This New York Times article about critics of moderate and “in the middle” Muslims in the US is hardly balanced. But at the same time, I can’t help seeing a bit of racism at work here … and an attempt to stoke the same passions behind the Red Scare nearly a century ago.
Passaic Park pink
Posted by Ron Coleman on April 28, 2008
I’m not proud of this — the pink tree thing.
It’s something that just happened, okay? Could happen to anyone.
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Roosting season
Posted by Ron Coleman on April 28, 2008
Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks (“God damn America”) and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.
(Via Insty.) You’re still all missing the point. Yesterday Rev. Wright received a standing ovation for essentially the same speech. Not from some fringe group, but from the NAACP.
This is mainstream thinking among the black elite in this country, it seems, and certainly in the black churches — and Obama Barack, at best, believes he can at best inch away from it in order to corral votes from the rest of us.
And I told you this months ago, before the story was Rev. Wright himself.
And only now are those chickens, if you will, coming home to roost.
Posted in Americana, Faith and Works, Oppression, Politics and Poker | 19 Comments »
Votes don’t grow on trees
Posted by Ron Coleman on April 28, 2008
SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS Indiana’s voter ID law: “The Supreme Court has ruled that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights.” Seems reasonable to me.
Amazingly, it didn’t to three justices.
Why do I have a feeling — without the decision being available yet — I can guess who they [Souter-Stevens-Ginsberg-Breyer] are?
UPDATE: Stevens actually wrote the majority opinion, interestingly. Jack Balkin writes:
In Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, the Supreme Court continues a trend of using technical doctrines of facial challenges to swat away constitutional litigation and drive questions back to the political process. Whether you think that is a good or a bad thing depends on your view of whether the Indiana legislature was essentially limiting access to the ballot to certain classes of voters in order to help the Republican Party stay in power. If you think that the political process will take care of enfranchising these voters, you need not worry too much about the result. If, on the other hand, you think that the political process is being used to build in advantages for one party over another, there is greater reason to be concerned.
That’s his first paragraph, his topic paragraph. He uses the word “constitutional” once, and never in a substantive way. In other words, Balkin does not like the policy of the U.S. Supreme Court. But he doesn’t seem to have much of a constitutional or legal argument — spot the word “technical”? — to make.
Posted in Lex scripta, Oppression | 2 Comments »
Interview with a “Prude”
Posted by Ron Coleman on April 25, 2008
John Hawkins at Right-Wing News talks with with Carol Platt Liebau about her book, Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!):
A lot of people think the only downside for premarital sex is STDs and pregnancy and if you avoid those problems … then you might as well enjoy yourself. Let’s say a person isn’t religious and they don’t get STDs or get pregnant; why shouldn’t they have sex before marriage?
That’s the key question that I was trying to strike at the heart of Prude.
You know what? You may avoid an STD, you may never confront an unwedded pregnancy, but even so, giving too much, too soon, to too many people is still a terrible idea. It’s terrible idea because there are many, many, emotional and psychological consequences that often these little girls are never told about.
Like what?
They include regret, anxiety, shame, the inability to trust men, and trouble forming permanent committed relationships later. You know, John, it all makes sense. If you’re the kind of young woman who doesn’t understand why it’s important not just to have sex with any guy that wants you to, you’re probably going to be prone to seeing some of the less attractive sides of male behavior. If you see that over and over again…it’s going to be difficult to learn how to trust men because you’ve never gotten to see the finer or noble side of men. Of course, it’s going to be difficult to forge long term relationships later, because if you don’t trust men, then on what basis are you building when you finally find a man you’d like to spend your life with?
This is, of course, territory covered recently, and successfully, by Dawn Eden in her book, The Thrill of the Chaste. I would be interested in knowing how the books differ. If anyone has read reviews comparing and contrasting — I couldn’t find one — or otherwise has a clue (such as by reading them, perhaps?), I would be interested in knowing.
Posted in Faith and Works, Homo sapiens, O Mores! | 2 Comments »
Macy*s from heaven
Posted by Ron Coleman on April 25, 2008
We went up to the Empire State Building last night! This is what the world’s biggest store looks like from the world’s tallest building (yeah, neither one of them are either one of that any more, but they always will be to me) taken by one pretty crude but nifty little PDA camera.
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
“Tests Confirm T. Rex Kinship With Birds”
Posted by Ron Coleman on April 24, 2008
In the first analysis of proteins extracted from dinosaur bones, scientists say they have established more firmly than ever that the closest living relatives of the mighty predator Tyrannosaurus rex are modern birds.
Hoo boy. Here come the paternity suits!
Posted in Jocularity, Scientificus | 3 Comments »
Brooklyn Bridge
Posted by Ron Coleman on April 24, 2008
It was a stunningly beautiful day for a cruise on the Circle Line around Manhattan yesterday! So that’s just what we did.
I’m now lightly toasted, having had a seat in the uncovered part of the boat. I feel like Joan Rivers, my skin is pulled so tight.
But funnier.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
The word and the thought
Posted by Ron Coleman on April 22, 2008
[Steven Pinker] cautions against confusing the “many ways in which language connects to thought.” “Language surely affects thought,” he writes, but he argues that there is little evidence for the claims that language can force people to have particular thoughts or make it impossible for them to think in certain ways.
That is actually something of a dissenting opinion, or seems to be, among researchers commenting on the linked article, in which experiments seemed to suggest a very different conclusion. But this is a fascinating topic, and one I was discussing with a very bright lawyer friend this weekend who, like me (actually, better than I) knows both English and Hebrew. I was telling him how, as my Hebrew skills improved, I was increasingly struck by the beauty and power of biblical passages. In particular I was thinking of the parts of the Torah that recount the Exodus, which of course was of recent interest.
“Hebrew is powerful,” he agreed, “but it lacks the precision of English. And that,” he said, “is why Middle Eastern peoples kill each other so readily: Their imprecise language, and their thinking, result in black and white approaches to life that don’t leave much room for tolerance or doubt.”
Maybe. But a lot of things in a culture can provide nurture violence. And as this Times article says, while there can be no mistake about the connection between language and conceptual development, it is probably a mistake to overestimate the effect of language on a people.
And after all, Hebrew itself is the language that, along with its cognate Aramaic, gave birth to the analytical depth and infinite shades of grey realized in the Talmud — a level of analysis, it is true, that is required in order to flesh out the flat-footed, “plain” meaning of arguably very vague, imprecise biblical texts. It is this process that is the premise of traditional rabbinic Judaism.
But focusing either on language or other social constructs also throws a sort of amoral mechanist blanket over moral teaching, at the societal level, and moral decision-making, at the individual letter, that is begets warranty. Ultimately people are, and should be treated as, moral decision-makers. Even if they are affected and shaped by their cultures, souls know the truth, no matter how much we foul up the ability of members of a society to make the inquiry and seek it.
Posted in Faith and Works, Homo sapiens, Scientificus | 3 Comments »
Why they know it all
Posted by Ron Coleman on April 22, 2008
Mickey Kaus quotes Chris Matthews on his Pennsylvania prediction for Hillary —
Eight points. I think eight points is the over/under. If she gets a victory of less than 8 I think shes going to have a hard time arguing that she should stay in this race. …. [S]he cant call it a victory winning five or six or seven up here. Shes got to get at least an 8.
And then, thank God, adds:
I wish I could report that he said it with a knowing, ironic appreciation for its absurd arrogance. …
Yes, and no, Mickey. Yes on the arrogance, but maybe not for the reason you think. The fact is that Matthews is 100% right: That eight points is exactly the margin of victory he, himself — and his friends in the Business — will declare to be “the one.” It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, not a prediction of some phenomenon based on an analysis of objectively observable phenomena.
And yes, yes, it is arrogant. You got a problem with that?
Posted in Medialites, Politics and Poker | Leave a Comment »
