Lucky White Girl

Bush or Batman?

Reality TV

I don't usually write about TV because I don't get to see much of it.  Most of the time I don't have a TV in the house and when I do (like now) we don't have cable, which limits the options so much the only thing I watch is old reruns of The Simpsons. 

But I know there is a lot of good non-junky television with good stories and complicated, intriguing characters. 

The Sci-Fi channel's Dr. Who is impressive.  Grey's Anatomy has a realistically diverse cast of characters that doesn't leave you wondering where all the non-white people are (just where all the non-supermodel people are!).  Monk is cute and quirky and light without being unconvincingly shallow.  And then there's the AMC's Mad Men which has been getting rave reviews and is opening its second season tonight.  There's something irresistible about Mad Men.

Mad Men, if you haven't seen it, is about a certain kind of life for a certain kind of people during the 60s.  Set in the high-stakes world of the advertising industry of New York City, it doesn't just do its duty to include the realities of sexism and racism of the times, it goes out of its way to luxuriate in them.

Compare this to so many movies and TV shows about times past that apply a more evolved 21st century consciousness to gloss over the problematic aspects of previous eras and make sure that a contemporary audience will feel comfortable with it.  This is understandable.  We want to see images of people in this country during previous decades NOT acting in ways that would make us cringe today, just as we want to see images of the good Germans who resisted the hateful antisemitism of the Nazis.

But the hard truth is that most people back then didn't.

And ultimately the lie that these sorts of movies promote is that it's easy to resist the pull of racism and sexism of the society you're surrounded with if you just have a good moral character.

It doesn't work that way.  Resistance doesn't just happen and it doesn't just come out of the blue.  It always has a context. 

I'm not saying that EVERY story of times past has to show characters that surrender to the forces of the society around them because it's more honest.  Some of my favorite stories are about characters who do that (e.g. Ursula Hegi's Stones from the River about a young woman in 1930s Germany who resisted the moral decay that surrounded her).  But I am saying that this shouldn't be presented as the norm.  Because it wasn't.  To suggest that it was is to underestimate or under-represent the power of the human capacity for evil. 

Mad Men is so alluring because it doesn't do that.  It doesn't indulge or coddle us.  If you were white and middle to upper class during the 1960s, this was your world.  And if you were part of that world you were almost invariably white and middle to upper class.  And it's a very accurate description of what that world was like back then.  You didn't see people of color.  Men really were patronizing and condescending towards women.  Sexual harrassment at work was painfully common and accepted.

Yes it makes a 21st century audience cringe.  Thank goodness it does.

Impeach now. We can do it!

Kucinich will introduce articles of impeacment again THIS FRIDAY!  We need to support him!

Veterans for Peace has kicked off an intensive 7 day campaign here in DC to urge support for this effort.

FOR THE NEXT 7 CRITICAL DAYS CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN AND DEMAND IMPEACHMENT. If they are for impeachment have them push the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Rep Conyers, to act now. We need as many calls, emails and letters as possible before July 25th. GET YOUR FRIENDS AND NEGHBORS TO CALL.

If you are able come to Washington, DC, July 24th will be an impeachment lobbying day where we will personally visit Congressmen demanding impeachment. On July 25th we will attend a Judiciary Committee Hearing, and then meet with Rep. Conyers.

CALL 202-224-3121 for the house switchboard and LEAVE A MESSAGE FOR YOUR OWN CONGRESSMAN TO IMPEACH. Find your Congress Member by ZIP Code.

Sign the petition.

One. Big. Union.

Well you wait too long to write an article and eventually someone else will beat you to it.  I've been thinking of writing something about the new relevance of the IWW in an era of globalization but I just found this article by independent journalist Dick Meister.  It's really good:

Although first voiced 160 years ago, "Workers of the World Unite!" is one of the most important messages that the unions of today are likely to hear. As President Andy Stern of the Service Employees Union says, Marx' message "isn't ideological anymore. It's practical."

We really need to get this message out.  Until we realize this we're always going to be pitting workers in one country against workers in another and all of us (except the owners and corporate big-wigs) will lose. 

As former labor leader and U.S. Under Secretary of Labor Jack Henning is quoted in the article "Global unionism is the answer to global capitalism. There is no other answer."

A bit bored... more research please!

I just twittered about this but think it maybe deserves a blog post because I know I have a few readers who like the bits of autobiography that come out here from time to time. Here's what I'm thinking lately:

I feel a bit guilty.  I love the organization I work for but I'm already a bit bored with "Communications Coordinator".  (I guess this is why you're not supposed to hire over-qualified people, right?) 

I want to do more substantive work.  Less tech stuff/web development stuff, more research.  I could do more research if they needed me to.  I mean, I do have this graduate degree and I hear that's supposed to mean I can, you know, maneuver my way around source material.  They've talked about putting out reports like what Human Rights Watch does.  Maybe I could do that.  That would make me happy.  Otherwise I'm starting to wonder how long I would stay at a job like this no matter how much I love them.

Today for example I spent the day going through news stories, filing them, distributing them to those who might be interested and then compiling a news roundup post for our blog.  (Granted, this normally this wouldn't take me all day but I've been out of the office for awhile and had a backlog.  Plus I had a 2 hour dentist appointment this afternoon).  Anyway that's one of my typical days for me.  The other typical day for me is pitching which just requires me to pull out my extroverted vivacious bubbly side and the third typical day for me involves spending a lot of time honing my web development skills on our Joomla site. 

Not that I'm complaining.  At least I get to write a lot.  And I get to write big picture stuff.  I have to understand what everyone in the organization does and what they work on so I can write about it.  I get to write about pesticides and the EPA and I get to write about guest-worker programs and immigration and labor rights.  It's good stuff.

But I want more.  Let me work on a report or something.  On guestworker programs or immigration reform. 
Something.  Maybe I'll talk to my boss about it when he gets back from this conference.

Cyclist killed in DC

I'm so angry!  This is so unfair!  Cycling is such a beautiful gentle way of moving through the world.  It makes me really, really angry when CARS run us over! 

I just found out that a girl was killed this morning biking to work (she worked at a non-profit --I would've liked her).  A fucking garbage truck ran her over.

This blogger reflects my sentiments exactly and turned me on to this site: Yield to Life.  We have to do more to raise awareness of non-cars on our nation's roadways. Tell. Everyone.  The cyclist you save might be someone you know!

Were the Colombian hostages ransomed, not rescued?

Were the hostages in Colombia really ransomed?  Swiss public radio is reporting that the FARC were paid millions for their release.  In other words, that wasn't a rescue, it was a ransom.  If true this would be really interesting. 

The rescue version of the story, is believable, even if unusual.  The Colombian army doesn't normally opt for non-violent methods in their rescue attempts (their rescue attempts usually involve lots of shooting and the hostages usually end up dead which is why kidnapped people in Colombia almost always ask NOT to be rescued!).   But a whole new modus operandi for the military is not unthinkable, especially since despite unprecedented new international support from Venezuela and Ecuador, the FARC seems quite weak these days and have been suffering some setbacks lately.  With the death of long-time leader Manuel Marulanda (aka Tirofijo, Sureshot) some say the oldest guerrilla group in the country is in decline.  I could see some commanders fucking up like this and would expect to find that those deemed culpable by the FARC higher-ups will pay a very dear price for it, if they haven't already.

But the theory that this wasn't a happy confluence of luck and an unusual change of heart by the government, is certainly not too much of a stretch.  If the U.S. --maybe under pressure from France?-- had a part in paying a ransom they would certainly not want to admit as much (because you know, we don't negotiate with terrorists!)  But why would the U.S. who let these guys languish in the jungle nearly forgotten for so long, suddenly want them back enough to pay millions?  Even if they were CIA (click here to read about who they were and what they were doing down there), they were just doing grunt work (spraying the Colombian countryside with highly toxic insecticide as part of an ineffective --not to mention immoral-- strategy to combat the cultivation of coca, the plant from which cocaine is derived) and didn't seem to be high enough up the hierarchy to merit much concern until now. 

France, however, has been consistently concerned with the welfare of the more high profile Ingrid Betancourt and French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged to make it a priority of his administration to free her.  See this statement he made a year ago about it.  I don't know enough about US-French relationships to know how much sway the French could've had to get the US to go along with this plan, but maybe it was primarily a French affair and only required getting us to not stand in the way. 

And here's another thing I wondered about too:

French media have also raised questions about Ms Betancourt’s relatively healthy appearance after her release, compared with the gaunt and haggard look of her last video from captivity. French state radio suggested the hostages may have been given food and medicine to return them to health before their release. There was no suggestion that the hostages knew they were to be released.

Dominique Moisi, one of France's leading foreign policy experts, said that it was “probable” that the Farc had been paid money as part of the "infiltration" of their command. “They were bought in order to turn them around, like Mafia chiefs," he said on French state television, as Ms Betancourt's plane was taxiing up to the terminal in Paris.

The more I think about it, the more I find the ransom version of the story more credible.  For what it's worth, I don't know how much it matters. The hostages are free and that's good.  Uribe's reaping the benefits of soaring popularity and that's not-so-good.  And some FARC commanders just got a whole lot richer.  Which, even minus possible (likely?) corruption, probably doesn't matter all that much.  $20 million isn't all that much to fight a war with.  In fact, I wonder if the fact that they let go of their biggest bargaining chips a further sign of weakness/desperation.  Even with this new revelation, things are not looking good for them.

Other blog reactions:
PhoenixWoman
WhiteLight/BlackLight

4th of July anagram

I pledge allegiance to the flag  of the United States of America,
and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

=

I, George W. Bush, an evil Republican fascist,
used God to inflict pain on the world, end life, facilitate death,
create militant jihad rebels, and to let youths die for nothing.

The Next Best Thing to the Man Who Didn't Shoot Liberty Valance

I've been seein' a lot of movies lately.  For the most part really, really good ones.  I just saw The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance last night.  My friend Caz talked me into seein' it.  I don't like Westerns and the one time I was forced to watch a Western (in a film class) I hated it.  It was The Searchers.  Had John Wayne playing a racist cowboy who hates Indians.  It was probably more complicated than I gave it credit for but nonetheless it just wasn't my cup of tea. 

But The Man Who Shot Liberty, Caz said, is a "thinking person's Western" and he was right. It was really good.  It's about a idealistic young lawyer named Ransom Stoddard played by Jimmy Stewart who goes west and runs into a town bully by the name of Liberty Valance.  Liberty's pretty much a hired thug: mean, agressive and in-definite-need of reigning in.  John Wayne plays his counterpart, an equally tough violence-prone "good" guy.  He keeps Liberty at bay (haha) and sorta protects the hapless townfolk from his unpredictable rampages. 

But Ransom's a law and order guy.  He doesn't believe in violence.  He wants to arrest Liberty, not shoot him.  And ain't that a perfect setup for a good story?

Although me being who I am, I was wanting it to turn out to be about the Man Who DIDN'T Shoot Liberty Valance.  The man who found the third way between violence and submission: non-violence.  Then what a parable it would be for the post 9/11 world!  To have someone stand up in a world of ever-escalating tit-for-tat violence and say no.  Here's an alternative.

It doesn't turn out that way, of course and for a while, carrying my international relations theory further in the movie I was afraid that the parable was going to be that it was the John Wayne character who represented the U.S. --the user of "restrained" violence, violence as a last resort-- who comes in and saves the law-and-order weakling from the throes of the terrorist.  Fortunately it didn't turn out that way either.

How it turns out (and don't worry if you haven't seen it, this won't spoil anything) is that law-and-order is NOT what prevails against the Liberty terrorist but what makes it a good movie is that this is not portrayed as an uncomplicated good thing.

Now here is a spoiler alert!  If you want to see it stop reading now.  I mean.  Go look at this.

Okay, for the rest of you:  The idea that men get elected to positions of power based to greater or lesser extents on the fact that they have proven themselves capable of violence is something that is definitely has particular relevance to us today.  Just be careful not to say that out loud or you might end up like Retired U.S. General Wesley Clark this past week, who dared to say that military service in and of itself should not qualify someone to be President.

It shouldn't but too often it does.

Once again Paul Krugman speaks for me!

Paul Krugman's column today is exactly what I was talking about in the post below.  I think Obama will win.  And I think he'll change things.  The question is how much.  I also think that however much he does change things, compared to Bush, this country will look a thousand times better than it does today.

The Reagan-Clinton comparison suggests that a candidate who runs on a clear agenda is more likely to achieve fundamental change than a candidate who runs on the promise of change but isn't too clear about what that change would involve.

Of course, there's always the possibility that Mr. Obama really is a centrist, after all.

One thing is clear: for Democrats, winning this election should be the easy part. Everything is going their way: sky-high gas prices, a weak economy and a deeply unpopular president. The real question is whether they will take advantage of this once-in-a-generation chance to change the country's direction. And that's mainly up to Mr. Obama.