Yesterday, I mentioned that President Obama was launching a campaign to get the youth vote reenergized for the midterm elections. Well, he started with a conference call yesterday with college media, the audio and transcript of which is here.
Reading/listening to it, the first thing one notes is how earnest and engaged the young journalists on the call are. Which is what makes this admonishment from Obama, as part of his answer as to why he chose Wisconsin as a stop for his GOTV tour, even more contemptible:
Now, I've been in office for two years; we've been in the midst of this big financial crisis. I've been having all these fights with the Republicans to make progress on a whole bunch of these issues. And during that time, naturally, some of the excitement and enthusiasm started to drain away because people felt like, gosh, all we're reading about are constant arguments in Washington and things haven't changed as much as we would like as quickly as we'd like — even though the health care bill got passed, and financial regulatory bill got passed, and we've brought an end to our combat mission in Iraq. But still it seems as if a lot of the old politics is still operating in Washington.
And what I want to do is just to go speak to young people directly and remind them of what I said during the campaign, which was change is always hard in this country. It doesn't happen overnight. You take two steps forward, you take one step back. This is a big, complicated democracy. It's contentious. It's not always fun and games. A lot of times, to bring about big changes like, for example, in our energy policy, you're taking on a lot of special interests — the oil companies and utilities. And some of them may not want to see the kinds of changes that would lead to a strong green economy.
And the point is, though, you can't sit it out. You can't suddenly just check in once every 10 years or so, on an exciting presidential election, and then not pay attention during big midterm elections where we've got a real big choice between Democrats and Republicans.
…And so even though this may not be as exciting as a presidential election, it's going to make a huge difference in terms of whether we're going to be able to move our agenda forward over the next couple of years.
And I just want to remind young people, they've got to get reengaged in this process. And they're going to have to vote in these midterms elections. You've got to take the time to find out where does your congressional candidate stand on various issues, where does your Senate candidate stand on various issues and make an educated decision and participate in this process — because democracy is never a one-and-done proposition. It's something that requires sustained engagement and sustained involvement. And I just want to remind everybody of that.
That is some condescending shit, right there.
Young people are not disengaging from politics because it's "not exciting" or "not fun," or because they don't understand the gravity of elections, or because they're suffering from the misapprehension that politics is easy.
They're disengaging from politics for the same reasons that older people are: Because they're disillusioned. Because they've been betrayed.
Young people aren't stupid. Telling them their "enthusiasm drained away" because of all the fighting with Republicans doesn't make it so. (Try: Because of all the capitulation to conservative policies.) Telling them "Politics is not always fun and games," as if they're fucking dipshits who don't understand that our democracy is "big and complicated" doesn't change the fact that people are pissed because they know what you're doing and don't like it, not because they're clueless rubes with sponges in their brainpans designed to soak up patronizing rhetoric.
The Obama administration continues to act mystified by the proposition that progressives could have anything less than undiluted enthusiasm for their agenda and accomplishments, despitethefactthattheyarecontinuingmanyoftheBushadministrationpoliciesprogressivesexplicitlyrejected. (No less after campaigning on a message of "hope and change.") And their official response continues to be berating disgruntled progressives for being too goddamn stupid to understand the sophisticated game of twelve-dimensional chess being played, and too goddamn ungrateful to appreciate everything being done for us.
Obama campaigned on the promise to bring back accountability to Washington, but he refuses to even entertain the possibility that his administration is accountable for the endemic disappointment among the voters who helped elect him.
The astounding collapse of Democrats and the rightwing resurgence of 2009 and 2010 is a direct result of the squandered moral authority of Barack Obama and Democratic leaders. I say "squandered" because it is something Obama possessed during the campaign and something Democrats prioritized as the antidote to Bush and Cheney's radicalism.
Pundits put forth myriad reasons to explain the GOP wave (jobs and the economy topping the list), but they invariably overlook the biggest one: that Obama and Democrats have undermined their own moral authority by continuing some of Bush's most egregious policies.
...Everything flows from the public’s belief that you stand for something.
He adds: "From gay rights to executive power to war to the environment, the left increasingly believes the Obama White House lacks the moral courage to undo Bush's radicalism. If anything, the Aulaqi case is an indication Obama will go further than Bush to 'prove' his strength."
Dude, it's not us; it's you.
And berating us as stupid ingrates, or casting us as naïve simpletons, or accusing of us losing interest in anything that isn't "fun," or whatever other defensive approach that deflects back onto us the sole responsibility for this yawning chasm of enthusiasm, isn't helping. Put down the shovel.
You're not entitled to our support. You have to earn it.
And if you don't understand how failing to vociferously champion the repeal of DADT, and asserting "that presidential assassination orders of American citizens should be treated as a state secret, and thus not reviewable by any court anywhere," and erasing choice from the party platform, and utterly failing to defend Roe for years, as but a few examples, aren't the sorts of policies that earn progressives' votes, then you've really got some nerve implying we're the daft ones who don't understand how politics works.
Eight of the nine pages in chapter ten are Molly's mother's speech at the teabag party. Oh Maude, what a speech it is. Pure neocon bullshit. I read the whole speech, and I hated every word of it. Empty, self-aggrandizing, pseudo-patriotic claptrap.
Beverly Emerson, Director emeritus, Founders' Keepers, according to Molly's flyer, takes the stage and lets go with a James Madison quote, as if to prove her patriot cred. She then sets about railing against corruption and power and Carrol Quigley's Tragedy and Hope. She continues, lambasting big government and the nanny state, lying the blame for that at Herbert Croly's feet.
His writings lived on, and they influenced every fundamental change brought on by what became known as 'the progressive movement' in the first half of the twentieth century, from the Federal Reserve Act and the income tax to the spiral into crushing debt and dependence that began with the New Deal.
Yeah, fuck the New Deal! The whole Depression was designed to weed out the weak, amirite? But seriously? Who pisses about the New Deal, for fuck's sake? Oh, yeah: Libertarians, neocons, and social Darwinists.
Beverly again sets her sights on corrupt politicians.
Danger comes when good intentions are hijacked and perverted by the culture of corruption—when those elected to represent us begin to act not for your own good, but for their own gain.
It’s the same today. People who, for their own gain, would replace equal justice with social justice, trade individual freedom for an all-powerful, all-knowing central government, forsake the glorious creative potential of the American individual, the beating heart of this nation, for a two-class society in which the elites rule and all below them are all the same: homogenized, subordinate, indebted, and powerless.
Oh, those elites and their tricksy homogenization. They wish to stomp on the heartbeat of America, what with their regulations and their rules that impede "the glorious creative potential of the American individual."
Out of kindness here, I am going to try not to quote too much. (Feel free to thank me by buying me something off of my Amazon wish list.) Noah looks around the room now and notices there are a few more interlopers, all with video cameras, recording Beverly's speech. There is more about lobbyists and elites and republics. But then it really gets good.
Beverly compares the size of the U.S. Constitution to the Federal Tax Code. Oh my! The tax code is 67,000 pages long! The Constitution just a few. So, I think what Beverly is getting at here is that the tax code is unwieldy, compared to the lithe little Constitution. Umm, okay. Fair enough. I'm not sure what that proves. But it is certainly something.
I do think I am beginning to understand what the teabaggers want: Lower taxes. Does that make Steve Forbes the Godfather of Teabaggers. There's more here about imbalances in power, different classes, fairness.
Our message of equal justice is impossible for any honest person to refute. How do I know that? Because it was the message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Umm... what?
Let that settle for a moment.
Yeah, that's right. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Now, remember a while back when Beck was saying his rally of angry white folk just happening to be on the anniversary of Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech was nothing more than a coincidence. Well, at first he said it was unintentional, then he said it was "divine providence."
And maybe that could be believable. Maybe. (The part about it being unintentional, not the bit about providence.) Except that Beverly goes on for a whole page about Dr. King, finishing up with this:
All we must do is find the strength and the wisdom to awaken our friends and neighbors, take back our power under the law, and restore what’s been forgotten. Restore. Not adapt, not transform ... restore.
Beck's Restoring Honor rally echoes too closely Beverly's speech in his book to be mere coincidence. It's branding. It's a tie-in. It's a marketing and PR coup. That last bit reminds me of something, now that I think about it.
Americans are still a fair and just people. They know the difference between racism and race-baiting, between violence and accusations of violence, between hatred and patriotism. Let them weigh the evidence for as long as they need, because when the verdict comes down, we will once again be on the right side.
Ah, yes. Americans know "the difference between racism and race-baiting." We're so post-racial. America is a multicultural paradise! Wait, no. White people aren't racist! That's what she meant.
This, perhaps (though I am open to suggestions otherwise) is the most ridiculous moment of the chapter:
Just like Dr. King, we aim to eliminate evil, not those who perpetrate it. To speak of violence in any form is to play right into the hands of those who oppose us. They’ve already invested countless hours into portraying us as violent, hateful racists, and they are just waiting for the chance to further that story line. Don’t give it to them. Instead of Bill Ayers, give them Benjamin Franklin. Instead of Malcolm X, give them Rosa Parks. Instead of bin Laden, give them Gandhi.
As an exercise, go ahead and parse the comparisons made by Beverly: Bill Ayers and Benjamin Franklin. Malcolm X and Rosa Parks. bin Laden and Ghandi. If you're not laughing you've more mettle than I. And if you're incensed, well, that's perfectly natural too.
Noah notes how Beverly has the crowd "in the palm of her hand." It's one of those expository moments that shouldn't need to be said, wouldn't need to be said if all the pages leading up to it were at all compelling. If the author needs to tell us the speech was electrifying, then it probably wasn't.
Beverly asks god to bless America (duh!) and exits the stage "as a Toby Keith song began to play over the sound system." Really.
Maude help me, that was brutal. And I feel as though I should apologize for quoting as much as I did. Eight pages and nothing was said, really. Not so much. Nothing anyone with even a passing understanding of Beck's worldview wouldn't already be aware of. This is one thrilling thriller.
All that is left now is for Noah and Molly to discuss the presentation.
Needless to say, PR weasel that he is, Noah is noncommittal. He doesn't like to discuss politics. Molly, for her part, has had her fill of Noah for the evening, and storms off.
Vice President Joe Biden on Monday urged Democrats to overcome their differences and support their candidates at the polls by telling them to "stop whining."
During a fundraiser for New Hampshire Democratic candidates for the House and Senate, Biden said that Democrats should "remind our base constituency to stop whining and get out there and look at the alternatives. This president has done an incredible job. He's kept his promises," according to a pool report.
Stop whining and look at the alternatives, huh? Well. I'm pretty sure Vice President Joe Biden just told me to vote for the Green Party.
Video Description: Footage of Dudley being playful at home, and at the dog park this weekend, both with Iain and with other dogs. Set to The Rescues' "Break Me Out," because Dudley continues every day, since he's been rescued, to break out of the shell that dog racing created around him.
My sincerest thanks to Shaker BrianWS who not only bought me the breathtaking CD whence this amazing song comes, but also bought Dudley an awesome new rainbow gayhound collar, and who lives for videos of Dudley at the dog park.
The bad news is that Oakleigh Reed, aka Oak, a transgender honors student at Mona Shores High School in Muskegon, Michigan, has been stripped of his Homecoming King title because school records still identify him as female.
The good news is that he won in the first place, his fellow students are rallying to his defense, his friends have started a Facebook page titled "Oak is My King," his mom is awesome, his teachers support and respect him even if the school administration doesn't, and the ACLU may champion his case. And the article about the whole thing is pretty damn good, to boot.
It's always shitty to have to post something about someone being denied some basic bit of equality, even something as "meaningless" as a homecoming title. (The fact that someone is being denied the title shows how not meaningless it really is, when it can still be used as a weapon of marginalization.) But damn if doesn't make me a wee bit blubby that the administration's fuckery seems to be getting the most support from transphobic internet trolls who don't even live in the state and bravely hide behind anonymous IDs.
The people who matter are (mostly) standing up for Oak.
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
I don't even know where to begin with this New York Times article about Isaan, the northeastern region of Thailand which has become a destination for Western men who are "drawn by the low cost of living, slow pace of life and the exotic reputation of Thai women." And, of course, the fact that it's a lot easier to be a misogynist fuckhead to a woman who has far fewer options for financial independence:
"Thai women are a lot like women in America were 50 years ago," said [54-year-old Joseph Davis of Fresno, California, who is married to 30-year-old Nui Davis], before they discovered their rights and became "strong-headed and opinionated."
"The women now know they are equal," said Mr. Davis, a retired Naval officer who has been divorced twice, "so the situation is not as relaxed and peaceful as it is between an American and a Thai lady."
Endemic extreme poverty, an economy in which even a small US pension makes you a rich man, and a vulnerable and easily exploitable population of women whose education, if there was any to speak of, didn't exactly introduce them to feminist concepts. Just your basic MRA paradise.
Saturday marked the start of Banned Books Week this year, as celebrated by the American Library Association. About Banned Books Week:
Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.
Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.
Alexie’s novel about a teenage boy growing up on an Indian reservation who decides to attend an all-white high school was already banned from a Crook County High School classroom in Prineville, Ore., in 2008 after one parent complained that the protagonist’s discussion of masturbation was “offensive.” The book was challenged again in Illinois in 2009 by a group of Antioch High School parents who objected to its vulgar and racist language, but was ultimately retained on the school’s summer reading list.
For the year 2009, the Top 10 Challenged Books were: 1. ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle Reasons: drugs, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
2. And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson Reasons: homosexuality
3. The Perks of Being A Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky Reasons: anti-family, drugs, homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, suicide, unsuited to age group
4. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee Reasons: offensive language, racism, unsuited to age group
5. Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer Reasons: religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
6. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
7. My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult Reasons: homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexism, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, violence
8. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
9. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
10. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier Reasons: nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
Here is a list of the Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books for 2000 - 2009. Google Books is also celebrating Banned Books Week.
By Shaker ExMo, who describes herself on Facebook as, "Full time sociologist, part time yoga tyro, all around awesome."
Look here, angry feminists. That wage gap you keep complaining about? The one that means that if you have a vagina (or look like you might have one), you will earn 75% of what someone with a penis (or who looks like they might have one) does? Even if you have comparable education and experience? Yeah, as it turns out, sociologists* have found that the gap is actually good for your relationship. At least according to the New York Times.
Men who were completely dependent on their female partner's income — the vaunted Stay at Home Dad, for example, and his less appreciated cohort, Laid-Off Dad — were five times more likely to cheat than men who contributed an equal amount of money to the relationship. And, in a cruel twist for women, men who earn significantly more than their female partners are also more likely to cheat. The safety zone, apparently, is when women make 75 percent of what men earn, which sounds suspiciously like the national average of women's salaries relative to men's.
It does seem suspicious, doesn't it. There are a few reasons why this "suspicious" finding may have come about. First of all, the data used in this study is a nationally-representative study called the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, which is based on yearly interviews with young people who were between 12 and 16 in 1997, when the study began. Mansch's analysis focuses on respondents between the ages of 18 and 28 who were in long-term (more than a year long) committed (married or cohabitating) heterosexual relationships. Theoretically, then, a male respondent could be 19 and be in his first long-term co-habiting relationship and could also be in a situation where he was making less money than his female partner. The flaw in this is that the Mansch seems to argue that a 19-year-old and a 27-year-old have similar maturity patterns, and tend to have the same types (re: trust, intimacy, goals, commitment) of relationships, which I'm sure we can agree is not necessarily the case.
My first "serious" boyfriend, whom I lived with from age 18-20, cheated on me and while he was from a more affluent background than I, I always worked and he never did. Now, at the age of 29, I am in a 10-year relationship with a man who has been "unemployed"** for at least half of that time. He is not cheating on me. Do my personal experiences negate this finding? No. Methodology Lesson #1: Exceptions Do Not Prove the Rule. However, equating 18 year old and 28 year olds is problematic.
The second reason for this "suspicious" finding is our dear old friend Correlation Does Not Equal Causation (Coming next week in Methodology Lesson #2). Yes, it is interesting that men who earn less than their female partners are more likely to be unfaithful. It is also interesting that murder rates and ice cream sales both see higher rates in the summer months. And that people who wear larger shoes score higher on math competency tests. And that when more fire trucks respond to a fire call, there is more damage to the structure.
That does not mean that there is something about ice cream that makes people murderous, just as that does not mean that there is something about the size of one's feet that makes one good at math, or that fire trucks cause damage to burning homes. What it means is that there may be something about financial inequity in relationships, particularly inequity that results from the female partner out-earning the male partner, that increases the likelihood of infidelity. But we don't know that from this study. To her credit, Cristin Munsch, the original author of the study, points this out:
But even Ms. Munsch cautions couples not to take the data too much to heart. Tempering the findings is the overall low percentage of people who admitted to cheating — 3.8 percent of male partners and 1.4 percent of female partners annually, roughly in line with the national average, which runs from 3 to 4 percent of married spouses in a given year.
Additionally, when what she calls "institutional and individual mechanisms" are controlled for, the relationship all but disappears. In simple terms, when the statistical relationship becomes more complex, the single variable of income inequality loses its significance. Taking into account things like relationship satisfaction, age, and level of education erases the effect of income inequality alone.
Of course, The New York Times does mention that, briefly. However, their screaming headline "By Her Support, Does She Earn His Infidelity?" (incidentally, in the Fashion section) puts the responsibility right where it belongs. On women. And, presumably, on uppity women who insist on earning their rightful wage for the work they do. And who have the gall to chose a partner not based on his earning potential, but on how he treats her and how their partnership works.
And what is the lesson here? If you are like most women and earn less than your male counterparts, see the silver lining: At least now your husband won't cheat on you. And if you are a shrew who has no time for relationships but somehow manage to wrangle a man who, let's face it, isn't earning more money than he is because of bitches like you, if he cheats on you it is all your fault.
---------------------------
*Not all sociologists. Just one. Who hasn't published her article yet. Or probably even finished writing it. Who, if she is anything like me, presented a half-finished piece of work at a professional conference so she could get some feedback on it while she enjoyed herself in Atlanta at a fancy hotel on her department's nickel.
**Of course, we are assuming here that all "employment" must be work done for wages. Interesting how this paradigm assumes that any work done in the home is work that has no value. Where have I heard this kind of thing before? Oh right.
Shakesville now has a Twitter account: @shakestweetz.
Or you can find the page here. There's also a Twitter feed in the righthand column, which shows my latest tweets and also includes a subscriber link.
I'll update with posts from Shakesville, but also links to other good stuff I'm reading and/or that people send me, about which I don't have time to write. There will almost certainly be some random bullshit observations, too.
I am, as anyone who knows me can attest, an irrepressible Luddite who says things like, "I like this mobile phone because it has a typewriter" (an actual quote), so forgive the inevitable awkwardness as I try to learn the lingo and culture of Twitter.
[Trigger warning for fat hatred and body policing.]
This is a picture of Christina Aguilera—who is, IMO, extremely talented and pretty damn cool—which the Daily Fail used as a launching pad to write this heap of fat-hating and body-policing horseshit.
Aguilera is said to have "piled on the pounds" and "ballooned" in size. She "was in great shape," but is now "curvier than ever," as if being a woman with curves is a bad thing. They guess at the exact amount of weight she's gained, and declare her "to be the heaviest she's ever been, barring her pregnancy in 2008."
All of this, as if it fucking matters. As if it's anyone's business. And as if Aguilera, despite being maybe 10 pounds heavier than she was earlier in the year, doesn't hew more closely to the Western Beauty Standard than the vast majority of women on the planet.
Which is kind of why this article is particularly heinous: It's about a classically beautiful woman with a face and body most people will find ridiculously attractive, being picked apart in a public way for a perceived flaw, thus implicitly communicating to all the women who read this article that even Christina Aguilera isn't beautiful enough.
Now buy these expensive beauty products and diet pills and exercise equipment and vitamins and liquid diet mixes and make-up and lunchtime cosmetic surgery procedures and skin firming potions and tooth veneers and hair extensions and girdles and spray tans and eyelashes and depilatories and everything else we can make to fix you up, you ugly bitches. Because you're sure as shit not as good-looking at Christina Aguilera—and even she's garbage.
This shit is despicable.
And Christina Aguilera rules.
[Commenting Guidelines: Please note that saying, "She looks better now!" or "Real women have curves!" (nope), or some variation thereof is just the flipside of the same type of body policing being criticized. This post isn't about creating a space to do more of the same.]
[Trigger warning for discussion of the rape culture.]
Shaker Greg emailed the link to Cracked's "Six Romantic Movie Gestures That Can Get You Prison Time," which, though not explicitly addressing the rape culture, nonetheless examines some common romantic comedy tropes that, in the real world, are criminal acts.
Meanwhile, Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias has written a great piece about the media's facilitation of the rape culture. I am always thrilled to be able to recommend an article that questions the rape culture, anyway, but this following so closely after Kira Cochrane's piece is awesome.
(Less awesome: That both of them were in foreign-to-the-US press, and I can't remember the last time I've read something like this in a major US paper. Hell, it's rare enough I read anything written by a feminist in a major US paper on any subject.)
Ann Coulter addressed Homocon, a gay conservative organization, this past weekend on the topic of marriage equality. You may remember that she got in trouble with her right-wing friends at World Net Daily for accepting the invitation, but based on what she said, WND will probably welcome her back.
First, she ran down the stereotypical stand-up comedian's list of reasons, including that lacking the legal right to marriage allows the less-committed partner to weasel out of it. But in a more serious note, she parroted the losing arguments of the lawyers supporting California's Prop 8 and told the crowd that the reason she opposes (and they should oppose) same sex marriage is that it is strictly for procreation.
In one of a series of racially insensitive remarks that pervaded her speech, Coulter added, "Marriage is not a civil right. You're not black." It was part of a larger argument on which she later elaborated, telling the crowd that the 14th Amendment only applies to African-Americans and that it does not, in fact, apply to women, LGBT people or other minorities.
[...]
Several attendees, who requested anonymity, were also startled by her racially-tinged humor: in addition to her comments about civil rights, she also accused single parents of breeding muggers and blamed the decline in marriage in the African-American community on welfare, "the subsidization of single parenting" and overly liberal child support laws. Coulter's comments about civil rights being "only for the blacks" rubbed many people the wrong way as well, though her joke about oppression and the amount of money in the gay community compared to other minority communities ("Blacks must be looking at the gays saying, 'Why can't we be oppressed like that?'") garnered plenty of laughs from the well-heeled crowd.
GOProud's executive director, Jimmy LaSalvia, told TPM after the speech, "I don't agree with Ann Coulter about gay marriage, but there was a real conversation here. That's what we're trying to start."
I used to think that Ann Coulter was some kind of an act; that her shtick was to be the Andrew Dice Clay of right-wing punditry. Or maybe that her nastiness was shaped by pain, and she was to be pitied. But she's an adult; she's capable of being responsible for what comes out of her mouth in public, and looking for some way to excuse her behavior is pointless. Some people are just assholes, and she's one of them.
President Obama will swoop into the heartland this week in a high-stakes bid to boost enthusiasm for Democrats by reigniting the coalition of young and minority voters who were critical to his success two years ago.
With polls showing independent voters swinging toward Republicans in Wisconsin and the nation's other battlegrounds, Democrats are turning elsewhere to make up ground. So on Tuesday in Madison, Obama will stage the first in a series of rallies on college campuses designed to persuade what some call his "surge" voters - the roughly 15 million Americans who voted for the first time in 2008 - to return to the polls this fall.
I'm just wondering what issues Obama thinks young progressive people are most passionate about. Because I'm pretty sure it's not bipartisanship and half-assed legislation that tries to look progressive while pandering to corporations. I'm under the impression that most young progressives are passionate about social justice and ending our two wars of choice and having healthcare and jobs.
But then again, I'm older than dinosaurs, so maybe I'm wrong and this whole idealism-crushing, warmongering, conservative-coddling, hippie-punching, totes fauxgressive shtick is what the kids are fist-pumping about these days.
"Marriage is not a civil right – you're not black." — Ann Coulter, speaking this weekend at Homocon, a meeting of gay conservatives. Whoops! I guess your heroes still despise you, GOProud.
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.
