More on Summers

Following up on my post on the Larry Summers controversy - Ezra Klein points to this response from Zoe Vanderwolk. She defends Summers, suggesting he was "set up" - that he was invited to speak off the record, but that his remarks were reported in the Boston Globe anyway, and out of context ("he summarized the contents of a paper that was about to be presented at the conference, which had valid statistical findings with regards to women underperforming in the sciences" she says). That seems reasonable enough, I guess, though I think it's unrealistic to expect anything someone in his position says to be taken apart from his position (and thus related to tenure issues at Harvard) - and I think the broader issues still tend to make Summers' remarks wrong-headed. In fact, Vanderwolk concludes the post with an argument that gets at what I was hoping I said:

Conclusions: many girls can do maths very well. Some can't. Some boys do maths extremely well. Many don't. However, schools shunt girls out of maths to concentrate on the small percentage that do extremely well, because that's how teachers are evaluated, and also because girls are routinely pushed out of maths at all levels. I think girls need more encouragement in general to do stuff, although I don't know if this is a nature or a nurture thing. A study I read last year showed a similar imbalance in women seeking office - once women actually run for office, there's no inherent bias against them, but many fewer women even bother to run initially because they are far less likely than men to get support and endorsement from political parties. . . .

Do Conservatives Think You're Stupid?

A particularly inspiring post on democracy and conservatism at Body and Soul. Taking off from this article (by Philip Agre, a UCLA professor.) Agre takes a dim view of conservatism:

Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.

Jeanne D'Arc agrees. She adds:

Traditional conservatism is the polar opposite of democracy. It assumes people can't -- or shouldn't -- think for themselves, and that they have to be lead, either by fear or p.r. (or a combination) to accept the natural order in which some people  rule and others are ruled.

What leaves most progressives, even centrists, banging our heads against the walls and mumbling about pharisees and hypocrites is that this is obviously as true of modern conservatism as it has been of conservatism for thousands of years, and yet an astonishing number of people think that the nature of conservatism has changed, and that now it is somehow all about freedom and allowing every individual to achieve everything he or she can.

This is a significant point. The right has been selling itself as the party of self-reliance - of freedom, of indepenbdence for some time now. They do this in the face of the facts - they have never been the party of self-reliance, they have always been the party of protecting the positions of those who have the power and money, now. That has not changed, and indeed, the current administration has dropped a lot of the pretense - they still use the words, but they seem barely able to contain their laughter at the rubes who still think they are a party of anything other than fuck you.

Anyway, Jeanne goes on to note - relevantly in the wake of the disatrous election last fall, with all the gnashing of teeth and searching of souls indulged in by the left, the seeking of positions to abandon and images to create - that copying the tactics of the right - "Where's the money for our p.r. machine? How do we create the mechanism to make our mindless drivel as much a part of the common wisdom as theirs? How do we learn to do this propaganda thing?" - is a losing game:

Which is not an unreasonable reaction, but it's based on the disturbing -- and conservative -- notion that most people are so deeply stupid, or at least so uninterested in the world, that they can only be reached in the dishonest and patronizing ways conservatives have been reaching them.

God help us if that's true, because if it is, we've already lost.

Conservatism thrives on ignorance (which is not, by the way, to say that all, or even most, conservatives are ignorant; if you're one of the elect, conservatism is quite rational). It's not just that conservatives are better at exploiting innate ignorance, but that conservatism itself -- the idea that if we let our superiors make the tough decisions, and generally do what they think is best and in their interest (oh, wait, we're not supposed to think about that) all will be right with the world -- depends on cultivating  lazy habits of mind and a sense of personal ineptness when it comes to understanding the world.

I can't disagree. Under all forms of conservatism, even the libertarian varieties, is that assumption - that people - the mass of people - really can't make rational decisions, so we - who can make rational decisions - must at least make sure that they can't touch us, and at most actively make those decisions for them. And given that pattern, those assumptions - she is right as well, that if we adopt their methods - simplifying the message, trying to argue with sound bites and image, then we will simply play into their hands. That approach assumes the stupidity of the people - and since conservatism shares that assumption, it will benefit from it.

The problem with what she says is that, first - the left has been (and is) perfectly capable of authoritariamism. And has been, often enough in its history, as simple minded and paternalistic as the right. It is probably begging the question to say that leftist authoritarians and paternalists are "really" conservatives - but it's not an approach I would want to abandon. But that is a topic for another day - today - I'm with Jeanne.

The most basic liberal belief is that people can and must challenge what they're told, and figure things out for themselves. And at the heart of that is a faith that ordinary human beings are capable of that action. To me, the best thing about blogs is that they feed that faith. Every day they provide proof that the country is full of people with no power, and no pretensions to expertise, who nevertheless have things to say that trump most of what you hear from those whose job it is to pretend they know what they're talking about.

Amen.

Women and Science

In my neverending quest to not blog more, I have not bothered to post anything about the Larry Summers controversy. Summers, if you recall, made a speech a couple weeks ago in which he suggested that there were innate, biological reasons why more men than women work with math. This went over badly, as one may expect. And so, a couple days later, he apologized.

So last week, in the Boston Phoenix, Harvey Silverglate responded to Summers’ apology. He was not pleased. Unfortunately, his response is not edifying. Claiming that Summers was "merely stating the obvious" - that "it is no longer acceptable to speak honestly or intelligently about gender, race, sexual identity, or any other issue that has already been "decided" by entrenched orthodoxies " just is not going to work here. Others, who know what they are talking about more than I do, have already addressed the substance of Summers’ remarks - see Majikthise and Pharyngula) in particular. I’ll have to stick to more general remarks.

First - I do not think there is anything particularly intelligent or honest about Summers' remarks. They sound to me to be aimed at irritating people - establishing an image of provocation, of being willing to challenge sacred cows - without the benefit of any thought whatsoever. They are provocative in the sense of provoking people to complain, not provoking people to think. And - perhaps a more important motivation for his remarks, in context - they are self-justifying. At some level, they seem to be aimed at denying his (or Harvard's) responsibility for fixing the gender disparity in the sciences. By suggesting that there are inherent, immutable differences between the sexes which no amount of political and social change can fix, Summers' arguments certainly suggest that at some point, there is no more good to come from social and political change. Where that point is can remain vague, but when someone in his position makes a speech like that, the implication is that the point isn't all that far away.

To defend either of those arguments in the name of academic freedom is cheap and lazy. Some of this is for essentially political reasons: Summers is not an expert on questions of gender, and as president of Harvard, what he says carries great weight - so his amateur opinions are magnified, and - again because of his position - are read as politically significant. (Some discussion of this can be found at the 800 pound gorilla of academic blogs, the Becker-Posner blog.) But beyond that, I think there are some fairly serious reasons why the whole issue is misleading.

Back in the first round of commentary on it, Matthew Yglesias posted something that, I thought, got around the obstructionism that mostly characterizes these debates. "Empirical research into genetics is only a red herring" said he - whether there are genetic differences or not, there are too many societal differences in the treatment of men and women for the genetic differences to be significant. (The Pharyngula link posted above has some similar thoughts - Myers arguing that even the differences that are detectable between men and women are too narrow to be related directly to academic positions.) Even Richard Posner, I think, falls into some of this trap, writing

It seems unlikely that all sex-related differences in occupational choice are due to discrimination; and therefore someone who explores alternative explanations should not be excoriated.

The problem, as Yglesias suggests, is that to speak of "innate" or "genetic" differences is to speak about something well beyond where we are now. That is - Posner (for instance) suggests that while discrimination declines, gender differences remain - this (he adds) suggests that there is something - else - at work. The argument presented by Summers is that the "something else" is biological - when the "something else" could be anything, from biology to social norms, role models, etc. Discrimination can't be defined as exiting only in the jopb market, or even in classrooms, in a simple way. It exists in what boys and girls are encouraged to do (for example) as much as in what they are prevented from doing. In short - I think it is unwise to talk about the genetic roots of social conditions, when you have nowhere nearly exhausted the possible social explanations.

Idealistic Hot Air

Here's David Brooks in the NY Times, talking about Bush's inauguration speech. It's a strange article. I quote, at length:

The people who detest America take a look at this odd conjunction and assume the materialistic America is the real America; the ideals are a sham. The real America, they insist, is the money-grubbing, resource-wasting, TV-drenched, unreflective bimbo of the earth. The high-toned language, the anti-Americans say, is just a cover for the quest for oil, or the desire for riches, dominion and war.

But of course they've got it exactly backward. It's the ideals that are real.

Two years from now, no one will remember the spending or the ostrich-skin cowboy boots. But Bush's speech, which is being derided for its vagueness and its supposed detachment from the concrete realities, will still be practical and present in the world, yielding consequences every day.

With that speech, President Bush's foreign policy doctrine transcended the war on terror. He laid down a standard against which everything he and his successors do will be judged.

When he goes to China, he will not be able to ignore the political prisoners there, because he called them the future leaders of their free nation. When he meets with dictators around the world, as in this flawed world he must, he will not be able to have warm relations with them, because he said no relations with tyrants can be successful.

His words will be thrown back at him and at future presidents. American diplomats have been sent a strong message. Political reform will always be on the table. Liberation and democratization will be the ghost present at every international meeting. Vladimir Putin will never again be the possessor of that fine soul; he will be the menace to democracy and rule of law.

Because of that speech, it will be harder for the U.S. government to do what we did to Latin Americans for so many decades - support strongmen to rule over them because they happened to be our strongmen. It will be harder to frustrate the dreams of a captive people, the way in the early 1990's we tried to frustrate the independence dreams of Ukraine.

It will be harder for future diplomats to sit on couches flattering dictators, the way we used to flatter Hafez al-Assad of Syria decade after decade. From now on, the borders established by any peace process will be less important than the character of the regimes in that process.

The speech does not command us to go off on a global crusade, instantaneously pushing democracy on one and all. The president vowed merely to "encourage reform." He insisted that people must choose freedom for themselves. The pace of progress will vary from nation to nation.

The speech does not mean that Bush will always live up to his standard. But the bias in American foreign policy will shift away from stability and toward reform. It will be harder to cozy up to Arab dictators because they can supposedly help us in the war on terror. It will be clearer that those dictators are not the antidotes to terror; they're the disease.

Does he believe this? (So asks Belle Waring at Crooked Timber, where I found the link.) Has Bush, in any way, done anything that might indicate this kind of a shift? He still supports strongmen if they're our strongmen - he hasn't done anythign to challenge Putin. He hasn't done much to challenge any dictators we don't like, if they have the means to defend himself. Is anything going to change?

Bush's speech is, in fact, just more of the same - repeating the words - freedom, freedom, freedom - as if they meant anything. But mostly, just making people feel good about their country so they won't think too much about what their country is actually doing. To imagine Bush suddenly adopting Jimmy Carter's foreign policy, even its underlying rhetoric (in anything approaching an honest manner) is fantastic.

And finally - the proof is in the pudding. And Bush's first term definitely supports the idea that "The real America . . . is the money-grubbing, resource-wasting, TV-drenched, unreflective bimbo of the earth. The high-toned language, the anti-Americans say, is just a cover for the quest for oil, or the desire for riches, dominion and war." One thing Brooks has right - or would have right if anyone anywhere took one word Bush says at face value - is that Bush's speeches should hold us to ahigher standard. But - unless we meet that higher standard - people will take his words as the blather they are. And - unless something very drastic has changed - there is almost no possibility at all that the policy Brooks talks about will be followed, not by this administration....

Fun with iMusic Shuffle

A fun little game - open up iTunes/iPod/whateveryouhave, turn on shuffle - list the first 10 (next 10, whatever it is) songs to come up. Well?

Things - Fannypack
One Million Kisses - Half Japanese
Hello Good Child - Acid Mothers Temple
Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for me and My Monkey - The Feelies
Treatment Bound - The Replacements
A Drop in Time - Mercury Rev
Good Fortune - PJ Harvey
Planet Claire - B-52s
The Neighborhood - Tom Waits
Run Run Run - Velvet Underground

An interesting stretch I guess.

Movies, 80s, Best

In the blogosphere, I find posts about 80s Movies. That is right up my alley, so I am going to post, and - if time permits - comment. Meanwhile, getting into the spirit of movie talk, Jim Snowden offers worst films even by great directors and best films by one-hit wonder directors. Those are interesting lists and topics themselves, and perhaps the spirit will move us to emulate.... not this post, though.

1 City of Sadness - dir. Hou Hsiao Hsien: follows a family in Taiwan from the end of WWII (it opens with Hirohito's radio speech, announcing Japan's surrender) to the arrival and takeover of Taiwan by the Guomindang. A beautiful film, with masterful articulation of space and depth of field, sophisticated use of time, flashbacks, ellipses and shifts of perspective, with a narrative and political sense that holds it together - the confusion of tongues, the ethnic and racial and political divisions, the wonderful accident of a star who couldn't speak Taiwanese, so played a deaf man, a perfect symbol for the impossibility of communication.... a film of political bitterness, and oppressive sadness.

2 Blue Velvet - David Lynch: Intense Freudian nightmare, with satiric overtones about middle America, TV, the Hardy Boy... brilliant in every possible way - gorgeous looking (the rich colors, the widescreen, wide angle cinematography, the distorted spaces, the lighting), gorgeous sounding - a funny, creepy, disturbing, moving masterpiece.

3 The Elephant Man - David Lynch: having seen this on video back in the 80s, I could like it, respect it - but until I'd seen it in a theater, in all its widescreen magnificence... when I did, I understood. The effect of the rich black and white, the odd portentious compositions, full of Lynchian spaces, with a kind of chorus of sights and sounds of machines. Men as monsters. Merrick on show, then, at the end, turned, made the looker as much as the lookee. The mirror. Dreams. Outstanding.

4 Fitzcarraldo - Werner Herzog: Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog sail a steamship up the Amazon, drag it over a mountain, and send it crashing through rapids. The story - Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, failed businessman, opera lover, hauling that steamship around - collapses into the performance of this man by Herzog and Kinski, but that doesn't matter either. Autobiographical, allegorical (isn't making any film a bit like hauling a steamship over a mountain? isn't life a bit like that? if it isn't - shouldn't it be?), absurd and wonderful all the way down.

5 Do the Right Thing - Spike Lee: A day in the life of Bed Stuy. A bad day. But Lee, here, is fair, giving everyone their reasons, and making it all make sense.

6 Peking Opera Blues - Tsui Hark: featuring an iconic performance by Bridget Lin, who is one of the great Movie Stars of all time. A thrilling, overpacked adventure involving an opera company, revolutionaries, warlords, gangsters, soldiers, petty thieves, and a good chunk of the burden of Chinese history. And the usual array of cross-dressing, derring do and bravura film-making one expects from Tsui Hark. Still a bit trapped by sound stages - lacks the production values of his Once Upon a Time in China films, but probably compensates with a tighter focus on the story and, well, Bridget Lin.

7 Black Rain - Shohei Imamura: adaptation of a book about a family living in the aftermath of Hiroshima. Imamura is an odd case - he has won the Palme D'Or twice at Cannes - for fairly unremarkable films. This one and Eijenaika are way better than Ballad of Narayama, his 80s winner. Somewhat unusual for Imamura - very restrained and dignified - the Ozu influence can be seen quite clearly.

8 Come and See - Elem Klimov: horrific story of a teenager fighting Germans in Bylorussia, 1943.

9 Full Metal Jacket - Stanley Kubrick: "I AM in a world of shit." Another of Kubrick's many fine war pictures, with the proof of the equation sex=death=shit worked out in some detail, in boot camp and Vietnam.

10 Brazil - Terry Gilliam: One of the best SF films ever. An everyman gets caught in a mistaken identity when his upstairs neighbor is mistaken for a revolutionary and taken away. He tries to help, and is himself destroyed. Brilliant evocation of a shabby future - cyberpunk almost before the word, with its low tech, grungy look and feel - a beautiful and genuinely haunting film.

Morning Despair

Fresh Horrors at Guantanamo - just great. James Woolcott comments. It's getting harder to snark. The unsettling fact that his "suggestion" that Fox hire Charles Graner is probably closer to a prediction - oh, maybe not Graner, but somebody smeared in the shit of this scandal is all too likely to turn up on TV alongside Ollie and G. Gordon Liddy (what a piker he is! all he ever tortured was himself!), probably pissing and moaning about the wickedness of Randy Moss or whichever Hilton sister is peddling smut this week.

Fucking hell.

How Low Can you go?

I know this has been discussed for a while now, but I have to say something - The Salvador Option?

Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out.

The fact that it is being discussed at all - is surprising, how? We've already more or less adopted torture as a policy; we've got an AG nominee who (along with the torture) thinks the president is not subject to the constitution...

You get what you vote for I guess. Unfortunately, I get what they voted for too - crap.

How Low Can you go?

I know this has been discussed for a while now, but I have to say something - The Salvador Option?

Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out.

The fact that it is being discussed at all - is surprising, how? We've already more or less adopted torture as a policy; we've got an AG nominee who (along with the torture) thinks the president is not subject to the constitution...

You get what you vote for I guess. Unfortunately, I get what they voted for too - crap.

Some Metablogging

So here I am this Thursday night thinking about... as we move into this new year... hopes dreams plans... expectations, goals! Right! Let us ask ourselves: how can we make this blog worth reading? more frequent posts might be a start, and posts that actually say something.... it is a cruel circle, yes? why, if it were more interesting here, I would post more!

No, no, let's be serious. A new year upon us and all that. Let us imagine an influx of energy, and some focus for that energy. Let us imagine, then, the arts. Let us imagine, movie reviews, comments on books, or music, on art - the arts. The presidential elections are behind us, now maybe we can turn from politics, all the time, though it's hard with Alberto Gonzalez up for Attorney General. That's the sort of thing that will put you off your feed. Or get you reading - say, Human Rights First, which is blogging the hearings; Pandagon is also posting frequent comments; Uggabugga reminds us what the scum bags think, and James Wolcott states the matter plainly.

What the hell is wrong with us, as a country? That someone who justified the use of torture, and who claimed the president had the power to set aside the law, is being considered for the post of Attorney General? How did we get to this place? One terrorist attack? Is it possible?

You see the difficulty.... When I started playing with blogs, back - oh god - last spring (of 03!), I actually did post more about arts than politics - a bunch of stuff on comics, I remember.... well, I mentioned comics, somewhere in the post. That lasted about 2 posts, then it was monthly links to something stupid from Bush... But it is a new year! hopes, dreams, expectations abound!

So anyway, as a token of my, um, resolution to move forward in 2005, or back, or whichever direction it is, how about I offer up a list of movies? How about, Top Ten Movies Released (in my town) in 2004?

Since you asked real nice:

1) Goodbye, Dragon Inn
2) House of Flying Daggers
3) Crimson Gold
4) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
5) Millenium Mambo
6) Moolaade
7) Napoleon Dynamite
8) Zatoichi
9) I heart huckabies
10) Gozu

Evil

Did Tom Delay really say this? Did he really read from Matthew 7 - the parable of the wise and foolish builders - at a prayer breakfast this week? I guess he did. It was on C-Span.

There are two possible explanations for this. One is that Tom Delay doesn't understand the passage - "it's about a flood, and there was a big flood, so, that will be real nice, I think" went the workings of his tiny brain, if this is the case. Alas, I have known too many bible readers who have pulled pieces out of context, or quoted things they simply didn't understand, to dismiss this explanation out of hand. He very well could be simply a moron.

The other explanation is that he meant it, literally (which, of course, is more than you can say of Jesus) - that a wise man builds his house on a rock (or lives in Texas) and a foolish man builds his house on sand (or lives in southern Asia). Or even meant it figuratively - we are good and god loves us, they are bad and god hates them, and has killed 150,000 of them because they had the temerity to live in SOuthern Asia...

In which case he is an evil moron.

However you explain it, the mere fact of it will bring you up short. Delay has really gone as low as one can go. MIsapplying scriptures like this - or worse - applying that scripture to this situation - is unimaginable.

Will Eisner

I just saw this - Will Eisner is dead. (I saw the news at Abu Aardvark's site, where I was reading his Comic Book Politics blog (linked to by Matthew Yglesias - this is getting confusing - how many parentheses in am I again?) Two?)

He was a great artist. He made some of the most completely satisfying comic art - from the Spirit on, to Fagin the Jew, which I believe is the last of his works I have, innovative and graceful and beautiful, and always intelligent and humane. He will be missed.

Happy New Year!

Well, this has taken longer than I thought - here I embarked on the new year full of enthusiasm and determination to blog regularly and... here it's the 4th already. Oh well.

On the other hand, this post can stand as a public sign that I have Fulfilled one of my New Year's Resoutions! For I type these words froom the basement of the local starbyucks, courtesy of a new wifi account - yay! This, I tell myself, will inspire me to all sorts of heights of blogging creativity! for now, I can post from Anywhere!

if I have the laptop.

Anyway, this is also almost completely contentless - nothing better, on a Tuesday - what is it? afternoon already? Wow.

We can only hope for more to follow, of a more edifying sort. For now -

Welcome, baby new year!

Where Have I Been?

I see I have not posted anything on this blog in over two weeks. That is, I fear, the annual tradition - pretty much all writing, posting to the internet, socializing, with anyone other than my family ends, around the holidays. The hope is that it starts back up in January. Hope is not a plan...

The big news this week has been the Tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean. There isn't much anyone can say about this. I know that isn't true - people have been talking about it all week - but nothing much you say means anything. Not about the Tsunami itself. Rather than blog, I imagine the thing to do is donate. There are lists of organizations at the link I posted - Amazon and Google and the like have links for donations.

And, of course, this is the end of the year - I certainly hope to post something of a year end (or new year) wrap up here - or several, including notes on Whither The Blog? but you know how that goes... hope is not a plan.

Sport Business Sanity

(Three words you don't see together very often.)

Looks like The Nationals are gonna be Les Expos again next year. From ESPN:

NEW YORK -- Washington's new baseball team shut down business and promotional operations indefinitely Wednesday as its move to the nation's capital teetered on the brink of collapse.

The decision by Major League Baseball followed the District of Columbia Council's decision Tuesday night to require private financing for at least half the cost of building a new stadium. The September agreement to move the Montreal Expos to Washington called for a ballpark fully financed by government money.

This is probably a very bad thing for Baseball - I should say, for Major League Baseball, the organization... But god, this is a great thing for the public at large. Someone stood up to the crap they sell. On something that makes sense, not the usual grandstanding Bullshit, like McCain on steroids. Jim Henley's Unqualifed Offerings has a couple posts up about it, and about the coverage of it. Jim Caple at ESPN agrees - and reminds us that the council still agreed to pay some $450 million, and that the real driving force here is MLB's desire to get all the sale money for the team for themselves. And after the fine fine job they've done the last couple years of raising the value of the franchise, who can blame them for wanting to make a modest profit off the deal?

Seriously - why should cities foot the bill? some of the bill, maybe, but all of it? No. And I should add - Henley quotes Mark Fisher uttering that old dead fish "Baseball was an opportunity to rise above those strains, to reach for world-class status, to lure suburbanites back into a view of Washington as the center, a place of pride." - a particular type of inanity I cannot abide . Baseball teams - basketball, football, what have you - do not make a place a world class city. Living in a city with some recent baseball success - winning the world series is great, but please - if we're a world class city, it's because of things like this, or maybe this (even if they are in a different city) - maybe even what lies across the fens from the baseball park. And, if we are a "world class city" - why the hell can't they get the trains running?

Ballad of the Hemp Beret

Check out comment # 10 on this post, over at Berube's blog - a high point, friends, of blogging commentary...

Mumia buttons on our chests
We’d all fail a urine test
One hundred crowd the hip café
But only three score the Hemp Beret

Thank you, thank you.

John, Paul, George, Ringo and Santa

Here is a Christmas gift to my 2 readers. The Beatles' Christmas songs, in mp3.

Via The Talent Show.

Probably the US Basketball Team

What on earth is this about?

In response to one or more indecency complaints, the Federal Communications Commission has asked NBC to send it tapes of its coverage of the Summer Olympics Opening Ceremonies in Athens, the network confirmed late yesterday.

I guess there were people impersonating Greek statues - and the Greeks, the barbaric bastards, don't wear clothes. I guess. Hard to say. All told, this reflects badly on the United States. But will probably continue...

Pointless Evil

A bad day for rock stars, I guess. Last night, December 8, 2004, Dimebag Darrell (Abbott), currently of a band called Damageplan, but mostly of Pantera, a major player in the metal scene, as respected a heavy metal guitarist as there is out there, was shot dead, on stage, by a fan of some kind - who came in yelling about Phil Anselmo, but that seems rather beside the point.

It is very strange. Surreal and terrible. I am not a metal fan, I have heard the bare minimum of Pantera’s music - I remember it as being, like most thrash metal, kind of dull, with moments of flash that don’t quite justify its existence. But I don’t know how fair that is.

But I am aware, from reading various magazines, of Dimebag’s importance in that world. And the culture of metal is interesting in a way - it’s like superhero comics - something that I don’t much care about in itself, but which can be fascinating to think about from outside. And sometimes from inside. So somehow, this comes off all disproportionate to the place he had in my life. I mean - it is always horrible when something like this happens, when someone is shot and killed - but usually, even famous people are strangers to me. This is not like John Lennon’s death - not someone I, personally, cared about in any special way. But for some reason, it looms very large.

Larger, say, than Tupac - who, like Dimebag, I had heard of, heard some music by, considered good enough in his area, just not something I cared all that much about. I don't know why, but Dimebag's death seems more significant, somehow. Is it because it happened yesterday? December 8? Is it the fact that it was a bloodbath - a guy jumping on stage and opening fire on the band and the crowd? Is it because I’d read so many references to Dimebag? Or was I jaded about Tupac, after his arrests and stabbings and feuds and everything, his death came as the logical next step - while this comes completely out of the blue?

Probably a little bit of all of it. What this reminds me of is when I heard that Peter Tosh had been shot, back in the 80s. Tosh was an artist I’d heard a little, heard of a lot more - he represented a whole genre of music (far more than Tupac could) that I respected without knowing much about. And his murder was shocking and strange, came completely from left field - it was very discomfiting, it made me very aware of the sense of losing something I never had. It’s that odd sense of vertigo that comes from having someone who had been a vague presence I should know more about suddenly become real by dieing.

That's how I feel about Dimebag. I don't know how else to describe it. It's absurd and horrible all out of scale with what I knew of him when he was alive.

Heil Santa!

You know, I like Christmas. A lot, actually. For a whole swarm of reasons that I may, if you (my loyal reader(s)) have been really bad this year, I might relate at mind numbing length... And that's in the teeth of, and indeed largely because of, its religious (specifically, Christian [and pagan, after all]) significance - since I generally hold the view that the Universal is found primarily in the Particular. And this generally filters down to not quite approving of efforts to take the Christmas out of Christmas - if you want to be inclusive, I say, be inclusive - put up hanukkah displays, Kwanzaa displays - more is always better, I say....

But then you come across things like this, at (shockingly) Michelle Malkin's blog. She's harrassing, and encouraging others to harass, businesses, cities, etc. who change Christmas specific signage and celebrations to more generic signs and parties. There is a word for what she is doing, and it has 7 letters, starts with f, ends with "ism" and is derived from the Italian word for a stick (as used in the symbol of the relevant political party, a bundle of sticks - symbolizing the old adage, one stick is easy to break - a bundle of sticks is hard to break.) Nor is this assertion of mine debatable. It is the case.

This is a link to something called The Committee to Save Merry Christmas.

You know, when I was a kid, the bad guys - Burgermeister Meisterburger and company - were always trying to stop Christmas. Now... ah yes... what times we live in. When roving bands of evildoers stroll the company demanding we sing "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem" on demand. Christmas is a good thing - things like this will put you off your gingerbread...