I was checking out The View from the Basement, a blog that has rather mysteriously been nominated for a “best new blog” Koufax. (The Koufaxes are for lefty blogs - View From the Basement is a centrist blog, not clearly left nor right). Unlike the Head Heeb, I wasn’t very impressed; the blogger seems to be one of those boring “anyone who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite” folks.

Anyhow, the reason I’m posting this is the following quote, which adorns the top of her blog:

The problem is that the quote is a fake, as Tim Wise has documented.

The quote does indeed pop up a lot; don’t be fooled.

And hey, while you’re reading Wise on MLK, check out his essay rebutting right-wingers who misuse MLK by claiming King opposed Affirmative Action.

Dear reader, I have failed you… I was determined this year to watch the state of the union address and write a post about it. After a minute, though, I left the room where my dad was watching it. I’ve passed through the room a couple times only to find myself getting mad at Mr. Bush for saying that women in Afghanistan are free and treated fairly, among other things.

I tried, but I just couldn’t stand to listen to him. If any posts are written by me on the state of the union address, it’ll be after I read a transcript.

I’m leaving for the airport (going from Florida to Oregon via Colorado) in just a few minutes, so I don’t have time for extended commentary - but here are a few links I’ve enjoyed today.

• It’s MLK Jr. day, of course. I thought this post at Feministe was particularly good. And TalkLeft provides a terrific collection of MLK links.

• The New York Times Magazine provides an excellent portrait of “Caroline,” whose life is a story of working hard and remaining poor, “A Poor Cousin of the Middle Class.” And those spunky IWF ladies respond to the article, proving that some conservatives are just as mean-spirited (and fact-challenged) as you imagine they are, in “Caroline’s Whine.”
• Be sure to check out Ms.Musings this week, for her list of ten stories she meant to get around to but didn’t (or didn’t sufficiently) in 2003. Also, check out item number 11, which highlights many new blogs of note. I’m also flattered as heck (and maybe a bit bewildered) to report that Ms.Musings “can’t imagine a world with Alas, a Blog.” (Seriously, thanks, Christine - your blog is great, too!).
• “Sex continues to baffle me, fascinate me, and cause me to be controversial…” A good discussion of sex (and critique of how some feminists have theorized sex) from Jasperboi.

That’s it - I have to go pack up and get to the airport. Posting from me may be slow for the next while. Ta!

The folks over at MarriageMovement.org are angry at the New York Times, devoting post after post to criticizing its coverage. Why? Because the Times article on the Bush administration’s Marriage Initiative included this passage:

Elizabeth Marquardt speculates that maybe no administration officials actually said that - maybe the Times just made the whole thing up (although Elizabeth admits the attribution is “believable.”) Tom Sylvester declares that it was probably taken out of context by the Times.

Neither of them seem to find it remarkable to accuse the Times of fictionalizing news stories without the slightest bit of evidence; call me old-fashioned, but I think it’s nice to present some evidence that someone has actually lied when accusing them of lying.

Here’s my theory: probably administration officials said what the Times claimed they said. And the Times reported it because it is newsworthy, and to not include the administration quotes would have been irresponsible for any news organization. And other papers picked up on the story because it is newsworthy.

I know that’s not as much fun as made-up conspiracies (the Times may have made up the quotes! No, wait, they took them out of context!), but in this case the duller story is probably the more truthful.

As for the marriage initiative itself, the Bush administration is making it sound like a very humble proposal indeed.

Dr. Horn (who, in a previous stage of his career, was an extremist “father’s rights” advocate) gives the impression that this initiative merely provides to poor folks the marriage counseling that wealthier folks have been able to afford all along. If that’s what it does, then I have no problem with the marriage initiative. I’m not convinced it will do much good, but maybe I’m wrong about that, and it won’t hurt to try. If the result is that more people who would mutually like to stay married are able to keep their marriages intact, then hooray.

On the other hand, I don’t find either Mr. Horn or the Bush administration trustworthy; feminist and liberal groups will obviously have to monitor how the program is actually implemented to see if it’s as harmless as Horn claims.

Of course, I also suspect that the money could be spent in more effective ways. From a different Times article:

If I were president, Ms. Brett’s approach would be emphasized and funded. But face it: that kind of feminist reform, dedicated to helping all women, not just women who want to get married, will not happen under this president and this congress. In the meanwhile, since really good policies are unavailable, let’s take what we can get.

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed I’m a fan of disability rights activist Harriet McBryde Johnson - I’ve blogged about her New York Times articles here and here.

(If you haven’t read Johnson’s articles, then you’re in for a treat! The first, Unspeakable Conversations, is about her Princeton debate with Peter Singer, who in disability rights circles is considered pure evil. The second, The Disability Gulag, is a critique of the American disabled care system. Both articles are funny, well-written, politically engaged, and human.)

Anyhow, New Mobility magazine has awarded Johnson their “person of the year” award. There’s a short, interesting article about Johnson, including this passage:

The article includes the good news that she’s working on a book, to be published by Henry Holt.

Eve, our hostess at “MarriageDebate.com,” invites us to discuss if the same-sex marriage (SSM) debate is about homosexuality.

At the most literal level, of course, SSM is about same-sex relationships. I mean, duh. You might as well ask if a traffic light ordinance has anything to do with traffic.

But of course, Eve isn’t talking about the most literal level. Rather, she’s asking whether or not opposition to gay marriage is necessarily motivated by anti-gay bigotry.

My answer is, who cares? I think a marriage law that discriminates on the basis of sex (or sexual preference) is bigotry; whether or not the people who support such a law have bigotry in their hearts is irrelevant. I’m against bigotry in people’s policies; I don’t care what’s in their hearts.

By asking this question, Eve is encouraging ad hominem debate. Isn’t that something we’d be better off trying to avoid?

* * *

The Koufax Awards don’t have a catagory for “most outragiously stupid anti-SSM argument.” If there was such a catagory, though, I’d vote for this post on MarriageDebate, in which Ben Bateman explains that people who disagree with him about SSM just don’t love children or care about childrens’ future as much as Ben himself does.

Aside from the usual flaws inherant in ad hominem attacks, Ben’s approach also indicates an impressive failure to comprehend opposing views. (And, I add later, a bizarre unawareness that some supporters of SSM are heterosexual). My suggestion to Ben - beyond, of course, suggesting he go fuck himself - is that he read this post and explain to me how the writer doesn’t care about what happens to children.

* * *

More generally, it seems to me that SSM opponants quite commonly imply that people who disagree with them don’t care about children, or care only about whatever is convenient for adults, or short-term pleasure, or whatever.

Fine, whatever. If people stoop to that kind of argumentation, it’s their business. I think that any SSM opponant who makes such an argument, however, loses the right to act affronted when a SSM proponant accuses them of being a bigot. People who routinely accuse their opponants of having terrible motivations, ought not complain when they are accused of same.

[Edited later to correct spelling and link errors... and fix up the prose here and there.]

So MSNBC posted a few transcribed fragments (about 2 minutes of a 20 minute stand-up routine) of Margaret Cho’s set at a MoveOn event. From MSNBC the transcript migrated to Drudge, and from Drudge to a thread on FreeRepublic (down, down, sinking ever down).

And from there, a remarkable deluge of hate mail, mostly criticizing Cho for being fat, Asian and female, traits that are considered grievous flaws by some right-wingers. The mail suggests that Cho should go back to China (Cho, who has Korean-American parents, was born in San Francisco); the mail uses the phrase “slant-eyed” over and over again; the mail suggests she should go fuck a pig.

Cho’s reply, on her blog, shows that she has a thousand times more wit and class than her attackers:

That’s just a small sample - I really recommend that you go read the whole thing. And read Cho’s earlier blog response, as well.

Cho’s manager originally posted the hateful emails intact - including the names and email addresses of the writers. As a result, the haters have been flooded with emails, and some of them begged Cho to remove their emails from her website. Cho, showing the hate mail writers far more decency than they’d earned, complied and is asking that her supporters no longer send emails.

Remarkably, a few of the hate mail writers have since written again to apologize. One person who originally wrote in to call Cho a “fuckin’ fat cunt” wrote again to apologize, and added that “I am the father of a daughter, the husband of a wife, the son of a mother and the brother of a sister and I feel like I owe them an apology also–although I’ll never be brave enough to do so.” It’s surprising that he’s perceptive enough to realize that his misogyny was an insult to all women, not just to Cho.

Years ago, when I was one of the token feminists on the anti-feminist Usenet group “alt.feminism,” most of the folks there assumed I was a woman. I would sometimes get vile, angry, semi-literate emails. Once it became better-known that I was male, the frequency of the hate mail went down. There was apparently no longer as much need to slap me back down into my proper place, once I was no longer thought a woman.

“D Ce” wrote an excellent analysis of the Cho hate mail, which was published on American Politics Journal. Here’s a sample:

D Ce’s analysis is exactly on-target, in my view. It’s men with a peculiar notion of masculinity - that masculinity is something that can be threatened or lost and is under attack and must be defended - who would think to write such hate mail. D Ce likens the mass asshole attack on Cho to a circle-jerk. It has elements of that to it, but I think it also has elements of a frat house gang rape. Not that writing a racist, woman-hating email is the same as rape - of course, it’s not equivalent at all. And I’m not saying that the letter-writers would themselves rape if they had the chance (I have no way of knowing). But I think the wellspring of contempt for women and wounded “masculinity” that led to this orgy of hate-mail, is the same wellspring that rapists drink deep from.

Cho’s manager has asked that no more letters of support be sent, right now - Cho’s mailbox is overflowing with support. As disgusting as Cho’s attackers are, it’s a pleasure to see her rise above them so effortlessly.

Some links via The Sideshow.

In the near future I’ll either be blogging and commenting a lot more, or a lot less. I lost my job today and so will be busy looking for a new one. If things look good and I get some nibbles, it’ll be a bit before I can blog. If things look bad, I may get to post even more often than even Amp cares to read.

It’s actually not as bad as it sounds. I lost my job, yes, but I was planning on leaving in the near future anyway. It’s a mixed blessing: I’ll have the ability to look for a job without having to schedule around the nine-to-five, on the other hand I don’t have a source of income but do have bills. We’ll see.

Just wanted to let you know: Alas’ll either be PDP-free or so-much-PDP-you’ll-be-past-the-legal-limit.

In City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple issues a challenge to his readers:

I have libertarian tendencies, but I don’t go so far as to say that “individual desire is the only thing that counts.” Take the minimum wage, for example: Sally wants to pay Bob $1 an hour to work in Sally’s store. Bob, for whatever reason, genuinely wants to work for $1 an hour. In this case, frustrating their individual desires seems justifiable to me, because having a minimum wage law prevents a “race to the bottom” that would hurt thousands more workers.

But I really can’t see that sort of logic applying to the cannibalism case. It seems to me the desire to eat people must be rare - and the desire to be eaten rarer still. It doesn’t seem likely that we’d be creating any sort of “race to the bottom” by allowing consenting adult meals to be eaten by consenting adult diners.

I suppose one could make a public health argument; I’ve heard that cannibalism is a particularly effective route for transmitting diseases. But, again, it doesn’t seem that banning cannibalism is necessary to prevent this from becoming a major problem, because there are simply too few wannabe meals in our culture.

I do have a problem with the idea of someone consenting to be murdered; there is a good argument to be made that laws against murder need to be enforced with as little slippage as possible. (Otherwise, we might have problems like murder victims being forced to sign consent forms at gunpoint before being killed.) But we could easily get around that by having the meal commit suicide rather than being killed by the eater.

So put me down in the pro-cannibalism column, I guess. If a competent, consenting adult wants to be a meal, and his competent, consenting adult friend wants to be an eater, I wouldn’t want to be invited to the dinner - but nor do I see a need to ban it.

On the other hand, I find that conclusion disturbing enough so I’d welcome anyone coming up with an argument that would change my mind.

Thoughts?

Via Invisable Adjunct.

This nifty flash movie, a well-done parody of “Behind the Music” tracing the career of a font, is a lot more interesting than you’re probably imagining.

From the movie, I wandered onto Mastication is Normal, which (at least in the parts I read) consists mostly of reviews of book-cover designs. Again, nifty.

Via Wanton Deconstruction.

Hey, did you know that a leading cause of infanticide is the Supreme Court? According to RealClearPolitics’ Mark Reinzi:

Mark’s thesis, as I understand it, is that pro-choice laws and attitudes create a culture of permissiveness towards killing babies, which leads to an increase in infanticide. Frankly, I think this theory is too stupid for words - does Mark really imagine that couples sit around saying “Honey, I see the Supreme Court just passed Roe v. Wade. Don’t you think we’d better kill Junior?”

Nonetheless, otherwise intelligent conservatives apparently take this claptrap seriously, so let’s test Mark’s theory against the facts. If Mark’s theory is correct - pro-choice attitudes lead to increased murders of newborns - states that have a (relatively) pro-life culture should therefore have much less infanticide than states with a (relatively) pro-choice culture. (State-by-state statistics are available from the federal government’s WISQUARS database).

First, consider five states with reputations for being strongly pro-life. Let’s look at their infanticide rates:

These statistics are for homicides of children aged 1 or younger for the year 2000. As you can see, infanticide rates are significantly higher among blacks than whites; I’m presenting the data for blacks and white separately because it allows better comparison between states. (Where “n/a” is listed, there were no known infanticides among blacks in that state in 2000).

Now, compare five states with reputations for being relatively pro-choice:

Notice the pattern? It’s the exact opposite of the pattern Mark’s theory would lead us to expect. The states with the strongest pro-choice cultures experience the least infanticide.

It’s clear that Mark’s theory is false. Now, I suppose I could turn around and claim that clearly pro-life attitudes increase infanticide - but that theory doesn’t make sense to me, either. (A couple of pro-choice states, like Hawaii, have very high infanticide rates). The truth is, pro-choice or pro-life laws probably have very little to do with infanticide rates.

What factors do matter? According to Child Trends Databank:

So why do pro-choice states have lower rates of infanticide? I don’t know for sure, but I have a theory. My bet is, it’s because pro-choice states are mostly liberal states, which provide more support for low-income women. That translates to more prenatal care and more infants born in hospitals, both factors that make it less likely that a newborn infant will be murdered.

Pro-life states, in contrast, tend to be dominated by conservatives and libertarians, who - despite evidence showing that state-provide prenatal care improves outcomes - would rather live with high infanticide rates than pay a higher tax rate.

But what about that increase in infanticide since 1970? That could mean anything. It could mean, for instance, that increased computerization of records and improved medical technology have made it much more likely that infanticides will be detected and statistically recorded. (In other words, the overall rate of infanticide hasn’t changed - just the likelihood of infanticides being detected and recorded). It could reflect demographic or racial shifts. It could reflect the growing influence of conservatives leading to less prenatal care for poor mothers. It could, in short, mean any number of things.

But - given the strong evidence provided by state-by-state data - only a pro-life ideologue could claim that it shows pro-choice attitudes lead people to murdering newborns. I therefore predict that many pro-lifers will continue making this claim, regardless of the evidence against it.

(Link to RealClearPolitics via Diotima, who mistakenly calls the article “worthwhile.”)

TWO AFTERTHOUGHTS: It’s impossible to intelligently discuss infanticide rates in the USA without at least nodding to the racial differences. As I’ve pointed out in the past, blacks in the USA are in effect living in a third world nation, when it comes to infant and maternal mortality.

Secondly, the unsubtle subtext of the RealClearPolitics essay - “pro-choicers are evil monsters who favor murdering children” - has not escaped me. This is, of course, the attitude that leads some pro-life psychos to justify murdering doctors and bombing clinics, and more generally part of the “dehumanize the opposition” approach to the debate which makes discussing abortion in the USA such a pisser. I haven’t responded to this aspect of the RealClearPolitics essay in detail because I consider it beneath reply (and also beneath contempt).

UPDATE: Be sure to read the comments to this post, which include a lot of valuable info added by Alas readers.

Paul Campos argues that Howard Dean “is, socially speaking, practically the same person as the current president.”

Of course, Campos is stretching to make his point - there’s a world of difference between help getting into med school (even if that’s true, passing med school and building a career as a doctor are legitimate accomplishments) and being more-or-less given a baseball team in exchange for family connections. Still, Dean vs. Bush is not exactly a stirring choice for those who dream of a classless society.

Sydney Quinn and Oberon share an interest in sprawling.

By the way, I’m headed off to Florida, to visit my parents and hang out by the pool (it’s a tough life, I know). I expect I’ll be able to keep posting semi-regularly, but if you don’t hear from me for the next week, then that didn’t work out.

In the comments to an earlier post - one which made fun of the idea that by entering a man’s hotel room, a woman has consented to sex - “Rap” wrote:

The thing is, “common sense” doesn’t begin and end with not going to a man’s hotel room alone, does it?

If women avoid doing all the things that they’re supposed to avoid doing in the name of “common sense” measures to avoid rape - if women don’t let themselves ever be alone in a room with a man they don’t know well, if they never walk alone at night or on isolated roads, if they never go to an empty bus station or subway terminal and never ride in an empty train car, and never walk alone in a public garage, never drink in a bar alone, never get drunk at a frat party (actually, better not attend the frat party in the first place!), and of course never wear tight clothing, etc etc…

If a woman actually obeyed all those “common sense” rules, it would be an awful lot like a life lived under house arrest, wouldn’t it?

Suggesting people should avoid walking down murder row is reasonable. Suggesting women should avoid the world - which is what all those “common sense” strategies boil down to - is not reasonable.

(And the wacky punchline to all this? Even if a woman obeys every single rule for avoiding rape, she still might get raped.)

I do think women - like everyone else - should exercise some common sense for self-protection. But in the final analysis, changing women’s behavior isn’t a promising anti-rape strategy. I’d rather discuss ways of changing men’s behavior. Rapists are by and large male, after all.

I haven’t run into Bad Jens before, which is a shame for me. It’s an English-language, Iranian feminist online journal. “Jens” means, roughly, “gender.” Bad means “bad,” and said as one word “badjens” means sly or disreputable.

The two pieces I just read - one an interview with performance artist Rbshapour, one an essay - both focus on the experience of Iranian-American woman living in Iran after spending nearly their whole lives in the United States. From the essay “The Practice of Control” by Nina Farnia (by the way, I suspect these links will go bad as soon as the seventh issue comes out; if the links don’t work for you, just go to the Bad Jens homepage and look in the archive in the sixth edition for these articles):

I came across this article while readnig a Ms. Magazine discussion board thread, provocatively entitled “we might mutilate our breasts and faces, but at least we don’t wear headscarves.” I particularly like Echidne’s comment on that thread:

The interview with Rbshapour was also interesting. Here’s a passage, from near the beginning, in which Rbshapour explains why she decided to move to Iran after spending her entire life since early childhood in the United States.

I keep forgetting to mention: PinkDreamPoppies has been upgraded from “guest blogger” to, well, just plain “blogger.” My only regret is that PDP (like Bean) doesn’t post as often as I’d like to read. Welcome, PDP.

Via Light of Reason, this article describes the way Bush has been forcing members of the U.S. military to serve far beyond what they thought they’d agreed to:

The article argues that this is one of a number of steps which are quietly being taken to reinstate the draft. I’m not that convinced; I don’t think we have to worry about the draft being reinstated secretly. (Some things just can’t be kept secret - sooner or later, someone has to say “you are ordered to report…,” and then the cat’s out of the bag). Nonetheless, the article is interesting, and reports on a lot of stuff that’s escaped the mainstream presses scrutiny.

Myself, I’m struck by yet another example of how much contempt this president exhibits for members of the armed forces. He tries to cut their pay, he cuts their benefits, he takes away their overtime, and now he’s keeping them against their will. I’ve asked it before: When Bush meets a U.S. soldier, does he struggle to keep himself from openly sneering and spitting in the G.I.’s face?

A lot of conservatives have been critical of the “chickenhawk” thing, because they misinterpret it as saying “if you haven’t served in the armed forces, you’re not qualified to have an opinion on military matters.” But that’s not the point at all. It’s about character, not qualifications.

A chickenhawk is “a person enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it; particularly when that enthusiasm is undimmed by personal experience with war; most emphatically when that lack of experience came in spite of ample opportunity in that person’s youth.” Being a chickenhawk doesn’t make anyone wrong or right in their opinions about war; it just makes them a person of low character.

Amy at The Fifty Minute Hour has written a very sensible post about Clark’s abortion position. Clark has been criticized for an “embarrassing lack of nuance” in his position.

Amy argues:

Amy goes on to criticize “the pro-choice crowd” for not standing as firm as Clark does. She has a point, although I think that for many pro-choicers opposing late-term abortions may be more strategic than emotional. If so, then Clark, if elected president, may wind up changing his position in deference to that strategy. We’ll see.

By the way, I’m finding myself warming a bit to Clark as time goes on. His abortion position, like his position on tax policy, is attractive. Of course, I’d still prefer Kucinich, but of the folks who might actually win Clark’s looking good.

I checked out the finalists in the Bush in Thirty Seconds competition (the winner will be announced late tonight). I thought the first-listed entry - “Child’s Play” - was by far the best of this lot - and it’s beautifully photographed, as well. Check it out.

The “humor ads” catagory wasn’t all that great, but the punchline to the “if parents acted like Bush” ad did get a laugh out of me.

Apparently if a woman visits a man’s hotel room, she’s consented to have sex. Or at least, that’s what National Review Online believes.

Darn those feminists! Thinking that women should have rights and freedoms!

Via Atrios.

UPDATE: Echidne of the Snakes weighs in on this. As does Will Baude.