House of Eratosthenes

Second, her interview, one of six of decent-looking female conservative bloggers who’ve been known to date “online,” makes lots of sense and shows her to be a lady of refined taste and sensibilities. I know this, because her opinions match mine with every single syllable she uttered. Except fer, y’know…that thing where she’s a gal and I’m a guy. Other than that.

I tend not to date liberals, for a reason. Politics is so important to what I do and I follow it so much. I can’t respect a guy who’s liberal all that much because it makes me question his intelligence. So, that’s a big minus because I’m thinking how smart can this guy be if he thinks John Kerry is a great politician? (Laughs) If he thinks Barack Obama would be a great President, I think, gee, how bright could this guy be?

Third, she’s got a wonderful sense of humor. Of course you could have come across this at Jawa Report any time you wanted to, but I found it via her. This is just a sample of the goods she has on her site, every single week.

Fourth — do we need a fourth? — her values are really in the right place.

War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless mad and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
– John Stuart Mill

I’m not available, and if I was I’m pretty sure I’d be too old, fat and ugly. But guys, if you think she’s on the market — not saying she is, mind you, I’m just saying if — and you’re ready as well, and you really think you have something to offer, I think you should drop on by hat in hand, and introduce yourselves. She’s probably already otherwise occupied, since the entire male species isn’t completely wombat-rabies bollywonkers crazy just yet. So if she is, hang around for the “just friends” thing. Be respectful and polite. This is one classy lady, and we can use a few more like her.

Ms. Fiano, m’dear, you are a gem. Hope you’re around for the long haul.

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Can’t We All Just Not Get Along?
Monday, March 31st, 2008

I’d like to think I’ve got awhile to wait before being lowered into the ground. So how I’m remembered, if at all, I’m in no position to say right now.

What if people just shirk their duties to job and to their own educations in my name?

I think I’d just as soon be forgotten. Poor Caesar.

In what has become an annual rite to honor the late civil rights leader Cesar Chavez - and protest the fact that his namesake holiday does not extend to schools - students at Hiram Johnson and Luther Burbank plan to walk out of classrooms Monday.

Organizers with affirmative action and immigrant rights groups have called for a school boycott, and said in a statement that students in Los Angeles, Oakland and Sacramento plan to march in honor of Chavez’s legacy.

“We demand the opportunity to celebrate who we are,” Hiram Johnson High School student Randy Lopez said in a statement. “Our schools could build up our pride and self-worth through events like celebrating the Chavez holiday, but this doesn’t happen. Instead our communities are treated invisible by our schools.”

Not “we celebrate”…but “we demand the opportunity to celebrate.” Injecting antagonism where it did not exist previously. How charming. And this is a high school student, a member of tomorrow’s generation.

Problem? Well, I guess my opinion isn’t that important. Let’s see what Caesar’s grandson has to say about it.

“The best way to honor Cesar Chavez is to make it a ‘day on’ - not a ‘day off,’” Anthony Chavez, grandson of Cesar Chavez told The Bee on Sunday. “We really want our students to be involved … there are still many things we need to work on.”

The younger Chavez, who will speak at Genevieve Didion School in Sacramento on Monday, said these days it is especially important for students to stay in school and maximize their education.

Words worth heeding, in my book. No matter, he’s sure to be shouted down.

Demanding. Confronting. Arguing. Walking-off. Meanwhile, I keep hearing how Caesar Chavez won all these rights for the “workers.” I hope his grandson prevails in this little difference of opinion that seems to be stirring in what passes for a “civil rights movement” of sorts…but if he does not…if the symbol of the earlier Chavez endures as a massive walk-off session and talk-back session and how-dare-you-this-or-that session and a general bitch-pitch…

…ultimately, we’d have to start remembering him as the guy who won a bunch of rights for non-workers. Call that “honoring his memory” if you want to. You don’t become a free people by finding excuses to skip class.

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Forty Years Isn’t Enough — We’ll Make Sure
Monday, March 31st, 2008

That’s what the headline should have said.

The Sacramento Bee, in the Forum Section…just a couple pages away from where it asked its own readers if we needed to have a “dialog on race”…looked hopefully toward the future of racial reconciliation in a way that must’ve made sense to someone, somewhere. They did it by delving deep into the past, to dredge up the most offensive and appalling anecdotes of racial discrimination, as told by all the embittered old guys they could manage to track down. And just to make sure things stayed nasty someone went out and took black-and-white photos of the offended as they held signs.

Sanitation workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker had climbed into the back of one of the old garbage trucks to get out of the rain. But as the vehicle rumbled along, the hydraulic ram that compacted the trash started up on its own. Cole and Walker were crushed. Just like garbage.

The men had complained for years about that truck in particular, about raggedy, malfunctioning old trucks in general. The city never listened. Now it gave each man’s widow one month’s salary – likely less than $300 – added an additional $500 apiece, and called it square. Burial expenses alone were $900 a man.
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No one knew it at the time. At the time, it was just a strike, just the workers against the city, the latter represented by its newly elected mayor, a stubbornly intransigent cuss named Henry Loeb who drew a line in the sand early on and refused to budge, even when his advisers advised him to, even when budging seemed a matter of plain common sense.

In his book, “Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign,” historian Michael K. Honey paints a striking picture of the mayor: racist, virulently anti-union; stridently anti-communist.

“Anti-communism was just a huge layer over the white population at that time in Memphis. In the first negotiation that (union organizer) Bill Lucy had with them, Mayor Loeb brings up the communist issue and the war in Vietnam. (Lucy) was dumbfounded and he said, ‘What did that have to do with anything?’ ”

The men were talking about raises. About a place to shower the filth off before they went home. About getting paid for time worked. About having a place to urinate. The mayor was talking communism.

In the minds of white conservatives, says Honey, “If you stood up for civil rights, you were automatically a communist.”

The plight of the sanitation workers, just prior to and during the strike, is fascinating stuff. But one should bear in mind it’s not going to be an even-handed treatment. You should have already gathered that from the excerpt above.

A funny thing, isn’t it…I keep hearing that Fox News should be criticized because it calls itself “fair and balanced.” One thing I usually can’t nail down is, should Fox News be criticized because 1) it is found undeserving of this moniker, or 2) nobody who retells historic events should try to be this. Good heavens. The “historian” is telling us “if you stood up for civil rights, you were automatically a communist”…in the minds of “white conservatives.”

If that doesn’t make you want to hear the other side of the story before passing judgment, there is something wrong with you. Just sayin’.

On Feb. 23, the strike exploded into violence. Sanitation workers were holding one of their daily marches when police appeared, riding five and six to a car, brandishing rifles and using their vehicles to force the marchers, who were walking several abreast and commandeering much of the street, back toward the sidewalk. Cars brushed dangerously close. March leader the Rev. James Lawson told the marchers, “They’re trying to provoke us. Keep going.”

Then, say the workers (the point is still disputed, 40 years later), a police car ran over the foot of a woman marcher. And parked there. And the men had had enough.

“They picked that car up,” says Joe Warren, an 86-year-old retired sanitation worker, “and turned it over on its side. That’s when all hell broke a loose.”

Out came the nightsticks. The violence was indiscriminate: women, old men, ministers, not resisting, just standing there, didn’t matter. Some policemen took off their badges as they whaled away.

“Them white police was mean with those sticks,” says Warren. “They hit you with those sticks; they juke you with those sticks.” Some men fought back with their protest signs.

All in all, an ugly episode from our nation’s past to remember. Or rather, Memphis’ past. We’re remembering it now, under the direction of our “news” media, under a gaze most jaundiced, because it is the backdrop of the martyrdom of Martin Luther King.

King is known to us now because he was a visionary. He looked forward to a future of complete integration and unity.

Maybe it’s the whiteness in me talking, but this doesn’t seem to me to be a very fitting tribute. Splash pages? Black and white photos? Pissed-off-looking models with signs? Reaching back forty years to dredge up white-on-black violence, and black-on-white hatred?

What’s that got to do with healing?

“Son of a BITCH! We’ve hit the motherlode!” a jubilant Faye Dunaway, playing producer Diana Christensen, exclaims upon hearing “they’re yelling in Baton Rouge,” after her anchorman Howard Beale (Peter Finch) delivers his oscar performance. You know what Howard Beale did, don’t you…he went through the motions of being an “anchorman,” sitting behind a dest giving people information about things, but then proceeded to instruct his audience to get “mad as hell.”

Over in Howard Beale’s fictitious universe, millions of news watchers all across the nation stuck their heads out their windows and yelled those magic words, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”

Over in ours, we giggled, pointed, admired the artistry and the gravity. Lavished 18 wins and 19 nominations on Network (1976). Yes, very poignant. We pretend the news informs when it is designed to merely outrage. And then when we were done admiring the message, we ignored it, going right back to the ol’ grind. And here comes Leonard Pitts, the new Howard Beale.

Look at those black, old, tired, sad — and oh, so angry, don’t forget the anger — faces. It’s like a GQ magazine, except unlike GQ, these “models” actually went through something that angered them.

Howard Beale admitted in his monologue that he didn’t know what people should do. “First, you’ve got to get mad” — then, who knows? Well, at least Beale admitted it. Mr. Pitts and everyone else responsible for putting together these GQ pages, seem to have the same counsel for us…”get mad”…and the same prognostication about how this is supposed to work to make life better…”I dunno.” What’s the point here? That these gentlemen are still around and have unpleasant memories? Okay, well then if we’re coming together to achieve racial unity and harmony, and the obstacle is these guys and their memories, are we supposed to be assassinating people? Or wiping out their memories? It doesn’t seem that either one of those is to be suggested here. I’m guessing the suggestion is to nurture a long, vivid memory.

A long and vivid, hateful memory.

It’s been forty years. It’s become a classic case of CALWWNTY (Come A Long Way, We’re Not There Yet). The sad truth of it is, giant, glossy splash-page remembrances such as this represent a big part of the reason why. We’ve been looking forward to a peaceful, utopian future while our gaze remains riveted on the ugliness of a hateful past. Riveted there, for the financial benefit of the Diana Christensens of the world. Can’t you hear them now over the “mad as hell” banter? “Son of a bitch! We’ve hit the motherlode!”

We are digging a well, in the very moment in which we’re watching others pile dirt back into it. For money and fame.

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Named for Sir Edmund
Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Of course anyone who’s been paying attention already knows about this, but you can’t help letting out a chuckle as you read one more time about how Hillary supposedly got her name.

If memory serves, and I believe this one time it does, this was old hat long before 2004 when the book was published. My guess is if I bothered to go chasing after tidbits of memorabilia, which I’m not going to do, I’d nail down something from 1996. This is almost like a psychological disorder — what’s this need to toss out lies like this so casually, when they’re so easy to nail down and it seems like there’s nothing to be gained from it?

I remember this from my “salesmen working alongside software developers” days. Things look different when you have a different perspective, and as the reality-man who actually worked with the code I’d get flustered listening to the boss telling customers things. I learned to bite my tongue and keep my reservations to myself, reminding the salesmen of them in private…granting them the benefit of the doubt, presuming that perhaps this had to do with arcane details not commonly appreciated. But on occasion, it looked to me like hostility toward truth. Glittering cliches would be tossed out, when it looked like there was no reason for them to be, beyond some need to say things that could later be determined to be inaccurate.

I’ve always thought this had to do more with perception than with reality. It was just my viewpoint on things. But with the Clintons, the psychosis really does appear to be there. You’re going to throw out this chestnut that Hillary was named after a mountain climber…so easily disproved…to do what? To impress people? People who are already impressed — so where’s the gain?

I’m sure there is treatment available for this somewhere.

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Captain Kirk Didn’t Have That Much Sex
Sunday, March 30th, 2008

…and that’s the TRUTH.

Ewww…I’m many times a bigger man-slut than Captain Kirk. That’s kinda nasty.

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Morgan’s Rule of Environmental Activism
Saturday, March 29th, 2008

Awareness Here comes the rule. It’s a rule we all understand deep within already, it’s just that nobody says it out loud. It’s coming; here it comes. Are you ready?

Hope you’re sitting down. Here it is…

…move your mouse over the picture to the left. See the little yellow box that pops up after a second or two, it’s got a word in it. It’s the same word as the word in the red circle.

It’s all about that.

Let me repeat that…

…it’s all about that. This Earth Hour thing tonight, that’s a perfect example. Awareness.

Attention. Getting attention.

Nobody who claims to be doing environmentally-conscious things anymore…or environmentally-sound things anymore…or environmentally-sensitive things…does anything to help the environment. If some good is done for the environment, it’s just a side effect. We’re just showing off for each other, and that’s all we’re doing, that’s all it’s about. We get attention from each other by going through the motions of helping the environment, which we don’t really expect to do.

I think we should face facts about this. Because hey, if you want to help the environment without getting any “strokes” for it, there are hundreds of ways, starting with trading in your big car for a smaller one. Nobody ever approaches anyone about driving a smaller car anymore though. Here and there a couple might decide to do that, to help the household expenses come out a bit by bringing down the gas bill.

But nobody approaches anybody about driving a smaller car — compared with — the trendy things. You know what those are. Changing your light bulbs. Drink out of an Eco Cup. Participate in “Earth Hour.”

While Earth Hour will see South-East Queenslanders flicking their switches for just one hour from 8pm-9pm, the WWF hopes residents and businesses will use Earth Hour as a catalyst for adopting other day-to-day energy-saving practices to cut their individual greenhouse emissions and help tackle climate change. [emphasis mine]

Another Aussie has a different way of putting it:

Colliers International Chief Executive John Kenny has announced the company will be throwing its full support behind Earth Hour, using the event as a catalyst to drive significant ongoing change in the actions of Australia’s landlords, tenants and residents to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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“We have been advocates for drastic changes in the approach to environmental sustainability in the property industry for some time,” Mr Kenny said.

“Earth Hour is a fantastic opportunity to really drive the message home,” Mr Kenny said.

How much energy does Earth Hour save the world tonight? How much carbon does it prevent from being spewed? The truth is that nobody knows; nobody cares. Remember the Morgan Rule. It’s about the message. It is all about the message.

Doing something to help the environment when nobody knows you’re doing it? Don’t.

Doing something that looks like it might help the environment, that actually doesn’t, but makes an impression on lots and lots of people? Dynamite!

In other words, it’s a social custom. Nothing more.

Eco Cup Consider a hypothetical in which we have “staggered Earth Hours,” with each household declaring an hour (Zulu time) in the month of April in which that house’s lights will dim. All at different times. My hour is 0900GMT on the 19th, your hour is 1500GMT on the 7th. We all live up to our pledges and the carbon-hour is saved. Success? NO! The Morgan Rule…it’s all about the union. The coming together. We all went off in different directions, and so the attention-whoring did not commence. On the other hand, consider a city that advertises the onset of the single, solid, unified Earth-Hour…television advertisements, radio spots, snippets ritually tossed out by high-profile officials to show it’s on their minds. And then at the golden hour someone forgets to flip the switch! Oopsie. This time…the carbon-hour is not saved. We went ahead and spewed.

Smashing success. It should be a failure, but it isn’t. The attention was gotten. Even though the carbon flowed.

Even better, consider that Eco-Cup mentioned above. It is environmentally friendly, because the plastic liner on the inside is made with cornstarch. Not the cup itself. The liner that keeps the coffee from getting in the cardboard. Just microns thick. You can drink half a dozen cups of Joe out of these things all year long, and thousands of you would have a barely significant effect on the landfills. It isn’t about the effect. Look at the design…just look at it. If it was about cause-and-effect, this thing would be a dull ugly off-white eggshell thing. It isn’t. It’s a distinctive green-and-brown design you can recognize instantly from across a crowded room.

If it wasn’t that, it would be a failure. A failure…at the thing it is really supposed to do. Which is to get attention.

And that’s fine with me. But I think it would be good for the sanity of all of us, if we drop the pretenses and just admit it’s about calling attention to ourselves. It isn’t about saving the environment, or anything in it.

Update: Mark Steyn points out that actually, the black Google page uses more energy than the white one.

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Bush the Multilateralist
Saturday, March 29th, 2008

This one is required reading, too.

[John McCain] spoke of the need for a “new global compact” based on “mutual respect and trust,” of adding “luster to America’s image in the world,” and of “paying a ‘decent respect to the opinions of mankind.’” The media played it all up as an attempt to distance himself from the “unilateral” President Bush, although the Arizona Republican never used that word.

We fully understand why Mr. McCain feels the need to show that his Administration would not simply be a third Bush term. But with Mr. Bush’s days in office nearing an end, it’s worth blowing apart the myth of the “go it alone” Presidency. The truth is that, with a couple of exceptions, he’s been the model of a modern multilateralist.

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Whereas…
Saturday, March 29th, 2008

This one is required reading. An Open Letter to the democrat Party.

“We, African American citizens of the United States, declare and assert:

Whereas in the early 1600’s 20 African men and women were landed in Virginia from a Dutch ship as slaves and from that tiny seed grew the poisoned fruit of plantation slavery which shaped the course of American development,

Whereas reconciliation and healing always begin with an apology and an effort to repay those who have been wronged,

Whereas the Democratic Party has never apologized for their horrific atrocities and racist practices committed against African Americans during the past two hundred years, nor for the residual impact that those atrocities and practices and current soft bigotry of low expectations are having on us today,

Whereas the Democratic Party fought to expand slavery and, after the Civil War, established Jim Crow Laws, Black Codes and other repressive legislation that were designed to disenfranchise African Americans,

Whereas the Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party, and their primary goal was to intimidate and terrorize African American voters, Republicans who moved South to protect African Americans and any other whites who supported them,
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Whereas after Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt received the vote of African Americans, he banned African American newspapers from the military shortly after taking office because he was convinced the newspapers were communists,

Whereas Democratic President John F. Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Law, opposed the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and was later criticized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for ignoring civil rights issues.
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Whereas the Democratic Party’s use of deception and fear to block welfare reform, the faith-based initiative and school choice that would help African Americans prosper is consistent with the Democratic Party’s heritage of racism that included sanctioning of slavery and kukluxery, a perversion of moral sentiment among leaders of the Democratic Party whose racist legacy bode ill until this generation of African Americans,

Now, therefore, for the above and other documented atrocities and accumulated wrongs inflicted upon African Americans, we demand a formal written apology and other appropriate remuneration from the leadership of the Democratic party.

There’s a lot more. I think you should go read it.

You know, it’s about bleepin’-bleep time. On the subject of race, we have this habit of beating up on the same-ol’ same-ol’ just because…because. Y’know? But when you look into the facts of it, time after time the most deplorable racist actions have been put in play by the democrats.

What have the Republicans given us as far as racial division? Well, I seem to recall sometime in the last five or six years, a prominent Republican was caught saying something nice about an old man on his hundredth birthday. I mean, shocking. Yes, surely that compares with putting a sheet over your head and using physical intimidation, up to & including lynching, to stop persons of color from voting. As the democRATs did.

Think I got this from the Rottweiler, but I can’t find it there now.

It bears repeating: About time.

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The Widget Boss
Saturday, March 29th, 2008

Blogger friend Phil picked up on our rant about what’s happening to Information Technology, and blogger friend Buck went over to participate…sharing this interesting tale. Thereby, of course, releasing it into the public domain.

Which I’m sure he realizes. Oh, well. His tale is too good not to tell.

Early on in my post-USAF IT career I was reassigned to a boss like that, who was also in his first manager-slot (a great UNIX guy, promoted to his level of incompetency). He and I had one of those “introductory” meetings and he gave me the list… and scheduled a follow-on meeting. I was supposed to submit three career goals, in writing, for the next meeting and I did. Stuff like:

1. Spend more time at home,less at work.

2. Take a REAL vacation this year.

3. Get laid more often.

The subsequent discussion was sort of a life-changing event for the guy. He went on to become a competent manager, and I got a great deal of satisfaction from popping the corporate balloon. Win-win.

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The Single Mom Problem
Saturday, March 29th, 2008

Fair disclosure: I’m a single dad. I didn’t marry the mom.

It’s been a pretty rocky road and it hasn’t been all good for the boy. But I will say this: Of all the things we have done that have hurt him the most, the biggest thing by far has been all the yelling and arguing. And one thing I can say for an absolute certainty is, if I’d married her, there would have been a lot more of that…and not too much of the other stuff would have changed. We still wouldn’t have “made it” because we still would be two different people who look at life in two different ways.

This is the problem with arguing about marriage in simplistic terms. The institution has become a complicated, wrinkled-up mess. We think of it as some kind of a “promise” when it isn’t anything even resembling that anymore. It’s a change in legal status; a change made to get some bennies. Promising doesn’t have anything to do with it. It’s become just a shrink-wrapped bundle of weird benefits and equally weird (toothless) obligations, all of which are re-defined one week to the next according to what lobbyists and activists tell politicians they want done.

Have I made wise, good decisions? No. Should I, therefore, have gotten married? Uh, erm………no. Pretty much everyone I knew at the time, told me to do something, I said I shouldn’t, and in the long run I turned out to be right. But I’m not proud.

Others have done the same thing. And for reasons that escape me, they are proud.

Stephanie Flanders Now, do you know what is going on in jolly old England? The time has come, once again, to put some floral wreaths and candies on the graves of the gentlemen who threw the tea into Boston Harbor…and maybe think about tossing a few more boxes in. Across the pond, they’re having a row and a ruckus about how everyone should live.

On a Newsnight programme in August 2007, [Stephanie] Flanders interrogated Conservative Party leader David Cameron about his proposed policy of tax breaks for married couples while questioning him with other journalists, asking him whether he had ever met anyone who would get married for an extra £20 per week. As an unmarried mother, she also asked Mr. Cameron whether the Conservative Party would like her to be married.

So. We got this nanny-state pro-marriage guy who wants to give a stipend to married couples, and he is rightly upbraided by a single mum.

Lashing out at him in honor of the libertarian spirit of the individual, and the God-given right to live life as you choose?

Erm……no, it doesn’t appear so….

Meet the Credit Crunch Crumpet: The unmarried mum who clashed with Cameron on Newsnight

…Next Tuesday Stephanie officially takes up a new job as economics editor of the entire BBC. It is one of the most senior jobs in broadcasting, and about as authoritative as it gets without actually being Sir David Attenborough.
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Quite a responsibility, then? “Hmmm. Immense,” she says. “It’s all extremely exciting - this is the best job in economic broadcasting, without a doubt - but it’s daunting, too.

“It’ll mean treading that fine line between being accessible and authoritative. I’ll have to get across very complex economic ideas in a way that is easy to understand and interesting.
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She gives a half-giggle. That she is the first woman to become one of the BBC’s senior editors - she is taking over from the flamboyant Evan Davis, who is off to present Radio Four’s Today programme - seems slightly shocking in this day and age, but good news all round. Isn’t it?

“No one can remember there being a woman in any of these senior positions before,” she confirms, choosing her words carefully. “I’m sure the BBC would admit that’s not ideal.”

That she is up to the job doesn’t seem to be in doubt. She is widely regarded as one of the most capable economic analysts in the country. Her clever-clogs qualifications are second to none - degrees from Oxford and Harvard - and she spent time speech-writing for the U.S. Treasury under the Clinton administration, before working for the Financial Times.

But aren’t we afraid of overly clever women in this country - unless they bring out diet books on the side? Isn’t the nation going to be intimidated by her?

She smiles again. “I’d prefer them not to be intimidated, but if they think I am talking with authority, then I’ll have got it right,” she says.

Perhaps surprisingly Stephanie hasn’t encountered that much sexism so far, “although there will always be men who simply think women aren’t up to the job”.
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Yet I’m astonished at how open she is about how her sex will, or won’t, affect how she does the job.

Indeed, she asks for this interview to be conducted at her home, where her 22-month-old son, Stanley, is running around. This makes it inevitable that we will talk about her new kitchen and the perils of finding a good nanny. She is pregnant, too, which makes things even more tricky. Baby number two is due in June.

I don’t know why we are motivated to treat women this way. By asking the rhetorical “aren’t we afraid of overly clever women in this country” — and then later eeking out “Stephanie hasn’t encountered that much sexism so far,” the article seems to me to be ‘fessing up to looking for discrimination where it doesn’t really exist in meaningful volume. She’s a child born into privilege, perhaps more energetic and ambitious than most, I don’t see anyone anywhere fighting her. Why do we have to imagine her battling some unseen force in her every waking moment when efforts to define said resistant force culminate in such a lackluster presentation? She seems to be swimming downstream, not up. Who — on the entire planet — has any hostility to this woman’s career, whatsoever, with any kind of ability to influence it?

If the story is all about her battle with day-to-day obstacles and barricades, then I’m still waiting for the story.

The other thing that’s funny about how we treat women, is we seem to imagine they don’t really have a “choice” to do anything until substantial energy has been depleted championing that choice, cudgeling other women into making the same one. Where, I wonder, did we get this rule? Stephanie is all about choosing to remain unmarried if that’s what you want to do. But Stephanie has to become a celebrity. Stephanie needs a splash page.

But Stephanie, according to the article itself, wasn’t born into humble beginnings. Stephanie has connections. Stephanie has friends and relatives. Stephanie went to schools that not-just-anyone can attend.

And Stephanie has a stud. He’s mentioned in paragraph 23. And in the context, it would appear he is expected to do some things about daddy stuff, childcare, bringing-home-bacon, whatever, to lighten Stephanie’s load a little bit.

Why paragraph 23? Why not in paragraph five? Why isn’t he in the splash picture with the hen and the chick, if the rooster is part of making it all work? What’s this drive to make the story read like a story of “we made it all work without a man.” I mean, it doesn’t come out and say it in those words, but can anyone deny that this is an intended central thrust of Stephanie’s story? She did it, girls, so you can do it too…except Stephanie isn’t really doing that. She depends on her man — and wherever she doesn’t, she depends on a lot of other resources she has in her personal life, that millions of single mothers don’t have in theirs.

Or as Richard Littlejohn wrote,

“If Stephanie Flanders speaks for Britain, then I’m a gnu ” (recalling a famous song by her father [Michael Flanders] and Donald Swann).

Meanwhile — the European tradition continues. Everybody’s nose is in everybody else’s business. Every couple that gets married is a victory for Mr. Cameron and his friends. Every couple that doesn’t is a victory for Stephanie and all her friends.

Mass communication is a wonderful thing, but sometimes I think over the course of its relatively short history it can be shown that we really haven’t used it that well. It has become very popular over the years to use the medium to bludgeon those among us in the most rustic circumstances, to make decisions that aren’t going to pan out very well for them or their children in the long run.

Here’s the question I’d really like to have answered:

Is it by sheer accident that we use mass communication this way? Or does that have some sort of appeal to somebody somewhere? It seems like we’ve been really working at it. Pregnant girls should stay single…kids should think of their daddies as idiots…if your boss doesn’t give you four months vacation out of the year, you should strike. Every single nugget of this modern-day electronic “advice” seems to be advice that is wonderful for someone else, that no one with a brain would accept as their own.

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Sexy Racist
Friday, March 28th, 2008

My goodness, the hardball questions they ask on The View. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t knock a few of Sen. Obama’s teeth loose, the poor fella.

JOY BEHAR: I understand you’re related to Brad Pitt in some way (laughter).

BARACK OBAMA: Yeah

JB: How are you related to Brad Pitt?

BO: I guess we are ninth cousins something removed or something

JB: Isn’t that fascinating stuff!

BO: I think he got the better looking side of the gene pool.

JB: Not necessarily.

BARBARA WALTERS: Joy and I were saying just before you came out….maybe we shouldn’t say this.

JB: Go ahead!

BW: We thought you were very sexy looking (applause). Don’t you think so? (to audience)

BO: I like that that. Thank you.

Wow, that’s what I call some hard-hitting journalism. Really make the racist bastard think on his feet there, Barbara.

You know, when men put on television shows to please men, it can look pretty bad too. And juvenile. And depraved, and lecherous and treacherous and…and…and…

…but at least when The Man Show was on, I didn’t walk away wondering if the republic could long endure men watching teevee and voting. Every time I see one of these segments from The View — which is still on — I always end up shaking my head, and wondering where the hell the outrage is. If I were a woman, I’d be picketing The View for making me look bad. These dumb broads are praising a known liar and racist for his sex appeal, and they can vote just as freely as anybody else.

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Are They Taking An Electric Bus?
Friday, March 28th, 2008

Well, I do think this is kind of cool because I’m much more supportive of “environment” stuff — as in, don’t leave the trial to go scampering down a hillside thereby causing heap-big erosion that doesn’t have to happen — than I am of the phony science of ManBearPig.

But it’s still a bunch of public-school indoctrination. And I can’t help but wonder if the message is being lost. What does a trip to Disneyland have to do with the environment? How about…a three day hike out in the wilderness, away from Mom and Dad, sleeping under the stars? Wouldn’t the enterprising, environmentally-conscious fifth-grader find that so much more rewarding?

Students at Phoebe Hearst Elementary in Sacramento got a fast lesson on how learning can be fun and pay off. A fifth-grade class at the school won the grand prize in a statewide environmental education competition.

During an assembly Thursday, Mickey Mouse delivered the surprise announcement to teacher Sylvia Rodriguez and her students, who snatched the top award – beating 45 other entries – for their project to preserve and protect the American River watershed.

Rodriguez and students jubilantly gave each other high-fives, jumped up and down and cried.

The 2008 Disney’s Environmentality Challenge asked students to design and carry out a classroom project that would spur environmental stewardship.

Accepting a plaque, Rodriguez said, “I’m all choked up.”

Well, hey. Maybe I should just simmer down. It’s not so much indoctrination, it’s creating a new generation of people who are going to think twice before chucking that cigarette butt out the window of whatever they’re going to be driving twenty years from now. Right?

“After we did all this work, we learned how Native Americans cared for (the river),” she said. “No way is it ours. No way do we have the right to pollute it and change it. It belongs to the earth, Mother Earth and to itself.”

Eww, that doesn’t sound ideologically-neutral at all. Mother Earth? In a public school? I’ve half a mind to sue for separation of church and state. And a healthy anti-capitalist rant tossed in, for no good reason, on top of it. From an adorable crumb-cruncher on her way to DISNEYLAND!!! Yay!

I wonder what she learned about Native Americans. Was it the overly-simplistic, red-always-good white-always-bad crap I was taught when I was in the fifth grade?

Or was it something a little better researched and more thoughtful, something that might take a little longer to wrap a young head around?

The impression that American Indians were guided by a unique environmental ethic often can be traced to the speech widely attributed to Chief Seattle in 1854. But Chief Seattle never said those oft-quoted words: They were written by Ted Perry, a scriptwriter, who acknowledged paraphrasing a translation of the speech for a movie about pollution. According to historian Paul Wilson, Perry’s version added “a good deal more, particularly modern ecological imagery.” For example, Perry, not Chief Seattle, wrote that “every part of the Earth is sacred to my people.” (Perry, by the way, has tried unsuccessfully to get the truth out.)

The speech reflects what many environmentalists want to hear, not what Chief Seattle said. The poignant and romantic image created by the speech obscures the fact, fully acknowledged by historians, that American Indians transformed the North American landscape. Sometimes these changes were beneficial, at other times harmful. But they were almost always a rational response to abundance or scarcity.
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Generally the demand for meat, hides, and furs by relatively small, dispersed populations of Indians put little pressure on wildlife. But in some cases game populations were overharvested or even driven to extinction. Anthropologist Paul Martin believes that the extinction of the mammoth, mastodon, ground sloth, and the saber-toothed cat directly or indirectly resulted from the “prehistoric overkill” by exceptionally competent hunters.

Historian Louis S. Warren drives the final nail in the coffin of the “living in harmony with nature” myth: “[T]o claim that Indians lived without affecting nature is akin to saying that they lived without touching anything, that they were a people without history. Indians often manipulated their local environments, and while they usually had far less impact on their environments than European colonists would, the idea of ‘preserving’ land in some kind of wilderness state would have struck them as impractical and absurd. More often than not, Indians profoundly shaped the ecosystems around them.”

Of course, shaping doesn’t have to mean despoiling. Whether this shaping encouraged conservation depended, for Indians as for humans everywhere, on the incentives created by the extant system of property rights. The historical American Indians did not practice a sort of environmental communism in tune with the Earth; yesterday, as today, they recognized property rights.

Today we refer to “Indian nations,” but this term mostly reflects the U.S. government’s desire to have another government with which to negotiate. In fact, Indian tribes were mainly language groups made up of relatively independent bands with little centralized control except at specific times when they might gather for ceremonies, hunts, or wars. And after the horse allowed small bands to efficiently hunt buffalo, even that level of centralization diminished.

The anchor reported on the insipid morning koffee-klatch “news” program a few minutes ago, that the excited fifth graders will be taking a bus to Southern California to go to Disneyland. Heh…diesel buses, I wonder? How long will they sit idling while our newest generation of environmentalists climb aboard?

Now, I really hesitate to badmouth a good thing. But how many things could be done to lower my red flags here. They could stick a microphone in the face of an excited fifth-grader who does not sound like a typical goth new-age hippie. Mother Earth…feh. They could couple this drive to learn about and protect the environment with…a companion drive to learn about and protect the Boy Scouts. I mean hey, let’s face it. After the giant diesel bus comes lumbering back from Disneyland and drops these kids off at home, they’re going to be going back to playing with the PlayStation 3…probably producing mountains of empty soda bottles and candy wrappers to fill up some landfill somewhere for the next ten centuries. By sixth or seventh grade, of course, they’ll all stop being cute, and the spotlight will shift to the next generation of fourth- and fifth-graders. But the Boy Scouts will learn about and protect the environment this year, next year, and the year after…whether they’re being watched or not.

How come so few friends of the “environment,” are friends of the Boy Scouts? Are we talking about the same environment here?

But the trip to Disneyland is the real hitch in the giddy-up. I know that’s how the checks got signed, I understand that…I just can’t get behind this. They could go on a trip to Yosemite instead, you know. Nowadays when you go camping you can be quite pampered, they tell me. My pup-tent sleeping-bag arrangement is supposed to be going out of style. They have wood cabins…bunks…running water inside…even cable TV, some of ‘em. Not only could that be a whole lot of fun to the pre-teen class, bu

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Go Hit CassyMonday, March 31st, 2008

Can’t We All Just Not Get Along?Monday, March 31st, 2008

Forty Years Isn’t Enough — We’ll Make SureMonday, March 31st, 2008

Named for Sir EdmundSunday, March 30th, 2008

Captain Kirk Didn’t Have That Much SexSunday, March 30th, 2008

Morgan’s Rule of Environmental ActivismSaturday, March 29th, 2008

Bush the MultilateralistSaturday, March 29th, 2008

Whereas…Saturday, March 29th, 2008

The Widget BossSaturday, March 29th, 2008

The Single Mom ProblemSaturday, March 29th, 2008

Sexy RacistFriday, March 28th, 2008

Are They Taking An Electric Bus?Friday, March 28th, 2008

Go Hit Cassy
Monday, March 31st, 2008

Can’t We All Just Not Get Along?
Monday, March 31st, 2008

Forty Years Isn’t Enough — We’ll Make Sure
Monday, March 31st, 2008

Named for Sir Edmund
Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Captain Kirk Didn’t Have That Much Sex
Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Morgan’s Rule of Environmental Activism
Saturday, March 29th, 2008

Bush the Multilateralist
Saturday, March 29th, 2008

Whereas…
Saturday, March 29th, 2008

The Widget Boss
Saturday, March 29th, 2008

The Single Mom Problem
Saturday, March 29th, 2008

Sexy Racist
Friday, March 28th, 2008

Are They Taking An Electric Bus?
Friday, March 28th, 2008