I can’t see any possible way this power could be misused:

Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“The policies . . . are truly alarming,” said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government’s border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or national origin.

DHS officials said that the newly disclosed policies — which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens — are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter.

So for the record: don’t take your laptop out of the country, because DHS will seize it, image your hard drive, and share that image with other government agencies, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Also, visitors from other nations…wait, do people still visit America? Because I’ve gotta tell you, if I was a foreign national and I wanted to go on vacation, I’d aim for pretty much anywhere else at this point.

You have got to be kidding me:

Speaking to donors at a San Diego fund-raiser last month, Barack Obama reassured the crowd that he wouldn’t give in to Republican tactics to throw his candidacy off track.

“Listen, I’m skinny but I’m tough,” Sen. Obama said.

But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama’s skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.

You know, I’m sure this will be a problem. I mean, it’s not like being skinny is still held up as the ultimate ideal for all Americans. Being fat is the new “it” thing. Why, I understand Seattle Sutton has fled the country for more tolerant Canada, while the last health club locked its doors last week. Plus, as a fat guy, I can tell you that all fat people hate skinny people, because nobody knows better than fat people that your body type is far more important than the ideas you have, the skills you possess, or the personality that animates you.

Snark aside — no, Wall Street Journal, Obama’s skinniness is not a deal-breaker. Indeed, as anyone who has engaged in American society can tell you, it’s an asset. There’s a reason Mike Huckabee wasn’t considered a presidential contender until he had bariatric surgery lost a lot of weight through “willpower.” This nation is far from embracing the idea that one’s body type does not correlate with one’s worth as a human being — and that includes a number of fat-hating fat people, who will be happy to tell you at length why Obama’s skinniness is a strength.

As for me, I wasn’t aware that I was supposed to care whether Obama was fat, thin, or trapezoidal. I just want a president who will wind down the Iraq war and not set the rights of women and the GLBTQQ community back 30 years. And given my choices, I think that I’ll pull the lever for Obama, whatever he weighs.

(Via Kevin Drum)

Including a behind-the-scenes photo and everything!

My newest cartoon is online at Dollars and Sense.

Also on D&S, “Ask Dr. Dollar” argues that the insanely high CEO pay in the US isn’t about productivity, and not just about crony capitalism: It’s also about political power.

And from Chuck Collins:

While average wages for all workers rose 3% in 1996, the average CEO salary and bonus rose 39% to $2.3 million — and that is without stock options. Benefitting even more than average were the top managers of the 30 U.S. corporations that laid off the most people last year, according to a new study, “Executive Excess: CEOs Gain from Massive Downsizing,” by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. The axmen who laid off between 2,800 and 49,000 workers last year upped their own compensation by 67%.[...]

Most corporate leaders would say any government regulation of CEO pay is an outrageous interference in the free market. But the government is already involved in CEO pay — through the U.S. tax code. The tax code allows businesses to deduct “a reasonable allowance for salaries or other compensation.” The catch is that the code doesn’t define “reasonable.” So companies can — and do — routinely deduct the entirety of grotesque executive pay packages. Corporations pay less in taxes than they should, and regular taxpayers pick up the slack.

Read the whole thing.

1) I’m not convinced McCain’s campaign purposely played the “sexually available white women” card. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t; it doesn’t seem like a slam-dunk case to me either way.

2) But it doesn’t matter much. Even if the racist connotations weren’t intentional, they still reflect the McCain staff’s gross insensitivity or indifference to racist connotations. (If McCain’s staff included lots of Black people who give a damn about racism, this ad would have died on the drawing board.)

3) It’s not coincidence that our two most famously vapid celebrities are women. Britney and Paris are so famous for vapidity and partying because the media is extremely eager to trumpet those traits in young female celebrities (making them even more famous — a vicious cycle), not because no male celebs are vapid partiers.

4) It’s ironic that McCain’s ad — which presents the least substantive argument (”Obama is like Britney and Paris! So vote McCain!”) of any political ad so far this election — suggests that Obama is the vapid one. Got that plank out of your eye yet, John?

UPDATE: Bean sent me this link, to a BBC column about a survey showing that the most-hated celebrities are women.

The Background

A magazine I’ve published in was recently involved in an internet kerfuffle of some magnitude. It began when the editor, William Sanders, sent out a piece of professional correspondance (a rejection letter) in which he invoked racist stereotypes and epithets:

No, I’m sorry but I can’t use this.

There’s much to like. I’m impressed by your knowledge of the Q’uran and Islamic traditions. (Having spent a couple of years in the Middle East, I know something about these things.) You did a good job of exploring the worm-brained mentality of those people - at the end we still don’t really understand it, but then no one from the civilized world ever can - and I was pleased to see that you didn’t engage in the typical error of trying to make this evil bastard sympathetic, or give him human qualities.

However, as I say, I can’t use it. Because Helix is a speculative fiction magazine, and this isn’t speculative fiction.

Oh, you’ve tacked on some near-future elements at the end, but the future stuff isn’t in any way necessary to the story; it isn’t even connected with it in any causal way. True, the narrator seems to be saying that it was this incident which caused him to take up the jihad, but he’s being mendacious (like all his kind, he’s incapable of honesty); he was headed in that direction from the start, and if it hadn’t been the encounter with the stripper it would have been something else.

Now if it could be shown that something in this incident showed him HOW the West could be overthrown, then perhaps the story would qualify as SF. That might have been interesting. As it is, though, no connection is shown and in fact we are never told just how this conquest - a highly improbable event, to say the least - came about.

There are some other problems with the story, but there’s no point in going into them, because they don’t really matter from my viewpoint. It’s not speculative fiction and I can’t use it in my magazine.

And I don’t think you’re going to sell it to any other genre magazine, for that reason - though you’d have a hard time anyway; most of the SF magazines are very leery of publishing anything that might offend the sheet heads. I think you might have a better chance with some non-genre publication. But I could be wrong.

Sorry.

William Sanders
Senior Editor
Helix

After this occurred, several authors requested that their work be removed from the archive of Helix Magazine, as they felt they could not support a magazine that was affiliated with anti-Muslim bigotry. (For the record, I was not one of those authors, though I support those authors.) These three women: N. K. Jemisin, Yoon Ha Lee, and Margaret Ronald, were met with yet more bigoted harassment. For instance, William Sanders wrote to Yoon Ha Lee, diminishing her writing on the basis of her race:

Certainly I would not want to continue to publish a story against the author’s wishes, especially a story like this one that never did make any sense and that I only accepted because I thought it might please those who admire your work, and also because (notorious bigot that I am) I was trying to get more work by non-Caucasian writers.

He did remove the material of Yoon Ha Lee’s, N. K. Jemisin’s, and Margaret Ronald’s. However, he replaced their stories with a sexist insult: “Story deleted at author’s pantiwadulous request.”* Screenshots of his defacement of his own magazine can be found here.

Sanders’ actions were unprofessional in other respects as well (for instance, the photograph of bent-over monkeys he posted on his own journal to represent “those people” who were upset over his racism, an image that’s particularly galling in terms of its racial implications in context). A detailed summary by N. K. Jemisin containing many excellent links can be found at this site. I strongly recommend that those who are interested in SF or publishing go over and read the detailed history of the disaster, complete with links to comprehensive analyses of the racism and unprofessionality at work at every stage.

The Reaction

A number of writers were disturbed by this sequence of events. We were disturbed by Sanders’ racism. We were disturbed by his bizarre and unprofessional treatment of writers, and his willingness to deface his own magazine.

I have not asked Sanders to remove my work from his magazine. However, I am proud of the poem I published in Helix, and believe that it deserves a forum free from racism and abuse of authors. I respect my readers, and want them to be able to access our work without being forced to support a publication run by someone who brings racism into his public dealings.

A group of us have decided to solve this problem by creating a mirror site that contains our content from Helix. This site is called Transcriptase. It’s a group effort, featuring content and statements by a number of authors.

Our group statement reads:

We are Helix writers who believe in a speculative fiction community that welcomes all readers—inclusive of all races, genders, and marginalized people of all backgrounds.

In July 2008, Helix editor William Sanders stirred up controversy in the community with remarks that many found offensive. The blogosphere exploded with discussion. You can find a summary of the events here.

As the controversy continued, several Helix writers asked to remove their work from the magazine and were met with unprofessional treatment. This upset all of us. We agreed that we would not stand by in silence.

Transcriptase hosts reprints of our stories and poems originally published at Helix. During the controversy, some of us removed our work from Helix; others left it up. There are valid reasons to make either choice, and we hope you’ll respect that we had difficult decisions to make. We offer our stories and poems at Transcriptase so that you can enjoy our work away from Helix, if you choose.

It’s difficult to summarize how we feel about the incident, since each of us feels differently. Our reactions range from disappointed to sad to angry.

Many writers have chosen to add personal statements to the group declaration. I’ll quote from a couple of them:

N. K. Jemisin:

I will never forget the first time I heard a young cousin of mine—only a little older than 12, the “golden age” as they call it in this genre—say, “Why do you write that stuff? That’s white people’s stuff.”

Science fiction and fantasy, he meant. White people’s stuff.

There are a lot of reasons why he might’ve said this. The visual landscape of SF/F has showcased the fantasies and futurism of one fairly narrow demographic cluster for a very long time. We’ve seen the predictably monochromatic, monocultural results of this in films, TV, and games, of course, but it’s also visible in SF/F fiction, even though fiction isn’t supposed to be a visual medium. Of course it is, since nearly all books have cover art, and textual description is usually meant to appeal to the inner eye. So most fantasies are set in medieval England analogues and showcase heroes described as blond and blue-eyed, or heroines with “porcelain” skin. Most science fiction takes place in futures in which everyone who isn’t physically perfect, straight as a board, and European-American has apparently been wiped out by a comet, with the exception of a token Canadian or two. And while not all books feature author photos, it’s not hard to see that the creative face of SF/F is collectively a pretty pale one: just pick up a copy of Locus sometime and peruse the photos. Or go to an SF/F con. These are colorful in many ways, but not so much on the diversity front.

But there’s another reason why my young cousin might’ve decided that SF/F is the sole province of one group of people, and that is because there’s a stunning amount of bigotry rampant within the SF/F community itself. In just the past year I’ve seen prominent, bestselling SF/F authors calling for the criminalization of homosexuality, advocating the death-through-medical-neglect of Spanish-speaking immigrants (just the illegals, note, as if that’s better), and trivializing rape and sexual objectification. The Helix incident is only the latest salvo in a long-running war by a few individuals in the SF community against several million other members of the human race.

Ann Leckie:

Mr. Sanders is, of course, free to have and express whatever opinions he thinks right. He is also free to run Helix in any fashion that seems good to him. As I am free to be unwilling to work with an editor who treats his writers so disrespectfully. Who despises “political correctness,” insists on the right to fling ethnic slurs, but then
demands that anyone around him approve of his actions, banishing anyone who might question or disapprove–essentially instituting his own brand of political correctness.

I think there are quite a lot of people who sincerely don’t believe they’re racist, who say and do racist things out of ignorance or the blindness of privilege. And if everyone refuses to speak up and say, “Look, that’s wrong,” because in their hearts they know the person in question isn’t really racist, it’ll just keep happening. Is Mr. Sanders racist? I wouldn’t presume to say. Is the use of ethnic slurs racist? Absolutely. Racism might not be the intent, but it is certainly the result.

The full text of these and other author statements can be found here.

Personally, I liked Helix Magazine a lot. Helix published fiction by women writers and writers of color. It published fiction that was shocking - sometimes viscerally, but often because it was politically radical. It was a forum for some excellent work, much of it written by writers who are passionate about social justice. I was not initially - and still am not — sure whether the editor’s willingness to employ racism in his business correspondence outweighs the inherent anti-racist good of the magazine. However, as a writer, I am damn sure that it’s poisonous to support or work for someone who is willing to fling racist and sexist insults at dissenters, and to deface his own product.

The content that’s up at Transcriptase is a smattering of work from some very talented writers. I strongly recommend that those who like science fiction and fantasy, particularly SF&F that’s daring and political, check out the work on the site.

I’ll end with a couple of excerpts from stories published on Transcriptase:

“The Snake’s Wife” by Ann Leckie, a story of court intrigue that deals intimately with gender roles in the ancient world

My father gestured to a slave. “Send the girl,” he said. We didn’t wait long — my sister was ready, had been for some time, most likely. She came in a side door, my mother behind her.

She was beautiful. Skin the color of honey, hair like polished wood. She wore a green dress, embroidered with darker green, and gold had been braided into her hair. Her face was flushed — she, or more likely my mother, had guessed what brought the king here. Prince Atehatsqe smiled when he saw her. My breath grew tight, and I wanted to stand and run, be out in the trees and the rain, anywhere but the hall. I must have realized what my father was planning but not been willing to believe it.

“Girl,” said my father, “the prince of Therete wants to marry you.”

She flushed even deeper, which I hadn’t thought possible, and knelt. “My father, I will obey you in all things.”

“Will you, then?”

“Yes, Father.”

He stood, and drew his sword and swung the edge with all his strength into her neck. Blood spattered his legs, and my sister fell dead on the floor.

“The Brides of Heaven” by N. K. Jemisin

No one realized the extent of Dihya’s madness until she was caught sabotaging the water supply. Even then the madness was difficult to see as she sat in Ayan’s office with her hands tied and her headscarf still askew from the struggle. She did not wrap her arms around herself and rock back and forth. She did not talk or weep incessantly, or fidget. Indeed, Ayan observed, to judge by her calm demeanor and the odd little smile on her face, Dihya might have been saner than any woman in the colony. This irritated Ayan to no end.

“You never attend the evening storytellings,” Dihya said. She had kept her silence up to that point. “Why not? Don’t you like tales?”

“Only true ones,” Ayan replied. “For example, the tale of why you broke into the purification facility.”

“To save us.”

“I cannot see how it saves anyone to be robbed of our only source of clean water.”

Dihya shrugged. “What good is water, to us?”

–

*Personally, I was more upset at the insult than the sexism, because it made it very clear that this editor was willing to seriously undermine the value and integrity of his own project for the purpose of getting in a cheap shot at someone who disagreed with him.

I was disappointed back during the primary when Barack Obama didn’t call out the misogyny swirling around the campaign. Mostly, I was disappointed for the same reason I was disappointed in Hillary Clinton for not calling out racism — both misogyny and racism are evils in our society, and neither campaign should have been willing to play footsie with racist or misogynistic ideas.

But I also understood at the time that Obama would inevitably face misogynist attacks of his own. I know, it seems impossible, given that Obama’s not a woman, but the GOP has been deriding male Democrats as overly feminine from time immemorial, or at least 1964.  (Female Democrats, of course, aren’t feminine enough, except when they’re too feminine.)

We already saw McCain trot out his “celebrity” ad, which unquestionably tried to portray Obama as vain, shallow, and superficial, but mostly, as a woman. That’s not accidental:

Staying very personal, the McCain campaign responds to Obama’s suggestion that Republicans will attack his unusual name and his race:

“This is a typically superfluous response from Barack Obama. Like most celebrities, he reacts to fair criticism with a mix of fussiness and hysteria,” says McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, before trying to link the attack back to offshore drilling.

Hysterical, you say? Hmm…now there’s something about that word that I seem to remember. What is it?

Etymology: New Latin, from English hysteric, adjective, from Latin hystericus, from Greek hysterikos, from hystera womb; from the Greek notion that hysteria was peculiar to women and caused by disturbances of the uterus

Oh, right: hysteria is not just an attack that one is angry, it’s an attack that one is irrationally angry, like women get.¹ Of course, Obama’s also “fussy” (homophobic insult) and “superfluous” (incoherent insult).

Point is, Barack Obama’s not a real man, because real men don’t complain when their presidential campaign is compared to meaningless celebrity gossip. I’m sure if someone pointed out that John McCain went on Saturday Night Live and hosted the show — and that like his campaign, it was one bad joke after another — well, McCain would just smile and nod. Or kill someone. Either way, it would be a manly response.

1. Silly women, getting all upset about institutionalized misogyny. (back)

So this ad makes the connection between Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Barack Obama:

As Josh Marshall notes, this one’s a two-fer: it sets Obama up first as a fey celebrity, one who’s facile and shallow. But by juxtaposing white, female Britney and white, female Paris with black, male Barack, we also get a nice echo of the Harold Ford “call me” ad — a reminder that as president, Barack Obama will be able to sleep with all of our white women, including the famous ones.

It’s a not-so-subtle playing of the racist card by the McCain camp. I wish I could say I was surprised.

Even by the usual standards of victim-blaming, this is pretty egregious:

Darn those young women and their drinking binges! It’s like they deserve to be raped, what with their drinking and their binges and their being young women.

Does the story get better? No, it does not:

San Diego police are investigating a rising number of rapes involving young women who go on drinking binges, becoming too intoxicated to fight back or say “no,” it was reported Tuesday.

The number of rapes in the city of San Diego rose by 38 percent during the first six months of this year compared to the same time period last year, from 129 to 178, according to recent crime statistics. San Diego police Lt. Carolyn Kendrick, who heads the sex-crimes unit, said victims know their attackers in 90 percent of the cases the unit investigates, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

“The majority are young women who start out in bars or at a house party and end up drinking too much,” Kendrick told the newspaper. “They can’t consciously make a good decision, like say no and leave. Or maybe they’ve had too much to drink and can’t leave.”

And then it’s only natural that they’d be raped. I mean, we can’t expect men to not rape women who are blackout drunk; that’s unpossible!

Look, you want to know who’s to blame for rape? Rapists are. There’s no excuse for rape. None. And when we spend our time bemoaning how those girls today drink too much and put themselves in jeopardy, we ignore the fact that those women wouldn’t be in jeopardy if those boys today would take the extraordinarily easy step of not being rapists.

There’s some really good commentary out there. Among other things, it’s interesting to me how many of my fellow bloggers identify as Unitarian.

First, Sara Robinson, over at Orcinus, offers a moving tribute to Unitarian principles, and talks about how, in a time of crisis, those principles shone through.

One of the dead, Greg McKendry, apparently took a shotgun blast full in the chest while trying to shield other members from the line of fire. Three other members of the congregation almost immediately charged the gunman and took him down, breaking his arm in the process. Still other members acted sanely and calmly to quickly get the dozens of children out of the sanctuary, and summon the police.

Those are the Unitarians I know. Smart, tough, fearless, calm in a crisis, committed to right action. It could have been any UU church in America, and they’d have behaved pretty much the same way.

It could have been any UU church in America — and that’s the problem.

Pam discusses both the homophobic motives of the shooter and the presence in the shooter’s home of hate literature by Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly.

Before opening fire, one witness said Adkisson shouted something to the congregation that suggests he was there for a purpose — “It was hateful words. He was saying hateful things.”  The FBI is officially investigating whether this brutal attack in a house of worship was a hate crime.

David Niewert at Orcinus has some information on the links between this assault and the eliminationist rhetoric of the right.

Right-wingers love to “joke” about mowing down, rounding up, and otherwise “wiping out” all things liberal. It’s become a standard feature of conservative-movement rhetoric. And whenever anyone calls them on it, they have a standard response: “Aw, c’mon — it’s just a joke!”

In reality, of course, rhetoric like this has historically played a critical role in some of the ugliest episodes in American history, as well as thousands of little acts of xenophobic brutality: functionally speaking, it gives violent — and frequently unstable — actors permission to act on these impulses. People like this always believe they’re standing up for what “real Americans” think — and the jokes tell them that this is so.

Brad Hicks, who’s always interesting, has a post up about all sorts of things . . . Angry White Males, eliminationist rhetoric, free speech, and the decency of the Unitarians themselves. His final paragraph pretty much sums up my thoughts on it.¹

Dave Neiwert, and I, aren’t actually calling for the Rush Limbaughs and Bill O’Reillys and Sean Hannitys of America to go to jail for ordering the murder of two people, and the attempted murder of many more, at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, or the murder of so many other liberals by those commentators’ depressed or enraged fans. Nor are we calling for such rantings to be made illegal; we’re both First Amendment absolutists. No, what we’re calling for is for Americans to wake up, and change their attitudes. We want to live in an America where when a prominent spokesperson for a political party “jokes” about sending their audience out to mass-murder their political opponents, it should and must shock our consciences. That person must become the kind of instant social pariah that people quite justly become when they make openly racist remarks. What you talk about in private, with people who know you’re not serious, is one thing; what they broadcast or publish to an eager audience gets innocent people killed by the dozens, and if that doesn’t bother them enough to stop them from continuing to do it, then there is just plain something that malevolently wrong with them, something just that deeply disgusting about them. And no matter what your politics are, if you aren’t just plainly that disgusted about their ongoing eliminationist rhetoric, there’s something wrong with you, too.

1. As if it wouldn’t be obvious, I don’t agree with everything he has to say in this post (!), but I think, especially towards the end, there’s a lot he gets right. (back)

So, Ted Stevens, you having a good day?

A federal grand jury has indicted longtime Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, on corruption charges after more than a year’s investigation, a federal law enforcement official has confirmed to The Times’s David Johnston.

[...]

Just a year ago, federal agents raided Mr. Stevens’ home following questions about renovations at the home. A few months before that, an Alaska businessman Bill J. Allen admitted to bribery, and in court papers acknowledged making $243,000 in possibly illegal payments to a state lawmaker identified only as “Senator B.” That abbreviation referred to Senator Ted Stevens’s son, Ben Stevens.

For reasons I’m unclear about, Andrea Mitchell is saying on MSNBC that this is news “no one could have predicted.” That is true, if for some reason you haven’t been paying any attention whatsoever to the sprawling, ongoing corruption in Alaska.

More to come, I’m sure.

I am never quite sure how one builds up a hatred of Unitarian Universalists. Oh, I know people exist who hate us, but it seems a bit of a wasted emotion. After all, the central tenet of Unitarianism is that nobody really knows whether there’s a God or not, and if there is, nobody really knows what he, she, it, or they are like. No lake of fire for the unbelievers, no eternal torment for the non-elect; as the great philosopher Homer J. Simpson once said, when asked what the true religion is, “Well, not the Unitarians. If that’s the one true faith I’ll eat my hat!” Not a Unitarian alive would disagree with him.

But UUs can be defined by one overriding principle, inherent in the idea that any of us could be right, and any of us could be wrong: tolerance. Tolerance for ideas and decisions and lifestyles that may not be right for me, but may be right for someone else. UUs are ardently pro-choice, staunchly pro-GLBTQQ rights, anti-racist, and pro-equality for all. Unitarian Churches and Societies in Massachusetts and California  gladly perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex partners, and that differentiates them from those in the other 48 states only because their states recognize the ceremony. We believe in helping those who are in need, accepting those who are different, supporting those who make the brave and difficult decision to be themselves, no matter what they are supposed to be.

And that is dangerous. For those who believe that there is but one acceptable way to live, but one acceptable path in life, but one acceptable belief system, the Unitarian Universalists are anathema to all that is right. We preach acceptance and tolerance, when we should be teaching proscription and the one true way. And that cannot stand.

Jim David Adkisson was clearly a disturbed and deranged man, one with a violent temper and a tenuous hold on his sanity. His ex-wife had been a member of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, a liberal, tolerant church, one where women were counted as equals, where gays and lesbians were welcomed with open arms, where liberal ideas of propriety and decency prevailed.

Adkisson was no liberal; that much is clear. While his neighbors noted that he had a rooted distrust of Christianity, he was much more interested in reading the sort of right-wing hate speech that passes for meaningful discourse. Let Freedom Ring by Sean Hannity sat on his bookshelf, as did Michael Savage’s Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder, and Bill O’Reilly’s The O’Reilly Factor. He nursed a hatred of liberals, one that he would eventually pour out into a four-page screed in which he said liberals were destroying America, and because he could not attack the leaders of the liberal movement, he would attack their followers.

And then he loaded up a shotgun, and he headed to the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, where children were engaged in a performance of Annie, Jr. And he opened fire.

We are told by the right, each time a mass shooting such as this takes place, that it would be best if everyone around was armed, better if everyone could just fire back. In a different setting, a different church, maybe there would have been crossfire. But even in Tennessee, I misdoubt gun ownership among UUs can be counted in the single digits. Total.

There would be no standoff, no OK Corrall shootout. Instead, Greg McKendry, a longtime parishioner and usher at the church, threw himself in front of the shooter, dying in the process but limiting the other deaths to but one other person, Lisa Kraeger, who was visiting from a different UU church.  Others rushed to subdue and disarm Adkisson, a man who expected he would go out in a blaze of glory, no doubt buoyed by his belief that liberals would not fight back, would not be armed, would go quietly.

Adkisson was denied his martyrdom. He was arrested; he is in custody, and he will rot in jail. His attempt for immortality was dashed by people willing to put themselves in harm’s way to save others. Adkisson himself was unharmed.

It would be nice if we UUs had a coherent belief in the afterlife, to say that McKendry and Kraeger were in Heaven now, and at peace. We don’t. We hope there’s something, and maybe there is something, but like all other aspects of our faith, we know only that we don’t know. McKendry and Kraeger may be in Heaven, or moving on to the next cycle of life, or joining with the infinite mind, or they may simply be gone, forever.

But their deaths were not in vain. McKendry died a hero, saving others by sacrificing himself. Kraeger died a martyr to her faith, if Unitarianism believed in such a thing.

There is, of course, much to say about the hatred that fed Adkisson’s resentment, the bile that begat his terroristic attack, that led him to write, “all liberals should be killed.” How the hatred and the othering that the right has engaged in for lo these many years will inevitably lead to more Adkissons, choosing to attack other liberal organizations. Dave Neiwert will inevitably have quite a bit to say about this, while the Malkinites will try to declare that Adkisson wasn’t really a conservative after all.

And it is important for us to discuss that, but in truth, I feel sorry for Adkisson, even as his actions are clearly unforgivable. He was, like all of us, a soul cast upon this world, looking for direction and purpose. Had he found himself a more stable, more honorable set of influences, he may have found himself happier and saner, at least enough so that he did not feel the need to murder others in order to find meaning in his existence. He went looking for answers, and the right gave him instead a scapegoat, an over-arching group to place all his self-hatred onto, all his anger, all his rage, all his uncomprehending fury. And then he acted.

He is as lost and broken as anybody involved in this, and my heart goes out to him. Hatred does not just push people to destroy others; it destroys those that hate, as well.

None of us know what lies beyond the end of our time on this Earth. All we know for certain is that we have this time to live, and this short time to find our own meaning to our existence. Adkisson thought he had found his meaning, that he was a means to the destruction of the enemy — the enemy being his fellow humans. But his fellow humans refused to turn on him, refused to harm him, refused to kill him, refused to view him as he viewed them. In all the righteous anger and fury and pain of the moment, the members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church did not seek revenge. Two lives ended the day of Adkisson’s attack, but they did not die without meaning. In that moment, the UUs of that congregation did what all of us in the church hope we can do — they fought back with tolerance, compassion, and self-sacrifice, not with anger, bitterness, and vengeance. The dead and wounded — even those who only bear the psychological scars of that moment — they embraced what is best about the Unitarian Universalist Church’s ethos.

There is deep meaning in that, even if it came in a horrific and brutal moment.

Well, I came home from school this evening to find this on my Google homepage.

An out-of-work truck driver accused of opening fire and killing two people at a Unitarian Universalist church apparently targeted the congregation out of hatred for its support of liberal social policies, including its acceptance of gays, police said Monday.A four-page letter found in Jim D. Adkisson’s SUV indicated that he targeted the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church because “he hated the liberal movement” and was upset with “liberals in general, as well as gays,” according to Knoxville Police Chief Sterling Owen IV.

Adkisson, 58, had a shotgun and 76 shells with him when he entered the church Sunday during a children’s performance of the musical “Annie.” Six adults were wounded in the attack.

Tonight in class, we discussed the 1957 integration of Little Rock Central High School. The thing that people don’t remember, especially in the North, is that Arkansas was considered a moderate southern state, and Little Rock was a moderate city within it. The Arkansas State Universitiy at Fayetteville integrated in 1948, Little Rock city buses were integrated by 1956, and the Little Rock school board was actively planning on desegregating their high schools. Things were going … if not swimmingly, then at least not unspeakably horribly.

All that changed, of course, when Arkansas governor (and douchebag) Orval Faubus, in a bid to win political support from segregationists and fend off challenges from his political right, ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent black students from attending the high school. There were riots. Eisenhower ended up federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and mobilized members of the 101st Airborne to protect black students on their way to and from classes. Acid was thrown in the eyes of one of the students. The next year Faubus shut down all Little Rock high schools rather than allow them to be integrated.

I’m sure you all know the story.

The reason I bring it up is that there was every expectation that integration of Little Rock Central would go smoothly, until Governor Faubus decided to demagogue in an effort to win votes. There’s even a Time magazing article: Making a Crisis in Arkansas. The entire situation was manufactured.

What’s my point?

Demagoging has consequences. Appealing to hate and bigotry creates more hate and bigotry. It creates riots. It creates vandalism. It creates murder.

We have a president who campaigned for governor on the promise that in his administration, consensual sex between adult males would be considered a crime. We have an entire political party that sees nothing wrong with the idea that in the year 2008, gay people in most states still aren’t allowed to marry the people they love. We have respected (well, Jonah Goldberg, so maybe not respected, but tolerated) conservative pundits who apparently in all seriousness believe that Adolf Hitler was a liberal.

Do I think that they actually believe this? Sometimes, sure. Sometimes not. It doesn’t matter.

As surely as I lay the Little Rock riots at the feet of Orval Faubus, I lay the assault on this church at the feet of those who have claimed that gay marriage would destroy western civilization and those who equate liberals with Nazis.

See, it turns out that when you said all that shit . . . people were listening. Jim D. Adkisson was listening.

I would have enjoyed winning (cue bitter tears and ranting), but to tell you the truth, I think the judges made the right choice. Congratulations to Cathy Malkasian for winning this year’s Russ Manning Award, in recognition of her gorgeous, eccentric graphic novel Percy Gloom.

Remember, you can own a paper copy of “Hereville” of your very own!

For folks that pay extra, I do a sketch on the title page. Each sketch is different. Here are two sketches I did recently; you can see a bunch more here.

Read the rest of this entry »

I find this to be utterly hilarious:

The Tax Policy Center prepared an interesting report (pdf) this week, noting the key differences between the economic policies articulated by John McCain and the economic policies presented by John McCain’s presidential campaign. There’s a bit of a gap — to the tune of $2.8 trillion (that’s “trillion,” with a “t”).

[...]

How does the McCain campaign respond to this? As it turns out, hilariously.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s chief economic adviser, told Slate, “[McCain] has certainly I’m sure said things in town halls” that don’t jibe perfectly with his written plan. But that doesn’t mean it’s official.”

Got that? If we want to better understand John McCain’s economic policies, we should overlook what John McCain says about his economic policies. McCain’s “official” positions don’t come from McCain.

And how could they? I mean, it’s just crazy to assume that just because John McCain says something that he actually means it! That would be insanity.

I used to have some respect for John McCain, back about eight years or so ago. Oh well.

National Review editor Kathryn Jean Lopez asks a very important question about this Washington Post article about 16-year-olds shopping for bikinis. No, not, “Why was the Washington Post running an article about 16-year-olds shopping for bikinis?” — that would be a reasonable question, the answer to which is “because it’s an interesting article.” Seriously, it’s an article about how teen girls see themselves, their concerns about their bodies, their feeling pressured to dress to attract boys, and their general existence as girls in a society that sees them first as sex objects. It’s thought-provoking, and a strong indicator that we haven’t reached a post-feminist utopia.

So did Lopez ask how we can teach girls to respect their own bodies? How we can teach them that their existence is not defined by the opinions of the boys — or their own perception of what boys’ opinions will be? How we can help them through the period of adolescence when they’re most apt to see themselves in the worst possible light?

No, of course not.  KLo’s question is far less interesting:

This Washington Post piece on three 16-year-old girls shopping for bikinis in Tyson’s Corner is begging for a dad to be on the scene. Mom’s no help — one of them provides financial assistance because a teenage girl just has to have a bikini, you know. “Bikinis are more popular because they’re sexier. They draw a guy’s attention.” Where’s dad to just say no?

Because that would fix everything!  Yes, instead of being a teenage girl who’s concerned about her body and unsure about how boys view her, she’d be a teenage girl who’s concerned about her body and unsure about how boys view her, but with a dad who is making that even more difficult — and not by asking hard questions, but by simply saying, “No daughter of mine is going to be wearing a bikini!”

That solves nothing. That just leads to a girl buying a bikini and putting it on in secret, to a girl who is now not just concerned that boys view her as sexy enough, but that her father views her as too sexy — too much of a tramp. It doesn’t make her feel better. It makes her feel worse.

What these girls need is, frankly, what this article spurred, and what it hopefully will spur — discussion. Questions. Hard thinking. Consideration. That doesn’t mean they’re all going to put the bikinis back and wear surfer shirts, not this time around, because these things don’t always take root immediately. But the girl who realizes today that she’s more comfortable in a less revealing swimsuit is the girl who next year begins to recognize that society’s views of women are skewed, the girl who hits college and begins to study feminism in earnest, and begins to reshape herself into who she wants to be.

By letting her listen, and think, and learn her own lessons, she will grow up to be a woman who is able to come to her own decisions, and live her own life. A dad or mom who simply says “no” is not doing her any favors. That doesn’t mean there are never times when a parent should say “no” — there most certainly are. But those times are fewer at 16 than six, and swimwear, frankly, is not where the line needs to be drawn, not if that line is to mean anything.