The Rage Diaries

Who doesn't love a happy ending?

Look at the dog on the left. According to the photo caption in yesterday's WaPo, "Little Red likes wearing her coat and playing with toys. She is believed to have been used dog to train other fighters or for forced breeding during her fighting days. Her teeth were filed down so she couldn't defend herself." Fortunately for that sweet-looking dog, she's now a resident of Dogtown, a sanctuary in Utah.

 Little Red was one of the Michael Vick dogs.

The article, "Saving Michael Vick's Dogs," details some of the efforts that different rescue groups have undertaken with the 47 former inhabitants of Bad Newz kennels. It also explores the debate over whether or not fighting dogs can be rehabilitated. However, I got a lot more out of the five-part audio slideshow accompanying the article online. Go take the time to go through "Shelter for the Scarred," and you can listen to shelters and foster families sharing their experiences and introducing their charges. It's a happier ending than I expected the Bad Newz dogs to have.

"The Sam's Club Agenda"

Disclosure: I read David Brooks mostly for the entertainment value; I don't really think he's the voice of conservatism or even a credible pundit. But even the most toothless prognosticator occasionally gets something right, and to my surprise, today was David Brooks' lucky day.

Not that I really thought much of "The Sam's Club Agenda" (NYT, June 27, 2008), but this section is worth ruminating upon:

Liberals write about economic inequality and conservatives about social disruption, but [Ross] Douthat and [Reithan] Salam write about the interplay between values and economics and the way virtue and economic security can reinforce each other.

In the 1950s, divorce rates were low and jobs were plentiful, but over the next few decades that broke down. The social revolutions of the 1960s and the economic revolution of the information age have emancipated the well-educated but left the Sam’s Club voters feeling insecure.

Gaps are opening between the educated and less educated. Working-class divorce rates remain high, while the mostly upper-middle-class parents of Ivy Leaguers have divorce rates of only 10 percent. Working-class kids are unlikely to complete college, affluent kids usually do.

Liberals have a way to address these inequalities — the creation of a Denmark-style welfare state. Conservatives have offered almost nothing. The G.O.P. has lost contact with its own working-class base. This is the intellectual vacuum that “Grand New Party” seeks to fill.

The party that can figure out how to use government to best boost the prospects of working-class children and adults -- without compromising their values or making wealthier people feel as though they're being penalized for being successful -- is the one that will have a lock on the nation in the next few decades.

Perhaps it's time to revive a WPA-style workforce and bolster America's greatest infrastructures -- highways, waterways, telecom networks, national parks. You could even come up with new programs devoted to national energy auditing and efficiency, high-speed network access in rural areas, victory garden-style urban and suburban gardening for food independence, etc. As a nation, we've been so factionalized for much of the decade -- perhaps what we need now is an initiative that makes us all feel as though we're invested in the country.

Spare me all that baby mama drama

Oh, Fox News, you crazy little vixen. You've just been at sixes and sevens since your number-one lady target eased out of the race. First there was E.D. Hill working herself into a tizzy over the Obamas' secret signal to Hizbollah, and now there's producer Jessica Herzberg's decision to refer to Michelle Obama as a "baby mama."

Below are the issues I have with this little lapse in judgment:

1. "Baby mama" is pretty much understood to be a term that men use to refer to the women they impregnate, but do not maintain a sustained partnership with. Michelle Obama bore her first child after six years of marriage to Barack Obama. In other words, she does not fall within the colloquially understood definition of "baby mama."

2. It is not okay to call Michelle Obama a "baby mama" just because she once referred to her husband as "my baby's daddy." Not to get all "it depends on what the definition of 'is' is," but that apostrophe matters; it's Michelle basically calling him "the father of my children" in a more colloquial manner. Again: not the moral equivalent of calling someone a "baby mama."

2a. And even if Michelle Obama did call her husband a "baby daddy" (which she did not), that doesn't make it okay for any news organization to do so. If you think that any cable news channel calling Michelle Obama  a "baby mama" is okay because you heard once (and incorrectly) that she called her husband a baby daddy, then I'm sure you're fine with any cable channel calling John McCain a cocksucker because you read that he once called his wife a cunt. What? It's not? Then neither is your specious "reasoning" about why it's okay for national news organizations to hang loaded labels on people.

3. And let's not kid ourselves: the phrase "baby mama" is loaded. Just because Tina Fey feels free to use it at the box office doesn't make it okay for every woman to slap it on to other women*. "Baby mama" is another way of saying "welfare queen," and deliberately applying it to the well-educated and accomplished Michelle Obama is a way to make people think, "Oh, Christ, another one of them no-count [fill in the blanks]." It's a race card.

So, yeah. I have a problem with referring to Michelle Obama as anyone's baby mama. I have a problem with Jessica Herzberg's judgment. And I have a problem with anyone who tries to defend what Fox did here. Anyone got a problem with that?

There is no excuse for being uninformed

Being able to figure out the political world in which one lives, to situate oneself imaginatively in history, is the most crucial kind of power, the prerequisite for any kind of public action or dignity. It is possible to live without that kind of power: Many Americans today, as surveys continually demonstrate, know nothing about their country's past or its government, and don't feel the lack. But our ignorance, which is an abuse of freedom, is especially shameful when set beside the ignorance of the slaves, which was the stigma of bondage, and which they strained every nerve to escape.

-- "Battle Cry of Freedom," Powell's review-a-day, June 11, 08

It's a rough time to be rural in America

Across Mississippi and the rural South, little public transit is available and people have no choice but to drive to work. Since jobs are scarce, commutes are frequently 20 miles or more. Many of the vehicles on the roads here are old rundown trucks, some getting 10 or fewer miles to the gallon.

[...]

Sociologists and economists who study rural poverty say the gasoline crisis in the rural South, if it persists, could accelerate population loss and decrease the tax base in some areas as more people move closer to urban manufacturing jobs. They warn that the high cost of driving makes low-wage labor even less attractive to workers, especially those who also have to pay for child care and can live off welfare and food stamps.

“As gas prices rise, working less could be the economically rational choice,” said Tim Slack, a sociologist at Louisiana State University who studies rural poverty. “That would mean lower incomes for the poor and greater distance from the mainstream.”

-- "Rural U.S. Takes Worse Hit as Gas Tops $4 a Gallon," NYT, June 9, 08

There are so many problems with the lack of infrastructure for rural America. I'm thinking that one of the solutions might be to invent an engine that can run off the byproducts of agricultural waste. Make the farms and rural households self-sufficient for fuel and these people can continue to contribute to a wider economy. Ach, I must read too much sci-fi.

Enter the Ellen Jamesians

This primary season was bound to create a national dialogue about any one of a number of deep divides in the U.S. -- class, ideology, race or gender. What I am finding interesting is that in declaring Obama the winner, we haven't really opened up a dialogue on racism, but on feminism.

Witness the cluster of blog posts and articles that have emerged since Tuesday:

Not identifying with identity politics

I have always called myself a feminist. However, after reading all of the below, I'm beginning to think someone's going to knock on my door and revoke my feminist cred.

I must admit: I did NOT see this coming

[I]n contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual's sexual orientation - like a person's race or gender - does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights. We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution
properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.

-- The final paragraph of the California Supreme Court ruling overturning the state's ban on same-sex marriage. Read more at SFGate: "State Supreme Court Says Same-Sex Couples Have the Right to Marry"

In related news, you know that Gavin Newsom is busy running in circles around his office, crowing, "Gavin FTW! Gavin FTW!"

You stay classy, America

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

-- "Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause," WaPo, May 13, 08

I didn't even include the elected officials who are convinced Obama is a sleeper agent for "the Muslims" or the vandalism of campaign offices in Indiana. Seriously, what year is this again?

It's at times like this ...

... I wish we still had a good 13-14 people running for president. Why? Because after reading "Studying the Intersection of Politics and Pantry" (NYT, Apr 16, 08), and its attendant sidebars "You Might Be a Clinton Supporter If ... ," "You Might Be a McCain Supporter If ... ," and "You Might Be an Obama Supporter If ... ," I am totally curious to find out what fills the stomachs of the Romneylans, Kuchinichistas and Edwardsians.

As to how my palate votes? I have one in the Clinton column (I buy butter -- a lot of butter) and four in the Obama column (I shop at a farmer's market, my favorite fast-food place is Panera and my grocery cart includes both olive oil and Kettle chips). However, I have a tortured relationship with two of the items in the McCain camp: the only reason I don't shop at Safeway is because the Schmichaels household has a boycott in place (long story ...) and holy cats, do I love me some Hardee's breakfasts. Damn you, cruel CKE overlords for keeping Hardee's east of Alameda! And you all with your alleged "Frisco" burger too -- can't you see the irony? BRING ME MAH CHICKEN BISCUIT!

Anyway, that's me. Who will your tummy vote for?