Calpundit has a couple of excellent posts about Jayson Blair, the black New York Times reporter who was caught making up stories and plagerizing. Many folks, both in the media and in the blogosphere, have siezed on this story as a cautionary tale about affirmative action, or diversity, or hiring black folks, or whatever. From Calpundit:

You should also read Kevin’s very practical follow-up.

Atrios, in a post succinctly entitled “Bigots,” writes: “The difference it seems, is that the white people get promoted.”

As you might have already noticed, the blog is looking just a little different. It’s because we’ve switched to Movable Type. Hopefully, it’s legible in most of the browsers y’all use. We made the switch because MT software is better-designed for group blogging.

Plus, MT comes with some neat bells and whistles. The “recently updated comments” feature (at the top of the sidebar) is my favorite of those, but finally having a functioning RSS feed is also a plus.

Once again, many thanks to Jenn, to Kip, and to Kirsten for their long, thankless hours toiling in the Alas grapeyard squeezing out the new MT vintage. (Ever start a metaphor, and then regret it?)

• Via Diotima, I came across this amusing article in the National Review, “Confessions of a Metropolitan Conservative.” It discusses the odd fact that no one at the Review would vote to criminalize sodomy, or believes in creationism. (Hey, “creationism” doesn’t exist in this spell-checker! How annoying and yet appropriately symbolic.)

• While I’m praising National Review folks, let me point out that this article on prison rape (via Eve Tushnet, whose permalink is bloggered) is excellent. It discusses some tiny-steps-in-the-right-direction legislation that is being held up by the Bush administration. (Before any Democrat readers feel superior, recall that the Clinton administration didn’t do anything about prison rape, either.) The article also makes an interesting point about how Christian conservative and left-wing NGOs have been allying behind some human rights legislation.
• The Austrailian Democratic Party is demanding 14 weeks of paid maternity leave, plus subsidized child care, for Mother’s Day. I hope they get it.
• The Portland Communique reports on Oregon’s unemployment rate - at 8%, it looks likely that we’re still number one in the nation. Here in Portland, it’s 8.5%. Whoopie.
• Emma at The Oregon Blog points out that the Pacific Green Party desperately needs a new webmaster - their site hasn’t been updated in months. C’mon, folks, this is embarassing.
• Genuinely excellent post from Kieran Healy on why there are relatively few women in philosophy departments.
• Sometimes I envy the British; wouldn’t it be cool to have a House of Lords? Politics in the Zeros quotes from a transcript in which the Lords discuss where the term “spam” came from.
• Making Light links to the very practical “How to Create a Golum from the Comfort of Home” website. A sample, from their FAQ::
  Can my golem be tried as an adult?
  Contact your local authorities for the laws concerning golems. You may be considered liable for any destruction of property caused by the golem should you lose control of it at any point.

  Will God be pissed that I’m creating golems?
  Creation of a golem is a special case. Only the most righteous of believers are allowed to create them. Some say that only those who are near to God and his wisdom will be able to follow the ritual to completion. So no, God shouldn’t be pissed.

  
  
• Big Fat Blog links to this story from Detroit - a fat man was turned away from a hospital because their “operating tables can only accommodate a maximum weight of 350 pounds.” He died on route to another hospital. Yeah, that makes sense; goodness knows that in America, hospitals can safely assume they’ll never have to treat very fat patients.

• Also from Big Fat Blog, a CDC study finds that parents are more likely to think their little girls are too fat than their little boys. No surprise there.
• As Trish Wilson asks, why are the major media so desperate to make it seem that there was a huge crowd of jubilant Iraqis present when the big stone Saddam was toppled? Trish links to this appalling Memory Hole piece showing how an Evening Standard cover photograph was altered to make a crowd larger than it actually was.
• Bouncing off an earlier post of mine, Trish points out that conservatives routinely say horribly sexist things about men (men are inherently violent, need women’s “civilizing” touch, etc), that - were feminists to say the same things - would get feminists branded “man-bashers” and the like.
• The Early Days of a Better Nation discusses why American politics are so, well, dumb. (Via BlueHeron).
  America: a country where ridiculous proportions of the population believe they were created by god, abducted by aliens, and attacked by Iraq. Also where some people believe that someone who burns a paper drawing of a US flag is as good as asking to be crushed under a bulldozer. It’s not just the Right. Every political persuasion in the US contains many more stupid people than it or its equivalent does in Europe.

A couple of days ago I criticized Mike of Red Letter Day for describing an anti-Lieberman website as “hard at work… making sure [Bush] will be re-elected in 2004,” and also for referring to a couple of critical-of-Israel websites as advocating “death for Israel.” Mike has posted a response. Although I’m usually leery of line-by-line responses (from a design point of view, they just look bad to me), in this case I think it’s the best way to proceed; click on the link below to read more.

Read the rest of this entry »

Katha Pollitt, possibly my favorite feminist writer, has won this year’s National Magazine Award for best columns and commentary. “This category recognizes excellence in short-form political, social, economic or humorous commentary. The award honors the eloquence, force of argument and succinctness with which the writer presents his or her views.”

The columns Pollitt (or, strictly speaking, The Nation’s editor) won for were two attacks on religious (not just Islamic) fundamentalism (“As Ms World Turns” and “God Changes Everything”) and “Backlash Babies”, a critique of Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s SCLM-favored but poor-selling book Creating a Life.

The honoring of “Backlash Babies” feels a bit arbitrary; it’s an excellent piece but no better than dozens of others Pollitt wrote in 2003. But “As Ms World Turns” and “God Changes Everything” are stand-out columns, exceptional for their angry eloquence and their scope.

Once again, thanks to MsMusings for the links.

Bad news for feminist publishing in Portland… as the Portland Tribune reports, Nervy Girl, the independent feminist monthly, has come to an end. The magazine had experienced phenomenal circulation growth (from 1,500 copies to 15,000 in just two years), but it seems internal conflicts and going monthly in a sour economy brought Nervy Girl down. The issue currently on the stands is the final issue.

Damn, this sucks. I really liked that magazine.

There are two silver linings here. One, Nervy Girl’s problems aside, its quick rise shows there’s a real market for local “magazine[s] for women that didn’t focus on dating tips or celebrity gossip.” The idea of the magazine was successful, even though the implementation wasn’t.

And two, Nervy Girl co-publisher Kristin Schuchman “hopes to start a similar magazine within a year.” I can’t wait.

Unfortunately, Nervy Girl’s website has been taken offline. But if you want to read some content, you can look through Google’s catche.

Thanks to MsMusings for the link.

South Knox Bubba has performed an invaluable service by summing up the health care proposals of all the Democratic candidates for the White House (Max has a similar post up). What I found particularly interesting was Bubba’s take on Kucinich’s plan: Bubba curtly dismissed it as politically impossible (the insurance companies and people “making $100k” would never allow single-payer) while admitting that “Kucinich’s plan seems to be the only one radical enough to break out of the status quo and maybe bring about meaningful reform.”

This sums up the problem with the Democrats, I think: they know what the right plan is, but they think they can’t fight for it because doing so isn’t politically safe.

I understand the impulse to play it safe. But I also believe it’s a losing impulse. The Democrats are facing a press which - on a national level - adores President Bush and will never report a negative about him. And they hate Democrats with a passion. President Bush’s campaign is run by Karl Rove, who isn’t a dummy and won’t make mistakes that hand the victory to Democrats. And when it comes to fundraising, the Republicans have advantages the Democrats can never match.

Ignore the polls showing that Bush is running even with an unnamed democratic opponent. (Remember how many Democrat partisans were looking at polls and predicting big Democratic wins in 2002?) Those polls are meaningless, because the Rove smear machine and the SCLM haven’t had their turns smashing the image of “unnamed democratic opponent.” If Bush is only running even with Unnamed - an opponent with no negatives - he’ll utterly cream someone like Kerry or Gephardt, once the negatives are piled on.

If the status remains quo, Bush has already won 2004.

There are only two ways Democrats can win: Bush could lose the election, for instance by appearing clueless and uncaring about the economy. But that’s how Bush Senior lost; I doubt Rove will allow the same mistake to be made twice. No matter how bad the economy is in 2004, Bush will be made to appear aware and concerned.

The second way Democrats can win is by not allowing status to remain quo. But that would require taking chances; it would require supporting positions that aren’t politically safe.

Personally, I think single-payer health care would be a good fight for Democrats to get into. It’s a fact-based issue that Democrats can win on the merits; no other health care plan can get the job done. It’s an issue that casts Democrats on the side of ordinary Americans and casts Republicans on the side of big insurance and big HMOs. For the vast, vast majority of Americans - the Americans who earn closer to $30,000 than $120,000 a year - it would be a clear gain to the pocketbook. It would work, and - unlike the health plans put forward by every Democrat except Kucinich - it doesn’t sound like a lot of weasel-worded mumbo-jumbo.

And if we fight for it, and don’t win? Well, then, we live to fight another day. At least a health care plan that could actually work will have been put on the table.

If not health care, then something else. My point is that Democrats have to act more like George W. Bush. That means taking risks; that means supporting some policy positions that the smart money in smoke-filled rooms say won’t fly politically. (Remember 1999, when everyone was saying that Bush’s tax cut was a ridiculous position to take, and he’d have to take a more moderate stance?)

Playing it safe is what the Democrats did in 2002. They took no positions that weren’t poll-tested and SCLM press-approved; they didn’t take political chances.

Why are Democrats so eager to repeat the strategy that got them creamed in 2002?

Playing it safe makes sense if you’ve got an even playing field. The Democrats don’t have an even playing field. The money, the media, and even the electoral college are all biased against the Democrats. In that situation, playing it safe is an almost guaranteed loss.

My prediction is that the Democrats will end up running Kerry or Gephardt, either of whom will run a safe, predictable campaign. They’ll do everything the smart money in the smoke-filled rooms suggest; they’ll support a health care initiative that’s confusing and can’t possibly work, and spend hours debating the minutia while the partisan blogs cheer every minutely-analyzed word and the American public dozes off.

And the press will hate whichever one it is, and run barely-rewritten RNC press releases smearing them, just as they did with Gore. And the public will not be energized, just as it wasn’t with Gore. And the Democrats will be outspent. And they will lose.

But thank goodness they didn’t take a chance on supporting a health care policy that could actually work. That would be a political disaster.

(Postscript: Emma at Notes on the Atrocities is discussing something similar today (permalinks bloggered), although she’s a lot less pessimistic than I am.)

Note: Due to this post being published as Alas was switching commenting software, the original comments to this post have been “stranded.” They can still be read here. However, please leave any new comments in the new comment system (link below).

Mike Silverman, in a post called “Greens for Bush,” writes:

The tedious Green-bashing and basic dishonesty of this post’s premise aside (there’s no reason to believe that the site Mike links to was created by the Green Party), what strikes me about this post is how much it opposes the very idea of dissent and criticism. The site Mike is objecting to, Joseph Lieberman for President 2004, is a satirical site criticizing Lieberman for being too right-wing (”Joseph Lieberman. A new kind of Democrat. The Republican kind.”). Sub-pages criticize Lieberman on military spending, on capital punishment, and other policy issues.

But apparently - at least, according to Mike - it’s now a terrible thing to criticize Lieberman’s policies at all. Criticizing Lieberman is working hard “making sure Bush will be re-elected in 2004.” To criticize Lieberman at all is to favor Bush.

Those “death to Israel” links Mike mentions? Neither one of them - not the excellent Jewish Women Watching site, nor the horribly designed Divest From Israel Campaign site - can be even remotely described as a “death to Israel” site. To criticize Israel at all is to favor its destruction, apparently.

Needless to say, I disagree with Mike’s dislike of dissent. Criticism is valuable. To attempt to shut down debate and criticism of Democrats with shrill screams of “you’re helping re-elect Bush!” is to undermine the very idea of the primary system; if Democrats running for the nomination can’t be criticized, then what’s the point of having primaries?

Similarly, the hysterical accusations that Israel’s critics favor “death to Israel” make legitimate, responsible debate impossible. Mike should be locked up in a small room with those occasional left-wing nuts who yell about “Zionazis”; the two extremes deserve each other.

Unfortunately, although there are many honorable exceptions, I think Mike’s contempt for dissent is pretty common in the Democratic party nowadays - and even more among Israel’s partisans.

As JWW says, “dissent is not a sin.”

(Postscript - If, like me, you’re a Jew who’s grown tired of “more-Jewish-than-thou” attitudes among some Israel partisans, be sure to check out Jewish Women’s Watching mean and sharp satire, “JewishSpeak.” (Warning: pdf file).)

Update: Mike responds to me here.

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Everyone remember that Harvard study which showed that vouchers - among black children, compared to a control group - lead to improved test scores? It was talked about quite a bit during the 2000 election.

It turns out, according to an article in today’s Times, the results don’t hold up. Fattypatties discusses the matter extensively (permalink is currently bloggered, so look for the April 7th entry entitled “Statistics and the Mystique of Science”). From the Times article:

Fattypatties is using this article as a jump-off for a series on science and fat issues. I’m looking forward to that.

From the indispensable Ignatz:

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• Artichoke Heart discusses “the ____ sex she’s ever had.” One of the best-written posts I’ve ever seen on a blog. The permalink is bloggered, so scroll down to May 6th’s entry (currently at the top of the blog).

  And after that, you can read her brief touch on the topic of cat puke. Those two entries show why AH’s pock-marked girl baby is well-deserved.

• I’ve been just generally reading Blog Baby, a new-to-me blog that I found out about via my blog’s comments. Lots of cool posts about environmental and privatization issues.
• Julian’s Lounge discusses property rights, relating to file-swapping software’s victory in a California court last month.
• Language Hat discusses the mistreatment of the Sapir-Worph hypothesis at the Times (they chose an umpire who clearly prefers the other team), but I found the second half of his post - a discussion of if creativity is impaired by non-alphabetic writing systems - more interesting. (Langauge Hat says “no,” and I agree - even a glance at Japan’s pop cultural output shows that they don’t have a creativity deficit). The readers’ comments are good, as well.
• Salam Pax is back, which is a relief, and has resumed his fascinating commentary from inside Iraq.
  
  The whole issue of American presence and Iraqi government makes us argue until we are too tired to talk. Usually Raed ends up calling me and G. pragmatic pigs with no morals and principles. He wants to stick a sign on my forehead saying “Beware! a Pragma-pig”. He talks of Invading forces and foolish loonies (me) who believe that the US will help us build a democracy. But what we all agree upon is that if the Americans pull out now we will be eaten by the crazy mullahs and imams, G. has decided that this might be a good time to sell our souls to the (US) Devil.
  
  
• Eve Tushnet has written an interesting series of posts responding to Jack Balkin. The issue at hand, summed up in my patented stupid way: Is Bush v. Gore a worse corruption of lawmaking by political ideology than Roe v. Wade? I tend to agree with Balkin - naked partisan manipulation is worse - but Eve makes a good case. Eve’s permalink is bloggered, but you can visit Eve’s blog and look for the entry on May 7th entitled “The Constitution, High and Low.”

Okay, so it’s actually 1:30am Thursday as I post this. I drew this several days ago, I just forgot to post it yesterday. (But I’ve posted a couple of extra cartoons this week, which hopefully makes up for it.)

Note: Due to this post being published as Alas was switching commenting software, the original comments to this post have been “stranded.” They can still be read here. However, please leave any new comments in the new comment system (link below).

So we’re switching from Blog to Movable Type. I have no complaints about Blog; I think it’s a terrific piece of software, and I’d recommend it to anyone doing an individual blog. But Alas is becoming a group blog, and Movable Type is just better software for multiple users.

Anyhow, with help from Kip and Kirsten (thank you both! Mwah!), the “dress rehearsal” of the Movable Type version of Alas is now up - in fact, you’re looking at it now (although some of the kinks are still being worked out). If you take a look, please leave a comment and let me know if anything’s not working with your browser and system.

As always, extra-big thanks to Jenn for aiding and abetting.

Note: Due to this post being published as Alas was switching commenting software, the original comments to this post have been “stranded.” They can still be read here. However, please leave any new comments in the new comment system (link below).

This is an illustrated version of a joke I’ve heard going around… if anyone knows who originated it, please let me know.

Note: Due to this post being published as Alas was switching commenting software, the original comments to this post have been “stranded.” They can still be read here. However, please leave any new comments in the new comment system (link below).

“We are at a tipping point with spam,” David Sorkin, associate professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, said in a panel presentation at the forum. “But, with the bills we see now, I fear we will be on the wrong side of the cow.”

–New York Times, “Finding Solution to Secret World of Spam”, 5 May
03

In the comments to my post “mutilating gender” last week, J. (a.k.a Mac Diva, author of two (!) notable blogs, Mac-a-ro-nies and Silver Rights) argued forcefully against sexual reassignment surgery (SRS).

J. has repeated this point on Silver Rights arguing that SRS isn’t a “proven medical treatment” and that it “may not be an actual remedy.”

Unfortunately, J. didn’t reference the specific research she’s relying on, so it’s possible that by posting this I’ll be smearing egg on my own face. But as far as I can tell, the evidence doesn’t support J.’s claims.

First, regarding John Money, J. is mistaken to think he is “the originator of the concept.” David Cauldwell, for example, was using the term “transsexual” in the late 1940s, whereas John Money’s work didn’t begin until the 1950s.

Much more importantly, J. is mistaken about outcomes of SRS. The most comprehensive study of post-SRS outcomes is “Sex Reassignment. Thirty Years of International Follow-up Studies” by Friedemann Pf’fflin and Astrid Junge (1992 in German, English translation 1998). Pf’fflin and Junge used data from over 70 studies, in total considering the outcomes of over 2000 patients from 13 countries. They found that outcomes - measured in terms of “subjective satisfaction; mental stability; socioeconomic functioning; and partnership and sexual experience” - of SRS are generally positive. Overall, 71% of male-to-female (MTF) and 90% of female-to-male (FTM) operations had positive results. When they limited their sample only to more recent patients (who benefited from improvements in techniques and procedures over the decades), the results were positive for 87% of MTFs and 97% for FTMs.

Of course, Pf’fflin and Junge’s article is now a decade old, but I’m not aware of any study of comparable scope since then which has discredited their work. And it may be that there are problems with the data which should prevent us from drawing conclusions; Dr. Anne Lawrence, summarizing more recent studies, points out that they have a distressingly low response rate.

On the other hand, as Lawrence points out, even the controlled study by Mate-Kole (in which MTFs were randomly selected to either be given SRS quickly, or to be in a control group which was waiting for the surgery) found that “patients who underwent expedited SRS demonstrated improved psychosocial outcomes, compared to the still unoperated controls. They were more active socially, and had fewer neurotic symptoms.”

On the important issue of regrets, Pf’fflin and Junge found 14 documented cases of patients who regretted having gone through SRS. Some of these patience appear to have been inadequately prepared, or to have had botched or incomplete surgeries. While it’s of course regrettable that anyone feel regrets, 14 out of 2000 doesn’t strike me as a high enough rate of regrets to discredit SRS, or to suggest (as J. did) that a typical SRS patient may seek to have their surgery reversed.

The evidence is imperfect; and, since I don’t know what J.’s sources are, it’s possible that she’ll post references that blow this post away. For now, however, it seems that the evidence indicates that SRS probably is effective; for those patients who choose to go through SRS, it provides real relief and life improvement.

If I’ve followed her arguments correctly, J.’s main concern is whether or not tax dollars should be used to pay for SRS. My feeling is that all necessary and effective medical treatments ought to be paid for out of tax dollars, preferably in a single-payer health care system akin to France’s. Since I think the evidence shows that SRS is an effective medical treatment, I think it should be covered.

(To read J.’s thoughts on transsexuality for yourself, read through this comments thread - if you don’t want to read the whole thing, you can find her posts with a text search for “Mac Diva.” On her blogs, read this post and also this post on Silver Rights, plus this post on Mac-a-ron-ies.)

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Yesterday’s Doonesbury is a stitch, even without knowing what most of it says. Nonetheless, I can’t help being curious. Any French-reading Alas readers out there wanna provide a translation in comments?

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Years ago, when we lived in Boston, we were broke and (by and large) unemployed. It was a very cold winter, and our heat had been cut off. We had a fireplace - but we didn’t have wood to burn. I therefore became fairly expert at shoplifting those faux-log things from the nearby Caldor’s. I didn’t feel bad about it then, and thinking back on it I still don’t feel guilty. It’s okay to shoplift from large corporations to get things you actually need. The harm to Caldors of losing the faux-logs is considerably less, realistically, than the harm to us of having nothing to burn in our fireplace.

Other kinds of shoplifting - if done from Wal-Mart or the equivalent - don’t particularly bother me, although I don’t shoplift anymore myself. (It would be nice if I was too moral to shoplift, but truthfully I suspect I’ve just got too vivid an ability to imagine consequences.)

To tell you the truth, other than a very poor relationship of risk to
reward, I don’t see what’s so immoral about stealing small amounts from
Wal-Mart. The harm caused by shoplifting from mega-corps seems extremely diffuse and theoretical; no one will miss a meal or shiver in the cold because someone lifted a walkman from a Fred Meyer.

Now, I do understand that overall, the efforts of thousands of shoplifters combined DO make things worse - they reduce profit for the chain, and (arguably) they therefore cause Wal-Mart to raise prices. (Or perhaps to pay Wal-employees less). But on the other hand, the shoplifters also create jobs for all those Wal-Mart security people who wander around trying to spot shoplifters.

In any case, the aggregate harm of thousands of shoplifters is rather like the aggregate harm of millions of Americans driving more than they need to, or eating meat, or any of hundreds of other minor harms to the zeitgeist. Yes, it’s bad, but it’s bad on such a minor level that I can’t feel any real anger at the individuals involved.

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• Body and Soul on the unfound WMDs. And, also, Body and Soul on why there isn’t a great left foreign policy columnist in the Times. And Body and Soul’s guest blogger Donald Johnson on how the Times will and won’t publish left voices.

• A good Mark Kleiman post summarizing why Lott (the gun researcher, not the senator) should no longer be taken seriously by the right.
• Calpundit points out the obvious: Social Security is not in “crisis.” (He doesn’t point out that the Democrats needlessly gave away ground on this issue for a short-term partisan gain.)
• Mac Diva asks, “So, why are some liberals willing to believe that Winnie Mandela is a serial killer, but not that Bill Clinton is a rapist who had Vince Foster murdered?” Speaking for myself, I don’t think Winnie Mandela is a serial killer (if she were, it seems likely that the Truth and Reconciliation commission would have said so). On the other hand, although the Vince Foster accusation is nonsense, I do think Juanita Broaddrick’s rape accusation is pretty credible.
• Big Fat Blog directs us to this editorial debunking the much-touted “fat causes cancer” study.
  
  In short, what this study actually found was a negative correlation between increasing weight and cancer mortality for the majority of the 135 million Americans who are currently categorized as overweight or obese, and only a small increase in risk for all but the very fattest people.[…]

  Just as in the war on drugs, the war on fat has reached the point where systematic distortion of the evidence has become the norm, rather than the exception. The strategies employed in these two wars are strikingly similar: Treat the most extreme cases as typical, ignore all contrary data (there are dozens of studies indicating cancer mortality decreases with increasing weight), and recommend “solutions” that actually cause the problems they supposedly address. And, as in all wars, truth ends up being the first casualty.

  
  
• We all know that the official unemployment number leaves out many people - but what would a more truthful figure look like? Wampum has done the work and has the (depressing) answer.

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…but here’s a cartoon, anyhow.

Note: Due to this post being published as Alas was switching commenting software, the original comments to this post have been “stranded.” They can still be read here. However, please leave any new comments in the new comment system (link below).