Working Class Heroes of the World Unite!

The latest edition of the Brearley Bulletin just arrived in the mailbox and my name appears in it three times along with a picture. This may actually be the crowning acheivement of my life so far.

Frankly, I think it is an inspiring success story. It shows that sophistication is no obstacle. A kid like me, who grew up on the tough streets of Detroit and attended public schools there, grew up and entered the upper crusts of New York life and married a graduate of a Manhattan Prep School. Only in America.

An interesting insight into wacko conservatism

This is a surprisingly interesting story from Slate, one that I think says plenty about how the right views the mainstream media.

In one sense, William Safire is just piling on Dan Rather. Safire was part of the Nixon machine that hated Rather. When you pair the idea of a "keeper" story with the competitive and non-stop news environment of a presidential campaign, they don't mix. The truth I've learned in three years in the media is that you can't afford to sit on things because you will get beaten. You just have to make sure you are right. Did CBS News want to hurt Bush? I hope so, since it is a news organization and the point of news is to tell the truth about people in charge. Rather just got his documentation, though not necessarily his facts, wrong

I have never been a person who believed that conservatism was, by definition, a symptom of mental disease. The right's "media conspiracy" charge has always struck me as a case of projection. If there were movement conservatives all over the media, they would trade in "keeper" stories that were timed to smother the hopes of Democratic candidates. Not surprisingly, they assume the left does that as well. I reject the concept of ideological media bias because it doesn't exist.

But the most important point is this, and any movement conservatives who come across this should take note. We on the left don't have a "conspiracy arm." The problem is that the people on our side, who would be inclined to join it, are so ideologically pure that they can't actually talk to each other, let alone plot together. Trust me, I know this.

Surprise! I'm a Giant Market-Glutting Slug!

After five post-free days, our faithful readers deserve our analysis of nothing less than the most pressing news. So we jump right in with the story the New York Times thought important enough to run below the fold on Sunday's edition: Alpaca Farming. Since 34 is temporarily offline thanks to some stroppy publisher at the Spectator, Free-Floating Hostility is here to pick up the slack. Voilà the key passage:

But there are plenty of skeptics, who say that alpacas' value is anything but certain. What if they die? What if the bottom falls out? What if the alpaca bubble bursts, as did the emu, ostrich and llama bubbles?

In other llama-related news, I was recently reunited with my old friend Jess, the originator of the giant llama-eating slug. She reminded me of the existence of some forgotten llama texts, including "The Masochistic Llama," as well as some repressed memories such as the nickname of my first boyfriend at nerd camp--Justin the Virgin.

East Coast here we come

Through the magic of air travel we will be in New York City when the sun comes up. That means very little blogging, if any, this weekend. That's probably fine since we'll be seeing most of the people who read "Free-Floating Hostility" upon our arrival.

Check back Monday for a full report on the holiday weekend that was.

Heather Locklear is awesome, Part 2

Someone agrees with us about the sublime joy that is LAX.

Apparently, however, the show is in trouble. And that's sad because it's good enough to deserve another chance.

Roar!

The New York Daily News reported Sunday that, apparently, Columbia is a bastion of hatred. If you read to the end, however, you'll see that the piece does mention the Spec. So that's something.

Here's the best graf in the story:

But one student on College Walk described the campus as a "republic of fear." Another branded the Middle East and Asian languages and cultures department the "department of dishonesty."

It shows that, whatever its flaws, a Columbia education teaches students how to speak in soundbytes.

On T.O. and Tony Dungy and interracial hugs

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Dave wanted to know what I thought of Tony Dungy's response to the Desperate Housewives opening on Monday Night Football last week, especially his invocation of the name Kobe Bryant. Well, here goes:

In his comment Dave referenced ESPN's Pardon the Interruption so I'll go back to something else that was said in the show in response to this story. The facts of the story are such that anyone can make whatever argument they want and have something to back it up. Tony Dungy is entitled to his opinion, that T.O's appearence in the commerical reinforces stereotypes of black athletes, but in this case Dungy's opinion is wrong. It may also be socially harmful, but I'll get to that.

Watching the NFL posture about this, of course, is vomit-inducing. Football's a great game and I love both the strategic aspect and spectacular athleticism you see from guys like Mike Vick. But I accept that fact that the experience of watching it is purposely visceral. The collisions and the injuries and the noise and the half-naked cheerleaders (or beer commerical women) appeal directly to my id. Incidentally, a naked Nicolette Sheridan also appeals directly to my id. ABC's opening was crass commericalism and slightly immature, which is to say that if I had seen it live (6 p.m. on the West Coast by the way) I would have thought it was great.

When Dungy compares this opening to the Kobe Bryant case, he implicity suggests that all sex (especially when the participants are of different races) is rape. I don't think he meant to do that. The specifics of the ABC clip, that she seduced him and whatever coitus is forthcoming is clearly consentual, immediately remove us from the realm of rape. It's also interesting that there is no kiss. She jumps into his arms instead and then it's gametime. One assumes this that was not how things played out between Bryant and his accuser.

It troubles me that a black man (Dungy) publically suggested that coupling between the two would be somehow transgressive because racial politics have always extended into the realm of the sexual. People have argued that the ideological underpinning of slavery and Jim Crow was that, if given equal rights, uncivilized black guys would fuck white women with impunity. Scared they would be locked out of the bedroom white men created an institutionalized system of racism in the American South. It's an appealing theory if only because you get to think of the Ku Klux Klan as limp-dick fuckers looking to take out anyone (blacks, Jews, et al) who stereotypically beats them in the phallus department. But given that the Klan's primary goal is protection of the white race, whatever that means, there's probably something to it.

After her charges were filed, I sought out the pictures of Kobe Bryant's accuser on the Internet. And when I saw her, my first thought was that Bryant was fucked if the case went to trial. I believe that particular strain of racism still thrives in this country. But that doesn't mean that it's the responsibility of anyone to cater to that. Certainly black athletes, the targets of that racism, can't be expected to indulge it. People are entitled to their prejudices, but they are not allowed to demand that everyone else engage in them.

Counting Sheep is for Normal People

In other news, Davis had its first murder since 1998 on Thursday. Actually the last shooting took place outside Seattle; Davis just happened to be where the killer got tired of driving and checked herself and her bleeding victim into a motel. This new killer, who apparently fled the scene with a gunshot wound, is still at large. I keep telling myself that he's probably in Illinois by now, but it does make it harder to sleep alone, given that security in our building is limited to the promise of the Valentis' baby waking up if anyone makes too much noise. And my reluctance to sleep alone has gotten me in all kinds of trouble, not the least of which is the Platonic Sleepover on Carman 11 that eventually led to me marrying Mike.

Ron Artest is a Boil on the Ass of Professional Basketball.

And that is all I have to say about last night's collapse of the social contract.

Suck up to your Pharmacist a Bit, Just in Case

Mike is in Oregan on a business trip for the weekend, so it looks like I have custody of the blog. I wouldn't want to disappoint our faithful reader (Dave), so here's a link to an article about pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control. In some states, apparently "moral grounds" are sufficient to excuse pharmacists from following scrip. I'm not a law student, but isn't the whole point of the prescription system to put the decision for who gets to use which medication in the hands of doctors and NPs? How did pharmacists get a veto over our health care? What if someone has moral objections to animal products and refuses to fill a prescription for bovine-produced insulin? Yeeshk.

An Open Letter to the UC Berkeley Faculty in Epidemiology/Biostatistics

At first I just wrote this for Sarah's amusement, but I crack myself up too hard not to share it.

The Grad School admissions essay is both humiliating and pointless, so what do you say we just skip it? As statisticians, you are looking for a record of my performance that will indicate my probable behavior in the future. But you are stymied, because you can’t ask the questions you really want to ask, and even if you were allowed to, Sodium Pentathol is more expensive than you’d think. What you really want to know is whether I am going be fun to work with and capable of scholarship that will be a credit to your department. But you have to make your decision based on a resume and some painfully awkward prose. And from that you try to glean the following:

Am I intellectually curious? Am I a mercenary? Am I responsible enough to be trusted with important work without hogging it all? Am I a neurotic who will turn to you to solve my personal life? Am I insufficiently neurotic and secretly looking down my nose at you? Do I snap under pressure? Do I cry in public? Do I treat new acquaintances to my poetry? Will I try to make friends with your children? Am I the type that remembers to thank her old professors while accepting the Nobel prize? Am I the type that knifes her old professors when she sits on award committees? Have I never committed academic fraud or just never been caught? Do I miss deadlines and blame it on my email account? Do I blame other people for my own shortcomings? Will I hate you for yours? Will I drink away my stress and come to office hours hung over? Am I a teetotaler who will make you feel guilty for the scotch in your desk drawer? Will I hit on the junior faculty? Do I take up the best stall in the ladies’ room from 12:40-12:45 every afternoon throwing up my lunch? Am I a 6-foot blonde with thighs like paddling boards and a metabolism that allows me to spoon peanut butter direct from the jar right in front of you while reminding you you’re the same age as my dad? Am I a terminally insecure wallflower whose average conversation is about as entertaining, minute-for-minute, as your last colonoscopy? Will I base my scholarship on obscure and questionable theories that I insist on describing as “cutting edge”? Will I write my thesis by hand? Will my fear of competition lead me down the road to academic sabotage? Do I secretly remind myself of a young Albert Einstein? As I approach my mid-twenties, are the seeds of schizophrenia preparing to shoot forth and blossom? Are you going to find me in the ladies’ room with a nosebleed and no pulse having collapsed while snorting Ritalin to make it through Finals Week? Will I hide from you all semester long and then pop up on the last day of term with a recommendation form and a favor to ask? Will I hound you night and day for "constructive criticism" until you have to change your email address and move?

I’m the child of two academics, so trust me, I’m sympathetic to your problem. I really think I’d be a good fit for Berkeley’s School of Public Health, but fuck if I know how to convince you. So all I have to say is, good luck, suckas.

This is why I must Phase Out TV

The 15 most absurd seconds on TV last night featured an ad for Mucinex, a new over-the-counter product delicately advertised as an "expectorant." For most of the commercial a 30-ish white guy tries and fails to hock a loogie, apparently because an animated green blob in a barca-lounger is clogging up his lungs. A dose of Mucinex takes care of that, the man can finally hock up the talking loogie, and he leaves his house ready for work and refreshed. I'm sure I missed some snappy dialogue between the white guy and the loogie, too because I mute commercials, even really fascinating ones like this, out of fear that I'll wind up actually buying "expectorant" the next time I need face wash.

Second-most absurd was the latest installation in the American history of doing it without doing it when it comes to interracial kisses. I get worked up into a truly vile temper when movies like The Eraser or The Time Machine end with a nice, friendly hug between hero and heroine to avoid a black woman kissing a white man. And TV is even worse. The first interracial kiss in TV's history, as it turns out, was on Star Trek, in an episode where an alien king takes over the crew's minds and makes Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nicols) kiss Captain Kirk (William Shatner) against their wills for his sick amusement.

Last night showed the most absurd avoidance of the on-screen kiss I have ever seen anywhere. As you faithful readers know, my plan to phase TV out of my life by the year 2006 faced a minor setback when Michael talked me into watching LAX, which has now become my guilty pleasure and which I am, apparently, incapable of turning off. Last night showed us the story heretofore only hinted, of the Christmas party where Roger de Souza (Blair Underwood) cheats on his wife with Harley Random (Maggie Smith) (no, I'm just kidding, it's Heather Locklear). As Harley flashes back to the one-night stand, we eventually get the whole story from seduction to unambiguous on-screen copulation...without their lips ever touching. Well, technically, there was a kind of brotherly peck right at the very end, presumably when the condom was coming off, and it's shot in very soft focus so it's just possible you'll miss it. Is there really some expectorant-selling eugenicist out there who's been convinced not to pull his ad by the promise that he only kisses her neck and nose? More importantly, the show takes place in California, where in the past decade there were more biracial children born than "purely" black children. How on earth are interracial relations of any kind still considered controversial? How did Tom Coburn get to them?

Jon Stewart is sad

With the election over, President Bush has turned to his second-term agenda: killing a bunch of Americans in Iraq, permanently impovershing anyone who makes less than 100 large and preparing the icebergs on which we'll send our retiring seniors out to sea. It seems to be too much for Jon Stewart, who appears unable to find the humor in any of this. Of course I don't really blame him. None of this is funny.

Bush the candidate was easily mocked as someone who could deliver empty rhetoric in a heartfelt tone. That was easy to mock. Now he's actually the president again and his party controls the entire government. It's frightening. I fear Stewart has become too earnest to survive the Bush adminstration. The record is starting to mount, the appearance on Crossfire and now his glum countenance since the election. He still uncorks gems like this from last night: "President Bush's election victory, combined with GOP gains in Congress have given America's Christian conservatives, well, whatever it is they get instead of boners." But his heart's not in it. Stewart has the rare gift of pointing out hypocrisy without sounding shrill, which is a skill that few on the left actually possess. Hopefully he gets a good vacation over the holidays and comes back angry rather than miserable.

Maalox, anyone?

Is anyone else wondering if the latest cabinet shifts are supposed to be grooming Rice to run for president in 2008? I'm depressed enough about Powell's departure without having to worry about that. I still hold out hope that I'll get a Democratic president before I get an ulcer, but my hope is in no way supported by facts.

It's SUCK-tastic, part deux

It's Sunday and I'm not watching the NFL. I haven't all year because not even my fantasy teams could keep me interested and I don't gamble on the games. I can't tell if this a reaction to spending my entire day Saturday dealing with college games or if the the mediocrity has finally become more than even I could bear (And keep in mind that I'm a Lions fan--Detroit and Columbia.)

Living outside Sacramento we are bombarded with the Bay Area teams; that's at least part of the problem. To call the 49ers and Raiders bottom-dwelling crapweasels would be charitable. But the quality of football is so bad that the supposed strength of the pro game (that casual fans will watch two teams they don't care about play because the game appeals to them on a visceral level) just doesn't seem to apply. All the teams are mediocre, so you have to pay attention to all of them and yet there's no actual way to follow this stuff because the results, as Jeff'y once said, look like they're coming out of a random generator. Even really good teams, like New England and Pittsburgh just seem so unappealing that I'm can't be bothered to check the TV schedule.

I find myself falling more and more into the "Sports need dynasties" school of thought. Because this NFL stuff isn't very interesting. I miss the old-time Niners or Jordan's Bulls. The Red Wings of the last decade have been deeply compelling, with the added bonus of also being my favorite team. I even find myself missing the Yankees, if only so I can root against them.

A Mitzvah

I would appreciate it if anyone with a free moment would click on this link to the first web pages I've ever created (unless you count my old columbia one with the llama with a hand for its head, and that was mostly Jeff's work anyway). You don't actually have to look at the website. Thanks!

Arafat

I learned of Yasir Arafat's death when the local NBC affiliate put it on the crawl during LAX. But 12 hours later I still don't know what to make of it. An NYT.com headline this morning calls Arafat an "icon," which is a nice neutral word. I suspect Arafat's legacy likely too complex to be understood for years and years, or at least until Sunday when Tom Friedman, in recovery from his bout of neo-conitis, will write about it in the New York Times.

Arafat created a Palestinan national identity that wasn't there before. And his ability to get on television and have the ear of major leaders certainly was a source of pride. But by the end, Arafat's political capital relied on the struggle for "liberation." A concrete land with set borders would have ended that struggle as well as the dreams of taking back the whole of Israel that he embodied. I think he'll be defined by his last major act on the world stage, walking away from Camp David when he was being offered a deal that included rights to Jerusalem. It set the stage for Sharon's ascendance, allowing him to cast Arafat as the primary obstacle to peace and engage in a military policy that has managed to kill a lot of people though -- it must be said -- has also slowed the rate suicide attacks.

On the political level, I'm not sure how much Arafat's death will change the dynamic in the peace process. My sense is not much because Israel marginalized him and found no one else to negotiate with. Perhaps this will force Sharon to choose someone to sit on the other side of the table. But I don't see how the basic political realities have really changed. Hamas is still there along with economic blight and a sense of powerlessness. I don't believe Sharon could ever have made a deal with Arafat because the emnity was too great. But I'm not sure I trust Sharon to make a deal with some other Palestinan leader. He's been a part of the fight too long. And if a new Palestinan leader gets too close to Israel does he immediately lose his legitimacy, and therefore the ability to bring the people with him as he tries for peace? I just don't know.

Heather Locklear is awesome

Heather Locklear may not be one of the great actresses of our time but she sure as hell knows how to pick television series. LAX is probably the best new show of the season. Anna, who wants to phase television out of her life by 2006, hopes NBC cancels it soon.

It's SUCK-Tastic

With many of my regular readers having or soon having the means to acquire tickets to professional basketball games I would like to offer one piece of advice. Do not purchase tickets to November NBA games. Before December, all you will see are still out-of-shape players running ragged offense and trying to get used to each other because of all the off-season player movement.

I saw Sacramento crush Toronto last night, but not even the Kings leading going up by 30 points could excite what is supposedly one of the most excitable crowds in NBA. Maybe it's a sign of the maturation of the Sacramento fan, that they cease getting excited about this early season stuff, understanding that what happens in April is really all that matters. It could also be that the bad start has everyone nervous that the Kings' Great Leap Forward has run out of gas.

On a related note, everyone should also take the opportunity to watch Rafer Alston play point guard before the Raptors start to suck and everyone stops caring.

I got your mandate right here

I'm not going to entertain much Bush mandate talk here since anyone who is not a total fucking moron should can look at the numbers 51-48 and realize there is not much difference between the two. I look at it like this: If you won a football game 51-48 and then claimed that one result plainly proved that every team should play football the exact same way as you, you'd be wrong. You might be a sportstalk radio host, but you'd still be wrong.

Instead, thanks to Cory, I'll post the link to these maps, which weight the map based on population. My favorite is the second one, which shows Minnesota and Washington eating up the Dakotas, Montana, and Idaho. And fuck those guys.

He's already making me sick

Look, I'm willing to concede that President Bush won the election. And I'm even willing to concede that winning an election gives the winner some legitimate ground on which to campaign for whatever deranged issue strikes his fancy. But it's just unseemly to read quotations like this:

"Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it."

This is preening. It's like he's the kid from the Eddie Murphy routine who walks around the neighborhood with an ice cream cone singing, "I got some ice cream, and you ain't got none, 'cuz you on welfare."

Can we get God to talk to him about this, because it's really unbecoming of the president.

After a few hours sleep

It's sort of hard to believe the Election is actually over, both because of the realization that Bush has won but also because...what are we going to pay attention to for the next three years? It hurts because I feel like Karl Rove is laughing at me. And it hurts because I believed the exit polls that said we were winning. The statistical reason Kerry lost is that he didn't maximize his advantages in the friendly parts of Ohio. The people whose top issues were terrorism and conservative Christian (Note the use of this term as we will not be using "moral" of any of its synonyms in relation to how the South votes) values voted for Bush in a far greater ratio than people whose top issues were Iraq and the economy voted for Kerry.

I have nothing bad to say about Kerry. I think the fact he didn't excite some on the left (I'm looking at you New Republic, Slate and Joel Haas) had more to do with the divisions within the left that were supposedly put aside in this election. We on the left are too adept at internecine warfare to truly believe "Anybody but Bush." And, frankly, we're not very convincing when many of us are saying that we're picking the most "electable" candidate. I liked Kerry a lot and was excited to vote for him Tuesday morning. I think he would have made a great president. If he remains in the Senate maybe he should be the new minority leader. After all, it's his party until the Democrats pick a new nominee in 2008. Plus, based on the debates, I think he intimidates Bush.

The question is, now what? Moping around, doing everything halfheartedly for the next couple of days is pretty much a given. But then it's about figuring out how to fight for the next four years. GOP fuckers can talk of mandate because their party has made steady gains since 1994, controls the entire federal government, got states like Oregon to pass anti-gay marriage ballot measures, and turned the South redder than Eastern Europe circa 1962.

So we have to find a way to resist Bush's extreme right-wing impulses. And that's the crazy thing about this administration. They've governed to the fringes yet were able to, with some success, define the Democrats as outside mainstream. Some will blame the mainstream media for this, but fuck that. The Democratic party failed because for decades it has focused on tactics rather than strategy. The far right has had the same strategy since 1964: organize and remain intractable. Democrats, meanwhile, seem to slide along the spectrum depending on the issue. People like me might say this is practical or even responsive. But if you're not predisposed to vote Democratic it can also look weak and unprincipled.

Much of the online chatter in the last few hours has been about the "values" question. Kos of the famous Daily Kos argues that we need to take back language. Meanwhile this piece on Slate offers a more secular, if similar idea, that we need to get back to start digging in for the class war argument, pushing the proposition that the GOP's positions overwhelmingly favor the rich.

But not only do we need to dig on this point, we need to get better at talking about it. We need to fight things like estate tax cuts and dividend tax cuts. We need to draw attention to the fact that Bush's vision for the economy is one where "earned" income, the stuff you work, is taxed but "made" income, the stuff that comes from dead relatives and stocks, is not.

Single-issue religion voters are never going to move. But I think the middle-class voter who is seeing his paycheck become less and less powerful is persuadable. Kerry made this point in the final months of the campaign, but the GOP and the Swift Boat Liars for Mendacity (thanks Jeff'y) defined him in August, the first time anyone really paid attention. When that happened, he didn't have a shorthand message to fall back on. Therefore Kerry came across as equivocal, which is completely insane. The Dems need to spend the next three years pounding the economic issues, showing how Bush's economic decisions are really a world view favoring the wealthy over the working class. We need slogans, we need shorthand and we need to not back down.

Fuck

Well, perhaps the sun will come up tomorrow.

If it does, I'll write more about what the hell we're going to do both about Ohio this year and the next four years.

Oh God they're getting punchy

This is why no one watches MSNBC anymore:

Here we are now 4 1/2 hours into the election and still have no answer. And now Chris Matthews is asking whether our enemies will see the delay in the vote count as a sign of weakness. Now perhaps we should wait for Osama bin Laden to make a tape and tell us whether he thinks it is a sign of weakness to be a democracy.

I'm getting antsy but am still optimistic. On my board its 207-200. I think now Kerry's in trouble in Florida, but Bush's lead isn't that big in Ohio and the votes left to be counted are those in Cleveland, which should be worth a pretty good boost in the totals. Maybe the 300s that looked like a possibility earlier tonight are gone. But this is still winnable.

Let's get this moving

Geez, I miss the days when the networks shot from the hip on these election calls. Damn it, don't leave Virginia on the board for two hours and let me think that all those people in Charlottesville are going to tip the election. Don't let South Carolina sit there with its eight scrumptious electoral votes. Give me answers. Just guess and change your mind if you have to. Just throw shit at the wall. I'm not sure how much of this I can take.

Though I do have one concrete number to report: Detroit 19, Houston 18 end of the first quarter.

Fucking Gay Marriage

In Ohio the anti-gay marriage passed and the people who supported gay marriage went 67-32 for Bush. Probably the anti-gay marriage folks would have voted for Bush anyway and it's hard to say whether it was the President or the gays that got those voters to the poll. Still, it's pretty impressive, I think, that this issue really went under the radar for the entire election. And, frankly, the numbers say that Bush isn't winning right now in Ohio.

At this point the Carolinas and Virginia still aren't in the Bush column like they're supposed to be. It could mean anything, but I'm hearing it's still possible that Virginia could flip.

Also MSNBC reports that the GOP is trying to throw out all the absentee ballots in Pennsylvania. Kerry's been up big in the state all day, so who know what that means.

Jesus Fucking Tits

It's 7 p.m in the east and both South Carolina and Virginia are too close to call. Where did this come from? Bush was up by 13 in the last poll in South Carolina and 9 in Virginia. If those are close it's great, brilliant, awesome.

Of course, even though I know the exit polling is looking good seeing Bush leading 34-3 is making me want to soil myself.

Reporting for duty

As I glue myself to this sofa in front of our large television, I have a complaint for the so-called media elite. Why the hell did you have to give red to the GOP? It's by far the better color.

Anyway I've glued myself to the sofa here and will be updating this site as event warrant.

Plans for tonight

I plan to update the site pretty regularly this evening as the returns come in. Perhaps, even some liveblogging.

I can't wait for this to be over.

Go Vote Tomorrow

In honor of the election, Anna and I have decided to eat nothing but blue foods tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.

Oh and if you're reading this in the United States go out and vote for Kerry. We will be at our polling place before 7 a.m., hopefully.