And discovers the sinister plot to steal Glenn Beck’s precious bodily organs.

Is he crazy, or is he so sane he just blew your mind?

Krista at Muslimah Media Watch, in the first of a series reviewing the Globe and Mail’s “Behind the Veil” series (about about women in Kandahar, Afghanistan), begins by objecting to the title:

They could not have come up with a more clichéd title if they had tried, and there is absolutely no excuse for such a lack of creativity at such a big newspaper. To illustrate just how overdone this title is, a Google search of “behind the veil” (in quotes) gives about 569,000 results, including articles and books on women in Iran, “Western” journalists’ encounters with “women in conservative Islamic societies”, representations of Muslim women in Indian writings, an Australian woman’s experiences as a nurse in Saudi Arabia, prostitution in Iran, HIV/AIDS in Muslim countries, and even a BBC report from 2001 that also focused on Afghan women. The point is, it’s been done, ad nauseam, especially (but not exclusively) with regards to Muslim women, and “behind the veil” as a name is just plain lazy. Maybe that sounds harsh, but my frustration comes from having seen titles like this time and time again, and the implication that the only reason to pay attention to Muslim women is in order to de-veil them.

In addition to the lack of creativity is the message that this title sends, particularly to Afghan women: “The veil is the only thing that comes to mind when we think of you. It takes us a whole lot of effort to consider that, behind the clothing you wear, there might actually be real people worth talking to.” [...]

Listening to the journalist’s introduction, available in video form from the series’ website, and reading the foreign editor’s note explaining the rationale behind the series, I was struck by just how formulaic it all sounded. Afghan women are to be pitied, and Afghan men and/or culture are at the root of all of their problems. Oppression can be measured by how many layers of clothing women wear. Not that there aren’t problems for Afghan women, but the lack of complexity anywhere in the introduction surprised me.

There’s lots more at Krista’s post (including praising the Globe & Mail for being unusually open about their methodology); I’m looking forward to reading the rest of this series.

This is something I’ve read again and again; women’s activists in Afghanistan, and many other places, are sick of westerners focusing on what women wear as the leading indicator of Muslim women’s oppression. From an article about Sakena Yacoobi, an incredible women’s activist in Afghanistan:

Afghan women “wear hijab because they want to,” she stated. “Yes, there was a time during the Taliban that they had it wear [it], but now if they don’t want to, they don’t have it wear it.” When those outside of Afghanistan see the garb as oppressive and “want to teach us human rights, when they want to teach us democracy, when they want to teach us all these things, [it is] according to Western culture. And that is not right.”

There’s a lot Naomi Wolf says that I disagree with, but this statement (from Wolf’s Facebook) seems on target:

When you travel throughout the Muslim world, listening to women there, you often hear FROM WOMEN THEMSELVES more nuanced views of the headscarf, and of modest clothing, than you hear in the West; and — a point I cannot make often enough — when you actually listen to Muslim feminist or women’s leaders, many of them wish the West, with all its resources and potential for positive dialogue with the Muslim world, would focus its attention more on the life-and-death or survival-level challenges women and girls often face in Muslim countries - and in the developing world generally — from bride killings to legal subjugaton to lack of access to clean water and safety for their kids – than on what women are wearing, as if that is the only possible measure of their wellbeing.

I’m against anyone being forced to dress in a certain way — including using the government to force women and girls not to veil (1 2 3)– but this is not the primary issue facing Muslim women today.

(Many links via Fatemah’s link round-up.)

I have conservative friends who argue that it’s unfair of the left to paint them all as a bunch of tea-party-attending, Glen-Beck-listening yahoos. They argue that conservatism has a rich intellectual foundation, and that by cherry picking their worst-sounding supporters, we willfully ignore the writers today who uphold that intellectual foundation.

Writers like the folks at The National Review.

Writers like John Derbyshire¹.

Why do I bring this up? Well, its just that as Faiz Shakir points out over at Think Progress, John Derbyshire went on Alan Colmes’ radio show yesterday and took a stand against female suffrage.

DERBYSHIRE: Among the hopes that I do not realistically nurse is the hope that female suffrage will be repealed. But I’ll say this – if it were to be, I wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep.

COLMES: We’d be a better country if women didn’t vote?

DERBYSHIRE: Probably. Don’t you think so?

COLMES: No, I do not think so whatsoever.

DERBYSHIRE: Come on Alan. Come clean here [laughing].

COLMES: We would be a better country? John Derbyshire making the statement, we would be a better country if women did not vote.

DERBYSHIRE: Yeah, probably.

Okay, so that’s bad enough, but Alan Colmes, rightly gobsmacked by this, next asked

COLMES: What’s next, you want to bring back slavery?

DERBYSHIRE: No. No, I’m in favor of freedom, personally.

COLMES: But women shouldn’t have the freedom to vote?

DERBYSHIRE: Well, they didn’t and we got on along ok.

He goes on to argue against The Civil Rights Act of 1964. Of course.

Anyhow, all this illustrates two things for me.

First, it really perfectly encapsulates the strange sort of doublethink you see in conservative political philosophy all the time.

“We believe in individualism! (Just so long as you don’t have sex in ways we disapprove of.)”

“We believe in freedom! (As long as people who disagree with us are not allowed to vote.)”

“We believe in free speech! (But people who criticize the (Republican) president should watch their goddamn mouths.)”

You see this a lot in discussions about economics, where the argument is that government intervention and collective solutions are illegitimate (not just wrong, mind you), no matter how much of the electorate is in favor of them. You see it in the faux-troversies about President Obama’s legitimacy. You see it in Glenn Beck’s rhetoric about how ‘real Americans’ are opposed to President Obama, despite him having won the presidency by an overwhelming majority ². You see it in the analysis we hear every election about how “if it weren’t for the African-American vote, Democrats would be a permanent minority party³ ”

The central idea is this: If you disagree with them, you ought not be allowed to participate in the democratic process in the first place. I contrast this with the way the liberal ACLU operates, fighting for the free speech rights of white supremacists and the religious rights of fundamentalists, both groups who are not (to put it mildly) their ‘core constituency’.

‘Rights for all,’ versus ‘rights for the people who agree with me.’ That’s the difference.

Hell, John Derbyshire makes no bones about it! He says outright, “The conservative case against [female suffrage] is that women lean hard to the left.” That’s not an argument. That’s thuggery.

Anyhow, that’s the first thing I took from it.

The second thing I took away is that when people talk about the rich intellectual tradition of Conservatism, it’s guys like John Derbyshire they’re talking about, so … jeez … maybe they mean something different by ‘intellectual?’

Please do not comment unless you accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people

1. Who, as Andrew Sullivan ably documents, continues to believe that gay people are all child molesters. Or at least enough where we shouldn’t let them around our children, best to be safe, etc, etc, etc. (back)
2. And the Democrats having won both houses! (back)
3. Hey look, here’s an example or two from a while back. (back)

On the racial Bechdel test thread, we discussed my comic Hereville a little. Hereville, it was agreed, failed the racial Bechdel test (understandably, given the setting, I would say), but passes the “Jewish Bechdel test” and the original Bechdel test. Responding to this, Daran wrote that Hereville “fails the reverse gender Bechdel test - it doesn’t have two male characters who talk to each other about something other than a women.”

While Daran is technically correct — there is no conversation of any note or substance between male characters in Hereville – I think that to apply a “reverse Bechdel test” misses the point.

The Bechdel test asks if, in a movie (or graphic novel or whatever)

1) there are at least two named¹ female characters, who

2) talk to each other about

3) something other than a man.

The point of the Bechdel test, in my view, is not to criticize individual pieces of work. It’s to point out that movies in the aggregate are overwhelmingly centered around male characters and their interests. In an IM, Mandolin wrote:

The Bechdel test is something that’s only useful when applied in aggregate to a field. It is not diagnostic of sexism or racism in a particular work that it does not pass it, or diagnostic of anti-racism or feminism.

The test - gender and race - exists because of a system that removes women’s and poc’s voices. To create a reverse-Bechdel test implies that it’s coherent to suggest that there’s a mass problem with erasing men’s voices from work.

I think sexism against men does exist, including in media, and is a real issue. But I don’t think a “reverse Bechdel test” makes any sense, because sexism against men in media is not similar to the mass absenting of women as central characters, and that’s what the Bechdel test is designed to make visible.

To work, a male version of the Bechdel test should be simple to explain and apply. It should be more about pervasive, aggregate sexism than about individual works. And it should address real sexism against men, rather than just taking a knee-jerk “but what about the men?” attitude which, I suspect, underlay Daran’s comment about Hereville.²

The problem is, I’m not sure a reverse Bechdel test that has any substance is even possible. There certainly are sexist stereotypes about men in cinema; men’s lives are treated as disposable in many action films, for example, and men are sometimes depicted as unfeeling brutes. There’s a whole lot of comedies which endorse the “men just think with their penises” stereotype, or which present men as incompetent dorks who need to be taken care of by female characters.³

But are any of these really statistically pervasive, the way that movies which center men and male characters are pervasive? There are, after all, many movies which don’t feature scores of men dying offhandedly; plenty which don’t depict men as bestial or as thinking with their penises, and so on. The anti-male stereotypes exist, and they should be objected to, but they’re not omnipresent. In contrast, there really are amazingly few movies which can pass the Bechdel test.⁴

So I’ve been trying to think of a male equivalent to the Bechdel test, with no success. That said, maybe I’m missing something. If Daran, or someone else concerned with making sexism against men more visible, were to create a substantive yet simple and elegant test that pointed out sexism against men in movies, I’d certainly welcome that development.

1. In the original Bechdel test, “named” wasn’t a requirement; my poor memory accidentally added that bit later. (back)
2. Although maybe Daran was just joking, and the joke didn’t come off. (back)
3. The female characters, in turn, are presented as competent but also relegated to the less funny and central roles. As frequently happens, this is an instance where sexism against women and sexism against men is interlocking and interdependent. (back)
4. This is even more true if you try to apply the Bechdel test in a substantive way, versus the “loophole” way people often apply it — for example, saying a movie passes because of one ten-second scene. Of course, looking for loopholes is often fun, and I totally understand that, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the substance. (back)

The following advertisement aired on Israeli TV:

The following clip was filmed in Palestine:

Fantasy is a strange thing. (via Lenin’s Tomb)

I really have never understood the concept of the “hate fuck;” it’s way too close to rape in spirit, and…blech. I don’t judge what goes on in someone’s head, and as long as these thoughts stay in your head, fine, but still…yuck.

But going to the next level and actually writing an article naming conservative women you’d like to “hate fuck” is a whole ‘nother level of vile, and actually paying someone for that article is awful, even if you’re Playboy. I mean, I dislike Michele Bachmann as much as the next sentient being, but throwing out sexual fantasies about her while opining that she makes “chemical castration…look appealing” is odious beyond odious.

And it goes without saying that nobody’s written a hate-fuck list naming, say, Rick Santorum.

This is seven kinds of despicable, and it is a reminder that there are plenty of fauxgressives running around who somehow think one can be a good liberal and still hate women. One can’t. By all means, attack the politics of Malkin, Coulter, Ingraham and Bachmann. But do so by attacking their politics, not by asserting that their vaginas make them an inviting target for defiling.

Oh, and by the way, Hot Air, while I appreciate that you’ve discovered misogyny, you guys might want to also police yourselves. Arguing that liberal women aren’t hot is not the way to prove you’re sensitive to women.

Shep Smith appears to still have a soul:

For the YouTube impaired, Shep says, “We are America! I don’t give a rat’s ass if it helps. We are America! We do not fucking torture!”

It used to be that Smith’s comment would have been uncontroversial, even on a conservative station like Fox News. Oh, the profanity would have gotten him into trouble, I suppose, but the comment itself, or his comment in another segment that, “We are America, we don’t torture! And the moment that is not the case, I want off the train! This government is of, by, and for the people — that means it’s mine. That means — I’m not saying what is torture, and what is not torture, but I’m saying, whatever it is, you don’t do it for me! I want off the train when the government starts — I want off, next stop, now!” — that was just what America was, and everyone agreed on it.

Sadly, today we have the dead-enders arguing over whether there aren’t legitimate policy disagreements regarding torture, and whether we oughtn’t just sweep things under the rug, let a new day dawn and all that. Because for too many Americans, torture is A-OK.

Incidentally, a newly-spreading meme on the right is that if there are hearings into torture, things could get uncomfortable for some Democrats. To which I say: good. Those Democrats who signed off on torture are no less culpable than the Republicans who signed off on torture, and I have no sympathy for them. If Sen. Feinstein ends up in the dock alongside Gov. Bush and Secy. Cheney, I won’t shed any tears. You see, for me this isn’t a partisan issue; it’s a moral issue. Like Shep Smith, I want us either not to torture, or I want off the ride. Because pace the Republican mantra, I love my country, and love what it once stood for, even as I acknowledge that we often failed to live up to the standards we set for ourselves. And I hate like sin the fact that so many of the things I love about America were cast aside by the Bush Administration in a fit of paranoia and terror.

I knew Fox News was bad and wasn’t even really an actual journalistic television station, but this? Damn!

So as you may recall, Bill O’Reilly was invited by the Alexa Foundation to give a speech at a fundraiser. The Alexa Foundation is a group that supports rape survivors — a great cause — but the invitation to O’Reilly was odd at best, given that O’Reilly has, in the past, embraced a blame-the-victim approach to the crime of rape. So a variety of crazy lefties pointed that fact out, which seemed pretty reasonable, all in all.

One of the writers who followed the story was Amanda Terkel of ThinkProgress. She had the temerity to suggest that maybe, just maybe, someone who thinks a rape victim could be asking for it shouldn’t have been invited to address rape survivors.

O’Reilly responded in typically mature fashion:

This weekend, while on vacation, I was ambushed by O’Reilly’s top hit man, producer Jesse Watters, who accosted me on the street and told me that because I highlighted O’Reilly’s comments, I was causing “pain and suffering” to rape victims and their families. He of course offered no proof to back up this claim, instead choosing to shout questions at me.

Watters evidently followed Terkel for two hours, following her and a friend to a hotel, where they ambushed her. Terkel responded, it appears, as professionally as possible under the circumstances; O’Reilly’s producer, of course, was about as far from the standards of professionalism as is humanly possible.

I’d comment further, but Terkel already has the most sane response to these events:

The main issue remains: O’Reilly should offer an apology/explanation of why, when a woman is raped and murdered, it’s relevant what she was wearing or how much she was drinking. O’Reilly never asked me for a statement nor invited me on his show before sending Watters to harass me. Since I’m a 5 ft, 100 pound woman with an opinion that he doesn’t like, perhaps O’Reilly believes I deserve to be treated this way.

Bill O’Reilly is a bully and a stalker. He should never have been invited to headline an event for anyone, anywhere. Indeed, one can only hope that he will Go Galt someday; the world will be a better place without him in it.

(Via Shakesville.)

UPDATE: If you are familiar with the Facebook on the interwebs, you can lend your support there.

Not the best reporting I’ve encountered about the financial crisis — that would be an episode of This American Life — but an incredibly substantive discussion for TV. It’s pathetic that TV this good can seemingly only happen on a comedy show.

(If you need background on the Stewart vs. Cramer thing, watch the first two videos here.)

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald points out that the only thing unusual about Cramer, among media talking heads, is that Cramer expresses some contrition.

From FAIR:

Major newspaper, broadcast and cable stories mentioning healthcare reform in the week leading up to President Barack Obama’s March 5 healthcare summit rarely mentioned the idea of a single-payer national health insurance program, according to a new FAIR study. And advocates of such a system–two of whom participated in yesterday’s summit–were almost entirely shut out, FAIR found.

Single-payer–a model in which healthcare delivery would remain largely private, but would be paid for by a single federal health insurance fund (much like Medicare provides for seniors, and comparable to Canada’s current system)–polls well with the public, who preferred it two-to-one over a privatized system in a recent survey (New York Times/CBS, 1/11-15/09). But a media consumer in the week leading up to the summit was more likely to read about single-payer from the hostile perspective of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer than see an op-ed by a single-payer advocate in a major U.S. newspaper.

Over the past week, hundreds of stories in major newspapers and on NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and PBS’s NewsHour With Jim Lehrer mentioned healthcare reform, according to a search of the Nexis database (2/25/09-3/4/09). Yet all but 18 of these stories made no mention of “single-payer” (or synonyms commonly used by its proponents, such as “Medicare for all,” or the proposed single-payer bill, H.R. 676), and only five included the views of advocates of single-payer–none of which appeared on television. [...]

Though more than 60 lawmakers have co-sponsored H.R. 676, the single-payer bill in Congress, Obama has not expressed support for single-payer; both the idea and its advocates were marginalized in yesterday’s healthcare forum. But given the high level of popular support the policy enjoys, that’s all the more reason media should include it in the public debate about the future of healthcare.

I understand that single-payer has no chance in the current political situation — but that becomes a self-fufilling prophecy, not just for now but for the future, when the media refuses to discuss any policy that isn’t currently politically viable, regardless of its support among much of the general public and among many experts. I don’t want the media to go along with the political elites’ decision to ignore the public’s preference; I want the media to push against the political elite’s arbitrary boundaries of which policies are and aren’t worth discussing.

I think what this comes down to what journalism professor Jay Rosen says in this interview: “Savviness is the real idealogy of Washington journalism.”

it’s this notion that that might be a good argument, but that’s not what the committee is going to do, you know? And this kind of religion of - I call it a religion because it’s a faith - that if you’re savvy, that you are realistic, and again, you are vulnerable to irresponsible elites when you do that. You can cut yourself off from your naturally constituency which isn’t them, but an informed and engaged public.

Scholarship and public opinion both say that single-payer is a health care option that deserves serious consideration. But treating single payer seriously might make a journalist look naive — so they don’t.

Real men, it appears, drive Chevys:

A lot of commercials make sexist appeals to insecurity about masculinity, but this one is impressive because it’s just so pure. The Dodge Ram has a heated steering wheel! Manicures! Pro football players! Unstated but heavily implied: Drive Chevy or die a wimp, wimp!

I like to imagine the ad agency people sitting around, spitballing. “You know the problem? Men think they can be real men just by driving any old ludicrously oversized truck. We want to make them know that if you’re in the wrong ludicrously oversized truck, then you’re a girl.”

Curtsy: Sociological Images and Feministe.

Near the end of the sublime Ratatouille, bitter, jaded reviewer Anton Ego pens a column in which he explains that he was wrong about pretty much everything. After discovering that the most sublime meal he’s ever eaten was cooked by a rat, Ego says, in voiceover:

In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.

Citizen journalism, whether it comes from blogs or podcasts or streaming video or mimeographed pamphlet, is a testament to this idea. There are plenty of well-known and well-respected writers and journalists who didn’t come up through J-school, didn’t start life covering the Maplewood city council, didn’t go through any particular training, but found that they had a voice and an ability to cut through to the truth. Nowhere is this more true than in the world of punditry, in which people had been fêted for coming up with opinions and theories that may or may not bear any connection to reality.

But while an artist can come from anywhere, that does not — as Ego notes — mean that anyone can be good at a job. As anyone who’s read a big chunk of the blogosphere knows, there are a few brilliant bloggers, a bunch of good bloggers, a ton of passable bloggers, and a nearly infinite supply of terrible bloggers. Not everyone is cut out for the business of transmitting the news to people.

And that brings us to “Joe” the “Plumber,” Samuel Wurzelbacher, who has for reasons unknown to any humans been hired by Edsel Media to cover the Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip.

Now, I have experience in journalism. And I’ve been writing on the internets since 2002. I’ve appeared on national television and national radio. And while I’m far from an expert on Israeli-Palestinian relations, I at least have been following the issues for a while. And I can tell you flatly that nobody should send me to cover this conflict; I’m not qualified to do it. There are better people for the job. And yet if someone lost their mind and sent me to cover events there, I feel certain that I would be a combination of Stephen Crane, Sydney Schanberg, Joe Rosenthal, Lady Florence Dixie, and Morley Safer compared to Joe the Sideshow Freak:

There’s a lot there, but here’s the money graf:

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war. I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what’s happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I think it’s asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you’d go to the theater and you’d see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for ‘em. Now everyone’s got an opinion and wants to downer, ah, down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers.

I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, “Well look at this atrocity,” well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.

So basically, Joe doesn’t know diddly, except that really, when dealing with war, America and other nations are served best by receiving only propaganda and spoon-fed happy talk from the government.

I’d trash Joe, but really, it’s not his fault; he’s just expressing the certain strain of wingnut thought that dissent is bad, debate is negative, and that when our country goes to war it is our duty to simply shut up and go along with it, whether it’s a terrible idea or not.

Of course, he’s not expressing it particularly intelligently, but that’s what you get for sending a faux plumber to be a faux journalist.

The really amazing stuff starts at 3:44:

“It’s the möbius strip of issues! There’s only one side!”

As M.J. Rosenberg says, Stewart did something very brave here. Look, I think we all can agree that Hamas is a group of idiots, and sure, them shooting rockets is a bad, stupid, and evil thing. But Stewart dares to note that Israel hasn’t exactly been good to the Palestinians either. That there is, in fact, more than one side to the issue. And that both sides should get an airing.

For this, I’m sure he will be pilloried as being anti-Semitic, because despite being Jewish and having sung “Can I Interest You in Hanukkah?” Stewart clearly hates all Jews, because he has a nuanced view of what’s happening in the Middle East. As for me, I appreciate that at least one newscast dared to step up and note that we are getting just one side of this story. And I’m totally unsurprised that it’s The Daily Show

Glenn Greenwald lists Politico’s “Top 10 political scoops of 2008“:

(1) Katie Couric’s interview of Sarah Palin (CBS)

(2) McCain can’t say how many homes he owns (Politico)

(3) Obama’s “bitter” comment (Huffington Post)

(4) Sarah Palin’s shopping spree (Politico)

(5) Turmoil in the Clinton camp (Washington Post and Atlantic — “The behind-the-scenes tension was captured by the reporters in one memorable exchange: ‘[Expletive] you!’ Ickes shouted. ‘[Expletive] you!’ Penn replied. ‘[Expletive] you!’ Ickes shouted again.”)

(6) Jeremiah Wright tapes (ABC News)

(7) The Pentagon’s military analyst program (NY Times)

(8) Bickering in the McCain camp (NY Times Magazine)

(9) John Edwards’ affair (National Enquirer)

(10) Powell endorses Obama (Meet the Press)

Number seven is certainly an important story (and one that got virtually no coverage on TV), but the rest is… Well, as Glenn says,

In fairness to Calderone and his comrades in the political press, our media currently covers a country that has very few substantial problems and an administration that is renowned around the world for being competent, honest, conventional and quite uncontroversial. In general, countries which enjoy great tranquility, prosperity, and stability — such as the U.S. today — can afford the luxury of fixating on the types of fun and trivial stories which comprise the list of top “scoops” heralded by Politico.

It’s not that all of these stories were meaningless and not worth reporting. Palin’s difficultly answering simple questions — and what it implied about her readiness to step into the Presidency — was relevant knowledge for voters to have, for instance. And a lot of these stories are irresistibly fun. But it shouldn’t be on anyone’s “top ten scoops” list. It wasn’t a “scoop” that they deserve credit and praise for — Katie Couric didn’t work to ferret that story out. Someone just turned a camera on.

Meanwhile, there’s a lot of in-depth reporting about the election that didn’t happen — or that happened, but didn’t get picked up on in any consistent fashion. After all the debating talks about Afghanistan, how many Americans could find it on a map? How many Americans, after all this time, could even guess at if Iran’s government is Sunni or Shiite? How many know, even in broad outlines, the differences between McCain’s and Obama’s proposed health care plans are? There may also have been some torture going on somewhere, and maybe some war crimes covered up, and possibly a tiny twinge in our economic health, but you’d never know it from Politico’s top ten.

But of course, reporting like that won’t sell papers, or pull in eyeballs, the way simple and fun narratives will. I’m not sure that good reporting is possible, except in erratic sparks, in a profit-driven news model.

I’m sure many of you have seen this Onion article:

Area Man Saddened To Realize Short Jewish Women With An Interest In Theater His Type

CHICAGO—While reminiscing about his romantic past Monday, area resident David Simms was shocked and a little saddened to realize that short women belonging to the Jewish faith and possessing an active interest in the world of theater have always been, and will always be, his type.

“God, how did I never notice it before?” said Simms, taken aback by his unexpected discovery. “Rachel, Sarah, Devorah—Miss Katzenberg, the weekend director at the Israeli Arts Center—it’s all so obvious now.”

“Squat, theatergoing Jews,” added Simms, shaking his head in confused wonder. “I’m totally into squat, theatergoing Jews.”

Okay, there’s enough offensive stuff in here to warrant a whole other blog post - the humor in the article is all based on presenting Jewishness, shortness, and (implied) fatness as undesirable - but that’s not what caught my eye. Notice the wording in the first paragraph:

hile reminiscing about his romantic past Monday, area resident David Simms was shocked and a little saddened to realize that short women belonging to the Jewish faith and possessing an active interest in the world of theater have always been, and will always be, his type.

So Jewishness is clearly a matter of religion, right? Not ethnicity, race, or culture? Hmm. Take a look at these snippets from the rest of the article:

“I always just thought I liked brunettes, or was, you know, a ‘breasts’ man…. I’m going to fall madly in love and raise a beautiful family with a short, curly-haired theater buff….” As long as his date is at least half-Jewish, appreciates some form of live performance, and can be picked up off the ground with relative ease, Simms said, he would be willing to see where things go.

Despite the article’s initial implication that a Jewish identity is based solely on faith, it goes on to describe Jewishness in physical and genetic terms. Simply put, the article can’t help but contradict itself.

I bring this up because this exact contradiction has been around for decades and decades. Jews and non-Jews constantly fluctuate between religious and ethnic terms to describe Jewish identity - very often, as in this case, in the same publication. Hell, whenever I try to talk about my half-Jewish identity, or describe anti-Semitism in the context of broader systems of oppression, I can’t help but resort to terms like “biracial” and “racism,” even while I maintain that Jewishness isn’t a race. It’s not the fault of individual writers; the blame lies with an astonishingly limited vocabulary to describe our identity. Do I call myself “biethnic?” What elegant variation should this writer have come up with besides “belonging to the Jewish faith?” (The article uses “Jewish persuasion” later on, which is just as bad.) “Jewish culture,” maybe? I have a feeling that readers would have been mildly confused by that - and then gone off pick up a bagel and the latest Philip Roth novel.

(Also, I should note that I think “tiny, artsy” Jews are hot. Just sayin‘.)

(Cross-posted at Modern Mitzvot.)

Let’s face it, things are not going very well for right-wing radio these days. Rush Limbaugh has been reduced to a national laughingstock, while Sean Hannity is best known for simply repeating talking points handed to him by the RNC. Where is the innovation? The fight? The good ol’-fashioned hatred that will sustain the righties into a new era?

Well, my fellow Minnesotans can puff our chests up with pride, because we’ve got a budding right-wing radio superstar right here in our own backyard, broadcasting daily at KTLK-FM.

Minnesotans know KTLK as the radio station that made the head-scratching decision to abandon reasonable talk and go to an all-right-wing-nonsense-all-the-time format right before the collapse of the Republican party. With the aforementioned Limbaugh and Hannity, along with Jason “North Carolina is Infinitely Superior to Minnesota, What With its Low Taxes and Family Values, Which is Why I’m Getting the Hell Out of There and Coming Back to the Cities” Lewis, KTLK is the sort of radio dinosaur that would have been really popular in 1994, but now languishes down with KOOL-108 (the oldies station) in the ratings.

But Chris Baker aims to change all that. The new morning drive host and Texas import is making a name for himself nationally, and doing it the old-fashioned way: by saying crazy crap.

You may remember Baker from his previous assertion that basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson had faked testing positive for HIV, because as everyone remembers, in the early 1990s nothing was cooler than pretending to have AIDS. Now, most radio hosts would kill to have just one crazy statement like that, driving the ratings and whipping up conservative resentment of multimillionaire basketball players who have spent their retirement building up the poorer areas of Los Angeles through investment. But not Chris! No, he’s just getting started.

According to the George Soros-controlled Media Matters, in his brief time in Minneapolis Baker has:

• Said that the murder of transwoman Latiesha Green was the media’s fault, saying, “I believe the media and the rest of the enablers out there, they have this guy’s [sic] blood on their hands because they create this false sense of reality and they enable people who need serious psychological counseling.” Because nothing says Liberal Media Conspiracy like the argument that people should be able to live their lives without being shot.
• Said, “I don’t think homeless people should vote. Frankly. In fact, I have to be very honest. I’m not that excited about women voting, to be honest.” Honestly!
• Suggested his gal Sarah Palin “shoulda had a little cleavage going” during her debate with Joe Biden. (Thank goodness she didn’t, it could have killed Rich Lowry.) Baker continued to show the kind of not-sexism that the GOP showered upon their veep, saying “[S]how your stuff, you know what I’m saying? Use all your assets….By the way, I noticed a panty line on her. … When they turned to walk to the podium, I saw a panty line.”
• Said of Code Pink protesters, “I’ll tell you, though, in the speech — the best part of the speech was when those Code Pink nuts — another bunch that ought to have all their tubes tied. All right? I can’t stand these Code Pink broads.”
• Called Thomas Beatie, the transman who has become pregnant twice, a “mutilated lesbian.”
• And while he didn’t say it himself, he promoted a video of a pastor who called Barack Obama’s mother “trash” for having a child with a black man.

Heckuva guy, huh? He also, just for the record, argued for the use of ax handles and machine guns against RNC protesters who, as far as I can tell, broke a window at Macy’s and…well, that’s it. Misogynistic, transphobic, racist — I assume homophobic, since it really is part and parcel of that worldview.

Of course, Baker is hardly alone in using sexism and hate to sell his agenda — it’s pretty much expected on the right. But for a guy to do so much in such a short time…well, it’s inspiring to all the hatchet men and haters on the right. Baker has set a high bar for his fellow wingnuts to clear. And I shudder to think what he’ll do next. Because while I suspect Baker doesn’t believe half the stuff that comes out of his mouth, we all know that a lot of his listeners do — and Baker has given the thumbs-up to violence against women and transpeople, given the green light to attacking liberal protesters. He’s opened the door to a lot of hate and evil. But that’s what the best right-wing talkers do, now, isn’t it?

That’s gonna leave a mark. Hey, George, here’s a tip for the future: don’t just yammer about economic history when you’re sitting next to a Nobel laureate. Knowing your stuff works a lot better.