CNN is reporting that a federal judge has ruled parts of the healthcare legislation unconstitutional. "The key issue of contention was the "individual mandate" requirement that most Americans purchase health insurance by 2014." The Justice Department is expected to appeal.
UPDATE: You can read the whole decision here (pdf).
Steve Harvey is back with more of his wisdom about men and women and relationships. (If you're not familiar with this guy's shtick, here is Renee's "Steve Harvey" archive.) And, like all the rest of his gender essentialist, heterocentrist, deeply misogynist claptrap, this "men and women can't be friends" garbage is about as fresh as pterodactyl droppings. It's also one of the key narratives of the rape culture.
[Transcript below.]
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Remember in the classic movie "When Harry Met Sally," and the character played by Billy Crystal insisted, "Men and women can't be friends!"…? Well, hugely popular syndicated radio and talk show host Steve Harvey agrees—in a big way. In his latest book on relationships, "Straight Talk No Chaser," Harvey tells me face-to-face why women who think he's just a friend are delusional. This kind of frank talk is why expectations are high that "Straight Talk" will rival his first breakthrough best seller. [begin videotaped interview] So where'd this come from—
STEVE HARVEY, ENTERTAINER/AUTHOR: I mean, it's a blessing, true enough, but really it was just me sitting down being honest. All of my friends are men. I don't have female friends. I don't. I'm incapable of that.
WHITFIELD: Why? What do you mean?
HARVEY: Well, because, you know—
WHITFIELD: Because you have a wife?
HARVEY: Well, I have a wife and I don't really have female friends because, look— Okay, let's get rid of this myth right now—
WHITFIELD: [laughing] I want to know why!
HARVEY: OK, let me tell you this. Let's get rid of the myths. You're an attractive woman. There's some guy somewhere saying, yes, we're friends. No, that's not true. He's your friend only because you have made it absolutely clear that nothing else is happening except this friendship we have. We remain your friends in hopes that one day there will be a crack in the door, a chink in the armor, and trust and believe that guy you think is just your buddy…? He will slide in that crack the moment he gets the opportunity. Because we're guys.
WHITFIELD: [laughing] And you think most men think this way?
HARVEY: Ninety-nine point nine percent of us think that way. And you tell this to a woman and it just blows her back. "No, I have male friends." You have male friends because they know it can be nothing else right now. I'll tell you what, all your male friends—just ask them in a friendly way: "If I wanted to date you, would you be okay with that?" And watch—WATCH!—the fireworks. Watch! I'm telling you.
As a good companion piece to Rep. Weiner's comments, Paul Krugman notes Beltway Myth becoming reimagined fact in real time, in response to Dana Milbank's terrible piece in which he claimed that "a protracted debate on the public option" delayed the passage of the insurance industry giveaway healthcare legislation. Observes Krug:
Um, that's not what happened — and I followed the health care process closely. The debate over the public option wasn't what slowed the legislation. What did it was the many months Obama waited while Max Baucus tried to get bipartisan support, only to see the Republicans keep moving the goalposts; only when the White House finally concluded that Republican "moderates" weren't negotiating in good faith did the thing finally get moving.
So look at how the Village constructs its mythology. The real story, of pretend moderates stalling action by pretending to be persuadable, has been rewritten as a story of how those DF hippies got in the way, until the centrists saved the day.
The worst of it is that I suspect Obama's memory has gone down the same hole.
Yes, well, it's certainly easier to be indignant at your ungrateful base if you imagine you tried valiantly to get them everything they wanted and failed, rather than treating the primary goal as your first bargaining chip.
As you might have heard, we're having quite the blustery snowstorm here in the Midwest. I managed to get a few shots before the wind picked up this afternoon, giving us the white winds of a lake effect blizzard.
A few days after Amber Yust visited the Department of Motor Vehicles in San Francisco to register her sex change from male to female, she got a letter at home from the DMV employee who had handled her application.
Homosexual acts, he informed her, were "an abomination that leads to hell."
The same day, Yust said, a DVD arrived from a fundamentalist church warning of eternal damnation for anyone "possessed by demons" of homosexuality. The DMV employee's letter had referred her to the church's website as a source of "critical information for your salvation."
What's more, the DMV had kept the employee on in 2009 even after he refused to process another transgender woman's name-change application, Yust said in a damage claim filed with the state, the precursor to a lawsuit.
...[Thomas Demartini] expressed no objection while processing her application, Yust said. But she believes he took down her name and address and shared them with his church.
The letter she received four days later was filled with biblical condemnations of homosexuality, including the passage in Leviticus that says two men who have sex "must be put to death," and implored Yust to change her mind about her sex change.
The letter also referred her to the website of the Most Holy Family Monastery, whose name was on a parcel that arrived the same day. It contained the DVD warning of damnation and a grisly leaflet showing hearts torn from bodies, said Dolan, her lawyer.
..."I feel really vulnerable," Yust, a 23-year-old software engineer, said Thursday. It's "scary that someone who's part of a government agency is able to take my personal information and get in touch with me. I don't think anyone could feel safe going to a DMV where they knew someone like that was working."
I have but two questions: 1. Why does this guy still have a job? 2. Why has he not been arrested for harassment?
"I was doing Six Feet Under, and I was playing a gay character, and I had some love scenes that I did on that show—I would go home and they'd be like, 'Yeah, yeah, we've seen the show, we've seen the show, it's good, it's good.' And I got home after doing Dexter and people were just like jumping out of their skin. They're, like, so much more comfortable with me killing people than kissing men. It's not that surprising, I guess. Sad."—Actor Michael C. Hall, on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon [at 27:25] earlier this week, observing the total fuckery of getting a better reception playing a sociopathic serial killer than a sexually active gay man.
[Trigger warning for sexual violence, male supremacy, misogyny.]
Below is video of a recent speech given by Tony Porter at TEDWomen. It is extremely powerful. His naked honesty about being a boy, a man, a son, and a father in a patriarchal rape culture is brutal, revealing, difficult, and effective.
I've written before about the void of a progressive men's equality movement; Tony Porter is providing a hell of a road-map here.
[Full transcript below.]
My thanks to everyone who sent in this link.
I grew up in New York City, between Harlem and the Bronx. Growing up as a boy, we was taught that men had to be tough, had to be strong, had to be courageous, dominating, no pain, no emotions, with the exception of anger, and definitely no fear. That men are in charge, which means women are not. That men lead, and you should just follow and just do what we say. That men are superior; women are inferior. That men are strong; women are weak. That women are of less value. Property of men. And objects, particularly sexual objects.
I've later come to know that to be the collective socialization of men, better known as The Man Box. [shows graphic of box containing classic masculinity tropes] See, this Man Box has in it all the ingredients of how we define what it means to be a man. Now, I also want to say, without a doubt, there are some wonderful, wonderful, absolutely wonderful things about being a man—while at the same time there's some stuff that's just straight-up twisted. [laughter] And we really need to begin to challenge, look at, and really get in the process of deconstructing, redefining, what we come to know as manhood.
This is my two at home—Kendall and Jade. [shows picture of two children, a girl and a boy] They're 11 and 12; Kendall's 15 months older than Jade, and there was a period of time, you know, when my wife, her name is Tammy, and I, we just got real busy, and whip bim bam boom, Kendall and Jade. [laughter] And when they were about 5 and 6, 4 and 5, you know, Jade could come to me, it didn't matter, come to me crying, you know, it didn't matter what she was crying about, she can get on my knee, she could snot my sleeve up, just cry, cry it out, Daddy got you, that's all that's important.
Now, Kendall, on the other hand, and, like I said, he's only 15 months older than her, he come to me crying, it's like, soon as I would hear him cry, a clock would go off, you know; I would give the boy probably about 30 seconds. Which means by the time he got to me, I was already saying things like, "Why you crying? Hold your head up. Look at me. Explain to me what's wrong. Tell me what's wrong! I can't understand you while you crying!" And out of my own frustration, of my role and responsibility of building him up as a man, to fit into these guidelines and these structures that are defined in this Man Box, I would find myself saying things like, "Just go in your room! Just go on—go on in your room! Sit down, get yourself together, and come back and talk to me when you can talk to me like a"…what? [audience: "Like a man."] Like a man. And he's five. years. old.
And, you know, as I grow in life, I would say to myself, "My god. What's wrong with me? What am I doing? Why would I do this?" And I think back, I think back to my father. [shows picture of his family] There was a time in my life when we had a very troubled experience in our family. My brother Henry, he died tragically when we was teenagers.
We lived in New York City, as I said—we lived in the Bronx, at the time—and the burial was a place called Long Island—it was about two hours outside of the city—and as we were preparing to come back from the burial, you know, the cars stopped at the bathroom, you know, let folks take care of themselves, for the long ride back to the city, and the limousine empties out—my mother, my sisters, my aunties, they all get out, but my father and I stayed in the limousine. And no sooner than the women got out, he burst out crying. He didn't want to cry in front of me, but he knew he wasn't going to make it back to the city, and it was better me than allow himself to express these feelings and emotions in front of the women. And this is a man who, 10 minutes ago, had just put his teenage son in the ground—something I just can't even, I just can't even imagine.
The thing that sticks with me the most is that he was apologizing to me for crying in front of me. And at the same time, he was also giving me props, lifting me up, for not crying.
You know, I come to also look at this as this, this fear that we have as men, this fear that just have us paralyzed, holding us hostage to this Man Box.
I can remember speaking to a 12-year-old boy, a football player, and I asked him, I said, "How would you feel if, in front of all the players, your coach told you, you were playing like a girl?" Now, I expected him to say something like, "I'd be sad; I'd be mad; I'd be angry," something like that. No, the boy said to me, the boy said to me, "It would destroy me."
And I said to myself, "God, if it would destroy him to be called a girl, what are we then teaching him about girls?" [applause]
It took me back to a time when I was about 12 years old—I grew up in tenement buildings, you know, in the inner city, and at this time, we're living in the Bronx—and in the building next to where I lived, there was a guy named Johnny. He was about 16 years old, and we were all about 12 years old, younger guys, and he was hanging out with all us younger guys, and this guy, he was up to a lot of no good; he was the kind of kid parents have to wonder, "What is this 16 year old boy doing with these 12 year old boys?" And he did spend a lot of time up to no good; he was a troubled kid, you know, his mother had died from a heroin overdose, he was being raised by his grandmother, his father wasn't on the set, his grandmother had two jobs, he was home alone a lot.
Well, I gotta tell you, we young guys, we looked up to this dude, man. He was cool. He was fine—that's what the sisters said; he was fine, right? He was having sex. You know, we all looked up to him.
So one day, I'm out in front of the house doing something, just playing around, doing something, I don't know what. He looks out his window, and he calls me upstairs. He said, "Hey Ant—" (they called me Anthony growing up as a kid) "—hey Anthony, come on upstairs." Johnny call; you go. So I run right upstairs. As he opens the door, he says to me, "Do you want some?" Now I immediately knew what he meant, because for me, growing up at that time, and our relationship with this Man Box, "Do you want some?" meant one of two things: Sex or drugs. And we weren't doing drugs.
Now my box, my card, my Man Box Card was immediately in jeopardy. Two things: One, I never had sex. We don't talk about that, as men; you only tell your dearest, closest friends, sworn to secrecy for life the first time you had sex. For everybody else, we go around like we been having sex since we was two. There ain't no first time. [laughter] The other thing I couldn't tell him is that I didn't want any. You know, that's even worse. We supposed to be always on the prowl; women are objects, especially sexual objects.
So anyway, I couldn't tell him any of that, so, like my mother would say, to make a long story short, I just simply said to Johnny, "Yes." He told me to go in his room. I go in his room; on his bed is a girl from the neighborhood named Sheila. She's 16 years old. She's nude. She is what I know today to be mentally ill, higher functioning at times; at others, we had a whole choice—words, you know, inappropriate names for her… [he drifts off; he looks pained]
Anyway, Johnny had just gotten through having sex with her—well, he actually raped her, but he said he had sex with her, because while Sheila never said "no," she also never said "yes."
So he was offering me the opportunity to do the same, so when I go in the room, I close the door—folks, I'm petrified. I stand with the back to the door, so Johnny can't bust in the room and see that I'm not doing anything, and I stand there long enough that I could have actually done something. So now I'm no longer trying to figure out what I'm gonna do; I'm trying to figure out how I'm gonna get out of this room.
So in my 12 years of wisdom, I zip my pants down, I walk out into the living room, and, lo and behold, while I was in the room with Sheila, Johnny was back at the window calling guys up. So now there's a living room full of guys, like, you know, like the waiting room at the doctor's office. And they ask me, "How was it?" And I said to them it was good. And I zip my pants up in front of them, and I head for the door.
Now, I say this all with remorse, and I was feeling a tremendous amount of remorse at that time, but I was conflicted, because, while I was feeling remorse, I was excited, because I didn't get caught, but I knew I felt bad about what was happening. This fear of getting outside the Man Box totally enveloped me. It was way more important to me, about me and my Man Box Card, than about Sheila, and what was happening to her.
See, collectively, we as men are taught to have less value in women, to view them as property and the objects of men. We see that as an equation that equals violence against women.
[shows a graphic reading: "The Collective Socialization of Men: Less Value + Property + Objectification = Violence Against Women."]
We as men, good men, the large majority of men, we operate on the foundation of this, this whole collective socialization. We kind of see ourselves as separate, but we're very much a part of it. You see, we have to come to understand that less value, property, and objectification is the foundation, and the violence can't happen without it. So we're very much a part of the solution, as well as the problem. The Centers for Disease Control says that men's violence against women is at epidemic proportions—it is the number one health concern for women in this country and abroad.
So quickly, I'd just like to say, you know, this is the love of my life [shows picture of daughter]—my daughter, Jade. The world I envision for her, how do I want men to be acting and behaving—I need you on board. I need you with me. I need you working with me and me working with you on how we raise our sons and teach them to be men. That it's okay to not be dominating. That it's okay to have feelings and emotions. That it's okay to promote equality. That it's okay to have women that are just friends and that's it. That it's okay to be whole.
That my liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman. [applause]
I remember asking a 9-year-old boy—I asked a 9-year-old boy, "What would life be like for you if you didn't have to adhere to this Man Box?" He said to me, "I would be free."
Pretty much everyone in the omniverse (or in the US. Whichever.) has already written about No Child Left Behind. I've also gotten to the point where I have a really hard time discussing the state of my current home. But let me lay some amazing local news on y'all:
High school graduation rates in Syracuse aren't what we might hope. Because of No Child Left Behind and the cult of accountability, there are arbitrary goals for this (and any number of other things that can be quantified), and punishments enhanced reformation measures that the district has to take when it fails to meet them.
Last year one Syracuse's four main public high schools was on New York's list of “persistently lowest achieving” schools. This year, the other three joined it.
So.
The Syracuse City School District will likely fire the principals of these schools. The district also has to, um, remove a large number of the teachers at each school. They won't necessarily lose their jobs, the district just needs to find them positions at schools that aren't on the State Department of Education's list.
Four of Syracuse's four public high schools are on the list.
Um.......
So there's the economy.
And the closure of pretty much every manufacturing facility in the region.
And massive numbers of foreclosed properties.
And a property tax base that contains a massive number of churches and abandoned buildings.
And we use property taxes to fund schools.
And the extent to which federal and state governments have funded are schools has declined.
And so the Syracuse City Schools are facing a $50 million budget deficit for next year alone.
And teachers are getting paid a lot less than they should, when they're not being laid off.
And new teachers aren't exactly flocking to the district, what with the lack of openings and the high probability of getting blamed for students' failure to graduate.
And the Rockefeller drug laws.
And the prison-industrial complex.
And violent crime, oh is there violent crime.
Only one of which is being temporarily and insufficiently addressed by No Child Left Behind (the district gets $2 million for each “failing” school that it “reforms”).
So yeah, perfect sense.
I can only assume that more and more parents can afford to send their children to private schools or move to the suburbs will do so, which will undoubtedly do wonders for the district's budget and graduation rates. Death spiral huzzah.
Which is not to say that there won't be corporate interests around to collect the grant money that will suddenly appear to teach children who couldn't be taught without it. Or that everyone who matters will leave the district so to hell with it. Or both. And there'll be hugs but not drugs and enough bootstraps for everyone. So there's that, I suppose.
Standing in a check-out line recently behind two young women, I heard one of them saying to the other: "I wish I could find a man who would love me even if I stopped shaving my legs."
The two of them went on to lament the dearth of straight men who would love them for various choices they identified as failures to be sufficiently feminine/lovable. Men don't love women who don't shave their legs. Men don't love women who are fat. Men don't love women who are smart. Men don't love women who are ambitious in their careers. They knew some men who liked smart women, or some men who wouldn't care about hairy legs, but to find a man who loved a woman that was all of these things...!
That man is a unicorn. And, even if he weren't, he would be impossible to find. I wouldn't even know how to find a man like that.
They spoke of the prospect as if they were contemplating the Twelve Labors of Hercules.
One of them reached for a copy of Cosmo, as if the answer might be in there.
"You have to be the person you want someone to love," I blurted out. I couldn't help myself. The Cosmo had rendered my filtering mechanism nonfunctional, like some kind of glossy, perfumed Kryptonite. They looked at me, at my face reddening with shyness. "If you want a partner who loves you with unshaven legs, stop shaving your legs. I think, um, you only find someone to love the person you want to be by being that person, by giving someone the chance to fall in love with you with hairy legs and all."
They blinked at me.
"Like, don't try to be perfect?" one of them asked.
I nodded. "Like, don't try to be perfect." There was a pause, while they contemplated. I wanted to hug them and tell them that everything they hear is wrong, that they should not suppress their individualism in pursuit of some generic brand of perfection, as arbitrary as it is elusive, that love is really only meaningful when it is honest, and that love should free them, not be an exercise in maintaining an artifice that only serves to make them feel small. Instead, I said: "Anyway, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to stick my nose into your conversation. My apologies."
"It's okay," said the other. They smiled and turned back around. Cosmo went back on the shelf.
I looked at the cover. Sex tips. How to look good naked. Fashion trends. How to cater to your man's emotional needs. Try to be perfect.
What a cruel lie it is that we should be something we don't want to be, in order that we may receive the love that we need.
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