Ross Douthat tries to make the case that we don't need affirmative action any more.
Whither affirmative action in an age of America’s first black president? Will it be gradually phased out, as the Supreme Court’s conservatives seem to prefer? Or will it endure well into this century and beyond?
To affirmative action’s defenders, Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings have been an advertisement for the latter course. Here you have a Hispanic woman being grilled by a collection of senators who embody, quite literally, the white male power structure. Her chief Republican interlocutor, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, even has a history of racially charged remarks.
But the senators are yesterday’s men. The America of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is swiftly giving way to the America of Sonia Maria Sotomayor and Barack Hussein Obama.
The nation’s largest states, Texas and California, already have “minority” majorities. By 2023, if current demographic trends continue, nonwhites — black, Hispanic and Asian — will constitute a majority of Americans under 18. By 2042, they’ll constitute a national majority. As Hua Hsu noted earlier this year in The Atlantic, “every child born in the United States from here on out will belong to the first post-white generation.”
As this generation rises, race-based discrimination needs to go. The explicit scale-tipping in college admissions should give way to class-based affirmative action; the de facto racial preferences required of employers by anti-discrimination law should disappear.
The problem with that is that just because a minority is now a majority, it doesn't mean they have the power. Lest we forget, fifty years ago the states that made up the Confederacy had a majority population of African Americans, and yet they were still powerless either by law or by tradition. It doesn't matter who has the numbers; it's who holds the reins. As long as senators like Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III can sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee and basically ask Sonia Sotomayor where she gets the gall to be so uppity as to assume that her world view and experience as a Latina or as a woman make her as qualified to sit on the Supreme Court as your average white patriarch, race and gender will be a factor in the American discourse.
Mr. Douthat expects affirmative action to fade away just because Barack Obama has been elected president. I chalk that sentiment up to his youthful optimism and the fact that since he was born in 1979, he has no recollection of what life was like in America when racism was so ingrained in American society that very few people gave it a second thought. I'm not talking about segregated schools and "white" and "colored" rest rooms and drinking fountains in courthouses and train stations; I'm talking about corporate America that put programs like Amos 'n' Andy on CBS, Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben on the kitchen table, and Sambo's restaurants on the interstate rest stops. The very idea of a white man kissing a black woman on an episode of Star Trek had NBC's Standards and Practices office so worried that they made sure that the storyline made it show that it was done under duress. Segregation and discrimination may have been championed by George Wallace in Alabama in 1962, but it was practiced silently and politely in every element in America, and in every state in the union.
Mr. Douthat thinks that keeping affirmative action will breed resentment and corruption.
If affirmative action exists in the America of 2028, it will be as a spoils system for the already-successful, a patronage machine for politicians — and a source of permanent grievance among America’s shrinking white population.
You can see this landscape taking shape in academia, where the quest for diversity is already as likely to benefit the children of high-achieving recent immigrants as the descendants of slaves. You can see it in the backroom dealing revealed by Ricci v. DeStefano, where the original decision to deny promotions to white firefighters was heavily influenced by a local African-American “kingmaker” with a direct line to New Haven’s mayor. You can hear it in the resentments gathering on the rightward reaches of the talk-radio dial.
The people who resent affirmative action the most are the ones who never needed it or don't remember a time when it was needed.
Affirmative action isn't perfect. Every system designed to try to shift the culture and advance our society can fall prey to resentment and corruption. But so far no one has come up with a solution that is better. It may not be fair to some people, but, as John F. Kennedy noted, life isn't fair, and the people who have been treated with institutional unfairness can speak to the efficacy of letting the system balance out on its own. In the end, it would have been a lot better if we had never needed it in the first place.
Care of Nicole Belle, whose got great commentary, check out Chris Matthews and his merry gang of Beltway Bubble Bobbleheads discussing healthcare and taxes as if what really matters are the poor schlubs making more than a quarter of a million dollars a year who might see a "tax increase" (i.e. see their taxes go back to normal) in order to help fund healthcare:
Seriously, we have a healthcare crisis in this country. The only thing that needs debated at this point is whether the proposed reform bill is actually comprehensive and citizen-centered enough to actually fix it—not whether it's needed in the first place and certainly not whether it's fair or politically wise or anything else to unwind the Bush tax cuts to pay for it.
The healthcare crisis is not merely a pressing financial crisis: It's also a grave ethical crisis. We treat healthcare not as a right, but a privilege—and a for-profit enterprise. Not only is that wildly short-sighted (if millions of uninsured people continue to lose everything from crushing medical bills, it will continue to fuck the economy for everyone), it's appallingly selfish and profoundly unpatriotic.
We are a nation of people who are meant to be each other's closest allies, but instead we're so voraciously self-interested, we're just a nation of individuals looking out for ourselves and wondering why it ain't working.
An the chattering classes are the worst of the fucking bunch, because they can't get past their own egos and greed and selfishness to have an objective conversation that makes sense for an entire nation—not just for them and their friends. They're the least willing to make any sacrifice at all for this country—send other people and other people's kids to fight wars in far-off lands, send other people and other people's kids to their graves for want of healthcare, let other people and other people's kids die in wars or on collapsed bridges or in national disasters or from hunger, instead of risking their stupid jobs to challenge a case for war or a dodgy election or a presidential administration gone horribly wrong—and the first to shout about how the government is betraying them anytime they're asked to contribute in any material way to the national collective.
What the hell is that contraption you're in? What the hell is that magenta beast to your right?? What the hell are you smiling about, anyway??? What the hell????
(If you've a ridiculous and/or embarrassing photo of yourself from your youth, please send it to shakerwhatthehell_at_yahoo_dot_com. I'll post them up as part of our series called What The Hell? so everyone can laugh at with you.)
A bitch just read this article about a proposal from the Democratic Leadership Council to move from textbooks toward e-books and…well, it made a bitch sad. I happen to enjoy the hell out of books…I adore books…shit, I am currently sitting in my couch-based area surrounded by books!
Yes, they weigh more than an electronic pocket tool…but a bitch even enjoys the weight of books.
There’s something about the texture of paper…the sensation of flipping through page after page to reveal the story within. A bitch has fond memories of weekend visits to my local library where I’d stock up on biographies, histories and trashy novels…and when I returned home I’d settle into bed for hours of fantabulous reading.
Gawd, those were the days.
I can’t imagine snuggling down with an e-book. Does one spread e-books out on the kitchen table to do homework? And there won’t be any coffee stains on the pages of e-books to remind a bitch what my ass was drinking the last time I read [insert novel title here]!
Shit.
Anyhoo, the Democratic Leadership Council is saying that e-books will save money and open up a discussion for online media in classrooms and blah, blah and another blah.
Fuck it…if e-books are the future of books this bitch won’t be able to stop that shit.
But I’m not feeling it and I’m already nostalgic for days spent thumbing through a printed thing as imagination kicked in and characters jumped off the page to become real…or a fork full of spaghetti plopped onto the page leaving a stain on a page I’d find months or years later when re-reading...or a turn of the page would reveal a phone number written next to the page number that a bitch can't connect to anyone I fucking know.
Blink.
Something tells me this transition will be far more painful than the death of record albums and themed mix tapes recorded off the radio.
Frank McCourt, a former NYC schoolteacher at Stuyvesant High School who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Angela's Ashes, along with 'Tis and Teacher Man, has died at age 78.
Mr. McCourt, who taught in the city's school system for nearly 30 years, had always told his writing students that they were their own best material. In his mid-60s, he decided to take his own advice, sitting down to commit his childhood memories to paper and producing what he described as "a modest book, modestly written."
In it Mr. McCourt described a childhood of terrible deprivation. After his alcoholic father abandoned the family, his mother — the Angela of the title — begged on the streets of Limerick to keep him and his three brothers meagerly fed, poorly clothed and housed in a basement flat with no bathroom and a thriving population of vermin. The book's clear-eyed look at childhood misery, its incongruously lilting, buoyant prose and its heartfelt urgency struck a remarkable chord with readers and critics.
"When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all," the book's second paragraph begins in a famous passage. "It was, of course, a miserable childhood: The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."
..."I think there's something about the Irish experience — that we had to have a sense of humor or die," Mr. McCourt once told an interviewer. "That's what kept us going — a sense of absurdity, rather than humor.
"And it did help because sometimes you'd get desperate," he continued. "And I developed this habit of saying to myself, 'Oh, well.' I might be in the midst of some misery, and I'd say to myself, 'Well, someday you'll think it's funny.' And the other part of my head will say: 'No, you won't — you'll never think this is funny. This is the most miserable experience you’ve ever had.' But later on you look back and you say, 'That was funny, that was absurd.'"
by Shaker Alexmac, a transgender woman studying at the University of Florida.
Recently a church in Gainesville put up a sign with the following message: "Islam is of the devil." Unsurprisingly, they also plan to put up signs against gay marriage and abortion.
Gainesville has a well-deserved reputation for being a liberal town, but, just at its outskirts, you quickly enter what we'll call less liberal country. This church is located on those outskirts. The Dove World Outreach Center has its tradition firmly planted in conservative religious extremism. Its own name is an oxymoron, because it does not represent peace or world outreach. When asked by reporters about their sign, the pastor explained:
Jones said, in spite of what the sign says, the church's outreach effort doesn't look at a person's faith when it comes to offering help.
Anyone in need can come and receive free food and clothing, he said.
"We are in no means in that way prejudiced or against them," Jones said.
While the church will continue to make its outreach program available to all people, its message emphasizing the Bible and a belief in Jesus Christ remains firm, he said.
"I think every pastor, every Christian pastor in this city, must be in agreement with the message. They might find the message a little bit too direct, but they must be in agreement with the message because the only way is the Bible and Jesus," Jones said.
This pastor shows profound ignorance about and hostility to Muslims and then has the audacity to say "we aren't bigots; we are just telling like it is." It is the classic "I am not a racist, but…" tactic. The series of events in the story follows the usual format of conservative churches putting up bigoted signs. The interesting part of this story is the community response.
The Christian religious left in Gainesville was not quiet about conservative Christians again making Christianity look like a religion of bigotry. In addition to the liberal Christians, many other groups, such as Muslims, Jews, and atheists, gathered to protest the church. About 125 people attended the protests against the church. The crowd carried signs preaching "peace not hate."
Eve MacMaster, pastor at Emmanuel Mennonite Church who organized the prayer vigil, said she wants people in the community to know most Christians do not agree with the message that the Dove World Outreach Center is sending by posting the sign.
“It troubles me that my faith is represented by such a negative message,” MacMaster said.
She said she sent an e-mail about the vigil to her congregation, members of Campus Ministry Cooperative, pastors from local churches as well as personal Jewish and Muslim friends.
“We decided that the most appropriate response was to meet in prayer,” she said.
She is concerned for the people in the Gainesville community as well as the congregation and pastors of the Dove World Outreach Center, she said.
"It's not a good thing for our community to have a sign that shows that much hatred," she said.
This response is incredibly encouraging. Liberal Christians standing up to the religious right and showing people a positive face to Christianity, and people of many different faiths, along with atheists, standing against the bigotry of the Dove World Outreach Center, is an important gesture.
by Shaker Lena Dahlstrom, a crossdresser from the San Francisco Bay area who also performs as a drag queen under the stage name "Joie de Vivre."
I'd run across "Bobbi with an I" by country singer Phil Vassar a few months ago and was intrigued. The song tells the story of the singer's friend Bobby, a former "linebacker, a quarterback sacker," who drives a tow truck and bench presses 335—and who shows up one night at the local bar "in his pink party dress." Jaws drop, but over time nobody gives it a second thought, it's "just Bobbi with an I."
Given that country music isn't known as a bastion of social progressivism it was a pleasant surprise, with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor (one reason Bobbi gets respect is because "he's been known to knock a few teeth out if you ask him for a beauty tip") that doesn't make Bobbi the butt of a joke. It seemed like Vassar either knew someone who crossdressed, or at least had run across crossdressers hanging out at a bar somewhere.
Vassar just released a music video for the song and it's got some, ah, interesting differences.
The video adds a prequel where Bobby is invited out by his friends, but demurs because he's broke. But his eyes light up when his friend mentions "it's Ladies Night, free drinks for the girls!" Did someone say: free drinks? Cue the music. Bobbi enters the bar, a cigar-chomping burly "man in a dress" (in fact he's wearing sunglasses to conceal the fact that he's not wearing any make-up). And in interviews and his "behind-the-scenes" video, Vassar says: "Bobbi is actually a guy I knew—this outrageous guy who showed up at a club one night dressed as a girl. It was just a funny way to pick up chicks." In other words—it's all just good fun, it's a one-time thing, and Bobbi doesn't really want to be seen as a woman.
I'll take Vassar at his word, he seems like a decent guy—but also a guy who comes across as savvy enough to know how far he can push things with his fans. Not that that might be a reason the video is at odds with the actual lyrics. (And don't think too hard about how Bobbi, who's flat broke, manages on short notice to get decked out in a cocktail dress, high heels, earings, platinum wig, fashionable women's sunglasses and a black sequin purse, or why he's got seemingly hairless legs.)
But even if the video undercuts the lyrics, Bobbi's having a great time, his friends are having a great time, in fact everyone's having a great time except an eye-rolling old man, who's presented as a curmudgeonly killjoy. The "big-boned girl with a platinum curl" is the life of the party. As Vassar sings: "That's how it is, nobody gives a second thought these days."
Would I have preferred that the video stayed true to its roots and cast someone like Victoria "Porkchop" Parker* as Bobbi? Hell ya. But if the "lite" version ends up making life a little easier for some trans person in some shitkicker bar somewhere, I'm not gonna complain too much.
* Before anyone kvetches, yes I know Porkchop is a gay man who's a professional female impersonator. But she's burly enough as a guy to be a convincing Bobby and femme enough to be a Bobbi who would've left viewers stunned and amazed.
From 1962 to 1981, Mr. Cronkite was a nightly presence in American homes and always a reassuring one, guiding viewers through national triumphs and tragedies alike, from moonwalks to war, in an era when network news was central to many people’s lives.
He became something of a national institution, with an unflappable delivery, a distinctively avuncular voice and a daily benediction: “And that’s the way it is.” He was Uncle Walter to many: respected, liked and listened to. With his trimmed mustache and calm manner, he even bore a resemblance to another trusted American fixture, another Walter — Walt Disney.
Along with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC, Mr. Cronkite was among the first celebrity anchormen. In 1995, 14 years after he retired from the “CBS Evening News,” a TV Guide poll ranked him No. 1 in seven of eight categories for measuring television journalists. (He professed incomprehension that Maria Shriver beat him out in the eighth category, attractiveness.) He was so widely known that in Sweden anchormen were once called Cronkiters.
Yet he was a reluctant star. He was genuinely perplexed when people rushed to see him rather than the politicians he was covering, and even more astonished by the repeated suggestions that he run for office himself. He saw himself as an old-fashioned newsman — his title was managing editor of the “CBS Evening News” — and so did his audience.
One of my favorite Cronkite moments:
For those of you too young to remember him when he was on the air, he told us about everything from Vietnam to the Kennedy assassination, to the arrival of the Beatles and the landing on the moon. Before that, he reported from London and Europe during World War II as well the battles in Little Rock and Selma. Through it all he was calm, quiet, and, despite the grumblings of both the left and the right, about as objective as you could get in the business of broadcast journalism. And that's the way it was.
"I tell you that OBAMA is really good chess playaear, and with awesonme IN TEAM CAN destroy your plans to enreach by blackwater; i HAVE tHE world on the saucer AND i'LL GIVE TO the king: mR. OBAMA., esquire; YOU ARE POOR PIONS;l BLACKWATER is in THE ATTACK AREA OF CHINA AND RUSSIA AREA: IT's MY DIK; I HAVE EXACT COORDINATES OF BLACKWATER; UNDERSATOOD: ISRAEL DON'T EXIST ANYMORE , ARABIAN EMPIRE IS REAL; LOCKERBY's JETS WILL BE MADE ON LYBIA; SUCK THE DIK AT YOUR BIRTHDAY. AWESOME the WRAITH, 'STEEL GUARDS' COMMANDER" — AWESOME_by_me, some dipshit who has left a couple comments on a year-old post.
It's easy to do, for lots of reasons—the contempt bred of familiarity, the strip malls that have changed the landscape and belligerently suggest that no beauty is to be found here, move along; we killed it, the thin veneer of dilapidation that sometimes seems to hang over everything, because we are a place of abandonment and stagnation, the survivors of a two decades-old economic cataclysm when the steel mills fell. They were lumbering giants who swallowed thousands, almost all men, 'round the clock, every day in three shifts, permanently dirtying their lungs and their fingernails—and no number of Wal-Marts can fill the void those giants left.
And so there is disrepair, the indications of atrophy. They are subtle things, that have happened slowly over decades. The schools and their playgrounds look less bright, somehow failing to suggest a place vibrating with energy and promise, the way they seemed to do when I was a kid. The streets aren't quite as clean. The potholes and the cracked sidewalks don't get fixed as quickly, or at all. Fewer salt trucks in the winter. More houses every year that need fresh paint, more vacant retail spaces. Little things. Little degrees of difference. Little signs that the good jobs are gone, that the salaries at the jobs which remain aren't keeping up with inflation, that local government is broke, that they can't afford real improvements, only layers of temporary fixes to stave off the rot as long as possible.
Everyone who wants something better moves away, just like I did once. And stayed gone for a decade.
This place is a haunted place, its history hanging over everything like cobwebs that can't quite be brushed away.
And yet, when I take a moment to really look, I see there is beauty to be found even in the decline.
There is beauty in decline. There is humor in tragedy. Maybe there is hope here, too, in this place very much like lots of places in this country, in this world.
Dwight DeLee has been convicted of manslaughter in the first degree as a hate crime in the killing of Lateisha Green, who was a trans woman. This is only the second hate crime conviction in a homicide case in the nation, the first being the conviction of Angie Zapata's murderer, Allen Andrade.
Shaker Lena emails, which I am quoting with her permission:
I'm puzzled how the jury found that it was a hate crime, but yet only decided on a manslaughter verdict — particularly when the defendant called her a "faggot," then went to get a rifle and returned to do the shooting. But hey, she was just a trans woman, it's not like any real person was killed...
There could be reasonable doubt that DeLee fired into the car not intending to actually kill anyone. (I.e. he only intended to hurt someone, but ending up killing someone, which falls under manslaughter.) But still.
Sadly, prosecutors had to refer to Green as a man and use her male birth name, because NY hate crimes law only covers sexual orientation, not gender identity or expression. This Feministe post has some good observation on how the prosecution's approach itself plays into transphobia. If anything, the defense seems to have presented a more ethical case -- arguing that there was reasonable doubt that DeLee was the shooter, and that he didn't know anything about Green's "sexual orientation." Apparently they didn't opt for a transpanic defense, which would've been a stretch anyway, but that hasn't stopped defense attorneys from successfully using it or the gay panic defense in equally improbably circumstances.
There is comprehensive coverage of the case starting here.
Pat Buchanan! Showing up yet again on Rachel Maddow's show.
Buchanan: Well, I think I would vote "no" on Sonia Sotomayor, the same way I would have voted "no" on Harriet Miers, and I said so the first day she was nominated. I don't think Judge Sotomayor is qualified for the United States Supreme Court.
She has not shown any great intellect here, or any great depth of knowledge of the Constitution; she's never written anything that I've read in terms of a law review article or major book or something like that on the law. And I do believe she's an affirmative action appointment by the President of the United States. He eliminated everyone but four women, and then he picked the Hispanic! So I think this is an affirmative action appointment, and I would vote "no."
Maddow: Why do you think it is that, of the 110 Supreme Court justices we've had in this country, 108 of them have been white?
Buchanan: Well, I think white men were 100% of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100% of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably 100% of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built, basically, by white folks in this country, who were 90% of the entire nation in 1960 when I was growing up, Rachel, and the other 10% were African-Americans who had been discriminated against. That's why.
I really don't understand why she's willing to give this racist, misogynist superfuck a platform to air his crustified wankery.
Tom Colicchio was obviously thrilled to hear that his hit TV show Top Chef garnered two Emmy nominations Thursday morning – "It feels great!" – but the award-winning chef admits he's a bit preoccupied these days: his wife is expecting a baby!
…So will his new son be expected to follow in the footsteps of his Beard-award-winning dad?
"He could do whatever!" Colicchio says, adding that both his sons, "can do whatever they'd like to do as long as they're happy."
I always feel all blubby anytime I read/hear parents saying that to their kids. One of the greatest gifts my parents gave me was the freedom from the corrosive pressure to be anything other than I was—and thank Maude. No one even knew what the internet was when I was a kid (besides Al Gore), no less had begun to imagine blogging. Some destinies don't even exist when the trip is begun; I can't image any other way besides "whatever they'd like" for that reason. But I know not everyone is so fortunate to be left to blaze their own trails unimpeded.
JOHNNY DEPP has his eye on a gender-bending movie role - he would love to portray singer/actress CAROL CHANNING in a biopic.
The character actor has regularly donned a series of bizarre outfits for his films, and even dressed up as a woman for his starring part in 1994 comedy Ed Wood. And he's determined to go even further with a future role - by playing 88-year-old Channing.
He says, "My dream role would be to play musical legend Carol Channing in a biopic of her life. I love her, I really do, she's amazing." (link)
Okay, someone in Hollywood needs to make this happen immediately. That is, if they can pry themselves away from making films about bullshit.
(1,000 points to the first person who can successfully deconstruct everything that is wrong with the sentence: "The character actor has regularly donned a series of bizarre outfits for his films, and even dressed up as a woman for his starring part in 1994 comedy Ed Wood.")
Since Johnny's currently mad-hatting it up in Tim Burton's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, it seems appropriate to remember Carol's turn as the White Queen:
Q: What do Republicans Senator John Ensign, Governor Mark Sanford, and former Representative Chip Pickering all have in common?
A: They're all members of the Christian Congressmember group "The Family"—and they all cheated on their wives.
Pickering, the newest outed member of this elite gang, even allegedly carried on his affair while living at the C Street townhouse belonging to The Family, which can rent space well below-market because it's classified by the IRS as a church.
Paul Krugman on Goldman Sachs, their nifty bonuses, and lessons we should be learning:
The American economy remains in dire straits, with one worker in six unemployed or underemployed. Yet Goldman Sachs just reported record quarterly profits — and it's preparing to hand out huge bonuses, comparable to what it was paying before the crisis. What does this contrast tell us?
First, it tells us that Goldman is very good at what it does. Unfortunately, what it does is bad for America.
Second, it shows that Wall Street's bad habits — above all, the system of compensation that helped cause the financial crisis — have not gone away.
Third, it shows that by rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely.
Welcome to Shakesville, a progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, social justice, cute things, and all that is in between. Please note that the commenting policy and the Feminism 101 section, conveniently linked at the top of the page, are required reading before commenting.
Frank McCourt, a former NYC schoolteacher at Stuyvesant High School who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Angela's Ashes, along with 'Tis and Teacher Man, 
Recently a church in Gainesville 
Tom Colicchio
