Comic Books and Misogyny

Paul O'Brian (of the X-Axis) takes on a recent article in the English Press on Sin City in his latest article at the Ninth Art. The article on Sin City suggests that Comic Books are guilty of a certain amount of misogyny. Well worth checking out, particularly for the way he trashes the article while admitting a grain of truth to the thesis.

He also points to Gail Simone's Women in Refrigerators website which deals with this problem in more depth. Well worth checking out, and it's particularly interesting to look down the responses by Comic Book Professionals.

Around the Horn Part 9. Not Responsible.

Still listening to Gorillaz by the way. Not as much as last week, but still once a day or so.

The Invisible Library has a bit about changes in the Mac Chip set, which is a bit out of my technical reach, but of some interest.

Speedkill has a reaction to the Medical Mary Jane decision earlier this week.

Scrutiny Hooligans has a rather disturbing discussion of the concept of Peak Oil.

Pen-Elayne on the Web has further thoughts on that age old question of where female bloggers are.

You know when you think about it, this is a weird question. I mean we accept (or are aware) that woman get certain roles on TV, in the movies, in books, in comic books, in news rooms, and elsewhere because of age old customs that belittled woman and smacked of misogyny. In other words, the history of the medium explains, if not justifies, the limitations placed on women (and others).

And yet here is a brand new medium. The pioneers of this medium might have been doing it for, what, a decade at most? There is no history to blogging, except the one we are making day by day. And yet we apparently have the same old problem. Kind of makes you wonder if we are really as non-sexist as we would like to think.

Anyway back to the blog-a-round.

Rubber Hose has a piece on renting Germans. Remember, no one who speaks German could be evil.

Musings Musings has a reaction to a New York Times Report of Mr. Greenspan's recent comments on our fabulous economy.

LEFT is RIGHT has some thoughts about Howard Deans fundraising strategy, and what a man's word is worth.

ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES has some words to share on Howard Dean as well, this time talking about his public pronouncements.

Iddybud asks some tough questions about the latest batch of photos from Abu Ghraib and those who supported the war in Iraq.

And that's it for another week. Be back later, as far as you know.

News from Albertsons

I'm shopping at Albertson's a lot right now, because they sent me some coupons and, due to my recent financial belt tightening, I am interested in coupons. But Albertsons has done something interesting. According to Talk Left and Crooks and Liars, an e-mail from James Dobson's Focus on the Family (Right wing Group) reports the following.

Albertsons Corporation agreed to accommodate its pharmacists' right to refuse to fill prescriptions that violate their religious or moral beliefs.

I have to admit that I am not that worked up about this particular issue. I probably should be, but I'm not.

What I am waiting for is for some clever pharmacist to refuse someone's medicine because the patient is a jerk. "Look, it violates my moral code to give insulin to jerks like that punk there. He cut me off in the parking lot three times! Three Times!! Not once, not twice, but thrice!!! Therefore I can't, in good conscience, provide him with insulin."

Could President Bush be Impeached

That is the question asked by a lead article at Salon today (warning! If you aren't a member you have to watch a short advert before reading the article). They asked four legal scholars to evaluate the legality of impeaching President Bush for having lied to the American people in the run up to the Iraq war. All four basically said that from a practical standpoint there is no chance. Republicans control the House and no way are they going to pass articles of impeachment.

That said the argument seems to be over what the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" was intended to mean.

"But, to the Founders, the answer to that question was obvious. The impeachment provisions referred to behavior that amounted to extraordinarily serious political misconduct -- selling out the country to a foreign nation (treason), selling out the national interest for private gain (bribery), and similar political misconduct. You can have arguments around the edges of the category -- could a president be impeached for murdering his wife's paramour? (Sure, because even though the misconduct is not in itself political, it demonstrates an inability to lead sufficiently serious to justify removal prior to the next election) -- but lying to the American people to gain support for a foreign adventure that they wouldn't otherwise endorse isn't even a close case." - Mark Tushnet

". . . Nixon's misconduct did not justify his impeachment and removal merely because it was a bad act. What tipped the balance against Nixon was that it became clear, through the Watergate tapes, that he had malicious or criminal intent. The Constitution requires more than just a bad act to merit removal from office; it also requires bad intent. This requirement derives from the framers' explicit use of criminal terminology to describe the scope of impeachable offenses.

Yet the framers never suggested impeachment and removal were appropriate to address political leaders' mistaken judgments." - Michael J. Gerhardt

Personally my interest in impeachment drops significantly once I realize it's a political impossibility, but it's worth considering as a theoretical issue, if nothing else.

The Rebellion

The Star Wars Rebellion, that is. I've been thinking about it, and I think it's just a little bit sanitized. I mean rebellions or revolutions inevitably end up getting their hands dirty now and again.

In Star Wars they take on one military target (the Death Star) which conveniently has no non-Military personnel on board (at least none that we see). In Empire Strikes Back they are hiding out in the Hoth System when the Empire shows up to pound on them. It's not until Return of the Jedi that we see them actually doing something a little ethically gray (recruiting the Ewoks to help fight the Empire (but, then again, the Ewoks sort of volunteered)).

Certainly rebellions and insurgencies on earth haven't acted with the same discretion. To be fair, it's entirely possible that other rebels are out blowing up munitions plants or kidnapping planetary governors. Who knows?

Medical Marijuana

For those who don't know, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the federal government and against medical marijuana. This has raised a certain amount of ire on both the right and the left. Kathleen Parker (Right), for example, waxes sarcastic in her latest article, which covers the ruling.

I've got that all-over tingly feeling not felt since Martha Stewart was put away and America's mean streets made safe again.

I'm talking, of course, about Monday's Supreme Court ruling against state-sanctioned medical marijuana use that will keep the terminally ill and chronic pain sufferers from firing up a marijuana joint, getting stoned and, in addition to risking acute munchies, enjoying a temporary reprieve from hellish suffering.

Thank G-d we've got that particular homeland security problem under control. Why, in the age of terror, one can never be too careful with dying people who have nothing left to lose.

Her column continues in that vein, wondering why, with so many law enforcement problems facing America, the Federal Justice system is focused on this particular issue. A question I've wondered as well. I've concluded that it's for political reasons; John Ashcroft would like to get elected to something someday. And he thinks getting tough with pot heads (even terminally ill pot heads) will endear him to a certain segment of the voters. He might be right.

Over at This Modern World, which now features a variety of bloggers, Greg Saunders (Left) discusses the issue in relation to the movement to legalize Mary Jane for recreational as well as medicinal use. His feeling is that, for those who really want to see Weed legalized, this was kind of a wrong turn.

Like I said before, I think the "war" on drugs is awful, but I thought we were talking about the ways marijuana helps ease the enormous pain and suffering of cancer patients. Yes, the two issues are related, but nobody should be exploiting the sympathy for the terminally ill to piggyback the larger, but tangential, issue of the excessive criminalization of narcotics onto this particular fight.

Furthermore, I can't think of a worse way to pave the way for medical marijuana than the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment as described above. I think doctors should be allowed to prescribe pot to chronically ill patients, but the idea of allowing bad laws to remain on the books while passing additional laws that make it illegal to enforce the existing laws seems like a big, big mistake. Sure, it may provide the necessary results, but the means to that end would probably be a legal mess that could end up confusing the issue even further.

That sort of makes sense to me. I think that combining the medical marijuana issue with the larger issue of drug legalization just ends up trivializing what is really an important issue in and of itself. That said, both sides have good reason to continue combining the two, unfortunately.

Looking backward

Thomas Sowells article earlier was entitled Looking Back, which reminded me of the great book by Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward. It's a utopian novel set in the far off time of 2000. Anyway I looked up the project Gutenberg version of this novel and started reading it when I came across this passage. See if it reminds you of anything in our modern world.

The great city bazaar crushed its country rivals with branch stores, and in the city itself absorbed its smaller rivals till the business of a whole quarter was concentrated under one roof, with a hundred former proprietors of shops serving as clerks. Having no business of his own to put his money in, the small capitalist, at the same time that he took service under the corporation, found no other investment for his money but its stocks and bonds, thus becoming doubly dependent upon it.

Like I said, does that remind you anything in particular?

War is the only Solution

Here's another rhetorical trick you might use. State the problem in strong terms. Propose a solution. At the appearance of any other proposed solution, reiterate the problem and suggest that this proposed solution is the equivalent of doing nothing. This is similar to what magicians call a force, where you give the mark what he thinks is a choice but it's really nothing of the kind.

Thomas swell, who is usually a more reasonable guy, uses this technique to somewhat chilling effect in his latest article. In it he postulates how a future America might look back at this crucial time in our nations history, and they will wonder, apparently, why we didn't take the opportunity to be even meaner and crueler to our Muslim prisoners and why we didn't invade North Korea and Iran.

What will the generations of the future say if we allow Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear weapons, which are then turned over to terrorists who can begin to annihilate American cities?

Our descendants will wonder how we could have let this happen, when we had the power to destroy any nation posing such a threat. Knowing that we had the power, they would have to wonder why we did not have the will -- and why it was so obvious that we did not.

That is definitely a call to action. But not, apparently, to diplomacy. He quickly mocks the idea of using diplomatic methods, and, as mentioned above, equates them with doing nothing. So one is left with the assumption that Mr. Sowell is calling for some kind of military action with Iran and North Korea.

Adventures in the Amazon (reviews)!

This from a review of the Moby single "Lift Me Up." Version 2 for those who keep track of such things.

ENTIRE FILTH!! = 0 STARS!, June 5, 2005
A Kid's Review

This is the music more horrible to that earlier he had never listened., I do not understand as the people can please this GARBAGE!.
MOBY YOU ARE AN ENTIRE GARBAGE!!, INSTEAD OF SINGING GO TO THE DENTIST, BECAUSE IF YOU HAVE NOT NOTICED YOUR TEETH ARE ROTTEN!

Anyway, I don't think that Moby has rotten teeth. For one thing, he's a vegan, and their breaths tend to be minty fresh (unless they are really into curried lentils. For another, he just doesn't look like he has rotten teeth. His teeth look ok.

Secondly, I'm not familiar with the sentence structure displayed in the first line. I think this is supposed to the convey the idea that this music isn't as good as his earlier music while also commenting that he had not listened to his earlier music. I think. Hard to say really.

Polls are Proof of the existence of Polls

This might be a bit rambling. I'm running late because of a car battery problem, and need to get to work. But I was just reading an article by Bruce Bartlett (on the recent spate of stories on class in America (social class, not the opposite of Paris Hilton Class)) and it reminded me of a particular tick by the right wing. They are constant poll watchers. Read this paragraph.

The American Enterprise Institute compiled a useful compendium of data on this subject a few years ago. According to this study, in 1964 people were first asked what economic class they had grown up in and what class they belonged to today. Pollsters asked this question again in 1978, 1984 and 1996. In every case, there was solid evidence that people were living in a higher economic class than the one in which they were raised.

What I find interesting is that the methodology the Right has adopted to prove that class isn't that big a problem is asking people what class they think they are in.

This methodology is suspect. Would it be possible to measure peoples living space, track their paychecks, track what they are able to spend on food and where they shop, track available credit and from that place them in a class? Yes. Would this method be superior to just asking people what class they think they are? Yes. For one thing, individuals may not wish to admit what class they belong to for a multitude of reasons. For another, they may simply not know.

This is similar to a trick they use in the debate over Media Bias. Empirical studies on Media Bias usually don't show that much bias. Certainly not enough to warrant the claims of a Rush Limbaugh. So they go to surveys that ask whether or not people think there is media bias. And, not surprisingly, all such surveys show that people think there is media bias (which may just prove that if the right wing says something enough times people will buy it).

I've also seen Rush and a few others use this argument on global warming and other environmental issues, although not nearly as much. I suspect they realize that the opinions of a poll really aren't the same as the opinions of trained scienticians.

Anyway something to watch for when you see a stastical argument being presented.

Religion and Politics

I got nothing against religious people being into politics. And, by the same token, I got no problem with religious people using religious speech as they discuss their politics. The behaivor described in this letter to the editor, on the other hand, I'm not so much in favor of.

Amember of my church gave to me a copy of the Ohio Restoration Project. This project is led by so-called Christians who have a plan for Ohio. The project will target 2,000 pastors throughout the state to become "patriot pastors." These patriot pastors will be briefed on a specific political agenda and asked to submit names of their parishioners in order to increase a database to 300,000 names. These pastors will be asked to place voter guides in their church pews.

Ken Blackwell, Ohio's secretary of state and a governor hopeful, is named throughout the document. Blackwell will be featured on 30-second radio ads promoting this group's agenda and supporting the "Ohio for Jesus" rally set for the spring of 2006. At the end of the document are the words, "America has a mission to share a living savior with a dying world."

This is not America's mission. This is frightening, diabolical stuff for non-Christians and Christians alike. It is blasphemous to claim that any earthly kingdom is God's kingdom. The theological foundations of this movement are vacuous. They are set on the sands of opportunism, self-righteousness and greed.

This type of operations strikes me as bad for Christianity and bad for America, and I hope those involved rethink their plans.

Deep Throat Redux

Interesting article by Armstrong Williams (yep, that Armstrong Williams) on Mark Felt and Frank Willis. Frank Willis for those who do not know was the security guard who discovered the Watergate Break-in, and didn't get much for his efforts.

After the scandal broke, Willis resigned from his security guard position. He had difficulty finding work after that. Most institutions feared the government would cut their funds if they hired him. In 1990, Willis returned to South Carolina to care for his sick mother. They lived together off her $450 a month Social Security check. When she died in 1992, Willis was too poor to pay for a funeral, and had to donate her body to science. Willis spent the next 10 years living in obscurity. On September 27, 2000, the man whose phone call changed history, died penniless.

I'm not sure why Williams chooses to repeat Willis's story, but it's probably good to remember.

William's overall argument is that Felt is unworthy of our praise. If he was unhappy with what was going on he should have gone public rather than doing his work through Bernstein and Woodward. Standard conservative text (he even quotes Pat Buchanan, although not the bit where Buchanan calls Felt a traitor who's actions led directly to the Khmer Rouge.

It's important that the right wing destroy Felt and erase the significance of Watergate from our minds. Why? Because Watergate was on of the triumphs of journalism, and the right wing isn't a big fan of journalism. They want adversarial journalism when their political enemies are in power, and celebratory journalism when they are in power. And, right now, they are in power.

So a return to the spirited journalism that uncovered Watergate, well, you can understand why they might not be so keen on that.

Dirty Harry

I've been singing the praises of the new Gorillaz album for a little while. For the record, I think it's pretty good. Dirty Harry, a sequel of sorts to a single off their first album (Clint Eastwood) has a rap provided by Bootie Brown. Here is a section of it.

Chill with your old lady at the tilt
I got a 90 days digit
And I'm filled with guilt
From things that I've seen
Your water's from a bottle
mine's from a canteen

At night I hear the shots
Ring so I'm a light sleeper
The cost of life,
it seems to get cheaper
out in the desert
with my street sweeper
The war is over
So said the speaker with the flight suit on
Maybe to him I'm just a pawn
So he can advance
Remember when I used to dance
Man, all I want to do is dance

Good lyrics, and I think they have a bit of a message in them.

Hannity and Turner

The Nation has an article tracing the career of a frequent caller (named Hal Turner) to the Sean Hannity show. I'm not sure about these kinds of articles, by the way. In a way it's guilt by association; Hannity has nuts call him so he must be a nut to. In another way, Hannity chooses to argue or disagree with people that call in, and, at least according to this article, he usually didn't challenge or correct Mr. Turner nor did he keep him from appearing on his program.

The article posits that Mr. Hannity needed Turner to connect with a certain segment of his audience while maintaining personal deniability.

Mr. Turner has some interesting opinions. For one thing he praises the killing of illegal aliens suggesting that if enough illegal aliens die they won't want to come to the United States anymore. He also argues that without the graciousness of the White Man, "black people would still be swinging on trees in Africa." So that's nice.

Eventually Turner turned out to be a liability to Hannity who stopped taking his calls. Fortunately Turner got a shortwave radio station and so still has a venue in which he can spread his particular brand of hatred.

Bible Literacy

Suzanne Fields has an alligator tears column in which she cries about the fact that American kids don't know the Bible as a literary work. Her article can't quite decide whether it's a pro religion tract or a critique of our failing schools. But fortunately she has a a solution.

No one proposes teaching the Bible as a sacred text or to promote religious faith in public schools. With three kinds of Jews, a dozen varieties of Methodists and countless flavors of Baptists, just for starters, we could never agree on what, exactly, should be taught as doctrine even if that's what we set out to do. But in a less-than-perfect world there can be no harm, and a lot of good, in well-informed surveys of the Bible as literature, showing how the Bible has shaped history, philosophy, the law, art and other subjects, inspiring our earliest settlers, Founding Fathers and presidents unto the modern day.

My school did have an optional Bible as literature class if memory serves. But I'm not sure this is intended as a solution or as a foot in the door. Once the Bible is being taught as literature, are Christian communities going to be satisfied or frustrated? Do they really want the Bible to be treated in the same way as, say, the Sonnets of Shakespeare? Do they want the words treated as having come from a human mind or a divine intelligence? Who should teach the course? That young bright atheist or that equally young, equally bright believer?

One can certainly assume that Christian communities do not want to see the bible taught in such a way as it would hurt their young peoples faith. Which presents the school and particularly the teacher with a bit of a challenge. Because, as Ms. Fields says, the teacher also can't promote a specific faith (or set of faiths) in her teaching either. I don't think negotiating this particular mine field can be done in a lower lever or a required class. On the other hand, I think Ms. Fields thinks that her more traditional values would eventually emerge victorious in this particular debate. Or, to return to the crocodile tears metaphor above, she's less worried about teaching kids from a specific point of view than she claims.

On the other hand, exposing our young scholars to the Bible certainly seems like a good idea. So how does one do it? In an upper level optional class where all the students choose to be there. Even that's not perfect (as there are well-intentioned atheist and Christian parents who will put kids in that class in order to pick a fight).

New Format, new Quote

Well I'm not feeling great today. So that's why the delay, and also why no updated quotes page. Still it looks nice, no?

Bryant.