The 2005 Weblog Awards (run by Wizbang) has garnered our favorite bloggrrl’s blog, Pam’s House Blend, a nomination for Best LGBT Blog. Pam also scored another nomination with Pandagon in the Best Group Blog category. Congratulations, Pam!
Ezra Klein, who allows me to invade his space on the weekends, is nominated for Best Liberal Blog, among many of our other favorite blogs.
The Countess and Yellow Dog Blog have also been nominated for Best New Blog.
You’ll also find some other liberals for whom to vote in the categories for Best Blog, Best Humor Blog, and Best Media/Journalist Blog. (If I missed any, let me know.)
Make sure to vote for your favorites!
2005 Weblog Awards
Bush Is Not a Popular President
More bad news for the beleaguered pres:
Political Wire received an early copy of a new Time magazine poll that finds President Bush's approval rating at 41% with 53% disapproving. This is down a point from the last poll two months ago.That ought to impress Mr. Stay-the-Course.
Major drags on the President’s standing include: Iraq and high energy prices (each 45%),the federal budget deficit (39% say “very negative” impact), his handling of the economy (35%), and the failure of his social security initiative (32%).
Stunning: Of those who disapprove, 76% say they're unlikely to change their minds about the president's performance in the future.
More stunning: If last year's election were held again, Sen. John Kerry would win, but the margin would only be one point, 48% to 47%.Wow, how wrong did Dems go with John Kerry? Something needs to give with these primaries. Kerry was supposed to be the “most electable” guy, remember? Still, about 5% of people who disapprove of Bush’s performance would vote for him rather than Kerry. Yikes.
(Of course, I’m not discounting the fact that lots of people are fucking stupid, too.)
I Can’t Handle the Truth
Last night, Mr. Shakes and I watched A Few Good Men, a movie which, when viewed through the prism of what’s currently going on at Gitmo, makes you pause to consider just how much sympathy you want to have for soldiers “just following orders,” and I swear Tom Cruise has ruined all of his movies for me by acting like a complete numbnuts. All I could do was picture him wrestling with Oprah and jumping on her couch like a monkey on crack.
Lordy Begordy
Amanda’s got a great post on pharmacists who refuse to fill women’s prescriptions, which includes a link to this entry (passed on by AnneJumps) on a woman who was refused the filling of her Valtrex prescription because, according to the pharmacist who tore up her prescription, “God is punishing you for your sin.”
Uh, okay.
I’m certainly no expert on theology, but I’m fairly certain that Joe Pharmacist hasn’t been imbued with the authority to speak for the Almighty.
If I’m wrong, however, I’m curious to know if God only issues herpes as a punishment for sins of the flesh, or if he sometimes, say, strikes someone with cancer as punishment for embezzlement. And if he does, how do the pharmacists know whose prescriptions to rip up and whose to fill? Discerning divine retribution seems like it would make a pharmacist’s job immensely more difficult. No wonder I have to wait so long for prescriptions.
Girly Men
Senator Huggy McClingman, sometimes also known as John McCain, appeared on Meet the Press in a new capacity today—as an expert on emotionalism. And who are we to argue with someone who clearly isn’t afraid to show his emotions, even toward a man whose 2000 campaign branded his wife a junky and started a whisper campaign that his adopted Bangladeshi daughter was his illegitimate black child? I mean, that’s someone whose experience tells us love conquers all. Or, failing love, an unfettered desire for power.
Anyhoo, McCain’s expertise on said topic was in full flourish this morning, as he opined on the motives of his colleague, Rep. Murtha.
MCCAIN: I think he has become too emotional and understandably so. He goes to funerals. He goes, as many of us do, out to Walter Reed, and he sees the price of war. And I think that that has had some effect on him…I see McCain’s point. It’s probably better to avoid funerals of fallen soldiers altogether so as not to compromise one’s bull-headed determinism to “stay the course” with a little thing like emotion. Or reality.
A cursory glance at Murtha’s explanation for his resolution makes evident that his decision was, in fact, informed by fact and reason. Emotion may well have played a part, as would be expected, since he’s a human being and all. That said, isn’t it interesting to watch a GOP party hack suggest that even if the genesis of his resolution had been sheer visceral emotion, it would be a terrible thing? This is, after all, the party whose current president prides himself on his gut-based decision-making, which is just a “manly” euphemism for a reliance on emotional responses.
Real men have instinct. Liberals have emotion. Girly men.
When all else has failed, conservatives inevitably conjure more of their pathetic sexist innuendo. Left without a reasonable counter, McCain casts Murtha as hysterical, too emotional, incapable of reason. It’s the same rusty pot of antiquated sludge from which they pull their criticisms of women, and because their port of last call when they’ve been outmatched is to conflate liberal men with—ick!—girls, Murtha gets the same treatment.
Tune in next week when Ken Mehlman accuses Harry Reid of having cooties.
(Crossposted at Ezra's place.)
Terminated by Text Message
This is just cold:
A leading German TV station has fired one of the country's most popular comedians by text message.U R Fired.
Comedian Hans Werner Olm said he thought it was a joke when he received a text message telling him he had been sacked.
But he realised it was no laughing matter when he turned up for work and discovered his long-running show had been cancelled.
Olm said: "I received a text telling me the next series of my show had been cancelled. I thought it was a stupid joke until I realised they were really sacking me."
Things only got worse for Olm when he received a text message from his wife: I Wanna D-vorce.
Reality Show: Survivor
Sometimes there’s a news story that sets off a chorus of voices from those who have been touched by a sense of sympathy. Sometimes, they are motivated by outrage. Sometimes, a shared sense of humor. And every so often, there is a story that finds itself raising a cacophony out of common experience, and the sound of those voices, the roar caused by the sheer number of those who have something to say on an unspeakable topic, can stop you in your tracks.
Amanda Marcotte, rape survivor: I wouldn't have prosecuted except I couldn't bear the guilt if he did it to someone else. I still almost didn't, except at the insistence of my boyfriend at the time that it was wrong to just roll over and pretend it didn't happen. It took me a week to work up the courage. I wouldn't have done it if I'd thought I'd get in trouble with the law for seeking justice.
Lauren Bruce, rape survivor: I, after I was raped, was not believed either. After all, I turned around from the incident, cleaned up the blood, and went back about my family vacation like nothing had happened because I thought I had done something wrong and didn’t want my parents to know. I was barely thirteen. Nevermind the promiscuity and drug addiction that followed, by god, I wasn’t traumatized and therefore was not raped.
I have a particular therapist to thank for convincing my support system not to trust me, the unqualified piece of shit. Shame, shame on this judge.
Shakespeare’s Sister, rape survivor: There is no such thing as a “typical” response to rape. Immediately following a rape, some women go into shock. Some are lucid. Some are angry. Some are ashamed. Some are practical. Some are irrational. Some want to report it. Some don’t. Most have a combination of emotions, but there is no standard response. Responses to rape are as varied as its victims. In the long term, some rape victims act out. Some crawl inside themselves. Some have healthy sex lives. Some never will again.
Trish Wilson, rape survivor: I can relate to not acting traumatized. I was raped. I went into auto-pilot, called the police, and was coherent if a bit detached when reporting the incident at the hospital. I knew enough not to take a shower afterwards because I knew the police and hospital personnel had to gather evidence. I didn't cry, tremble, or break down, which I suppose is what it means to "act traumatized". I made the big mistake of dropping the charges, under pressure by people who sided with my attacker. I don't want to go into much more detail than that since this is very personal, and I don't like to get very personal on my blog. I'm fortunate in that the police and the hospital personnel believed me, even though I didn't "act traumatized". What scared me in retrospect is that my rape rested on whether or not I was believed by other people based on the way I acted after the rape. I didn't know there was a way that rape victims were "supposed" to act. I just went on auto-pilot, and did what I thought I was supposed to do. I know that I could easily have been seen as wanting to create a false report because I knew enough not to take a shower immediately after the rape.
The Fat Lady Sings, rape survivor: You see I am a rape survivor – as is Shakespeare’s Sister, Klondike Kate, Amanda at Pandagon, Lauren at Feministe and about 100 million other women in this country. I was raped more than once – and, like the victim, I wasn’t believed. I was a child, and the religion my family practiced always considered the female to be the whore in any sexual circumstances – no matter the age.
So my rapists went free – and they did rape again; and again, and again – as will the men who brutalized that young girl.
Klondike Kate, rape survivor: Over 30 years ago throughout circumstances that stretched over a five-year period of time I was raped four times. … When I tried to call once, after being held on the frozen ground at knifepoint (I still had mud, leaves, and a trickle of blood running down my neck,) I was told not to bother: since I was hitchhiking -- I was "just asking for it." … Have we really come a long way since then? It would appear not. I feel such a deep sadness for all the women of the world who go through this act of soul-killing violence, perpetrated every single second of the day.
Pia Savage, rape survivor: I felt better after I bought new clothes, and while I didn’t equate being raped with sex because it had been so violent was turned off sex for awhile, and only dated boys who were closeted Gay for several months. I was young and resilient but I did carry that shame for many years. No, not the shame of the rape; the shame of not being able to tell a policeman.
Rape is talked about in laws and statistics. Numbers are debated. Hands are wrung. Heads are shaken. While the abstract discussion of rape in the public sphere goes on, groups of rape survivors have met in rooms that smell of coffee and cigarettes to share their stories, and individual victims have cried into their pillows and held themselves together with nothing but a lack of options and walked out into the world to get on with it.
These individual stories are murmurs of a larger story waiting to be told.
More from The Heretik. Also: Kevin at The American Street, Dave at Seeing the Forest, The Heretik, Amanda at Pandagon, Lauren at Feministe, Once Upon a Time, Liberty Street, Radioactive Quill, Ded Space, My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, Alas a Blog, Trish Wilson, I Blame the Patriarchy, Brilliant at Breakfast, Pam’s House Blend, The Green Knight, Media Girl, Lawyers, Guns & Money, Night Bird’s Fountain, King of Zembla, The Left Coaster, Loaded Mouth, BlondeSense, NewsHog, Evil Mommy, Agitprop, Deborah Lipp, Laughing Wild, Washington Monthly, Zoe Kentucky at Demagogue, Majikthise, Recidivist Journals.
Once my face burned with the shame of rape; now I smolder with anger.
I’ve spent the entire day burning up from the inside out about the Oregon case in which a rape victim was found guilty of filing false charges after prosecutors decided not to purse a case against her attackers. I feel like the sun itself has settled in my gut and any moment I’ll just explode into a puff of smoke and ash.
The only thing that’s keeping me whole is knowing I’m not alone in my outrage. Or in my experience. Check out this excerpt from The Heretik:
FROM AMANDA MARCOTTE rape survivor: I wouldn't have prosecuted except I couldn't bear the guilt if he did it to someone else. I still almost didn't, except at the insistence of my boyfriend at the time that it was wrong to just roll over and pretend it didn't happen. It took me a week to work up the courage. I wouldn't have done it if I'd thought I'd get in trouble with the law for seeking justice.Klondike Kate, rape survivor, adds in The Heretik’s comments:
FROM LAUREN BRUCE rape survivor: Shakespeare’s Sister (HT) discusses false rape reporting and the notion that there is a “right” way to act after rape. There isn’t much for me to say because she and Kevin have said it all, but I, after I was raped, was not believed either. After all, I turned around from the incident, cleaned up the blood, and went back about my family vacation like nothing had happened because I thought I had done something wrong and didn’t want my parents to know. I was barely thirteen. Nevermind the promiscuity and drug addiction that followed, by god, I wasn’t traumatized and therefore was not raped.
I have a particular therapist to thank for convincing my support system not to trust me, the unqualified piece of shit. Shame, shame on this judge.
FROM SHAKESPEARE'S SISTER rape survivor: There is no such thing as a “typical” response to rape. Immediately following a rape, some women go into shock. Some are lucid. Some are angry. Some are ashamed. Some are practical. Some are irrational. Some want to report it. Some don’t. Most have a combination of emotions, but there is no standard response. Responses to rape are as varied as its victims. In the long term, some rape victims act out. Some crawl inside themselves. Some have healthy sex lives. Some never will again.
THE ISSUES ARE LARGE the victims made smaller when we fail to listen, when we fail to look. You know a rape victim, but you might not know it. Look for the woman who had lively eyes who now seems dead inside.
THE HERETIK REMAINS disgusted.
Over 30 years ago throughout circumstances that stretched over a five-year period of time I was raped four times. … When I tried to call once, after being held on the frozen ground at knifepoint (I still had mud, leaves, and a trickle of blood running down my neck,) I was told not to bother: since I was hitchhiking -- I was "just asking for it." … Have we really come a long way since then? It would appear not. I feel such a deep sadness for all the women of the world who go through this act of soul-killing violence, perpetrated every single second of the day.And Kevin Hayden, who knows the victim, adds in my comments:
Other things the detective found odd: she did not shower for two days after. The detective said most overshower because they feel dirty afterward. So why did this woman not bathe?It isn’t. It’s just heartbreaking.
Because she was afraid to be naked. Why's that so hard to believe?
The Heretik has more to say here. Additional commentary from Kevin at The American Street, Dave at Seeing the Forest, The Heretik, Amanda at Pandagon, Lauren at Feministe, Once Upon a Time, Liberty Street, Radioactive Quill, Ded Space.
(Thank you to all those who are giving this story the attention it needs and deserves.)
Ford Caves to Homobigots
Some days I just hate everything:
The antigay American Family Association claimed a cultural victory on Thursday and called off its threatened boycott of Ford Motor Co. On Friday, Ford spokesman Mike Moran confirmed to Advocate.com that the company will stop advertising its Jaguar and Land Rover brands in gay publications but insisted it was strictly a business decision.Whatever, Ford. Eat shit, you scaredy-cat losers.
The Dearborn, Mich., automaker came under fire from the AFA in May for its longtime efforts to increase LGBT workplace diversity and support gay rights causes. Ford has long been a regular advertiser within gay media, including The Advocate, and has donated significant sums to LGBT causes and nonprofit groups such as the Human Rights Campaign.
Threatened with a boycott by the Mississippi-based AFA, Ford and some of its dealers agreed to negotiate, and the AFA announced in June that it would hold off on its planned action. On Thursday, AFA announced the boycott would be canceled altogether.
[…]
According to a list of demands on AFA’s Web site, the organization insisted that Ford and all of its brands stop donating cash, vehicles, and endorsements to gay social activities. This includes donations to pride celebrations and groups such as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the Human Rights Campaign, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. AFA says those groups have received contributions from Ford in the past.
Whether such sponsorship deals—in which Ford brands are given visibility by nonprofit groups and at LGBT events in return for donations—will continue, Moran could not say.
Don’t Just Blame the Victim; Prosecute Her
A 17-year-old girl went to police at the urging of her friends after she was allegedly gang-raped by three men, including her boyfriend. The men testified that the act was consensual. After reviewing all the information and statements, prosecutors decided they didn’t think they could prove a rape allegation, and so declined to prosecute the case.
Instead, they prosecuted the victim for filing a false police report. Yesterday, she was found guilty.
The victim has never recanted her story. Instead, the decision was based on the judge’s opinion that the three men were more credible, in part because a police detective and the victim’s friends testified she did not “act traumatized” in the days after the incident.
In cases like this, people tend to draw their own conclusions, based on what’s reported, filling in the blanks in a way that satisfies one’s judgment. What are you thinking right now? That maybe it really was a false rape charge? That maybe the victim was just vindictive? That there had to be some reason that the judge found her guilty?
Let me give you some more information—something that is only a possibility because The American Street’s Kevin Hayden has known the victim nearly her whole life. He attended the trial. He noticed that the prosecutor repeatedly referred to the attackers as “boys,” even though they were grown men and the victim was 17. He noticed that the judge acknowledged he had found inconsistencies in all of their stories, but, inexplicably, decided that the same reasonable doubt that kept prosecutors from pursuing charges against the attackers wasn’t enough to keep him from finding the victim guilty.
He also noted what was, and was not, allowed to be introduced as evidence. Allowed: The 17-year-old victim’s sexual history. Not allowed: That one of the victim’s “friends,” her mother, has problems with alcohol and prescription drugs, provided her daughter with the alcohol she’d had that evening (which the mother had stolen from the store at which she cashiers), and was:
…awaiting her boyfriend’s return to her home within two months of the rape. That boyfriend was in prison for molesting his own daughter. That’s hardly a credible witness with any sympathy for victims of sexual assault…Again: The judge decided that the victim was not credible because her friend and her mother said she did not “act traumatized” in the days after the incident. He then filed a charge against the victim which turned the two people he had deemed credible witnesses into criminal conspirators. That seems rather confusing, that two criminal conspirators could also be credible witnesses, and experts on post-rape trauma no less. Although, it is rather convenient for a judge and prosecutors who might want to make a point.
Additionally, the two ‘friends’ were the ones who convinced the 17 year old that she should report it to the police. So if the young woman is guilty [of filing a false rape charge], the instigating accessories to her ‘crime’ are considered credible experts about how a rape victim should act.
Even though the woman never said she lied or recanted her story, city prosecutors say they took the unusual step of filing charges against her because of the seriousness of her accusations.It shouldn’t, should it? Something tells me it just might, particularly when a judge admits he found inconsistencies in the stories of both the woman and her attackers, but decided nonetheless that the attackers were “legitimate” victims and the woman was not. As it is, only 10% of victims of sex crimes in Oregon file reports with police.
[…]
Ted Naemura, the assistant city attorney who prosecuted the case, said the woman's false accusations were serious enough to lead to charges. The young men faced prison sentences of at least 7 years and a lifetime labeled as sex offenders. In addition, police spent considerable resources investigating the accusations.
Beaverton has no policy about prosecuting such cases, but reviews each one on its merits, Naemura said. The city prosecuted a similar case a year ago in which a judge ordered the woman to pay $1,100 in restitution for the city's investigation costs, said Officer Paul Wandell, a Beaverton Police Department spokesman.
The bottom line, Naemura said, is that people can't use the criminal justice system to further their own ends.
This case should not deter legitimate victims from reporting crimes, he said.
Kevin Neely, spokesman for the Oregon Attorney General's Office, said it was rare for alleged sex crime victims to be charged much less convicted of filing a false police report.Just how safe a bet? Heather J. Huhtanen, Sexual Assault Training Institute director for the Attorney General's Sexual Assault Task Force, reports that Portland police have found that 1.6% of sexual assault cases were falsely reported. By way of comparison, 2.6% of auto theft cases were falsely reported.
"Our concern is always with the underreporting of sexual assaults," he said, "not with false reporting. It's a safe bet that prosecutions for false reporting are rare."
Here are some things we hear a lot: Vindictive women use rape charges to get back at men. Women’s sexual histories can be informative in a rape case. Women who were “really raped” are easily identified by the way they behave.
None of them are true.
Yes, there are some women (and men) who file false rape charges. They are, however, rare, usually quickly identified as false, and are almost always thrown out long before trial. In truth, many genuine victims of rape never see their cases reach trial due to lack of evidence; a genuine rape victim is exponentially less likely to see her attacker prosecuted than an erroneously charged man is to be prosecuted.
A woman’s sexual history has absolutely no bearing on whether she was raped—including her past sexual history, if any, with her attacker. A rapist doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether he rapes a virgin or a whore, or any of the majority of us who fall somewhere in between, which makes each of us as likely to fall victim to the crime as anyone else.
There is no such thing as a “typical” response to rape. Immediately following a rape, some women go into shock. Some are lucid. Some are angry. Some are ashamed. Some are practical. Some are irrational. Some want to report it. Some don’t. Most have a combination of emotions, but there is no standard response. Responses to rape are as varied as its victims. In the long term, some rape victims act out. Some crawl inside themselves. Some have healthy sex lives. Some never will again.
Now here are some things that are true. Rape is underreported. Reporting a rape is difficult, and can be embarrassing, shameful, hurtful, frustrating, and too often unfulfilling. Quite bluntly, there is very little incentive to report a rape. It’s a terrible experience, and the likelihood of seeing justice served is a long shot. Even if it is, it usually comes at great personal cost, with one’s sexual history put on public display amidst the dismay of reliving the attack—and an extended trial can necessitate living in a state of suspended animation, where moving on from that moment is all but impossible. The only real incentive one has is knowing the sacrifice might prevent the same thing from happening to someone else. Not a small thing, but a big personal investment.
And now, women have one less reason to come forward—the possible horror of watching their attackers go free while they are found guilty.
(Many thanks to Dave Johnson of Seeing the Forest for giving me the heads-up on this story.)
Question of the Day
Suggested by Tart...
What is your favorite movie line of all time?
I could spend days recounting my favorite movie lines, but the first one that popped into my head is from Harold and Maude: "Vice, virtue—it's best not to be too moral. You cheat yourself out of too much life. Aim above morality. If you apply that to life, then you're bound to live life fully."
That’ll Teach Ya, GOP
What do you do when the GOP steals your song and uses it in their campaign without your permission?
If you’re John Hall, frontman of Orleans, whose “Still the One” was stolen by Bush last year, you tell him to cease and desist and then run for Congress.
Hall, who’s running as a Democrat in New York's 19th District, is a former Ulster County Legislator and school board president in addition to being a musician. From the press release announcing his candidacy:
John Hall has been active in environmental and community affairs in the Hudson Valley for more than three decades. He was elected to the Ulster County Legislature in 1989, and twice to the Saugerties Board of Education, where his fellow trustees elected him President. He now lives in Dover Plains with his wife Pamela Bingham Hall, a Vassar graduate and former Tennessee Assistant Attorney General. He has a twenty-six-year-old daughter who is in graduate school.Hall promises to be “a real voice for real people, advocating for honesty and competence throughout our government.” Go get 'em.
Hall, a founding member of the band Orleans, co-authored their hits including "Still the One" and "Dance With Me," along with songs recorded by a spectrum of American musical legends from Janis Joplin to Bonnie Raitt, from Bobby McFerrin to James Brown. He has written and directed music for Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, produced and played guitar on dozens of records. His ode to alternative energy, "Power," was released three weeks before the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, and became the anthem of the No Nukes Concerts which Hall helped organize. It was recorded live at the event by the Doobie Brothers and James Taylor, and subsequently performed by Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Holly Near.
Damme, Baby
Just Horsin’ Around
Paging Charles Darwin. I believe we have an award-winner for you.
A man has pleaded guilty to trespassing in connection with a fatal horse-sex case.“Fatal horse-sex case.” There’s a phrase you don’t hear every day.
James Michael Tait, 54, of Enumclaw, was accused of entering a barn without the owner's permission. Tait admitted to officers that he entered a neighboring barn last July with friend Kenneth Pinyan to have sex with a horse, charging papers said. Tait was videotaping the episode when Pinyan suffered internal injuries that led to his death.
Tait pleaded guilty Tuesday and was given a one-year suspended sentence, a $300 fine, and ordered to perform eight hours of community service and have no contact with the neighbors.
The prosecutor's office said no animal cruelty charges were filed because there was no evidence of injury to the horses.
As for no evidence of injury to the horses, doesn’t the prosecutor’s office have any regard for the emotional health of the horses? Surely, the Groucho Marx Rule ought to be invoked: Any human who wants to have sex with a horse is someone a horse does not want to have sex with.
Hat tip to Kathy, and a special mention for Coturnix, who noted in her comments thread, in reference to the sentencing provision which prohibits talking to the neighbors, “It does not say anything about talking (sweet nothings) to the neighbors’ mares…”
Two Americas
Newsweek has a great (but depressing, if not surprising) article called Who Gets the Organs? about the disparity between the ethnic make-up of organ transplant waiting lists and organ recipients.
According to figures from the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), which administers the organ-allocation system, ethnic minorities make up 50 percent of the 96,581 people on the waiting list, but white patients receive 63 percent of organs. Even for kidney transplants, for which Medicare funding should provide a level playing field, minorities made up 60 percent of the waiting list, but less than 45 percent of transplants. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," says Dr. Ashwini Sehgal, assistant professor of biostatistics at Case Western Reserve University. A growing body of research shows that black and Hispanic patients face longer delays in getting referred, spend longer on the waiting list and have worse survival rates even after receiving an organ.One of the doctors interviewed, Dr. Devon John, who is a black transplant surgeon at the NYU Medical Center, notes that the disparity is “well recognized, but highly controversial.” Part of the problem, according to some researchers, is “an imbalance in supply and demand of suitable organs for minorities.”
Although race isn't an explicit factor, minority patients—especially African-Americans—are more genetically diverse, making it harder for them to find suitable tissue matches. Black and Hispanic people donate organs at the same rate as whites, but they are predisposed to organ-damaging diseases like diabetes, so that in spite of campaigns to promote organ donation in minority communities, there's no way for minority donation alone to keep up with the minority demand for organs. Doctors must struggle to find suitable matches for black and Hispanic patients among predominantly white donors.The article doesn’t explain exactly of what the campaigns to promote organ donation consist. If they mirror traditional organ donation campaigns, part of the issue may be related to one of the contributing problems during the aftermath of Katrina—greater numbers of poor minorities don't drive. At least in Indiana and Illinois, getting one's driver's license is the primary venue for organ donation campaigns and making a decision about whether to register as an organ donor. Outside of that experience, I’ve never seen any other information about organ donation, and I lived in the most racially diverse neighborhood in Chicago for a decade. Unless it's discussed with family, who then also happen to be in the right place at the right time in case of an accident, there are probably lots of people with usable organs that aren't used simply because they never thought about it or their wishes weren't known.
And, in truth, a dearth of suitable matches is not the end of the story.
In theory, allocation of organs is race-neutral. Patients receive points for medical need, tissue type and time on the waiting list; doctors use a computer algorithm to decide who gets organs. But they admit the system doesn't always work as intended. Computer programs alone can't eliminate the potential for subconscious bias—or overt racism—among the physicians who use them. "The computer may be colorblind, but the people who put information into the computer are not," says Dr. Clive Callender, director of the Howard University Hospital transplant center. "This is directly the consequence of institutionalized racism."Pam sums it up nicely: “Matching criteria for organs and patients is clearly a complicating factor, but once that and the general disparity in access to appropriate care and known bias is factored in, you've got a deadly and unfortunate combination that is a blow to minority patients at every step of the process.” Poverty and racism (particularly when combined) have created a second-tier health system. Or, in truth, a third-tier health system, lowest rung on a ladder at the top of which sit the extraordinarily wealthy. Certainly, not all doctors are racists, but it's foolish and illogical to presume that those who have a calling in medicine are somehow more likely to be collectively exempt from the endemic prejudices found in the larger population.
I had occasion to visit a doctor in Gary not long ago, who, if I recall correctly, had a gastrointestinal speciality—a private practice. His waiting room was unlike anything I’d seen in a doctor’s office before—it was teeming with people, all black, who had filled not only every available seat, but every available inch of floor space as well except for a thin walkway leading back to the examination rooms. I was just there for him to sign something, so I was ushered through to the examination rooms immediately, and I could hear the muttered comments, not even angry, but resigned: “I’ve been here three hours.” “Typical.” “White girl goes straight in.” I so wanted to tell them that I wasn’t there to be treated, not because I wanted to defend myself, but because I didn’t want them to think their doctor was an asshole.
But I didn’t really know that. Maybe he was.
Bill O’Reilly is a Lunatic
Not only is he single-handedly saving Christmas, he’s also taking responsibility for lower gas prices:
O’REILLY: I have guys inside the five major oil companies - my father used to work for one of those oil companies by the way - who have told me that in those meetings they look for every way to jack up oil prices after Katrina, every way, when they didn’t have to. They got scared because of my reporting and reporting of some others. They said, “Uh ho.”Coincidentally, Bill—I have guys inside the padded room you call “The No-Spin Spaceship,” who have told me that you say “Wheeeee! Time for blast-off!” when you poop your pants.
CAVUTO: So wait a minute, you’re not, you’re taking credit for gas prices being down from where they are?
O’REILLY: I said my reporting and some reporting of others. They got scared.
Think Progress has the Quicktime video clip of Bill recounting his heroic intimidation of Big Oil. And by the way, this guy doesn’t look like he scares easily.
Scares small children, maybe.
(Picture via Alternate Brain.)
Homecoming
I got an advance copy of Homecoming, an hour-long film which premiers tonight on Showtime as part of its new Masters of Horror series. Based on Dale Bailey’s short story Death and Suffrage, and directed by Joe Dante (the George Romero protégé who directed Gremlins), Homecoming is a clever send-up of the Bush administration and their minions, centered on a war sold on "horseshit and elbow grease." It’s also a zombie flick.
I don’t want to give too much away, but I’ll give you a few teasers—there’s a blond talk-show pundit who favors short black minis and S&M named Jane Cleaver, a political guru named Kurt Rand who likes to describe politics and war as a game, and a big fucking bunch of zombies in fatigues who beg to differ.
The scariest thing about Homecoming is what a short distance it is between the real people on whom it was based and the caricatures in the film.
From a recent Village Voice review of Homecoming, which you shouldn’t read in full if you’d like to avoid spoilers:
How fitting that the most pungent artistic response to a regime famed for its crass fear-mongering would be a cheap horror movie. Jaw-dropping in its sheer directness, Homecoming is a righteous blast of liberal-left fury (it was greeted with a five-minute ovation [at its November 13 premiere at the Turin Film Festival], the most vocal appreciation seeming to come from the American filmmakers and writers in attendance).Atrios says this is a free weekend on Showtime. I couldn’t find any info either way; in any case, if you don’t have Showtime, check in either tonight at 10:00EST or tomorrow at 10:30EST, and you might be able to catch it. You can see preview clips of the episode here.
At once galvanic and cathartic, Dante's film uncorks the rage that despondent progressives promptly suppressed after last year's election and that has only recently been allowed to color mainstream coverage of presidential untruths and debacles. For all its broad, bludgeoning satire, Homecoming is deadly accurate in skewering the callousness and hypocrisy of the Bush White House and the spin industry in its orbit.
[…]
Dante hopes Homecoming functions as a wake-up call—not so much for politicians but for filmmakers. "If this spurs other people into making more and better versions, it will have done its job. I want to see more discussion," he says. "Nobody is doing anything about what's going on now—compared to the '70s, when they were making movies about the issues of the day. This elephant in the room, this Iraq war story, is not being dramatized."
"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see what a fucking mess we're in," he continues. "It's been happening steadily for the past four years, and nobody said peep. The New York Times and all these people that abetted the lies and crap that went into making and selling this war—now that they see the guy is a little weak, they're kicking him with their toe to make sure he doesn't bite back. It's cowardly. This pitiful zombie movie, this fucking B movie, is the only thing anybody's done about this issue that's killed 2,000 Americans and untold numbers of Iraqis? It's fucking sick." While gratified by the warm reception to Homecoming in Turin, Dante says he's eager for the right-wing punditocracy back home to see it: "I hope this movie bothers a lot of people that disagree with it—and that it makes them really pissed off, as pissed off as the rest of us are."
Friday Blogrollin'
...isn't happening, because Blogger won't let me republish. Frustrating. It'll be back next week.
Instead, go read this amazing post by Thesaurus Rex.
Blog About Racism Day, Part 2
In my earlier post, my point was not to start a discussion about cartoon characters. Nonetheless, I did, which clearly detracted from a discussion of racism, or any of the related points about getting at racism's root I attempted (and obviously failed) to raise.
So let's try this again. What are your experiences with racism? Have you been the victim of racism? Have you been confronted with your own racism? Do you talk to people of other races openly about racism? Childhood experiences ... adult experiences ... undermined prejudices... existing biases ... let it out.
