This is slathered all over CNN's front page today. Two things:
1) What does it mean that we are so ready to compare children to deadly weapons? Deadly not just to themselves, but the metaphorical comparison suggests also to others. Obviously, I think we need to be thoughtful about the way we create metaphors for understanding, and really think through the implications in making comparison. Bombs are weapons of destruction, engineered by man to kill others.
2) Moreover, if you look at the story's subhead, they're noting that "experts" argue that we need to "get our kids back on the playground." My problem with this suggestion is that it is backward-looking and nostalgic -- it imagines a time of yore when things were better, and suggests that we magically return to this era. I have news for you: It ain't gonna happen. Rather than viewing shifts in technology and childhood play as problems, we need to be invested in understanding how we can use them as assets. The Nintendo Wii is one great example of this and how we might think of applying it to the problem asserted in this article. Children aren't going back to the playground. Deal with it.
This is CNN's lead article tonight -- concerning the potential link between Craigslist and the murder of Julissa Brisman of Boston. Brisman met her clients as a massage therapist on the popular website. Of course this is a tragic incident, but I want to point out the ways in which the media spins a certain fear and panic into our hearts by attempting to link the murder to Craigslist. After all, this isn't the lead article on CNN for any old reason -- it's the lead article because it successfully links a popular sense of moral decay vis-a-vis the Internet to a brutal murder.
It would be hard to imagine this story gaining similar ground, say, if the victim met her attacker via a newspaper ad for massage services. Or at a bar. Or anywhere where there isn't the same fodder for moral panic. But she met him online, and that proves to work especially well in tandem with a moral panic about the Internet's power to bring society to new levels of depravity. The murder's lurid details (she's a "massage therapist", after all) just add to the story's message of moral decay, depravity, and social demise. It's a tragic murder -- and my heart goes out to Brisman and her family and friends -- but we need to be critical on how stories like this get used to posture a social message in the media that ultimately buttress a conservative anti-sex, anti-technology panic.
Why CNN hasn't fired this moron I have no idea. He makes the most uninformed, highly judgmental, and pedestrian kinds of commentary possible. His latest offense comes in a diatribe against smokers in an op-ed for CNN.com titled, "High cigarette taxes? Great!" Who does this asshole think he is? All we know about smoking is that its the poor and marginalized who smoke in greatest numbers today, in part because of a self-righteous anti-smoking sentiment among the middle and upper-classes. As if they don't condemn smoking and turn around and down a fifth of vodka. Spare me.
That self-righteous, self-congratulatory, highly moralizing tone is on full display in his piece:
There is nothing -- NOTHING! -- that I like about smoking.
Why someone in their right mind would want to essentially inhale fire is beyond me.
When relatives come to my home and they smoke, they can't just stand outside the front or back door. No, I send them to the furthest point in the backyard to get their nicotine fix.
I celebrate when cities pass smoking bans because the only smoke I want in a restaurant should come from a hot, juicy steak. If I'm walking down the street, and the person in front of me is leaving their trail of smoke, I'll happily speed up to get past them or publicly wave the smoke out of the way when walking by them to show my disapproval. And it angers me to drive down the street and look over to the next car and see a mom or dad puffing away as a helpless child has to sit there and inhale that junk.
You could just replace "smoking" with "having sex with men" and "smokers" with "homosexuals" to see the point I'm trying to make here. It's not so much that there's a problem with informing consumers that there are risks to smoking. Sure, that makes perfect sense. But it's that Public Health has enabled a moralistic crusade to make people who smoke not just out to be people who risk danger to their own health, but irrational, pathological subjects who need to be denigrated for their habit. They're not just making a bad decision, they're committing a SIN. 21st century religion isn't happening in churches, it's happening in the domain of Public Health.
CNN, I beg of you: Fire this idiot. He has nothing new or interesting to say.
DailyKos has this interesting analysis of the final vote tallies for the election. They note that Fox News currently has the vote tally's margin as the smallest of any news source, although they are all inaccurate (according to Dave Leip's analysis). Here are the raw numbers:
The media has just been eating up Dan Savage! There was this prominent appearance on Stephen Colbert's show, The Colbert Report. Curious here, he seems to have switched around his position form his much-maligned commentary blaming the 70% of African-Americans who voted for Prop 8 in California (a claim that statistician Nate Silver and others have shown to be inaccurate and misleading). But on his appearance on The Daily Show, he concedes that this is misleading, and also thanks Colbert for pointing out he fact that there are black gay men (who are obscured in the Black vs. Gay analysis). He also here is refocusing his attack on the Mormon Church, an attack he will continue in the next video. Have a watch:
That was one week ago. Now, something interesting happens today when he was on Anderson Cooper, sparring with the homophobic Family Research Council's Tony Perkins. Watch how Perkins baits Savage to try to get him to condemn Black voters. Perkins is furious that protests are happening at Mormon temples across the country, an outcome of the Church overwhelmingly financing the Yes-on-8 campaign in California. Perkins is well aware that public sympathy for Mormons is low (they're portrayed often as polygamist misogynists, rightly or wrongly), and thus protests against them are seen as legitimate. Protests against Black churches, however, would not be as politically palatable. I think Dan realized this in the hours after the massive backlash began after he penned that editorial criticizing Black voters. Watch it all happen on CNN:
CNN's exit polls reveal that 27% of the self-identified lesbian, gay, and bisexual voters they surveyed indicated that they voted for John McCain. This of course is only a sample of people who were willing to disclose their non-heterosexual identity -- but we might expect that this would be a more liberal sample than a "true" sample of all LGB people. I'm not sure about that, though.
In any case, it's pretty shocking news to me. I knew there were some LGB McCain supporters out there. I wish the data was chunked into L/G/B subcategories. I would expect that not many lesbians voted McCain. But hey, what do I know? I did see a few folks on Gay.com promoting McCain in their profiles. So I guess anything is possible! Oy.
I think this is just further evidence that gay is -- for many Americans -- no longer a political identity. Because of extreme discrimination, it used to mark folks in a way that produced radical political responses. But as homophobia becomes less extreme and more subtle, gay identity becomes less politicized in and of itself. This of course translates into a need for progressive political organizing that does not begin with identity (woman / Black / gay), but rather with progressive values for change. Complicating this further, though, is the fact that in many contexts (rural areas everywhere, the South generally, Texas, etc), homophobia's still pretty violent and still produces a context for useful LGBT political organizing. But in most large metro areas, this is no longer fruitful I think.
Phew! I'm watching CNN.com's reporting of the election before I head over to my friend's place for an election-night fiesta. And oy vey! Who is this Reggie Aqui? He is smoking hot! Jeebus. Sexy sexy sexy! And, if my gaydar's functioning properly, he's also gay gay gay! Yum. I need to make a trip to Atlanta!
And here we see CNN of course spouting out the same tired rhetoric that gets recycled every election season. Today we have Donna Brazile rehashing the cliche, "If you don't vote, you have no right to complain later" rhetoric. Her article actually doesn't make a lick of sense. She says out of one side of her mouth, "You're not allowed to complain if you don't vote," and out of the other side wants to complain about how "Resources, both human and material, are scarce and may not be equitably distributed" at polling places. Um, who forgot to edit this story?
I thought for some reason that we had moved past this idea. Of course, I encourage everyone to vote -- don't get me wrong. But with newsreports pouring in over voters being purged from the books, it becomes increasingly hard to argue this line.
It also presumes that everyone is able to, you know, take a few hours off of work to go down to the voting booth. This is actually going to be a problem at -- of all liberal places -- the University of Michigan. My day is packed with activity from 9 AM to 8 PM. None of my classes have been canceled. I'm not at liberty to cancel my sections. What am I supposed to do? I have two one-hour breaks, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the line to vote here in this huge college town will be more than one hour long. My polling place is also off campus, at least a 10 minute walk from my department building. It's a dilemma. I don't doubt that I will find a way to get there -- but this should tell you something: if a graduate student at the University of Michigan is having a hard time getting to the polls, you bet there are countless working Americans whose jobs totally prevent that possibility.
So I say this loud and clear to Donna Brazile, CNN's "Democratic strategist" (whatever the fuck that means): you should know better. After all, you're a member of the DNC's "Voting Rights institute." So I'm sure you're well aware of all the ways that people get disenfranchised in America.
Which brings me to my last question: Why the fuck are elections in America not either: 1) On a national holiday where everyone has off work; or 2) Less equitable, but better, on a Sunday, when many more people have off of work?
You know - when CNN starts to directly contradict government officials, I start to think that there must be some deep crisis going on. That's what's been happening over the past few days with the Hurrican Katrina madness. I've staved off blogging on the issue until more is known and I can make some sense from all the different sources of information. It does appear that the Bush Admin and many government agencies will have a foul mess on their hands. It's almost as if it took until Friday for the stench of the sewage-infested waters in New Orleans to waft up to DC. Bush took a big wiff Friday - a bit too late, it seems.
So many things. Anderson Cooper's (who, by the by, is somewhat openly gay) nasty exchange with Senator Mary Landrieu. (Transcript thanks to mediabistro or look here for the video)
LANDRIEU: Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heard -- maybe you all have announced it -- but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating.
COOPER: Excuse me, Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated.
And when they hear politicians slap -- you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to take her up. Do you understand that anger?
LANDRIEU: I have the anger inside of me. Most of the homes in my family have been destroyed. I understand that, and I know all the details, and the President —
COOPER: Well, who are you angry at?
LANDRIEU: I’m not angry at anyone. It is so important for everyone in this nation to pull together, for all military assets to be brought to bare in this situation. I have every confidence this country is great and strong as we can be do to that, and that effort is under way. That effort is under way.
COOPER: Well, I mean, there are a lot of people here who are kind of ashamed of what is happening in this country right now, what is — ashamed of what is happening in your state. And that’s not to blame the people that are there, it is a terrible situation, but you know, who — no one seems to be taking responsibility. I know you say there’s a time and a place for kind of, you know, looking back, but this seems to be the time and the place. There are people that want answers, and people want someone to stand up and say: we should have done more.
Forgive me for posting yet another transcript, but this gets even better. Soledad O'Brian ripped into FEMA Director interview with FEMA Director Mike Brown after he noted that he hadn't learned about the Superdome situation until well after it had been widely broadcast by the media:
S. O'BRIEN: You know, when you hear the interviews with some of these families who are living on the street, completely and utterly unprotected from these armed roving troops of men who are attacking people and they're raping people, what are you doing to protect these people right now?
BROWN: Well, that's why we're trying to get additional boots on the ground, because we have to protect them.
And, Soledad, I want the American people to know that we understand how dire this situation is. And we're going to do everything we can to get that aid down to that individual level. You know, we're feeding stuff into the Superdome. When we found out about the Convention Center yesterday. We started diverting supplies to get them fed, too. And now we're finding literally as we do evacuations that more and more people are beginning to manifest and show themselves in areas that we didn't
that they were there, and so we're doing everything we can to get to them.
S. O'BRIEN: You were unaware of the situation at the Convention Center until yesterday. When yesterday did you become aware?
BROWN: I think it was yesterday morning when we first found out about it. We were just as surprised as everybody else. We didn't know that the city had used that as a staging area. That shows how difficult communications are. And that is why we moved the USS Bataan, so that we could give the mayor a place to actually be able to communicate on a regular basis, to give us good intel about what he needs.
S. O'BRIEN: How is it possible that we're getting better intel than you're getting? We had a crew in the air. We were showing live pictures of the people outside of the Convention Center. We had a National Guardsman who was talking to us, who was telling us he estimated the crowd at 50,000 people. That was at 8:00 in the morning yesterday. And also, we've been reporting that officials have been telling people to go to the Convention Center if they want any hope of relief. I don't understand how FEMA cannot have this information.
BROWN: Well, we're busy doing life-saving and life-rescue efforts. We rely upon the state to give us that information. And, Soledad, I learned about it listening to the news reports.
S. O'BRIEN: FEMA has been on the ground for four days, going into the fifth day. Why no massive airdrop of food and water? In Banda Aceh, in Indonesia, they got food dropped two days after the tsunami struck.
BROWN: That's what we're going to do here, too. And I think...
S. O'BRIEN: But, sir, forgive me...
BROWN: Soledad, just a moment, please.
We're feeding those people in the Convention Center. We have fed over 150,000 people as of last night. That is happening.
S. O'BRIEN: But I guess the point is, as of last night -- sir, forgive me, I have to stop you here.
BROWN: What we're hearing, is that we're hearing people's frustrations. There are people that are beginning to manifest themselves out of the community that we didn't know that were there, and we're doing everything we can to find those individuals, case by case to get them help as quickly as possible.
S. O'BRIEN: But it begs the question, why are you discovering this now? It's five days that FEMA has been on the ground. The head of police says it's been five days that FEMA has been there. The mayor, the former mayor, putting out SOS's on Tuesday morning, crying on national television, saying please send in some troops. So the idea that, yes, I understand that you're feeding people and trying to get in there now, but it's Friday. It's Friday.
BROWN: Soledad, what's going on is in this situation, we have people who have gone, for example, to the Superdome, and we're feeding those people. And as we do the evacuations, as the water recedes, people begin to come out wherever they've been trying to keep themselves safe. They go to the bridges. They go to the overpasses. We find out about those people. We have every urban search-and-rescue team in this country out trying to find them now. We don't know where everybody is. And as they come out and they show themselves, we're rescuing them and moving them to places. I understand their frustration. I understand your frustration. This is a catastrophic event, and as these people continue to show themselves, we rescue them and take care of them.
S. O'BRIEN: Do you look at the pictures that are coming out of New Orleans? New Orleans? And do you say, I'm proud of the job that FEMA is doing on the ground there in a tough situation?
BROWN: Soledad...
S. O'BRIEN: Or do you look at these pictures and you say, this is a mess and we've dropped the ball; we didn't do what we should of done.
BROWN: Soledad, I look at these pictures and my heart breaks. My heart breaks just like the rest of the country's heart breaks. And so what we're doing is ramping up. I've asked the military to come in and help us and do -- I mean, I've mission assigned the Army, and the Coast Guard and the others to get those supplies in to all of those pockets.I don't want to see any American suffer the way some of these people are suffering, because of the consequences of this disaster.
And then today, I was reading today a CNN article on comments from Homeland Security's Secretary Michael Chertoff. The following are the lead paragraphs to an article whose headline was "Chertoff: Katrina scenario did not exist" and subhead, "However, experts for years had warned of threat to New Orleans":
"Defending the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.
But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years."
You can find the full article here. It just amused me. So rarely do corporate mainstream news sources like CNN ever step out and seriously question anything that comes out of someone in the Administration. It's a glimmer of hope? Maybe? (Not, of course, that the corp media has somehow changed, but that the magnitude of this situation has yet to be fully disclosed or realized).
Ask me again in a week and we'll see.
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Pam's House Blend
She's a fabulous North Carolinian blogging about politics, LGBT and women's rights, the influence of the far Right, and race relations. What more can I say?
