- Bean emailed me this Get Fuzzy strip, and it totally cracked me up.
- I’ve been ignoring the Bush/Kerry polls because they’re not meaningful unless they’re broken down into state-level results. But Ruy Teixeira looks at the battleground state poll results and finds some cause for optimism.
- Harpo Marx was pretty good with his little horns, but he had nothing on this French dude.
- The Boston Review has an interesting “forum” on “What We Owe to Parents.” Anne Alstott proposes a $5000 annual grant to the caretaker parent in each household (no more than one per household); this money can be spent on child care, on the caretaker’s education, or on the caretaker’s retirement account. Several (mostly feminist) scholars reply to this proposal, both supportively and critically.
- One problem with focusing on child-rearing is that it ignores other kinds of caretaking – such as taking care of elderly relatives. Bodies Politic reports on a study of “the toll of caring for an elderly spouse.”
- Yet another poll showing that a lot of Americans are just plain ignorant. Sometimes I just feel like giving up and moving to France.
A new poll shows that 57 percent of Americans continue to believe that Saddam Hussein gave “substantial support” to al-Qaida terrorists before the war with Iraq, despite a lack of evidence of that relationship.
In addition, 45 percent of Americans have the impression that “clear evidence” was found that Iraq worked closely with Osama bin Laden’s network, and a majority believe that before the war Iraq either had weapons of mass destruction (38 percent) or a major program for developing them (22 percent).
There’s no known evidence to date that these statements are true.
Americans live in a fantasy world, in which the USA is incapable of doing wrong, and the easiest and simplest foreign policy fairy tale is always considered true. Next to the power of that fantasy world, little things like facts have no power.
- Speaking of polls, Liberal Oasis has a good piece up on how pro-lifers spin the poll results – and the “liberal media” lets them get away with it.
- Hey, if you haven’t checked out Feministing, a new feminist blog, you really should – it rocks, it rolls, it stays up all night and trashes the hotel room.
- Speaking of Feministing, it, Feministe, and “Alas a Blog” were all recommended on left-wing radio station Air America last week. Neat. Thanks to Bill at Liberal Oasis, who did the mentioning.
- Sara at Diotima is on a hot streak. First, former IWF intern Sara fisks the IWF blog for assuming that women who say they’re being discriminated against are just whiners. Second, a good critique of Will Saletan’s Slate advice to pro-choicers. And third, a post about the “is legalizing prostitution a good way to fight sex-trafficking?” question.
- By the way, Saletan’s Slate piece on abortion – arguing that pro-choicers need to frame abortion as a “healthy families” issue (“They don’t want abortions. They want to be moms’when they’re ready.”) is worth reading, even though his interpretation of how feminists view the “who decides” slogan is egregious bullshit. I’m not sure I agree with Sara’s critique; intellectually, she’s right, but as a practical matter, I think the pro-choice groups would survive (have already survived) being a little intellectually inconsistent.
- Via Body and Soul, a good essay on Kerry, abortion, and the Catholic Church.
- Legal Affairs has a good article about rape of men in prison.
The traditional rationale for prison rape is the lack of women, but most psychologists consider this facile. They see prison rape mainly as a means by which people who have been stripped of control over the most basic aspects of their lives’when to eat a meal, take a shower, or watch TV’can reclaim some sense of power. As one Louisiana prisoner, Wilbert Rideau, wrote, “the psychological pain involved in such an existence creates an urgent and terrible need for reinforcement of [a prisoner’s] sense of manhood and personal worth.” Others believe that prisoners become rapists out of fear of becoming victims themselves; it’s a choice between becoming predator or prey. The psychologist Daniel Lockwood, in his study Prison Sexual Violence, calls this strategy “pre-emptive self-defense.”
That *was* an outstanding “Get Fuzzy”.
I’ve been considering getting the heck out of the country myself, but I think I’ll stay, just for the opportunity to say, in a few years, “You see, you ignernt buck-toads! Ya see?! I TOLD YOU SO!”
Major league baseball is the thing that keeps me in the country. Sure, Toronto has the Blue Jays, but . . . you know Toronto may be a good place to live after all.
Don’t leave. You’re either going to be America’s conscience now, or America’s victim later.
Can’t it be both?
Yeah, which is why we’d better do a good job as conscience.
i wonder about that last article that you linked to – if that might help explain why men are more likely to rape or be raped by other prisoners than women are. (there’s a fair amount of rape of female prisoners, but it tends to be done by male guards and not by other female prisoners. not to say that female prisoners raping each other is non-existant, just much less prevalant than male prisoner to prisoner rape).
meaning: since women’s socialized role in society creates feelings of powerlessness, there isn’t as urgent a need to try to take power when put into a total institution like a prison, because it’s not as much of a transition from “little power over one’s own circumstances” to “almost no power over one’s own circumstances”… whereas men, used to having nearly total control of their circumstances, can be shocked by the transition and desperate to repair the shock by trying to gain some small control.
please note also i’m not saying anything about all women’s agency, i’m just generalizing that society still tends to teach women that they are not the authors of their own destiny, and that they should be comfortable with decisions affecting their lives being made for them.