Sunday, October 26, 2008

Rooting for Me, Again.

Malcolm Gladwell's Late Bloomers, The New Yorker, 10/20/08


My response:

Here's hoping-
No joking.
I'm sloping
Toward stoking
The creativest in me.

I'm crawling
Toward scrawling
My calling
And galled when
The ageists don't see.

[Most productive three hours spent this week! ;)]

(Originally posted on Facebook)

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Powell for Obama

Powell endorses Obama.

It might just be tragic if this man doesn't have the chance to serve in an Obama administration.

(Originally posted on Facebook)

Monday, October 13, 2008

McCain's Missed Opportunity

After some reflection, I think Jack was partially right. I shouldn't be ashamed of the woman who (erroneously) referred to Senator Obama as "an Arab." The thing of which I AM ashamed is John McCain's response.

My original note misquoted her. She actually said, "He's an...he's an...he's an Arab."

McCain replied, "No, ma'am...he's a decent, good family-man citizen..." a nice effort, trying to win back points his crew intentionally sacrificed that week--but wait a minute! The response blatantly implies that such things (decency, hard work, citizenship) are, by definition, NOT Arab. How could a reasonable Arab-American NOT hear the implicit slur?

The BEST I can infer her to have meant was that Obama is at once an Arab, a fundamentalist Muslim, AND a terrorist. I surmise that many Arab-Americans understand all too well that many prejudiced Americans equate all three.

Her ignorance (he is indeed not an Arab) and bigotry (clearly she means to say that Arabs are untrustworthy) are representative of a particular segment of White America that will never abandon its sad grip on white supremacism as a worldview. We can only hope and work if not to change their minds then to minimize their impact.

But McCain was there offered a magnificent opportunity to un-teach some terribly sad stereotypes, and he again chose tactics over strategy. Where he could have responded, "While Mr. Obama is most certainly not an Arab, being one would certainly not keep him from being a decent, good family man citizen..." He could have (once again) dis-equated Arabs from Muslims and Muslims from terrorists. He might have gone as far as to wish for a climate in America so racially tolerant as to elect an Arab-American president.

He might also have sprouted wings and flown under those Spanish power lines without crashing. Before I expect him to cure AIDS, I could at least expect him NOT to so willfully buy into the stereotype some of his most ardent supporters clearly espouse.

(Originally posted on Facebook)

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Maveridiculous.

Tim Dickinson's Rolling Stone story on John McCain's real record is a breathtaking read. I suspect many hold-outs for the Senator will decline to read this article, or dismiss it as lib-smear if they do. But to any of my friends who truly believe McCain is what he says he is, I will fact-check it with you, claim-by-claim (where possible), and we will see together.

(Originally posted to Facebook)

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

On the need for "Green" directors at for-profit corporations. While I think McCain seems only to want to drill, Obama is only scratching the surface of how this approach may just save us all, and needs to -- forgive the expression -- dig quite a bit deeper.

(Originally posted to Facebook)

Monday, October 6, 2008

A Slippery Slope

The Palin-Couric interview on abortion.

"Look here, it's a slippery slope, Katie...if you allow teenage rape or incest victims to go an' get unholy abortions, and let's face it, some of those girls are totally askin' for it, ya know, well, you're just gonna encourage more young girls to head down the dangerous path of incest, so ya gotta take a stand."

(Originally posted to Facebook)

Comments:

Susan (10/7, 2:49 PM): "So sad, and yet, so true! You couldn't make this stuff up if you wanted to."

Rebecca (10/7, 5:21 PM): "except that it WAS made up. Adam, please, she didn't say anything of the sort. Listen, I'm not voting the McCain-Palin ticket, but this kind of crap makes me want to. Her position was simply that she would "counsel" them to keep the child and under no circumstances would she throw them in jail. She also called the morning after pill "conception," as those of us who have actually been fighting this fight for decades, know that is a huge step forward. Honestly, you aren't helping the cause here."

David (10/7, 6:46 PM): "Maybe she finally learned that the Vice President's role is that of a family planing counselor. To be fair, I didn't know that either. I always thought it had something to do with the government."

Me (10/7, 8:11 PM): "I thought the satire was obvious. Overall, she answered well, and shrewdly distanced her own views with those of the ticket. But you forgive too much to hear her equating the morning after pill with "conception" [sic -- "contraception"?]; she did NOT say so directly. She said she's all for safe and legal contraception, and then that she believes life begins at the moment of conception. While I'm not qualified to dispute either view, it definitely leaves her cover to claim the pill works AFTER conception, effectively aborting the newly fertilized egg."

Me (10/7, 8:43 PM): "Generally, this is not my territory, and I try to tread lightly.

But another part of the answer that troubled me was "women who find themselves in circumstances that are absolutely less than ideal." I cringe at such an egregious understatement.

Finally, while acknowledging she wouldn't want to see people jailed for aborting incest-conceived children, she also tellingly omitted her likely governmental response, which would be to rally congressional support for and cast a tie-breaking vote in support of any federal legislation seeking to bar government funding for such cases."

My original response was going to include the above. Then I thought it would be a little too dry to just dissect what she said. Or didn't say. I thought I actually deleted the snark line because I didn't want to seem to glib about a serious issue. But I don't think she said as much as you want to have heard. Not in that interview alone, anyway.

Rebecca (10/7, 9:08PM): "Actually, I watched it again and right now I'm convinced that she is pro-choice. The thing to remember is that Roe v. Wade overturned a law that _criminalized_ abortion. She made it very clear that she opposes "criminalizing" abortion. In fact, she never even said that she supported laws that made abortion illegal. It's a remarkable little ... Read Moresnippet. I'm still incredulated but the fact that she called RU-486 "contraception." That is huge.

Again, I'm not voting the McCain ticket. But all of McCain's top VP choices, whom he was forced to turn down (Leiberman, Hutchinson, Whitman) are pro-choice, and I think Palin may be a ringer. Just a thought."

Me (10/7, 10:50 PM): "If by pro-choice you mean that in saying she would "counsel" a rape victim toward adoption, or less specifically, toward a culture of life, she acknowledges an implicit choice, it's hard to disagree.

but if you're arguing that her interview masked what conventional wisdom would consider to be a "pro-choice" stance, I think you've got a long way to go.

I think your optimism will be in desperate demand should that ticket succeed."

Visits