In the Spring of 1979, my teacher made everyone in class stand up and give a brief prepared speech on "Why I Am Proud to Be an American". Times were tense in the San Francisco Bay Area then—Dan White had shot Milk and Moscone, and I think we were into odd/even gas rationing by then too. I don't remember what I told the class. I do remember the questions that filled my head: am I proud to be an American? Should I be? Why?
Of course, my teacher wasn't asking any of those questions. My American pride was a foregone conclusion—or else.
My assignment was not to think about my country, just to praise it, and by extension, to praise my classmates and myself.
I am grateful that my later education did emphasize critical thinking, but living in America the past eight years has been like Kindergarten all over again.
In answering yesterday's question of what I will miss least about the Bush administration, I said that "the constant message that any questioning of the administration was treasonous and un-American, that 'you're either with us or against us', is at the top of the list."
Yesterday, I was drifting along through Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem, Praise Song for the Day, when her words, "Love with no need to preempt grievance", sliced a knot. The message of the entire inaugural address suddenly became real. I had heard Obama's recognition that "greatness is never a given"; his exhortation to "begin again the work of remaking America" and to help build a government we can trust. But with Alexander's words, I felt it. I felt the invitation both to love my country and to criticize it. The address and the poem together called upon us to take issue and to take action.
Alexander's poem is being criticized by Carol Rumens at The Guardian for being "too prosy" and for hewing too close to the themes and language of Obama's address; Adam Kirsch at The New Republic calls it "bureaucratic verse". I agree there are some cringe-worthy clichés in the poem, and I sensed that Alexander was under pressure not only to stay in tune with Obama's language, but also to avoid upstaging it. However, if a purpose of poetry is to distill an idea that hits both the brain and the gut, then Praise Song for the Day worked for me on this day.
Below the fold is the full text of Praise Song for the Day with line breaks, from One Poet's Notes:PRAISE SONG FOR THE DAY: A POEM FOR BARACK OBAMA'S PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION
There is video and more analysis at The Guardian and One Poet's Notes
Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other's
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.
All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.
Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.
We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what's on the other side.
I know there's something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,
picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.
Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light.
—Elizabeth Alexander
Love With No Need to Preempt Grievance
Rape Culture: We're Soaking In It
Speaking of soaking in it, I just happened upon this snippet about an interview in Elle magazine in which Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler says he was never rejected by a woman.
Except, that's not totally accurate:
When asked in an interview in Elle magazine if he was ever rejected by a woman, Tyler replies, "Never. I'm a persistent motherf**ker. I'm very sensual and very rhythm-oriented and into poetry. Women can feel that."If he were never rejected, he wouldn't have to be persistent, now, would he?
But in a culture where no doesn't mean no, you've just got to be a "persistent motherf**ker" until a woman relents—and then you can claim victory and convince yourself you're some kind of awesome Casanova who owes his sexual conquests to "poetry" and not the wholesale rejection of every women's right to say no and then be left the fuck alone instead of wooed, pressured, cajoled, coerced, manipulated, or otherwise convinced to have sex. Or "have sex."
This shit is everywhere you look, once you take a monocle to our fucked-up culture.
Nouning Considered Harmful*
by Shaker smadin
Here's the thing: Using adjectives as nouns obscures meaning, harms discourse, impairs communication, and ultimately reduces our ability to think in a careful and nuanced way about controversial issues, let alone effect social progress. Anyone who wants to see our society become less divided rather than more, and in particular anyone who wants to combat racism, sexism, homophobia, and all other forms of prejudice and modes of oppression, should try hard to avoid the practice, and refrain from calling a person a sexist, or a racist, or a homophobe, instead applying those descriptors to his or her actions.
Here's why.
"I don't like the word 'addict' because it has terrible connotations," Root says one day, as they are sunning themselves on the afterdeck. "Instead of slapping a label on you, the Germans would describe you as 'Morphiumsüchtig.' The verb suchen means to seek. So that might be translated, loosely, as 'morphine seeky' or even more loosely as 'morphine-seeking.' I prefer 'seeky' because it means that you have an inclination to seek morphine."This passage from Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon gets at some of my concern. Nouns have a tendency to be binary: a thing either is, say, a stone or a chair or a pen, or it isn't; but adjectives admit of degree. We don't think of "soft" and "not soft" as the only two possible states of softness, or "blue" and "not blue" as the only two possible states of blueness. A thing can be completely blue or completely hard — or at least we can conceive of those extremes, though they don't really occur in life — but virtually everything falls somewhere between the poles.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Shaftoe says.
"Well, suppose you have a roof with a hole in it. That means it is a leaky roof. It's leaky all the time—even if it's not raining at the moment. But it's only leaking when it happens to be raining. In the same way, morphine-seeky means that you always have this tendency to look for morphine, even if you are not looking for it at the moment. But I prefer both of them to 'addict,' because they are adjectives modifying Bobby Shaftoe instead of a noun that obliterates Bobby Shaftoe." [emphasis added]
And we, humans, are more complicated things than stones or chairs or pens, so nearly all the ways we describe each other are more meaningful than "soft" and "blue." Surely, then, in the most emotionally and politically charged areas we ought to exercise special care to use language that recognizes, rather than denies, that no one is wholly one thing or another.
This is an idea that's been developing in my head for a long time — probably ever since I read the quoted passage above.
Imagine with me a public figure who makes an off-the-cuff statement, say at a restaurant or something. This statement uses loaded language with a history of being associated with racism or racial slurs. Imagine how the public figure reacts if people then say, "Look, so-and-so is a racist!" Pretty easy thought experiment, right? Because we've seen that movie before, with Michael Richards and with Mel Gibson and so on and so on.
In many people's minds, "A Racist" is nothing short of a white-sheeted KKK member with a swastika armband chanting the N-word and brandishing a noose while standing in front of a burning cross, and so to call someone "a racist" is to say they're exactly like that Platonic Racist. And that's clearly false, they're not like that at all, why, some of their best friends are black! So it's you, you crazy liberal, who's all oversensitive, who's really the intolerant one — you want to control every little thing anyone might think or say lest someone somewhere take offense! This just goes to show that racism isn't a real problem anymore! Why, that kind of politically-correct thought-policing behavior is downright fascist! And now we're off in Cloud Cuckoo Jonah Goldberg Land.
There are any number of great examples of this sort of thing happening. Like this one, or this one (which Coates discusses further here).
There's a flip side of this, too: On the one hand, use "racist" (I trust it's obvious that this applies to other terms as well) as a noun and your audience thinks you're talking about the Platonic Racist. But on the other hand, being accustomed to using "racist" as a noun, and thinking of it as a noun, lets you tell yourself "I am not like the Platonic Racist, therefore I am not a racist!" This is a dangerous thing to say to oneself (no matter how buried that meaning might be in layers of obfuscation and rationalization): As PortlyDyke said so well in one of the posts that inspired me to start writing this one, if you don't claim it, it's not yours to change.
If I tell myself "I'm not a racist" because I don't resemble or act or speak like the Platonic Racist, I conclude that this means things I do or think or say must not be motivated by racial prejudice. I can provide rationalizations and explanations of why they're not racist, if I'm pressed. But the real reason they're not racist is that I did or thought or said them, and I'm Not A Racist. To be A Racist is to be a bad person, obviously, and I'm not a bad person, so I must not be A Racist, so whatever I did can't have been racist.
And so I elide, and blind myself to, my own role in a racist society, and quite probably not only prevent myself from doing the good I want to do but preclude my being taken seriously as an anti-racist ally by people of color. Thinking this way, thinking of and using "racist," "sexist," etc. as nouns that one either is or isn't, is thus harmful in two ways: It hinders our attempts to address problems of prejudice and hierarchy external to ourselves, and it provides us a false sense of moral righteousness that prevents us from working to improve, or even recognizing, our own failings.
We exist in a racist, sexist, homophobic, heterocentric, xenophobic, fatphobic, ageist, classist, ableist, white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchal/kyriarchal society. It has always been that way, and its structure is infused with prejudice and hierarchy. That means we are all, all of us, regardless of our respective positions in the overlapping hierarchies that make up that society, racist, sexist, homophobic, heterocentric, xenophobic, fatphobic, ageist, classist, ableist, to some degree. As Liss has said, "[A]ll of us, sans rigorous philosophical exertion, are hapless conduits for every limiting and oppressive archetype upon which the [kyriarchy] depends, conveying the bars of our own cages."
Each of us probably has each of these characteristics in varying degrees, some more and some less than other people. We can't help it: We've been soaking in them since before we were born, and they're so pervasive that they're hard to see. Does that make us bad people? Well, it doesn't make us good people, but "Bad Person"/"Good Person" is another false dichotomy like "A Racist"/"Not A Racist". We can always, and should always try to, be better. If I can quote myself:
We're soaking in it, and we always have been. I want to emphasize, however, that in no way am I claiming any of this absolves us of responsibility. It's uncomfortable, because it means recognizing that much of what we've been taught since before we were conscious is a lie, but it's not actually hard to see the truth, and to see gender for the lie it is, even if we can't fully free our own minds from that lie (I often think of gender as being like heroin — it poisons us slowly, but we can't even fully process the notion of freeing ourselves from it, and what that would mean).There is in fact no contradiction in being both racist and anti-racist, sexist and feminist, homophobic and an LGBTQI ally, or indeed in being both racist and a person of color, sexist and a woman, homophobic and an L, G, B, T, Q and/or I person. These things coexist and compete within us whether or not we pay conscious attention; but if we pay conscious attention we can put a thumb on the scale.
It makes me sick to know that hate is in me, but I have to own it: as someone — I believe someone around these parts — said, "if you don't own it, it's not yours to change." I'm sexist, misogynist, racist, homophobic, heterosexist, fatphobic, ageist, ableist. I'm less so than many people, though also more so than many; these things aren't binary, they're matters of degree. And by doing my best to be aware of them, I can lessen them further and reduce their impact on others [I also previously wrote about this implicit bias study, which I think is immensely important]. And if we all do that, then gradually they'll wither out of the world, even if we ourselves don't live to see it.
But for now, they're still there.
I'm not the first person to address this issue, of course (though I think I might be the first to do so by quoting Neal Stephenson). The always-brilliant Jay Smooth took it on; so did Kevin and Amp; and Liss often points out that it's inappropriate and dehumanizing to use "male" and "female" as nouns in place of "man" and "woman" — "a female what?" as she would say. (Of course, we don't actually have a noun that means "male person" or "female person" without specifying their gender role, as "man" and "woman" do, instead of just biological sex, but that's a post for another day — and I suspect were we not conditioned to "need" to know each person's gender, there would in fact rarely be any need for such a noun.)
Recent discussion both here and elsewhere (this post is one among many) has reminded me, too, that this doesn't apply solely to negative descriptions like racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. If it were more normal to use "feminist" (for example) as an adjective, a mostly fruitless debate over whether Barack Obama is "a feminist," which tends toward devolving into people claiming their set of views is what defines "a feminist" and anyone who doesn't quite match up is "not a feminist," could instead have been a discussion of how feminist he is (answer: more than Republicans, and probably more than many Democrats, but not nearly enough). These things are matters of degree.
So, please: make an effort to use words in a way that admits of degree. Attempting to shoehorn everyone into "X" and "not-X" is a counterproductive oversimplification. It hurts our own ability to understand the world, and it hurts our practical ability to reach people. As Jay says, making it about what they are — and I'd add, making that a binary, yes or no question — is a surefire way to get nowhere.
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* Nerd joke.
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This post appeared originally at Fineness & Accuracy, but I've revised it for posting at Shakesville, to clear up some of my phrasing and expand on some other ideas I didn't feel I'd sufficiently addressed in the original. The post at F&A has been updated to reflect these changes as well.
Just curious
Are there any other Shakers out there watching Fringe? I'm absolutely loving it, and I was wondering if people might like a weekly discussion thread, like we do with Lost, Amazing Race, Top Chef, etc. Drop something in comments if you're interested, and feel free to discuss last night's episode.
For those of you that haven't seen the show, I highly recommend it. I never got into The X-Files; the comparison between these two shows seems inevitable. As I gushed to people at the Shaker meet-up this past weekend, I love Fringe because it's not all "what's out there?" stuff; it's all based in science.
But, it's mad science.
Joy.
lol my rollercoaster
Yay:
In one of his first acts in office President Obama has ordered the U.S. government to suspend prosecutions of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay for 120 days, military officials said Tuesday.Sigh:
Papers filed at the U.S. prison camp said the request is made "in the interest of justice and at the direction of the president of the United States."
Israel Withdraws from Gaza
As ("kind of crassly") promised, Israel has withdrawn from Gaza in conjunction with the commencement of Obama's presidency, thus having, as Spencer Ackerman put it, "take[n] advantage of the blind eye of the Bush administration one final time." Meanwhile:
[T]he Israeli Army said it had begun an investigation into reports by some non-governmental organizations that it used white phosphorous weapons illegally during the Gaza war.Great. And if Americans know anything, it's that self-regulation followed by internal investigations always uncover the truth.
A military spokesman in Tel Aviv said such weapons were not prohibited under international law if they were used to create smoke-screens or for marking battlefield areas. The spokesman said Israel only used legal weapons.
Human rights groups are concerned about the Israeli use of white phosphorous, illegal if used against civilians, because it can burn flesh like a kind of napalm.
The Israeli spokesman said: "in response to the claims of non-governmental organizations and claims in the foreign press relating to the use of phosphorous weapons, and in order to remove any ambiguity, an investigative team has been established in the Southern Command to look into the issue."
The spokesman said the investigation was first announced on Jan. 16 and was repeated on Wednesday after the newspaper Haaretz reported that the military was "investigating whether a reserve paratroops brigade made improper use of phosphorus shells during the fighting in Gaza."Well, as long as only a few people had their skin melted off in an excruciating torture that makes death a relief, that's okay then.
"The brigade fired about 20 such shells in a built-up area of northern Gaza," the Haaretz report said. "Aside from this one case, the shells were used very sparingly and, in the army's view, in compliance with international law."
I don't mean to sound flippant. The business of war makes me so angry, I can't even talk about it in any way except with resounding contempt.
Chocolate Rain
Somewhere in Indiana, a chocolate waterfall. As best I can tell, it reaches some thirty feet to the ceiling of the world's least-inviting candy factory.
Filmed while visiting Liss and Iain last weekend. If you listen closely, you can hear the two of them muttering in the background.
Question of the Day
What will you miss least about the Bush administration?
It's actually a tough question, given how many things there were to loathe. I'm going to have to call a tie between their insistent use of the lives and bodies of POC, women, and LGBTQIs as political footballs and scapegoats, and, as much as I hated their policies, I'm going to have to go with the wanton incompetence that clusterfucktastrophied every horrendous policy into something even more abhorrent than they intended.
Daily Kitteh
The whole time Misty and Deeks were here, Sophie was doing her hilariously adorable prairie dog impression, which I have never managed to catch on film. Today, upon the arrival of a large package which naturally had to be thoroughly investigated by all three furry residents of Shakes Manor, I finally managed to catch her in the act:
"Let me see...yes, yes, everything looks in order here."
News from Shakes Manor
After yet another morning of heavy snowfall, we now have what I can safely describe as a fuckload of snow.
A few minutes ago, I had to run an errand, and, when I opened the front door, I was shocked to see the tiniest wee red squirrel lying on my front porch on its stomach, directly in front of the door. It's a covered porch; ergo, no snow. And I imagine the bit right in front of our (drafty) front door is pretty warm.
The poor thing peered up at me as if to say, "You're not really going to make me go back out in the snow, are you? As you can see, it's three times as tall as I am."
I said, "You can stay as long as you like, but I'm going to have to step over you to get to the driveway."
We looked at each other a moment longer. When I moved toward it, it scurried away through the porch slats, into the snow. But it was definitely a half-hearted retreat. I'm pretty sure Red Squirrel was thisclose to taking the wild risk of trusting me, if it meant not having to face any more snow.
Well, Gee and Golly
THERE were cheers, whoops of joy and loud applause at US military bases in Afghanistan today as soldiers welcomed in their new commander-in-chief, President Barack Obama.But... but... but... FOX News said that the troops don't like Obama! Wow. Never thought I'd see the day conservatives would promote misinformation. Snort.
Soldiers at Camp Phoenix, a mainly US base on the outskirts of Kabul, stood to attention as they watched a live television transmission of Mr Obama take the oath in Washington.
"It's a proud moment for us," said Brigadier General Steven Huber, commander of the base, where many of the soldiers hail from Illinois, also Mr Obama's home state.
"He is our new commander-in-chief and we will serve him with honour," he said. Live feeds of the ceremony were watched at other bases across Afghanistan - where roughly 32,000 US soldiers lead an international effort to fight a Taliban-led insurgency and rebuild the local security forces.
Sarcasm aside, I really like this:
Master Sergeant David Nichols said it felt right for him to be watching the inauguration in Afghanistan.(Energy dome tip to Think Progress.)
"I am here, I am defending my country, and I am watching history being made," he said.
Bush Obama Street
Shaker Margosita emails:
Shakers might enjoy this: All the signs on Bush St in San Francisco have been changed to Obama. :)
Hilarious.
Hello, Mr. President
I've got a new piece up at The Guardian's Comment is free America about this morning's festivities:
MSNBC is the usual mix of absurdity and unexamined privilege, as Chris Matthews compares the Bushes to the Romanovs (starring Miss Beazley as Anastasia!) and Keith Olbermann says they're so far away that Obama will "look like a raisin". CNN is predictably boring with their "facts" and "restraint", so I head back to MSNBC, where Matthews waxes global, informing me that the US is not as monarchical as outsiders think. Why, just recently US supreme court chief justice John Roberts' wife was standing next to him at the cobbler's!Read the whole thing here.
I switch to Fox News. It's just a test pattern accompanied by audio of Sean Hannity quietly sobbing.
Back to MSNBC, where Matthews is now rhapsodising about the concept of democracy, telling me there is a sense in America that, "on some level", all people are equal. This note is followed immediately by images of Dan Quayle entering the inauguration with Al Gore right behind him, and I think: Yes, Matthews is right. You can be a rich, white, idiot dude or a rich, white, genius dude and become vice-president. Go equality! Maude bless the USA.
When Bush appears moments later, he is booed. Highly inappropriate, wildly disrespectful and, of course, totally hilarious.
Classy Conservatism, Cont'd
While they pray the new president fails over at WorldNetDaily, professional assdrip Rush Limbaugh also hopes Obama fails and the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes is queasy and fearful.
Sacrifice
Sacrifice, when presented as a counterpoint to the unchecked avarice that has been the hallmark of the go-shopping-to-win-the-war-on-terrah Bush Era, is an excellent concept.
Sacrifice, when presented as the unique responsibility of old and sick people giving up things they "enjoy," like food and healthcare, is not.
