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Why Can't a Woman Be a Chum?

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Jeff Fecke

I have tried very hard not to write about the Tiger Woods kerfuffle, because, quite frankly, I don’t really see as it’s my business. Tiger certainly cheated on his wife multiple times, and I don’t condone that behavior, but his offense really is against his wife, and he owes her explanations and apologies, not me. (His wife may or may not have committed assault with a deadly weapon against him, which would be a more serious transgression than cheating, but we don’t know that for sure, and I’m not going to speculate further about it.)

At any rate, the Woodses will split up or stay together, and whatever; it’s not really my business. And quite certainly, it isn’t a “scandal,” unless you’re the sort of person who is deeply shocked that in 2009, there are rich, handsome people out there cheating on their spouses.

Enter Richard Cohen, WaPo resident concern troll and sexual harasser, who asks a question that has been on nobody’s mind ever since the Woods “scandal” broke: why don’t women cheat on their spouses like men do? If you don’t want to read any further, the answer is that they’re not driven to conquer things, which is also why women aren’t that successful.

No, really.

Cohen starts his post by noting that every white, middle aged guy he knows doesn’t know why women don’t cheat, which is because, I assume, most of these middle aged white guys Cohen knows have wives cheating on them:

It’s not that there are no women in the Tiger Woods category of professional sport. No woman makes Tiger’s kind of money, of course, but plenty make good money and become celebrities in golf or tennis, and you don’t hear about them hitting on every caddy, pool boy or masseuse. Why?

Well, until the last couple weeks, we didn’t hear about Tiger hitting on every caddy, pool girl, or masseuse. As far as anyone knew, Tiger was playing it straight and narrow, and totally faithful to his wife.

Or take politics. There are now 90 women in Congress, and yet you don’t hear about them recommending their lovers to be a U.S. Attorneys or hiking the Appalachian Trail all the way to Buenos Aires. No female member of Congress is known to have offered the wife of her lover the chance to become a major lobbyist or, just for nostalgia sake, to have had a bit too many and gone for dance in the Tidal Basin. Why?

Well, there are 445 men in Congress. The odds favor men. Also, a quick googling found that Rep. Loretta Sanchez, R-Calif., is currently being accused of carrying on an affair with a defense contractor. I don’t know if she is or isn’t, but it rather undermines Cohen’s point.

Or take corporate America. Fifteen of the nation’s top CEOs are women and there are lot more women one ore two rungs down the cooperate ladder. Yet, you do not hear of them taking their lovers on the company jet and checking them in to resorts as their research assistants. I’m not saying these things never happen, I’m just saying they happen so rarely as to amount to not happening at all.

Uh…yeah. Look, Richard, I don’t remember the last CEO sex scandal that made the news, because frankly, CEOs are screwing all of us all the time, and finding out that they’re screwing someone else specifically really isn’t all that surprising.

Even women entertainers do not carry on like the men do. Okay, Madonna was famous for bedding much of New York’s outer boroughs, but this was no scandal since she was intent on proving… something. Whatever the case, she was not married at the time. Men get caught with hookers and men have multiple lovers and men have groupies, but not women. Why? Why? Why?

Well, Richard, let me tell you about a little thing called the patriarchy, which punishes “slutty” women much more than it punishes “caddish” men, which means that the female entertainer/politician/CEO caught cheating on her spouse is likely to take a much more serious tumble in the eyes of the public than a similarly situated man.

This doesn’t mean women don’t cheat on their spouses. 15 percent of women and 22 percent of men have had intercourse outside of marriage, numbers that are frankly not that different. And the numbers of men and women who have been unfaithful in any relationship are both majorities — 57% of men and 54% of women, numbers that are essentially the same. Women cheat at a healthy rate, nearly as much as men, and it is ludicrous to think that no famous women are among that number. It’s just much more likely that they place a very high value on discretion.

Consider: Kobe Bryant confessed to raping a woman, and is still considered a superstar. Nike still hires him to do ads. He’s still a multimillionaire. Do you think that, say, Mia Hamm would have kept getting endorsement deals had it come out that she cheated on Nomar Garciaparra? Of course not. Her “all-American girl” image would have been shattered. Her endorsements would have been pulled. Her reputation would have been permanently damaged.

Now, I don’t know that Mia Hamm didn’t cheat on Nomar (if she’s interested in cheating, she should feel free to give me a call, as I’ve had a crush on Mia Hamm for something like 20 years). But if she did, she damn sure had to be careful about it, make sure because it simply wouldn’t do for a woman to be caught in the same type of situation as a man. And certainly, if she was tempted, she would have had the previous scenario in the back of her mind in a way that Kobe obviously did not. This is the slut/stud dichotomy, Richard, and I understand why you don’t know about it, because you’re a douche.

But even if you don’t understand it, you still should know better than to spin elaborate just-so stories out of misunderstood ev-psych studies.

We start with a backhanded complement.

We can guess. The first guess is that women are simply smarter than men. Say what you will about Woods, it’s not his wholesome image that has suffered, it’s his standing as a sentient being. A person with the wit of a mosquito knows better than to leave a voicemail message on a mistress’ phone or to text women who, from the angelic looks of them, would sell their own dear mothers for a chance to appear on Inside Edition. Few women are that stupid. Few men aren’t.

Except, Richard, that women aren’t inherently smarter than men. They’re not inherently dumber, either — men and women are cognitive equals. Women are prone to make dumb mistakes and rash decisions just like men are, and if you don’t know that, you don’t know many women.

It’s just that for women, the stakes are much higher in things like this than men. Bill Clinton largely survived his infidelities; do you think Hillary Clinton would have been electable if it turned out she was having an affair with an intern? No. She would have been pilloried for it, even as people allowed that she probably had earned the right. Good girls don’t, cool boys do. Slut/stud, Richard.

When you’re dealing with something that can end your career, or at the very least ruin your reputation, you’re more apt to be very, very careful. Tiger Woods didn’t worry about leaving messages and sending texts because he realized — accurately, I misdoubt — that the disclosure of his infidelities would not destroy his career. And it won’t. He may take a bit of a financial hit in the short term, but in the long term, he’ll be fine. A woman in a similar position would be a fool to take a similar risk. And so they don’t.

This is also probably a good time to note that there is no “female Tiger Woods,” period. Tiger Woods is on a different plane when it comes to endorsements. Only Michael Jordan comes close. The only woman with the kind of drawing power Woods has is Oprah Winfrey, and she’s chosen to build her own brand, rather than shill for others. And, for what it’s worth, Oprah’s been careful not to get married, hasn’t she?

All right, so women smart, men dumb. That may be it, Richard, but it’s not offensive enough. Can you really be obnoxious?

The other possibility that strikes me is that women seem not to have the evolutionary urge to couple with cheaply dressed strangers. They have a stronger need to mother — to have a child and then raise that child.

Ah, yes, ladies! I know, you say you liked New Moon for the level of shirtlessness involved, but you’re lying. What you really want is to birth babies. There’s no better proof of this than my seven-year-old daughter, who has told me flatly that she doesn’t want to birth babies, because it looks like it’s painful, and there are a lot of kids who don’t have parents who could be adopted. See? It’s so natural that a seven-year-old doesn’t know it!

Also, just so we’re clear, men have no interest in children. My daughter comes up in this column only so I can prove I had sex, not because I love the fact that she’s thinking that deeply about stuff at seven, and find it adorable and sensible.

The male equivalents of the sort of women who have courageously come foreword to claim their reward money for entertaining Tiger are evolutionary bad material. No woman would want them as husbands and fathers. They are what Darwin called dreck, which is Yiddish for cocktail waitress. Since recreational sex can lead to diapers, women have to be prudent. As they say down at the Fed, they have to consider the out years.

Yeah, cocktail waitresses are scum of the earth, and while men may have sex with them, they certainly don’t want to marry them. Also, women never have one-night-stands because evidently it’s 1523 BCE, and the only contraceptive that’s been invented is crocodile dung.

To be fair, in Richard Cohen’s America, abortion is something you probably can’t get, so there is that to consider.

This is why women more than men link sex to love and commitment. I’m not saying that all of them do or all of them do all the time. I’m just saying that there seems to be few women who behave as Tiger Woods did. Even women who have no moral compunction against multiple affairs draw the line at a number somewhat below Tiger’s.

Well, I mean, Jesus, even men who have no moral compunction against multiple affairs draw the line at a number somewhat below Tiger’s. Tiger’s kind of in a league of his own there, too.

Men, like the poor polar bear, have seen their ecology change. Their youthful aggression, so useful for wars of choice (not to mention necessity) or merely hunting saber-toothed tigers, is now just a social menace. Their urge to have sex with just about any woman with a pulse makes them crude laughing stocks. Tiger Woods has become a punch line — and so have men in general. (Thanks, Tiger.) We are a sorry lot. Almost no one, save maybe lachrymose country western singers, will defend the cheatin’ man.

I don’t even know what the hell Cohen is talking about here. Our “youthful aggression” is tied to sex somehow, which I thought was about love, or at least general friendliness. Also, saber-toothed tigers.

As for men becoming a punch line because of Tiger — well, no, you see, just no. Tiger’s a punch line, but if the statistics can be believed, 78 percent of men don’t cheat during marriage. That’s what statisticians like to call “an overwhelming majority.” I’m not saying men never consider cheating — nor that women don’t. (If statistics can be believed, roughly 70 percent of both sexes have said they’d have an affair if it could be guaranteed never to come out.) But most men and women don’t cheat, ever.

The fact that 78 percent of men and 85 percent of women don’t cheat during their marriages suggests to me that, as per usual, men and women are more alike than different. Or, possibly, it proves that women aren’t that driven, not like men are.

But it could be that the urge to get closer to cocktail waitresses and denizens of dimly lit hotel lounges is in some way linked to the drive to conquer, to prevail — to succeed. It could explain why all this time into the Age of Feminism, years after women were liberated, women make up less than 20 percent of Congress and only 3 percent of those top CEOs.

The reason the Glass Ceiling has not broken is that women have other priorities — maintaining relationships and being a mother. This is the way it is, and this is the way it has always been. As any of Tiger Woods’s cocktail waitresses could tell him, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

N’est ce pas?

Yes, that would be one explanation of why systemic sexism has prevented women from reaching parity with men. And I’d totally buy it, if it wasn’t the biggest load of shit produced on land since Amphicoelias fragillimus went extinct 150 million years ago.

Men are successful because we like sex? Really? Well, then, what of women who like sex, a group that includes, at last count, the vast majority of women? Certainly, they would seem to be likely candidates for success, would they not?

Oh, but there’s that slut/stud dichotomy, Richard, which holds women back. You see, women are taught that Good Girls Don’t, remember? So when you’re hitting on a waitress at Perkins at three in the morning, because Cool Guys Do, the woman across the way may be just as interested in hitting on the waiter, but she doesn’t, because she doesn’t want to be That Kind of Girl.

This is tragic, evidently, because a willingness to engage in random sexual encounters is evidently the key to success in life. And women are kept from that success by societal pressures. Too bad.

Of course, the irony is that women are kept from success by societal pressures. Just not the ones Cohen identifies or cares about.

Richard, do you want to know why there aren’t that many female sex scandals? Well, first off, recognize everything I’ve said here as a factor. Now, note that overall, the number of women in all of these “famous” situations are dwarfed by the number of men. Female athletes get nowhere near the endorsement deals that men do. There are far fewer women in Congress than men. There are far fewer female CEOs than men. Only in the case of entertainment is there rough parity, and frankly, I can think of several “sex scandals” involving women there — Britney Spears, you may recall, saw her career crippled by one.

Famous women aren’t that plentiful, and they have strong incentives to be discrete. That, it seems to me, is a far more likely answer than the idea that there aren’t that many famous women because women don’t like sex. They may not like sex with you, Richard, but that just shows they have good taste.

No, much as you may want to think that your propensity for sexual harassment and general rape apologism is the key to your success, it isn’t, Richard. It’s just proof that you’re a douche, like the small minority of men and women who cheat on their partners. Only douchier.

No. We Wouldn't.

Posted on December 16, 2009 by Jeff Fecke

I was never a Deaniac. I supported him for DNC chair precisely because I thought his reckless rhetoric would work well for the leader of an opposition party, and that his fifty-state strategy had merit. But I most certainly did not support him for president, because the tools that serve one well in opposition do not necessarily translate into the ability to govern, and I have never felt that Dean was particularly adept at the more mundane, serious aspects of governance.

So it doesn’t surprise me to see Howard Dean declaring that “If we were Republicans, this [health care] bill would be done.” It’s just the sort of half-assed thing Howard Dean would say, without any regard for the reality of the situation.

First off, as John Cole notes, the Republicans would never try to create a bill to provide $100 billion a year in health care subsidies for the nation’s poor and working class. But ignoring that, and taking Dean’s statement in the spirit it was intended — that Republicans have so gosh-darned much party unity that things would automatically get done — let me remind the former DNC chair once more, with feeling, that no, they wouldn’t.

Social Security privatization is to the conservative domestic agenda what health care reform is to the liberal domestic agenda — the brass ring, the piece de resistance, the thing that the party most wants to get done. And the GOP and George W. Bush, with majorities in the House and Senate — and after an election in which said majorities increased — was not only not able to get Social Security reform through, they weren’t even able to get a bill up for a vote in the House. Compared to how well things went for the GOP on Social Security reform, Democrats are a virtual juggernaut, crushing all in their path on their way to passing a reform bill that is more robust than the one Dean proposed in 2003 and 2004, when he was running for president.

That last link, which goes to an article by Ezra Klein, is important to read, because it makes a point that we have lost sight of. Not only is the health care reform bill before the Senate still worth passing; it’s a reform bill that would have been beyond the wildest, most optimistic dreams of Democrats just five years ago. Is it perfect? No. But it is a huge step forward, even if it leaves several huge steps to go.

Ultimately, the people who are calling for this bill’s demise are the kind of Democrats — and indeed, the kind of activists in general — who have always frustrated me. I understand that it would be nice if we could get reform passed that was perfect. Believe me, if I were God-Emperor of America, I’d make a lot of quick changes that would make most progressives happy. Indeed, I suspect if Barack Obama was God-Emperor of America, he’d do the same.

But we don’t have a God-Emperor. We don’t even have the Westminster system, which would allow us the possibility of more rapid, sweeping change, for good or ill. We have a Presidential system, one designed with Madisonian checks and balances which make sweeping change all but impossible. In our system, change has to come bit by bit, step by step, agonizing compromise by agonizing compromise.

Now, some activists — left and right alike — will say that’s not good enough. That change should be perfect, or it shouldn’t happen. They will draw lines in the sand, punish the heterodox, and declare that it’s better for us not to pass a bill than to pass this imperfect one. That’s a very satisfying, very pure sentiment, and I understand it.

But in our system of government, abandoning change because it’s not sweeping enough doesn’t end with us getting all the changes we want. It ends with change not happening at all. Social Security privatization is dead until the GOP takes back both houses of Congress and the presidency. That could be as soon as 2013 — but that would mean eight years of no change in the status quo, and it’s pessimistic to think the GOP would retake all three that quickly. The last time Democrats had a shot at passing meaningful health care reform was 1994, and we failed; almost 16 years passed before we got another shot.

Reconcilliation is not an option — starting over puts us back eleven months, and if you think that things will sail through easier using reconcilliation, you’ve obviously never studied the U.S. Congress. Quite frankly, 2010 is an election year, and Democrats don’t want to be debating health care reform in the weeks leading up to the election — not to mention that all the items sitting on the back burner right now, including DOMA and DADT, will keep sitting on the back burner so long as the health care debate is open.

No, it’s this bill or nothing. If you take the position that we need to kill the bill, then you are dooming health care reform for, at minimum, another two years. Realistically, you’re dooming it for another decade or two. As we’ve noted many times, 40,000 people a year are dying for want of health care. If you are comfortable condemning 400,000 of your fellow Americans to death simply because you don’t find this bill ideologically pure enough…well, you can call yourself whatever you want. But I sure as hell don’t see that as “progressive.”

Posted in Health Care and Related Issues, Social Security | 12 Comments

Pearl Clutching and Urban Planning

Posted on December 16, 2009 by karnythia

pearl-clutching-and-urban-planning

Walk in My Shoes: Surviving the walk to school. You know I understand the whole “If it bleeds it leads” concept of journalism. Really I do. But, we live on the South Side of Chicago too. I grew up here and all those sunny park pictures that I post of my family on my journal? They’re taken on the same South Side mentioned in this article. There’s more to this city than the blighted areas, and while we’re talking blight and violence let’s talk about how these neighborhoods (which used to be thriving healthy communities) fall apart.

Our society likes to wring its hands and bleat about the poor pitiful children once the shooting starts, but we don’t tend to pay attention to the roots of the problems before everything goes wrong. This latest spate of failed gentrification efforts are going to have brand new bad areas springing up as the residents struggle to make it with no tax base, poor infrastructure, and the same old issues of race and class. It’s ridiculous to paint these pictures of scary bad areas that are the result of some foreign event horizon that no one can understand when we know how places get this way.

For starters you get rid of the grocery stores, instead allowing liquor stores that sell food or whatever little corner stores spring up to be the only place within walking distance to get groceries. Then you take away (or never start) bus routes, and the ones that are in the area have shortened hours and limited routes so it’s difficult for the remaining population to get to work. Oh, let’s not forget schools that lack necessary equipment so the students are ill-equipped to succeed academically in a society where education is key. And of course there’s the added impact of poverty and institutional racism. Why the mention of racism? Well, how do you think we get to the place where only certain neighborhoods are allowed to turn into war zones? It’s no accident that I can get cops in my neighborhood to respond a lot faster than people living in Englewood.

Those conditions form the underpinnings of gangs and their powerful hold in these areas. As the money and the opportunity and the access fade away? People still have to eat, and despite the hype I have yet to meet a gangbanger or a street level dealer that wasn’t hungry, as in literally going to bed without enough food on a regular basis hungry when they decided to get in on the game. Drugs, crime, and poverty go hand in hand, but not for the reasons you’d think they do. It’s survival living and people do a lot of things to make it when the wolf is at the door. Generational poverty plays a huge role because these blighted neighborhoods don’t get that way in a week or a month. It takes time, and the people with resources move out relatively early in the process but there are always people left behind with no way out.

And without a proper foundation at an elementary school level, few or no role models, and of course the stress and trauma of living in an area that’s dangerous all the time the kids in these places don’t have boots, never mind bootstraps to pull themselves out. Or to pull their own kids out once they’re adults. Oh sure there’s always a success story that gets lauded, but the reality is that the combination of luck, support, and intelligence required for those stories to happen isn’t a recipe that’s accessible for every child. And to paint the South Side with such a broad brush instead of talking about the actual issues that lead to these conditions is just further exacerbating the problems. Less pearl clutching and more urban planning is the key here.

And now a word from our sponsor…

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Pearl Clutching and Urban Planning

Posted in Syndicated feeds | 3 Comments

Still Worth It

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Jeff Fecke

There’s really not much in this Karoli post that I disagree with. Is Joe Lieberman odious? Yes. Should the Democrats strip him of everything, up to and including his jowls? Yes. Is there a good way to work around him? No. Has he effectively killed the public option and/or a Medicare buy-in, at least for this session? Yes. He has.

But does that mean health care reform, even without such an option, should simply be killed dead? No, it does not.

lieberman As Karoli points out, even after the public option is killed dead, the health care plan still ends banning people based on pre-existing conditions. It still provides significant subsidies. It still will mean the difference between millions of Americans being insured and uninsured, and that will save tens of thousands of lives a year. Is it perfect? Hell, no. Would it be better with a public option or Medicare buy-in? Hell, yes. But you pass the bill with the system of government you have, not the system of government you want, and for good or ill, the American system of government is designed specifically to kill big, sweeping changes, to whittle bills down into small, incremental, piecemeal steps.

This is, incidentally, the biggest problem with the liberal opprobrium aimed at Obama. (Reid — well, he’s another story, and I’ll talk about him at another time.) Barack Obama is the President of the United States, not the Prime Minister. He commands large majorities in both houses, but those majorities are fractious, and have grown up under the American system in which each legislator is a free agent, whose votes are up for grabs on every bill.

Yes, the Republicans are moving away from that to perfect parliamentary lockstep — we know, we know. But the Republicans were not much more unified when they held Congress, and were forced to actually govern. Remember how the Bush Administration muscled through Social Security privatization right after the 2004 election? You don’t? Right, because it didn’t happen. Without Democratic support for privatization in some form — support that was non-existent save, maybe, for Joe Lieberman — the Republicans in Congress were so disorganized, so fractious, so disunited, that they couldn’t even get a bill through the House. Had it made it to the Senate, it would assuredly have died, as the Democrats — who held more than 40 seats — would have filibustered it to death.

The last major piece of domestic legislation the GOP got through Congress was Medicare Part D in 2003 — which only passed because the Republicans were willing to play major games in both houses to get the bill over the top, going so far as to hold the roll open in the House for two and a half hours in order to wheedle for the final votes for passage.

The GOP got no major bills through congress in the last five years of the Bush presidency. For all the vaunted unanimity among the Republicans, Bush Administration efforts on everything from Social Security to immigration reform failed, due to a lack of party support.

So while it’s both tempting and true to complain that the health care bill has been whittled down to less than half a loaf, and maybe down to a single slice, we shouldn’t ignore the fact that said single slice contains more health care reform than has passed since Medicare itself was enacted. And that even in its very watered-down form, it will save lives and save families from penury. This is not a minor accomplishment. As Nate Silver notes, the public option was always a long-shot in the Senate, but keeping the focus on that still managed to allow a pretty decent bill to get to the brink of passage.

Bill Clinton couldn’t get get a bill this far. Jimmy Carter couldn’t get it done. Lyndon Johnson, Jack Kennedy, and Harry S Truman couldn’t get it done. No great Democratic majority leader ever muscled health care reform through the Senate. And until Nancy Pelosi, no Democratic speaker ever had shepherded health care reform through the House.

Quite simply, this watered down, attenuated, imperfect, tenth-of-a-loaf bill still represents one of the greatest legislative triumphs by either party since the Great Society programs passed under Johnson. And while it will need to be improved in the future, it will establish the baseline from which all future discussions begin: Every American deserves health insurance, and no American should be denied health insurance because of pre-existing conditions. Once that is enshrined in law, changes will only make coverage more robust. Just as Medicare once failed to cover prescription drugs, just as Social Security once failed to cover large swathes of workers, so too will this bill need to be improved. But there will be nothing to improve if we fail to pass this now, and there will be no chance at improving it if, in our pique at imperfection, Democrats choose to allow the same forces that have been trying to kill this bill to gain ground in Congress. Imperfect isn’t fun. It’s frustrating and annoying and it means we have to endure Joe Lieberman. But it’s better than a perfect bill that doesn’t pass. Better by far.

Posted in Whatever | 67 Comments

Does Art as Social Justice Lead to the Artist as Unpaid Social Worker?

Posted on December 14, 2009 by Mandolin

Yasmin Nair, guest blogging at Dakshina, examines the connection between art and social justice with a skeptical eye, suggesting that the connections are not as straightforward as naive writers often want to believe. She also looks at how the idea of writing as a social justice project feeds into the undervaluing of writing-as-labor:

The notion that the production of art is separate from the nitty-gritty of art as labor. While I would never blame artists themselves for their woes in terms of getting paid, the truth is that many of us have a hard time seeing ourselves as laborers who ought to be fairly compensated. Most of us have been trained to think our work is sacrosanct, that our work is not labor, that it is above petty commerce, and that we must make art only for nobler causes. When you add on the patina of social justice, many of us are reluctant to or unable to negotiate with those who are supposed to pay us, in part because we do care about the issues and the people affected by them. And, in part, because, frankly, too many of us have assimilated a deeply privatized notion that our art is so profound that it can and should directly effect social change – monetary value be damned. The result, as Andrew Ross puts it in a seminal essay, “The Mental Labor Problem,” is that “…the new profile of the artist as a social-service worker is coming to supplant the autonomous avant-garde innovator as a fundable type, increasingly sponsored through local arts agencies.” In the case of the Artivist Coalition events, artists were deployed as semi-mystical healers, responsible for shining a light on matters that should be the purview of social workers and politicians.

Which is, of course, interesting in terms of the pay rate flap, as another one of those excuses which comes up for the fact that writers are not compensated for their labor is that art is unlike real work and should be done for love not money. (I note that the problematic form of this argument is not “I write for love” but “I write for love, and that’s pure, but you are tainted because you write for money.” We once had someone write into podcastle that if we accepted their submission, they would refuse payment, because they didn’t believe that writers should get paid. This is certainly a decision they were entitled to make for themselves, but the indictment of all payment-seeking writers is problematic. Why should love and money be mutually exclusive reasons?) Nair goes on to say:

writing is profoundly devalued to the point where it is seen as work without labor – anyone can write, the argument goes. Just build a website, and pound away.

To be clear, I think it is always a good thing if people want to write more. The problem is that the apparent democratization of writing today comes along with a profound devaluing of its worth as labor that ought to be fairly compensated. Take, for example, the notion of the “citizen journalist.” Someone once had the bright idea that all it takes for a robust and civil society is to turn a group of citizens, armed with little more than basic web access and digital cameras and the ability to pound keys, to make society accountable for its ills. In return, they usually get little more than a free byline. So, what the term “citizen journalist” should really refer to is “unpaid schmuck who will work for free in hopes of a byline.” I also happen to be a professional journalist. I once covered an event and got some exclusive photos as well. When I returned home to file the story, I found that a local website had already “reported” on it. The citizen journalist in question had simply cut and pasted a press release from one of the organizing groups, without even acknowledging that the words were taken verbatim from the document. A reader who assumed that the reporter actually talked to people at the event was unlikely to see the inherent bias in the article. As as activist who has written a fair number of press releases, I know that they are always written ahead of time, regardless of what might actually transpire at an event, and about the careful crafting and messaging that goes into projecting events as spectacular successes. Without important information about the source of the material being divulged to the reader, the “citizen journalist” was able to pass off a cut-and-paste job as journalism. In the end, this is what brings down the quality as well as the expectations of what good journalism should be and it makes the work of journalists look like something that requires no effort and, hence, something that can be done for free or very little.

Let me be fair: I am also a blogger, and that work is entirely for free (a fact that escapes the notice of irate readers who summarily call for my “firing” by editors who are themselves making just enough to keep the sites up and running). I understand the value of producing work that might entice and create a reader base for my writing. But all of this goes on in a social and political environment where people assume that it is not only okay to underpay writers, but that writers should, if worth their salt, be willing to be exploited…

The situation is hardly helped by the fact that artists like me are expected to function without the basics like health care and that, as a freelance writer, I cannot seek unemployment. I have sprained the same knee twice in two years, leading to a drastic reduction in my earnings. Intrepid journalism is hard or impossible if you have to ask a fast-trotting subject at a political rally to please slow down so that you can keep up with them. I live with the knowledge that a slightly more serious accident could wipe me out. I do various gigs around town to make what I can and I try to carve out chunks of that most precious commodity, the drug of choice for writers: Time…

Most people unacquainted with the reality of a writing life cannot grasp the fact that while writing is not taxing in the same way as hard physical labor, it is draining, and not something you do on the fly… For writers, our work is not our reward; the amount paid for our work is the just reward.

I’ve cut a great deal of the connective tissue to try to highlight some of the article’s main points, particularly as they relate to artists who may or may not also think of themselves as activists. (I do consider myself to have an activistic purpose with some of my work, but obviously not all SFF writers do or should — it’s good for the field to have writers with varying motivations.) Her article also approaches the topic from the point of view of artists who are trying to make a living from their work, which again is a connection between her and me, though obviously not all artists are seeking to make a living off of writing and I do not mean to imply that all artists should be.

But ultimately, whether or not it’s also a hobby, writing is also work. It deserves respect as labor. Nair’s analysis of writing-as-exploited-labor is thought-provoking. It does concentrate on certain manifestations of writing, but that’s because she’s writing out of her own experiences, and the article is more interesting for that.

Go to Dakshina to read Nair’s whole article.

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Review of Alaya Dawn Johnson's Racing the Dark (Agate Bolden, 2007)

Posted on December 14, 2009 by Mandolin

Alaya Dawn Johnson’s debut novel, Racing the Dark, was released in 2007 by Agate Bolden. The epic fantasy is the first in the Spirit Binders series.

Racing the Dark begins when thirteen-year-old Lana is initiated as a diver who seeks and finds Mandagah jewels, a profession that provides her island’s main commercial export and is also religiously significant. The jewels Lana finds during her initiation mark her as chosen by the spirits, but Lana hides this fact so she can attempt to have a normal life.

The island archipelago where Lana lives is in turmoil — her home island is suffering from environmental changes that seem to be caused by the great spirits (including water, fire, wind and death) which are struggling against their bindings. When the Mandagah fish become endangered, Lana’s family flees their home, looking for work on the inner islands. Lana becomes ill from hard labor and poor diet, forcing her mother to promise her as an apprentice to a witch in order to get money to pay for a cure.

The novel follows Lana through the major periods of her life, as she learns magic from the witch, takes on the spirit of death, meets the spirit of wind, and falls in love with the spirit of water. We leave her abruptly in the middle of the climax, paving the way for the sequel.

As I contemplated what to say about this novel, I came across a review by Niall Harrison of Alaya Dawn Johnson’s short story, “Far & Deep,” which appeared this year in Interzone.

“This is how you trail a novel,” writes Harrison. “‘Far & Deep’ shares a setting with, but is not extracted from (or is sufficiently well-adapted to stand apart from), Johnson’s Spirit Binders novels.”

He goes on to say:

“Far & Deep” is not as firmly controlled as I wanted it to be; the stabs of emotion that punctuate the predominantly cool narrative tilt, a little too often, a little too close to melodrama for my taste. I don’t think the revelation of the world and the mystery are quite geared correctly; we don’t always learn about the possibility of a thing and the significance of a thing in the smoothest progression…

All this is to carp, however. They are little criticisms. The busyness of the story — the many details of setting, the deft character portraits, a sense of events with forward momentum — the basic shape of it all — carries you over such details, on a first reading, and leaves you looking forward to Johnson’s next tale.

While I don’t feel that the momentum of Racing the Dark carries the reader over its flaws on first reading, the rest of Harrison’s review is spot on for my impressions of the novel. Racing the Dark is a flawed text, but a rich one, full of minor faults and major successes.
Continue reading →

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Dollhouse Review 12/14/09

Posted on December 14, 2009 by Maia

So after a month off Dollhouse has returned with double episodes. This means my reviews will probably be even later, and a little shorter than usual. This week’s episodes were a two parter, so I’m reviewing them together. I’ll be reviewing the episodes that aired on the 11th separately (and they’ll be long reviews, even for me)
As you probably know the show has already been cancelled. For anyone who is interested in its history I recommend this interview with Mo Ryan. This quote is particularly telling:

The problems that the show encountered weren’t standalone versus mythology. Basically the show didn’t really get off the ground because the network pretty much wanted to back away from the concept five minutes after they bought it and then ultimately, the show itself is also kind of odd and difficult to market. […]But there was… We always found ourselves sort of moving away from what had been part of the original spark of the show and that ultimately just makes it really hard to write these stories. It makes it twice as hard as usual. [Normally] you have that sort of kernel that you’re building on that’s completely solid. You know, “She is a little girl with super powers.” “He is a cranky doctor who always gets it right.” Whatever it is you sort of can build off that. When you’re trying to back away from your central premise at the same time as you’re making that [show,] it gets complicated.

Continue reading →

Posted in Buffy, Whedon, etc. | 11 Comments

Hereville update (and a drawing of Mirka's cafeteria)

Posted on December 13, 2009 by Ampersand

I haven’t forgotten Hereville! I’m still working hard on the graphic novel.

Right now, I don’t have time to do much of anything but draw Hereville, which is one reason I’ve been posting so rarely. I should finish drawing the graphic novel in March, and after I’ll be a bit more active with posting.

Here’s a panel I just inked, showing Mirka’s school’s cafeteria. You can see Mirka and her sisters Gittel and Rochel, sitting at the table closest to the viewer (behind the girl with the spikey hair). Gittel is the one with glasses.

Click on the panel to see it bigger.

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Hereville | Comments Off

Translating Classical Iranian Poetry: Farid al-Din Attar

Posted on December 13, 2009 by Richard Jeffrey Newman

The only things we know for sure about the life of Farid al-Din Attar are that he was a pharmacist and a native of Nishapur, Iran, where a monument to him that was built over his tomb at the end of the 15^th century CE still stands. The best evidence that we have places his birth in Nishapur in either 1145 or 1146; and scholars seem to agree that he died in Nishapur when he was well over seventy years old, at the hands of Mongol invaders, in April of 1221. The legends which grew up around him once his fame as a poet and mystic began to spread in earnest in the 1400s tell us something about the high esteem in which others held him and his work, but—except for the fact of how he earned his living and his claim that he therefore did not have to write the eulogies and other panegyrics that court poets had to produce to earn their keep—the work itself reveals next to nothing about the details of his life.

Attar wrote six major works of poetry and one of prose. The prose work, Tadhkirat al-awliya (Memoirs of the Saints), is a collection of biographies of famous Sufis. The poetic works are Asrar-nama (Book of Mysteries), Mantiq al-tayr (The Conference of the Birds), Mushibat-nama (Book of Adversity), Mukhtar-nama (Book of Selections), Divan (Collected Poems), and the book portions of which I will be translating, Ilahi-nama (Book of the Divine). Recognized masterpieces though they are, none of these books earned Attar much recognition outside of Nishapur during his lifetime. Only after he died, in the second half of the thirteenth century, did people start to pay attention in earnest to Memoirs of the Saints, and, as mentioned above, it was not until the 15^th century that his fame as a mystic, a poet and master of narrative really began to spread.

The more people valued Attar’s work, the more they told stories about him. There is, for example, a probably apocryphal tale about the time that Rumi’s family came to Nishapur when Rumi was still a child. Attar—who was by then already an old man—immediately recognized in the young Rumi a unique curiosity and intelligence. One day, according to this narrative, Attar saw Rumi following his father out of their house and said, “Look! There goes a sea chased by an ocean!” This story also has Attar giving Rumi a copy of his Book of Mysteries and, when Rumi’s family left Nishapur, saying to Rumi’s father, “One day your son will set fire to all forlorn hearts” (Moyne & Newman 28-29).

The desire that there should have been a meeting between Attar and Rumi, certainly one of the greatest poets Iran has ever produced, no doubt arose from Rumi’s own acknowledgment of Attar as one of his spiritual and literary masters. About Attar, for example, Rumi wrote the following:

Attar was the spirit;
Sanai, its two eyes.
I am their shadow.

…

Attar has toured the seven cities of love;
I am still at the turn of the first alley. (Quoted in Moyne & Newman 29)

Rumi, in other words, looked to Attar not only, and perhaps not even primarily, as a literary influence, but also as a spiritual one. Indeed, everything Attar wrote is devoted exclusively to Sufi practice and ideas. As Leonard Lewisohn and Christopher Shackle write in their introduction to Attar and the Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight, “throughout all of [Attar’s] genuine collected works, there does not exist even one single verse without a mystical colouring [sic]; in fact, Attar dedicated his entire literary existence to Sufism” (xix). This spiritual focus lies at the root of Attar’s importance in both the East, where his stature and influence are comparable to that of John Milton in the West, and the West, where the translation and study of his work has not only influenced Western perceptions of Iran and, more generally, Islam, but has also inspired artists of all kinds.

The first work of Attar’s to be translated into English, in 1809 by the Reverend J. H. Hindley of Manchester College, was what we now know to be the apocryphal Pand-nama. Hindley translated it, according to Christopher Shackle, to help the British “colonial administrator [of India] get inside the Muslim mind-set [….]” (168). This colonialist agenda drove much of the translation of classical Iranian literature into English during the 1800s, and one can find it also, though not as explicitly expressed, in Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of The Conference of the Birds, the first authentic work of Attar’s to be brought into our language, and the only one to receive any substantive attention in the West. Fitzgerald’s translation was published by his literary executor in 1889. Most recently, in 1984, Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis published the only verse translation of the entire text.

The Conference of the Birds is about the mystical journey undertaken by thirty birds to find the Simorgh and achieve enlightenment. “Simorgh,” however, means “thirty birds” in Persian, and the point of the story is that the birds discover they are themselves the Simorgh, that enlightenment is already within them. The Conference of the Birds has sparked the imaginations of writers, poets, musicians and directors throughout the English-speaking world. American novelist Jeffrey Lewis, for example, published The Conference of the Birds: A Novel in 2005 (Other Press), while the Australian poet Anne Fairbairn recast Attar’s masterpiece in a contemporary Australian context in her book length poem, An Australian Conference Of The Birds (Black Pepper, 1995). As another example, the musical group Om recorded an album called Conference of the Birds in 2006; and the director Peter Brook, along with Jean-Claude Carriere, adapted The Conference of the Birds for the stage in a version that was published in 1982, a project for which the British poet Ted Hughes wrote one hundred poems based on Attar’s text (Heilpern 8).

Clearly, Farid al-Din Attar is a poet to be reckoned with. He is a central figure in the literature of Iran, and of Persian Sufism more specifically. Moreover his work has influenced the literary landscape of English in ways that continue to reverberate. The rest of Attar’s work deserves to take its place in English next to The Conference of the Birds, so that we can see what else he has to teach us and how else we might be inspired by what he has to say. My next post will be about Ilahi-Nameh, the book of Attar’s selections from which I will be translating.

Sources

Heilpern, John. Conference of the Birds: The Story of Peter Brook in Africa. Theatre Arts Book 1999

Lewisohn, Leonard & Christopher Shackle. Attar and the Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight. London: I. B. Tauris 2006

Moyne, John A. & Richard Jeffrey Newman. A Bird in the Garden of Angels: On the Life and Times and An Anthology of Rumi. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers 2007

Cross posted on It’s All Connected

Posted in Iran, literature | Comments Off

New Music Love, Gabriel Kahane. Putting Ice Down People's Shirts.

Posted on December 13, 2009 by Mandolin

I was happily writing along when all of a sudden Pandora turned up a musician I’d never heard before and I fell in love.

I almost never find musicians I love, but Gabriel Kahane is amazing. He’s sort of like Stephen Sondheim and Jason Robert Brown (who, I just learned by looking him up, apparently has a seriously gorgeous Jewish nose) presented as vaguely pop* music.

His instrumentation is stunning and I love the complex melodies. I almost didn’t pay attention to his lyrics until I happened upon his epic aria about the plight of a man who cannot find a roommate because of his compulsion to put ice cubes down people’s shirts.

I have a compulsion to put ice cubes down people’s shirts. As my roommate, you will likely bear the brunt of this problem. Don’t ask me why I do this. Why do I do this? Why do I do this? Years of therapy hasn’t helped. Hasn’t helped. Hasn’t heeeeeelped.

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii always have ice cubes on hand. Don’t think you can simply get rid of all the ice trays in the apartment. All the ice trays! All the ice trays!

Trust me, I have tried this. I will only buy more! I will only buy more! I will ooooooooooooooonly buuuuuuuuy moooooooore!

Really — gorgeous music *and* humor? I swoon for this music.

You, too, can listen for free online.

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*Note: my definition of “pop” means “written for enjoyment as individual songs.” As opposed to “part of a musical.” When I was in college, I complained over and over again to my friend Tim Jones-Yelvington that I couldn’t get into songs that weren’t part of a story. I thought my problem was unique until Tim’s boyfriend — a lyricist and playwright studying at NYU — revealed he had the same problem. I’ve gotten over it since, by dint of musicians like Poe (whose album Haunted is a musical response to her brother’s amazing experimental novel House of Leaves) and the Dresden Dolls (whose song “Coin-Operated Boy” is a perfect science fiction short story in three minutes).

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ETA: Why did I not previously notice that this song is on an album called “Craigslistleider?” That’s seriously fucking brilliant. So, for instance, another song in the cycle is “I have one pair of slightly used assless chaps in size 42. Will trade for spiderman comics. Will trade for spiderman comics. Will trade for spiderman comics or equivalent.” Set to disjunctively serious music. Awesome.

Posted in Whatever | 7 Comments