KICKIN' ASS AND NAMIN' NAMES

(Dale Robertson, a Tea Party activist, holding his sign at the Feb. 27, 2009 Tea Party in Houston)

The conservatism which took hold in America during the cultural devastation of Ronald Reagan, the Neocons who successfully married the Religious Right, depends on conning the working class to benefit the owning class by actively maintaining or advancing two bedrock values: woman-hating and white supremacy. It's a one-two punch that sucks in otherwise progessive males who are covertly terrified of powerful women and otherwise intelligent women who are covertly terrified of brown folks. (Or not so covertly.)

I agree with Katha Pollitt that I'm personally relieved we are not sitting in the raging floodwaters of woman-hating sewage that would fill all the airwaves if Hillary Clinton had won the Presidency. The backlash would be horrific.

But equally horrific is how white supremacy has come out from under wraps (well. it never was concealed for those of us without privilege or choosing to not accept denial) and has fueled a 250% increase in terrorist organizations whose raison d'etre is race hatred. And make no mistake about it, to quote Bob Cesca's essay at Huffpo today, "The Tea Party is all about race."


I'm going to quote a few sections from his post to whet your appetite but I hope you'll go read it for yourselves. We must continue challenging the media coverage which acts like these people have a rational agenda and force exposure of what actually brings them together -- why separatist, eliminationist Sarah Palin is their darling. Why Rick Perry is running for Governor of Texas with TV spots openly declaring his support for Tenthers, a code for white supremacists who want to roll back federal civil rights protection in "their" states. We have to decode their dogwhistles at every turn and organize that majority of citizens for whom race hatred is un-American. We are the real patriots, and we must not let them steal that term.

From Bob Cesca The Tea Party Is All About Race:

"...when you strip away all of the rage, all of the nonsensical loud noises and all of the contradictions, all that's left is race. The tea party is almost entirely about race, and there's no comparative group on the left that's similarly motivated by bigotry, ignorance and racial hatred.

"...The tea party is an extension of talk radio. It's an extension of Fox News Channel. It's an extension of the southern faction of the Republican Party -- the faction that gave us the Southern Strategy, the Willie Horton ad, the White Hands ad and the racially divisive politics of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. It's an extension of the race-baiting and, often, the outright racism evident in all of those conservative spheres.

"...In the final analysis, when you boil away all of the weirdness, it becomes clear that the teabaggers are pissed because there isn't yet another doddering old white guy in the White House -- like they're used to. That's what this is all about."

(Hat-tip to Brilliant at Breakfast for pointing me toward the Cesca post.)

[Cross-posted at Group News Blog.]

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HOW LONG UNTIL WE CAN "JOKE" ABOUT KATRINA?

It's been 18 years since Claytie Williams forgot he wasn't surrounded by reliable Texas good ole boys and said "Rape is like weather. As long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it." A nearby reporter faithfully repeated the remark, and -- make no mistake about it -- this comment is what lost him the governorship of Texas.

Ann Richards tied this slice of hate (it was definitely not a joke) to Claytie's Big Oil anti-environmentalism, to his OTHER public woman-hating remark about treating Richards like a steer, and to his attempt at smearing her for being a recovering alcoholic. It disgusted enough people that she won by a narrow 49-47%.

Richards went on to completely re-energize the Texas busted economy, re-fund education, reform prisons, and do more good than this state has seen in decades. Claytie remained an anachronism, except, of course, to the misogynist, racist, classist white boys who agreed with everything he said.

Ann lost to Dubya in 1994, despite her wild success as a Governor, because Bush trumped her AA treated alcoholism with his "God saved me, I don't need no fucking 12 Steps" version (much more popular with all the secret drinks in evangelical circles) and because Karl Rove spread the rumor that she was a lesbian. When Bush ran for the Presidency, all the things for which he took credit as Texas's governor were, in fact, programs initiated under Ann Richards. WE knew he was an abject failure, lying about his past. But the rest of the country bought it.

So, all this was 18 years ago. That's not long enough to excuse the decision on the part of whoever it was in John McSame's campaign remuda that having Claytie host a fundraiser would be a smart move. Either they are too young to be put in charge of such things (and the Republicans do rely inordinately on young and stupid white boys for their grunt work) or they are so indoctrinated in the culture of hate speech they thought it would be a funny anecdote now. I mean, look how Hillary was smeared by anti-woman shit, with no backlash or outcry from most of the Democratic party, right?

Well, the McSame folks had to cancel their event once a news reporter made the connection that they apparently could not, but they've made no comment about returning the more than $300,000 Claytie has already raised for them.

You know, bedbugs can live for 18 months without a fresh meal. The subterranean life of Neocons seems to be much longer. The only way to cleanse our habitat of them is to flush them into the open and deny them any nutrition whatsoever. We can begin with Midland, Texas, which remains a hotbed for those would destroy the Constitution for profit, white supremacy, and the right to make rape "inevitable".

Below is Richards' campaign ad from 1990. Rest in peace, Ann. Some of us are carrying on your work.

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WHAT SHE SAID

Take me to the river, Shakesville.

Melissa McEwan's post For The Record has been seconded many places on liberal, woman-respectful blogs in the last week, so you may have already seen it. But if you have not, I say "Read it" and then "Me, too".

I have never voted for Hillary Clinton. (Though I did vote for Bill, twice, and am not a bit sorry for it.) I even wrote once that I agreed with Molly Ivins when she said she was giving advance notice, she would NOT vote for Hillary for President. But I had to publicly take back that blustering statement when Hillary became an equal contender for the nomination because, the fact is, if Spongebob Squarepants turned out to be the Democratic nominee this time around, I AM GOING TO VOTE FOR HER/HIM. The alternative is unthinkable. I found Hillary and Barack equally acceptable and equally unacceptable, although I do agree with Howie Klein's assessment that Hillary is/was demonstrably more liberal than Barack.

Yet any time I commented on a so-called progressive blog to protest hate language which was being aimed at Hillary on the basis of her being a woman, a wife, an older female, I was assumed to be a Hillary supporter. Not just that, a Boomer identity-politics-troglodyte racist C**T of a Hillary supporter who could not understand change or hope or vision if it bit me on my white, fish-smelling ass.

Yep, that's me to a tee.

Despite my best efforts, it got to me. And I've been sick inside as I've watched the testosterone-fueled fist-pumping victory dance. Because for some of these guys, too many of them, it was not just Hillary who was going down in flames. It was all the uppity bitches who ever denied their male superiority. We really can tell the difference, you know. You asswipes fool NOBODY but each other. And your exalted candidate did not lift one fucking finger to interrupt it. Which means when it's time to let YOUR values get assaulted, he'll choose silence if it serves him in the long run there, too.

PUH-LEEZE don't begin with your lizard-brain rebuttal of all the things Hillary's campaign did or said that were racist. I've read them. I agree. One does just not justify the other. Can you fucking understand that much? It's not a goddamned football game, nobody is keeping score of racism vs. sexism (except for you morons). I have and will continue to speak out just as much against racism, in all its forms. It's completely unacceptable.

And so is woman-hating.

I'm going to excerpt one part of Melissa's post here:

"...these women have witnessed this despicable but spectacular marriage of aggressive misogyny and their long-presumed allies' casual indifference to it, and wondered what fucking planet they were on that dehumanizing eliminationist rhetoric, to which lefty bloggers used to object once upon a time, was now considered a legitimate campaign strategy, as long as it was aimed at a candidate those lefty bloggers didn't like.

"And these women felt, quite rightly, like feminist principles were being thrown to the wolves in a fit of political expedience.

"And these women felt personally abandoned. By people they had considered allies.

"And while they struggled to understand just what was happening, while they were losing their way along well-traveled paths that no longer felt familiar or welcoming, they were admonished like children to stop taking things personally. They were sneered at for playing identity politics. They were demeaned as ridiculous, overwrought, hysterics. They were called bitches and cunts. They were bullied off blogs they'd called home for years.

"(But don't take that personally.)"

You have all shit in your beds, and you are too dumb to understand how. But nonviolent, steadfast refusal to cooperate with your cherished machinery will eventually get your attention. I'm asking all my sisters, mothers, daughters, and our allies to ELECT THIS DEMOCRAT, we have no healing option otherwise. He'll do some good, and he'll stop some of the death and destruction that's eating us alive. Boycotting this vote is suicide, and if you hint such a thing my way, I'll consider you self-destructive and unreliable.

After the election, though? The bot-boys are OUT. Lock the door. We know who we are, we know who stayed clean in the blogosphere, we took names and paid attention. Jesse Wendel, Lower Manhattanite, Shakesville, Crooks and Liars, Digby, Orcinus -- at the top of the list of those who can manage to fight injustice without resorting to racism or sexism. (Feel free to give praise to others in the comments here.)

Playing fair means, eventually, that only other fair players will sit down at a table with you.

But you'll always have Bush to whine with.

---------------------------

For those of you with energy to deal with denial, recommended reading to help you not feel crazy:

From Dave Neiwert at Orcinus, How right-wing crap polluted Democrats' political waters

Shakesville keeps a simultanous Hillary Sexism Watch and Barack Racism Watch. The latest I could find are Hillary Sexism Watch #104 and Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch Part Forty-Goddamn-Six.

A request by Melissa McEwan at Shakesville to provide concrete evidence of posts and comments on "progressive" blogs of woman-hating directed at Hillary produced this depressingly long and detailed list:
List of Leftie Misogynist Hate Against Hillary

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TWO IMPORTANT STORIES ABOUT AFRICA

(Liberia, filming for Communication for Change, photo by Eve A. Lotter)

The Utne Reader has a good article up, Through Their Eyes, about how refugee women who are assaulted (sexually and otherwise) in West Africa are making videos expressing what it looks like through the eyes of the victims. I'm posting this to encourage you to donate what you can to the non-profits who are sponsoring this project and the community viewings/speak-outs afterward, American Refugee Committee International (ARC) and Communication for Change. Woman-created videos are also being made about forced marriage and wife beating.

But I also want to take this opportunity to comment on the language used in writing this article and how it contributes to dilution of feminism and clear thinking about what is really going on. The tag at the top reads "Victims of gender-based violence fight back with video" and the lead-in states "The crime is all too familiar for many women and girls around the world, especially those living in refugee camps where gender-based violence has become endemic: Rape is a weapon of war, forced sex a currency exchanged for food or safe passage."


But this is not, strictly speaking, gender-based violence. It's woman-hating. It's ONLY aimed against women and girls, not against a generic "gender". I mean, the corollary would be to sanitize lynching by referring to it as "race-based violence" instead of community murder of black people.

I believe this semantic shift is underway to make discussion of crimes against WOMEN somehow more palatable to the mainstream, less feminist and more "gender-studies" friendly: For all those who have difficulty facing the fact that sexism is second-class status and hatred of WOMEN AND GIRLS (and anyone else who can incidentally be shoe-horned into the NOT-MAN category.) "Gender-based" should be reserved for those statistically rare instances when the oppression is clearly being aimed against all "not-men", instead of specifically targeting women and girls. The conflation of terms does no justice to the different expression of oppressions as it is experienced by different targets. Those of us in the belly of the beast deserve to not have our struggles lumped together into academically polished and distancing language.


Recommended reading: Rape in Liberia at Womanist Musings


(From the Middle Passage drawings by Tom Feeling)

A couple of weeks ago, there was a fascinating article in the Boston Globe online about new research from a Harvard economist which "suggests that Africa's economic woes may have their roots in the slave trade" (hat tip to Jesse Wendel of Group News Blog for sending this my way). This is not an original idea -- the theory has been around for a long time. But Nathan Nunn has created innovative (and still untested) measures to verify his argument "that the African countries with the biggest slave exports are by and large the countries with the lowest incomes now (based on per capita gross domestic product in 2000). That relationship, he contends, is no coincidence. One actually helped to cause the other."

The article, Shackled To The Past, by Francie Latour, is detailed enough that you need to go read it yourself.

However, I want to address a couple of ideas within it. One section reads:

"Nunn's research also comes at a time when the most fervent calls for reparations have come and gone, but when international calls for Western apologies for slavery still draw attention. The United States has never apologized for slavery, although five states - Virginia, Maryland, Alabama, North Carolina, and New Jersey - have done so recently, and Congress is poised to consider a resolution of apology this year. With much of the world's trade policy heavily skewed to the West's advantage and Africa's disadvantage, some say apologies carry little if any value. In any case, it remains to be seen whether the United States will ever face the role it played in one of history's worst crimes."

...

"The echoes across time are fascinating, and seem undeniable. But many practitioners say that ultimately, looking at Africa's problems through the lens of slavery is self-defeating. Calestous Juma, a native of Kenya and one of the most influential voices on African economic development, falls squarely into this camp.

'The legacy of slavery cannot be denied, but if you push the argument too far, it becomes a fatalistic argument," said Juma, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. 'Because you start to say, "Well, what can we really do? We can't undo the past, and therefore, Africa will always remain poor."'

I've thought about the idea of reparations and apology from different angles for decades now. In the 1980s, I dated a woman who was active in the African People's Socialist Party. Their platform then, and now, included reparations for African slavery in this country. While I was behind it in principle (and, I have to say, most of the other planks in their platform), I didn't think it was a realistic demand and that its quality of being "far-fetched" would detract from the other goals they were pursuing.

I've changed my mind since then. To begin with, the labeling of a goal as "far-fetched" is always soaked in cultural and target versus non-target group assumptions. Given my radicalism on so many other issues, I think it's safe to say my willingness to see reparations as "out there" arose from racism more than sudden rationality.

To illustrate my point, other reparations movements (such as Jews claiming damages from the Holocaust) meet with far more public (i.e., white people) acceptance and respectful airplay. However, the turd in the punchbowl is that the wealth of the United States is utterly founded on theft of land and labor. There is a prevailing myth to the contrary, especially among white people, that America's "greatness" is the product of hard labor. Labor by men, this means. White men. The work of women is taken for granted, and the resources of others is considered the property of white men by manifest destiny and Christian-backed racial superiority.

Relinquishing this myth to reality would do more than flood the foundations of white supremacy and woman-hating. It would also remove the chief delusion propping up white working class compliance with rule by the power elite: The fantasy that their own hard work will lead to class advancement and stability. Forcing the white lower classes in this country to face the truth that their status, however shitty, is never going to change through their own efforts and, even so, they are advantaged in comparison to the people of color living around them would lead to revolution.

If we took a zen approach to undoing the past -- we can't really time travel, but we can undo the effects of the past manifested present-day -- we'd have enormous opportunity to level economic prosperity on a global level. Since America currently stands squarely in the past of this progress, anything which would address the cultural and psychological pathology supporting such obstruction could help jiggle it loose.

For this second-tier reason, then, I'm also in favor of pushing for reparations. Bringing the actual source of our economic advantage into the clear light of day would be immensely tonic for my class, and enable us to (possibly) step around the racism which keeps us doing the dirty work of standing on our sisters' and brother's necks. I can only hope.

Likewise, governmental apologies have been applauded by everyone except Republicans and their ilk. In its honest form, an apology says "I see what I did there, I feel badly for how my action hurt you, and I'm going to take steps to make sure I don't do it again." Apology is an adult skill, arising from a blend of developmental attainment and responsibility -- to others AND to self. Which explains why it is beyond the reach or comprehension of conservatives and evangelicals, but we have to not let their limitations be our lowest common denominator any longer.

The article states:

"Juma and Nunn may be working toward an eventual meeting of the minds. The Kenyan sees slavery's lasting scar as a deeply psychological one - an attack on the self-confidence of a continent, and by extension, its human potential. Until that legacy is conquered, Juma said, Africa will not advance.

"Nunn, now at work on Chapter 2, has another name for this legacy: He calls it the trust channel. He can't prove it. But using household surveys of Africans over the last seven years known as the Afrobarometer, he is finding that ethnic groups that had the most slaves taken in the past express the most difficulty trusting people within their group, and outside their group. It may be that as it ravaged populations and crippled institutions, the hunting down and handing over of their own kin also robbed them of an innate ability to trust, all the way to the present day.

"Measuring this kind of collective feeling, and correlating it to events so far in the past, will likely put Nunn right back on slippery ground. But he doesn't seem to mind. 'The idea of the transmission or evolution of trust over generations, and this being affected by these large historic events,' Nunn said, 'is definitely not mainstream in economics.'"

I was fascinated by the introduction of this word, trust. (As was Jesse, hence his recommendation to read this article.) Trust of course arises from relationship, and dysfunctional/damaging relationships erode trust backwards and forwards along the temporal plane. I think it is possible that this is perpetuated not just through conditioning and culture -- i.e., we raise our children to distrust because of a devastating betrayal in the past. I think it is possible that this erosion of trust is making its way into biological expression via epigenetics: The way in which rearing and environment (nurture) alters our very biology, either temporarily (during our lifetime) or in a more long-lasting fashion (altering the genes that get passed on).

The plasticity of our genetic expression as is currently being discovered, daily, through epigenetic study is where the hope lies in this revelation of centuries of distrust. It's a reversible condition.

But apology will be the first step in that healing. There's no way around it. It will be good for us, good for the world, good for future generations. When you write your elected representatives or speak to the powerful, I ask to you add this to your list of requests: That we learn how to apologize, and do it (on every scale) when we have transgressed. It's not enough to sing "Amazing Grace" any more (as if it ever was), marveling at that which "saved a wretch like me" but not moving emotionally to the next step. We have to reverse the Middle Passage, in whatever ways we can dream up. Wouldn't you rather live in a world which took on this task?

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TEN LETTERS TOWARD AN ALPHABET OF PRESIDENTIAL CHOICE

I wonder how many other former Edwards supporters are now in a period of deep analysis, trying not just to decide on a second-choice candidate but to understand the "why" of that choice. So far, the differences between Barack and Hillary are not substantial enough to easily sway me. I'll be fuckin' thrilled with either one, and that's the truth.

I read a lot of blogs each day, liberal/progressive and radical feminist, mostly. Here's what I (very subjectively) seem to be noticing:


(a) A lot of women my age, white women from what I can tell, were not especially on the Hillary bandwagon to begin with but are now getting behind her just because of the appalling woman-hating being aimed her way. I don't find this public vituperation "unbelievable" because I'm a decades-long feminist who has never been "post" or in denial about how shit on women (and woman-ish folk) are in this culture. We've actually lost ground in the last 15 years in a number of key aspects, including (and often most painfully) within what used to be our "safe" communities, i.e., lesbian enclaves. Lesbian never did equal feminist, but the public room to question masculinity, woman-hating and gender essentialism has vanished from queer space; we tend to find it now only in straight feminist arenas. (For which I want to say here, thank you, sisters, for leaving the light on for us.)

(b) Once discussion is under way about Barack vs. Hillary in a blog comments section, so-called liberal white boys cannot seem to stick to issues and cannot resist oozing into anti-woman crap, even as they deny it IS anti-woman crap. Honest to god, the hateful stuff coming out of the mouths of Chris Matthews, et al in White Boy Media is really not substantially different from what's cropping up in comments at Kos, Digby, etc. So much so that responsible blog moderators are having to clamp down on misogyny in comments. Way to go, guys.

(c) Rightwing verbal rape of Hillary, as usual, finds a mirror outlet in the mainstream media, who simply laughs at hate rhetoric in a frat-boy snicker of appreciation. The origin of that laugh is, of course, Ronnie Raygun. The one consolation I keep finding in this pile-on is the audible "click" I keep hearing from progressive bloggers, a "click" my generation heard in around 1975: Yeah, it's that vicious. Yeah, it runs all discourse in this country. Yeah, how'd YOU like to try to assume leadership or a voice in the midst of that kind of onslaught?

(d) The emotionality of the men who are trying to shout down any (even imagined) Hillary support is never acknowledged as emotionality and hysteria. Because, you know, men don't get hysterical.


(e) We're not seeing how Barack would respond to this kind of furor (yet), so I don't have a good guess as to how cool he can stay. I'm duly impressed with Hillary. She's been in the crosshairs for a long time, and is doing well -- except, of course, for the slow, long-term damage that is a result of living in crosshairs. I kinda need to know if Barack is going to lose it and get pissy, unfocused, rigid or wobbly, when his turn comes, like Kerry -- not to mention McCain, Bush, etc, of course.

(f) I just listened to Prairie Home Companion, and they did a long segment where their talented crew of mimics did pretend speeches from Barack, Hillary, McCain, Reagan, and Bush. These were wildly funny, poking at folks on both sides of the divide, and I was struck with how well they did Barack and Hillary. Barack couldn't answer a question in specifics, instead always speaking about "vision" -- convincingly, it was actually persuasive, in the way that good mimicry will be. Hillary kept making it about her ego and her experience, and I laughed hard, though uncomfortably. This gave me a lot to think about, in conjunction with:

(g) More than one blogger had suggested checking out the Presidential selector quiz at Select Smart, so I finally did. The unsettling results were that my position on the issues covered by their list of questions (which would NOT be my list of questions, let me issue that caveat) was shared by
1. Theoretical Ideal Candidate (100 %)
2. Dennis Kucinich (withdrawn) (94 %)
3. Barack Obama (86 %)
4. Joseph Biden (withdrawn) (81 %)
5. John Edwards (withdrawn) (80 %)
6. Christopher Dodd (withdrawn) (79 %)
7. Hillary Clinton (79 %)
8. Alan Augustson (campaign suspended) (78 %) [who???]
9. Wesley Clark (not running, endorsed Clinton) (73 %)
10. Al Gore (not announced) (70 %)
11. Bill Richardson (withdrawn) (65 %)
12. Michael Bloomberg (says he will not run) (65 %)
13. Mike Gravel (63 %)
14. Elaine Brown (55 %)
15. Ron Paul (40 %)
16. Kent McManigal (campaign suspended) (37 %)
17. Mike Huckabee (28 %)
18. Rudolph Giuliani (withdrawn, endorsed McCain) (28 %)
19. Wayne Allyn Root (27 %)
20. John McCain (27 %)
21. Chuck Hagel (not running) (24 %)
22. Sam Brownback (withdrawn, endorsed McCain) (20 %)
23. Tommy Thompson (withdrawn, endorsed Giuliani) (20 %)
24. Mitt Romney (withdrawn) (19 %)
25. Newt Gingrich (says he will not run) (18 %)
26. Alan Keyes (13 %)
27. Fred Thompson (withdrawn) (13 %)
28. Duncan Hunter (withdrawn) (11 %)
29. Tom Tancredo (withdrawn, endorsed Romney) (11 %)
30. Jim Gilmore (withdrawn) (6 %)
31. Stephen Colbert (campaign halted) (4 %)


To respond, I'll begin by saying that Kucinich's avowed willingness to consider Ron Paul as a running mate wiped him off my radar permanently. No cozying up to Nazis, that's a deal-breaker for me. Biden, Edwards and Dodd's alignment with my own views I already knew about. But Barack was a shock. I realized, at that point, I actually don't know his hard views on issues. All I get from the mainstream press and his blogger cheerleaders alike is "the vision" thing. Which isn't enough for me -- I liked and believed in Bill Clinton, I was very swayed by his charismatic speeches, even though I suspected he was at best a moderate. It was the first time I voted for a candidate who won, that blissful year in 1992: Clinton, Ann Richards for Governor and Glen Maxey for my state representative, folks I believed in and they all won. I've been a voter since 1972, and for a long time I used my electoral capital on Socialist, Peace and Justice, or Green party causes. After Reagan came along, I began voting for sheer survival and have stuck to it. But Bill seemed to be the best of both. Well, no more voting for personality reasons. I'll go research Barack's stands, as well as his Senate career, and we'll see.

(h) The questions I want addressed by a candidate are not appearing on these lists. Will they restore habeas corpus as it was in its entirety? Will they reverse NAFTA? Will they strip away the "unitary executive" power-grab of the Bushies and restore checks and balances to our government? Will they not just get us out of Iraq, but drastically cut the military and return that funding to social services plus a foreign policy based on compassion instead of building empire? I felt like I knew how Biden and Edwards would answer these questions, and their answers were mine. I'm not so certain of either Hillary or Barack, and I'm equally unsure of both, Hillary because she's a gifted "player" and Barack because he fumbles (as he has, repeatedly, around gay issues).


(i) Doris Lessing tossed a piss-filled water balloon into the plaza today by with her statement that Barack "would certainly not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would murder him." This has been said for a few weeks now on various blogs, and I have repeated it myself. But now it's an international item. Lessing certainly has a history of speaking her mind in ways that I may or may not agree with (her pointing out that the September 11th attacks were not that big a deal -- agreed -- and her disavowal of feminism -- stupid, stupid Doris). Still, I don't seeing the notion of "Of course they'll kill him" being given a sort of legitimacy, an air of inevitability. Energetically it's bad news.

(j) This brings me back around to the beginning, how different the attacks are on Barack and Hillary, but I insist we cannot quantify which is worse, woman-hating or white supremacy. I have a distant cousin whom I know only through similar genealogy research, from South Carolina (the problem child of the South), who after 9/11 sent me anti-Muslim group e-mails on a regular basis, no matter my protests. In the last six months, however, he's switched his focus to anti-Barack garbage. It's my barometer on what's up for those who have no reluctance to proudly display their mental illness known as racism. The corporate elite who run our government and the Republican Party will stop at nothing to deny our will, and if they can find a way to bring the nigger-hating out from their 30% base to a larger view with as much public acceptance as their woman-hating receives, they'll do it.


Which, as a conscientous citizen, makes me question everything I hear, looking for the manipulation behind it. Question my own beliefs, and dig deeper. This essay is just one manifestation of my quest to overcome the conditioning which has rotted my soul and which, at least, I am not dense enough to deny exists.

(Image by little gator, now on the FRONT PAGE! at I Can Has Cheezburger

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BROAD CAST, 6 FEBRUARY 2008: POLITICS, POP CULTURE, AND POETRY

(March for Women's Lives, Washington D.C., April 25, 2004)

I have no comments about primary results except to say this: If woman-hating and white supremacy are playing an open role in this Presidential race, as they assuredly are (the only difference being that the malignancy has been unroofed), I think going to white men for analysis about "what it means" is like going to a male gynecologist. Choose your caregivers, as well as your information outlets, as lovingly as you choose your friends. This doesn't mean insularity -- some of my closest friends disagree with me in fundamental ways, which I appreciate. It means using trust and respect to winnow out who has your ear.


And I do wonder: If the Barack-hating were as in his face on news shows as the Hillary-hating is, how well would he deal with it? I know the man is surely facing assassination attempts by rightwing nutjobs as his campaign progresses. It's clear from what's going out on their talk radio, websites and flyers. Clearly the hate aimed against him is no less than what is targeting Hillary. But it bubbles up in different forms.

I can't read anything on a so-called progressive blog dominated by white males about Hillary that doesn't reek of woman-hating in its intellectual, I-am-the-great-objective-thinker guise. (Jesse Wendel being a strong exception.) Whereas the female bloggers that I read are, for the most part, struggling to identify their crap pro and con about both candidates and find a path through the minefields -- but then, we're raised to admit our mistakes.

Well, you can't kill maggots until you find out where the rot is. I keep telling myself that.

(Vulture woodcut by Tugboat Printshop)

One of the parenting policies of my mother which may or may not have been a good idea (I waffle) is that she seldom interfered with my choice of reading material. Mostly this freedom expanded my horizons, particularly since she did keep track and tried to engage me in conversation about what I had just absorbed after I finished a book. I remember that after I read Fanny Hill at around age nine, she poked questions at me in a way I knew meant there had been something in the book that concerned her. The sexual escapades were so decorously worded (in that 50s style) that they had gone over my head. I had blitzed through them. My only complaint to her was that "People smoked an awful lot of cigarettes", which sent her into crazed laughter I didn't comprehend until years later.

A few books, however, did upset me, at times enormously. I was sickened by Lolita, and given weeks of nightmares by the one-two punch of Triumph (by Philip Wylie, whom my mother had a love/hate relationship with as a reader) and On The Beach (by Nevil Shute), both of them post-nuclear-war apocalyptic nightmares that I read at around age 11.

I was also seriously rattled by by Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. The vampires were bad enough (and let me state here, this author should be credited for creating the world that Buffy would later inhabit). More thought-provoking was the message about conformity and difference: In a culture of vampires, the single "sane" individual who carries stakes and seeks their destruction is not only perceived by them to be "the bad guy", but possibly really is the problem. It gave me a great deal to think about, and in this case, I believe it was good for me.

I haven't seen the newest movie version of the book, although reviews say it does the message justice. I saw the previous adaptations, The Last Man on Earth (1964) and The Omega Man (1971), both of which I found disappointing when compared to the complexity of the book. But then, the only Charlton Heston role that seemed convincing to me was his gun-toting rant in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine.



Having mentioned Buffy, let me direct you to a fun exercise, The GOP Primary Field Expressed As Buffy Villains, created by Neil Sinhababu at Cogitamus. Imagining Ron Paul as Morloch the Corruptor makes glimpses of him easier to bear.


From the folks at via Poor Impulse Control comes a video of the kind of cooking show I'd love to see (now that the Two Fat Ladies are no more): Cookin' and Cursin' with the Grandsons of Italy Warning: Not for work consumption or kids' ears!



There's a great interview with Susie Bright at Susie Bright-ens Boston at Sue Katz: Consenting Adult about the current state of publishing and writing on the internet. Gave me some chewy bits.

(Window with garden landscape, by Louis Comfort Tiffany circa 1902-1920)

The selection two days ago from The Writer's Almanac stuck with me enough that I'd like to share it with you. Offered through American Public Media, The Writer's Almanac sends out (to those who sign up, like I did) a daily poem selected and read aloud by Garrison Keillor, along with literary and historical notes for the day in question. A welcome addition to the e-mail box.


MISGIVINGS
by William Matthews, 1998, from After All: Last Poems

"Perhaps you'll tire of me," muses
my love, although she's like a great city
to me, or a park that finds new
ways to wear each flounce of light
and investiture of weather.
Soil doesn't tire of rain, I think,

but I know what she fears: plans warp,
planes explode, topsoil gets peeled away
by floods. And worse than what we can't
control is what we could; those drab,
scuttled marriages we shed so
gratefully may augur we're on our owns

for good reasons. "Hi, honey," chirps Dread
when I come through the door, "you're home."
Experience is a great teacher
of the value of experience,
its claustrophobic prudence,
its gloomy name-the-disasters-

in-advance charisma. Listen,
my wary one, it's far too late
to unlove each other. Instead let's cook
something elaborate and not
invite anyone to share it but eat it
all up very very slowly.

And, to close out my post, another poem from Judy Grahn. I have to admit a personal attachment to this one because, a very long time ago, a woman I loved quoted it to me as if it were meant to be about me. A lovely memory.

A GEOLOGY LESSON

Here, the sea strains to climb up on the land
and the tree blows dust in a single direction.
The trees bend themselves all one way
and volcanoes explode often
Why is this? Many years back
a woman of strong purpose
pass through this section
and everything else tried to follow


by Judy Grahn, circa 1971, in She Who

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BROAD CAST, 30 DECEMBER 2008: STILL NOT SAFE TO BE FEMALE OR BROWN

I am grieving the loss of Benazir Bhutto. I didn't actually know much about her, except that she was the first woman to be elected head of a Muslim nation (something we haven't managed yet, and the woman-hating aimed at Hillary Clinton is really coming out from under wraps, ain't it). Still, her death feels like a world loss to me.

So far, the best response I've read has come from Heart at Women's Space, so I'll link you all over there (do read the comments, too): Benazir Bhutto Assassinated.

(Serafina Pekkala from "The Golden Compass")

For those of us who've been discussing the His Dark Materials trilogy, mostly at Maoist Orange Cake (also briefly a while ago at Dykes To Watch Out For), Pandagon's Amanda Marcott has published a great review and launched a wonderful conversation about it. Not too late to join in, I don't think.

("Mexican Cook", woodcut by Michele Ramirez)

I want to second Feministing's recommend of a post at Guanabee concerning the pornification of the term "Latina": Hottt Wired: The Currency Of The Word "Latina" Online.

I remember when I read Andrew Holleran's Dancer and The Dance, a pivotal gay novel of the 80s, I was struck by the implicit racism of the gay male community, especially with regard to the sexual objection of "Latins". It's not desire, it's not love, it's not appreciation, and it's not positive.

And, this post brings up an interesting aspect of using Google images, which I rely on heavily for graphics on my blog: Seems like most any term having to do with women (including and especially, to my disgust, lesbian) brings up mostly pornographic images for pages on end. Don't tell me this severe imbalance of visual stimuli is NOT having a negative impact on how we see things. What if a search for "white male" 80% of the time showed images of dismemberment and pain? Would that be no big deal, either? (Although, given who's doing the killing and raping, it would be accurate in terms of projection...)


Alex Jung has an excellent article up at Alternet, White Liberals Have White Privilege Too!, and I recommend reading not just it but also the comments -- despite the fact that the initial defensive, at times hostile reaction from white liberals tended to prove all the point she'd just made. But the comments list gets better after a while. Here's an abbreviated version of her "List of misunderstandings that many white liberals have about race":
1. White supremacy? You mean white men in white sheets? (Not only.)
2. I'm not racist, but...
3. Colorblind as a bat.
4. Kumbaya, multiculturalism!
5. It's not a "[insert racial group here]" issue as much as it is a "human" issue.
6. One of my best friends is [insert nonwhite group here]!
7. How could I have white privilege? I'm poor/female/gay/Polish/disabled!
8. The white savior complex.
9. "Good" people of color
10. All that guilt.


Another recommended read is an examination of "Acceptable Sexism and Racism" in the media and punditry world by Chris Bowers at Open Left. The opening paragraph states:

"Long-standing sexist narratives that macho pundits have often used to denigrate not only female candidates, but also Democrats in general, are more acceptable in our national political discourse than crass, barely coded racism against African-Americans. Crass, barely coded racism against Muslims and Mexican immigrants is a different story. Talk of deporting the tens of millions of people in America who falls into these categories is quite acceptable, for example."

It's not just macho pundits, however. Too many white male "progressives" can't disagree with a woman without engaging in thinly-veneered woman-hating, and even the "good" ones still use mankind instead of humanity. Or think it's most important for them to say what they think than find a way to encourage the voices not yet present in the discourse.


For all the vocabulary geeks who read this blog, The New York Times' List of New Words of 2007 is out and includes:
Colony collapse disorder
Forever stamp
Life-stream
Mom-job
Global weirding
Post-kinetic environment

(Good news, only one out of the six takes a jab at women.)

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