Month: September 2010

(via Field Negro)

One of the most disturbing aspects of moving to the South after a lifetime of Yankeeitude is seeing advertisements promising the "Old South experience!" at various resorts, tourist areas, and historical sites. The Old South experience. You know, the one with segregated bathrooms. Or perhaps you're more of a Gone With the Wind fan, in which case the experience requires slaves.

Charleston, South Carolina (not coincidentally the last state to officially display the Confederate flag on its Capitol grounds) recently hosted a conference of the National Federation of Republican Women.

I know nothing about this group except that their convention theme was "The Southern Experience." That means lots of biscuits, charming hospitality, and doilies, right?
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Oh. That "Southern Experience." That's the president of the South Carolina State Senate, for the record, dressed as a Confederate General.

The baffling part is not that this happened – we all know what to expect when upper-crust Republicans from South Carolina congregate and feed off of one another's crazy. But how in the name of god did they find two black people willing to do this? "Hi, we're a national Republican group. We need two older colored folks to dress up like field slaves and take pictures with our members and guests. Interested?" One would think that even a very Republican black person would refuse a request by his or her ideological brethren to don Aunt Jemima garb and shuffle on down to the country club to pose with ol' Jeff Davis.

"Uncle Tom" might be inappropriate here, since I assume that Uncle Tom had a limit. But one thing's for sure: the GOP mission to win the black vote continues apace.

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You probably have forgotten about Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller website, billed as the conservative answer to HuffPo when it was announced last year. Like anything described as "the conservative version of _______" the Daily Caller is unadulterated shit. It makes Drudge Report look like the collected works of Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell. That it borrows the layout of a 1997 GeoCities website does not help, but I digress.

In a move guaranteed to offend none of the site's 14 daily readers – all white males averaging 318 pounds and 44 years of age – DC decided to offer a "slideshow" as commentary on the controversy surrounding a female reporter, Ines Sainz, working in the New York Jets locker room doing NFL coverage for Spanish-language TV networks in the U.S. and Mexico. It has been alleged by other reporters present that players made suggestive comments toward her and members of the coaching staff threw things at her during practice. Interestingly, the Jets ownership apologized and Sainz herself did not claim to be all that offended by the behavior. The Daily Caller, recognizing that this was becoming A Story nonetheless, left little doubt about which party bears responsibility in their 12-photo montage:

The accompanying caption to this photo reads, "The skin tight jeans — er, we mean, the sensible outfit that sparked the current controversy." Other photos, all emphasizing Sainz's obvious, despicable sluttiness, carry captions like "Hello, Ines! My, what a serious photo you have to headline your website!
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" and "Sainz’s dressing for success recipe: Low cut lacey top? Check. Necklace with strange white things drawing the eye to her chest? Check." Classy. It is a logical extension of the "Ines Sainz is a Whore" meme that has dominated the media coverage.

The NY Post misquotes and demeans the reporter with this little blurb:

Sexy TV sports reporter Ines Sainz slinked into last night's Jet game in a black minidress with a plunging neckline and matching black stilettos — while insisting that she "felt very uncomfortable" when lusty Jet players made salacious comments about her in their locker room after practice Saturday.

Noted legal experts like Joy Behar and TV actor Richard Belzer were brought in to discuss the intricacies of sexual harassment in the workplace, taking care to thoroughly investigate the possibility that she provoked whatever behavior ensued by wearing clothing too sexy for a locker room full of dudes. Washington Redskins star and stupid quote machine Clinton Portis chimed in helpfully: ""You know, somebody got to spark her interest, or she's going to want somebody. I don't know what kind of woman won't, if you get to go and look at 53 men's [bodies]. I know you're doing a job, but at the same time, the same way I'm going to cut my eye if I see somebody worth talking to, I'm sure they do the same thing." His insightful comment underscores the fact that she was actually in the locker room scouting for hot New York Jets cock, not, as she alleged, because she is paid to do things like interview Spanish-speaking quarterback Mark Sanchez.
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I always end up pissing off both sides in this debate, so bear with me for a second. Above is a photo of Sainz at last year's Super Bowl. I would not wear that to work. Personally. If I wanted to take myself seriously as a professional and have others do the same, I would not dress like I went on a shopping spree in the juniors' department. For the same reason that I put on a tie to teach classes, reporters should probably be in business casual while on the clock. That said, the issue here is not "Is her clothing appropriate for her job?
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" or "Does this total stranger look like a skank?" The issue is, regardless of what she wears, can harassment of someone performing a job be tolerated? The answer is unequivocally no. I understand the urge to question her choice of wardrobe but the bottom line is that whether she shows up to work in a suit of medieval armor or a thong that barely complies with local anti-nudity statutes, sexual harassment is against the law.

Dressing or acting in a way that could be interpreted as engaging in a little exhibitionism – remember Meghan McCain's famous Twitter picture? – is not a green light for others to engage in illegal acts. If I am stupid enough to stumble around a bad part of town blind drunk at 4 AM drunk while holding a wad of money in my hand, one might argue that I am Asking For It. Certainly my judgment could be criticized. But mugging me and taking the cash is still illegal. Similarly, by not wearing something that approximates professional attire, Sainz may make herself a somewhat easier target. Doesn't matter. This isn't about her judgment, her fashion sense, or which outfits are slutty. It is about an individual's right to be protected by the law and for people who violate those laws to be held accountable. Doing something that appears to others to show poor judgment does not mean that an individual consents to the boorish at best, illegal at worst behavior of others.

Throughout the Roaring Twenties and most of the Great Depression, Dr. Clarence Little was the President of the University of Michigan.

A biologist by trade, Little held a number of beliefs that were both common and in the process of being debunked at the time. For example, Little was a hardcore eugenicist – the "Hey, why don't we sterilize all of the poor people!" kind – and a firm believer that no aspect of human physiology had an environmental cause. It's all genetics, he claimed. As his public statements became increasingly controversial and his professional opinions were disproved Little was run out of Ann Arbor on a rail.

So he did what any professional who crosses the line into quackery would do: he sold out to corporate interests who were in search of a shameless quack. Thus Clarence Little became the scientific director of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, vehemently arguing that lung cancer was genetic and not conclusively linked to smoking.

Everyone got what they wanted. Little received a platform for his ridiculous views and a handsome salary. The tobacco industry got an official expert, Doctoral degree and all, to aver the safety of their lethal product. The smoking public got a rationalization to continue smoking despite the overwhelming contradictory evidence ("Science says it's OK!

Cough cough cough.")

Little's story is a great example of how profitable it is to be utterly without shame. Any Ph.D.-level biologist, chemist, or so on could start making a fortune tomorrow by announcing some "research" proving that burning hydrocarbons do not pollute the atmosphere, hydrogenated fats are good for you, or condoms cause AIDS. A sociologist could make a mint with a book about how blacks and Muslims control society to the consistent detriment of white Christian males. A political scientist – and I know a few folks who will almost certainly go this route – can work the right-wing lecture and think tank circuit indefinitely with some ridiculous crap about how Alexander Hamilton believed in mandatory homeschooling or the 4th Amendment doesn't apply to Mexicans. It's almost too easy. Just earn the right credentials and proceed to tell the masses that whatever they want to believe is the indisputable truth.

Sometimes I wonder about the choices I've made and the potential alternatives to the deadening grind of the academic grist mill. At our recent professional conference the usual suspects on the right – the American Enterprise Institute is particularly active – attend in force but are largely shunned like the lepers they are in the reality-based community. Yet they are doing so much better than the rest of us – more money, higher profiles, and the easiest jobs on the planet. Just churn out scripts for Lindsey Graham in the morning and spend the afternoon golfing. Do the Sunday morning talk show rounds bimonthly and appear on the occasional Blue Ribbon Panel with Bill Kristol.

I'm not a particularly good person, but I'm terrible at pretending that I believe something. I wish I had just one utterly ridiculous belief – "The Arizona Cardinals will win a Super Bowl some day" does not count – that I could ride to financial success.

Nothing I believe is profitable. I'd never have to work again if I could write a book about people Bill Clinton had murdered or Barack Obama's secret plans for the North American Union, the Amero, and one-world government. The marketplace of ideas is a free market, after all, and nothing moves its gears like selling garbage to idiots. The longer I look at the state of my profession and this country as a whole, the more it seems like a good idea to get cracking on that book about how Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Jesus really felt about the limits of the Full Faith and Credit clause as applied to gay marriage. The only question is how large a font we should use for "Ph.D." in the cover art.

For the first few years of the "post-9/11 world" – to embrace the terminology of our previous President – every hack comedian in the country survived on a steady diet of jokes in the format: "If we __________, then the terrorists win/have already won!" Like all memes, the joke was funny the first time with diminishing returns thereafter until it reached Annoying status. By now even the hackiest of hack comedians won't use such a dated cultural reference.

The joke worked, to the extent that it did, on a number of levels. It ridiculed people who used this phrase in earnest. It mocked the seriousness with which some Americans treat the most banal parts of our lives ("If we cancel college football, then we've let the terrorists win!") And it amuses Americans, at least subconsciously, to think of "losing" a war, let alone a war against a bunch of people living in caves.

However, our hubris relies heavily on the pre-9/11 mindset of which President Bush spoke so regularly. What is defeat? To us, defeat is what we inflicted upon the Nazis and the Japs in World War II. Countries are devastated, governments toppled, and societies radically restructured. Down with Emperor Hirohito, up with a figurehead monarchy in a constitutional democracy. Even the terrorists themselves, smack-talk inspired by the need for religious justifications aside, would not claim that they could inflict this on the United States. Yes, they could blow up some airplanes and buildings, maybe killing a few thousand people. But toppling the government? Installing sharia law? Converting us to Islam? Even bin Laden would roll his eyes and say "You must be high" to any such suggestions.

Of course that was not their goal. Unlike Americans, Islamic terrorists do not relate everything back to World War II. They see themselves not as an opposing army but as the Joker to our rule-based Batman.
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They are interested mostly in causing chaos, in destabilizing tenuously stable economies and societies through fear, panic, and a small number of well-timed and -executed actions. They thought we needed a better class of criminal than the Soviet boogeyman that was so hard to sell after 1991. And they gave it to us. [/Batman analogies]

In that context, why talk, or even joke, about the terrorists winning? It is abundantly clear that they have already won. Charles Johnson, current right-wing apostate and creator of Little Green Footballs, was once described by a mutual acquaintance as a nice, normal individual driven completely and overwhelmingly insane by 9/11. His mind became a disorganized morass of fear, poorly conceived ideas for violent revenge, and cultural/ethnic hatred toward Muslims.
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Mr. Johnson does not deserve singling out, though, because that description applies to America as a whole for the last nine years.

They won. Nineteen people plus a loose network of associates who helped them execute their stunningly simple plan at a total cost of about $400,000 (per the 9-11 Commission) gave up their lives to kill a few thousand innocent civilians and in the process drove an entire nation insane. How can we look at America circa 9/11/2010 and attempt to argue that they did not accomplish their goal? America is a neurotic basketcase dog-paddling in its own toxic vomit of xenophobia, proto-fascist politics, and an alarmingly large social divide. We pursued an utterly pointless war at the cost of over a trillion dollars, thus bankrupting (not to mention demoralizing) the nation and setting us at one another's throats even more violently as we fight over the scraps of a once-mighty economy in the shadow of an external threat that is, for the most part, in our heads.

That is the lesson to learn from 9/11. We are particularly bad at learning lessons from tragedies and bad decisions, which is why so many of us believe we lost the Vietnam War because we didn't stay the course. Today the lesson we seem to have learned from 9/11 is that Muslims are bad or that to fight this threat we have to wipe our ass with the Constitution and start operating by Jack Bauer rules. The lesson we do not learn is that "terrorism" is about instilling terror, as the name implies, leading to social, economic, and political disorder in the target nation. As we stand today with a wrecked economy, an intensely divided society, and a political system that has nearly ceased to function altogether there can be no doubt that the terrorists won. They won because we let them win. They wanted us to go completely fucking insane and we were more than happy to oblige.

The FDA is on the verge of approving genetically engineered animals for human consumption. It has not yet done so, but let us not feign suspense about the decision they will reach. Unlike most westerners, Americans are already eating enormous quantities of GMO corn, soybeans, and other staple crops.
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Despite the highly controversial nature of this issue, I have to admit that I have never taken the time to form an opinion about it. I understand all of the issues involved – health-related, legal, ethical, and environmental – but I cannot muster the outrage expected of someone of my ideological persuasion.

Our fields, grocery stores, and stomachs are already so packed with lab-engineered Miracle Foods that I have a hard time seeing how GMOs are much of a step down.
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I mean, are those Doritos, Cocoa Puffs, and Miller Lites going to be better for you if we kick out the GMO corn? Are Monsanto, ConAgra, and Tyson going to have any less of a grip on the American food system if GMOs are ruled unfit for human consumption? Which is worse for me, the GMO milk or the non-GMO milk laced with Bovine Growth Hormone and "Doctor, I think I have anthrax" sized doses of antibiotics? If we trust the FDA to declare regular farm-raised "Atlantic Salmon" – which I can only assume is fed an engineered diet of slaughterhouse waste and chemical additives – safe for consumption, why should we grow skeptical about their judgment now?

My point is not that GMOs are great or even safe. It is that GMOs have become a buzzword and a distraction from the larger deficiencies in our food chain as a whole. The dangers of GMOs mirror the dangers of any heavily processed food, patented seed, or chemical-addled livestock. There is no point in "winning" a battle over GMOs if we're going to continue to eat Cheetos and patronize Taco Bell. Hell, if GMOs cause cancer and shorten our lives they'll fit right in with our current choices at the supermarket.

Politically, this is an instance in which people on the left are undermined by the extremity of their own rhetoric. Talk of "Frankenfoods," modified corn that will have us dropping dead, and vicious, feral strawberries waiting to kill us in our sleep accomplish little, especially since pro-GMO advocates have such pleasant-sounding (although ultimately dishonest) arguments on their side. They can claim that increased yields and pest/virus resistance will alleviate hunger and reduce the need for chemical pesticides. This, of course, is nonsense. The root causes of hunger are social and political, and they do not stem from a lack of available food globally. There is enough food for everyone and the relevant issue to confront is what prevents it from ending up on the plates of people who go hungry.

I'd like to get worked up about GMOs but I have yet to hear the argument that will push me past indifference. With or without them, we confront the same problems. Agribusiness does whatever it wants.

Science keeps coming up with new ways to "improve" food with chemical additives and more exotic processing. Most of our food supply is altered in some way that serves to make us fatter and provide us with little to no nutritional value.

I may be wrong, but I think every minute spent wailing and rending our tunics over Genetically Modified, factory farmed salmon is a distraction from the more important question of why we're eating chemically enhanced factory farmed salmon in the first place. Let's stop eating shit rather than bickering over what specific kinds of shit should be allowed on the grocery store shelves.