Wednesday, February 25, 2004
This CNN article quotes Candace Gingrich pointing out that one million self-identified gay and lesbian voters voted for Bush in 2000, according to exit polls. Enshrining second-class status for gays in the Constitution is a bigger declaration of war than Republicans have ever made against blacks and Jews, for example, and 90% of those groups traditionally vote Democrat. It's not inconceivable that this announcement could drive the gay percentage that high; if so, Bush would lose 600,000 gay votes. (Going from 25% to 10%.) And let's not count the Republican parents and siblings of gays who might think this is going too far.Karl Rove (who probably doesn't believe the exit polls, but let's pretend he does) always talks about how there were three million Evangelical voters who stayed home in 2000 that he thinks he can convince to go out and vote this time. Presumably the Evangelical voters who feel most strongly about gay marriage voted last time, so now we're trying to get the laziest dregs out to vote. If this announcement convinces only one in 5 of those Evangelicals to get off their holy asses and vote, Bush will come out ahead. I wonder if it can do that; it's pretty hard to get nonvoters excited about voting: Back in 1992 everyone in college was gaga over Clinton and the turnout among under-21s blipped up by only a tiny amount. Not enough young people remembered Clinton talking about his underpants and playing sax on Arsenio enough to create a real groundswell - will the Fundies remember it this time?
They are certainly more likely to remember if Bush harps about it all the time between now and November. It seems to me that the more people talk about gay marriage, the less they like it. I think part of this is because of incidents like what's going on in San Francisco: when gays seem like harmless relatively normal people (like harmless and TV-normal Will and Jack, pre-adoption Rosie and various santizied homosexual sidekicks in recent films) straight people don't get excited. But when we seem pushy, like the San Franciscans lining up for useless marriage licenses, they get mad. Bush probably has to keep this in the public eye in order to make it pay off, and I'm more than a little worried that gays and lesbians are going to make it very easy to do so.
Just wait until the the March reopening of the Massachusetts Legislature, upcoming arguments in front of California courts, the possibility that New Jersey's Supreme Court might follow Massachusetts, and oh wait, don't gays get really excited and flamboyant at the end of every June? Just as sure as you can see Laura Bush's face scotch taped to the face of a Carmelite habit, you can bet Bush will be pilloried from Fifth Avenue to Castro Street the last weekend in June. And then, hey, aren't the Republicans having their convention in New York City, where you can't swing your purse without smacking a gay guy in the face? And then, damn, didn't those idiot Democrats put their convention in useless, gay-loving Boston rather than fun, gay but other things going on LA or New York? It's going to be a fun year.
posted by J. --link--
As usual, the Midwest seems to be the most reasonable part of the country on gay marriage. The LA Times talks about a poll in Missouri that shows majorities against gay marriage and a slight majority for the amendment (OK, so Missouri is a little more conservative than, say, Minnesota or Hawaii) but the people they interview mostly sound very reasonable about the whole thing. They also don't think it's an important issue.
This seems likely to me to fire up a few Republicans and get some Democrats angry, and it should further divide the social conservatives in the Republican party from the old-line Republicans who don't want to be seen as Bible-thumpers. But I guess I don't think it's likely to remain a swing issue.
One thing that worries me a little: people didn't have strong opinions about going to Mars again, or about allowing illegal immigrants a few years of legal protection in the country, and no one understood the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Gay marriage is a deceptively simple issue to most people, and everyone in this article has an opinion. For that reason I think it might be easier for the Republicans to get some traction out of it, but they'll run the risk of looking like the bigots they are, rather than the decent moderate people they pretend to be if they try.
posted by J. --link--
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
So I was just checking out Marilyn Musgrave's website. She's the Congresswoman from Colorado who wrote the Marriage Amendment Bush endorsed today. Here are the websites of Colorado's representatives. Two of them (DeGette and Udall) are Democrats, the other five are Republicans. Interestingly, DeGette and Udall both have articles on their websites about gay marriage: DeGette saying she was at a rally supporting gay marriage, and Udall opposing the new amendment. None of the five Republicans have anything about gay marriage on their front pages.
What this means to me is that this stupid amendment is likely to be treated pretty much the same by Democrats across the country: regardless of whether they publicly support gay marriage or not, they don't want to amend the Constitution to ban it forever. But Republicans have to tread a finer line here: they probably are opposed to marriage, but don't want to look like bigots. That is, the Democrats can hide their pro-marriage views behind a reluctance to amend the Constitution, but Republicans hvae to go all the way: amend the Constitution or alienate the Christian right that thinks this is the most important issue out there.
So far everything Bush has done in the last few months to resurrect his popularity has backfired: sending people to Mars, providing additional protection to illegal aliens, promising a few million more jobs that will never materialize, the new Medicare drug benefit. . .I could go on. I'm inclined to think this amendment will be the same way: there aren't that many votes he'll get from people just waiting for the leadership to do this, but it does kind of look intolerant. I don't think there are 67 votes in the Senate for this, and I know there are 13 state legislatures that won't support this. Bush must know that, too, so I wonder what he's thinking.
posted by J. --link--
Today's a pretty sad day for anyone who cares about anyone gay or lesbian - the day our President supports enshrining second class status for our relationships in the Constitution. Here is the Republican party's press release on the subject. Here is the Democratic party's press release on Bush's announcement, which went up a few hours earlier. Any questions?
posted by J. --link--
Friday, February 20, 2004
Are you Yankee or Dixie? Take this test and find out. I was a "definitive Yankee". There were a few where I said the Northeastern word instead of the Great Lakes word even though, really, it just doesn't get any more Great Lakes than Buffalo. And I couldn't remember if I said "water fountain" or "drinking fountain" growing up. They both sound right to me. But they're sneakers, not tennis shoes, and cot and caught don't rhyme.
posted by J. --link--
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Chad, the country in West Africa, not the frat guy you met a few years ago, is now producing oil. This is the first time the international community has ever tried to ensure that oil money isn't wasted. No one knows how it's going to turn out. People probably have unrealistic expectations: Chad is not going to become Dubai overnight. If things go well, Chad (where the average income is a hell of a lot less than the $1000 a year this article says) might have some decent roads and better schools than it has now. If they're very lucky, they could become Botswana, which has decent universal health care and primary education, but it still not as rich as, say, Turkey, South Africa, or Peru.
posted by J. --link--
Thursday, February 12, 2004
This is such a nice article about playing hockey outside in Canada. It talks about where hockey came from and compares how Canadians see hockey to how Americans see baseball, and I think explains pretty clearly why people who grew up in the Frozen North find it bizarre that people in places like Texas and Florida want to play the game.
It also talks about a seventh-grader singing Oh, Canada and the Star Spangled Banner before games. For some reason singing both of those before any sporting event makes me homesick.
posted by J. --link--
Maybe there are some gay and lesbian people out there who aren't following what's going on in Massachusetts. These people are crazy - the debate over whether and how to amend the Massachusetts Consitution in response to their Supreme Court decision has got to be the biggest legislative debate ever in America on gay issues. There's only one openly gay or lesbian member in the Legislature, Jarrett Barrios. He spoke for the first time today:
"Now I'm biased and you're all thinking that. He is up there because he is gay. In fact I am the first person to speak on this who is directly affected by this. I'll admit it," said Barrios, who recently adopted two children with his partner of 10 years. "Don't believe those who tell you that just defining marriage between a man and a woman will not hurt your gay and lesbian friends, your family members, your neighbors and your colleagues, because it will."
What can you say to that? By June, thousands of same-sex couples from all over America will be legally married - even if the Legislature approves an amendment - and the whole legal battle of overturning the Defense of Marriage Act will start. Massachusetts is the first laboratory where a legislature elected by reasonable human beings will be debating this right. How can you not be interested?
The Boston Globe has terrible internet links, but here's the article I got that quote from.
posted by J. --link--
So I said I would do postings for Black History month and I've been remiss. Here's one for today.
CNN has an article about black history in Washington. I live about two blocks from the African American Civil War Memorial (sidebar: Is "U Street/Cardozo/African-American Civil War Memorial" the longest name for a subway stop anywhere in America? I thnk so) and people in DC talk about my neighborhood as if it had once been Harlem or Bronzeville. Which is great. Now open a grocery store.
But here's an interesting tidbit about the AACWM:
The district is also home to the African American Civil War Memorial. The 15-foot bronze statue features the images of black troops and sailors as well as so-called contraband slaves liberated by union forces during the war. Stainless steel plaques are inscribed with the names of 209,145 soldiers and 19,000 sailors who served with Union forces.
"Virtually every black family in the United States has a name on this wall," said Frank Smith, executive director of the African American Civil War Museum.
There sure were a lot of blacks living down South in the 1860s who didn't fight in the war, and whose descendants probably haven't married into Northern families. But it's a striking statement: plenty of non-black Americans don't even have ancestors who were in the U.S. in the 1860s. If you can trace your whole family back to Ellis Island, no one you're descended from fought in the civil war. If you're (part or whole) Asian or Latino, it's even less likely.
That's certainly something most Americans don't think about, so I guess I'm glad there's a memorial to black Civil War veterans in Washington. Now, write to our city government and tell them how much you'd like to come see the memorial, but only if they build a nice big grocery store nearby.
posted by J. --link--
Where I work is probably one of the most diverse workplaces you can work: lots of people from all over the world in all kinds of positions. (Though of course we have the usual problems of overrepresentation of men and some ethnicities at the top.) I've been in environments like this long enough that I don't particularly care one way or the other (frankly I think it would be nice to work with all Americans just once in my life so I'd have someone to talk about TV with) but one thing does irritate me about it. With all these surnames from all over the world, how can it possibly happen that there's another guy with the same first and last name as me, and yet another guy with the same last name whose first name is my middle name?! It's unbelievable. It really makes me wish my last name were Rawangpha, or Seriategui, or Tshabalala. Misdirected email. Opening the wrong paychecks. Christmas cards from people I've never heard of. Digital camera photos from the holiday party of smiling people I've never seen before. Plane tickets to Eritrea mysteriously appearing in my mailbox. And today I went to a meeting that had been cancelled, but the wrong Rungu had been informed.
Just as well, since I thought this meeting was tomorrow, and I have another at 1030.
posted by J. --link--
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Where does jargon come from? I was just reading a document (by which I mean "paper") that talks about "enhancing the results focus" of reports. Why does a person decide to write "enhance the results focus" instead of saying "be candid about successes and failures?" Even that must sound bureaucratic to people who, unlike me, don't write stuff like that every day. There are a number of jargonistic phrases I refuse to use at work, and I'm going to add "enhance" to the list.
posted by J. --link--
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Well this seems to explain why I saw Wes Clark on TV so much during the last week or two saying "I'm Wes Clark, and I support this ad." Apparently there's a new law that requires candidates to personally vouch for ads they air. From the LA Times:
One possible limitation on the president's TV campaign is a new law that requires candidates to personally vouch for the content of their ads on air. Advisors acknowledged that they were carefully weighing whether and how to put Bush's voice and image into an ad that would attack a Democrat.
That's interesting. I wonder how far this goes - Kerry won't want to go on saying he supports an ad that attacks Bush, but the Democrats have a lot more money in 527s that can say whatever they want.
posted by J. --link--
Sometimes I think I could write a daily blog just finding bits that make me laugh in the newspaper. Here is a New York Times travel article about Veracruz, in Mexico, and it has this priceless paragraph:
In Veracruz, the gossipy morning newspaper, El Dictamen, had an old-fashioned typeface and left smudges of black ink on my palms. It cost 4 pesos (about 50 cents), but the headlines were priceless. "There was something for everyone at the Candelaria Festival!" read an exuberant article on a country fair that featured the running of the bulls in a neighboring town. "Music! Mistreatment of Bulls! Happiness! Wounded!"
I love over-the-top Latin American newspapers. When I was in Guatemala in May the front page of a respectable paper had a huge glossy article on what to do if you were carjacked, including campy graphics that looked like they were straight out of Ready.gov.
posted by J. --link--
Monday, February 09, 2004
You know what the worst thing in the world is? Idly reading something at work, clicking on a link without thinking about it, and having something pornographic (or at least prominently featuring unclothed people who aren't Janet Jackson) appear. This is why I usually work with my office door closed.
No, I'm not posting the site this happened from. Blog yes, but not a sleazy one.
posted by J. --link--
I think the Democrats will probably win in November. There. I've said it. I've thought this for a year, since it has always seemed to me that Bush's opinion poll ratings go in one direction (down) unless something big affects us from outside: 9/11, then the Iraq invasion, then the capture of Saddam Hussein. So far these things have tended to happen just when his approval rating gets to 50 percent or so. (I'm not saying he caused 9/11, scheduled the war, or hid Saddam until this happened.)
The flip side of that is that nothing he has done on domestic policy has caused people to like him more than they did when he became President. He cut taxes for the middle class. He introduced national educational testing. He ended a death tax Americans mysteriously think they would otherwise have had to pay. He expanded Medicare coverage. He's actually done quite a lot, and it seems people really don't seem to like it. (I actually don't mind some of those things, but I don't like the way he did any of them.)
So I'm jinxing myself today because I saw this on Gallup.com. Bush is behind Kerry in a who-will-you-vote-for horse race. Tthe only time this has happened to an incumbent since Gallup has been asking was 1976, when Ford was behind Carter by only two points (Bush is behind by seven) and Carter went on to win. You do the math.
But it makes sense, right? He got 500,000 fewer votes than Gore. Certainly the three million or so people who voted for Nader don't like him. His main achievements are the tax cuts, which have coincided with employment stagnation, and an invasion of Iraq that he sold under terms that now seem to have been shakier than they originally were. And on top of that, his administration is seen as having gone far to the right on so many issues that it's not surprising that they're losing the center.
I'm not saying it's definite that the Democrats will win: if Osama Bin Laden is captured on Halloween, they have no chance. And maybe employment will pick up suddenly in the first half of the year (no one seems to know why it's flat, so maybe it will). Maybe he will end up supporting a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage just as the country decides that it's had enough of those uppity homosexuals. But if the economy keeps chugging along at 4 percent growth and none of it is going into new jobs, and Iraq continues to calm down only slowly and we still have troops there in October occasionally being killed, I really wonder how he can win. Maybe with that $100 million he has in his pocket, but it seems to me that people eventually start tuning out negative advertising, and postitive advertising for him will just grate on people if they don't like him.
So sue me on November 3rd when Bush wins in a landslide. But I have to say, as it stands today, I really don't see how he'll pull it off.
posted by J. --link--
All us Bluestaters are writing to CBS to complain about not airing that MoveOn ad. I didn't put their suggested blog code because I'm not that much of a joiner.
But I did write to CBS, because apparently they still refuse to air the ad (why not?) and because after cancelling the Reagans, I think they deserve a little bit of left wing heat. So here's my letter:
If you're not going to air a MoveOn ad during the Super Bowl because it's "controversial", why air an ad supporting the President's Medicare policy during prime time? Isn't that "controversial"? Are the feelings of Super Bowl viewers that much more sensitive than the population as a whole?
You knew this was coming if you refused to air an a relatively harmless political ad during the Super Bowl. Especially after you then air ads with crotch-biting dogs and break the long-standing taboo on the phrase "an erection that lasts more than four hours". Those aren't controversial? Tiffany network my fanny. Bill Paley must be spinning in his grave.
I'm only 31 years old, but keep this up and by the time I'm old enough to be in your prime demographic, I'll make the nurse change the channel to Rupert Murdoch's Fox. In the meantime, I don't see much reason to watch Survivor or Letterman this week.
Here's the address if you'd like to write, too: newmediasales@cbs.com
On MoveOn's page, they caution prospective writers that Brevity is the soul of wit. I love that. No one wants to be responsible for four pages of hand-pointing sent out by earnest liberals. Conservatives have their heartfelt letters to the editor riddled with homespun wisdom, historical inaccuracies and hokey misspellings, liberals have their outraged and outsized harangues with vapid calls to arms and irritating, pointless rhetorical questions like "what if you were a Thanksgiving Day turkey?" Ah, politics.
posted by J. --link--
Thursday, February 05, 2004
Since I mostly read the New York Times, I end up reading a lot more about New York than I probably should. But the ongoing navelgazing about a shopping mall in Columbus Circle is kind of interesting Even The Robot wrote about it.
I can't decide if I find it entertaining or just irritating, but the self-absorption of the discussion about this mall is one of those things. A mall in a city! What an idea! Have any of these people been to the Prudential Center in Boston (ADM has - he used to live there) , the San Francisco Center (or whatever it's called, with the swirly escalators), or, hello, all of downtown Chicago? I think Chicago is the best example of this - there are four or five decent sized, six storey vertical malls there and it's pretty unremarkable. Maybe it's partially because shopping in Chicago in the winter is miserable, so people are glad to have malls, but shopping in New York in the winter is no picnic, so I'm surprised New Yorkers don't have the same reaction.Part of it I think is New Yorkers' devotion to the idea that anything that smacks of the suburbs is wrong. Most New Yorkers moved there from somewhere else (many from countries without suburbs, I suppose) and rejecting the life you left behind is probably more a part of the New York experience than, say, the Chicago experience, which I think has more to do with eating and beer. I don't think there's anything wrong per se with a city shopping mall - it's kind of nice in Chicago that along a one mile strip of Michigan Avenue you have a huge variety of stores (I think it's better than either Madison or Fifth, but maybe not both put together) some of which are stacked on top of each other. And Michigan Avenue has movie theaters and decent restaurants affordable to mortals, which 5th and Madison in the 50s do not have.
Anyway, but if the opposition is to the narrow confines of the mall, or the upscale shopping and its impact on the neighborhood, well those are maybe more of a problem. But people like to shop, malls are a convenient way to do it, and it's not like New York is ever going to lack for public spaces where people can complain and not fit in (my major objection to privatized shopping spaces) so I don't see any harm in it so far.
posted by J. --link--
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
How odd is this. The Washington Times has an article about how conservative students at liberal campuses like Colorado Boulder feel ostracized and ridiculed, and now David Horowitz wants to pass a law banning discrimination on the basis of political views in hiring.
The article is couched in terms that compare it to gays and lesbians: the students are having a "Coming Out Day" to draw attention to the fact that they're forced to hide by a mostly liberal faculty and student body.
This is so ironic it's nauseating. Their solution to a dilemma they obviously see as analogous to what gays and lesbians face is to do exactly what gays and lesbians do: try to redress discrimination through laws. So you'd think these students would then be a little more understanding of what 17 year old lesbians go through, right? Don't count on it.
When teenage Republicans start committing suicide because their parents try to cure their Republicanism through electroshock therapy, and when Democratic politicians and leaders talk on TV about how Republicans brought hurricanes, AIDS, and September 11 upon the rest of us, and most importantly, when some scientist shows that Republicanism is a heritable trait, rather than a political conviction, then I won't be offended by that comparison. In the meantime, think of your own damned metaphors and stop stealing ours.
posted by J. --link--
My blog has an African name, and even though Maasai people aren't really African-American, I'll give something back and have occasional postings over the next few weeks in honor of Black History Month.
So here are links to census data going back to Independence that include data on slaves. I took the 1860 census and divided the number of slaveowners by the number of families in each state in the country. (This statistic is likely to overestimate the percentage of slaveowning families, since there may be two or more slaveowners in a household, but the pattern holds up under other assumptions.) By 1860 slavery was gone from most of the country: the census records 6 slaveowners in Nebraska, 2 in Kansas, and none anywhere else in what I'd think of as the North. But in the South, more people owned slaves than you might think. In Missouri and Maryland, which certainly aren't deep South today, slaveowners accounted for about 12.5 percent of households. The percentage was between 20 and 30 in Louisiana, Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas. In Florida, Alabama and Georgia it was about 1/3, and in South Carolina and Mississippi, almost one-half.
The real number you'd want to see if the number of free households that owned slaves. I'm sure that's available somewhere, but not on this convenient census website. The Peculiar Institution lays out those numbers, though, and I think they're only a little lower than what I have here.
What I think is important about those numbers is that people pretend that slavery was something that a few rich people in Georgia and Louisiana were involved in, and that most people were hard-working middle-class farmers who had no truck with slaveowners. But it's not really true. The distribution of income was worse in the early 19th century than now, so most people would have been pretty poor, and they didn't own slaves. But in places like Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Alabama, middle-class people did own slaves.
That, I think, is the biggest difference between slavery here and slavery in, say, Latin America or the Middle East: in a free and upwardly mobile society, someone who worked hard and did well could someday own a slave or two to help out at harvests and planting, and rent out to other farmers the rest of the year. (Slaves were seen as an asset in the 19th century: if you bought someone, the money he made if you rented him out was yours.) Was it like that anywhere else? Would regular people in the South have fought as hard as they did during the Civil War if they didn't think they'd someday have a chance to own slaves?
And on the other side, imagine being a slave in a place where slaveowning was a run of the mill middle-class preoccupation. When freedom finally came, how could you identify with your poor, white neighbors? Not only had they fought to keep you in chains during the war, but probably most of them hoped someday to own you, or your wife, or children.
And people wonder why there were such racial problems in the South in the late 19th century. Just looking at the prevalence of the instutition explains a lot, if you ask me.
posted by J. --link--
Monday, February 02, 2004
Having scanned the blogs I read regularly, I've come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of blogs: those that have written about J*net J*ckson's right breast, and those that have not.
I am not proud to say which side I have fallen on.
posted by J. --link--
So far this is the best bit I've read about the J*net J*ckson uproar. From the NYT of course, where sarcasm in the course of criticism is a cherished technique:
The N.F.L. was apparently put off by much of the MTV halftime show, not just Ms. J*ckson's uninvited breast. And one can understand the league's confusion. Does anyone who loves the CBS hit "Everybody Loves Raymond" enjoy watching the hip-hop singer Nelly repeatedly grab his crotch, as he did in the halftime show? (Viacom, like Gaul, is divided into at least three very different parts).
But if the N.F.L. was really so shocked and appalled, why didn't it flinch at the Cialis advertisement that promised men 36 hours of relief from impotence, then warned that if they should experience an erection for four hours straight, they should seek "immediate medical care"?
All this hue and cry about J*net J*ckson's Solar Nipple Medallion, yet nothing about explicit advertising for a drug that's mainly used for recreational purposes.
posted by J. --link--
Assuming John Kerry gets the nomination, and everyone now seems to be, I wonder who he'll nominate for Vice President. Probably John Edwards, who I don't like. Washington's Governor, John Locke, endorsed Kerry today, and I like him. He delivered the rebuttal to the State of the Union last year, and the Legal Counsel and I both thought he did a good job. The Democrats now seem to have quite a few governors who would make decent Presidential candidates someday (so why not vice presidential candidates now). Ever since I read that Howard Dean offhandedly mentioned Janet Napolitano as a possible VP nominee, I thought she would be a good idea: the Democrats need to increase their support in the Southwest, she's a moderate Democrat in a fast-growing and still pretty conservative state, and hey, she's an Italian-American woman, and we've only done that once before.
Today she wrote an Op-Ed piece in the Times about what the Democratic candidates should do to win people over in her state. There were other pieces about South Carolina and Missouri that were written by reporters and show it. JN's piece is written by a politician, though and it also shows it, except for the striking fact that she doesn't say anything about national security.
That's probably going to be a problem for the Dems in November, though less of one than if Dean were the nominee. As much as I like Locke, Tom Vilsack (governor of Iowa), Bill Richardson (governor of New Mexico - talked about back in 2000 but there were all these scandals when he was Energy Secretary that should now be old news) or Napolitano, this probably isn't the election where the Democrats should go with a demographically expansive ticket, like they did in 2000. As one of my neighbors (a lifelong union activist) said, they should go with the most macho ticket possible. I can't imagine Wes Clark taking the nomination or being Vice President, but Anthony Zinni or Eric Shinseki (I'm just assuming they're both Democrats - neither of them seem to like the Bush administration, and that was enough for Clark to become a Democrat) might not be too bad. But if they're seen as too apolitical, and Kerry has enough military experience to cover a good VP nominee, I think we could do a lot worse than Richardson or Napolitano.
posted by J. --link--
Sunday, February 01, 2004
So, since everyone I know was obviously watching the Super Bowl, I have a question. The bit at the end of the halftime show where Justin Timberlake ripped off half of J*net J*ckson's brassiere revealing her right breast on national television - was that planned? CBS - the network of Murder, She Wrote and Matlock - is now going full frontal? It sure seems unlikely.
Update: I guess it was intentional. Until he takes it down in probably fifteen minutes, here's Drudge's take on it. For my more tender readers, Ms Jackson's anatomy was not fully revealed: it was partially covered with a tassel.
posted by J. --link--
