Progress March 9, 2009

Finally, people are coming to their senses!

Front page of USA Today:

When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers.

The percentage. of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

“More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, ‘I’m everything. I’m nothing. I believe in myself,’ ” says Barry Kosmin, survey co-author.

Among the key findings in the 2008 survey:
• So many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists. In a nation that has long been mostly Christian, “the challenge to Christianity … does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion,” the report concludes.
• Baptists, 15.8% of those surveyed, are down from 19.3% in 1990. Mainline Protestant denominations, once socially dominant, have seen sharp declines: The percentage of Methodists, for example, dropped from 8% to 5%.
• The percentage of those who choose a generic label, calling themselves simply Christian, Protestant, non-denominational, evangelical or “born again,” was 14.2%, about the same as in 1990.

Oh, to live to see the day when atheists (and agnostics, free-thinkers, humanists, and the generally non-religious) outnumber the wackos. That, my friends, will be a glorious day.

Things are looking up.

Sick of being sick February 27, 2009

I’ve been MIA due to a friggin’ nasty cold. While managing to wade through the mountains of snot-laden tissues to find the computer was tempting, I managed to resist. After all, I was just being considerate… not wanting to infect you with this super cold bug that spreads through cubicles and computer screens. I caught it from a friend in California after all.
Okay so I managed a couple of tweets in the interim… and its not that I don’t love you guys, its…yeah, well, I don’t love you guys that much. I was too fucking tired.
I still am, hence the intellectually devoid content. So bear with me a few more days and I promise I’ll come up with something amazingly insightful and thought-provoking. Or maybe just something only half-stupid.
We’ll see.

Recommendations February 23, 2009

Go check out:

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon

Compare and contrast the levels of outrage Americans had for these two different yet related stories: 1) Michael Phelps smokes some weed, hurting absolutely no one and 2) this:

A shootout in a border city that leaves five alleged drug traffickers sprawled dead on the street and seven police wounded. A police chief and his bodyguards gunned down outside his house in another border city. Four bridges into the United States shut down by protesters who want the military out of their towns and who officials say are backed by narcotraffickers.

The latter story would, in a sane world, be the one that matters more and generates more outrage.  But it is the story that requires we Americans to actually take some fucking responsibility for the hell we unleash on countries that are supposed to be our friends and neighbors, like Mexico.  The remarkable thing about the Phelps story is that most of the people viciously condemning have probably smoked weed and aren’t sorry about it.  But they enjoy getting into a sanctimonious snit over the evils of drug use, so they don’t let that kind of hypocrisy bother them.  Unfortunately, our national hypocrisy about drugs is super-deadly on the Mexican-American border. That is, after all, why this war is going on—to control the trade routes to get drugs to Americans using criminal methods because drugs are illegal in America.  (And Mexico, too, but they appear to have more of an export issue than an import one.) To really face this story would be to face what we don’t want to—either everyone who uses drugs stops, or we give up the War On Drugs.  Only one of these is realistic.  And while we have plenty of drug addicts in America, we have even more sanctimony addicts who need their fix.

Wendi Muse at Racialicious

I want to go ahead and put it out there that I take issue with the bulk of missionary work (past and present), especially that which takes place in developing nations. It is a reminder of the power of nations who sit firmly and comfortably in their G8 seats, spectators in a game of international tennis. Only in the case of missionary work, the victory comes at a higher price, one that can mean not only renouncing one’s culture, but also one’s religion (or at least denouncing it in public) as a means of attaining vital resources.

[...]

In light of my objection to this line of work, I find myself dealing with a mental conflict almost every day of my present job. My campaign has nothing to do with God, but in terms of international influence, the English language and American culture come pretty darn close.

M. LeBlanc at Bitch Ph.D.

Last night, I attended the Yes Means Yes reading… When I left, my mind was buzzing, and at night laying in bed with my boyfriend I must have rambled non-stop for forty-five minutes about all the things I was thinking about, the new concepts I’d been introduced to. In particular, I was sort of shocked at how common sexual assault was among this group. Every presenter, and many people who came up afterward and said “I was raped.” People who knew people. And I was thinking that talking frankly about rape is such an important part of what happens in the feminist blogosphere, and even though we’re a fairly prominent feminist blog, it’s not a part of the set of personal experiences we talk about here. I don’t know whether any of my fellow contributors have been through sexual assault, and I’m not challenging them to say so. But the fact that I consistently think of myself as someone who has not been sexually assaulted is a shining example of the way this discourse is extremely limited.

Because I have been raped.

Jesse Taylor at Pandagon

Last night on Hardball, I watched Pat Buchanan take on Michael Eric Dyson on Eric Holder’s comments about America’s cowardice in terms of discussing race.  First, what Holder said was true.  Second, watching that show was like watching a ferret take on a uncovered table fan.

[...]

Buchanan pointed out the sad statistics that plague the black community, from crime to family structure.  But he did the very thing that makes an honest conversation on race so terribly difficult to have – he treated the statistics as if they simply arose out of the ether, the product of a series of conscious decisions on the part of black people to sling drugs and live in ghettos.  But the history of America, even to this day, revolves around how the white majority has chosen to shape our communities, and the steps to which they’ve gone to mask the nature of their decisions.

A Very Public Death February 23, 2009

Lately, I’ve been intrigued by the coverage on Jade Goody (a person I had not even heard of until last week) and am curious to know what people think of her very public dying.
Some have said it is distasteful and that reality TV has gone too far, but why are we so against this? Is it that we are so afraid of death and our own mortality that we don’t want a very public reminder on the brevity of life? That seems absurd, considering how little we value the lives of many of our citizens.

There are some applauding Goody’s decision from the standpoint of health promotion. By making her struggle with cervical cancer public, she is helping to raise awareness for an illness that is relatively unknown amongst young women. There have been reports of increased numbers of women seeking cervical screening in the UK in the past few weeks, so it already seems to be doing some good.

But what is our huge aversion to death? (Aside from the obvious, not wanting to die.) We see death and murder on TV and in the movies all the time, so one would think we’d be a bit desensitized to it. But in our modern society, with our increasingly long lifespans, death is considered such a private affair, no matter how public our lives are.

One British commentator in the Guardian summed it up nicely.

In the long run we are all dead, yet modern life is increasingly shielded from that reality. Most of the 575,000 deaths each year in this country take place in silence and private, blinds down, doors closed, away from what used to be called prying eyes. Most funerals follow suit – typically discreet affairs. The average Briton dies in semi-darkness, is cremated behind drawn curtains, and has no public memorial. The shared presence of death that was common in other times or societies has been lost in ours. The ostentatious rituals of mourning and public graveyards of earlier eras are not part of modern life either. Today, mortality is as finite as before but has somehow been marginalised. In her own way, Jade Goody is doing something to correct our self-deceiving denial of death.

He’s right. Death is a very real part of our lives and we need to face it now and then. Perhaps it would make us better appreciate the little time we do have.

Blast from the Past, Part Deux February 18, 2009

More travel memories and European hijinks…

Méridional Hôtel
14, rue du Docteur Heulin
75017 Paris

Our hotel is a picturesque little building located in the north of Paris in the 17th arrondissement, near the area of Montmartre, and around the corner from the Boulevard de Clichy (the red-light district). It is a traditional Parisian style hotel on a small, quiet street and couldn’t be more perfect. I am sitting by the open window enjoying a light spring rain and watching the people go by.

I had a good laugh today as, at one point in the day, the electricity in the hotel went out and Marc went downstairs to complain to the manager. In his broken English he proclaimed, “I will do everything I can, but I can not do anything! Every day I have worked here there is problems and I have been here five days!” I was amused.

__________________________________________________________________

After camping out on the floor of the train station for two hours, and a cramped night in a tiny bunk stacked on top of two other people on a train, we arrived in Toulouse about 7am this morning. We stopped at a tiny restaurant for a breakfast of croissants then headed to the beautiful little fortified city of Carcassonne. . The town actually consists of two parts, the outer, lower city called the ville basse, and the fortified village within the walls.

Marc told us a story about an Arab princess that lived within the city during a time when the town was under siege.The city was surrounded by an army that was attempting to starve them out, and the food supply was diminishing quickly. The princess had an idea to scare away the army, so she suggested they feed all the food left to a pig. The townspeople acquiesced, and all the food was given to the pig. She then suggested they throw the pig over the wall. Thinking her crazy they, nonetheless, did what she asked, and the pig was thrown over the wall. When it hit the ground it exploded and all the food came spilling out. The army, upon seeing this, thought if they could afford to give that much food to their animals, surely they had enough food to last a very long time; therefore, starving them would be a very long and difficult process. So, the army left.  In celebration the princess, whose name was Carcu, went out to ring the bell (sonne, in French, means ‘to ring’), hence the name of the town, Carcassonne.  Whether true or not, it was a lovely story to hear (especially with his sexy accent).

__________________________________________________________________

Tonight we had dinner at a theater and watched a flamenco performance before heading out to the clubs. The clubs in Barcelona aren’t much different from the ones in America, although, it seemed we were stared at most of the night by the locals. I think it was BestFriend’s dancing; she gets a little crazy.

After exhausting ourselves on the dance floor, we sat down at the bar for a drink. Somehow we ended up discussing odd nighttime habits after one girl complained about her roommate waking up the night before screaming about some woman. She sat up in bed and yelled “The woman! He said the woman!” before screaming loudly and then going back to sleep. Suffice it to say, we thought this was hilarious, much to the poor girl’s embarrassment. Marc then told us about a time he was visiting his parents and his girlfriend  came over. He usually fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV, and this time she happened to fall asleep on his chest. She is a beautiful Spanish woman with long dark hair, and he woke up in the middle of the night screaming about a “big hairy monster” on his chest. He freaked out and threw her across the room before he realized what was going on. I haven’t laughed that hard in a while.

Scary social policy implications of the Nadya Suleman Debate February 16, 2009

I’ve been reading up on all the buzz on Nadya Suleman (the woman who just gave birth to octuplets, despite being  jobless, $50,000 in debt, on food stamps, having 6 current children, and living with mom in a 3-bedroom house) and I find myself angered over the situation, and almost guilty over my anger. After all, I am a huge proponent of choice; a woman’s uterus is her own business and she may do with it what she will. Granted, that doesn’t mean she won’t face criticism for her choices, but she does have the freedom of choice. But tell me, am I being hypocritical in my anger over her choice? I mean, it was clearly an unwise decision, especially in today’s economy, and with our ongoing environmental crisis, to bring 14 children into an already overburdened world. Yet, she has every right to do so.

I think what I find more maddening, is the media hype surrounding these sensational births that obviously led her to think she could pull this off. With all the publicity surrounding families like the Duggars (TLC’s 17 Kids and Counting) and the Gosselins (Jon & Kate Plus 8) she probably thought she could get a TV show and donations would flood in and she could raise her kids the same way.  Other people have speculated that she’s emulating Angelina Jolie and her plethora of children (even going so far as to get a nose job and lip plumping?) which also begs the question, is she doing this for the fame or because she really did want lots of children? Either way, the media has probably contributed to the delusions of an already unstable woman (there are reports of mental instability in her past) and will continue to shine the spotlight on these anomalies.

It all circles back to the fact that, while we have the right to criticize her, she also has the right to continue spitting out children to her heart’s content, no matter how ill-advised it might seem. But one question I would like to ask is, would everyone be as outraged had she been well off to begin with? Is it just anger over the fact that she’s already on public assistance and will now need more money to live? I can’t help but feel that people are only attacking her because she is poor, rather than her decision not to selectively terminate. Its like saying that poor people don’t have the same rights to have children as the rich, which opens up a whole other can of worms.

But, on the other hand, given her current economic state, would it be considered negligent for the hospital to release the 8 premature babies into her care, with no source of income and inadequate living-space? Its an interesting quandary, and one that has potentially damaging social policy consequences if the debate turns that way. What do you do? I firmly believe that other people, or the government for that matter, should have no say in what a woman does with her body, and yet, it almost seems criminal to allow children to go home to a family that can’t (at this time) adequately provide for their care. But, if the donations flood in that would allow her to take care of her babies, wouldn’t that send the message to other delusional people that hey, its okay to have a boat-load of children and to market them for an income!

Where do you weigh in on the issue?

Blast from the Past February 13, 2009

I stumbled across my old travel journal from a trip to Europe I took my freshman year of high school and had a blast reading through it last night, so I thought I would share a few of the interesting stories.

Checking in at the airport:

In our infinite high school wisdom, my best friend and I made fools out of ourselves at the check-in desk. Staring menacingly from across the counter, the guy at the desk asks “Has your luggage been in your possession at all times? Has anyone given you anything or asked you to carry on or check any items for them?” I just stare blankly saying “Uhh…” until my mom pipes up from behind me stating, “No! The answer is no.” Of course, BestFriend is laughing hysterically at me the whole time, until its her turn. In response to the same questions she dumbly declares “I don’t think so,” prompting the guy to look at us like we’re both morons and say” If you’re not sure, then you’re not sure you’re going to Paris either.” We were off to a great start.

I laughed at myself a lot last night over the goofy details I thought to include in the journal. Things like the size of the flight attendant’s arms (“talk about muscle!“), the in-flight movie (“Head Over Heels: Cheesy!“), and watching the sun rise and set on the same side of the plane.

Upon disembarking the plane:  “This is the Paris airport? Its so old and dirty.” I just laugh now, looking back. I don’t know why I expected something glamorous. Its that infinite high school wisdom again.

After a day trip to Versaille:

There’s a full moon in Paris tonight; actually, about 8 of them!  After Versaille, we came back to the hotel to freshen up for dinner. Marc took us to a restaurant called Hippopotumus (come to find out is a French chain) where we dined on chicken and fries (how American) and for dessert, a yogurt- type dish that tasted more like sour cream. After dinner we took a brief trip to La Tour Effile, then boarded a promenade boat (Bateaux-Mouches) for a night ride down the Seine. The scenery was gorgeous, the night was perfect. We floated lazily down the river, discussing the various sights we had seen and gushing over the ones yet to come. As we rounded a corner we saw a group of 8 men standing on a bank. Just as I started to wonder what they were doing…. they all bent over and dropped their pants. We laughed and stared as 8 bare asses greeted us, welcoming us to France.

One day we had lunch at a little sidewalk cafe called Le Carolus, and I remember being so proud of myself for being able to order a croque-monsieur in my rudamentary French because I had been having such trouble communicating with the locals. I was so frustrated the day before when BestFriend and I went down to the Seine for lunch. We were able to purchase a bagette and some cheese and meats without much trouble, but when we tried buying stamps to send postcards home the shopkeeper couldn’t understand a word I said. He was so exasperated with me that I nearly gave up trying to ask for things myself.

After lunch we took the metro to the Avenue des Champs Elysées for a little shopping and sightseeing. The group split up and Marc told us we had just enough time to run to the Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile and back, but not to go up.  He said it took 30 minutes to get to the top.  We decided to go anyway, so we walked all the way down the avenue in fifteen minutes flat and made it to the top of the arc in 2 minutes 30 seconds. So whadya think of that, Mr Tour Guide?

Was I a little snot or what?

On the flight back home from Madrid:

BestFriend was figgity and kept accidentally kicking the seat of the guy in front of us, much to my chagrin. She appologized loudly to him so he turned around to talk to us. Turns out, it was Evan Seinfeld from Biohazard. (He was also actor, and later, a porn star. You might also remember him from VH1’s SuperGroup.) He was returning from a 9 country tour in Europe and was on his way home. He talked to us for a bit and had this advice to offer: “Never let someone get in the way of your dreams and do what you love.” He said he would rather rather have a job where he was happy and poor than rich and miserable.

We also befriended a Spaniard named Eduardo, who later became a penpal. When we asked him what his impression of Americans was, he said Americans were all on Prozac and were known for eating peanut butter every day. Huh. Hadn’t heard that one yet.

Lazy Blogging February 9, 2009

Entirely too tired and worn out this morning to come up with meaningful commentary, but wanted to share none-the-less.  Discussion may follow.  Maybe.

The Senate Discovers Women Its about time.

The Great Girl Gross-Out

For Women, Good Jobs Depend on Good Contraception So very true and a  big F-you to the wingnuts that caused it to be slashed from stimulus bill.

Till Children Do Us Part Duh.

Sarah Palin is the new face of feminism? February 6, 2009

This is bullshit.

From the podium at the Christian Right’s Values Voter Summit in mid-September, Kate O’Beirne of the National Review Institute pronounced that the “selection of Sarah Palin [as the GOP vice presidential nominee] sounded the death knell of modern American feminism.”“She’s a prick to the liberal establishment, to the feminists and to the men who fear them,” she jeered.But as “Palin Power” surged through the halls of the Hilton Washington that day and through the Republican Party base in later weeks, her vice-presidential candidacy revealed a generational cleavage that conservative elders may not have expected. Because even as older conservatives decried anything feminist, many younger activists in the hall were supportive of Sarah Palin’s “free-market” feminism.

[...]

“For such a long time, the powerful women in Washington were all touting pro-choice as pro-woman. People like Sen. Hillary Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were the role models,” says Emily Buchanan, the young executive director of the Susan B. Anthony List, which seeks to elect “pro-life” women to office. “[Palin] embodies the American woman. She’s independent. She speaks her mind. But she also embodies the traditional values that are so important to Americans.”

Can someone please explain to me how anyone could consider Sarah Palin a better role model for feminists than Hilary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi? Palin denounced feminism in an interview and her beliefs are as anti-feminist as the party she subscribes to. There is no way in hell she can be considered a feminist. Just because someone juggles family and “men’s work” doesn’t mean they automatically gain entrance to the feminist club. She’s an abomination.

They’re missing the point. Feminism isn’t just about equality for women and its not always about shirking traditional roles. Its about choices and the right of women to be able to pursue the careers, lifestyles, family choices, education, etc. that they want, with the same opportunities as men. Its also about having the freedom to choose what to do with your body (sex, contraception, abortion, etc), which is something Sarah Palin does not support.

The irritation continues…

Powerful “traditional” women balancing work and domesticity are no big deal, says Joy Yearout, Susan B. Anthony List’s legislative and political director. Yearout explains the continued enthusiasm for Palin following the Republicans’ defeat. “She doesn’t see gender as something that is victimizing. She doesn’t see it as a barrier.”

This suggestion that progressive feminists peddle victimology is a popular position on the right, particularly with the free-market feminists at the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF). The IWF staff do not all identify as feminists, although director Michelle Bernard does so and states there can be such a thing as a “limited-government” or “red-state” feminist.

IWF says it offers a feminist alternative to the progressives at National Organization for Women who exaggerate their victimhood to support big government policies.

Right. We exaggerate our victimhood, because despite championing causes that we feverntly want accepted, we prefer not to be taken seriously.

Bailout = Welfare February 6, 2009

Brilliant.

We are in some ways still a nation of Puritans, and we don’t much cotton to people who can’t take care of themselves and end up sponging off our generosity. We demand that welfare recipients do an honest day’s work for their checks. And now, since President Obama laid down the law Wednesday, we demand that the guys who ran our banking system into the ground abide by our pay scales in return for our bailing them out. After all, what’s the moral distinction between welfare recipients and the wizards of Wall Street, other than that the welfare recipients aren’t the ones responsible for tanking the global economy?