In Mississippi, Homophobia Prevents Prom

News and Analysis…

Constance McMillan attends Itawamba Agricultural High School in rural Mississippi.  She is a lesbian.  She asked the school if she could bring her girlfriend to the prom.  The high school canceled the official prom but suggested that the students and parents organize their own private prom.  What lesson does that teach to the students there?

Change.org | Isn’t it amazing the depths folks will go in order to continue homophobic policies? That this school wanted to stop a lesbian student from bringing a same-sex date to the prom was outrageous enough. But to cancel the entire prom just to take aim at this student is punishing every single person in the school. So much for school’s acting in the best interests of their students.

The Itawamba Agricultural High School’s mission statement is to “involve school, families, and community in enabling students to be responsible and productive citizens of an ever changing world by providing academic and technological programs in a learning environment that is safe, orderly, empowering, and challenging.” If that’s the case, their decision to eliminate the prom is a complete and total epic FAIL.

Lez Get Real | The LGBT community has been tweeting and facebook this story all over the internet to try to bring attention to McMillen’s plight. We know what this statement means, The Itawamba School District is trying to villify McMillen to all her classmates, students that might have been indifferent or even supportive of her sexual orientation before, will now blame her for the prom being cancelled. We also know that an “unofficial” prom will be organized and McMillen will not be invited. It is probable that McMillen is not the only LGBT student at the school, so the school district is effectively endorsing a “no gays allowed” prom.

A Purse Full of Cheerios | The issue really isn’t even whether or not the girl wanted to bring a date of the same sex. The issue is that the school board has rules and those rules must be enforced. Just like many schools have a rule that students attending the prom cannot bring a date who has already graduated. Are they discriminating against adults? This is ludicrous.

Pam’s House Blend | In a brazen move, the school board urged that a private prom be organized so that they can legally ban McMillan from attending with her date and the attire of her choosing. How much deeper hate can adults foment over this young students request for equal access to her own school’s prom?

On the Web…

Fail to Understand Why Non-White People Feel Like Self-Segregating | Stuff White People Do

But again, those situations are rare. Partly because most white people spend little or no time in spaces that are mostly non-white, they tend to find it confusing, and even “wrong,” for people of color to seek out spaces and situations that are not predominantly white — to “self-segregate,” that is. Because seeking sanctuary from a situation in which you’re no longer surrounded by your racial peers could merely mean stepping back into the great (white) norm for whites, it wouldn’t seem like racial self-segregation for a white person to do that. Even though that’s what it is, and even though white people actually self-segregate almost all the time.

New French Diet Eat Air | Womanist Musings

Well it seems as though a new diet fad starvation plan created in France is the next big thing. The diet is called “L’Air Fooding” and it involves putting food on a plate and pretending to eat it.  Yes, so very chic; put food on your fork and bring it to your lips but never take a bite.   Not to worry, if the hunger pangs hit you, you can always fill up on soup à l’eau (water soup) which consists of water and salt. Mmmm tasty.

Police Brutality Against CA Protesters for Higher Education…Again | Feministing

Thursday, March 4, a group of UC Davis students marching through campus began to approach a freeway on-ramp for the purposes of occupation, and Yolo County Sheriff’s Department officers blocked the route. They shot pepper balls at students’ feet as the marchers continued to approach the on-ramp. Abruptly, the police pulled Laura Mitchell, a student and queer leader at UC Davis, from the front of the crowd, dragging her along the ground, ripping her shirt off, and holding her hostage until protesters agreed to dissipate.

Threatened Muhammad Cartoonist Has No Regrets | Pew Forum

A Swedish artist who angered Muslims by drawing the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog said Wednesday he has no regrets and believes the suspects in an alleged plot to kill him were not professionals.

Lars Vilks, who has faced numerous death threats over the controversial cartoon, said he has built his own defense system, including a “homemade” safe room and a barbed-wire sculpture that could electrocute potential intruders.

American Dream | Achieving the Dream

What is the dream and who can achieve it?

The United States of America is the land of great opportunity, in which people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and give their children better than they had.  This idealistic vision is the American Dream. In addition to improving chances for children, the Dream also typically includes home ownership, having a chance to get rich and achieving a secure retirement. The Dream finds its roots in our Declaration of Independence which states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  As humans, life has been given to us.  Liberty is established through the social contract.  The Pursuit of Happiness — that is the promise of the American Dream.

The term was made popular by James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book, The Epic of America.  According to Adams, the term was “that American dream of a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank.”

However, the idea of the American Dream is neither simple nor universal.   Americans oddly tend to hold contradictory views of ways to achieve success.  We simultaneously think that people should get out of the system what they put into it (an idea called meritocracy), and that people should be able to pass wealth generationally, thus effectively nullifying a meritocratic system.  The tensions between these widely held views are what makes the Dream complex.

The American Dream is the great American story.  It is given power at least partially by what Max Weber called the Protestant Ethic, which taught that hard work and prosperity are signs of the achievers’ place in heaven and of God’s favor towards them.  The Protestant Ethic contributed to America’s financial success.  We worked hard, saved and spent frugally.  Protestantism also affected how we view work.  Martin Luther taught that all work, not just ordained ministry, was a sacred thing.  In a sermon, Luther preached that, “every occupation has its own honor before God, as well as its own requirements and duties.”  This dedication to work from the 16^th century is evident to us in the 21^st through the nation of workaholics.  Once Americans decided work was a positive, we took it to the extreme.  Because of this Protestant framework, Americans came to view work as an opportunity, not merely a necessity.

Stories of the American Dream are ubiquitous in the American Experience.  Indeed, they portray some of our greatest figures such as Abraham Lincoln who was famously born in a log cabin and rose, due to his intellect and work ethic, to become one of the nation’s most visionary presidents.  In the present day, two O’s tell the story of the Dream: Oprah and Obama.  Oprah was famously raised in poverty in Mississippi before she became the queen of day time talk and just about everything else.  President Obama continuously touted his credentials as an American Dream president, the son of a Kenyan and a Kansan during his historic 2008 presidential campaign.  Using his unusual past to his advantage, he continuously said on the trail, “In no other country on earth is my story even possible.”

The Dream mentality is so all-encompassing that it can be found almost anywhere.  Some of our great American art personifies the Dream.  Citizen Kane and The Godfather II, two of our greatest films portray rags to riches stories.  Recently, the Will Smith film The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) showed some of the heart-breaking realities of chasing success.  In one moving scene, Smith and his son find themselves homeless and spend the night in the public restroom of a Bay Area Rapid Transit station.  Another scene from this film epitomizes the Dream mentality.  Smith’s character teaches his son that the Dream is a possibility for those who work for it.

You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period.

Will Smith’s character endures barrier after barrier to achieving success but it is this belief in the Dream that propels him forward.  This spirit of opportunity and drive is necessary in working toward the Dream.  Without it, the goal seems unachievable.

However, that same drive can turn against those who devote their lives to it.  F. Scott Fitzgerald’s acclaimed work, The Great Gatsby is also about the American Dream and the potential pitfalls of too much success.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy–they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

Excess is not a concept included in the Dream. Rather, the Dream is to have enough to be comfortable and give your children a little better than you had.  Enormous wealth is a bastardization of the Dream, an unintended consequence of unbridled ambition.

Dream stories serve to inform us of possibility.  Last year we heard an American Dream story recounted over and over, that of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.  An e-mail from President Obama to his supporters recounts the now familiar story.

And then there is Judge Sotomayor’s incredible personal story. She grew up in a housing project in the South Bronx — her parents coming to New York from Puerto Rico during the Second World War. At the age of nine, she lost her father, and her mother worked six days a week just to put food on the table. It takes a certain resilience and determination to rise up out of such circumstances, focus, work hard and achieve the American dream.

In Judge Sotomayor, our nation will have a Justice who will never forget her humble beginnings, will always apply the rule of law, and will be a protector of the Constitution that made her American dream and the dreams of millions of others possible. As she said so clearly yesterday, Judge Sotomayor’s decisions on the bench “have been made not to serve the interests of any one litigant, but always to serve the larger interest of impartial justice.”

This story shows who can achieve the American Dream: anyone.  According to the Dream, we all have the opportunity to achieve it.  Our own hard work and moral fiber will help us along the way.  As Americans, this story is our story and permeates every aspect of our society.  We are constantly told that we can achieve it.

But, is that true?  For some, pursuit of a Dream turns into the American Nightmare, faced with the inability to break into a closed system no matter how hard they work.  The ideology of the American Dream has been used to justify the inequalities of our society, as if those who have not been able to get ahead do not deserve it and have not worked hard enough.  This is where the tension between meritocracy and inheritance becomes important.  For the argument that those who get ahead deserve success to be logically sound, everyone would have to originate in the exact same place.  But, we don’t.  Those with privilege start out light years closer to the finish line.  The next installment of this series will examine the barriers and impediments to achieving the American Dream.

Do Barbie Prices Make Walmart Racist?

News and Analysis…

Walmart has taken heat from racism critics after a photo surfaced on the web showing two Barbie Dolls side by side, one black doll selling for three dollars and one white doll selling for six dollars.  Advocates, such as Thelma Dye, the executive director of the Northside Center for Child Development, have critiqued the decision of Walmart due to the potential psychological effect on children seeing that a white Barbie costs twice that of a black Barbie.  Her comments have received a backlash from others who see Walmart’s actions as either inconsequential or reflective of a societal problem, not a corporate one.

The Powers That Be | Instead of coming to a basic understanding of human behavior and economics simultaneously — which is that white kids are more likely to buy white dolls and black kids are more likely to buy black dolls, and this particular Wal-Mart more than likely has more white shoppers buying the white dolls — this is becoming yet another race issue.

Econ 101 says that when a product isn’t moving, the price goes down until it sells, but some minority leaders might want to think twice before setting a bad precedent by intimidating stores into increasing the price of products targeted to minorities.

Jezebel | Sociological Images co-author Gwen Sharp suggests that maybe black Ballerina Theresas don’t sell well because they just look like re-painted Barbies: “Maybe for both parents and kids, it seems more real and less symbolic of a change to have a doll that actually presents a range of attractive features rather than ‘Oh we’ve changed the skin tone slightly.’” And Mattel says its “So In Style” line — dolls “designed to better resemble black women’s facial features” — has received a “great response.” Still, just as Barbie dolls continue to reflect institutional sexism with their unrealistic representation of the female body (a baby-face-plus-big-boobs representation that’s become especially popular in an age that incongruously demands both extreme youth and sexual availability), so too the relative “values” placed on black dolls reflect the ways black women are often devalued.

Rod Dreher – Beliefnet| Seriously, it’s heartbreaking that any black child would think that the whiteness of a person’s or a doll’s skin makes them more beautiful or worthy. That is a problem we have to work on as a society. But forcing Walmart, or any retailer, to ignore what their customers are telling them in order to preserve a moralistic fiction is not the way to go. Faulting Walmart’s discounting policy here is a good way to convince retailers not to stock any black dolls at all, for fear that they won’t be able to treat those products like any other and discount them if they don’t sell, on pain of being called racially insensitive.

On the Web…

Consuming Pop Culture While Feminist: Disney’s The Little Mermaid | Feministing

The Little Mermaid is, quite simply, a feminist’s worst nightmare. This movie is about, as a very wise friend of mine once put it, a young woman who gives up her voice to get a pair of legs so that she can snare a man. It’s about the triumph of “good” women – young, slender, silent and lovesick – over “bad” women – old, voluptuous, outspoken and sexual. It’s about a young woman forced to choose between her father’s world and her husband’s world, and there is nothing in between. And there’s the unsettling fact that the song “Kiss the Girl” tells us that the “one way to ask” if a woman wants you to kiss her, is to just kiss her.

Surviving Without a Safety Net | Truthdig

Obama has made concessions to the right, which wants to destroy him. The left has written him off. With a good sense of what this country is about, he continues to steer a perilous course between them. His efforts to pass an economic stimulus, health care reform, a modest jobs bill and extensions of unemployment and COBRA benefits have left him weakened. In the end, he may leave the arena bloody and exhausted, but I believe he will succeed. The president is edging forward under a backbreaking load that was heaped upon his shoulders when he entered office. As Irv Feldman told Walter Thomas, the old Tuskegee airman, “Thank you for your service, sir.”

When Bishops Play Politics| Newsweek

They see themselves as crusaders for human rights—protectors of the innocent, the voiceless, and the powerless. After years of enduring the slings and arrows of opposition, these activists are finally in the power seat. They are among the most important voices on a crucial political question: will abortion finally scuttle health-care reform?

They are America’s Roman Catholic bishops.

Three Proven Steps to Advance the World’s Women | NYT Nicholas Kristof

First, I think girls’ education may be the single most cost-effective kind of aid work. It’s cheap, it opens minds, it gives girls new career opportunities and ways to generate cash, it leads them to have fewer children and invest more in those children, and it tends to bring women from the shadows into the formal economy and society. It’s not a panacea, of course. Lebanon and Sri Lanka were leaders in girls’ education, and both ended up torn apart by conflict. In India, the state of Kerala has done a fine job in girls’ education, but its state economy is still a mess and dependent on remittances. But overall, educating girls probably has a greater transformative effect on a country than anything else one can do.

On the Trail: I Got a Job

If you are regular readers of this blog, then you know that I have been writing about my work as a volunteer on a congressional campaign.  I have covered a number of topics including: the power of money in politics, the unconventional workplace of a campaign and the ambiguity that comes with not being in a traditional work environment,  the pace of campaigning, and being the baby of the campaign “family.”  It’s been a very useful outlet for my experiences ‘on the trail’ and hopefully you got a sense of what it’s like.

However, my heart rejoices to tell you that I have been hired on with the same campaign to work as the Press Secretary.  I have been on the job for about 10 days now and I am still very excited.  Our primary is June 8th so we have about three months of lead up before the election.  Because of my involvement as a staff person on the campaign, I have to temporarily forgo my reflections on the process.  It wouldn’t be quite right for me to be reflecting from the position as a staff person.  Maybe I will have some reflections after the race has run its course but until then I will be blogging on other topics.  Thanks for reading.

But wait, there’s more!  I cannot help but write a few words about the difference between being staff and being a volunteer, in the most general sense.

First, the boundaries are much harder to define.  When I was working as a volunteer, I only worked the time I had and if it did not work with my schedule, that meant that I could not be there.  Now I schedule things around the campaign and there are campaign events almost every night.  Therefore, making plans for anything personal is very difficult.

Second, spending time with the same group of people day in and day out is exhausting.  I see my fellow staff and core volunteers more than I see my housemates and I spend about twice as many hours in the day with them as I do sleeping.  I know that by the end of the campaign, I will be on their last nerve and they will be on mine.  But, spending all that time together also results in strong bonds.  We’re there to encourage one another.  Example: Yesterday three of my coworkers went to Panda Express, the Chinese restaurant literally around the corner from the office.  “Do you want anything?” one of them asked.  Jokingly I said, “yeah, I’ll take your fortune cookie.”  When they arrived back thirty minutes later I received three fortune cookies, one from each of them.  Indeed, we go to Panda Express so often I’ve started collecting the fortunes and taping them to my laptop screen.  The two fortunes added today say, “BEAUTIFUL THINGS AWAIT YOU” and “NOW IS A GOOD TIME TO FINISH OLD TASKS.”  I have more to add.  I know that these will be long month and looking up at encouraging words (even fortune cookie wisdom) delivered from friendly hands will keep me trudging on.

Third, I am perpetually exhausted.  Any political race is daunting and ours is no different.  The sheer amount of work to be done seems almost unachievable in such a short period of time.  I also had the wisdom to start work and move across town on the same day, which led to me shoving books and knick knacks into boxes while fielding calls from my candidate and my campaign manager.  Then all my possessions spent several days in boxes while I worked 15 hour days to try and get my bearings.  I pushed myself on Saturday (first day off) to unpack and organize everything.  Sunday morning I woke up with a cold.  Such is life, at least for the next three months, and hopefully beyond.

That is all for my campaign reflections.  I look forward to filling you in after the race has been run (and won).

In Alice, Burton Delivers

News and Analysis…

Tomorrow is the release date for the much anticipated Alice in Wonderland directed by Tim Burton.  But, you probably knew that since the film has been advertised almost to market saturation.  At least in Los Angeles, it is hard to leave the house without seeing Johnny Depp’s dazed Mad Hatter starting back at you.  Reviews state that although the film is not perfect, it will not disappoint the millions of anxiously awaiting fans.  One of the most common critiques is of the use of 3D.  After Avatar raised the bar for the 3D experience, Alice failed to meet it.  Perhaps skip the shades on this one and see it in the 2D world.  The movie is expected to dominate the box office this weekend.

Huffington Post | And marrying one of my favorite mythos with one of my favorite filmmakers was a no-brainer. The movie began and I was transfixed. Sure, I thought the overt use of symbolism from Wonderland was a bit overt, but I swallowed it down wanting to love the movie and it worked. And when Alice fell down the rabbit hole, I had the chills.

I was incredibly concerned about what would happen once we got into Tim Burton’s Wonderland. Wonderland has always been an incredibly silly place and I was worried that when it was married to Tim Burton’s style it would be a little too much, but it never was. He restrained as much of himself as was necessary and provided an excellent live action take on Wonderland. But from the get go, we can tell that something is different in this Wonderland.

Screen Rant | Ultimately, the 3D fails to impress in Alice in Wonderland and certain 3D parts of the film, such as Alice falling down the rabbit hole, are completely unwatchable. The digital effects guys throw so much debris towards the audience and Burton films the scene so close up that everything blurs together in a mass of unintelligible imagery. I hope that other studios are taking note of this and realize that if they must make a 3D film, then it needs to be done during the shooting process and not done as an afterthought.

Tech Land | The delightfully giddy, silly, delirious movie. The movie where it seemed like Tim Burton wasn’t being “Tim Burton” but was just having fun again, scrambling up the expected pieces into a puzzle so new and bizarre that it blindsides you with its sentiment.

Living in Cinema | Narrative isn’t historically a Burton strong suit. Sometimes the style makes up for it (Sleepy Hollow…yes I kind of like Sleepy Hollow) and sometimes it doesn’t (Planet of the Apes). Which way will Alice go? I don’t know, but the rest of the cast including Mia Wasikowska as a 21-year-old Alice, Anne Hathaway as the White Queen, Stephen Fry, Crispin Glover, Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall make it worth finding out.

Cinetology | Overall Burton gets the elements about right bar a couple of missteps. The final battle scene in which Alice faces off against a dragon while reciting her list of six impossible things is unfortunately generic, the sort of wham-slam-bam! battle montage we’ve seen countless times before, though the sheer Burton-lathered look of it – weird beasts, a boofhead Red Queen, creepily skewed backdrops etcetera – separates it somewhat from garden variety large scale action scenes.

On the Web…

Race, Those Billboards and Abortion as Genocide| Feministe

Last month, Renee wrote about the “Black children are an endangered species” billboards. Now the New York Times has picked it up, in a story about how the anti-abortion movement is using race and accusations of genocide as a way to “court” supporters of color to a traditionally white, long-racist movement. The anti-choice strategy has been to hire a handful of women of color to travel around the country telling African-Americans that abortion is part of a decades-old conspiracy to kill off black people.

AVictory For Online Journalism | Alternet

Mayor Mike Bloomberg has finally done the right – and democratic – thing in reversing a previous boneheaded decision by the New York Police Department to deny official ‘working press’ passes to reporters at online or nontraditional news outlets – such as this one!

The turnabout came as a result of a lawsuit filed by three such reporters — Rafael Martinez Alequin, Ralph E. Smith and David Wallis. There was never any real doubt that all were “legitimate” reporters.

Make Non-White People Feel Marginalized in Their Own Countries | stuff white people do

This fawning and seemingly complimentary commentary about our hair is just another way to other black people. It’s as though she sees her hair as being “regular” hair, and our hair is some weird, exotic, abnormal characteristic. But when you’re in a country where the vast majority of its inhabitants possess (naturally, although a ridiculous percentage of women are relaxing their hair) a certain phenotype and you don’t, you’re actually the one with the “weird” hair, not us.

What Does a Congressional Whip Actually Do? | Slate

They count votes. The principle task of a party whip, formally known as “assistant party leader,” is to keep track of the number of votes for and against a piece of legislation. They’re also responsible, along with the party’s leader, for “whipping up” support for a particular position. Not every vote gets whipped. If the party leadership knows that a bill is going to pass easily, they won’t go to the trouble of counting every last vote. But when the vote is close—say the Senate leadership has 45 guaranteed “yes” votes and 10 “maybes”—whipping is necessary to get a more accurate head count.

Catholics Less Than Charitable on Gay Marriage

News and Analysis…

Today, gay marriage licenses will be issued for the first time in Washington D.C.  In order to prevent providing benefits to gay couples, Catholic Charities preempted the possibility by changing its personnel policy to exclude spousal benefits to any couples who are not already included.  In the lead up to legalizing same-sex marriage, Catholic Charities had threatened to terminate its city contracts if the law passed.  Excluding benefits for gay partners is the latest measure the Church is taking to show its displeasure with the law.  On the blogosphere, some bloggers are outraged.  Others expected something like this from the Church after their previous threats.

The Sexist In short: If you and your spouse are already enrolled in Catholic Charities health coverage, your spouse will be grandfathered in. Starting tomorrow, however, new employees (or newly married employees, hint hint) will not be allowed to add spouses to the plan. So: Longtime employees will receive the spousal benefits they’ve always had; Catholic Charities will get to keep its pool of covered spouses gay-free; only fresh employees and gays will feel the sting on this one.

Alternet | I don’t get it. Why do they care? If Fauntory does not believe in gay marriage then I suggest he shouldn’t marry a man. And excuse me, but I went to catholic school, and any Catholic organization should be the last group complaining about gay folks. If it weren’t for gays, the Catholic church would likely lose a quarter of its nuns and priests.

More importantly, why do they care? Why would anyone care who a stranger chooses to marry?

Change.org | That’s right, the Church that loves to call itself pro-family is giving a huge middle finger to family values by taking away benefits for everyone. Or, to perhaps put it another way, the Catholic Church would rather take benefits away from straight couples than give them to gay ones.

Shows you just how much the Catholic Church values its employees, right? Here’s hoping they at least let the bus slow down before they threw everyone underneath it.

Feministing | These moves are despicable. And attempts by the Archdiocese to blame the new same sex marriage law are ridiculous. The law didn’t force the Archdiocese to abandon children in foster care or screw over their employee’s families. The blame sits squarely on the shoulders of church leadership that’s decided to prioritize a commitment to discrimination over valuable social services work.

Get Religion | As opposed to what, by golly? I’m not Catholic but I would hope that any church leadership worth their salt would encourage everyone in the church to follow both the letter and the spirit of God’s law. Some of us even think that what the church has to say is just as or possibly even more important as what my city council thinks at a given moment. Maybe some people think that “everyone who flies the Catholic brand flag” should just bend their practices to whatever winds blow their way, but that’s not really the way the traditional church has operated over the years.

Best on the Web…

Speed Trap: George Lopez to Play Speedy Gonzalez | Racilicious

The thing is, it’s not just about Speedy, but about the universe he inhabited. If this new film strays from the original Andale! Andale! schtick, critics will decry that the character was neutered by “the PC Patrol.” If it doesn’t, the couple has resurrected a very problematic cartoon character (two, if Slowpoke Rodriguez is also brought back.)

Are the Winter Olympics Getting More Diverse | Foreign Passport

At the time, I wondered how globalization has impacted the winter games — are more countries participating? Winning medals?

The answer is to both question is yes, as you can see above. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the number of countries participating in the Winter Olympics has skyrocketed — with the number of medal winners increasing in turn. (It’s a bit hard to see on the graph, but the percentage of countries winning medals has held at around 30 percent since 1988.)

That said, the Winter Olympics are just keeping pace with the Summer Olympics, as you can see on the chart below. Since 1988, the number of countries sending athletes to the summer games has increased around 46 percent, and around 44 percent for the winter games.

With Travel Expenses, Some in Congress Keep the Change | ProPublica

Congressmen like to travel — in the past two years alone, members of the House and the Senate ran up 5,300 travel days, according to the Wall Street Journal — and when they’re abroad on official business, they get a chunk of spending money each day to cover basic costs. In Paris, for example, it’s $178, in Tokyo it’s $214, and in Kabul it’s $28. When the trip ends, any unspent funds are supposed to be returned to the taxpayer, but as the Journal reports [1] today, this doesn’t always happen.

Instead, “lawmakers use the excess cash for shopping or to defray spouses’ travel expenses,” the Journal writes. “Sometimes they give it away; sometimes they pocket it. Many lawmakers said they didn’t know the rules demand repayment.”

Putting Conservation Back Into Conservatism | The Next Right

The Right needs to go further. Falling back on small government and low tax rhetoric, too, simply won’t fill the bill – the average American doesn’t take our high polemic seriously anymore (beyond sharing our disdain for the sitting Democratic government – we should recognize that this could only be temporary). Republicans have plenty of momentum in their favor, and, like Rep. Paul Ryan, can seize this opportunity before sliding backward into campaign mode this year. Here’s the good news: it’s entirely possible to be green and pro-business all at once.

Who Would You Let in Your Political Bed?

It was Charles Dudley Warner who said, “Politics make strange bedfellows.”  I suppose that all depends on with whom you are sleeping, politically of course.  The truth of this quotation is that politics is all about coalition building.  If you want to create or change a policy, you need support.  But, in this game there is more than one ball in the air.   At any given time, a multitude of issues are being discussed, organized around and acted upon.  Political parties help to build coalitions and cohesion.  You will usually be on the same side of the aisle as those with whom you share a political party.  However, as watching health care in the US Senate has taught us, parties often find themselves trying to play “red rover” with the other side.

However, coalition building is difficult because some issues cut so close to the bone.  Can a gay pro-life representative join forces with a homophobic pro-life representative on their shared interest against abortion?  Taking a stand with another elected official is a serious statement.  But, are there some issues that prevent you from even standing up with another person?  For me, homophobia is a huge barrier to allyship.  Gay culture and people have always been a big, positive part of my life so I take issue with people who would seek to tear down the LGBT community for whom they love.  Other complete no-go issues for me are misogyny and racism.  Are there issues so dear to you that you could not work with some one who opposed you on them?  Or, in other words, “Who would you let in to your political bed?”

I have been reading Teddy Kennedy’s memoir, True Compass over the last couple of weeks.  He was constantly faced with the challenge of finding allies to support the issues which mattered to him, such as health care and immigration.  Here is a small section of the book.

Eastland’s racial views posed a moral problem for me.  Civil rights became one of the defining causes of my career.  How could I seek guidance, or cooperate in any way, with a proponent of segregation?

My decision regarding Eastland-in fact, my abiding impulse to reach across lines of division during my career-took strength from the concluding phrase of Lincoln’s first inaugural address, on the eve of the Civil War.  I decided to put faith in ‘the better angels of our nature.’  I worked with James Eastland; in fact, the two of us became friends.  Then and always, I would work with anyone whose philosophies differed from mine as long as the issue at hand promoted the welfare of the people, and I would continue to await those better angels, and to remain confident in ultimate justice.

I would like to believe in the better angels of all of us.  In fact, I would imagine that for the issues of racism, misogyny and homophobia, both sides would benefit from some relationship with the other.  When we isolate ourselves, we stop seeking to dialogue with the rest of teh world.  But, it is through dialogue and learning from those who differ from us that we learn the most.  As I have written, diversity is the servant of dialogue. Maybe bedfellows is too intimate of an analogy.  But, we can share a handshake, a meal and a conversation with even those who differ the most from us.

Gay Marriage Advocates Hail Maryland

News and Analysis…

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler issued an opinion Wednesday to inform the state’s policy toward recognize gay marriages performed in other states.  His conclusion is that the state should do so and will begin recognizing out-of-state gay unions starting yesterday.  This opinion comes nine months after it was requested and only days before gay marriages are set to begin in Washington D.C.  The opinion is tentative and could be overturned in court.   To read the decision, go here.

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force | This opinion by Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler affirms the dignity of marriages of same-sex couples performed in other jurisdictions. While the opinion doesn’t change current Maryland law, it states that same-sex marriages performed out-of-state may be honored at home by various Maryland state agencies. We thank the attorney general for his important opinion and urge state agencies to take steps immediately to honor the legal marriages of these same-sex couples.

Queerty | Any marriage that is “valid in the jurisdiction in which it was contracted” may be recognized by Maryland, he says.

But could doesn’t mean will: “Such marriages may be recognized in several ways. First, legislation enacted by the General Assembly could provide for recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages generally, or for particular purposes. Second, in the absence of legislation, the Court of Appeals, applying common law choice-of-law principles, could decide that such marriages will be recognized in Maryland, either generally or in particular circumstances. Finally, a state agency may also address the recognition of out-of-state marriages on particular matters within that agency’s jurisdiction, so long as the agency’s action is consistent with any relevant statutes and court decisions, including federal laws that may govern the agency’s activities.”

Change.org | His opinion doesn’t lock Maryland into recognizing out-of-state same-sex marriages. But it certainly offers a solid hope that action will be taken, either legislatively or perhaps more expectedly from the Maryland State Supreme Court, to make out-of-state marriages valid in the State.

Expect this to drive some conservative Maryland legislators into fits of rage. Earlier this month, two legislators tried to move forward pieces of legislation that would have blocked Maryland from recognizing out-of-state gay marriage, or in one radical case, would have impeached Attorney General Gansler preemptively for writing an opinion favorable to gay marriage. Those pieces of legislation died, thankfully.

On the Web…

White Girls Can Use Microscopes If They’re Pink | Womanist Musings

Isn’t it wonderful everyone?  Now girls can be into science too and we know this because everything is a wonderful shade of pink. Yep, pink just screams girl.  I suppose I should see this as a leap forward because these sorts of toys are usually aimed at boys, but it irritates me that the creators felt that simply having girls on the package was enough to signify femininity.

I would remiss if I did not point out that though these two little girls are cute, they are White and blonde.  It seems that it is okay to encourage girls to succeed, only if they fall within certain criteria.  White women are oppressed due to sexism but their race privilege often opens doors that are closed to little girls of colour.  No matter how much we claim to value children, socially not all children are equal.

When Rapists Graduate and Victims Drop Out | The Sexist

According to a a new report from the Center for Public Integrity, many U.S. colleges fail to adhere to federal laws that dictate the school’s response after sexual assaults are reported on its campus. “Under Title IX, schools must meet three requirements if they find a sexual assault has occurred: end a so-called “hostile environment”; prevent its future occurrence; and restore victims’ lives,” writes CPI reporter Kristen Lombardi.

In many cases, however, students found responsible for sexual assault through the college judicial process are administered little more than a slap on the wrist, leaving victims to continue pursuing their education in close proximity to their assailants—or drop out.

“Compton Cookout” Party at UCSD Ignites Racial Firestorm | Racialicious

The University of California at San Diego is still feeling the aftermath of an off-campus party organized by students dubbed the “Compton Cookout” in which racial stereotypes of blacks were used in flyers and a Facebook invitation. According to the Los Angeles Times, “the invitation included references to ‘dat Purple Drank,’ an apparent mix of ’sugar, water, and the color purple, chicken, coolade, and of course Watermelon.’ Party organizers aimed to have a “ghetto” theme Feb. 15 poking fun of Compton, a community near Los Angeles made famous by rappers and films about urban blacks.

Dove: Redefining Male Beauty | Adios Barbie

Is male beauty found in ripped abs and bulging biceps? Is a man deemed attractive by the car he drives? Or by how much money he earns? If you look at commercials geared toward men as an indicator, you would have to deduce that square jawlines, snazzy sport cars, and a thick wallet equate with masculine attractiveness. But one commercial that aired for the first time during Super Bowl XLIV presented a refreshing alternative.

Dove’s marketing team, Unilever didn’t use a buff model to promote its new skin care line, Men+Care. Instead, the spot (dubbed The Journey to Comfort), features a man that some male consumers can identify with: A thirty-something family guy who has successfully navigated gender-specific milestones to arrive at “being comfortable in his own skin.”

Health Care…FINALLY?

News and Analysis…

On Tuesday, President Obama announced his support for a health care reform  (HCR) bill before Congress.  The announcement, as well as an invitation for Republicans to join in a forum, is being taken as the Obama administration’s inability to let health care reform die after failing to pass for the better part of the year.  Both conservatives and progressives are critical of the President’s bill, for opposing reasons.  Conservatives claim the bill contains too much spending.  Progressives insist the bill is not enough change to be substantive.  It seems that no one supports Obama’s efforts.

Washington Post | Democrats have already paid a political price for tackling health reform at a time when voters are hurting from the recession, anxious about the economy and wary of new government initiatives. There is no way they can avoid facing this line of attack in the fall. The question, at this point, is whether Republicans will be able to toss in allegations of gutlessness and incompetence: The Democrats controlled the White House and all of Congress, and still couldn’t get it done.

Daily Kos | An new Kaiser Tracking poll shows the country evenly split on the current HCR plan–43/43, but it also finds that “majorities of Americans of all political leanings support several provisions in the health reform proposals in Congress and most attribute delays in passing the legislation to political gamesmanship rather than policy disagreements.”

American Spectator | President Obama on Monday removed speculation about whether he would scale back his health care ambitions in the current political environment, releasing a plan that increases taxes, spending, and regulation even more than the Senate health care bill that has been overwhelmingly rejected by the public.

The brazen move, coming just days before a scheduled health care summit, was accompanied by a renewed willingness to use the reconciliation procedure to ram a health care bill through the Senate with just 51 votes. Taken together, some commentators see a growing momentum for finishing the health care legislation that was put on life support after Sen. Scott Brown’s surprise victory in Massachusetts.

Slate | If you are afraid of President Obama and congressional Democrats, then you will see this final push for health care reform as a scheme to bankrupt the country and ruin your current health care and as proof of a government-knows-best approach that will slowly erode personal freedoms. If you are afraid of the insurance industry, you’ll see the Republican obstructionism in the face of rising premiums and inflation as an unconscionable abandonment of those who can’t afford coverage now and those middle-class families who soon won’t be able to.

The Hill | Now Harry Reid is promising to pass a health care bill through the Senate in sixty days. President Obama is continuing to arrogantly push this radical legislation in the hope of creating a new entitlement program that will continue to nurture America’s dependency on Big Government. When America’s leadership has become so disconnected from Americans’ interests, the American people must stand up boldly in defense of their livelihoods and their liberties.

On the Web…

Why “African American” IS the Most Accurate Term | Racialicious

Yet McWhorter’s argument does not rest on personal predilection, but rather it is an attempt to reason and eventually settle on the most exact designation for black people native-born to the U.S.  As such, the first concern is one of history.  (And McWhorter recognizes this, as his title suggests: “Did ‘African American’ History Really Happen in Atlanta, Cleveland, Philly, and Detroit?  Listening to the Census.”)  That most black Americans have not been to Africa, do not speak an indigenous African language, and/or cannot trace their ancestral line to a particular tribe or region is beside the point.  The “African” in African American is not that grounded; it is does not signify the particularities of Africa.  Instead, the “African” in African America refers to a very distinct historical process of acculturation, trauma, and community building.

The Environmental Effect of Pet Food | Slate

You’re right that the carnivorous diets of cats and dogs are likely to be worse for the environment than those of, say, birds and guinea pigs. But the meat we feed to our pets isn’t quite the same as the stuff we eat ourselves. Most commercial dog and cat food is made from the parts we humans don’t eat, like organs, scraps, and rendered bones and tissues.

Looked at one way, then, pet food is a kind of recycling operation: It takes waste products and finds a use for them. From an economic perspective, these less-than-palatable parts aren’t that big of a deal. Clark Williams-Derry, blogging for the Seattle-based think tank Sightline Institute, notes that byproducts account for at most 15 percent of a livestock animal’s value. Thus, he argues, the pet food industry contributes relatively little to the total environmental impact of a meat-producing cow, chicken, or pig. We grow and slaughter those animals to feed our yen for meat—not to make the scraps that go into pet food. So 100 calories of byproduct meat should be credited with a lower impact than 100 calories of human-grade meat.

Is Genetically Engineering Animals Not to Feel Pain Really the Solution to Factory Farming? | TreeHugger

Last week the New York Times ran an op-ed piece by PhD-to-be philosopher-neuroscientist-psychologist Adam Shriver, from Washington University in St Louis, that really cuts to the heart of one of the deepest issues in the green movement: How does humanity best relate to the other animals on the planet? Shriver starts the assumption that, like it or not factory farming is here to stay in the United States. Therefore, we ought to minimize the pain animals feel in the slaughterhouse… by genetically engineering them to not feel it:

No one is actually doing this yet, but Shriver points to research done into how mammals sense pain and speculates, because of the similarities between all mammals neural systems that one day that this could be applied to pigs and cows.

Proposed Florida Bill Would Charge Abortion Providers with First-Degree Felonies | Change.org

What I find particularly interesting about this anti-choice bill is that it punishes the abortion providers, not the patients. If this bill becomes law, then a person performing abortions would be charged with a first-degree felony, punishable by up to life in prison. As Jessica over at Feministing suggests, this “punish the provider, not the patient” philosophy seems to stem from the popular anti-choice sentiment that women are victims of abortions, not well-informed, active participants in the process. In that scenario, abortion providers are like the Big Bad Wolf preying on innocent Little Red Riding Hood, which is insulting to women on many levels.

I Embrace Religions, Except Other Interpretations of My Own

In school, I majored in Religious Studies.  I learned about Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform), Buddhism (Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana), Islam (Sunni, Shia, Sufi), Sikhism, Ba’hai, Jainism, Hinduisms, and more.  I eventually came to the conclusion that all religions are seeking the ultimate truth.  In addition, I concluded that many religious traditions share common elements but emphasize them differently.  I can recall very clearly having this revelation in high school Sunday school while talking about non-attachment in the Buddhist tradition.  “What’s the one day that Christians focus on non-attachment?” my teacher posed to the group of us.  My mind was completely blank, is that something we talked about at all?  “Ash Wednesday,” he said, “when we receive the imposition of ashes and are told ‘Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.’”

I like to think that I am ‘beyond tolerance’ (as a t-shirt of mine says) when it comes to religious traditions.  I’m not just interested in “a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one’s own.”  I want to embrace the diversity.  Even atheists and agnostics intrigue me.  The claim that there is no God or that any ultimate reality is unknowable are themselves statements about religion.  I love to talk to those people over a cup of coffee, not because I’m a believer and want to convert them, but because they have valid opinions too.

Having said that I can sit comfortably with a great diversity of religions and not only tolerate them, but embrace their perspectives, there is one tradition with whom I cannot sit comfortably, a conservative interpretation of my own.  Perhaps it’s from the years of being asked as a child in Oklahoma if Episcopal was Christian, or having someone speculate that my youth group van was decorated in race car type flames because we were going to hell, but I cannot speak respectfully with those Christians who would close the church to women’s ordination or full participation of homosexuals, among other things.

However, I could talk to other traditions that hold these exact same views.  What is it about my own tradition that creates such a blind spot?  Perhaps it is because I perceive Conservative Christians as an incorrect interpretation, whereas I am not similarly inclined to pronounce the same opinion  in say, the Orthodox Jewish tradition.  Indeed, it never even occurred me that Conservative Christianity was a religion of which I needed to be tolerant until a few years ago when my mother pointed it out.  I had been completely intolerant of a branch of my own tradition.

A friend and Hindu chaplain writes of his experience talking to the one religion which irks him.

I fashion myself a pretty tolerant and accepting guy, but there is one “religion,” I must admit, that I simply can’t stand.  Its doctrines and practices make my blood boil. Its champions bug me, its devotees test my patience.

So it’s not surprising that a recent attempt to dialogue with one of them left me feeling like I’d just spent time acquainting my head with a brick wall.

Here, he is writing about fundamentalists but I think that his experience is relevant to my own since fundamentalists of my own, Christian, tradition are some of those with whom I find myself least able to communicate.  Maybe it’s the lack of give and take in the conversation.  Maybe it’s my own prejudice against a culture by which I was largely surrounded as a child.

An author at Paliban Daily argues that it is in the very nature of religion to be intolerant.

Religions don’t bring that same spirit of tolerance and understanding to the table. They insist on it but they will not reciprocate. They can’t. It is against their very doctrine and dogma. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, in particular, are political systems as much as they are theologies. They come with prescriptions, not only for their adherents, but for society at large. Tolerance can only be a one way street. Their doctrine, being divine, cannot be open to compromise or negotiation. They share many of the same bigotries and prejudices against women, foreigners, homosexuals and any who don’t agree with their beliefs and superstitions. Regardless of the good people want to see from religion, or have been trained to see and expect from religion, the truth is that the fundamental structure of religion is authoritarian, uncompromising and not open to negotiation. God’s laws and prescriptions cannot be edited, abridged or altered. God’s laws and teachings cannot be subject to the laws of man, society, or the state, and, most definitely, not compromised with another religion’s equally divine prescriptions and demands.

I disagree with this assessment.  Religions can embrace their traditions and suspend their claims of absolute truth.  Letting go of absolute truth claims is the only way that two people can sit down and discuss anything.  And so, it is with this appreciation that I suspend my own claim on absolute truth in the Christian tradition.  If you’re willing to sit down, so am I.

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