The Great Leap Forward

Whitey does not approve: Sheridan and T.O.

This is something that crossed my mind regarding the MNF "controversy" this week. I didn't see the offending skit until a few days later. In my mind, no big deal. Not so for White America, apparently. The NFL claims that that sort of display is unbecoming, but we always get an eyeful of scantily-clad cheerleaders at each game, don't we?

I didn't write about it at the time, but Jeffri Chadiha at Sports Illustrated did:

Personally, the skit didn't bother me one bit. What the segment did do, however, was make me wonder if America was ready to see a naked, blonde, white woman with her arms wrapped around an outspoken, controversial, highly paid black man. From what I can tell from everybody's reaction, the country definitely wasn't.

Isn't that what this is really all about? Once we get past all the people complaining about how inappropriate the skit was for the Monday Night Football audience and how so many children will be scarred after being exposed to such a tawdry scene before their bedtime and all the decision-makers in the NFL who have raced away from this topic as if it were a time bomb, this is an issue that comes down to race. Aside from Tony Dungy, nobody wants to talk about that aspect of the story, because that's the really scary part. It might tell us something about ourselves, that our country hasn't come as far in the area of race relations as we'd like to believe. Even now, with so many people still talking about Owens and Sheridan, I doubt we can fully address it like it needs to be addressed.

And what's more...

I guarantee you that if Peyton Manning had been the man Sheridan jumped on, there wouldn't be half the controversy. If it had been Eva Longoria, the Latina co-star of Desperate Housewives, there also wouldn't be as much of an outcry. Two minorities locked in a sexual embrace isn't as shocking a thought in some of those red states. This is the same type of thinking that is all around Hollywood. When's the last time you saw Will Smith, Taye Diggs or Denzel Washington smooch a white woman? I can't recall it either because the people who make movies know they'd face the same response as ABC is dealing with now.

White America needs to get over itself. We're heading towards minority status (fine with me) anyway. Hope T.O. got some.

The Ohio recount continues.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann (the last respectable journalist) reports on some electoral strangeness in Washington Township, OH:

Yet when the votes were tallied, 168 of the 611 voters had made no choice for president. Unless these were the famed undecideds we heard so much about in the closing weeks of the campaigns, something went terribly wrong. 27 and a half percent of the voters in that “Washington X” precinct in Montgomery County officially didn’t have a presidential preference.

This was the high point of the Daily News’ investigative analysis of the still-unofficial voting results in its county— or more properly, perhaps, the low point. The paper discovered that of the 284, 650 votes in Montgomery, a total of 5,693 registered no valid vote for president. And the percentages were significantly higher in the 231 precincts that wound up voting for Kerry (2.8%) than did the 354 that wound up voting for Bush (1.6%).

If we can't count the votes properly, we may as well kiss democracy goodbye, if we haven't already. The Rethugs certainly aren't interested in counting the votes. Try to imagine the right-wing media uproar if this situation had favored Kerry.

The problems are not limited to Washington Township, either:

As the Ohio recount nears, the number of hotspots continues to multiply. You are aware of the remarkable late night voting lines throughout the state, and the mysterious Glitch of Youngstown which initially registered negative 25,000,000 votes. There is the Gahanna machine which gave one presidential candidate 4,000 extra votes in a community of 600. And the farcical “walling off” of the vote counting in Warren County, because the county head of security was told face-to-face of an FBI terrorism warning there - except the FBI says it didn’t issue any terrorism warnings there.

...and...

The Associated Press today carries a report of 2,600 ballots in nine precincts around Sandusky, Ohio that were counted twice— as that paper puts it— “likely because of worker error.” The Clyde precinct showed a voter turnout of 131%, to the dismay of the head of the elections board, Barb Tuckerman.

This will get worse before it gets better.

Europe in ascendance, America in decline.

Welcome to the new cold war

So you've been around for over 200 years, you're kicking ass in Iraq and God is most certainly on your side. Good times unending? Think again:

These young Europeans, Reid believes, now have a sense of their own political and economic power, and they have built a pan-continental "Euroculture" that borrows what it likes from American pop culture but now stands independent of it. "For many Europeans today," he writes, "the familiar concept of 'the West,' the transatlantic alliance with shared values and common enemies, is a relic of the last century." In this century, their goal is to challenge the American claim to global supremacy, at least in moral and political terms.

Here come the Yurpeans with their fancy civil rights and acceptance of differences. We don't need that stuff here in the good ole U. S. of A.!

But seriously, we're in danger of becoming a backward, militaristic danger to the rest of the world. In addition, our supposed economic superiority is not much more than a sham. Read on:

Much of American "productivity," Rifkin suggests, is accounted for by economic activity that might be better described as wasteful: military spending; the endlessly expanding police and prison bureaucracies; the spiraling cost of healthcare; suburban sprawl; the fast-food industry and its inevitable corollary, the weight-loss craze. Meaningful comparisons of living standards, he says, consistently favor the Europeans. In France, for instance, the work week is 35 hours and most employees take 10 to 12 weeks off every year, factors that clearly depress GDP.

Well, I'm a teacher, so this doesn't apply anymore (but I work hard!). But when I was in the corporate world, two weeks was all you got. I worked long enough at MCI to get three, but when I switched jobs, it was right back to two. And we wonder why we're so stressed out all the time.

While America has been gnawing on its own innards for the last decade or so, feuding internally over White House blow jobs, flawed elections, the threat of terrorism, the ill-fated war in Iraq and an angrily polarized public discourse, Europe has quietly been cohering into an impressive whole, the world's newest superpower. For all its layers of bureaucracy and all the challenges it faces, the EU has forged a harmonious society on a continent that spent most of history at war with itself.

The rise of the European Union may in fact, as Rifkin says, represent a new phase of history, and we barely saw it coming. While the outcome of this new cold war between Europe and America is far from clear, we should feel humbled by the way it's gone so far. The EU has succeeded so dramatically in its ambitious goals that the utopian dreamers of the last century who dared to imagine a peaceful, prosperous, united Europe seem eerily prescient now. If nothing else, it's an object lesson in the power of vision.

I can't wait for that one world government I've been hearing about. Anything that pissed off fundies and freepers is OK with me.

No matter how many voters (or pResidents) claim the high moral ground, we as Americans have lost the right to lecture other nations on how to conduct themselves. With the debacle in Iraq, it may be decades before we can even think of getting it back.

Well, I guess we could always bomb the shit out of 'em.

Irony in blogging.

Followed a random link in the "Recently Updated" list - found myself at Room 101. Mr. 101 turns out to be something of a right-winger (with the slight mitigating factor of an obsession with Pac-Man) who would probably like to see folks like me dead (or at least out of the country).

(Keep this in mind - I'll be teaching your children for the next 25 or 30 years - chew on that for a while.)

So is this guy pro-1984? Because his heroes are using Orwell's tome as a handbook, not a work of fiction.

Ah, the American Right Reich - so much vitriol, so little time...

The planet slips away - biodiversity is on the way out.

Species disappearing at an alarming rate, report says

It looks as though we are losing the war for earth. As we consume more and more of the earth's resources, we take away habitats from those we share the planet with. (Emphasis on the word "share".)

At least 15 species have gone extinct in the past 20 years and another 12 survive only in captivity, the World Conservation Union said in a report that accompanies its annual "Red List."

Current extinction rates are at least 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural rates found in the fossil record, the report stated. The data were released as 3,500 delegates gathered in Bangkok, Thailand, for a World Conservation Union conference focused on halting what's deemed an extinction crisis.

The report concluded that humans are the main reason for most species' declines. "Habitat destruction and degradation are the leading threats," the union said in a statement, "but other significant pressures include over-exploitation (for food, pets, and medicine), introduced species, pollution, and disease. Climate change is increasingly recognized as a serious threat."

Seriously, how long can this go on? I once read an analogy that went something like this: Think of the Earth as an airplane. One by one, we're throwing parts out of the airplane. At some point in the future, the plane will crash. Get it?

The "Red List" can be found here.

How close is the United States to fascism?

Pretty damn close, according to this article. So what constitutes a model fascist society? How about:

For the purpose of this perspective, I will consider the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia. To be sure, they constitute a mixed bag of national identities, cultures, developmental levels, and history. But they all followed the fascist or protofascist model in obtaining, expanding, and maintaining power. Further, all these regimes have been overthrown, so a more or less complete picture of their basic characteristics and abuses is possible.

Here's a handy clip-n-save list you can refer to if you think your country is slipping into fascism:

Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power. These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity.

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.
5. Rampant sexism.
6. A controlled mass media.
7. Obsession with national security.
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.
9. Power of corporations protected.
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.
12. Obsession with crime and punishment.
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.
14. Fraudulent elections.

Sound familiar? More details if you follow the link. All it would take is one more terrorist attack, or even just "four more years", and game over.

(Found through this dKos diary.)

Faces of the fallen.

As of today, 1,166 U.S. servicemen dead in George's War. Who were they?

Why does the Washington Post hate America?

Bloggers trying to get respect.

Bloggers offer no apologies over impact on news (MSNBC)

Blogs have drawn attention to political stories that more established media outlets then report on, and exposed flawed journalism by those same newspapers and television news programs. But some at the gathering said they face a near-constant struggle to establish the credibility enjoyed by professionals.

“Things get picked up by bloggers that take awhile to get picked up by the mainstream media,” said Mark Glaser, a columnist for the Online Journalism Review who writes about Web logs. “Bloggers have to start from scratch in building trust.”

Glaser noted the importance of bloggers in tearing down CBS News’ election season story about President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. The constant barrage of questions and charges from the Web kept heat on the network until it admitted a mistake in relying on what turned out to be fake documents.

Of course, your so-called liberal media only gives an example an example of how right-wing bloggers work. Have they forgotten Trent Lott already?

Before too long, perhaps the blogging community will be taken seriously. Our ability as a whole to help shape the news and bring out stories that are being ignored can only make this country and its (somewhat) free press stronger.

That doesn't mean I'm going to be breaking any stories here (no time or connections), but TGLF will certainly offer its support when necessary.

Stew at Symphony Space.

Life is full of happy accidents. My latest one happened this week. In the course of writing this post about My Dad Is Dead, I mentioned another favorite band with an unsavory name - The Negro Problem. I headed over to the site to find out what was going on with the band. Turns out that Stew (leader of TNP) was playing in NYC in two days. Miraculously, I managed to talk Kim into going after getting her to listen to five minutes of Joys & concerns.

Stew and his 7-piece band (including TNPer Heidi Rodewald) played two completely different sets on Friday, November 12 at Symphony Space in NYC in front of a crowd of 150-200 people, including Mr. Counting Crows himself, Adam Duritz (easily spotted because of the goofy hair - he's about six foot tall and quite bulky - maybe he works out?). We could only stay for the first set (the second one was supposed to be completely different). Songs included "Buzzing", "Doubting Uncle Tom", "Bong Song" and "Father Popcorn." Stew drew quite an eclectic crowd that skewed surprisingly older and somwhat racially mixed. Hell of a show, and Kim liked it too. Stew is Mr. Engaging Frontman and a bit of a storyteller as well. Glad we went!

The Apology Blog

The Teacher Teacher blog wasn't working out. I do not have many original ideas about education, despite being a teacher. I couldn't sleep last night - I got inspired to start a new blog. It was an idea I'd kicked around before but never followed through on. I've got a lot to be sorry for in my life - not that it's been a terrible life - but from time to time, I have been a truly lousy human being. As have we all. Anyway, in a strange way to try and make amends, I decided to start The Apology Blog. TAB is a way for folks to say they're sorry. Whether the intended target sees it or not is not really the use. The person in question may no longer be with us. But sometimes you have to say what needs to be said.

Anyway, the world needs a little forgiveness and healing these days. Maybe this will help.

Hopefully, this is not another one of my stupid ideas that won't work. If you do have something you need be sorry for, please write TAB at [email protected].