Friday, February 25, 2005
Think galactically, act locally.
Whenever life gets you down
And things seem sad and bad
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that’s evolving
Revolving at 900 miles an hour.
It’s orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day.
In an outer spiral orb, at 40,000 miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred million stars.
It’s a 100,000 light years side to side
It bulges in the middle 16,000 light years thick,
But out by us it’s just 3,000 light years wide.
We’re 30,000 light years from galactic central point.
We go round every 200 million years.
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light you know, 12 million miles a minute,
And that’s the fastest speed there is!
So, remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth.
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause it's bugger all down here on earth.
And things seem sad and bad
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that’s evolving
Revolving at 900 miles an hour.
It’s orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day.
In an outer spiral orb, at 40,000 miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred million stars.
It’s a 100,000 light years side to side
It bulges in the middle 16,000 light years thick,
But out by us it’s just 3,000 light years wide.
We’re 30,000 light years from galactic central point.
We go round every 200 million years.
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light you know, 12 million miles a minute,
And that’s the fastest speed there is!
So, remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth.
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause it's bugger all down here on earth.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Wal-Mart and the downward spiral of labor
You might recall, if you live in the LA area, the 5-month Kroger/Safeway grocery strike: the national grocery behemoths claimed that the threat of Wal-Mart's coming' superstores, with their grocery sections and ridiculously stripped-down worker 'wages' and 'benefits', that competition required cutting benefits for their own workers. Kroger/Safeway grocery workers (including Vons, Pavilions, Safeway and Ralph's) are unionized, so they went on strike. The strike ended with a somewhat disagreeable deal for both sides: http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/03/01/grocery.strike.ap/
Also, last year, Wal-Mart continued to court the California market by trying to introduce one of its superstores (i.e. adding grocery facilities to its considerable retail arsenal) in Inglewood. Suffice it to say that the public was displeased. Wal-Mart's goal is to establish 40 superstores in California by 2008. I don't know how many superstores they have right now, but they do have 180 traditional stores. 180! (Number includes 120 Wal-Marts and some Sam's Clubs.)
Timothy Noah puts together what basically amounts to a fact-check of Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr.'s recent speech in LA. (You can read it here.) Scott claimed, among other things:
-That Wal-Mart's average wage is around $10 per hour;
-That 74% of Wal-Mart's hourly store workers are full-time, as compared to 20-40% at 'comparable retailers';
-That Wal-Mart offers health care to part-time workers, which other companies do not.
Of course, as Noah points out, citing Wal-Mart's average wage is ridiculous if you don't know how the statistic is calculated. If the statistic includes the wages of upper brass, like Scott himself (who, Noah says, pulled in a cool $29 million in 2003), the mean's a wee bit higher than if you didn't include their salaries. Maybe the median would be a better choice. Noah uses a similar approach to debunk a few others of Scott's claims (which, Noah says, Scott didn't want taken seriously anyway):
-"Full time" at Wal-Mart is 34 hours a week, not 40;
-A dude from The Century Foundation (www.tcf.org) says that fewer than half of Wal-Mart's employees can afford the company's cheapest health plan.
So excuse me if I'm a wee bit grumbly about this corporation's systematic production of working poor.
Speaking of, the internet has provided me with (a dangerous thing in these times of terr--) evidence to support an assertion I read long ago in Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed": that Wal-Mart workers are likely to receive welfare. A study at the Berkeley Labor Center demonstrates this trend in California--Wal-Mart families (at least one member works at Wal-Mart) are 40% more likely to subscribe to taxpayer-funded health care than the average rate of all large retail employers in Cali. The discrepancy is similar for other public assistance programs too--like food stamps, low-income housing, and school lunches: 38%.
As for average wages, Wal-Mart workers (store, non-manager workers, not white collars) get the shaft. They make $9.70/hour to the $14.01/hour average the study finds for all other large retailers in California. Here's the study: http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/lowwage/walmart.pdf
California isn't alone. As this story in the LA Times reports, Alabama's having the same issues right now. As the Berkeley study notes, Georgia is the prime example, where 10,000 of the 166,000 children enrolled in the state's Children's Health Insurance Plan (called PeachCare) are--you guessed it, children of Wal-Mart workers. Georgia has something like 102 stores in Georgia alone. Wal-Mart has something like 1 million workers around the country. Therefore, the fact that the company is underpaying its workers and consequently sending them to the welfare office is a problem of tremendous moral and fiscal scope.
California and some other states have resisted Wal-Martization. They cite various concerns, but among them are the consequences for smaller local merchants and the company's god-awful labor record. Today there was a story in the Christian Science Monitor about Wal-Mart's intention to set up a megastore in Queens, NY. Even I was a bit surprised when I came back to the article later in the day to find the following note at the top of the article:
[UPDATE: Since this story was written, developers have dropped plans to build a Wal-Mart at the proposed Queens site. But Wal-Mart says it still would like to open a store in New York City and will continue looking for a new site.]
Popular resistance against the establishment of Wal-Marts has been stronger in the cities--not least because worker unions are stronger there than in rural areas (like most of Arkansas, where Wal-Mart was started). So maybe Wal-Mart doesn't screw up urban labor any worse than it is. That doesn't justify the exploitation of rural labor, Red America, so to speak. (If you want to read an amazing first-hand account of work at a rurally-based Wal-Mart, read the Wal-Mart chapter in the abovementioned "Nickel and Dimed." I promise it'll be both quick and elucidating.)
Wal-Mart. They recently settled a few--ah, well, 24--child labor violations. I'll be fair: the cases involved 16 and 17 year-olds--legally "kids", but hardly the people you think of when you hear the powerful term "child labor." (I tend to think of arthritis-plagued runny-nose 8 year-olds in Cambodia sewing our jeans.) Apparently these teens were using heavy-duty equipment that they are federally forbidden to use until they are 18.
They paid $135,540 by command of the Department of Labor--the equivalent of what Wal-Mart makes in 15 seconds, says this guy who works for the Committee on Education and the Workforce.
That's not a slap on the wrist. That's a love poke on the pelvis.
Apparently such pokes aren't effective. This New York Times story reports that in 2000, the state of Maine fined Wal-Mart $205,650 for no less than 1,436 'child labor' violations. That's poor form.
The good: Wal-Mart does make some pretty hefty donations to various community causes--which claim I will try to support at a future date, since I'm bloody tired. But does any amount of charity justify the systematic economic injustices they're party to?
Also, last year, Wal-Mart continued to court the California market by trying to introduce one of its superstores (i.e. adding grocery facilities to its considerable retail arsenal) in Inglewood. Suffice it to say that the public was displeased. Wal-Mart's goal is to establish 40 superstores in California by 2008. I don't know how many superstores they have right now, but they do have 180 traditional stores. 180! (Number includes 120 Wal-Marts and some Sam's Clubs.)
Timothy Noah puts together what basically amounts to a fact-check of Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr.'s recent speech in LA. (You can read it here.) Scott claimed, among other things:
-That Wal-Mart's average wage is around $10 per hour;
-That 74% of Wal-Mart's hourly store workers are full-time, as compared to 20-40% at 'comparable retailers';
-That Wal-Mart offers health care to part-time workers, which other companies do not.
Of course, as Noah points out, citing Wal-Mart's average wage is ridiculous if you don't know how the statistic is calculated. If the statistic includes the wages of upper brass, like Scott himself (who, Noah says, pulled in a cool $29 million in 2003), the mean's a wee bit higher than if you didn't include their salaries. Maybe the median would be a better choice. Noah uses a similar approach to debunk a few others of Scott's claims (which, Noah says, Scott didn't want taken seriously anyway):
-"Full time" at Wal-Mart is 34 hours a week, not 40;
-A dude from The Century Foundation (www.tcf.org) says that fewer than half of Wal-Mart's employees can afford the company's cheapest health plan.
So excuse me if I'm a wee bit grumbly about this corporation's systematic production of working poor.
Speaking of, the internet has provided me with (a dangerous thing in these times of terr--) evidence to support an assertion I read long ago in Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed": that Wal-Mart workers are likely to receive welfare. A study at the Berkeley Labor Center demonstrates this trend in California--Wal-Mart families (at least one member works at Wal-Mart) are 40% more likely to subscribe to taxpayer-funded health care than the average rate of all large retail employers in Cali. The discrepancy is similar for other public assistance programs too--like food stamps, low-income housing, and school lunches: 38%.
As for average wages, Wal-Mart workers (store, non-manager workers, not white collars) get the shaft. They make $9.70/hour to the $14.01/hour average the study finds for all other large retailers in California. Here's the study: http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/lowwage/walmart.pdf
California isn't alone. As this story in the LA Times reports, Alabama's having the same issues right now. As the Berkeley study notes, Georgia is the prime example, where 10,000 of the 166,000 children enrolled in the state's Children's Health Insurance Plan (called PeachCare) are--you guessed it, children of Wal-Mart workers. Georgia has something like 102 stores in Georgia alone. Wal-Mart has something like 1 million workers around the country. Therefore, the fact that the company is underpaying its workers and consequently sending them to the welfare office is a problem of tremendous moral and fiscal scope.
California and some other states have resisted Wal-Martization. They cite various concerns, but among them are the consequences for smaller local merchants and the company's god-awful labor record. Today there was a story in the Christian Science Monitor about Wal-Mart's intention to set up a megastore in Queens, NY. Even I was a bit surprised when I came back to the article later in the day to find the following note at the top of the article:
[UPDATE: Since this story was written, developers have dropped plans to build a Wal-Mart at the proposed Queens site. But Wal-Mart says it still would like to open a store in New York City and will continue looking for a new site.]
Popular resistance against the establishment of Wal-Marts has been stronger in the cities--not least because worker unions are stronger there than in rural areas (like most of Arkansas, where Wal-Mart was started). So maybe Wal-Mart doesn't screw up urban labor any worse than it is. That doesn't justify the exploitation of rural labor, Red America, so to speak. (If you want to read an amazing first-hand account of work at a rurally-based Wal-Mart, read the Wal-Mart chapter in the abovementioned "Nickel and Dimed." I promise it'll be both quick and elucidating.)
Wal-Mart. They recently settled a few--ah, well, 24--child labor violations. I'll be fair: the cases involved 16 and 17 year-olds--legally "kids", but hardly the people you think of when you hear the powerful term "child labor." (I tend to think of arthritis-plagued runny-nose 8 year-olds in Cambodia sewing our jeans.) Apparently these teens were using heavy-duty equipment that they are federally forbidden to use until they are 18.
They paid $135,540 by command of the Department of Labor--the equivalent of what Wal-Mart makes in 15 seconds, says this guy who works for the Committee on Education and the Workforce.
That's not a slap on the wrist. That's a love poke on the pelvis.
Apparently such pokes aren't effective. This New York Times story reports that in 2000, the state of Maine fined Wal-Mart $205,650 for no less than 1,436 'child labor' violations. That's poor form.
The good: Wal-Mart does make some pretty hefty donations to various community causes--which claim I will try to support at a future date, since I'm bloody tired. But does any amount of charity justify the systematic economic injustices they're party to?
Friday, February 11, 2005
On 'comfort women'
During WWII, Japanese soldiers--with the proven endorsement and support of the Imperial government--captured, drafted, or hired women throughout their colonies and occupied territories to serve as sex slaves.
I researched and wrote a small capsule about them. Read it here: An Introduction to "Comfort Women"
Bobby wrote a passionate statement in response to my first post on this blog. Read it. Say something.
I researched and wrote a small capsule about them. Read it here: An Introduction to "Comfort Women"
Bobby wrote a passionate statement in response to my first post on this blog. Read it. Say something.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Types of existence. Gad.
As Zisser writes in his blog:
"For some people, it's a fact that God exists. For others, it's a fact that God doesn't. Athiests might say that to bring your kids up without religion should be the status quo, because there is no God and we're merely telling them the truth. Deeply religious folks would probably say that they're merely instilling the truth in their kids. It's as true for them that God exists as it is for me and most people that women and men are equal, or that concrete is hard."
Personally, I do not think it is a supportable way of thinking about God, that It might be "as real as" the hardness of concrete.
Certainly the believers must make some ontological concessions when explaining their faith.
It's just a question of whether these concessions need to be 'sideways' or 'downwards'. A 'downwards' concession would mean that a believer is operating, more or less, on an assumption of hierarchy in the cosmos--like the Great Chain of Being. That is, this believer would feel that she 'demotes' God to say that he is not "as real as" your textbook or your french fries. I have a certain degree of sympathy for this. Many of us are taught never to associate any sort of negativity with God...that is, many of us are taught to respond defensively to any idea involving the syntactical structures "God canNOT" or "God is NOT". So in order to avoid making God someone who CAN'T do something or who ISN'T something (regardless of what that "something" is), people will take the easy out of saying, "Nuh uh. He's as real as anything in the world, including my Converse All-Stars. With hearts drawn on them in ballpoint pen."
I prefer the poetry and dignity of the 'sideways' concession, by which I mean to name the process of analyzing without hierarchizing. In short, separating without ranking. In terms of God and Its being 'real', for example, a believer in God could say "sure, It's real. God is real. But he's not real in the same way that your trendy bracelet is, or you are, or your love for dating shows is." This is an elegant step--maybe a bit of an evasion, too, since it spuriously expands the definition of 'real'--but it WORKS. It gives the materialists the satisfaction that God isn't in the MATERIAL realm of 'reality', and it gives the believers the right to say "GOD IS REAL!! (but you have to grant It a parallel reality of Its own)."
The only people who are screwed are the English professors (who insist that we must use language carefully). And I can live with that.
If anything, I think believers concede a valuable element of their faith (if and) when they insist that God IS as real as material objects. To me, one strength of faith is precisely its root in that which is ontologically unsupported. Now THAT's a cool God, something that can be real without being measurable or tactile in ANY way.
We would be irresponsible to assign all elements of the cosmos to merely two states of 'realness' (material v. not). I suggest a spectrum, for starters. Surely you wouldn't claim that blue jeans are every bit as real as your future white hairs. Surely my idea about distributing rubber bands with "Ze Deficit" written on them (for people to wear in mockery of wristband activism) isn't as real as my mama's love for me. They're different types of things. Why would they be equally real? Perhaps I treat them as equally real, but that is a maneuver I use because I haven't any other tactics.
Of course, this whole brain exercise rests upon simple dualities of 'real' vs. 'not real', 'worldly' vs. 'heavenly', and other intellectual Duplo blocks. Cut me some slack. I'm 22 and I haven't finished "Macbeth" yet.
And I didn't even consider the 'quotidian God' hypothesis that pleases me most. And you thought you knew me well.
Hope you're well--Saqib
"For some people, it's a fact that God exists. For others, it's a fact that God doesn't. Athiests might say that to bring your kids up without religion should be the status quo, because there is no God and we're merely telling them the truth. Deeply religious folks would probably say that they're merely instilling the truth in their kids. It's as true for them that God exists as it is for me and most people that women and men are equal, or that concrete is hard."
Personally, I do not think it is a supportable way of thinking about God, that It might be "as real as" the hardness of concrete.
Certainly the believers must make some ontological concessions when explaining their faith.
It's just a question of whether these concessions need to be 'sideways' or 'downwards'. A 'downwards' concession would mean that a believer is operating, more or less, on an assumption of hierarchy in the cosmos--like the Great Chain of Being. That is, this believer would feel that she 'demotes' God to say that he is not "as real as" your textbook or your french fries. I have a certain degree of sympathy for this. Many of us are taught never to associate any sort of negativity with God...that is, many of us are taught to respond defensively to any idea involving the syntactical structures "God canNOT" or "God is NOT". So in order to avoid making God someone who CAN'T do something or who ISN'T something (regardless of what that "something" is), people will take the easy out of saying, "Nuh uh. He's as real as anything in the world, including my Converse All-Stars. With hearts drawn on them in ballpoint pen."
I prefer the poetry and dignity of the 'sideways' concession, by which I mean to name the process of analyzing without hierarchizing. In short, separating without ranking. In terms of God and Its being 'real', for example, a believer in God could say "sure, It's real. God is real. But he's not real in the same way that your trendy bracelet is, or you are, or your love for dating shows is." This is an elegant step--maybe a bit of an evasion, too, since it spuriously expands the definition of 'real'--but it WORKS. It gives the materialists the satisfaction that God isn't in the MATERIAL realm of 'reality', and it gives the believers the right to say "GOD IS REAL!! (but you have to grant It a parallel reality of Its own)."
The only people who are screwed are the English professors (who insist that we must use language carefully). And I can live with that.
If anything, I think believers concede a valuable element of their faith (if and) when they insist that God IS as real as material objects. To me, one strength of faith is precisely its root in that which is ontologically unsupported. Now THAT's a cool God, something that can be real without being measurable or tactile in ANY way.
We would be irresponsible to assign all elements of the cosmos to merely two states of 'realness' (material v. not). I suggest a spectrum, for starters. Surely you wouldn't claim that blue jeans are every bit as real as your future white hairs. Surely my idea about distributing rubber bands with "Ze Deficit" written on them (for people to wear in mockery of wristband activism) isn't as real as my mama's love for me. They're different types of things. Why would they be equally real? Perhaps I treat them as equally real, but that is a maneuver I use because I haven't any other tactics.
Of course, this whole brain exercise rests upon simple dualities of 'real' vs. 'not real', 'worldly' vs. 'heavenly', and other intellectual Duplo blocks. Cut me some slack. I'm 22 and I haven't finished "Macbeth" yet.
And I didn't even consider the 'quotidian God' hypothesis that pleases me most. And you thought you knew me well.
Hope you're well--Saqib
Monday, February 07, 2005
Simple!! airport security vulnerability
Andy Bowers published an important piece that you can find here: http://www.slate.com/id/2113157/
Bowers makes a layman's point--that in its efforts to make convenient the airport screening process, airport security fails to utilize its first, simplest line of defense--a list of ineligible passengers. Think about it--you go to the airport; you show one person THAT you have a boarding card and THAT the name matches the one on your ID.
You proceed to your gate and you show one person a boarding card that is scanned--but you are cheerily informed that you need not evidence the link between your ID and your successful scan (which scan indicates that the card does not correspond to a blacklisted name). So, as Bowers says, all a blacklisted terrorist has to do is acquire two boarding passes (which can now be printed at home): one with her own name, to correspond to her ID; and one with somebody else's name, a name that won't bring up the blacklist once she's at the gate.
Well, at least Palestine and Israel are on the verge of a formal peace agreement (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4244493.stm)...now let's see if Abbas can bottle up the chaos in his country. We've got to get to a point where it doesn't matter who's firing the shots...the dying's got to stop.
Bowers makes a layman's point--that in its efforts to make convenient the airport screening process, airport security fails to utilize its first, simplest line of defense--a list of ineligible passengers. Think about it--you go to the airport; you show one person THAT you have a boarding card and THAT the name matches the one on your ID.
You proceed to your gate and you show one person a boarding card that is scanned--but you are cheerily informed that you need not evidence the link between your ID and your successful scan (which scan indicates that the card does not correspond to a blacklisted name). So, as Bowers says, all a blacklisted terrorist has to do is acquire two boarding passes (which can now be printed at home): one with her own name, to correspond to her ID; and one with somebody else's name, a name that won't bring up the blacklist once she's at the gate.
Well, at least Palestine and Israel are on the verge of a formal peace agreement (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4244493.stm)...now let's see if Abbas can bottle up the chaos in his country. We've got to get to a point where it doesn't matter who's firing the shots...the dying's got to stop.
Seth Stevenson (Slate.com) on Super Bowl ads
The link is here: http://www.slate.com/id/2113214/, and I don't think it's great work, but...
"An Anheuser-Busch ad salutes our troops. Yay troops."
...that's friggin hilarious.
Here's the link to the ad: http://dyn.ifilm.com/superbowlads/
The ad is titled "Anheuser Busch: Thanking the troops".
This morning on KPCC, Larry Mantle was asking whether this commercial was political. I dunno. While I was watching it, I felt like it was sort of lame...really sentimental, when we probably should be wiping away tears for the poor sobs whose nation was invaded, who get one hour of electricity a day, who don't have clean water, who are threatened for wanting to participate in the civic system, who vote in spite of threats and never bitch about it.
All the same, the middle-left makes sure the country knows that they too "support our troops". Supposedly this is an apolitical question--how could anyone NOT 'support' our boys? (And girls--if the Busch spot is to be believed, after all, something like 40% of our troops are women, and half of them are minorities.) And I can begin to see that. At the very least, the middle-left needs to be taken seriously by Red America. A guaranteed way to lose that is to speak in "I told you so" tones whenever American troops die in Iraq.
"An Anheuser-Busch ad salutes our troops. Yay troops."
...that's friggin hilarious.
Here's the link to the ad: http://dyn.ifilm.com/superbowlads/
The ad is titled "Anheuser Busch: Thanking the troops".
This morning on KPCC, Larry Mantle was asking whether this commercial was political. I dunno. While I was watching it, I felt like it was sort of lame...really sentimental, when we probably should be wiping away tears for the poor sobs whose nation was invaded, who get one hour of electricity a day, who don't have clean water, who are threatened for wanting to participate in the civic system, who vote in spite of threats and never bitch about it.
All the same, the middle-left makes sure the country knows that they too "support our troops". Supposedly this is an apolitical question--how could anyone NOT 'support' our boys? (And girls--if the Busch spot is to be believed, after all, something like 40% of our troops are women, and half of them are minorities.) And I can begin to see that. At the very least, the middle-left needs to be taken seriously by Red America. A guaranteed way to lose that is to speak in "I told you so" tones whenever American troops die in Iraq.
Words can do injustice.
Blogs shouldn't have introductions.
The current presidency is reshaping the way that I, and potentially other Americans--maybe a lot of them--view language. The art of the bromide isn't one that this president invented--his predecessors, Dem and GOP, have fired off their own caps, empty ammunition, a hollow pop. Elegance isn't a precondition, or a determiner of, a steaming Reagan-esque platitude...JFK was elegant, but it was because he was intelligent and well-read. I can't say either of the current president, but he knows what Reagan did: that delivery and non-verbal communication can override the substance of the communication itself. I don't know if there are many simpletons out there who buy this constant hammering at the dignified ideas of "freedom", "peace", &c. [The people who call into C-SPAN at midday, Fox N. and talk radio certainly seem to entertain such empty words' abilities to make reality rather than describe it.]
I'm contextualizing my frustration in the Teach for America documentary I watched last Thursday. It was a CNN doc to be sure--long intro sequences with dramatic music (news, after all, is fast, hard, and movielike--as x% of heterosexual males conceptualize sex) and embarrassingly lengthy commentaries from Aaron Brown, celebrity journalist.
I've gotta try to keep my focus here. First I'm soloing on the president's word poverty, then on cable news. I'm not supposed to be writing the great 'Merican album here.
No, I'm supposed to be addressing the vast diversity of our society--and condemning some of it. The TFA film showed me exactly what I wanted to know about--the sheer difficulty of the circumstances in low-opportunity schools in the USA. Kids who hold pencils like thin soda cans. Teenagers whose friends are shot to death less than a mile from school; they leave class and go to a shrine of roses and pictures lain on the broken, dirty concrete. World history books ten years old. An entire class talking and walking around while a short, young, white lass screams her unheeded lecture.
I shouldn't overdo this. Their situation doesn't need (or deserve) to be dramatized in order to be understood as demanding change. But as I left the film, I found myself wondering about something I heard at the GOP convention. Rod Paige, the Secretary of Education. Let me tell you, the guy's evaluation of No Child Left Behind--and the racial inequalities in education, etc.--were sparkling. And I know this shouldn't matter (and it's embarrassing to admit it to my assuredly dignified readers), but he is black. (And that knowledge played into my reception of his speech.)
Schwarzenegger made similarly upsetting comments. In his famous speech, he praised the nurses and teachers of California...stylishly neglecting to mention his sweeping cuts to public medicine programs and education. Don't you see? It doesn't matter what's real; it just matters what and how you communicate.
And on that walk down Westwood Blvd., I found myself thinking about social privilege. George Bush has never attended--has very likely never even visited--a down-in-the-dumps high school with prophylactics scattered throughout the grounds, 22 books per 172 students, and blue and red shirts. (You're right--it is ironic how the significance of two colors changes as you go from white to colored society.) And as long as George Bush hasn't been there--what goddam right does he have to comment on the situation?
That is the injustice of words. They can betray truth, especially when spoken to deserted minds. Look, I didn't go to a ghetto high school--and neither did you, reader. But I've done my reading. I've seen and worked at a city school. For what I lack in experience, I strive to make up in knowledge. This is a start--and only that.
But I consider it a patent wrong for those who lack experience and knowledge to speak of things as though they are ok.
Here are some words you should consider, boss. "I don't know."
The current presidency is reshaping the way that I, and potentially other Americans--maybe a lot of them--view language. The art of the bromide isn't one that this president invented--his predecessors, Dem and GOP, have fired off their own caps, empty ammunition, a hollow pop. Elegance isn't a precondition, or a determiner of, a steaming Reagan-esque platitude...JFK was elegant, but it was because he was intelligent and well-read. I can't say either of the current president, but he knows what Reagan did: that delivery and non-verbal communication can override the substance of the communication itself. I don't know if there are many simpletons out there who buy this constant hammering at the dignified ideas of "freedom", "peace", &c. [The people who call into C-SPAN at midday, Fox N. and talk radio certainly seem to entertain such empty words' abilities to make reality rather than describe it.]
I'm contextualizing my frustration in the Teach for America documentary I watched last Thursday. It was a CNN doc to be sure--long intro sequences with dramatic music (news, after all, is fast, hard, and movielike--as x% of heterosexual males conceptualize sex) and embarrassingly lengthy commentaries from Aaron Brown, celebrity journalist.
I've gotta try to keep my focus here. First I'm soloing on the president's word poverty, then on cable news. I'm not supposed to be writing the great 'Merican album here.
No, I'm supposed to be addressing the vast diversity of our society--and condemning some of it. The TFA film showed me exactly what I wanted to know about--the sheer difficulty of the circumstances in low-opportunity schools in the USA. Kids who hold pencils like thin soda cans. Teenagers whose friends are shot to death less than a mile from school; they leave class and go to a shrine of roses and pictures lain on the broken, dirty concrete. World history books ten years old. An entire class talking and walking around while a short, young, white lass screams her unheeded lecture.
I shouldn't overdo this. Their situation doesn't need (or deserve) to be dramatized in order to be understood as demanding change. But as I left the film, I found myself wondering about something I heard at the GOP convention. Rod Paige, the Secretary of Education. Let me tell you, the guy's evaluation of No Child Left Behind--and the racial inequalities in education, etc.--were sparkling. And I know this shouldn't matter (and it's embarrassing to admit it to my assuredly dignified readers), but he is black. (And that knowledge played into my reception of his speech.)
Schwarzenegger made similarly upsetting comments. In his famous speech, he praised the nurses and teachers of California...stylishly neglecting to mention his sweeping cuts to public medicine programs and education. Don't you see? It doesn't matter what's real; it just matters what and how you communicate.
And on that walk down Westwood Blvd., I found myself thinking about social privilege. George Bush has never attended--has very likely never even visited--a down-in-the-dumps high school with prophylactics scattered throughout the grounds, 22 books per 172 students, and blue and red shirts. (You're right--it is ironic how the significance of two colors changes as you go from white to colored society.) And as long as George Bush hasn't been there--what goddam right does he have to comment on the situation?
That is the injustice of words. They can betray truth, especially when spoken to deserted minds. Look, I didn't go to a ghetto high school--and neither did you, reader. But I've done my reading. I've seen and worked at a city school. For what I lack in experience, I strive to make up in knowledge. This is a start--and only that.
But I consider it a patent wrong for those who lack experience and knowledge to speak of things as though they are ok.
Here are some words you should consider, boss. "I don't know."
