oh patriarchy, don't you have any new tricks?

there's a story at the nytimes about Arizon's new law prohibiting
classes in ethnic studies. to here the patriarchy apologists whinge
about how the chicano students became angry instead of staying docile
little mexicans after taking the class is funny. it also makes me
think of charlotte perkins gillman being locked in a yellow room with
no books because she might become agitated. if you don't get pissed
off reading about milleniums of oppression, you're probably an
oppressor.
but can we please get an oppression system to fight that has some new
tricks please? i mean, keeping the brown folk and the ladies
illiterate and ignorant is sooooo 19th century.

--
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

You cannot negotiate with terrorists

By now I am sure you all have heard the horrible news out of Arizona.

A 9 year old girl was murdered to make a political point. A judge was murdered to make a political point. A congress person was shot through the head to make a point. At least 5, possibly 6 people are dead because a terrorist couldn't get his own way. (I'm working on sketchy internet access here, so apologies if I get some facts wrong- the sentiment is still the same).

We already know how this story is going to play out in the news. Rethuglikans and tea baggers will claim this was the act of a lone, disturbed man and has nothing to do with their rhetoric. Democrats will try to use this to guilt rethuglikans into bipartisanship (it won't work). And Democratic politicians across the country will be even less likely to do anything but give into the right because of real fear of being killed for doing otherwise.

But Giffords is a moderate. She was already doing what she could to find common ground with people who will be gleeful that the bullet through her head gives them a chance to steal her seat. There is no middle ground to be found with them. There is no way to negotiate a fair deal with people who will happily load the gun that will be held to your head later. You don't negotiate with terrorists because their end goal is your destruction, and there's no middle ground between dead and alive.

There will be Democratic pundits and voters who will claim that this is what happens when you don't vote blue. Actually, this is what happens when you do vote blue. As unhappy as we on the left were under Bush, nobody tried to shoot Tom Delay and the violent factions of our country were resolutely quiet for 8 years.

So this is the word we live in now. The political left pays ransoms to the political right in hopes of saving their own skin and the political right stokes the fires violence. 9 year old girls die in the crossfire.

I have always thought that the measure of a person is not what they would kill for, but what they would die for*. If there is no amount of moderation that can save you from the bullet of a teabagger, then perhaps it's time to give up the idea of bipartisanship. They will kill you anyways. Go down fighting, or let someone take your place who will.

(Isn't it also funny that the people most likely to murder in these situations are white Christian dudes. I may be a godless atheist, but I'm pretty sure that the bible doesn't say "Jesus killed for our sins". What would Jesus do certainly never involved mass murder.)

Everybody fucks up

but very few people admit it well.

So Roger Ebert, who is usually awesome, weighed in on the controversy about replacing the word n****r in Huck Finn with the word slave by tweeting that he'd rather be called a n****r than a slave. (sorry folk, rules of reclamation mean I won't type the whole word).

When someone pointed out this little bit of privilege, he responded with “You know, this is very true. I’ll never be called a N***** *or* a Slave, so I should have shut the **** up,”

That's how you apologize when privilege comes leaping out of your mouth or keyboard. Imagine a world where after any number of stupid things said by, oh say Keith Olberman, we got a "you're right, I'm never going to be date raped in Sweden, so I should just shut the fuck up".

Or the virtuous foodies "you're right, I'm never going to have to choose between organic steel cut oats and paying the electric bill. I should just shut the fuck up,"

Or members of the political class "you're right, when we say sacrifice we mean only for people who have less than us. We should just shut the fuck up".

(I think I had a little wordgasm typing that last one).

As far as the actual controversy goes, I think Renee sums it up better than I can. But I will add one little thing, would it be so fucking hard to include books written by actual people of color when talking about race and or slavery?

It's the end of the world as we know it.....

Anyone else find it funny that all the dead animals are in predominantly Christian countries?

Oh please, oh please, oh please, the rapture can't come soon enough for this non-believer.

Careful what you wish for?

So a few years ago, when we had a house of our own, I used to say that what I wanted more than anything was to live out of a suitcase and spend my time writing*. Well, the Kid and I have certainly done that for the last year or so, and lemme tell you, it's way less romantic than I imagined.

I don't believe in god or kharma or magical forces of any kind, but every now and then I have to look at the order of the universe and go "What the fuckity fuck kind of sick joke is this?"

*What I actually used to say is- I want to travel around the world, living out of a suitcase, and getting to yell at people for a living.

by the skin of our teeth

whew. what a morning it has been. today we went from short term
temporary housing to longer term temporary housing. we made it her
with exactly one dollar left (thank you soo much to all of you who
made it so that we didn't spend december living in a tent) as you can
see, i am back to interneting on my phone. don't know when that can be
fixed but forgive the typing please. it's still a long, hard, scary
road ahead, but we are safe and there is a thin possibility of
something better to come. happy belated new year, i think that might
actually be true this year.

--
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

He was a gatekeeper

(FTR, the blog tittle should be sung to the Beattles' Daytripper)

New Left has an interesting little blurb up about gatekeeping in regards to college educations. Go read, I'll wait.

Gatekeeping serves a major purpose in entrenching the dominant paradigm and reinforcing cultural hegemony. If you can only get a a decent job through a college education, and you can only get a college education by subscribing to capitalism and free marketeering, then the only people who get good jobs are those who will support the current system. But that's just a small gate, there are much bigger gates to be guarded. Another small gate, say you are a lefty poly sci student. You can be as progressive as you want, but if you want to get a paying job doing what you spent years in school studying, you have to shelve those alternative ideas. Maybe occasionally someone (Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader) gets to be king of the ideal left, but you should note that they are usually white dudes who get to betray their elite status with radical ideas. If you have any kind of oppression points at all, that won't be possible.

Our election system is one grand example of gatekeeping. We only get 2 versions of what's possible, and strangely both those versions are business friendly. They may bicker over talking points, but at the end of the day real change and reform just isn't going to happen when both parties rely on massive corporate funding and the elimination of third parties. You can start out as Mr. Smith (or Mr. Alan Greyson) goes to Washington as you like, the reality is that you either work to keep the system intact or you get sent home.

But gatekeeping doesn't just happen in politics. This is where I may get into some trouble, so forgive me in advance. Take a look at Oprah Winfrey, undisputed media queen of the world. Oh yes, she is a dark skinned black woman. She is one hell of a business woman and talented too. All of that is true. Yet she wouldn't ever have gotten where she is today if she didn't repeat the false American dream ideas over and over and over. Your failures are individual failures. She pulled herself up by the bootstraps and look where she is. Anyone can do it if she did. All it takes is education and drive and hard work. Except that's not all it takes. It also takes a certain degree of luck and the willingness to ignore cognitive dissonance. Oprah works really hard everyday, but does she really work harder than a minimum wage hotel maid? If Oprah didn't repeat that hard work equals success narrative, if she started questioning the economic system that has made her so much money, would she still make so much money? Would she have been allowed to have a television show on networks whose job it is to sell ad space to companies that want to sell us on the American dream? No. (See also the new OWN network, if Oprah suddenly got all progressive her network would fail because major corporations wouldn't advertise with it).

That same thing works in small ways too. If the only employer in town is Walmart, you shut up about how Walmart closed down all the little stores and the factories that went overseas to make the products that Walmart sells. You shut up and hope that you can get a Walmart job. You spew the company line, because if you don't subscribe to it, you don't eat. You become the gatekeeper for mass consumerism.

But some of us can point out the gatekeeping. We can explain that freedom doesn't mean the choice between donkey flavored coke and elephant flavored pepsi. we can remind them that progressive economics are water for those dying of economic thirst.