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Friday, April 28, 2006

Ugly American

In a post dated April 17, 2006 Shelley the Republican illustrates why Americans are perceived as ignorant buffoons by the international community. From a series of pictures depicting a gentleman in a pink jacket, short skirt and stiletto boots working as a deliveryman, Shelley gleaned that the entire European population is homosexual, sado-masochistic, and child-abusing. These are the statistics she claims support her theory that Europe has become a debased, immoral place:
-Percentage of European children suffering in or from gay marriages: 30
-Percentage of European marriages being divoced as a result of leather or rubber fetishes: 25
-Percentage of Europeans wearing rubber or leather underwear: 29
-Percentage of Europeans that had sex with the same gender: 47

Her statistics come from web.de. This site is not only in German, but a search engine such as Yahoo or Google. Although she does provide a link to DPD, the company the subject of the photographs purportedly works for, she does not provide a link to the original source of the statistics used to make her case. I find this highly suspicious, as she provides no way for one such as myself to study those statistics and make my own evaluation.

Although I heartily disagree with Shelley, as an American I defend her right to say it; however, what I cannot swallow is her passing along as fact numbers that seem absolutely fabricated and denying access to the original source. An opinion is not a fact, and it is irresponsible and unacceptable to portray it as fact. The wording of particular statements, such as "Percentage of European children suffering in or from gay marriages," sounds biased to me. It also seems like an unrealistic number. Thirty percent of all children in the EU could not possibly be in the custody of legally married same-sex couples. Each couple would have to have about 100 kids under their care for that number to even come close to reflecting reality. As a further illustration of the one-sidedness of her arguments, she does not offer the other side of the debate. N% of gay parents abuse their children as opposed to n% of heterosexual parents, for example. I dare say parental abuse from heterosexual parents has a much longer recorded history than that by homosexual parents, making it very difficult to even base an argument on those grounds.

Shelley has the right to voice her opinion on her blog, albeit uninformed, biased, and woefully overgeneralized. What is unacceptable is the guise of opinion as fact. Unfortunately, this is a sad picture of Americans for the world to see. Seemingly closed to intelligent debate, and extrapolating on images of one individual, who for all we know lost a drunken bet at a bar with his buddies, she seemingly invents statistics without giving her readers the benefit of knowing where she gathered her information. It is an unfortunate and irresponsible use of our freedom of expression, and what we call the "ugly American."

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Corporate Greed Lobbies for More

The Coalition for Vehicle Choice "lobbies against government fuel-economy rules" (from cbsnews.com). So this article is from 2002, and perhaps I should have noticed a long time ago, but that doesn't change the fact that there is a group that lobbies against government fuel-economy rules. If that doesn't scream irresponsible I don't know what does. It's the epitome of corporate greed, most recently brought to you by Enron.

I almost feel like lobbying should be outlawed. Special interest groups should be barred access to lawmakers. They obviously have an agenda, and it is not always in the best interest of the consumer. The food industry has lobbyists telling Congress they should vote against regulations, the meat-packing industry is doing the same thing. Who cares if our meat comes bundled with e. coli? It's all about how much of a profit the industry can make without getting sued. And when it does, it lobbies to the lawmakers and tells them to write up a bill to cover its ass if someone tries to sue them again.

This is all a bit extreme. I am aware of that; however, doesn't it seem logical that our lawmakers should be looking out for the common good of the people? The electorate put them in office, not the lobbiers. In this world everything does boil down to money. And freebies and perks act as currency in the big game of influence in Washington. Getting paid meals, charter flights, and other such luxuries in exchange for a vote is what I call bribery.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Of Clean Air and Global Warming

Apparently, experts are saying that the wild, record-setting hurricane season last year was a result of global warming. Also, according to this cnn.com article, the Bush administration believes that global warming is an unproven theory (much in the same way evolution is an unproven theory?). Finally, as a result of high fuel prices, President Bush is pushing to lower Clean Air standards in order to boost oil production, thus driving down prices for American consumers.

To be fair, the President has also proposed cutting back tax incentives from heavy-profit oil companies, since they have recorded record profits and obviously don't need those incentives. In a further show of bravery, Bush has also ordered probes into gas price-gouging. This, however, is where my praise ends. All three of the problems I outlined above are related, and I would like to point out that cheap gas now will spell a much more bitter price to be paid later (remember Hurricane Katrina?).

Although the matter is still open to debate, many experts believe that the record 2005 hurricane season was a direct result of global warming. The waters in the Carribean sea got warmer, thus hurricanes had a perfect environment in which to form and grow into devastating storms. As we learned from last year's season, hurricanes in the Gulf Coast spell bad news for oil, and as a result, the price at the pump goes up. With the conflicts in the Persian Gulf region and the threat of sanctions on Iran, the barrel has gone up to more than $70.

The "decider in chief" has proposed that we lower Clean Air standards to increase oil production, boosting the emission of green house gasses in the process. Since global warming is at least part of the problem with respect to the formation of chimeric hurricanes, wouldn't it stand to reason that lowering Clean Air standards is spelling disaster for the Gulf coast and other affected regions in the hurricane seasons to come?

Yes, gas prices are something that affect us all, and yes, it would be great if we could buy it for cheap, but what are the consequences of keeping gas prices artificially low? The current plan of attack is lowering environmental standards, which causes global warming (potentially causing cataclysmic natural disasters). Low gas prices also means there is no incentive to find alternate ways of fueling our cars, and thus deepens our dependence on non-renewable fuel sources.

The U.S. has some of the lowest gas prices in the world. Maybe a hike would make consumers and car manufacturers alike realize that they don't really need to buy or produce cars that get 15 miles a gallon. Energy conservation has always been an issue in this country, and the U.S. is one of the most wasteful nations on the planet. Perhaps there is something to be learned from this vicious cycle.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Crossing Party Lines, or Why John McCain Should Run as an Independent

"Senator John McCain used to be good for an honest slap at the White House every now and then. But ever since he made up his mind to do whatever is necessary to win the Republican nomination in 2008, he's been a pussycat," writes Francis Wilkinson in her column on cbsnews.com. As a Democrat (and feeling more and more like I should not support a bipartisan government), I would vote for John McCain. I would vote for John McCain because I think he's honest, I think he has good ideas, and I think that (at least before he was looking for that red nomination in 2008) he does what he thinks is right regardless of what the elephant in the room is trying to tell him.

In his bid for the 2008 presidential nomination, McCain has truly taken the "candid" out of candidate. Political analyts have been all over his personality shift. At least for me, his very appeal is the fact that he does not fit in with the traditional Republican profile. Why, then, is it important for him to be on the ballot as a Republican? I'm sure the Republican National Committee has connections to deep pockets, but should McCain exchange what could be a truly candid run for office for thirty pieces of silver? I think he would do himself and this country a disservice.

Furthermore, who's the competition? Bill Frist? Mitt Romney? Honestly! John McCain has name recognition, he's a Vietnam veteran, and he has the sympathy of many liberal voters in this country. If John McCain ran as an independent in the next election, he wouldn't have to cozy up to the Republican base. He could continue calling out the Bush administration on the mess they have created in Iraq, the chaos that will certainly erupt in Iran (did I hear "regime change?"), and the slew of domestic issues, such as the illegal spying President Bush will not apologize for, and for which, it seems, he will not be punished.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Anti-Feminism Feminism?

While I concede that I have not extensively explored the Ladies Against Feminism website, I approached it with the utmost prejudice. Let this be a life lesson: groups that one disagrees with on principle can sometimes be right. It was from their homepage that I got to this article. It made me think about what I believe are the real fights feminism should be fighting and how we should be fighting them.

Before I begin, I would like to point out that I do not agree 100% with what Albert Mohler has to say. I think he does not provide a solution to the problem Linda Hirshman raises when she says "an educated, competent adult's place is in the office," meaning women should be at work and not at home, beyond reinforcing traditional gender roles as they are played out in our society.

That motherhood would be a less worthy occupation for a woman with an MBA from Wharton's than a high paying executive job on Wall Street is the main problem with Hirshman's argument. Mohler quotes, "Housekeeping and child-rearing in the nuclear family is not interesting and socially validated." He writes further, "[Hirshman] doesn't buy into the arguments of many homemakers who say taking care of the family is the most fulfilling thing they can imagine." I agree with him on this count. She is not focusing on the right side of the argument. The problem is not about where women are the most fulfilled, if at work or at home, but why men cannot find that same fulfillment in either sphere. The viewpoint that housework and child-rearing are not socially valitdated is not constructive to her argument.

Mohler quotes, "while the public world has changed, albeit imperfectly, to accomodate women among the elite, private lives have hardly budged. The real glass ceiling is at home." This appears to be true, and it has to do with preconceived notions of gender roles. The problem is not women choosing to be stay-at-home mothers. The real problem is men not considering that same option. The idea that either mom stays home or no one does is really the core of this whole debate. Theoretically, housekeeping and child-rearing are validated, but only if those same things are done by a woman. Again, the issue is not how women relate to the problem of stay-at-home parent, but how men do. A man in a domestic, child-rearing environment does not fit in with our society's male stereotype.

I think Hirshman really hits the nail on the head when she says, "prying women out of their traditional roles is not going to be easy." This is really what's at stake; however, it should not exclude women from choosing motherhood. There is nothing inherently wrong with choosing motherhood, and this is where I agree with Mohler. He writes, "the thought that motherhood could be a higher calling than law, medicine, finance, or any number of other professions is completely beyond [Hershman's] comprehension." I also think this point is precisely what is at fault with Mohler's article. Feminism is not just about empowering women. It is about redefining gender roles where men and women are truly equal. That means sharing the responsibilities of parenthood, and breaking out of the notion that the only parent fit to stay at home is the mother.

Hirshman has a worthy fight, but she is not approaching it in the best way. By affirming that home life is unfulfilling and that motherhood sets back the feminist movement is precisely the wrong way to gather support from either men or women. Albert Mohler, although his defense of motherhood is necessary, does not go far enough in proposing a solution to the problem. He writes, "the Christian response to [Hirshman's] article must be a combination of refutation, amazement, and affirmation of motherhood." He should also point out that a child has two parents, and by definition, one parent is a mother and the other is a father. And if this truly is the Christian response, those two parents are married. Perhaps I am naïve to suppose that Mohler would go so far as to propose that perhaps the father should step up to the role of stay-at-home daddy.

Ultimately, the problem is not women in the workplace, and it is certainly not motherhood as an unworthy choice. The idea that fatherhood "could be a higher calling than law, medicine, finance, or any number of other professions is completely beyond" most men's comprehension. That is the real problem.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Outsourcing Parenthood

Yesterday I read an article on cbsnews.com that made me shudder. I am under the impression that parents are shirking more and more from their responsibility to take care of their children by parking them in front of the television and expecting tv broadasts and teachers to do the parenting for them.

"A lot of parents don't really get the time to teach their kids," Aresh Mohit is quoted as saying. He is a bike riding coach who claims he can teach in two hours what would take a parent weeks to do. It is fair to say that hiring a bike riding coach is certainly more convenient; however, if parents don't have time to teach their kids, why did they become parents in the first place? We all have busy lives, work challenging jobs, and now more than ever, have two breadwinners in the household.

Helping your child learn to ride a bike is something I call "quality time," and is yet another aspect of partenting that is being outsourced. Other items include talking to your kids about sex (this has been outsourced to the schools) and talking to your kids about drugs (this has been outsourced to television). Although in principle I see no problem with educating children through these means, I find it reprehensible that parents should think these are alternatives to having a candid conversation with their children.

I have seen two signs that parenthood is corroding in this country. The first was a report at the end of last year that parents were outraged that advertisements on Saturday morning television were targeting their children for the sale of candy and other junk food items. They said there should be more regulations. First of all, television commercials are made to manipulate the spectator. That is their purpose. If companies are targeting children it is because they have recognized in them a market niche for their product. I personally hate ads, and I don't particularly enjoy being manipulated. That's why I shut the television off. If parents spent some quality time with their children, say, teaching them to ride a bike on a Saturday morning, then junk food adverts wouldn't be an issue.

The second thing is also related to television. As I mentioned earlier, teaching kids about drugs has been outsourced to those terrible anti-drug spots where a teen who is experimenting with marijuana decides it’s a good idea to shoot himself in the mouth. First of all, that kind of behavior is simply inaccurate for someone under the influence of THC. Secondly, kids scoff at that kind of attempt to get to them. Scaring them off drugs doesn’t work. I was 15 once, and I felt the same way. It’s not a silly anti-drug ad directed at my demographic that’s going to solve the problem. There is a new batch of drug awareness publicity and it is directed at parents, and this, I believe, is the right approach. It urges parents to “be a parent” and talk to their kids about drugs. Our parents are the people who should care about us the most in this world, and if they never speak to us, their children, about issues such as sex, drugs, and healthy living habits, why should we care what other people think?

Parenting is difficult. I’m not a parent, but I’m a daughter, and I know how hard it was for my parents to raise me. They made many sacrifices and they also made mistakes along the way, but they never hired someone to teach me to ride a bike.

Monday, April 17, 2006

The Politics of Morals

It's an election year. I can tell because the GOP is pushing hot-button moral issues in the house and senate. I remember a very similar scenario in 2004, when Mr. Bush decided it would be a good idea to ban same-sex marriage by proposing a constitutional amendment. If it was that important, why did he not try to push it through when Massachusetts first allowed unions between same-sex couples in 2003? That would certainly have shown moral outrage. The fact that it didn't pass made it look conspicuously like a political stunt made to ensure the religious right is happy that their grand old party is doing something in the name of morality.

Thomas Aquinas wrote in his Summa Theologiae that there are different kinds of laws abiding different communities. Human law is ordained for one kind, and Divine law for another. Divine law pertains to the ordinance of law in relation to God. In a country where there is a supposed separation between church and state, it seems that more and more right wing lawmakers are coddling to a group that promotes institutionalized intolerance. The duty of the lawmaker is to keep in mind the common good, and that includes protecting citizens who are discriminated against and granting them the same rights as all citizens, regardless of the Divine Will.

I am a Catholic. I believe people who truly love each other should be allowed to share their lives together and get the same civil rights as all of us, regardless of sexual orientation. In the face of the law, whether you are a homosexual or heterosexual couple should make no difference. Individuals should be guided by their own moral principles insofar as those are not detrimental to society. Two people joined in loving union really is a time bomb waiting to go off, now isn’t it? If the religious right was really so adamant to preserve the sanctity of marriage, why not go all the way and push the GOP to pass an amendment banning divorce? Then we could preserve the sanctity of marriage forever.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

The Trouble with Immigration

Most of us in this country today cannot claim descendence from pilgrims on the Mayflower. We did not come with the British or the Spanish, and even fewer of us are descended from the natives who lived on this land before white people took it away from them. We are the children of immigrants. Had our great grandparents not come across the Atlantic 150 years ago, we would not be settled, middle class, white Americans.

My grandmother grew up in Patterson, NJ, in a community bustling with immigrants. She herself lived with her Scottish grandparents and had friends whose parents were Italian and spoke no English. Immigrants today are no different from those who came to this country in the Nineteenth century except on two key points. Many of those who rushed to our shores during the 1800's came from Anglisized countries, like Ireland and Scotland, and already spoke English, albeit with a brogue. They did not have to learn English. Many of those who came from Italy and Poland did not learn English, but started businesses within their communities where they knew their customers from the Old Country. Also importantly, Italians, Poles, Scots and Irish are all white (even though they faced racism as well. The Irish were repeatedly portrayed as monkeys in political cartoons of the time).

When immigration critics blare about how their grandparents came to this country and learned the language, I feel compelled to voice a dissident opinion: that is not necessarily true. It was their children who mastered the language. My boyfriend's great grandmother was Polish and spoke very little English. Her children, born on American soil, speak it as their first language. This is the generation, first generation Americans, that is the closest we come to our own immigrant past. Our collective memory has conveniently forgotten that the white immigrants of 150 years ago did not learn English, since their children, fluent in English, are here to tell us their stories.

Latino and Hispanic immigrants face many challenges today. Besides the language barrier which is reshaping our country into one that encourages citizens to be bilingual (and this is a bad thing why?), Hispanics are not white. Although a veil of political correctness covers America, racism and xenophobia still lie beneath. If uprooting yourself from the community of your grandparents isn't enough, facing adversity in the place you choose to call home is truly adding insult to injury. People immigrate because they want to be happy. They want to have opportunities. They want to be successful. If that isn't the American dream, I don't know what is.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Why Pointless Jobs are Overrated

I graduated from college in May of 2005 and all I wanted was a pointless job. Work should stay at work, at least for a while. I needed to get my life organized, and I figured that about a year should do it. Now it is almost a year in the future and I learned many things about the pointless, first job you get after you acheive a B. A. in something.

As an English major, I quickly learned that unless I went the academic route, there was very little I was trained to do in the real world. I had decided that I wanted to be a professor, and immediately decided I would be writing a senior thesis, and on William Blake, no less. It was right around the beginning of my senior year at Boston College that I realized that I had given myself more work than I was prepared to do. As a senior, I suddenly became very confused about what I wanted to do with my life, even though mere months before, I was convinced a Ph.D. was somewhere in my future.

By the end of the term, I could no longer hear the words "William Blake" and "grad school." I couldn't wait to get a silly job making coffee or selling clothes. A job I didn't have to think about. I was sick of poring over books in the library, of making notes in my laptop until I was crosseyed. It was time to have no emotional connection to my work! I was thrilled when I started making sandwiches at an expensive café near the Harbor in Boston. I was there for about two days.

My next job, making $7.50 and hour, was at the Harvard Coop, in the clothing department. I must admit that I was all smiles for the first two weeks or so that I was working there. I was nice to people, and very considerate of hysterical mothers who *need* the sweat pants in extra small, even though we don't carry them. Shoppers are very unreasonable people. The honeymoon period quickly ended and soon I was getting headaches, even migrains, and working weekends makes every day exactly the same. It's very depressing. I had taken this job because I had no responsibility beyond showing up and doing my shift. This job, whether I liked it or not, was coming home with me.

Being sorely overqualified for something makes for a very unfulfilling experience. After a while I wondered why I was putting up with people who assumed that because I was behind a register I wasn't qualified for anything better. When you've graduated from a top college with honors and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, it's difficult to put up with people talking down to you.

Working a pointless job did have its benefits: it made me make up my mind about graduate school. This fall I will be starting at Pratt Institute's School of Information and Library Science. I never could shake off my bookishness.

Friday, April 07, 2006

So Wikipedia is now available in Old English

Is anyone as excited as I am? Today I was sitting at work with nothing to do (the phones were not ringing as much today. Is it because it's a Friday?) and, not surprisingly, I set myself to browsing the internet for something of interest.

Today, the Boston Metro featured an article on the new translations made of what is being dubbed "The Gospel of Judas," and I admit that I am quite fascinated by Biblical scholarship (this is related, I swear). I did a search and found an article on Wikipedia about the find. After having browsed all the external links, and essentially extinguished all the patience I could muster for the subject, I began searching the site for other items of interest, such as Neil Gaiman and The Lord of the Rings.

I began noticing the sidebar for the site, which contains the available languages, and noticed Galego was available. A native Portuguese speaker myself, I was curious about this language which is spoken only in the part of Spain that borders the northernmost tip of Portugal. I had certainly never seen it written before, and was quite surprised to find it quite readable (although I can say nothing about how it is actually pronounced in colloquial speech). It seems a bizarre mix of Spanish and Portuguese. Again, the sidebar drew my attention, and for the first time I saw "Anglo-Saxon."

As an undergraduate, I studied Old English ("for my sins," as my professor would later attribute to my success level in this particular course). I was immediately intrigued. The site is certainly still under construction, and, to be fair, there are not many among us who can read, let alone write a coherent sentence or two, in this language. Although for most people the creation of an Old English version of Wikipedia will be no more than a curiosity (one they cannot understand, but a curiosity no less), I find it intriguing and bold. Who would have thought that more than one thousand years after the death of the Anglo-Saxon culture we would be reading articles about Samuel Alito in Old English?

I am a strong proponent of revitalizing dead languages. I think it is a genius idea to have editions of Harry Potter in Latin, Ancient Greek and Old English (and I believe there are such items). We no longer have classical educations. What public schools today teach their pupils any of the classical languages beyond "caveat emptor" or "amor vincit omnia"? Wikipedia is a good place to start.