of this tactic. But if Coakley loses, there are going to be a number of messages that Democrats and Republicans are going to take away from this race, and I don't think any of them are going to involve Gerald Amirault. Her loss will be blamed on a poor campaign, being part of the party in power, anger at government on the part of constituents, bad organizing, the danger of assuming you've got an election locked up, and many other things having nothing to do with Coakley, such as a sense that the Democrats are screwing up.

And that's where political expediency comes in. Do I think people should vote for Coakley? I don't have a dog in that fight. If I were a Massachusetts resident, I certainly wouldn't have voted for her in the primary. I was responding to a reader who was inclined to vote for her, but concerned about this particular aspect of her history. And I assume that if someone is inclined to vote for Coakley, it's because they identify as a Democrat/want health reform/want the success of the Democratic agenda in Washington/etc. Do I think her actions in the Amirault case, at face value, mean that someone who is otherwise ideologically or pragmatically inclined to vote for her, should refrain? No. Because, as I said, what she did is shockingly common.

People seemed to think that the "everyone's doing it" argument is morally bankrupt. I don't. I think, when it comes to politics, we simply have to judge people against their peers. As a less dire example, I think accepting money from interest groups that have a stake on issues you legislate is morally problematic. Lots of people agree. But it's the status quo; everyone does it. So if you refuse to vote for any candidate who accepts money from interest groups, you're going to find yourself not voting a lot, or at least not voting for any candidate who has a chance of winning. So instead of capriciously blaming individuals for participating in a broken system, whether it's criminal justice or campaign finance, we should seek to reform the systems to prevent injustice and undue influence from flowering.

Is this moral relativism? No. Moral relativism is deciding that everyone's right, or at least that we have to judge them by the norms of society rather than any independent moral standard. Instead, what I'm saying is that we have to do the best we can given the choices we're given. Here we're given a choice of Scott Brown or Martha Coakley. Is what she did dispositive as to how we would make that judgment against her competitor? I've seen no evidence to suggest that people who find themselves entangled in the criminal justice system would fare better with Scott Brown as a senator than with Martha Coakley. Brown would support and reinforce the systems that make it harder to be a defendant, that make it harder to be a poor person, a black person, an undocumented worker.

And this is why I maintain my state of being more troubled that Martha Coakley opposed the creation of an innocence commission. I can't find an answer on the internet: was such a commission ever created? Think about it: this would affect every single person wrongfully convicted in the state, not just one. Systems are far more important than individual actions. And given that politicians are responsible for the creation and implementation of systems, I think their systemic actions are far more important than their individual ones.

Just Doing My Job?

2010-01-15T10:28:00.006-08:00

Bitch reader Alice O. Nunez writes me with a question:

I'm unsure what to make of the Amirault case, which has been getting some attention lately due to Martha Coakley's involvement toward the end. There are some obvious reasons to be bothered by the prosecution's handling of the case, and the DA lobbying to overrule the parole board's unanimous vote to release Amirault is particularly disturbing. But I'm a math person, and my only familiarity with how the law is "supposed" to work is from my instincts and, well, stuff I read on blogs. Is it the DA's job to always push on the side of the state (i.e. keep people in prison), even when the trial is over and new evidence says they were wrong? That's kind of fucked up, but I guess I'm more okay with Coakley's actions if they're the norm. Kinda. Anyway, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts, because if it's not obvious, I'm in over my head here.

(Disclaimer: I'm almost certainly voting for Coakley anyway. I just want to feel better about my vote.)

If you have no idea who Amirault is, some background is here. Remember Capturing the Friedmans? If you haven't seen it, it's a great, fascinating movie. Anyway, the Amirault case was about similar allegations of horrific sexual assault by three members of a family who operated a day care center. This was in the 80s, at the height of the molestation craze, where the "recovered memory" technique (a.k.a. hypnosis) was being used to get kids to tell stories about being molested and assaulted. Many of these cases were later called into question when witnesses recanted, or people started wising up that the investigatory methods were extremely suspect.

Coakley wasn't the person who prosecuted the Amirault case. But she was the DA in 1999 when Gerald Amirault came up for parole. The parole board voted 5-0 to grant him parole, based on the fact that serious doubt had been cast on the integrity of the case against him in the intervening years. It looks like Massachusetts has a governor-can-overrule-the-parole-board law, like other states, including California. I didn't know of the existence of such laws until I was listening to an episode of This American Life last week. If you have time, it's a great episode. One of the best I've heard on TAL in a while, which, admittedly, I don't listen to as regularly as I used to. But as someone invested in criminal justice issues and particularly parole, I found it fascinating.

Radley Balko has a good has a good write-up about Coakley's criminal justice problems at Politico. He writes:

Coakley didn’t prosecute the Amiraults; her former boss Scott Harshbarger did. But the case against the family began to come apart during her tenure as district attorney. Despite a parole board’s 5-0 recommendation to grant Gerald Amirault clemency and mounting doubts about the evidence against him, Coakley publicly and aggressively lobbied then-Gov. Jane Swift to deny Amirault relief. Amirault remained in prison.

So, what's the moral status of advocating that someone who is likely innocent remain in prison? It's a tough question. As far as I known, it's something that's routinely done by prosecutors everywhere. In Illinois, the only place I've practiced, the prosecutors oppose all parole petitions, as far as I know. They oppose the petitions with varying levels of vigor. Their vigor is often directly correlated with how strenuously the victims and families of the victims are opposed to release. I can't find any information about this, but it's my guess given the notoriety of the case and the large number of "victims" that there was strong public opposition to Amirault's release.

I don't have a major problem with prosecutors who lobby for people to serve more time in prison, whether it's at the indictment, sentencing, or parole stage. My main concern is with systems that are overly deferential to prosecutors, that disadvantage defendants, and that make it extremely difficult for convicts to make the case for their own parole. I do think the criminal justice world would be a lot more just if more prosecutors declined to prosecute more often. Particularly in high-profile or embattled cases, where it seems that all evidence points to innocence, but the prosecutors insist on, for example, re-trying a case after a trial has been thrown out years after the fact by a judge. You see this all the time: prosecutors' stubborn insistence that they've got the right guy in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Nevertheless, being a prosecutor who is stalwart when presented with evidence of innocence or prosecutorial misconduct is so common as to be banal. Which is why I think her lobbying for Amirault's continued incarceration isn't, in itself, enough to make her a morally suspect choice for senator.

What I find far more troubling is something mentioned later in the Balko article, which is that Coakley publicly opposed the creation of an innocence commission in Massachusetts. This, I find absolutely deplorable. Advocating for the state in any one case? That's the DA's job. But arguing that systems should not exist to investigate the actions of the state, to hold the criminal justice system accountable? That's a prime example of systems that disadvantage defendants. Innocence projects exist because it's extremely difficult for convicts to argue that they were wrongfully convicted. It costs of lot of money and often requires the use of experts. Experts are expensive. We're talking forensic experts, DNA testing, psychological experts in witness testimony, highly trained investigators.

A lot of the criticism of Coakley's involvement in the Amirault case seems to center on the fact that she was clearly stepping up the pressure on the governor for her own political gain. Being seen as a law-and-order sort is almost uniformly a political advantage, no matter where you hold office. Hardly anyone ever fails to be elected because they were too hard on criminals. Take, for example, Joe Arpaio (extremely popular!) vs. Michael Dukakis (Willie Horton!). But it's not really enough to blame politicians for exploiting this tendency of Americans to thirst for more and more justice-blood. And I'm not particularly moved by allegations that people are behaving in politicized ways. Justice is political, and the more we recognize and appreciate that, the better we can be honest with ourselves as a society and government about how we want to proceed.

Help Haiti

2010-01-14T11:38:00.005-08:00

If you are among the many who wish there was something you could do to help Haitians right now, here is some advice in choosing organizations to support. Short version: send $, not stuff, and send it to organizations that were there before the earthquake.

The two easiest ways to donate:
Text YELE to 501501 to donate $5, which will be added to your next cell phone bill. Yele "is a grassroots movement that builds global awareness for Haiti while helping to transform the country through programs in education, sports, the arts and environment. Yéle’s community service programs include food distribution and mobilizing emergency relief. Grammy-Award winning musician, humanitarian and Goodwill Ambassador to Haiti Wyclef Jean founded Yéle Haiti in 2005."

Text Haiti to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross, same deal with the $ charged to your bill next month.

In both cases my understanding is that the entire amount goes to the dedicated organization.

Other suggestions:
Partners in Health has been in Haiti since 1985, and "ranks as one of the largest nongovernmental health care providers in Haiti – and the only provider of comprehensive primary care, regardless of ability to pay, for more than half a million impoverished people living in the mountainous Central Plateau."
Oxfam, which is one of my favorite international relief orgs.
UNICEF, which is another.
Catholic Relief Services has been in Haiti for 50 years and is one of the largest human service organizations there.
A few more organizations, many of which are specifically focused on Haiti, can be found here.

And finally, tons of bloggers are generously offering to donate goods and/or services to the highest bidders on the LiveJournal Help Haiti page, with proceeds going to benefit Haiti recovery efforts. Deadline for bidding is Weds, Jan 20. Just don't bid on the box of Spanish goodies from La Rioja listed here, because that one is mine.

Have at it!

2010-01-13T07:44:00.000-08:00

Here, at long last, is the post everyone's been waiting for: an invitation to tell those uppity/bitter/boring/cat-hating/immoral bitches what we Ought To Do.

Should I stop seeing my boyfriend, who clearly doesn't respect me, and beg my husband's forgiveness? Or should I leave my husband and let him have full custody of Pseudonymous Kid, since I'm clearly a poisonous influence?

Should LeBlanc take her husband's name when she gets married? Or should she be a Real Feminist and quit with this hypocritical patriarchy-reinforcing marriage crap?

Should Sybil stop being so mean to her poor kitty? Or should she give it away to someone who will treat it properly, since she's practically abusing the poor thing, what with forcing it to have an abortion and all?

Should DC quit being so, well, shrill about race? Or should she devote more of her time to Educating people In a Kindly Tone, because that's what would make a difference? And while we're at it, do her girly interests, like fashion and dating, completely undermine feminism or what?

And Taddy, that ... well, let's admit it. Taddy is really beyond reproach. I suppose the only advice *he* needs is how he ought to be treating his cancer, and maybe whether he really ought to be wasting his talent blogging with the rest of us.

Knock yourselves out, folks.

It's Kind of Like Idol

2010-01-12T16:57:00.003-08:00

So I fixed the comment moderation problem. Where "fixed" means "figured out the easy way to login that my dumbass couldn't see earlier." Which I suppose means that, contrary to an earlier claim, the problem wasn't entirely BITCHPHD's fault, but I found that I very much prefer screaming her name and may just stick with it.

The comment upgrade (which everyone is all "Why, what was wrong with haloscan?" about - nothing was wrong wit it except they told us we had to upgrade or host somewhere else. The end.) allows us to do some new things, one of which is user policed comments. Since we are lazy ass bitches, it seems like a good idea. The new deal is that any of you can flag a comment as abusive or offensive or whatever and once any comment has been flagged by 5 distinct IPs it gets buried.

So, we'll see how that works for awhile I guess. I dare you to be more trigger happy than leblanc is. Double dare.

"No kitty, that's my pot pie."

2010-01-09T15:40:00.007-08:00

Let me take you through the process of how dinner happens here on a Saturday. Can you imagine anything less riveting? Probably not, but I'm taking the CAT to get a late-term abortion on Monday morning, as well as having my first day of classes, so the fodder should be picking up soon.

8am Vanes go out to breakfast. At the restaurant they have a TV on which is showing the food network. The dude on screen is making swedish meatballs, but I see a brief promo for an episode where he makes a pot pie. I've never made or eaten one, but as the temp did not get out of the 30s in my deep southern town today, this sounded perfect. I start thinking about what I have that will work while I am eating eggs. I love thinking about dinner over breakfast. I resolve to use only things currently in the house.

We go home. I look at the blog and feel irritated that there are comments I want to delete but can't because BITCH PHD needs to get into the stupid new comment hosting system and click something but she is IGNORING ME. I put that out of my mind, and the I have the rest of a day. This consists primarily of feeling angst-y about the CAT's late-term abortion and doing lunges. Which is weird, for a Saturday.

Then at 4:30, I start cutting up this stuff:

1 cup cauliflower
1 cup green beans
1 cup peas (canned. gross. they were hard to eat around.)
3 carrots
1 big sweet potato
1 white onion

I put all that in a big deep cast iron skillet I got for Christmas. I don't really know how to use it yet, so everything is guesswork. Like always. So, I have some olive oil and garlic (maybe 3 cloves worth) at the bottom, but I soon realize the vast majority of the veggies don't benefit from that. So I threw in a cup or so of chicken broth and then go to the fridge for a beer and see a cheap bottle of cheap pino so I threw a cup of that in too.

Meanwhile, I throw these things in a small saucepan:

half a jar of cream of chicken soup
about a 1/4 cup of skim milk
1.5 cups chicken broth
2 cloves garlic
3 tbsp worcesterhire sauce

I whisked it until smooth, then brought to boil and then added flour till it was thick (maybe a cup?).

So, while the veggies get tender, I took a whole grain baguette we only half finished with yesterday's dinner, and which was already crusty, and smashed it into little pieces that lined the bottom of my casserole dish. then i dumped a tbsp or 2 of melted butter on them. Then I dumped in veggies, sans their stewing liquid. Then I grated some Publix brand parmesan on top of the veggies, then I dumped the flour sauce over the whole mess.

This is where things get prototypically SV. I had thawed a cheap ass frozen pie crust, which is all I ever use. I don't even want to hear about it. But I couldn't get it out of the tin without ripping it apart. So I ripped it apart, figuring I would roll it back out. But then I remembered I don't have a rolling pin. I also don't have a smooth surface (all kitchen surfaces are tile with deep grout do-hickeys). So I just glommed balls of pie crust dough in my hands and smashed it thin-ish with my fingers and placed it on top of the mess in blob that were about 1.5 inches in diameter. It looked atrocious, so I melted more butter and dribbled it on top, which made me feel better.

Then I stuck it in the oven for about 45 minutes. Dinner at 6. We like getting the kid to bed before 8 so we eat at Golden Girls time.

Delicious, you guys. We loved it.

I hate you all

2010-01-08T08:23:00.002-08:00

The CAT is pregnant. The vet fucked up her weight/age guess. I hate you all.

STEP ONE

2010-01-07T14:36:00.003-08:00

The first blog post after a long hiatus is the hardest. I want to write something brilliant so you all, my erstwhile readers, will welcome me back without rolling your eyes. But hey, everyone has to bear disappointment, right?

So I'll start with something inconsequential, like this post.

In Sybil-style, things I have contemplated blogging about over the last month about which I have not blogged:

• Why Avatar sucked, namely, the complete and utter inability of someone as famous and rich as James Cameron to realize that he cannot write dialogue and that his notion of plot is terrible. With a reported $240 million spent, he couldn't drop a few mil to hire a screenwriter?
• Why Avatar was awesome, namely OH MY GOD THE HOLODECK IS NOW.
• My goals for the new year, including getting a job, exercising more than once in a blue moon, and coming to terms with the fact that I live here and I am going to Like It.
• This article. Of course Star Trek is an extremely liberal show. A lot of liberal commentators seemed surprised that Potemra would admit that conservatives are against progress, but I found it refreshingly honest. Conservatives are against progress. That's the whole point. They want to go back to some time that is between 10 and 50 years ago. Because things were better then.
• Ross Douthat's column about Avatar, which is shockingly bad. And I really can't believe that the NYTimes lets him write something that is basically a whiny defense for Christianity on their pages.
• My possible impending conversion to vegetarianism and/or veganism.
• Why The Wire is the greatest television show ever made and one of the pre-eminent examples of storytelling of our time, in any form.
• The Katie Roiphe brouhaha. See her essay here. Some analysis here. I have a lot to say, none of which is particularly informed because I haven't read a single page of Updike or Mailer or Roth. So, I'm not really sure what she's talking about. I do know, that reading novels where the male author uses sex and women as a way to pen his not-very-appealing fantasies to the page don't really appeal to me. Magically, the women are hot. They have big tits. They are so hot it can't even be described. And they really, really want to get it on, whether they know it or not. The best sex in a novel written by a dude is contained in the book Absurdistan. It is messy, and weird, and funny. Like real life.

Admin

2010-01-05T16:37:00.002-08:00

We are having to upgrade the comment section from Haloscan to Echo and there is some sort of importing/exporting what's-it's-shit business going on right now with the thingers. So, shit may be wonky and annoying for a bit in the comments area. Sorry.

Also, did I tell you that Avatar sort of sucks? It does. Have you seen Princess Mononoke? Then don't bother.

on the unintended consequences of bad policy

2010-01-04T12:59:00.000-08:00

I don't think anything I write this year will compare to this post at Fugitivus:

Laws restricting access to medical services are laws restricting access to medical services. They are not laws creating family talks, better worlds, or moral teenagers. They are laws creating restrictions to medical services, which people do not seek unless they need them. Laws creating restrictions to medical services are laws creating restrictions to services people need and need desperately. You can argue that the lawmakers had some kind of noble intentions in mind — I will not buy it, but you can argue that. But you cannot argue that once the law has been in effect and created an inability to comply, and yet remained unchanged. If this was a law about notifying parents, it would have addressed how to notify parents. If this was a law about how to seek a bypass, it would have addressed how to seek a bypass. Since it didn’t address either of those things, this is obviously a law about something else. You only get one guess about what that something else is.

The whole post is long but powerful (especially her memory of what it's like to be on the street and needing to come up with plans b/c/d/e & f. This section is almost enough to convince me that most policy discussions/solutions need to start with/come from the people who are actually experiencing what others are trying to legislate or control. Everything else is just academic, intellectual, bullshit meddling.

I also love how she peels back the curtain on how shit actually gets done - or not done, as she demonstrates.)

Because of my job I've become aware that most legislators don't actually read finer points of policy implications for a new piece of legislation; they want the bullet points. So we give it to them, probably to the detriment of thoughtful policy development. Some of them ask for clarification but they appear to rely on instinct, some electoral soothe-saying, and a smattering of hope that the nit-picky administrative details will be resolved in committee while all they have to do is jump on as sponsor and then vote on it when it's called.

Well, unfortunately, the devil is in those very details they are likely to overlook.

We rely on our elected officials to take care of the public's trust but they are often too 'busy' (see how I give them the benefit of the doubt there?) to actually do it critically, or thoroughly.

Illinois' parental notification law survived a recent legal challenge and will be in place as of this year. At least, that's what they tell us. Think our bankrupt, overtaxed and janky state system will have a firm enough hand to enforce this badly constructed law? I'm not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, in my and other state legislatures, the anti-woman/anti-choice faction has succeeded in building a wall separating young women in crisis from their legal access to a needed legal, medically-approved procedure.

Golf clap, frakkers.

[Who the hell is Delia Christina, you say? Ding was so 2009. It's 2010; here's to the long, slow death of my pseudonymity.]