From Left in the West, via I-forget-where, there is a lively debate in the Montana state legislature over the volatile issue of all-day kindergarten. What, you didn't know this was a volatile issue?
If you read the Billings newspaper accounts (here and here) the lawmaker sponsoring hearings on expanding Montana's public kindergarten program, was utterly taken aback when opponents raised charges of "anti-Christian teachings and a socialist agenda," as well as "a threat to family values" and a lot of other stuff. I share the guy's bewilderment. We sure went from "extra three hours of kindergarten" to "promoting abortion and gay sex" in an awful hurry.
Obviously, the debate is way out of proportion to the proposed policy, entailing a modest increase in the reach of the public school system. (All-day as opposed to half-day kindergarten would be non-mandatory and offered in only a handful of communities.) The point is, the mere idea of the public schools represents to conservatives a whole constellation of bad values: same sex love and sex ed and other offensive examples of government intrusion into private lives. So the family-values crowd jumped on this initiative--well justified and mild as it appears--as an opportunity to air ALL their gripes (or paranoia) about public education.
I can't find a link now, but I believe I read recently that the Bush Administration tried to suppress a study that showed the benefits of federal Head Start programs. That's another symptom of the same problem. Wingers can't conceive of the value of big-gubmint programs aimed at our precious pre-schoolers. And they can't be looking at evidence that conflicts with their theology. Does not compute.
When I was kindergarten-aged, I lived in West Virginia, which at that time had no public kindergarten. My folks sent me to private half-day kindergarten, though they were NOT legally bound to. (This was 1969, incidentally. Smartass.) WV does have K-12 today, but now I'm curious about the history there. Was there a culture-war skirmish over this in WV? (It sure wouldn't shock me to learn there had been. After all, WV closes schools for the opening day of deer hunting season. And I know they've had flaps about teaching evolution.) Have many states had protracted fights over extending public education, mandatory or otherwise, into the years before first grade?
You gotta love the fact that in the outcry that six hours kindergarten = promotion of abortion, the loudest voice belonged to a Montana Republican who happens to be a physician. Would you accept treatment from this man? It puts me in mind of Henry Aldridge, the notorious North Carolina dentist-legislator, who contributed to the abortion debate by stating that it was a scientific impossibility for a female rape victim to become pregnant ("the juices don't flow").
Did one of the wingnuts say out loud that he opposes diversity? I guess it's good that we have states like Montana where they don't bother with code words. On the other hand, supportive as I am of the pro-kindergarten position, it sure is unfortunate that one of the pro-kindergarten people, a school superintendent, was quoted in the news story saying that "we can't control what happens to them before age 5." That language might fuel a couple of paranoid fantasies.
Actually, as a godless liberal social engineer, I can tell you, you can promote promiscuity and socialism among five-year-olds just as much in three hours as you can in six. It's all a matter of scheduling and priorities. Teach Betty Friedan first, then Dr. Seuss only if there's time later. Try making the kids recite "My body, my choice" before they receive their Graham crackers and Hi-C. And don't call them Graham crackers, call them Chomsky crackers.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Monday, February 14, 2005
50 Books (ha!)
No way in hell, unfortunately, will I read 50 books this year. But I'll do what I can. Inspired by a lively online discussion I eavesdropped on a few weeks ago, I picked up Thomas Frank's The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism.
While I enjoyed the book, the discussion I was party to hinged on the question of "co-optation" of rock music and other cultural product by cynical corporations. And unless I'm missing a point somewhere, I don't think the book actually addresses that question. It looks at things from the point of view of advertisers and marketers, not at all from the view of musicians and artists. And there's never a gotcha moment when, say, a Nike executive, twirling his mustache, hatched his plot to sell sneakers over John Lennon's dead body. Corporations in the 60s weren't being cunning, they were merely being open to possiblities, and stumbled on the realization that hippie and protest culture, as commonly apprehended at least, were quite amenable to selling stuff. The hucksters just set their sales (oops, Freudian slip) for the way the wind was blowing.
There are two main things I took away from the book. One is, as Frank admonishes in an early chapter, that historians ought to pay more attention to business practices and culture. Lefty academics may view business studies as dull and unilluminating--trailing indicators of people's private or political behavior, where the REAL action is. The Conquest of Cool suggests to me that in some ways, marketers understand pop culture better than it understands itself; in any case, Frank mines some terrific material from sources such as old trade journals in advertising, men's apparel, and other industries.
The other is a new way of looking at the cultural flowering of the 1960s. There is a view of American history that maintains that the 50s were the age of contented conformism, and the 60s saw a revolt against cultural norms that was entirely hostile and antithetical to the prevailing consensus. This line of thinking emphasizes the famous Generation Gap as stark and absolute. The truth isn't quite that simple. Many Americans of all ages were grateful for a loosening of cultural straits and responded in practical ways. For instance, appeals to youthfulness and quasi-rebellion were themes that could be employed even in a campaign to sell denture adhesive to gray-hairs. I was very taken by Frank's examination of the advertising business, which showed creative people chafing under the rule-bound scientism that ad agencies enforced in the Gray Flannel Suit period: finding the unique selling proposition and flogging it several times within one ad. So quite a few people in the business world were starving for the cultural earthquake of the 60s, rejoiced at its arrival, and embraced rock music and bell bottoms and recreational drug use with great enthusiasm.
On to Frank's latest effort, What's The Matter with Kansas. (Once again, I get around to a book many months after the cool people have already conquered it.)
Oh, I better take credit for another title that was a pretty easy read but by God was an honest-to-goodness book betwen hard covers: The Punch by John Feinstein. It examines the background and echoes of an incident in pro basketball in 1977, when Kermit Washington punched and severely injured Rudy Tomjanovich during an NBA game. (The punch could be characterized as either an assault or an accident.) I enjoy a well-executed jock bio, and particularly the inevitable career twilight when the athlete transitions from stardom back to "regular life." Feinstein's book is essentially a dual bio of two players, both of whose careers were derailed by the punch incident, both of whom struggled to escape the stigma of the event. I wouldn't say the book transcends sports, but if you like basketball to begin with, I recommend it.
While I enjoyed the book, the discussion I was party to hinged on the question of "co-optation" of rock music and other cultural product by cynical corporations. And unless I'm missing a point somewhere, I don't think the book actually addresses that question. It looks at things from the point of view of advertisers and marketers, not at all from the view of musicians and artists. And there's never a gotcha moment when, say, a Nike executive, twirling his mustache, hatched his plot to sell sneakers over John Lennon's dead body. Corporations in the 60s weren't being cunning, they were merely being open to possiblities, and stumbled on the realization that hippie and protest culture, as commonly apprehended at least, were quite amenable to selling stuff. The hucksters just set their sales (oops, Freudian slip) for the way the wind was blowing.
There are two main things I took away from the book. One is, as Frank admonishes in an early chapter, that historians ought to pay more attention to business practices and culture. Lefty academics may view business studies as dull and unilluminating--trailing indicators of people's private or political behavior, where the REAL action is. The Conquest of Cool suggests to me that in some ways, marketers understand pop culture better than it understands itself; in any case, Frank mines some terrific material from sources such as old trade journals in advertising, men's apparel, and other industries.
The other is a new way of looking at the cultural flowering of the 1960s. There is a view of American history that maintains that the 50s were the age of contented conformism, and the 60s saw a revolt against cultural norms that was entirely hostile and antithetical to the prevailing consensus. This line of thinking emphasizes the famous Generation Gap as stark and absolute. The truth isn't quite that simple. Many Americans of all ages were grateful for a loosening of cultural straits and responded in practical ways. For instance, appeals to youthfulness and quasi-rebellion were themes that could be employed even in a campaign to sell denture adhesive to gray-hairs. I was very taken by Frank's examination of the advertising business, which showed creative people chafing under the rule-bound scientism that ad agencies enforced in the Gray Flannel Suit period: finding the unique selling proposition and flogging it several times within one ad. So quite a few people in the business world were starving for the cultural earthquake of the 60s, rejoiced at its arrival, and embraced rock music and bell bottoms and recreational drug use with great enthusiasm.
On to Frank's latest effort, What's The Matter with Kansas. (Once again, I get around to a book many months after the cool people have already conquered it.)
Oh, I better take credit for another title that was a pretty easy read but by God was an honest-to-goodness book betwen hard covers: The Punch by John Feinstein. It examines the background and echoes of an incident in pro basketball in 1977, when Kermit Washington punched and severely injured Rudy Tomjanovich during an NBA game. (The punch could be characterized as either an assault or an accident.) I enjoy a well-executed jock bio, and particularly the inevitable career twilight when the athlete transitions from stardom back to "regular life." Feinstein's book is essentially a dual bio of two players, both of whose careers were derailed by the punch incident, both of whom struggled to escape the stigma of the event. I wouldn't say the book transcends sports, but if you like basketball to begin with, I recommend it.
Friday, February 11, 2005
Keeping 'em Down on the Farm
The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial Observer: Keeping Iowa's Young Folks at Home After They've Seen Minnesota
Love this writer's name: Verlyn Klinkenborg. This piece is about Iowa's efforts to retain its bright young people. There is a proposal to eliminate the state income tax for Iowans under 30. (I'll reprint part since the NY Times link will go behind a pay wall.)
"But $600, the average yearly state income tax for Iowan 20-somethings, is not enough to undo decades of social erosion. The problems Iowa faces are the very solutions it chose two and three generations ago. The state's demographic dilemma wasn't caused by bad weather or high income taxes ... It was caused by the state's wholehearted, uncritical embrace of industrial agriculture, which has depopulated the countryside, destroyed the economic and social texture of small towns, and made certain that ordinary Iowans are defenseless against the pollution of factory farming.
"These days, all the entry-level jobs in agriculture - the state's biggest industry - happen to be down at the local slaughterhouse, and most of those jobs were filled by the governor's incentive, a few years ago, to bring 100,000 immigrant workers into the state.
"Business leaders all across Iowa have been racking their brains to think of ways to spur economic development. But nearly every idea leaves industrial agriculture intact. That means a few families living amid vast tracts of genetically modified soybeans and corn, with here and there a hog confinement site or a cattle feedlot to break the monotony."
***
Klinkenborg writes that North Dakota and Iowa and Nos. 1 and 2 in "brain drain." I would have thought West Virginia would have been ahead of Iowa (West Virginia is actually losing population, along with North Dakota). WV may have fewer "brains" to begin with, however brains are counted.
North Carolina is the number 2 hog raising state, behind Iowa. NC is fortunate to have some growing urban areas, but parts of the state resemble this picture. Factory livestock farming seems to create a few big winners and a lot of losers (the neighbors of these huge stinking hog or poultry houses). A different wrinkle here is tobacco farming, which under the allotment system allowed small landowners to make a living as farmers. But the allotment system is on the way out, and it remains to be seen what will replace it.
Love this writer's name: Verlyn Klinkenborg. This piece is about Iowa's efforts to retain its bright young people. There is a proposal to eliminate the state income tax for Iowans under 30. (I'll reprint part since the NY Times link will go behind a pay wall.)
"But $600, the average yearly state income tax for Iowan 20-somethings, is not enough to undo decades of social erosion. The problems Iowa faces are the very solutions it chose two and three generations ago. The state's demographic dilemma wasn't caused by bad weather or high income taxes ... It was caused by the state's wholehearted, uncritical embrace of industrial agriculture, which has depopulated the countryside, destroyed the economic and social texture of small towns, and made certain that ordinary Iowans are defenseless against the pollution of factory farming.
"These days, all the entry-level jobs in agriculture - the state's biggest industry - happen to be down at the local slaughterhouse, and most of those jobs were filled by the governor's incentive, a few years ago, to bring 100,000 immigrant workers into the state.
"Business leaders all across Iowa have been racking their brains to think of ways to spur economic development. But nearly every idea leaves industrial agriculture intact. That means a few families living amid vast tracts of genetically modified soybeans and corn, with here and there a hog confinement site or a cattle feedlot to break the monotony."
***
Klinkenborg writes that North Dakota and Iowa and Nos. 1 and 2 in "brain drain." I would have thought West Virginia would have been ahead of Iowa (West Virginia is actually losing population, along with North Dakota). WV may have fewer "brains" to begin with, however brains are counted.
North Carolina is the number 2 hog raising state, behind Iowa. NC is fortunate to have some growing urban areas, but parts of the state resemble this picture. Factory livestock farming seems to create a few big winners and a lot of losers (the neighbors of these huge stinking hog or poultry houses). A different wrinkle here is tobacco farming, which under the allotment system allowed small landowners to make a living as farmers. But the allotment system is on the way out, and it remains to be seen what will replace it.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Happy Groundhog Day
In today's major local news story*, Sir Walter Wally did glimpse his shadow, portending six more weeks of winter.
Hopefully, Sir Walter did not bite the hand of mayor Charles Meeker, the way he did last year. I'll have to ask my wife for the lowdown. Not to brag or anything, but my wife knows Sir Walter personally.
* The real major local news stories lately have been (1) the paramedics in Franklin County who pronounced a man dead and zipped him into a body bag when in fact he was still alive, and (2) parents in the high-priced Wakefield subdivision of north Raleigh who are up in arms because public school overcrowding may force the county to send their kids to a temporary modular school in (gasp) an African-American neighborhood in the town of Wake Forest. I choose to highlight the groundhog.
Saturday, January 29, 2005
Practically Jack Shafer
I read this piece in Slate by Jack Shafer, didn't like it, but didn't think any more about it until Ezra Klein had a response much different than mine. Ezra took Shafer's message to be apt, that the blogosphere is clearly dependent on / secondary to / not-about-to-replace-anytime-soon the maintream news media. Ezra's a pretty big boy in the blog jungle, but he has a healthy sense of humility and unrealized promise about the blog format. But here's what I commented on Ezra's site:
NYU's Jay Rosen, the sponsor of the blog conference that Shafer was reporting on, gets pissy with Shafer's piece as well, for different reasons. Me, I look at Rosen as a paper tiger himself, a la Winer and Jarvis: guys who are earning points in the "respectable" media world by hyping those crazy, transgressive bloggers. If the bloggers ever really stormed the Bastille, Rosen would need watch his own neck. Rosen was a big proponent a few years ago of the "public journalism" movement. I was never impressed; public journalism struck me as a policy of newspapers' polling their readers, then feeding back to them what they asked for.
Yes, the takedowns on [Jeff] Jarvis and [Dave] Winer were probably needed, but the main thing I took away from the Slate article was Jack Shafer's dunderheaded stance that "gee, I'm practically a blogger myself."
The biggest single problem with the corporate media, which Shafer doesn't even nod to, is the agenda hidden behind the mask of objectivity. The NYT et. al. are reliant on access to official power, they're addicted to perks, they enjoy salaries and lifestyles that push them more and more into Republican territory. The follow-up question to Jill Abramson should have been, "Does that $180 million come with strings attached?"
Blogs are not THE ANSWER, but they help to counteract the phony omniscience.
NYU's Jay Rosen, the sponsor of the blog conference that Shafer was reporting on, gets pissy with Shafer's piece as well, for different reasons. Me, I look at Rosen as a paper tiger himself, a la Winer and Jarvis: guys who are earning points in the "respectable" media world by hyping those crazy, transgressive bloggers. If the bloggers ever really stormed the Bastille, Rosen would need watch his own neck. Rosen was a big proponent a few years ago of the "public journalism" movement. I was never impressed; public journalism struck me as a policy of newspapers' polling their readers, then feeding back to them what they asked for.
One of These Things Is Not Like the Others
My friend Phil at Here Be Monsters commented on this story about Dick Cheney's weekday-casual attire earlier in the week. I could have been the one to call it to his attention, and it did occur to me at the time that maybe I was making too big a particular deal out of this fashion faux pas, as if Emily Post was a more sacred authority than the Geneva Conventions. (Upon reflection, last week when I bitched about Dubya not dancing long enough at his inaugural balls, I may have been making a tango out of a jitterbug.)
But the Affair of Cheney's Timberlands is more than merely cosmetic, it's a symbolic foul-up. It just sends a message that Americans don't care very much about universal human rights. So does appointing the Poster Boy for Torture as the top law enforcement official in the country. As so often with the Bush Administration, the question is: evil or stupid? In the case of Cheney at Auschwitz, I say Stupid. Israel is our most important ally, Bush and Cheney should know it better than anyone, and I'd conjecture that the Israelis take Holocaust memorials pretty seriously.
Alberto Gonzales for AG is a tougher call. The Bushies do tend to be stupidly tone deaf, to overrate the world community's willingness to give us the benefit of the doubt and/or fall for laughable White House spin--for instance, to blame the Abu Ghraib disgrace entirely on SPC Charles Graner. On the other hand, I think it's a real possibility that Bush would be in deep legal jeopardy if the shit ever hit the fan. Maybe having an obsequious bag man and fixer in the Attorney General's office is the the highest consideration. So maybe Evil.
Can you feel me struggling not to sound like the shrill Blame America First stereotype? And failing? For an even, well-reasoned discussion of how alienated we are from the world community, let me give you Michael Lind writing about America, the Dispensible Nation.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
My Hands Are Numb / From Hanging On That Steering Wheel
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Friday, January 14, 2005
Stupid Americans, Pt. MCCXXXIV
Terrific op-ed piece by Steven Prothero, citing a study showing that while Americans are the most religion-professing people on earth, we are also quite ignorant about what religion says, exactly. (The money quote is that 12% in the poll thought that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife.)
Prothero chides 1st Amendment absolutists who, for instance, want schools not only to refrain from teaching religion but even from teaching about religion. He also makes a glancing mention of congregations who preach and teach using contemporary stories rather than Bible stories. Ed Kilgore at New Donkey takes the latter point and expands on it:
I think this is exactly right. In a mobile society, fewer of us live in the town where we grew up, where our parents and grandparents lived. Fewer of us unquestioningly follow in the civic and religious traditions we grew up in. Whether and where to worship is a consumer choice; churches compete with one another as well as with Starbucks, local golf courses, and sports on TV.
Entering the life stage of marriage and parenthood leads many young adults to give church another spin. (A book on my reading list is "Spirit and Flesh" by Jim Ault Jr., a sociologist's look at an evangelical church. Ault feels that marriage counseling / family support is a crucial factor in young adults' joining and staying in a conservative church.) But to attract customers, a church has got to be entertaining. The music is peppy, the preaching and teaching are light and in a self-help vein. Bible study is awfully dry, so isn't emphasized.
As Kilgore further points out, the doctrinal ignorance of church members plays into the hands of preachers with political/social agendas. (Conservatives take advantage of public stupidity? Shocking but true!) It's likely that those evangelicals who can't name the four Gospels, are nonetheless certain that those Gospels are clearly thumbs-down on gay marriage, abortion, estate taxes, and Dan Rather. So folks who have joined a church with secular motives (achieve success, have a happy marriage and family) hear the preaching of ministers with essentially secular motives (self-aggrandizement on some level).
What a great, great post. This is a lot better and subtler about Democrats-and-religion than Amy Sullivan's writing. I guess I wish Kilgore or some other Democratic heavyweight could have articulated it before Election Day, but it's good stuff to throw into the hopper as progressives strategize and build toward '06 and '08.
Prothero chides 1st Amendment absolutists who, for instance, want schools not only to refrain from teaching religion but even from teaching about religion. He also makes a glancing mention of congregations who preach and teach using contemporary stories rather than Bible stories. Ed Kilgore at New Donkey takes the latter point and expands on it:
At one point in our history, religious pluralism created a way to define ourselves distinctively within the common American civic creed. Now the arrow seems pointed in the other direction, with religious identity being less and less a matter of heritage, doctrine and liturgy, and more and more a matter of consumer choice--and of secular values.
I think this is exactly right. In a mobile society, fewer of us live in the town where we grew up, where our parents and grandparents lived. Fewer of us unquestioningly follow in the civic and religious traditions we grew up in. Whether and where to worship is a consumer choice; churches compete with one another as well as with Starbucks, local golf courses, and sports on TV.
Entering the life stage of marriage and parenthood leads many young adults to give church another spin. (A book on my reading list is "Spirit and Flesh" by Jim Ault Jr., a sociologist's look at an evangelical church. Ault feels that marriage counseling / family support is a crucial factor in young adults' joining and staying in a conservative church.) But to attract customers, a church has got to be entertaining. The music is peppy, the preaching and teaching are light and in a self-help vein. Bible study is awfully dry, so isn't emphasized.
As Kilgore further points out, the doctrinal ignorance of church members plays into the hands of preachers with political/social agendas. (Conservatives take advantage of public stupidity? Shocking but true!) It's likely that those evangelicals who can't name the four Gospels, are nonetheless certain that those Gospels are clearly thumbs-down on gay marriage, abortion, estate taxes, and Dan Rather. So folks who have joined a church with secular motives (achieve success, have a happy marriage and family) hear the preaching of ministers with essentially secular motives (self-aggrandizement on some level).
[T]he rampant secularization of much of the American faith tradition in the not-so-sacred cause of cultural and political conservatism must be laid at the parsonage door of those religious leaders who have abused the prophetic function of their ministry to acquire a "seat at the table" of secular power.
In particular, Christian Right leaders in every denomination who abet and exploit the doctrinal and historical indifference of The Faithful to promote an agenda of intolerance and self-righteousness are the true Secularists of contemporary American society, and far more dangerous to the integrity of our faith communities than all the honest unbelievers in our midst or in Europe or Asia.
What a great, great post. This is a lot better and subtler about Democrats-and-religion than Amy Sullivan's writing. I guess I wish Kilgore or some other Democratic heavyweight could have articulated it before Election Day, but it's good stuff to throw into the hopper as progressives strategize and build toward '06 and '08.
Educational technology update
Have I mentioned how I feel about the homeschool movement lately?
"And another problem with the public schools nowadays--these namby-pamby rules against corporal punishment. The vice principal used to whip my ass three times a week, and look how great I turned out..."
On a spring day, Susan Lawrence was flipping through a magazine, Home School Digest, when she came across an advertisement that took her breath away. In it, ''The Rod," a $5 flexible whipping stick, was described as the ''ideal tool for child training."
"And another problem with the public schools nowadays--these namby-pamby rules against corporal punishment. The vice principal used to whip my ass three times a week, and look how great I turned out..."
Saturday, December 25, 2004
Homemade X-mas Card
We’re having a nice Christmas here. Santa Claus is still a big, big deal in our house, and thankfully the girls asked for presents that weren‘t too extravagant or hard to find. So parents and kids are all pretty satisfied. No snow, which takes some explaining (my youngest has been brainwashed by the TV specials to think that a white Christmas is automatic), but it’s quite cold outside, so a couple of the presents (a Razor scooter, for one) won’t get tried out until tomorrow.
One odd thing--my friends the Jehovah’s Witnesses stopped by. These guys first knocked on our door one Saturday over two years ago, and for better or worse I was polite and attentive to them. (I don’t agree with what they preach, but I respect their dedication, if for no other reason than having been a field canvasser at one time myself.) They’ve stopped by regularly ever since then, one Saturday a month or so, just for a couple of minutes, to give me a little magazine and a short Bible lesson. You wonder how productive it is for these folks going around knocking on doors on Christmas Day, in the freezing cold. But Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate Christmas like most churches to begin with, so maybe that‘s part of the point.
One of the girls got the Crayola crayons 120-color set. Crayon color technology has almost doubled in a generation. I wonder if there is some corollary to Moore’s Law that accounts for this. Anyhow, I whiled away some time today looking at the colors and the names Crayola assigns to them. Most of the great ones from my childhood are still there: Cornflower and Periwinkle and Bittersweet. The new colors, I give mixed reviews. Crayola does do some innovative things in the way of fluorescents. But some of these colors, frankly, are mostly hype and not much character. Entrants like Shocking Pink and Outrageous Orange and Unmellow Yellow--it’s obvious what’s going on there, right? Just adding a clever or trendy modifier to the same old color. There are some cheap sentimental nature/ecology allusions. There’s a Rain Forest Green, a Mountain Meadow. There’s a color called Outer Space. There are colors called Manatee and Timberwolf. Also, there are some nods to cultural Americana (Denim, Tumbleweed, Purple Mountain’s Majesty, Wild Blue Yonder), some of which verge on nationalism or militarism. Navy Blue is a cliché by now rather than a military tribute, but there is a Cadet Blue and, most striking, a Purple Heart.
Obviously, the eight or ten basic colors are a given, but it’s interesting how much editorializing goes on in The Big Box. The Crayola Company of Easton, Pennsylvania, is one of the unacknowledged legislators of our mental universe. They’re at least as important as any museum or school in fundamentally shaping American children’s imaginations and use of senses. Kvetching aside, the company fulfills this role fairly responsibly. Foods and flowers represent the membrane between the wild and the domestic, the natural and the artificial. Like many children’s songs and stories, Crayola dwells quite a bit on the table and the garden. Granny Smith Apple. Asparagus. Macaroni and Cheese. Orchid. Wisteria. Inch Worm. Robin’s Egg Blue.
I thought of commenting on this story about the soul-negating tyranny of "Season's Greetings" (there is a Raleigh connection after all, and isn't it my function on the WWW to blog about national news stories that originate in my geographical area? Isn't it? Hello?) but I won't. 'Tis the season for peace on earth, good will to ALL men, and I think the angel was including big fat crybabies in that injunction.
One odd thing--my friends the Jehovah’s Witnesses stopped by. These guys first knocked on our door one Saturday over two years ago, and for better or worse I was polite and attentive to them. (I don’t agree with what they preach, but I respect their dedication, if for no other reason than having been a field canvasser at one time myself.) They’ve stopped by regularly ever since then, one Saturday a month or so, just for a couple of minutes, to give me a little magazine and a short Bible lesson. You wonder how productive it is for these folks going around knocking on doors on Christmas Day, in the freezing cold. But Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate Christmas like most churches to begin with, so maybe that‘s part of the point.
One of the girls got the Crayola crayons 120-color set. Crayon color technology has almost doubled in a generation. I wonder if there is some corollary to Moore’s Law that accounts for this. Anyhow, I whiled away some time today looking at the colors and the names Crayola assigns to them. Most of the great ones from my childhood are still there: Cornflower and Periwinkle and Bittersweet. The new colors, I give mixed reviews. Crayola does do some innovative things in the way of fluorescents. But some of these colors, frankly, are mostly hype and not much character. Entrants like Shocking Pink and Outrageous Orange and Unmellow Yellow--it’s obvious what’s going on there, right? Just adding a clever or trendy modifier to the same old color. There are some cheap sentimental nature/ecology allusions. There’s a Rain Forest Green, a Mountain Meadow. There’s a color called Outer Space. There are colors called Manatee and Timberwolf. Also, there are some nods to cultural Americana (Denim, Tumbleweed, Purple Mountain’s Majesty, Wild Blue Yonder), some of which verge on nationalism or militarism. Navy Blue is a cliché by now rather than a military tribute, but there is a Cadet Blue and, most striking, a Purple Heart.
Obviously, the eight or ten basic colors are a given, but it’s interesting how much editorializing goes on in The Big Box. The Crayola Company of Easton, Pennsylvania, is one of the unacknowledged legislators of our mental universe. They’re at least as important as any museum or school in fundamentally shaping American children’s imaginations and use of senses. Kvetching aside, the company fulfills this role fairly responsibly. Foods and flowers represent the membrane between the wild and the domestic, the natural and the artificial. Like many children’s songs and stories, Crayola dwells quite a bit on the table and the garden. Granny Smith Apple. Asparagus. Macaroni and Cheese. Orchid. Wisteria. Inch Worm. Robin’s Egg Blue.
I thought of commenting on this story about the soul-negating tyranny of "Season's Greetings" (there is a Raleigh connection after all, and isn't it my function on the WWW to blog about national news stories that originate in my geographical area? Isn't it? Hello?) but I won't. 'Tis the season for peace on earth, good will to ALL men, and I think the angel was including big fat crybabies in that injunction.
Monday, December 20, 2004
"Caryan" Brotherhood; or, Getting Medieval
So this Christian school got exposed for employing materials in the classroom that defended Southern slavery. (It was reported in the Raleigh News & Observer, but I’ll include this link because it will last longer.)
I never heard of Cary Christian School before, despite its being not more than 15 miles from my house. When I first heard this story, I thought there might be mitigating circumstances here. Parents in Cary regularly have gripes about the county public schools, and some of those gripes are reasonable. Cary’s population is booming at an unbelievable rate, they can’t build schools fast enough to keep up, so every year there are problems with overcrowding and children being involuntarily re-assigned to different schools to shift the population load.
This could fairly be described as “busing,” so use your imagination as to some of the Cary parents’ gripes that are less savory.
Where parents are chronically unhappy, private and charter schools will sprout up at a rapid rate. I have heard and read stories about disorganization at some of these new schools—inexperienced teachers, half-baked curricula, and so on—and I wondered if adopting a pro-slavery pamphlet might have been an honest mistake. In other words, I started out looking to give the Cary Christian School some benefit of the doubt, and perhaps learn that the story wasn’t as bad as it first sounded.
The lesson, as always: I’m an idiot. On closer examination, the story is just as bad as, maybe a little creepier than, it first sounded. Cary Christian School is a freaky scary fundamentalist place. When the bad publicity hit, the school did pull the offending pamphlet from use, but the statement currently on their website doesn’t seem very contrite about the whole thing.
My notion of Cary is that it’s full of technology workers. I guess it’s quite possible to have a narrow-minded troglodytic worldview and at the same time have the skills to build routers for Cisco Systems. Anyway, I feel there IS a line somewhere between, on one hand, religious families with legitimate concerns about the quality and climate of their public schools, and on the other hand, xenophobic bigot assholes. This was my initial interest in this story. Well, it turns out the school falls squarely into asshole territory, but I became morbidly interested in the creepy ideology this school subscribes to.
In its statement about the slavery hub-bub, the school uses Biblical arguments, some of which Jefferson Davis would recognize. Funny thing about Saint Paul, he was really clear that slave trading was wrong, but much iffier on the subject of slave ownership per se. If you’re a pedantic literalist who refuses to let your mind be tainted by any hint of historical interpretation, this is a problem. So their statement is rather sophistical (“the logic of the Great Commission requires the eventual death of slavery”) and in the end, it seems that slavery loses on a technicality. But CCS’s reading of the Civil War is that, like all revolutionary approaches to social change, it was unnecessary. (The Holy Spirit works like yeast through a loaf, it never manifests itself violently.) Exactly how slavery would have ended without a war is never addressed. But it matters little. Apparently, the reason it is important for our kids to study arguments for and against slavery, is as intellectual calisthenics, a warm-up for the really important social struggles of our time: against abortion and homosexuality.
Cary Christian School is a leading member of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools. The ACCS is based in Idaho (I can’t resist reporting this factoid), and its website is a family-sized Planters sampler of mixed wingnuttery. It is slick and erudite and hair-raising all at the same time. Here is an excerpt from one of its position papers:
I assume that last sentence refers to the Civil War and Reconstruction. So to sum up, Catholics are bad, the Enlightenment was a big mistake, and government schools are linked to the sinister tyrannical after-effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction. (By the way, these guys are relentlessly consistent in referring to public schools as government schools. Newt Gingrich would be proud. Hell, Goebbels would be proud.)
Clicking around these sites for the ACCS and its member schools, you find something for every prejudice. Sure, there’s rhetoric to appeal to the freaky Randy Weaver style Christianist true believer, but the schools also push the buttons of the less extremely conservative parents—run of the mill curmudgeons with their knee-jerk complaints about the public schools. The emphasis on a classical curriculum connotes a tried-and-true Eurocentric approach—a rejection of multiculturalism and trendiness. Whole-language is out; rote memorization of grammar and spelling is in. Centralization and bureaucracy are out; parents-as-customers are in. There are codes of conduct and codes of dress that enforce civility, unity, and respect for authority. Cellphones and iPods are banned from school grounds.
Something else I find intriguing is that one of the foundational texts of this “classical education” movement is “The Lost Tools of Learning” by Dorothy L. Sayers. I think of the late Ms. Sayers as a sweet English lady who wrote whodunits. It turns out she’s a more interesting figure than I realized: a vicar’s daughter, a scholar of theology and the classics, an early feminist of sorts, an associate of T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis. She was a serious critic of modernism: her horror of Freudian thought shines through particularly in this lecture. But I’ve got to think Sayers is doing subterranean somersaults at the way these Idaho spuds are using her. She champions the classical trivium in education (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) as a tool of free intellectual inquiry. But by linking her trivium with Biblical literalism, the ACCS beats Sayers’s plowshare into a sword.
The ACCS opposes school vouchers: a devil's bargain, they believe. That government money is like crack cocaine, and before you know it you'll be allowing all kinds of infernal things, like mandatory buggery in the hallways. The ACCS is also an ally of the home-schooling movement, which I posted about once before. Homeschoolers are not the isolated screwballs I’d once thought they were. Every new thing I discover about their networking and coordination worries me, including this little tidbit: "we homeschool because we don't want our kids to be socially bonded to their peer group. We want to keep the hearts of our children where they ought to be, with their parents, until it is time for them to marry and leave home."
[UPDATE: Sorry, the Cary Christian School took down their position statement about the Biblical view of antebellum slavery. Fortunately, I have my hard copy! If you're curious, let me know.]
I never heard of Cary Christian School before, despite its being not more than 15 miles from my house. When I first heard this story, I thought there might be mitigating circumstances here. Parents in Cary regularly have gripes about the county public schools, and some of those gripes are reasonable. Cary’s population is booming at an unbelievable rate, they can’t build schools fast enough to keep up, so every year there are problems with overcrowding and children being involuntarily re-assigned to different schools to shift the population load.
This could fairly be described as “busing,” so use your imagination as to some of the Cary parents’ gripes that are less savory.
Where parents are chronically unhappy, private and charter schools will sprout up at a rapid rate. I have heard and read stories about disorganization at some of these new schools—inexperienced teachers, half-baked curricula, and so on—and I wondered if adopting a pro-slavery pamphlet might have been an honest mistake. In other words, I started out looking to give the Cary Christian School some benefit of the doubt, and perhaps learn that the story wasn’t as bad as it first sounded.
The lesson, as always: I’m an idiot. On closer examination, the story is just as bad as, maybe a little creepier than, it first sounded. Cary Christian School is a freaky scary fundamentalist place. When the bad publicity hit, the school did pull the offending pamphlet from use, but the statement currently on their website doesn’t seem very contrite about the whole thing.
My notion of Cary is that it’s full of technology workers. I guess it’s quite possible to have a narrow-minded troglodytic worldview and at the same time have the skills to build routers for Cisco Systems. Anyway, I feel there IS a line somewhere between, on one hand, religious families with legitimate concerns about the quality and climate of their public schools, and on the other hand, xenophobic bigot assholes. This was my initial interest in this story. Well, it turns out the school falls squarely into asshole territory, but I became morbidly interested in the creepy ideology this school subscribes to.
In its statement about the slavery hub-bub, the school uses Biblical arguments, some of which Jefferson Davis would recognize. Funny thing about Saint Paul, he was really clear that slave trading was wrong, but much iffier on the subject of slave ownership per se. If you’re a pedantic literalist who refuses to let your mind be tainted by any hint of historical interpretation, this is a problem. So their statement is rather sophistical (“the logic of the Great Commission requires the eventual death of slavery”) and in the end, it seems that slavery loses on a technicality. But CCS’s reading of the Civil War is that, like all revolutionary approaches to social change, it was unnecessary. (The Holy Spirit works like yeast through a loaf, it never manifests itself violently.) Exactly how slavery would have ended without a war is never addressed. But it matters little. Apparently, the reason it is important for our kids to study arguments for and against slavery, is as intellectual calisthenics, a warm-up for the really important social struggles of our time: against abortion and homosexuality.
Cary Christian School is a leading member of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools. The ACCS is based in Idaho (I can’t resist reporting this factoid), and its website is a family-sized Planters sampler of mixed wingnuttery. It is slick and erudite and hair-raising all at the same time. Here is an excerpt from one of its position papers:
[A]s Christians, we reject the follies of ancient paganism, while seeking to appreciate what God gave them through common grace. As classical Protestants we affirm that the Protestant Reformation was a glorious recovery of the truth of the gospel, and was not an unfortunate mistake. As medievalists, we affirm that the soul-destroying Enlightenment was an unfortunate mistake. As private educators, we affirm that the growth of government education in America cannot be understood apart from the war and its aftermath that established a centralized state in our nation.
I assume that last sentence refers to the Civil War and Reconstruction. So to sum up, Catholics are bad, the Enlightenment was a big mistake, and government schools are linked to the sinister tyrannical after-effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction. (By the way, these guys are relentlessly consistent in referring to public schools as government schools. Newt Gingrich would be proud. Hell, Goebbels would be proud.)
Clicking around these sites for the ACCS and its member schools, you find something for every prejudice. Sure, there’s rhetoric to appeal to the freaky Randy Weaver style Christianist true believer, but the schools also push the buttons of the less extremely conservative parents—run of the mill curmudgeons with their knee-jerk complaints about the public schools. The emphasis on a classical curriculum connotes a tried-and-true Eurocentric approach—a rejection of multiculturalism and trendiness. Whole-language is out; rote memorization of grammar and spelling is in. Centralization and bureaucracy are out; parents-as-customers are in. There are codes of conduct and codes of dress that enforce civility, unity, and respect for authority. Cellphones and iPods are banned from school grounds.
Something else I find intriguing is that one of the foundational texts of this “classical education” movement is “The Lost Tools of Learning” by Dorothy L. Sayers. I think of the late Ms. Sayers as a sweet English lady who wrote whodunits. It turns out she’s a more interesting figure than I realized: a vicar’s daughter, a scholar of theology and the classics, an early feminist of sorts, an associate of T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis. She was a serious critic of modernism: her horror of Freudian thought shines through particularly in this lecture. But I’ve got to think Sayers is doing subterranean somersaults at the way these Idaho spuds are using her. She champions the classical trivium in education (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) as a tool of free intellectual inquiry. But by linking her trivium with Biblical literalism, the ACCS beats Sayers’s plowshare into a sword.
The ACCS opposes school vouchers: a devil's bargain, they believe. That government money is like crack cocaine, and before you know it you'll be allowing all kinds of infernal things, like mandatory buggery in the hallways. The ACCS is also an ally of the home-schooling movement, which I posted about once before. Homeschoolers are not the isolated screwballs I’d once thought they were. Every new thing I discover about their networking and coordination worries me, including this little tidbit: "we homeschool because we don't want our kids to be socially bonded to their peer group. We want to keep the hearts of our children where they ought to be, with their parents, until it is time for them to marry and leave home."
[UPDATE: Sorry, the Cary Christian School took down their position statement about the Biblical view of antebellum slavery. Fortunately, I have my hard copy! If you're curious, let me know.]
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Now Playing
How did I get to my age without ever hearing this album in its entirety? Another shameful gap in my education... Anyway, what a great song "Stray Cat Blues" is. "Jig-Saw Puzzle" shows a marked Bob Dylan influence, but still manages to be a Stones song. I tend to feel that when Mick Jagger sings country, he's laughing AT us, not WITH us, but "Dear Doctor" is genuinely funny.
I set myself up for ridicule when I try to interest my kids in my CDs, but I did score a success with the Ramones: the girls like it, and I get a surreal chuckle when I hear my four-year-old singing along with "Blitzkrieg Bop." (She has a new pair of black boots that look like Doc Martens, and I tell her that the Ramones are just right for her to dance to in her "punk rock boots.") I feel okay about my kids hearing "Beat on the Brat" or "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" because they're pretty absurd, and if the girls ask, I can explain that it's a joke.
On "Stray Cat Blues," however, Jagger is not joking. I'm a bit uncomfortable playing that song for my kids, the oldest of whom is almost 11. Not that there's anything wrong with a grown man wanting to bed a 15-year-old girl (or two), necessarily...
Monday, December 13, 2004
Steroids in Baseball
Though I don’t agree with all his conclusions or lack of them, Skip Bayless helpfully connects some dots here. As others have pointed out, on the list of public scandals, baseball players using steroids should rank way below the leaking of grand jury testimony by federal prosecutors. But Bayless reminds me of something I’d forgotten: Herr President cited steroid abuse as one of the nation’s leading ills in his last State of the Union address. And he wants to be able to say Mission Accomplished somehow. It looks unlikely that Bush’s Justice Department will manage to nail any scalps to the courtroom wall (quel surprise), so a “victory” in the court of public opinion, by way of a politically motivated press leak or two, will have to suffice. Right-wing scolds could hardly invent a better scapegoat on this issue than Barry Bonds: an unpopular player in that blue state Sodom & Gomorrah, San Francisco. Jason Giambi, overpaid free-agent bust for the New York Yankees, is almost as good for the part.
Slate used the occasion of the recent Bonds/Giambi disclosures to republish this Charlie Pierce article, a timely reminder that in the past, drug scandals in sports have had some really bad ramifications for American public policy and constitutional law.
Pierce also makes the very salient point that much of what Bonds and Giambi are alleged to have done wasn’t illegal at the time, neither in the eyes of the government nor of major league baseball.
I don’t have a whole lot to add. I really had no faith in Bonds’s or Giambi’s innocence even before the recent revelations; the circumstantial evidence is pretty overwhelming. It bothers me, I admit, especially in the case of Bonds, who has broken or will break some of baseball’s most cherished records. But it's an aesthetic objection, and a wee bit of an irrational hang-up on my part.
There's a colorful tradition of stretching the rules in baseball, including throwing a spitball and corking a bat. The spitball, of course, was legal for many years, and when baseball finally outlawed it, they grandfathered the active practitioners. Today, when you can just about about calculate the value (at ten of thousands of dollars) of every double off the wall that could be juiced into a home run over the wall with a little help from a syringe--why would any fan be surprised?
Slate used the occasion of the recent Bonds/Giambi disclosures to republish this Charlie Pierce article, a timely reminder that in the past, drug scandals in sports have had some really bad ramifications for American public policy and constitutional law.
I realize that with sports we are talking about the private, and not the public, sphere, but we have allowed the job of abridging our rights to be subcontracted in so many directions these days that the government hardly has to bother itself with doing so anymore, and a lot of that has its roots in the days after Len Bias died. [Bias’s death from cocaine overdose contributed to the war-on-drugs mood and legislative excesses of the 80s.] Consider, for example, Pottawatomie County v. Earls, in which the Supreme Court decided last year, by the predictable 5-to-4 margin, that high-school students could be tested for drugs if they decided to participate in virtually any extracurricular activity.
The case concerned a girl named Lindsay Earls, who’d refused a school-mandated drug test. Lindsay Earls wanted to join the choir.
Pierce also makes the very salient point that much of what Bonds and Giambi are alleged to have done wasn’t illegal at the time, neither in the eyes of the government nor of major league baseball.
I don’t have a whole lot to add. I really had no faith in Bonds’s or Giambi’s innocence even before the recent revelations; the circumstantial evidence is pretty overwhelming. It bothers me, I admit, especially in the case of Bonds, who has broken or will break some of baseball’s most cherished records. But it's an aesthetic objection, and a wee bit of an irrational hang-up on my part.
There's a colorful tradition of stretching the rules in baseball, including throwing a spitball and corking a bat. The spitball, of course, was legal for many years, and when baseball finally outlawed it, they grandfathered the active practitioners. Today, when you can just about about calculate the value (at ten of thousands of dollars) of every double off the wall that could be juiced into a home run over the wall with a little help from a syringe--why would any fan be surprised?
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Blogstorms and Bumper Stickers
This Peter Beinart article in The New Republic has been thoroughly masticated by my elders and betters in Blogtopia. So I'll try to keep this somewhat brief. (heh -- we'll see)
Beinart's piece is thought-provoking, and it outlines the Democrats' dilemma in a useful way. Hence all the hubbub in Democratic circles. And some of his criticisms of the Kerry campaign on foreign policy are on target. For instance, while I think Kerry was right to oppose the $87 billion of additional funding for the Iraq occupation, it was a mistake to justify that vote in isolationist terms (e.g., why build firehouses in Baghdad but not in New York). Kerry should have cited the poor progress of the Iraq occupation, and Bush's refusal to pay for the war by rolling back tax cuts--to seriously re-align his administration's priorities. There IS a way for the Democrats to extend their core principles (such as human rights and the rule of law) into the realm of foreign policy and anti-terrorism. Beinart mentions the Marshall Plan and the Peace Corps: examples of Democratic initiatives that have used economic developments (carrots) in tandem with military power (sticks) and have achieved positive results. And congruent with this approach, there was room for Kerry to attack Bush from the right on his conduct of the anti-terror campaign: Why didn't we finish the job in Tora Bora? Why do we tolerate embarrassing distractions such as Halliburton and Ahmad Chalabi? Abu Ghraib -- WTF? Kerry could've hammered Bush much harder on grounds of incompetence and less than total commitment, and affirmed traditional Democratic values at the same time.
It being The New Republic, though, naturally some things in the article grated on me. Beinart writes, "Had Kerry aggressively championed a national mobilization to win the war on terror, he wouldn't have been the Democratic nominee." That's exactly wrong, as fellow TNR writer Noam Scheiber establishes here. (If anything, Kerry missed an opportunity to reach toward the center-right.) Another thing that got my goat was that Beinart implies that the right has undergone "a historical re-education," significantly adapting its worldview to the new post-9/11 reality. Where's the new thinking? The outline of the Iraq invasion and Middle East "democracy promotion" has been on paper for 10 years or more, and the 9/11 attacks were no lesson at all, but an opportunity. 9/11 energized the right, and it gave them great fuel for propaganda and fear-mongering. But the right has less insight into the causes of Islamist terrorism, and in fact are more implicated in the conditions that cause it, than we are. They have no answers, just tough talk. And fewer scruples about demagoguing and using US troops as political pawns.
Bumper-sticker semiotics is one of my favorite hobbies. On the way to the coffee shop this morning I saw a car festooned with Bush/Cheney stickers, and with the familiar support-our-troops yellow ribbon decal-—and beside it, something that shocked me: a black ribbon that had the letters POW-MIA on it. What the fuck is anybody doing with a POW sticker in late 2004? It's just to feed somebody's persecution complex. It’s ain’t rational. It’s animal.
The country is still absolutely reeling from September 11th: left and right, in different ways. We will be nowhere close to a consensus on what 9/11 meant for decades, if ever. It’s like Vietnam in that sense. In fact, what Beinart writes comparing exit poll data between Dems and Reps and between '00 and '04, is mostly meaningless. 9/11 messed with our heads profoundly enough that our common language is shaken, and what "Iraq" means to people across the political spectrum is hardly worth comparing.
What most people mean by national security is really national pride. Liberals can talk until we’re blue in the face about how the Iraq war is counterproductive against terrorism, and most people aren’t even listening. The whole point of Iraq is animal vengeance—-who cares that it’s misdirected-—and getting our national mojo back. And the GOP is infinitely better at tapping animal instincts than we are. And I don't envy them in that respect.
Beinart's piece is thought-provoking, and it outlines the Democrats' dilemma in a useful way. Hence all the hubbub in Democratic circles. And some of his criticisms of the Kerry campaign on foreign policy are on target. For instance, while I think Kerry was right to oppose the $87 billion of additional funding for the Iraq occupation, it was a mistake to justify that vote in isolationist terms (e.g., why build firehouses in Baghdad but not in New York). Kerry should have cited the poor progress of the Iraq occupation, and Bush's refusal to pay for the war by rolling back tax cuts--to seriously re-align his administration's priorities. There IS a way for the Democrats to extend their core principles (such as human rights and the rule of law) into the realm of foreign policy and anti-terrorism. Beinart mentions the Marshall Plan and the Peace Corps: examples of Democratic initiatives that have used economic developments (carrots) in tandem with military power (sticks) and have achieved positive results. And congruent with this approach, there was room for Kerry to attack Bush from the right on his conduct of the anti-terror campaign: Why didn't we finish the job in Tora Bora? Why do we tolerate embarrassing distractions such as Halliburton and Ahmad Chalabi? Abu Ghraib -- WTF? Kerry could've hammered Bush much harder on grounds of incompetence and less than total commitment, and affirmed traditional Democratic values at the same time.
It being The New Republic, though, naturally some things in the article grated on me. Beinart writes, "Had Kerry aggressively championed a national mobilization to win the war on terror, he wouldn't have been the Democratic nominee." That's exactly wrong, as fellow TNR writer Noam Scheiber establishes here. (If anything, Kerry missed an opportunity to reach toward the center-right.) Another thing that got my goat was that Beinart implies that the right has undergone "a historical re-education," significantly adapting its worldview to the new post-9/11 reality. Where's the new thinking? The outline of the Iraq invasion and Middle East "democracy promotion" has been on paper for 10 years or more, and the 9/11 attacks were no lesson at all, but an opportunity. 9/11 energized the right, and it gave them great fuel for propaganda and fear-mongering. But the right has less insight into the causes of Islamist terrorism, and in fact are more implicated in the conditions that cause it, than we are. They have no answers, just tough talk. And fewer scruples about demagoguing and using US troops as political pawns.
Bumper-sticker semiotics is one of my favorite hobbies. On the way to the coffee shop this morning I saw a car festooned with Bush/Cheney stickers, and with the familiar support-our-troops yellow ribbon decal-—and beside it, something that shocked me: a black ribbon that had the letters POW-MIA on it. What the fuck is anybody doing with a POW sticker in late 2004? It's just to feed somebody's persecution complex. It’s ain’t rational. It’s animal.
The country is still absolutely reeling from September 11th: left and right, in different ways. We will be nowhere close to a consensus on what 9/11 meant for decades, if ever. It’s like Vietnam in that sense. In fact, what Beinart writes comparing exit poll data between Dems and Reps and between '00 and '04, is mostly meaningless. 9/11 messed with our heads profoundly enough that our common language is shaken, and what "Iraq" means to people across the political spectrum is hardly worth comparing.
What most people mean by national security is really national pride. Liberals can talk until we’re blue in the face about how the Iraq war is counterproductive against terrorism, and most people aren’t even listening. The whole point of Iraq is animal vengeance—-who cares that it’s misdirected-—and getting our national mojo back. And the GOP is infinitely better at tapping animal instincts than we are. And I don't envy them in that respect.
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Fan-Tastic
If you were given dictatorial power over the NBA, what would you do differently? Assume that you can't manufacture extraordinarily talented players, but you can change the rules and structure any way you like.
Oh boy. We’re firmly in the realm of fantasy, are we?
The tension between players and fans has so much to do with money. The public resents the huge salaries players draw, but at the same time ticket prices are so high, ticket buyers feel they have a license to abuse players verbally (or worse). So turn down the volume on the bling-bling. Reduce ticket prices by at least half. Fewer corporate skyboxes. More bleacher seats that “regular people” can afford. Reduce the number of games by a third. Reduce TV commercials on the game broadcasts. Reduce or eliminate billboards in the gym. And reduce player salaries commensurate to all this (by 75%?). (I know, it’s un-American to leave money on the table voluntarily, but it’s my fantasy, dammit.)
Guarantee the security of players on the court and fans in the bleachers. More cops, if that’s what it takes. Eliminate alcohol sales, or limit them (say, first half of the game only).
I agree, the NBA should have a developmental league. At the same time, if a teenager has the ability, or shows the promise, to command an NBA contract, it seems unfair to deny them that. Nobody thought it was somehow immoral of Bill Gates to drop out of Harvard, did they? If 18-year-olds want to go pro, let them, but let them play in the “minor leagues” for a year or two. Don’t make them grow up in the glare of the big time. And don’t make them endure a year or more of pauperdom, going through the motions of getting a college education they’re not interested in.
(College basketball will become a second-tier level of play in my scenario. But college ball will become less mercenary. College fans will expect players to stick around for four years, and will believe that the players are real students as well as athletes.)
Link each NBA team more closely to the real basketball culture of its community. Put the arenas where the fans are, and reduce ticket prices to make them affordable to the “average fan.” For instance, and I’m not certain this matters in the recent fight, but the Detroit Pistons play in Auburn Hills, an affluent suburb. Detroit has a great tradition of basketball played by black kids in inner-city neighborhoods. The Pistons should be geographically and financially within reach of the most passionate fans.
If each franchise has a developmental or youth team, that can be a bridge to the community as well. Tickets to those games can be extra cheap, with perhaps some giveaways. Developmental teams could hold camps or workshops for youth players. This could be a recruitment tool for up-and-coming players as well as a community relations strategy.
Less ear-splitting music, please. Fewer dancing girls and cavorting mascots. Let’s be clear that we’re all here for a basketball game.
As far as actual play goes: Expand the court. The players have gotten bigger and faster, and it’s simply too crowded out there. Make the court wider by five feet or so, and maybe longer as well. Expand the three-second lane: perhaps go to the international lane (wider at the baseline).
I like the physicality of the NBA, but I don’t want it to be Worldwide Wrestling. Call fouls a little closer. There ARE such things as traveling and palming, Mr. Referee. And hand out stiff penalties for the most flagrant fouls.
Team play and fundamentals are lacking. Fewer games per season (i.e. more time to practice) and the presence of developmental leagues might improve this situation. Also, there should be more exhibition games between NBA teams and international teams. (Foreign teams are less athletic than American teams, but are sounder fundamentally, they pass better, etc.) All parties would benefit.
** We hashed over the Pistons-Pacers fight at PeoplesForum as well, and I was finally persuaded that it's not the end of civilization as we know it. Nobody was badly hurt, fortunately, and when was the last time people were talking about the NBA in November? But I take it more seriously (and simultaneously maybe less seriously, I dunno) than the Slate writer does. Big time sports matter, for better or worse, as a kind of Kabuki theater where we work stuff out as a culture. I'm in favor of tweaking the conventions a bit to keep the focus on fair play and merit rather than gladiatorial decadence. Yet precisely because sports is NOT curing cancer or housing the homeless, it depends on the public's faith. Pro baseball and football had problems with players involved with gambling and organized crime. Those sports confronted gambling firmly if not brutally (see: Shoeless Joe Jackson) and went on to prosper. On-court violence and the tension between players and fans may be the NBA equivalent of the Black Sox scandal.
Oh boy. We’re firmly in the realm of fantasy, are we?
The tension between players and fans has so much to do with money. The public resents the huge salaries players draw, but at the same time ticket prices are so high, ticket buyers feel they have a license to abuse players verbally (or worse). So turn down the volume on the bling-bling. Reduce ticket prices by at least half. Fewer corporate skyboxes. More bleacher seats that “regular people” can afford. Reduce the number of games by a third. Reduce TV commercials on the game broadcasts. Reduce or eliminate billboards in the gym. And reduce player salaries commensurate to all this (by 75%?). (I know, it’s un-American to leave money on the table voluntarily, but it’s my fantasy, dammit.)
Guarantee the security of players on the court and fans in the bleachers. More cops, if that’s what it takes. Eliminate alcohol sales, or limit them (say, first half of the game only).
I agree, the NBA should have a developmental league. At the same time, if a teenager has the ability, or shows the promise, to command an NBA contract, it seems unfair to deny them that. Nobody thought it was somehow immoral of Bill Gates to drop out of Harvard, did they? If 18-year-olds want to go pro, let them, but let them play in the “minor leagues” for a year or two. Don’t make them grow up in the glare of the big time. And don’t make them endure a year or more of pauperdom, going through the motions of getting a college education they’re not interested in.
(College basketball will become a second-tier level of play in my scenario. But college ball will become less mercenary. College fans will expect players to stick around for four years, and will believe that the players are real students as well as athletes.)
Link each NBA team more closely to the real basketball culture of its community. Put the arenas where the fans are, and reduce ticket prices to make them affordable to the “average fan.” For instance, and I’m not certain this matters in the recent fight, but the Detroit Pistons play in Auburn Hills, an affluent suburb. Detroit has a great tradition of basketball played by black kids in inner-city neighborhoods. The Pistons should be geographically and financially within reach of the most passionate fans.
If each franchise has a developmental or youth team, that can be a bridge to the community as well. Tickets to those games can be extra cheap, with perhaps some giveaways. Developmental teams could hold camps or workshops for youth players. This could be a recruitment tool for up-and-coming players as well as a community relations strategy.
Less ear-splitting music, please. Fewer dancing girls and cavorting mascots. Let’s be clear that we’re all here for a basketball game.
As far as actual play goes: Expand the court. The players have gotten bigger and faster, and it’s simply too crowded out there. Make the court wider by five feet or so, and maybe longer as well. Expand the three-second lane: perhaps go to the international lane (wider at the baseline).
I like the physicality of the NBA, but I don’t want it to be Worldwide Wrestling. Call fouls a little closer. There ARE such things as traveling and palming, Mr. Referee. And hand out stiff penalties for the most flagrant fouls.
Team play and fundamentals are lacking. Fewer games per season (i.e. more time to practice) and the presence of developmental leagues might improve this situation. Also, there should be more exhibition games between NBA teams and international teams. (Foreign teams are less athletic than American teams, but are sounder fundamentally, they pass better, etc.) All parties would benefit.
** We hashed over the Pistons-Pacers fight at PeoplesForum as well, and I was finally persuaded that it's not the end of civilization as we know it. Nobody was badly hurt, fortunately, and when was the last time people were talking about the NBA in November? But I take it more seriously (and simultaneously maybe less seriously, I dunno) than the Slate writer does. Big time sports matter, for better or worse, as a kind of Kabuki theater where we work stuff out as a culture. I'm in favor of tweaking the conventions a bit to keep the focus on fair play and merit rather than gladiatorial decadence. Yet precisely because sports is NOT curing cancer or housing the homeless, it depends on the public's faith. Pro baseball and football had problems with players involved with gambling and organized crime. Those sports confronted gambling firmly if not brutally (see: Shoeless Joe Jackson) and went on to prosper. On-court violence and the tension between players and fans may be the NBA equivalent of the Black Sox scandal.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Tuesday stuff
More stuff about religion that I was hipped to by The Revealer. Shield your eyes.
The New Pantagruel is a webmag about religion and culture. (Pantagruel is a Rabelais allusion; damned if I know what it means beyond that.) The slant is definitely conservative, but conservative in the best sense (i.e. respect tradition and “do no harm”) and hard to pigeonhole. I was only familiar with “the culture of life” as a catchphrase used by Bush and other pro-life figures, but the New Pantagruel actually fleshes it out as a political/cultural platform. It includes opposition to the death penalty, concern for systemic poverty, and other positions that you’d normally put in the Democratic column.
This piece is a roundtable discussion of the November elections, whose participants really wrestle with which candidate, if any, might earn the culture-of-life vote (Bush obviously wins on abortion, Kerry wins on everything else). My question is whether abortion has to be THE culture-of-life issue or just one of many. (Again, what makes the life of a fetus intrinsically more worthy than that of post-born humans with flaws and actual experiences?) But it’s an informative dialogue. And if you think all Ralph Nader sympathizers are/were post-Woodstock acid casualties, here is evidence to the contrary.
A writer at Daily Kos looks at the growth of the Christian Right somewhat the way I do: as a triumph of propaganda and organization, rather than a spontaneous growth of faith. He talks about the growth of Christian media, including radio stations, overcoming the usual fractiousness among different denominations and traditions:
The New Pantagruel is a webmag about religion and culture. (Pantagruel is a Rabelais allusion; damned if I know what it means beyond that.) The slant is definitely conservative, but conservative in the best sense (i.e. respect tradition and “do no harm”) and hard to pigeonhole. I was only familiar with “the culture of life” as a catchphrase used by Bush and other pro-life figures, but the New Pantagruel actually fleshes it out as a political/cultural platform. It includes opposition to the death penalty, concern for systemic poverty, and other positions that you’d normally put in the Democratic column.
This piece is a roundtable discussion of the November elections, whose participants really wrestle with which candidate, if any, might earn the culture-of-life vote (Bush obviously wins on abortion, Kerry wins on everything else). My question is whether abortion has to be THE culture-of-life issue or just one of many. (Again, what makes the life of a fetus intrinsically more worthy than that of post-born humans with flaws and actual experiences?) But it’s an informative dialogue. And if you think all Ralph Nader sympathizers are/were post-Woodstock acid casualties, here is evidence to the contrary.
A writer at Daily Kos looks at the growth of the Christian Right somewhat the way I do: as a triumph of propaganda and organization, rather than a spontaneous growth of faith. He talks about the growth of Christian media, including radio stations, overcoming the usual fractiousness among different denominations and traditions:
Furthermore, thanks to companies like Clear Channel, Christians across the country are being exposed to exactly the same political rhetoric. James Dobson's "Focus on the Family" is carried on virtually every Christian radio station across the country, as are many other such programs. And while the protestant wing of Christianity is hopelessly fragmented into thousands of denominations and sects, Christians feel a sense of unity here. The idea here is: We may disagree about the proper way to baptize someone, but at least we can "all" agree on some certain core points. And although Christianity. Inc. is careful to never articulate these clearly, these are the core points around which it is organized. There is no doctrine on "Spirit 95", our local Christian radio station. Instead there are platitudes, feel-good (i.e. non-controversial) Bible verses, and praise songs. Consequently, through this tendency to avoid anything controversial, there is very little discussion of Christianity itself at all! This happens at the local level. But these stations also play the national-level shows distributed across the country. Because of this, there is a hidden implication that the topics discussed by the likes of the Dobsons and the Robertsons must be part of the "safe" topics that we (apparently) "all agree upon".
Monday, November 22, 2004
Teenage Motherhood: Not Just A Good Idea, It's The Law
I was looking forward to reading this piece in The Nation about feminist politics in the South. God knows why I was. Apparently female residents of Tennessee HAVE to be knocked up at age 15.
The basis of a good article is here, but the writer comes off as a liberal Northern anthropologist/spy, slipping into enemy territory with forged papers. She uses the term "religious fanaticism" to refer to people who... I'm not sure, contribute money to the GOP? Buy the Left Behind books? My not-very-rigorous reasoning is that if millions of people do it, it's not fanaticism.
Reporting from a conference on women's issues in the South, Ms. Sayeau writes that "it took one attendee's sister a year to recover from a minor injury because most doctors in her town of 17,000 were incompetent." Wow--I sure wouldn't publish this claim based on an anecdote. It COULD be true. I certainly suspect the quality of health care in small towns is a problem in this country (all regions). But describing the problem as one of incompetent doctors gives short shrift to the systemic nature of the problem, AND it contributes to the unhelpful stereotype of Southerners as ignorant yahoos.
Another thing: My perception is that feminism and women's liberation are tainted terms in our culture, even more so than liberal. Not just in the South, I think young women today live feminism but don't proclaim it. I'm open to being corrected about this, but I think saying "feminist" or "women's libber" without qualification comes off as dated and ivory-towerish.
The basis of a good article is here, but the writer comes off as a liberal Northern anthropologist/spy, slipping into enemy territory with forged papers. She uses the term "religious fanaticism" to refer to people who... I'm not sure, contribute money to the GOP? Buy the Left Behind books? My not-very-rigorous reasoning is that if millions of people do it, it's not fanaticism.
Reporting from a conference on women's issues in the South, Ms. Sayeau writes that "it took one attendee's sister a year to recover from a minor injury because most doctors in her town of 17,000 were incompetent." Wow--I sure wouldn't publish this claim based on an anecdote. It COULD be true. I certainly suspect the quality of health care in small towns is a problem in this country (all regions). But describing the problem as one of incompetent doctors gives short shrift to the systemic nature of the problem, AND it contributes to the unhelpful stereotype of Southerners as ignorant yahoos.
Another thing: My perception is that feminism and women's liberation are tainted terms in our culture, even more so than liberal. Not just in the South, I think young women today live feminism but don't proclaim it. I'm open to being corrected about this, but I think saying "feminist" or "women's libber" without qualification comes off as dated and ivory-towerish.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
I Take What I Need to Live
This week's favorite album is Hey Ho! Let's Go! , the two-disc Ramones anthology. Sixty-some tracks, and extensive liner notes by David Fricke.
In college at some point I decided I needed A Punk Record. My music collection, then and now, ranged in tone mostly from very mellow (folk, bluegrass) to medium hard (Neil Young, The Who), but I decided I needed one really fast thrashing record, to play at maximum volume on the last day of final exams or other times when I needed sonic release. The one I grabbed was Rocket to Russia, and it served its purpose very well. Later I supplemented the one punk album with "Never Mind the Bollocks" and a Clash or two, but all of these are on vinyl, therefore I haven't played them in about a decade.
So I picked up Hey Ho! Let's Go! and feel like I understand the band much better--thanks partly to Fricke's essay. I'm sometimes guilty of taking a condescending view of punk bands as noble savages, untutored and instinctive, but these guys were deliberate in their choices about sound, onstage image, and aesthetic principles. That signature Ramones sound is really quite beautiful, even sweet when they wanted it to be--"I Want You Around" is the song that's earworming me today. And to be honest, part of what heightens my appreciation for that sound is hearing how they strayed somewhat from it late in their career, with overbearing producers and Joey betraying his deadpan delivery a bit.
A great thing about the Ramones is the combination of twisted humor with bubblegum-pop influences. Yesterday was the first time I ever took a close listen to "The KKK Took My Baby Away," and it's a girl-group song, for cryin' out loud. King and Goffin could almost have written it. (And it makes it real easy to hear what attracted Phil Spector to the Ramones.)
In college at some point I decided I needed A Punk Record. My music collection, then and now, ranged in tone mostly from very mellow (folk, bluegrass) to medium hard (Neil Young, The Who), but I decided I needed one really fast thrashing record, to play at maximum volume on the last day of final exams or other times when I needed sonic release. The one I grabbed was Rocket to Russia, and it served its purpose very well. Later I supplemented the one punk album with "Never Mind the Bollocks" and a Clash or two, but all of these are on vinyl, therefore I haven't played them in about a decade.
So I picked up Hey Ho! Let's Go! and feel like I understand the band much better--thanks partly to Fricke's essay. I'm sometimes guilty of taking a condescending view of punk bands as noble savages, untutored and instinctive, but these guys were deliberate in their choices about sound, onstage image, and aesthetic principles. That signature Ramones sound is really quite beautiful, even sweet when they wanted it to be--"I Want You Around" is the song that's earworming me today. And to be honest, part of what heightens my appreciation for that sound is hearing how they strayed somewhat from it late in their career, with overbearing producers and Joey betraying his deadpan delivery a bit.
A great thing about the Ramones is the combination of twisted humor with bubblegum-pop influences. Yesterday was the first time I ever took a close listen to "The KKK Took My Baby Away," and it's a girl-group song, for cryin' out loud. King and Goffin could almost have written it. (And it makes it real easy to hear what attracted Phil Spector to the Ramones.)
Monday, November 15, 2004
The Numbers Are Sapping Our Essence
My friend Naz Nomad provided a link to this story: An Indiana congressman wants to change the number of Interstate 69.
Another data point to support my theory: The entire conservative social agenda is driven by parents being embarrassed to talk to their teenagers.
The Hoosier Gazette offers some pedantic support to Rep. Hostettler's initiative:
Forgive me, but this is a case of the media and the congressman engaging in some 69 action on each other. Not even hot paper-on-pol action--I'd call it perfunctory--but still, a surrender of the chaste gazetteering that Hoosiers have traditionally insisted on.
Let me just ask -- Is the ultimate goal to eliminate 69 from the list of whole numbers altogether? Because that seems a little off the wall to me. What if we just tried to be cool and accept 69 whenever it naturally occurs, in highway numbers or street addresses or whatever? The other way to go is to change hundreds of highway signs and have the old ones turn up in college dorm rooms and on eBay. I don't think that's the way to lessen the sexual connotation of old 69.
Hostettler, a proponent of the interstate extension, agrees. “Every time I
have been out in the public with an ‘I-69’ button on my lapel, teenagers
point and snicker at it. I have had many ask me if they can have my button. I believe it is time to change the name of the highway. It is the moral thing to do.”
Another data point to support my theory: The entire conservative social agenda is driven by parents being embarrassed to talk to their teenagers.
The Hoosier Gazette offers some pedantic support to Rep. Hostettler's initiative:
As a matter of fact, naming the highway’s extension I-69 is a violation of the
Interstate Highway System’s rules for numbering roads. Interstates numbers
are to increase from west to east. If the extension through southern
Indiana is named I-69, then 69 will be west of I-65, a direct violation.
Forgive me, but this is a case of the media and the congressman engaging in some 69 action on each other. Not even hot paper-on-pol action--I'd call it perfunctory--but still, a surrender of the chaste gazetteering that Hoosiers have traditionally insisted on.
Let me just ask -- Is the ultimate goal to eliminate 69 from the list of whole numbers altogether? Because that seems a little off the wall to me. What if we just tried to be cool and accept 69 whenever it naturally occurs, in highway numbers or street addresses or whatever? The other way to go is to change hundreds of highway signs and have the old ones turn up in college dorm rooms and on eBay. I don't think that's the way to lessen the sexual connotation of old 69.
Doctor Love
James Dobson has been in the news a lot lately. Head honcho of Focus on the Family, Dobson considers himself largely responsible for Dubya's '04 victory, and he's making the rounds of the Washington talk shows, loudly calling in his markers.
When my wife and I announced our engagement, her aunt gave us as a present Dobson's marriage primer Love For A Lifetime. We sat on the couch together one evening and leafed through it, reading bits aloud to each other. And we laughed and laughed. I don't remember all the things we found amusing; one thing was that he spends a couple of pages defending the idea that wives should be obedient to their husbands. Anyway, it was a hoot.
I don't have my Gore Vidal book or notes handy, but he has a good riff somewhere, written during the Reagan years, about the movement in politics toward "strengthening traditional family values," and how when politicians talk about the family, the subtext is the regulation of people's libidos, especially their homoerotic urges. When considering how James Dobson made the trip from family therapist to preacher against same-sex marriage, Mr. Vidal leaps to mind.
When my wife and I announced our engagement, her aunt gave us as a present Dobson's marriage primer Love For A Lifetime. We sat on the couch together one evening and leafed through it, reading bits aloud to each other. And we laughed and laughed. I don't remember all the things we found amusing; one thing was that he spends a couple of pages defending the idea that wives should be obedient to their husbands. Anyway, it was a hoot.
I don't have my Gore Vidal book or notes handy, but he has a good riff somewhere, written during the Reagan years, about the movement in politics toward "strengthening traditional family values," and how when politicians talk about the family, the subtext is the regulation of people's libidos, especially their homoerotic urges. When considering how James Dobson made the trip from family therapist to preacher against same-sex marriage, Mr. Vidal leaps to mind.
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