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Derisive Religion Mocking

destor23 — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:20:21 -0500

by destor23

Pssst. I'd like to be president of the United States but before you vote for me, there's something you need to know. I believe, literally, that Star Wars is a true story. I believe in both the Old Testament story of Luke and Vader (parts IV-VI) and the New Testament origin of Vader (Parts 1-3 and The Clone Wars cartoon series).

Does this make me an unfit leader?

Before you say yes, consider that I'm a reasonable guy. I don't think, for example, that Star Wars has any bearing at all on life on Earth. It all happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. I don't think that humans evolved from Ewoks or that the Force works here of that you can make a lightsaber or travel through hyperspace. I just literally believe that everything in Star Wars actually happened somewhere at some distant point in time. Of course, I can't show you proof. But consider this... if the universe is infinite, then everything has to have happened, by definition. So don't even get me started on The Marvel Comics Universe.

So far as politics go, I'm making a relatively innocuous claim by believing in the literal truth of Star Wars. Since I believe that these true events happened far away and long ago, I don't make claims, as some religious adherents do, to moral authority, legal authority or land ownership. I just don't want to be mocked or criticized for my beliefs.

Over at the Washington Monthly, Ed Kilgore is chastising an "elites" for making fun of Rick Santorum's literal belief in a worldly and active Satan. Far better, says Kilgore, to engage Santorum on the substance of what he had to say about Protestants, Satan and the corruption of America, as Genghis has ably done for us already. I get why this makes sense. If you can make Santorum say what he really believes, which is that some of the very people who he is courting for votes are the dupes and pawns of the Big Evil, then you get to have some fun watching Santorum flail in the flames ignited by his own rhetoric.

Kilgore is probably right that letting Santorum get into the weeds of his own beliefs is better politics than just mocking a grown man for going around the country talking about devils. Besides, says Kilgore, most Americans believe in an actual Satan, far more intensely, it seems than my professed belief in the Book of Lucas.

Kilgore's concern is that "elites" who make fun of Santorum's hunt for the devil are just feeding into the myth Santorum is selling. Santorum's followers will view his critics as people duped by Beelzebub. How could Dan Savage so effectively sully Santorum's name without help from the depths of Hell?

Well, I'm sorry but you should not vote for me if I truly believe that Star Wars really happened, even if it has nothing to do with the policies I'd enact. A rich fantasy life is a wonderful thing, but there are limits, right? A belief in Satan as a living being who once rebelled against God in Heaven and now rules of the sulfurous pits of Hell is part of a rich fantasy life, too. It just happens to be a fantasy that many, if not most, Americans share.

I think we have to start talking more openly and honestly about this. What laws are really being pushed and passed based on such magical thinking? How rooted, really, are our policies in the world we inhabit, as opposed to the world we imagine?

For the sake of expedience, most Americans have embraced restraint with regard to religious issues. I stopped debating with my Israeli friends about the Middle East not because they ever changed my mind but because, in the end, I'd rather have Israeli friends than go down lonely, spitting arguments out of my pie hole. But it seems to me that, at least every now and then (and especially when a national-level politician brings it up) that we do have to debate about ghosts and goblins every now and then, no matter whose feelings get hurt.

It's Going To Be Complicated

Donal — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:27:38 -0500

by Donal

Gasoline is expensive, getting more expensive, and that threatens our wide-ranging American way of life, y'all. The conservative solution seems to be drill, baby, drill and frack, baby, frack and pipeline, baby, pipeline. Others are looking for the big technological breakthrough—the dilithium crystals that will keep the Starship America on its continuing mission.

In his latest Technological Update, Tom Whipple feels that there are two possible sources of energy that might replace fossil fuels. The bad news is that one is hydrogen. The worse news is that the other is cold fusion. Whipple is being cautious in his writing, but he still gives LENR more credence than do most of us:

The 800 lb. gorilla of course remains cold fusion. While little new has happened in the cold fusion story recently, scientists from around the world continue to report that Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) really do take place and can make heat. So far two companies say they have developed the technology to the point where they can safely make useful amounts of heat and are preparing to bring heat-making devices to market. Unfortunately, both of these companies, for what they say are proprietary reasons, have refused to let outside scientists examine their technology to verify that it can perform as claimed.

Whipple is correct that LENR would be a game-changer. But have we really seen enough to call it viable? Over the past decade, Peak Oil types have dismissed the Hydrogen Hype and Fool Cells, but trucks, buses and automobiles with hydrogen fuel cells, such as the Honda FCX Clarity, are being manufactured and leased now, though probably at a loss. Hydrogen is a portable way of storing energy—if you can keep the hydrogen from leaking—but the problem has always been that the energy return on energy invested (EROEI) to make hydrogen didn't seem to make sense:

The one announcement that seems to be of more than normal interest was made by the University of California, Berkeley where a team of chemists have come up with a catalyst that produces hydrogen from water without heat.

That would be a game-changer. And as far as storage losses:

To store useful quantities, such as would be necessary for a hydrogen-powered vehicle, expensive high pressure tanks are necessary. For this reason there is considerable research going on to find a way to store hydrogen inside the lattice work of metals. This is all rather exotic technology so it is hard to tell whether a commercially useful product will be available soon.

Indeed. The Doomer doubts, but the Trekker in me wants to believe.

In The Way is Shut, Do the Math has a more thorough evaluation of our ways out of the energy briarpatch:

A few weeks back, I organized assessments of fossil fuel alternatives into a scoring matrix to provide—at a glance—a sense for the pluses and minuses of each option. We saw from this exercise that most alternatives are inferior replacements for fossil fuels in one way or another (although superior in terms of carbon dioxide emission). We also saw that transportation will be the hard part.

I suspect that while substantial electricity can be generated, a widespread grid will be hard to maintain, as well. We're already seeing that in energy-poor Pakistan.

...A complex, interrelating series of considerations will steer us one way or another. My hunch is that human nature, political realities, economics (including economic hardship) combined with technical shortcomings of alternatives will get in the way of our shiny future. I would like to be convinced that this isn’t the case so I can stop worrying and go full-force on my experimental physics career, but the arguments for why things will be alright often strike me as narrow or simplistic. “It’s obvious: we’ll go to space where resources are unlimited.” ... “More sun hits the Earth in an hour than we use in a year: it’s obvious we’ll solve this problem.” ...

Any argument/rebuttal that starts with “It’s simple,” or “It’s obvious,” or something along those lines is more likely to fall in the foolish camp than the wisdom camp. ... My “hunch” tells me that we work in an imperfect world full of irrational reactions, uneducated citizens, dysfunctional politics, competitive nation-states willing to wage war, ruthless extrapolation based on our fossil fuel bonanza, and simple, stupid inertia. ...

That's an observation with which I can fully agree.

Cookies for Communism

erica20 — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:08:09 -0500

by erica20

If you support my 6-year-old daughter's radical lifestyle, please let me know and I'll hook you up with some Girl Scout Cookies! We've got all the good flavors:

--Secular Hu-Mints
--Tree-Hugger Shortbread
--Shout "Out of the Closet!" Shortbread
--Peanut Butter Prides
--Peanut Butter Parenthood Planners
--Radical Samoas (also known as Islamist De-Lites)
--And of course, the new flavor, "Savannah Smiles because She's Really a Boy."

She's hoping to sell at least a hundred boxes.

(If you're mystified, check out recent criticism of the Girl Scouts' "Radical Homosexual Agenda." You won't know whether to laugh or cry.)

--Crossposted at FullOstrich.com

Satan vs. Santorum

Genghis — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:06:17 -0500

by Genghis

Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum sparked a media firestorm on Saturday when he accused President Barack Obama of promoting a "phony theology...not a theology based on Bible."

To many, his accusation smacked of the old smear--whispered through right-wing email chains--that Obama is a covert Muslim. In response to such concerns, Santorum publicly expressed his confidence in Obama's Christian faith. "If the president says he's a Christian," he assured reporters, "He's a Christian."

But what Santorum means by "Christian" is a bit different from the way most Americans understand it. He may acknowledge that the President worships Jesus Christ, but he regards Obama's Christian faith as polluted by secular and liberal ideals. And not just Obama's. Santorum believes that most of mainstream American Protestantism has been corrupted in both doctrine and practice.

Corrupted by whom?

In the summer of 2008, as Barack Obama and John McCain vied for the White House, Santorum delivered a speech to Catholic students from Ave Maria University. He warned them of a terrible threat: Satan had targeted the United States of America.

According to Santorum, the "Father of Lies" had lusted after America's soul ever since the Republic was founded, but our stalwart ancestors resisted his efforts. In these latter days of depravity and moral decay, however, Satan was winning.

First, Satan wormed his way into the Ivy Tower, using the doctrine of moral relativism to seduce "the elites." Then he and his new minions set their sights on a juicier target.

"What we saw this domino effect," Santorum explained, "Once the colleges fell and those who were being education in our institutions, the next was the church."

By the church, he meant the large Protestant sects that dominate the United States--Episcopalians, Methodists, and so on. In Santorum's view, Satan and company had reduced mainstream Protestantism to a shambles. "It is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it," he charged, unintentionally echoing the sentiments of more than a few Catholic popes over the centuries.

But Santorum's own Catholic Church was not immune to Satan's influence. As the pedophilia scandal broke in 2002, Senator Santorum angrily decried the villains responsible. "It is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm," he stormed. Warning that Catholic seminaries had been corrupted by secular culture, he called for a "new evangelization" within the Church to combat the infestation.

With the nation's great religions under siege, Santorum warned of one more domino that was finally toppling under the cascade of satanic corruption in late 2008. The last bastion of righteousness was, believe or not, the government.

"People in political life get elected by ordinary folks from lots of places all over the country where the foundations of this country are still strong," Santorum explained, perhaps alluding to his old district in Pennsylvania, "The body politic held up fairly well up until the last couple of decades, but it is falling too."

A few months later after his speech, the last domino fell. Obama won the election, and "cultural liberals" swept into Congress.

In 2012, Santorum aims to right the dominos, starting with the White House. He regards the effort as much more than a political campaign. "This is not a political war at all, or a cultural war," he explained, "It is a spiritual war."

According to his view of America, two religions vie for the nation's soul. On one side stand traditional Catholics and evangelicals. On the other stands the "phony theology" of President Obama and all those who reject Santorum's right-wing version of Biblical morality. One side stands for God. The other stands for you-know-who.

Michael Wolraich is the author of Blowing Smoke: Why the Right Keeps Serving Up Whack-Job Fantasies about the Plot to Euthanize Grandma, Outlaw Christmas, and Turn Junior into a Raging Homosexual.

Mitt Romney is looking Christ-like.

Oxy Mora — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:05:46 -0500

by Oxy Mora

After listening to the Jesus-trumpeting of Rick Santorum for the last week and then having bile rise up in the back of my throat at the obscene remarks of Franklin Graham on MSNBC this morning, Romney, by comparison, is looking like a saint or even Jesus Christ Himself.

At what point will fair minded Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, reach the point of saturation with the calumny, hypocrisy and self-righteousness of people like Santorum and Franklin Graham, and say to themselves---this is not right, this is not America, and this is not who I am.

I do not particularly like Mitt Romney, either his money grubbing in business, his flip flopping, his late coming conservatism, or his demeanor. And I think it is fair game to question him on how his Mormon faith would affect his policies. But when you stack Romney up against the likes of Santorum or Franklin Graham, who does not show the President even enough respect to call him "President" Obama on air---so why should I respect his title of "Reverend"?---Romney looks normal and even generous.

If Romney were elected I would not like his economic or his social policies, but I think the man himself is rational. He would not tank the economy with austerity. He would not start an unnecessary war with Iran. He would not turn the country into a Christian Theocracy. On the other hand Santorum looks like a train going off the tracks. Santorum with his finger on the button? Are you serious?

Santorum, Graham & Co, are, spurred on by the media, again questioning President Obama's Christianity.

Again, we are forced to hear the explicit dishonoring of another person's faith with the words---he says he is a Christian, don't ask me, ask him." . Do not those words represent calumny? No? In what way do they represent the teachings of Jesus? Is it not the same if I were to raise suspicion of Rick Santorum's integrity with words like, "I don't know if Rick Santorum practices recreational sex. Ask him, not me". My job is just to get the ball rolling, as has been happening a lot at MSNBC over the last few days.

When asked about Obama's faith, Graham said, in effect, "He says he is". When asked about Santorum, he said, "I believe he is a Christian." When asked whether he has a double standard, Graham demonstrated the calumniator that he is. "He, Obama, is not a Christian, because it doesn't 'feel' like it to me". "I don't believe him because in his actions around the world he shows he is more concerned with Muslims than with Christians who are being killed" ---for which there is not a shred of evidence.

Further, Graham demonstrated the type of "Christian" he is. Someone can only prove to Graham that he is a Christian, and give Graham a "feeling" that he is a Christian if he, for example, goes to church regularly. And if he lives his life according to Graham's frame of reference.

When asked whether Romney is a Christian, Graham flat out stated that he wasn't, either by his standards, or according to the beliefs of "most Christians". In my opinion Romney himself has made the most heartfelt public statements about his faith of all the Republican candidates. And he did so when asked, not bringing it up at the drop of a hat like Santorum. Romney spoke to explain his own beliefs, not to pass judgment on others.

The way I understand the teachings of Christ, Romney's behavior is more Christ-like than either Santorum or the sanctimonious Graham, the woeful master of litmus tests for everyone else's belief systems---the, "Reverend" Franklin Graham---who would be both judge and jury on another's man's public profession of faith. For the religious right folks out there who endorse Franklin Graham, please prove to me how he is different from Cotton Mather in 17th Century, Mass.

Santorum is so full of himself being the front runner that he is either just high or is exhibiting his innate nature of a Religious despot. I think Romney has an opening here to demonstrate that he is the more sane and main stream person and candidate. Talking about the Mormon religion has been a problem in his campaign. But at this point he has nothing to lose and Santorum is off guard because he firmly believes Romney is precluded from discussing his own faith. But the reality is that, in the context of the Religious extremism and Christian hegemony being espoused by Santorum, Mormonism may by comparison look like the very essence of freedom of religion in the promised land of America.

But if Romney jumps on the band wagon of distorting the contraceptive issue as one about freedom of religion, I will never again say one kind word about the man, especially not---that he is Christ-like.

Fracking, Drilling OK in Theory

Donal — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:04:26 -0500

by Donal

In UT: No Evidence of Groundwater Contamination from Hydraulic Fracturing, Rigzone lets fracking off the hook:

No direct connection has been found between hydraulic fracturing and reports of groundwater contamination, according to a study released Thursday by the Energy Institute at The University of Texas of Austin.

The study found that many of the problems linked to hydraulic fracturing are related to common oil and gas drilling operations such as casing failures or poor cement jobs.

Researchers also concluded that many reports of contamination can be traced to above-ground split or other mishandling of wastewater produced from shale gas drilling, rather than hydraulic fracturing per se, said Charles "Chip" Groat, an Energy Institute associate director who led the project.

"These problems are not unique to hydraulic fracturing," Groat said in a statement.

While Rigzone, and no doubt numerous conservative news outlets will see this as a vindication of fracking, in Fracking impacts reviewed in major study, Environmental News Network reports the results a bit differently:

The report, released at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW), doesn't give this form of natural gas extraction a clean bill of health. Rather, it suggests that problems aren't directly caused by fracking, a process in which water, sand, chemicals are pumped into wells to break up deep layers of shale and release natural gas. Instead, the report concludes, contamination tends to happen closer to the surface when gas and drilling fluid escapes from poorly lined wells or storage ponds.

In, Fracking Could Work If Industry Would Come Clean, Scientific American steered a middle course:

But a panel of experts not tied to industry told a large audience at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting here yesterday that the primary concerns can be solved if drilling and gas companies would impose tougher controls on their own operations, and if regulators would stiffen safety rules and crack down on violators who break them. ...

“We did not find that fracking the shale itself was likely to contaminate groundwater,” said Chip Groat, a geologist and professor of geoscience at the university who led the study. “We did find contamination from surface spills and leaks” at the top of the well.

The main culprits were above-ground spills of chemicals used in fracking; poor installation of metal casings and concrete in the top of the well that are supposed to prevent chemicals sent down the bore hole that later come back up, as well as the methane itself, from leaking; and sloppy handling of that “flowback” water plus other wastewater when it is transferred and stored in open pits or closed tanks.

So the problem isn't fracking, it's fracking by the lowest bidder. With little or no inspection or regulation. Maybe we need a new show, Holmes on Hydrofracturing.

Turning to Arctic drilling, according to US Officials OK Shell's Spill Plan for Alaska, a 17 Feb 2012 report from Rigzone:

U.S. officials have approved an oil-spill plan for Royal Dutch Shell PLC as the company looks to begin drilling in the Arctic, saying Friday that Shell has demonstrated its ability to respond to potential spills in icy waters despite protests from environmental groups.

The approval, granted by the U.S. Interior Department, helps pave the way for Shell to begin drilling in the Chukchi Sea this summer after years of preparation for the project.

Shell still has to obtain drilling permits from the Interior Department before it can move forward.

"We are taking a cautious approach," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement.

Caution is the word, as the IB Times' Green Economy blog reports that Repsol just had a mud blowout:
North Slope Blowout on Land Clearly Shows We Are Not Ready to Deal with an Accident in the Arctic

Susan Murray, Oceana's Senior Director, Pacific, issued the following statement in response to the North Slope Repsol well blowout:

"Yesterday, Spain's big oil company Repsol drilled into a methane pocket that resulted in an exploration drilling blowout on Alaska's Arctic shores. This is yet another wake-up call for the Obama Administration that oil and gas activities are risky business. We are incredibly lucky this is not an oil well blowout offshore in the Arctic Ocean; because the nation is not prepared to deal with an accident like that in offshore Arctic waters where the ability to respond is limited at best, and impossible at worst. As of right now 42,000 gallons of drilling lubricant or "mud" have spilled and an unknown amount of methane has escaped.

"This accident is only the latest of several oil and gas disasters since the Deepwater Horizon tragedy less than two years ago. As is the case with Repsol's blowout here, accidents happen for unanticipated reasons, but when it comes to oil and gas activities the record shows it is not if an accident will happen but how soon will the next accident happen.

Fortunately no one was injured, but it seems clear that extracting energy from more remote locations under lower profit margins will lead to more unintended consequences, whether they be poisoned water tables or dead workers.

Longtails to Long Tailpipes

Donal — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:03:32 -0500

by Donal

My massage therapist now rides a big black Yuba Mundo cargo bike, or longtail, like the one in the video above. While I was on the table he raved about the financial advantages of ditching his car, skipping the bus and cycling around town. He had even let his Zipcar membership lapse. He likes riding in an upright posture, because it takes stress off his arms, which are his tools. He's been riding all winter, which has been mild, but I do see people riding in the snow. I haven't been willing to try that, even though Dmitry Orlov says it is common enough elsewhere:

Around the world, for over a century, people everywhere have used the bicycle to get around in every kind of climate and weather. There are year-round bicyclists in the Sahara, as well as in Edmonton, Alberta. Bicycling year-round is very much a solved problem everywhere. Here in Boston I know dozens of people who commute by bicycle year-round, and I see hundreds of people out on bicycles, every day, at all times of the year.

And yet with just about any random group of people I encounter the idea of bicycling through winter is regarded as very strange: somewhere between suicidal and heroic. (The fact that driving a car is far more dangerous, and suicidal on multiple levels, does not seem to register with most people.) What can I say? To each his own. As for me, I am perfectly comfortable riding a bicycle year-round.

Yuba is a big bike for a taller person, while Surly's Big Dummy is available in four sizes. Here's an enthusiastic ten minute video on all sorts of cargo bikes.

For an extra 1500 dollars, you can get the Yuba Mundo with electric drive, which probably makes sense for hauling a load. Like a lot of folding bikes, my Xootr Swift can be fitted with a Bionx kit, and Currie offers conversion kits for conventional bikes. I've debated adding electric drive to a bike. It's a tempting thought to ride to work without sweating, but I also worry about going too fast too easily with only ordinary brakes for stopping. I've read reports of thousands of e-bike and electric moped accidents in Asia.

Several years ago, I test rode a TidalForce M-750, which is based on the Montague Paratrooper folding bike. The M-750 had a powerful motor and good brakes, and frankly felt more like riding a motorcycle. I couldn't imagine pedaling its 75 lb dead weight uphill with a dead battery, though.

In a very long article on EV World, A Battery and a Pair of Wheels, Ed Benjamin considers electric four wheel bad, electric two wheel good:

Electric cars are still a tiny, and struggling business. Though rapidly becoming successful, electric cars are exactly the tiny, short ranged, and boring in concept, vehicles that have been presented for decades. While I think they are overdue, they are not very creative. And they do not own any transportation niche (yet).

And they have a cultural problem. They represent a reduction in utility for the user of a fossil fuel vehicle. While there may not be a real problem in accepting the reduced utility – it is not human nature to go in that direction. So in North America, (which is really the only totally-car culture) EVs will struggle for a while yet.

For very large parts of the human race, the gas-powered car is not, and never has been their primary transportation. For most humans, to walk, to ride a bike, take the metro, or ride an electric bicycle is their daily travel method. Owning a gas-powered car is regarded as an expensive and not very practical luxury by most humans.

EV World editor Bill Moore is long on electrics of all types, and was perplexed by a study of vehicle emissions in China making the rounds on energy blogs. I first saw it on Green Car Congress, and it focused on the huge amount of fine particles in the Middle Kingdom's atmosphere. Moore contacted Chris Cherry, the lead author, and concluded:

As to the question of the environmental impact of electric cars compared to gasoline, the issue really isn't how dirty electric cars are, they aren't because they produce zero local emissions, compared with ICE-age models. The problem is how dirty China's electric power grid is.

This is essentially the long tailpipe argument with rebuttal. EV proponents hate long tailpipe because it ties their clean new devices to the source of power. Their rebuttals always presume greater efficiency in the use of power, which is certainly true of electric bikes, and cleaner generation of power, which given approaches like fracking cannot be predicted with certainty.

Nixing Racism: Jeremy Lin Gives Us a Teaching Moment, Along With Lots of Great Balling

Articleman — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:24:32 -0500

by Articleman

I love basketball, so I love Jeremy Lin. He's awesome. I also love to write about basketball, so I was waiting until I had seen more of Lin's play to write a blog about his fascinating rise to celebrity status and into the upper echelon of NBA guards. I was not waiting to blog about Lin until idiots thought it was cool to use the ugly and out-of-bounds racial slur "chink" in prepared text to refer to him. Nonetheless, we have been exposed this week to ESPN making wordplay with this racist slur, and to boxer Floyd Mayweather and even columnist Jason Whitlock joining the racist foot-in-mouth comment club. So before we get back to enjoying the Linsanity where it belongs, on the hardwood (where Lin scored 28 and dished out 14 assists in a nationally televised Knick win over the Mavericks today), let's recognize the teaching moment our culture suddenly finds itself in about the not widely paused upon subject of antiAsian racism.

By way of background, in case you have been unconscious or perhaps visiting the new Gingrich moon colony for the last three weeks, you have certainly heard by now of the meteoric rise of Jeremy Lin, a second year NBA player, into being the first Asian-American basketball star in American history. Lin was an end-of-the-bencher for a listless and 8-15 New York Knicks team, when coach Mike D'Antoni, himself on the brink of being fired, took this inexperienced guard and gave him extended minutes. Linsanity followed, as the Knicks won seven straight games with Lin leading them in scoring and assists over the stretch, hitting a game winner at the end of one road game, and scoring more in his first six NBA starts than any player in the league's 66 year history. New York responded with a lot of love, as did NBA nation. Lin was an underdog and a surprise several times over -- undrafted, he played his college ball for Harvard, having never received a single college basketball scholarship offer, and he had been sent to the NBA's minor league repeatedly. And it is surely part of the Lin story that there had never been an Asian-American player in the modern NBA, which, rolled together will all of those underdog facts I just listed, and Lin's joyful, positive disposition, made his rise a unique and upbeat sports story. People like rooting for the underdog, for the nice guy made good, for the novelty of someone being the first to do something, and Jeremy Lin is all of that. (Although he's too good to be the underdog forever, but hey, let's enjoy the liftoff here.)

Unfortunately, one of the distinctive things about Lin being race (the only other Asian-American player in NBA history was Wat Misaka, who played three games, also for the Knicks, in 1947), there was an opening for stupidity to creep into the discussion. Sure enough, there was a scuffle about race and speech about Lin earlier in the week, when hater Floyd Mayweather, Jr., a convicted serial batterer of women and a boxing champion, tweeted that Jeremy Lin is a good player but that he only receives hype because he's Asian, and that black players do every night what he does. Mayweather had previously been caught on video saying of rival champion boxer, Filipino Manny Pacquiao, "We're going to cook that little yellow chump…. Once I stomp the midget, I'll make that motherfucker make me a sushi roll and cook me some rice." By this standard of racist speech, Mayweather's latest comments sound almost scholarly in tone. It's true that Lin being Asian is a positive part of why people pay attention to him (he's as novel as Tiger at Augusta, and arguably more so than the Williams sisters, all of whom inspired a lot of love), and to that degree only, Mayweather almost had a point. But in having to make it about black versus Asian (a leitmotif on display in Mayweather's diseased rant against Pacquiao), he went off the deep end. It was nice to hear the First Knick Fan, Spike Lee himself, tweet back that Mayweather sounded like Rush Limbaugh making those comments. Spike was right. What Lin did in his first set of starts had never been done by a white, black, or Asian player. Which is part of why it is cool, and raciaizing sour grapes over Lin's attention is bad news.

I was surprised while researching this to see that a figure in sports I actually like -- columnist Jason Whitlock -- had gotten into the act. Mayweather is the kind of violent idiot jock who our culture elevates improperly onto a soapbox through Twitter and media coverage. But Whitlock is a good and often thoughtful sports columnist. And he tweeted the other night that after another good performance in New York by Lin, "Some lucky lady in NYC is going to feel a couple inches of pain tonight." Get it? The joke or stereotype about Asian men and their genitalia. Nice. Jason apologized, and was not suspended. Yecch. Whitlock considers the joke "inappropriate" and "immature." He didn't call it "racist," which means he hasn't accepted responsibility, a failure even more evident in his whinily criticizing the sincerity of those criticizing him. He'd rather walk around in little circles pretending to be some racial truth-teller when he should just say he screwed up and give supposed racial insight a rest for the week. That his employer Fox has not suspended or punished him remains more pathetic and unacceptable than what he said in the first place, as it amounts to tacit endorsement.

Speaking of Spike Lee, as we did two paragraphs above, ESPN provides a generally praiseworthy contrast to Fox in how you do the right thing. As the virus of racist cracks spread through the intertubes, ESPN employees twice this week made racist "chink" wordplay in text about Lin. Friday night, ESPN ran the racist headline "Chink in the Armor" to explain the Knicks' first loss with Lin starting. Someone had the presence of mind to pull it down within 35 minutes, but thankfully not before the screen-shot of ugliness went viral, and called the question as to whether this was ok. Saturday morning, as HuffPo and others focused attention on the headline, we learned that ESPN had done the same thing two days earlier when anchor Max Bretos asked in this video whether there was a "chink in the armor -- where can Lin improve his game?" Remarkably, ESPN had already come under criticism for using "Chink in the Armor" as a headline to refer to a USA Basketball loss in China. Anyone knows that this continuing conjunction of China with the slur "chink" was not accidental. Sadly, fans taunted Lin with "chink" even while he played college ball in the Ivy League.

Happily, ESPN stepped up and recognized at least the rough equivalency of the slur in its headline with the N-word, which America learned you don't get to use as an epithet at someone decades ago. It fired the headline writer, and suspended Bretos for 30 days. (And it pointed out that someone broadcasting over ESPN Radio who is not an ESPN employee, thus beyond its disciplinary reach, who turns out to be Knicks radio voice Spero Dedes, had used the same "chink in the armor" language in his live broadcast of Friday's game -- audio here.) There is a good argument for firing Bretos, but I am betting that he showed great contrition (he tweeted that his wife is Asian and that he would never intentionally disparage the Asian community) and that he may have been ad libbing on air, though one would tend to assume otherwise. In Bretos' defense, it says something about American acceptance of casual antiAsian racism that nothing happened as a general cultural backlash after his comment for two days. Only when the headline two days later raised the issue to critical mass was ESPN was forced to confront what appeared to be its third racist use of "chink in the armor." The delay, the indifference from Bretos' point A Wednesday to the headline's point B Friday cannot be laid at the doorstep of ESPN, but instead at the doorstep of how America still sometimes fails when it talks about race.

In that continuing American conversation about race, one thing that shone through to me is that even though this antiAsian C-word stands in rough parallel to the antiblack N-word, as a totem of hate and disparagement and dehumanization, we haven't evolved rules as clear about antiAsian disparagement, partly because there was no Asian counterpart to the African-American civil rights movement of the 1960s. We have had many more Al Campanis moments in our popular culture than Jason Whitlock or Floyd Mayweather moments. I know one great illustration from my own youth of the disparity between how clear our cultural prohibitions have been against using overtly antiblack language, compared to our softer prohibitions against overtly antiAsian slurs. As a teen, I had a girlfriend in Pekin, Illinois, so named because someone stupid thought that if you burrowed through to the opposite side of the earth, you'd be in Peking. I say someone stupid because Pekin and Peking are both in the northern hemisphere. (I guess if you want to imagine that you can connect any two points on a sphere through the center, all towns in the world could be named Pekin. But I digress.)

Having made some acquaintances in Pekin, I was shocked back in 1984 to learn that Pekin's high school nickname until 1980 -- far into the post-MLK world -- had been the Chinks. This was their logo. You cannot imagine a sports team with a comparably disparaging ethnic nickname (ok, the "Washington Redskins" comes close and persists) existing in 1980. By then, America had too evolved of a consensus against the N-word to permit its use in such a casual and authoritative way as in nicknaming a school. Yet when the school in all-white Pekin (a town with longstanding Klan ties) resolved to change its nickname from Chink to Dragon in 1980, there was a protest in which students stayed home en masse. Fortunately, the school stood its ground and there were mass suspensions and discipline, greatly to the displeasure of the disciplined. Remarkably, even after Pekin retired the disgraceful nickname, Pekin still had a roller rink called "Chink Rink," which had outside it a cartoon logo caricature of an Asian man in a long robe, with slant-line eyes, a coolie hat, an idiotic grin, and roller skates sticking out from under his robe. Thankfully, I cannot find an image of it to paste here. The rink name passed around 1985, as I recall.

The story of casual racism this week has an interesting parallel with the purging of Pekin's offensive mascot and nickname. By 1975, the nearby Peoria Journal-Star, which was the primary newspaper in the area, resolved that it would never use "Chink" in covering Pekin's teams even while the nickname persisted, to avoid offending readers. The Journal-Star's decision helped start the push to put the slur out of bounds. You can see the discussion of that in this interesting history of the Pekin nickname controversy, at pages 55-56. And when ESPN issued a full-throated apology, with heads rolling today, it helped draw the line more clearly, as we drew it long ago on the N-word, against this very ugly disparagement. Thank you to the worldwide leader (as it calls itself) for the moral clarity Fox, Jason Whitlock, and Floyd Mayweather lack. I have confidence we're going to move forward from this week as a teaching moment that helped, and that we all benefit from that, not just kids like my half-Asian son who asked me this morning during a Lin discussion how he would have been treated during Old South segregation.

So with that confidence in where we're headed, I'm going to put this angle aside, and get back to enjoying Jeremy Lin's game. If you missed today's Knicks victory over the Mavericks, you missed something special. The defending champion Mavs were up in the second half in a loud Garden. Bringing them back, Lin knifed through the lane twice for tough layups, absorbing hits and finishing one as an and-one. He got teammate Steve Novak raining threes from the outside by drawing the defense and making the smart pass. After Novak hit two threes in the fourth quarter to put the Knicks up six, with the shot clock running out, Lin coldly nailed a long three over a long defender to make it nine. And after the Mavs clawed back to 100-97 down in the last minute, Novak batted a long rebound of a Mavs miss to Lin, who casually tossed a perfect 50 foot pass upcourt to J.R. Smith, who had released early, for the layup that proved decisive. Playing the best field-goal defense in the NBA, the Mavs yielded over 100 to Lin's Knicks, who are 8-1 with him starting. Cheering on Lin's eyepopping 28 points, 14 assists, and 5 steals, the First Knick, a man whose films have improved our conversation about race, was wearing a long, baggy Harvard jersey, with Lin's name and college number 4 on the back. Think I'll be getting one of those myself. God help me, I'm starting to like the New York Knicks. Peace out.

Foster Friess & viagry for the larynx.

Oxy Mora — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 12:01:20 -0500

by Oxy Mora

This past week has seen such an outburst of psychologically disturbing sexual and gender references by old white men---and for that matter, old white women---well connected to the socially conservative Republican Party that I have been puzzled as to what chemicals might have been put into their water supply---but I doubt that it is estrogen, because estrogen would presumably make men effeminate and cause prostate cancer whereas the outburst has seemed more like an overdose of testosterone.

Last night I watched the movie, "Code 46", starring Tim Robbins who plays a fraud investigator in a Totalitarian state. One of his disarming techniques is to invite anyone, say a receptionist, to tell him something about themselves, anything at all, and see if he can guess their innermost secrets---which he does. Turns out Robbins has at his disposal an empathy virus which puts his insightful instincts on overdrive. Republicans have apparently found a drug which transforms normal and healthy sexual instincts into self-deprecating, and somewhat angry, sexual fantasies which---in an anatomical flip flop---are expressed through the vocal cords. Not knowing the actual chemical makeup of the drug I refer to it as Viagry for the Larynx, or, VFL.

Forster Friess was most likely one of the early adopters of VFL. Typically the users are old men, or old men in their own minds---like Rick Santorum. In normal conversation about the economy or sports, VFL is dormant. But when an older man, like Friess, is confronted with an attractive woman like Andrea Mitchell, especially when a camera is involved, the larnyx is stimulated and out comes a 1950's high school men's locker room joke, the flip side of which is an old white guy who is now past his prime---and the reality of which is that he can still talk a good game.

But in his case, Foster Friess did not necessarily ingest VFL prior to his interview with Andrea. My instinct is that his comments were well planned to keep the media's attention on Santorum focused upon cultural issues. The Republican consultant, Steve Schmidt, has the view that social conservatives have little appetite for an attack by Romney on Santorum's culture issues, so Romney must try to attack in areas like earmarks and votes to raise the debt ceiling. It follows that any culture issues which suck up the pundits' air time takes attention away from Romney's intended messaging and is therefore a good thing for Santorum. Not to mention that Santorum's base voters are vehemently anti-main stream media.

In my opinion, a guy like Friess does not use national television without a specific game plan. Perhaps he considered the possibility that Andrea herself would over-react, which would have accomplished the same purpose. In any event, the standard playbook of walking the comment back, apologizing, etc., is all prescribed. Santorum keeps his focus with the base he needs and can even segue to the media victim ploy, allowing him to throw into the mix Reverend Wright and possibly a reference or two to the election of 1860. The fact that Santorum is by and large writing off the female vote in the general election is secondary and can be dealt with later. The immediate goal is to tank Romney in Michigan and Ohio where more than likely Viagry has already been leaked into the water supply.

It was clear that social conservatives of both genders who were in front of microphones last week had all been ingesting Viagry for the Larynx. The ladies in the New Hampshire HR were prime examples and gave us such gems as "use of the pill has created estrogen in the water supply and is a cause of prostrate cancer in men."

Or the lovely admonition, "If you people want contraception you need to try condoms or abstinence". I wonder when this woman last had an empathetic thought in her head.

The testimony of the patrician and stove-up religious leaders paraded before Issa's committee exhibited the effects of ingesting VFL---except that these men are already so predisposed to misogynistic views, and they have certain parts of their anatomies so far in-grown, that they themselves need only quarter-doses of the drug. And in their cases, an aspirin between the knees might do little else than perhaps help them pee straight.

Any American who does care about religious freedom ought to be terrified at the easy complicity of those five men in a trumped up charade about religious persecution. Imagine them with even more power under a Santorum Presidency.

I am insulted by the comments of Foster Friess in whatever context one wants to put them. And the kind of angry, misguided rhetoric being spewed forth by social conservatives is in my opinion dirt for the mind much more so than anything which can be ascribed to Hollywood or the degrading social T.V. programming of Murdoch's News Corp. But the stupidity being thrown against the wall by social conservatives this past week is just the tip of the iceberg if, God help us, someone like Rick Santorum gets the nomination or were ever to reach the Presidency.

Foster Friess, in my opinion, does not give a hoot one way or another about outlawing contraception. As long as women in his family can buy contraception somewhere in the world, it's not an issue. What is an issue with Friess is somehow getting Santorum nominated by the Republican Party, and by a fluke, elected and used as a puppet for whatever regressive economic and social policies he actually does desire. If Foster Friess reads the media game as well as he did last week, he might well succeed in getting Santorum into the White House. Then VFL, and aspirin between the knees---like most other prescriptions in the Republican playbook---will be reserved as drugs for the little people.

So, who's up for a brokered convention or does the GOP really not want this one?

Saladin — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:07:48 -0500

by Saladin

As it is becoming increasingly clear that everybody hates Romney--especially the GOP base--and there is little chance that women will allow the election of Santorum--much less the practicing polygamist Gingrich--talk of a brokered convention has begun to bubble up from the disgruntled masses to the bored press core. Sarah Palin, 2008's exciting late entry femme fatale, has openly contemplated it. Stating that if a brokered convention comes about then "all bets are off." If, as seems very possible, Romney loses Michigan--the state of his birth and where his father was a popular governor--expect this to become a new media meme. Frankly, given Romney's unfavorables I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that a brokered convention is the only chance the GOP has.

In our modern era the conventional wisdom seems to have taken hold that brokered conventions are some fusty relic of the past when cigar chomping party bosses of the gilded age brokered the fate of the nation. Today that seems to be done in back doors at Koch meetings, predetermined well before the actual voting occurs. However it must be noted that it was also conventional wisdom that claimed a black man--particularly one whose name rhymed with Osama--could never become a president, or that a half term female governor from Alaska with zero accomplishments would ever become a legitimate VP candidate, or for that matter that the Supreme Court would blatantly dismiss the results of a popular election (last seen in Rutherford vs. Hayes). I believe you see the new modern trend... Democratic elections have always been a bit of a carnival, best with charismatic narratives and dramatic plot twists. Overturning the CW is par for the course.

Many pundits point to the 2008 Obama/Hillary horse race--when the so-called super-delegates meekly endorsed the narrow delegate leader rather then upset passionate Obama voters--as evidence that a brokered convention is bad politics. But for that analogy to be valid you need excited voters preferably a solidly reliable block like the African Americans who are committed to their candidate. Are the Mormons really going to sit out the election if Romney loses this? Will this put Utah or Idaho at risk in the general election? Yeah, right. Tell me another.

The other common argument that belittles a brokered convention is that the national candidate requires the primaries to build a national campaign who can turn out the vote. However an economic downturn and international uncertainty coupled with vast superpak spending could more then make up this difference. I am not as sanguine as many around here seem to be that superpacs will not have an effect on the election. Frankly I am also scared to death about the global economy. Greece, Iran--Israel, Syria, overheating China, Oil, Spain, Egypt, Italy, etc. the list is damn long, any one of which could send us into a global meltdown. (Did anyone mention that the largest economic driver of our economy, the housing market, is still in the doldrums. Or that record amounts of commercial real estate loans--which are predominately ARMs of some sort (a dirty little secret the media kindly ignores in favor of blaming those trashy residential speculators)--were inked in 2007 and are now rapidly coming due for renegotiation). Amidst such an uncertain backdrop why not drop a moderate GOP Saviour...it seems a damn great strategy to me. Much better then a super rich duchebag going against a black guy who represents the 99%.

I'll admit that I have a bit of a paranoid mentality when it comes to the GOP. I do not trust them, they have shown that they will use ever tool they have, from disenfranchising voters to destroying activist groups that dare to register voters, to gambling away the US's credit rating. So why not do a bait and switch and rope-a-dope Obama. The drama would create great excitement and is sure to rile up the GOP base. And our abominable media would soak it up in spades.

Or maybe the GOP just doesn't want it. Maybe they are content to stonewall for another four years in preparation for a massive push in 2016, with Rubio or some other charismatic pol fissuring the Democrats and capitalizing on the final hurrah of the baby boomers. I don't know, seems possible, and like I said, I don't trust em. But for the sake of this discussion lets assume they will still make a go at it. So who do they have waiting in the wings? Daniels? Thune? That lying twerp from Wisconsin?

As a friend once wrote America has jumped the shark and all bets are off. So who's in?