Dreaded Memes

Somewhere in America or Young Black Gay Men Need Idols, Too

2013-04-30T16:34:00.001-07:00

Credit Sports Illustrated

While I recognize the point that is being made that a number of lesbians who are professional athletes are coming out of the closet, I think something is getting lost in the 'yeah, yeah, Jason Collins but...' chorus and it is this: somewhere in America, right this moment, there is a young black man around the age of 15. Maybe he lives in the suburbs and he knows he's just a little bit different from the other boys. Like a lot of middle class black kids, his parents take him to church and likely he has heard at least one sermon in his life about 'the gays'. It is a near certainty that he has heard negative comments about 'fags' or 'punks' or some other slur. If he plays a sport either in school or an outside league that rises to an absolute certainty. Maybe he lives in a rural Louisiana town. Maybe he lives in Chicago or New York or Oakland or Los Angeles. He could be anywhere. He may not have realized that he could *be* anyone.

Yesterday that young man's life got better. Much better. Suddenly, that young man knows not only that he is not alone but that he can be *anything* and be a strong black man who gets to go home to the man that he loves. He knows it in a way he likely didn't know the day before yesterday. Certainly he's aware that there are gay people. He's very likely aware that there are black gay people. He may even know Bayard Rustin was gay and that Samuel Delaney was bisexual. Maybe. But Bayard Rustin and Samuel Delaney are dead and so occupy the realm of history, a country that we, as Americans, have only the vaguest sense of. Yes, Martina Navratilova did it first. Yes, a number of women did it before them. One of the women who has done so most recently is black, Brittney Griner of the Phoenix Mercury. If I were that 15 year old boy's sister, and I were a lesbian Brittney Griner would be the light of my world right now. I could have used a Brittney Griner 30 years ago.

I know it's silly and it shows my naiveté but I was an adult and only a year away from my coming out myself before I knew that there were black lesbians. I remember listening to Tracy Chapman's first album, hearing her sing "For My Lover" and I knew I wasn't alone. That *I*, too, could become somebody. Black lesbian and all and go home to the woman I hoped to love (and have been lucky enough to find). She meant the world to me but might have meant next to nothing to a young black gay man coming out at the same time. Maybe in a 'good for her' sense but not in a "I could be that one day" sense.

I'm not Tracy Chapman but when I had no place else to turn to look for someone else who loves women who looked something like me, Tracy Chapman was there. Later I found Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich found out that Lorraine Hansberry was bisexual. I learned that I was nowhere near as alone as I thought. But Tracy Chapman and her first two albums, will always hold a special place in my heart because she, in that strange psychological interaction between a star and those who idolize her, made it okay for me to be a lesbian. Somewhere in America, there's a young black man who feels a little less alone. That may not mean a lot to middle-class white lesbians but it means a hell of a lot to some young black gay men. Hell, as a middle class black lesbian it means something to me. Not as much as Brittney Griner would have or Tracy Chapman did. But something special nevertheless. I'd like to think that those of us who had 'that day' when Martina Navratilova came out would let Jason Collins and his fans have theirs.

Maybe it shouldn’t be that way. Maybe it should be that anyone can look up to anyone else and to some degree that is true. My heroes and intellectual ancestors range over time and culture and ethnicity and place. But you know, if Alan Turing had been, say, Alana Turing that would have made his remarkable life all that more meaningful for me. Imagine being able to say, ‘there was this black woman who broke the Germans ENIGMA code and if any one person contributed singularly to the victory of the allies in WW II, it was her. She was a lesbian and…’ I love being able to say that about a white gay man from England. If I’d known about a black, lesbian codebreaker who is considered one of the singular minds of the last century and mother of the modern computer, it would have had a deep and profound impact on her. One of the uber-nerds of the last century a black lesbian? Oh the heaven to read about her in a history book! These things matter in some non-trivial psychological manner. I still look up to Turing. He had a hell of a mind and I’m glad we queer people get to claim him as one of ours.

2013-04-11T10:16:00.002-07:00

Something has been bothering me about the reaction to the Brad Paisley song "Accidental Racist". The reaction appears to be grounded in the observation that Paisley's lyrics are not in the language of the social justice warrior. One criticism I read before I got on the train today was that Paisley does not acknowledge his white male privilege. I can imagine that if I were to look for it, I could find a critique that dings him for not once using the term 'system of white supremacist hegemony'. Whatever might commend the use of that phrase that it rolls lyrically off the tongue isn't one of those things.

It seems to me that people are criticizing the song not because of what it tries to do but because who it is written for. It's not written for us where 'us' means those who do use terms like 'system of white supremacist hegemony' in casual company. We don't need that song. We simply don't because we're already aware of white privilege and can talk long into the night on how it manifests. We are not Paisley's audience. This can be seen by the number of times people have made statements on the order of, "I'd never heard of Brad Paisley and now I wish I hadn't ever heard of him." Paisley is writing for people who do know who he is. He's writing for white Southerners like him.

Many have criticized him for not recognizing that the Confederate flag is racist but is that really so remarkable? I am five years older than Paisley (1967 and 1972 respectively) and so he also grew up watching the change happen. He likely spent most of his life around people who genuinely believe that slavery was incidental to the Civil War and that the civil rights movement was a bunch of troublemakers. He's likely not had many conversations where terms like 'white privilege' and 'system of white supremacist hegemony' fall like rain in Oregon. Most of the people listening to his music whether they bought the album or they hear the song on country stations have likely not participated in a lot of those conversations either. He likely doesn't read Tim Wise and it's a safe bet that most of his fans don't either.

Now that means two things both important for a rational discussion of the song: the first is that we have to ask whether its more important for him to sing to his audience in a language they can understand or for him to sing in a language that will pass muster with those of us who were never going to buy a Brad Paisley album under any circumstances. The second is we have to ask whether we want his fans on our side on any reasonable terms or if we will only accept them on our side on our terms.

I've participated in a number of discussions both in the hard world and on the Internet regarding race in America. I've observed numerous times white people who are genuinely opposed to racism balk at the suggestion that the mere fact of they're being white means they are racist in the dictionary since of the term. They blanch even more at the suggestion that whether they know it or not, no matter what they do and almost no matter what they say they are bolstering up a system of white supremacism again using the dictionary definition of that term. The people who buy Brad Paisley albums, who go to see his concerts, are not going to listen to anything calling on them to question their attitudes about race if it is couched in language that boils down to them being racist no matter what they say or do. They will tune out any philosophy that says that even if they adopt all the language of anti-racism and social justice they are still actively or passively trying to ensure that the system of white supremacist hegemony stays in place. People don't like 'heads I win, tails you lose'.

I bring that up to ask this question; would it be better if Paisley never tried to write a song that asked southern whites to question themselves and their assumptions about race? Would we prefer that? Because it is likely that not only would he write a song that would pass muster with social justice warriors on the coasts but it is very likely that such a song is not possible to write and would be an aesthetic train wreck if it did. This is, remember, a four to five minute song not a hour long Tim Wise lecture.

This leads to the second question which is on what terms are we willing to accept Paisley and his fans on our side. Are they on our side only if they speak in the language of the social justice warrior? Have they shown sufficient commitment only when they speak like Tim Wise? I suspect that the truth is pretty close to the preceding.

Perhaps some of my skepticism of how this song has been received by people who are, again, not fans of country music in the aggregate has to do with how racism and, particularly, white supremacy has been defined downward. We do not draw a distinction between the man who shouts the n-word at a black woman and the woman who clutches her purse when a black man passes by on the street. Both are irredeemably racist and are both equally racist even though in the latter case the woman may not even be aware that she's clutching her purse. Is it racist? Yes, but it is not the same kind of racism.

White supremacy has been defined even further downward. Growing up white supremacist was reserved for the Nazi and the Klansman. They were virulent racists. These are people proud of their racism and ideologically committed to it. These are people who would happily kill and maim (but not be killed or beaten, which shows their moral cowardice) in the name of their ideology. Your garden variety white person who might let slip some stupid statement wasn't a white supremacist. They might be racist or they might just be grossly uninformed but of goodwill.

It is this unwillingness to grant Paisley the goodwill of his attempt that I find most disturbing from an ethical standpoint. It strikes me as grossly unfair and based on framework that most of us would not want applied to us. Like I said, most people don't like 'heads I win, tails you lose'.

Up to this point I've been silent about LL Cool J's participation in this project. He has come in for his own opprobrium for his part of the lyrical proceedings. He shows willing to meet Paisley halfway and for that he has become a 'joke' or worse. Yet, I think that he and Paisley are doing something courageous. They are trying to bridge a gulf and, perhaps, turn the volume down on a racial discussion that has reached a level of fever pitch that I haven't seen in close to forty years. For these two men, different as they are, to reach out and say "I'll meet you partway" is progress. Yet, they are being excoriated for this effort and the root of that criticism is that it doesn't sound like an academic paper written for a Race and Society class.

Instead of seeing the song as a sign of winning, we have interpreted it as a sign of Paisley trying to shore up white supremacy. Paisley's father would likely not have been bothered at all by wearing a tee-shirt with a Confederate flag on it and would not stop to ask himself how the black guy behind the counter at the coffee shop might see it. His grandfather would likely have found the mere question as, at best, morally obtuse. That within the space of two generations we went from a place where a white southern man would think "so what if the black guy is bothered, he should be bothered by it" to "oh my god, I never thought about what this might mean to someone not like myself" is as unambiguous a sign of serious cultural progress as I can think of based upon present observations.

Listen to his screams

2012-03-19T19:31:00.000-07:00

I am glad my parents aren’t alive to see this. I had not listened to the 911 tape of the murder of Trayvon Martin until tonight. I had intentionally avoided it. I couldn’t take it. My son could have been Trayvon Martin. My father could have been Trayvon Martin. My sister’s boys could be Trayvon Martin. My ‘nephew’, Jayvin, could be Trayvon Martin.

It’s the screams. Listen to them. Really listen to them. The terror reaches out through the speakers and grips you by the heart. If you have the least bit of empathy, your mind will be inexorably drawn to imagining the last few terrified moments of this kid’s life as he pleaded to be allowed to live.

When I heard it, all I could think of was my son’s face, his eyes wide with fright, pleading for his life and hoping that someone anyone will come to his rescue. Then the gun shot. Then the second gun shot. Even if one were trying to be ‘fair-minded’ (i.e. pretend that this might not be about race) the second gun shot makes it clear that Zimmerman meant to get himself a trophy. He was going to be the hero who saved the gated community from the young black man. It is bad enough that cops kill black people in the course of routine traffic stops and walk away without even a slap on the wrist. Now, it appears that--at least in Florida--we’ve taken a gigantic step backward and civilians can also kill a black man who is carrying Skittles-of-mass-destruction in his hand.

Imagine that you are there. You’re Trayvon Martin. You are walking home from the corner store with Skittles in your hand and suddenly you face every black parent’s nightmare. Yes, every black parent’s nightmare. For now, right now, I don’t really want to hear white people jumping up with their story of how their neighbors’ brothers’ best friend
knew this guy who was neighbors with this woman, who had a third cousin thrice removed, whose former neighbors’ son went to school with a guy who was randomly shot by a black guy. It’s a genre of ‘karmic balancing act’ tossed into American discussions of race. You are probably more familiar with the genre wherein the storyline is this, “When I was right out of high school, I tried to get a job as Attorney General of the United States and they gave it to some black guy named Eric Holder because they needed to fill a quota.” Never mind that the story teller hadn’t gone to law school. When the subject is job discrimination based upon race there will inevitably be some story where a white person didn’t get a job because ‘they’ had to ‘give it to a minority’. It is inconceivable that a black person might actually be the most qualified candidate for the job. Oh no! If a white person and a black person compete for the same job and the black person gets hired it must be because a quota had to be filled so any ongoing job discrimination is just karmic just desserts for blacks taking so many jobs we aren’t qualified to do in order to fill a quota.

There’s a difference between this hypothetical story and what actually happened. There are no municipalities where a black man could run down and shoot a random white kid, have the police show up and that black man just go on about his idle business. If Trayvon Martin had been white kid, and George Zimmerman a black man I guarantee you that Zimmerman would, even now, be sitting in jail awaiting trial. But since Martin was black and Zimmerman white, the latter gets to go on with his life. I wouldn’t put a $10 bet (much less a $10,000 dollar bet, Mittens) on Zimmerman doing any time whatsoever. IF it goes to trial and IF he is convicted, I wouldn’t be the least surprised if Zimmerman got off with time served in county jail. This guy Zimmerman, against the advice of 911, followed this young black man and killed him thinking he would be thought a hero. He’s not far off wrong.

Oh, he won’t be praised on Red State or anywhere else, at least not immediately. But the fact that he was carrying a gun and is defending himself under the ‘Stand your ground’ law is instructive. Apparently, the men I listed at the head of this piece (and all the one’s I left out) are so deadly that one has to stand one’s ground while following him down the street when he is armed with a pack of Skittles. At some point some conservative commentator or another is going to make a statement to the effect that Zimmerman reacted properly because how was he to know that a black kid walking with candy and an iced tea wasn’t a threat.

The 911 tapes are here (opens new window). Listen to them as many times as it takes for you to internalize this fact; Trayvon Martin is dead because he was black and a male over the age of 8. George Zimmerman is free because Trayvon Martin was black. Listen to his screams. Imagine him backing away from Zimmerman. Listen to the gun shot. Imagine the bullet striking his young body. See him falling to the ground. See Zimmerman taking another shot. You will have entered into the nightmare of every black parent in America.

And I still don’t want to hear any tales or statements of the ‘that could have been anyone’ variety. The shade of Billy the Kid or John Dillinger could walk down the street carrying a suitcase nuke and a AK-47 while wearing a tee-shirt reading, “Ask me about my plans to pillage and kill” and not be seen as ‘suspicious’ while a black kid with Skittles is a mortal threat.

No, Virginia, there are no living wooly mammoths

2012-02-14T11:08:00.000-08:00

To the surprise of absolutely no one who thought this through for more than about two minutes, it turns out that the wooly mammoth video is a hoax. I know, shocking!

It appears that a story last week about a hairy, woolly mammoth seen walking across a Siberian river is a hoax.
In the opening frame of the blurry video that went viral, an animal is seen moving through the Kitoy River. Superimposed over the video are the words: Siberian Mammoth, Copyright Michael Cohen/Barcroft Media
That's where the controversy and accusations began to fly.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/woolly-mammoth-hoax-confirmed_n_1273952.html

Now All Americans Are Losing Ground—David Frum - The Daily Beast

2012-02-08T16:19:00.000-08:00

To be an employer means that you pay a fair day's wage for a fair day's work. If your firm goes broke, you go broke too. You don't take advantage of clients or customers. As a voter and citizen, you try to think about what is best for everyone, not just you. You eschew ostentation when times are good, and you pay your fair share of the cost when times are bad. Your good name matters more than money. Your contributions to your community define your good name. Whenever you are inclined to criticize anyone, just remember that not everybody was born with the advantages you had.
(David Frum)
The man who wrote this is a conservative. He is also right.

Amazon 'Cancelled order' phish-bait

2012-02-06T09:13:00.000-08:00

Some Internet sleaze ball spammer has hit on the idea of trying to fake people out by sending the following email. The idea being that you say “what order!” and then click on the link. That then takes you to God knows where. Instead of clicking the link, go to your regular Amazon.com bookmark just to make sure that your account hasn’t been hacked.

Your order has been successfully canceled. For your reference, here’s a summary of your order:

You just canceled order #155-529594-6657462 placed on February 4, 2012.

Status: CANCELED

______________________________
_______________________________________

1 of The Acuity Special Edition
By: Olwen Roberts

Sold by: Amazon.com LLC

_____________________________________________________________________

Thank you for visiting Amazon.com!

-----
Amazon.com
Earth’s Biggest Selection
http://www.amazon.com

Parade for Vets in the PDX

2012-01-23T18:44:00.000-08:00

So I was watching Rachel Maddow and she interviewed a gentleman who is putting together a parade for veterans of the post-9/11wars. I would like to see something done like here in Portland. How this happens I don’t just yet but it should be doable.

RIP Etta James

2012-01-20T11:02:00.000-08:00

Died today at 73. And our world is made just a tiny bit less bright as her light goes out.

Gay rights and the corporate, capitalist world

2012-01-20T10:05:00.000-08:00

Andrew Sullivan, over at Daily Dish, makes the point--and one would be hard pressed to say he’s wrong in this instance--that the recent news that all of the companies on the Fortune Best 100 Companies to Work For list have anti-discrimination clauses that protects queer people is a triumph of the market. None of these companies are pandering or catering to a queer audience and they aren’t doing it for any particularly noble motive. Rather, they want the best talent they can get and do not want to lose that talent because someone is queer. Given that we’ve been waiting for ENDA for the better part of a quarter century but this change has happened right under our noses, I’m hard pressed to say that the market didn’t work.
A story from my way-back days in tech will be illustrative here. I used to work for a start-up in Oakland. This was my third job in the computer industry. I came in the door as employee thirteen. When I started, the company did not cover domestic partner benefits. As I was doing all of my paperwork on day one, the office manager came to me and said, “Don’t fill out your insurance forms yet. We don’t cover DP because it never came up before but now it has so I just have to call Aetna and it’ll take a few days to get it all sorted.” At the time I was only dating some woman, we’d had all of two dates and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I didn’t have a domestic partner.
That said, the next three hires were queer and so they benefitted from it. I was kicked out of the military for being queer. I never lost my job for being queer and in all the time I’ve worked in the field (since 1994) I can only think of one time that my being queer was the likely cause I didn’t get a job and that was because the organization was an arm of the Lutheran church. Since 1994, I’ve worked for two non-profits (including the YWCA), two start-ups and two multinationals. I’ve been treated fairly and equitably and been a valued member of the teams I was on.
I will give the last word to Sullivan.

This is not because they are somehow being noble. It is because they are serving their shareholders by employing the absolutely best people for the jobs they have and do not want to miss someone's talents because of something irrelevant like sexual orientation.
Hence capitalism enables equality. And the last entity to get with the program is the government.

David Frum - The Daily Beast

2012-01-17T12:30:00.000-08:00

I saw this the other day at Frum Forum and then read the whole article at Prospect magazine

And therein lies one of the central dilemmas of political life in developed societies: sharing and solidarity can conflict with diversity. This is an especially acute dilemma for progressives who want plenty of both solidarity – high social cohesion and generous welfare paid out of a progressive tax system – and diversity – equal respect for a wide range of peoples, values and ways of life. The tension between the two values is a reminder that serious politics is about trade-offs. It also suggests that the left’s recent love affair with diversity may come at the expense of the values and even the people that it once championed.

This may be something that we on the left will have to face sooner or later and, for my money, I would have it sooner. Neither the American left or right seems to truly grasp that the very nature of politics is trade-offs. The left, admirably pursuing diversity, has become blind to the fact that in doing so we may have fractured the social bonds that tie us together as Americans. Unlike, say, the Japanese who have a--more or less--common ancestry, history and heritage we Americans are tied together solely through commitment to an ideal and a history that may have some of us placed in the role of outsider or the target to whom the history happened. So like the British but unlike, say, the Germans part of the challenge for us as Americans is to figure out how to see the national story as being our story. Currently, those on the American left are likely to see our national story and ideals as something deeply and profoundly alien to us even though it may be the only story we know well. Instead of seeing the founding of America as the start of something great and good, we see it as the beginning of an unending string of horrors visited upon blacks, Native Americans, mestizos, Japanese and Chinese immigrants, etc. While there is historical accuracy to this portrait, it is not the whole of the story nor is it necessarily where we should want our focus to be.
It is difficult enough for a nation as diverse as ours to hold itself together. It is even more of a challenge when we do not feel that our national story has anything to offer minority populations outside of a long list of grievances and broken promises. What’s more, the more we emphasize that which makes us different and hold that up as far more important and noble than that which makes us similar, we will have a very difficult time convincing our fellow citizens that we need a stronger social safety net.

Ron Paul loves straw men

2012-01-10T18:15:00.000-08:00

Listening to Ron Paul’s speech this evening it was interesting his enthusiastic use of straw men:

“All these bleeding hearts who said we can just give everyone a free house and they can borrow off the equity…”

You can’t look back at the utter debacle of the housing market and say, with a straight face, that the problem was that people got ‘free houses’ that they then took loans against the equity. At least you can’t say that without worrying that some great cosmic force turns you into charcoal briquette on the spot.

Three patents does not a Perpetual Motion Machine make

2012-01-10T11:26:00.000-08:00

Just reading around on Huffington Post I saw yet another add for a perpetual motion machine. What I found most entertaining about this claim (outside of the LULZ inherent in this kind of flapdoodle) was this: The “HoJo Motor” is the only device that produces “Free Energy” that has 3 U.S. Patents!

Produce Free Electricity For Your Home and Appliances in Just 48 Hours With The "Howard Johnson Motor" (HoJo Motor) - The only "Free Energy Device" to have 3 U.S. Patents! | HoJo Motor
http://www.hojomotor.com/vid

It’s important to note here that the US Patent Office does not actually certify that the device produces ‘free energy’. The US government granted a patent not because the motor produces free energy. Rather, it granted a patent because the it is a working electric motor. The person is relying on the reader sucker not realizing this fact.

>Produce Free electricity for your home and appliances in just 2 days!<
No, you won’t be able to do this.
>Fire the Greedy electric companies and supply more of your own electricity!<
NO, you won’t be doing that either. Rather, you’ll be giving the greedy, self-deluding scam peddler lots of money as well as your greedy electric company.
>Reduce your carbon footprint and help the environment!<
Get a bicycle, it will actually work.

In case you are wondering how I can be so absolutely certain that this device doesn’t do what it claims to--and I’m certain it doesn’t--it requires invoking the thermodynamics.

Perpetual motion machines (and all ‘free energy’ devices are perpetual motion machines) violate either the first law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy) or the second law of thermodynamics (conservation of work).

The first law states that in a closed system you cannot create new energy. This device, the Johnson motor, appears to violate the first law. The claim is that you can generate work without having to input energy. The argument is essentially this: you give an initial impetus to the device and then, once it is going, it will continue to generate more energy than is needed to keep it going.

The second law states that in a closed system, whenever work is done *some* energy is loss to friction etc. In other words, you cannot have an engine that is *so* efficient that 100% of the energy input into the system is used.

The argument against all forms of free energy is this:

1) You cannot get free energy. In other words, you cannot get *more* energy out of a system than you put into it (1st law)
2) In any system where work is done (e.g. a change of states happens because of energy put into the system) some will be loss because of inefficiencies.
3) Therefore, you cannot make a machine that makes enough energy that it can either keep itself going without an external input or get out more energy than you put in.

All ‘free energy’ advertisements are scams don’t fall for ‘em!

Happy 369th Birthday Isaac Newton!

2012-01-04T18:57:00.000-08:00

Isaac Newton, born in England this day in 1643, was a leader of the scientific revolution whose Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687) is among the most important single works in the history of modern science.

Recess appointments? That's never happened before! Except it has.

2012-01-04T14:15:00.000-08:00

“President Obama’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is perhaps the most powerful and unaccountable bureaucracy in the history of our nation, headed by a powerful and unaccountable bureaucrat with unprecedented authority over the economy. Instead of working with Congress to fix the flaws in this new bureaucracy, the President is declaring that he ‘refuses to take no for an answer’ and circumventing Congress to appoint a new administrator. This action represents Chicago-style politics at its worst and is precisely what then-Senator Obama claimed would be ‘the wrong thing to do.’ Sadly, instead of focusing on economic growth, he is once again focusing on creating more regulation, more government, and more Washington gridlock. As President, I will focus on turning around our economy so that America can once again lead the world in job creation.”

Livewire | TPM
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/updates/3593?ref=fpa

Here’s a partial list of Bush the Younger’s recess appointments. Just so that when your FOX News watching relatives pretend that Obama made up the whole concept of recess appointments you’ll have something to counter with, gentle reader.

William Pryor
Charles Pickering
John Bolton
Susan Dudley
Sam Fox
Andrew G Biggs

Whose liberty?

2012-01-04T12:30:00.000-08:00

According to Paul the Elder (Ron) and Paul the Younger (Rand) the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a terrible, terrible mistake. In their construction I, as an American, had more liberty when there were jobs I might as well not even bother applying for because of the color of my skin or because of my gender. This is the logic of libertarianism. In that construction, there are no tradeoffs. Rather, there’s just a big pile of liberty and everyone either has all of it or none of it.
Now, I will be the first to admit that my employer’s liberty was limited in that they couldn’t just refuse to hire me because I’m black, a woman or queer. However, in the America my parents spent the first 50 years of their life in their liberty was seriously constrained because they were black. In other blog posts, I have taken apart the idea that if only the market had been left to its own devices integration would have come to America in the fullness of time. There is less than no reason to believe this. In fact, the argument comprises a counterfactual worthy of Harry Turtledove. We ran the experiment and we know how it turned out. Many of the people who experienced that experiment through most of the last century are only now departing this veil of tears. Another fairly large cohort is only now just retiring. The generation who experienced ‘the Change’ are only now reaching middle-age. The market didn’t solve the problem on its own. I will not rehash that argument in this post but if you’re interested in it (and my mea culpa for assuming a goodwill on the part of Paul the Elder that his newsletters suggest he does not deserve) the blog post discussing the problem with the libertarian fantasy that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was unnecessary is here.
Over at the Washington Post, Michael Gerson, in full mainstream Republican freak-out mode makes this observation about Ron Paul and the overly anti-government rhetoric of libertarians.

Government can be an enemy of liberty. But the achievement of a free society can also be the result of government action — the protection of individual liberty against corrupt state governments or corrupt business practices or corrupt local laws. In 1957, President Eisenhower sent 1,000 Army paratroopers to Arkansas to forcibly integrate Central High School in Little Rock. This reduced Gov. Orval Faubus’s freedom. It increased the liberty of Carlotta Walls LaNier, who was spat upon while trying to attend school. A choice between freedoms was necessary — and it was not a hard one.

Tennessee Bill tries to carve out a 'special right' to bully gays

2012-01-04T11:52:00.000-08:00

A proposed bill in Tennessee would create a loophole in the state’s anti-bullying laws to protect those expressing religious, philosophical or political beliefs, which one proponent says would ensure that people can still express their “views on homosexuality.”
The proposed bill would amend the state’s current anti-bullying laws to specify that the anti-bully policy should “not be construed or interpreted to infringe upon the First Amendment rights of students and shall not prohibit their expression of religious, philosophical, or political views” as long as there’s no physical threat or threat to another student’s property.

So the key here is not to threaten a gay kid but to just go ahead and beat the stuffing out of them. One wonders if the good people of Tennessee think that this law should cover Muslims although given recent history one suspects the answer is no.
(Tip o’ the hat to TPM for the original story.)

David Frum delivers Ye Olde Smackdown on 'Goldline' Glenn Beck

2011-12-29T18:56:00.000-08:00

It was a beautiful thing.

http://www.frumforum.com/lest-we-forget

Because sometimes you just have to use a meme with a 'mansplainer'

2011-12-29T16:03:00.000-08:00

More signs the times they are a changin'

2011-12-28T10:55:00.001-08:00

Twenty years ago, I tried to get a piece making a similar argument published in 'The Crisis' the 'house organ' of the NAACP. It was roundly rejected. It does my heart good to see more and more black people who are not gay coming forward and telling the community, particularly the black church which is the undeniable well-spring of anti-gay sentiment in the black community, that they are on the wrong side of history.

Monique Ruffin: It's Official: Gay Is the New Black

Gay is the new black. And some Christian blacks must be willing to look into their hearts and find the seeds of fear that would have them deny the humanity of another in the name of God (just the way it was done to them not that long ago). Let's ask ourselves: do we fear gays or fear being gay? Why must gay leaders in our churches and communities serve clandestinely? Consider what the power of love and acceptance might offer if we are willing to stand courageously with gays as we stood for ourselves decades ago. Our freedom will not truly be granted until we can pass it forward. Gay is the new black, sadly, because many blacks haven't been willing to embrace their own practices, secrets, fear, and shame about homosexuality. Many blacks have not been able to reconcile their real-life experience with their faith, and until they do this, they are oppressed people who are also practicing the oppression of others.

The Mark of the Barbarian

2011-12-28T08:31:00.000-08:00

Barbarian:
noun
(in ancient times) a member of a community or tribe not belonging to one of the great civilizations (Greek, Roman, Christian).
• an uncultured or brutish person.
adjective
of or relating to ancient barbarians: barbarian invasions | barbarian peoples.
• uncultured; brutish.

We live in a time and place that puts high value on emotion, and that views emotions as self-validating. To feel something is thought by many to be sufficient evidence of its truthfulness, or at least its authenticity. This is a mark of the barbarian. I understand why post-Sixties liberals make the mistake of believing that nonsense. But conservatives?

This is another one of those “scary-to-write” posts because what I am going to say so breaks with standard Left orthodoxy that it feels as if I am writing religious heresy. The above quote is taken from a post at Frum Forum written by a conservative about older conservatives (Fox Geezers) who get all their news from FOX News. My concern in this post is not with the Right-leaning people who think that it is sufficient that they feel that the HCR law leads to ‘death panels’ or that Obama is a Marxist Islamist. My concern here is with the Left-leaning people, my own political tribe, that think it is sufficient to ‘feel’ something in order for it to be ‘true’ or ‘authentic’. The barbarian I speak of is in the second sense of the uncultured or brutish person.

The examples I have are too numerous to count. It is such a commonplace on the Left that whenever two or three of us are gathered together, it is a near certainty that someone will make a statement of the ‘George W. Bush was worse than Hitler’ species. If challenged, that person will then claim that “well, that’s true for me” as if that makes a difference. “That’s true for me” is just another way of saying “I felt it, that settles it.” The Left, generally, and the Queer-Left specifically has a disturbing tolerance for these kinds of statements. What’s more there is a colossal blind spot that people willfully ignore even though it causes all manner of problems. If your feelings are accurate barometers to what is going on in the real world then by what logic are my feelings not an accurate barometer?

In other words, if one leans left and believes that, for instance, the Republican party has active plans for the elimination of queer people in America and you believe that the mere fact that you feel it means it must be true how can you turn around and argue that the FOX News watcher who believes that Barack Obama wants to enslave white people is wrong? They aren’t working off of a basis having any more foundation than your belief.

I have had this conversation so many times in online lesbian circles that I have now had to leave two online lesbian communities because of it. The first time was when someone insisted that there were clauses in the 2009 stimulus package that were demonstrably not there. This woman kept posting ‘as if’ those statements were there and when I pointed out to her that they weren’t and that she was clearly lying about it, I was told by a moderator that we had to be ‘tolerant of diverse opinions’. Except she wasn’t expressing an opinion, she was making a statement of fact. Either the stimulus package had language about reparations for slavery or it didn’t (for the record it didn’t) but this woman kept insisting that it did, along with language about a train from Disney to Vegas. On another board, there was a discussion about whether quantum mechanics explained telepathy and telekinesis (it doesn’t) and when I pointed out to my interlocutor that the brain is too large and too hot for quantum effects to be observed, they kept insisting that in their quantum mechanics it did. On that same board, I did a post on how humanity has become less violent over time. As an example, I offered up the fact that slavery is no longer legal in most of the world and is certainly illegal everywhere in the West. Someone then responded to say that slavery still happened in the United States and the rest of the world. Now, it is important to note that I was talking about the legality of slavery and its being socially acceptable. This person was using the (cough) logic (cough) that if slavery happens anywhere then it might as well be legal everywhere. Their response was about emotionalism. They want, perhaps even need, to be able to see America as a nation that is singular in its malevolence and so the idea that things might have improved in America was anathema to them.

There was a time in the West that we thought that self-control and particularly control of our emotions was a virtue. Now, we believe pretty much the opposite. To practice self-control and control of the emotions is seen as inauthentic and is, perhaps, even a vice. At least it is a vice when it is oneself who is expected to show some self-discipline. On the other hand we still like it when others show self-control since it makes them easier to deal with. I have a sign “keep calm and carry on” on the wall outside my office at home. Can you imagine people giving that advice in contemporary Left-leaning circles in America? I can’t.

Ben Nelson Retiring Ahead Of 2012 Election

2011-12-27T11:39:00.000-08:00

Someone will miss Nelson, I’m sure but I don’t know who that Democrat is but I’m sure he’ll be missed by someone. I wonder if he’s measured the drapes for his lobbying office on K street yet.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) is expected to announce that he will not run for reelection in the 2012 election cycle, Politico reported Tuesday. Nelson is currently in the middle of his second term. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000.

Ben Nelson Retiring Ahead Of 2012 Election
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/27/ben-nelson-retiring-reelection_n_1171256.html

Egads I'm such a geek!

2011-12-27T11:33:00.000-08:00

My lovely wife got me a Bag of Holding for Xmas! If you ever played ‘books and dice’ Dungeons and Dragons you know what these wonderful items were. A bag that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside! Egads I’m such a geek!

The times they have changed

2011-12-21T13:06:00.000-08:00

This made my day! Oh and welcome home sailor!

Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta and Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell share the first kiss after the USS Oak Hill returned home.
[Photo credit: Brian J. Clark/Associated Press]

At least Newt is being honest

2011-12-21T09:47:00.001-08:00

You've got to admire Newt for his honesty. He doesn't want our vote and is explicit in saying so. It's still insanely stupid but it's honest stupidity. Would that the GOP, as a whole, adopt this level of honesty and just tell the voters they don't want voting for them that they can vote for the other side. It would save the GOP a lot of pain gotten from contorting themselves to try to appeal to blacks while using racially charged and dog-whistle politics. It would save them the trouble of turning themselves into four dimensional toruses trying to court the Latino vote while simultaneously trying to scare the bejeezus out of the base at the thought of hordes of Mexicans coming over the border. And then there's Arab and Muslim Americans who it is manifestly obvious the GOP does not want their vote. They could at least be polite enough to tell Arab and Muslim Americans to just piss off.

Newt To Gay Voter: Support Obama | TPM2012

If you’re a gay American, don’t vote for Newt Gingrich. That’s not a Democratic talking point — that’s reportedly what Newt himself said to a gay man in Iowa Tuesday.

Put a fork in it, Boehner is done

2011-12-21T08:56:00.001-08:00

When the WSJ abandons you and you're a GOP politician, you're done. The Journal has abandoned Boehner, calling him out by name. David Frum, over at Frum Forum, makes another interesting observation that the Journal is responsible for the GOP being in this position because they taught them that this is what they are supposed to believe as good conservatives. At some point, the GOP is going to have to decide that governing is more important to the nation than campaigning. It's clear, though, that they aren't there yet.

Another GOP Domino Falls In Payroll Fight After WSJ Cries Uncle | TPMDC

“Both Republicans and Democrats have agreed that this is going to happen and probably the best thing to happen now is just to get it over with — one more policy blunder— but just get it over with and move on because now it’s been framed as a tax increase which it’s not,” he said. “I know what’s going to happen and I agree with the editorial this morning in the Wall Street Journal,” Corker went on. “Probably the best thing to do at this point is just get this behind us and move on and hopefully figure out a way to deal with the real issues that our country needs to deal with.”

How Dare The WSJ Blame The House GOP? | FrumForum

The Journal also of course as always favors tax cuts too. But not this one. The payroll tax holiday is the rare example of a tax cut the Journal strongly dislikes. In today’s editorial, the Journal suggests that its dislike is based on the holiday’s temporary nature. Yet the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were temporary too, and that time limit did not disqualify them in the Journal’s eyes.