Looks like it’s time.
Archives for May 2011
A Foolish Consistency
Doug Mataconis makes this point in his examination of Ron Paul’s statement that he wouldn’t have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act because it violates “property rights” of the owners of establishments that chose to discriminate:
It’s also worth noting that Plessy v. Ferguson involved a Louisiana law that was designed to prevent the Pullman Company from offering equal seating options to blacks. That, in fact, was the entire purpose of Jim Crow laws. Even if, for example, the Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina had wanted to serve the four black college students who sat down at their lunch counter on February 1, 1960, the laws in place at the time told them that they couldn’t. Racial segregation in the South wasn’t a product of the free market, it was the product of a state imposing racial prejudices under the threat of criminal prosecution. For that reason alone, it was a violation of the 14th Amendment and the Federal Government was entirely justified in trying to bring it down.
Both of the Pauls fall back on the view that it’s oh-so-awful that the federal government might tell some private business owner that they can’t run a business however the hell they please, but they conveniently ignore the fact that state governments were imposing the same tyranny upon the same business owners for decades. I’m willing to imagine that the Pauls truly believe, as Goldwater did, that the Civil Rights Act is partially unconstitutional, and that the political convenience that many of their supporters aren’t big fans of that measure isn’t the reason they would have opposed it. So, the right question for the Pauls isn’t “would you have voted for the Civil Rights Act”, but “what would you have done about Jim Crow laws?” And if they can’t be as full-throated and precise about how the federal government had a legitimate role in ending that kind of tyranny, then not only do they deserve to be called racists, but Libertarians who support them have a lot of explaining to do.
Ugly
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund and a presidential hopeful in France, has been arrested and charged with attempted rape, criminal sexual act and unlawful imprisonment, New York City police and the IMF said on Sunday.
[…]Mr. Strauss-Kahn allegedly forced a cleaning woman onto his bed and sexually assaulted her at around 1 p.m. Saturday inside his room at the Sofitel Hotel near Times Square, the official said.Mr. Strauss-Kahn allegedly allowed the woman to leave and then departed for the airport, the official said. The alleged victim informed co-workers who then alerted authorities, the official said. […]
The Times report says that the police have DNA evidence.
Open Thread: Cave of Forgotten Dreams
This one is absolutely worth paying the 3D premium, if you have any interest in paleoarchaeology, caves, art, or lions…
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We are none of us liable to tour the Chauvet cave in person — to preserve the delicate microclimate, it is accessible to only a handful of specialists for a few hours at a time — so it’s a wonderful thing that a filmmaker both as gifted & as experienced as Herzog was allowed to be one of those specialists. Frankly, I’m not sure I could risk a tour, because even the filmed images made me long to touch, to get my face up close and inhale, even to lick the glittering calcifications that have coated “humanity’s first known artwork” over the last 30,000 years…
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Best part of the film, for me and the Spousal Unit, were the lovingly detailed closeups and full panoramas of the cave lions; there are lots of reproductions of Chauvet’s ‘three bisons and four horses’ mural, but not many good images of the rhinos and lions which Herzog lingers over. Also excellent, the French archaeologist telling a German filmmaker in English the story of an Australian aborigine showing a European anthropologist rock artwork from his ancestors’ dreamtime — while carefully redaubing some of the time-eroded images. How can you risk damaging the image? asks the fieldworker, and the man tells him I am not drawing a picture, I am the instrument of the Spirit whose image is meant to be here. [that is my best interpretation of the fourth- or fifth-hand account]
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Another one of the specialists describing the Chauvet cave points out two overlapping horses that look contemporaneous, but which carbon dating the charcoal used to draw them indicate were drawn 5,000 years apart. We’ve lost the capacity, I think, to imagine a timebinding universe where an artist/shaman/worshipper is adding their own interpretation to something that is as immediate as yesterday and yet older than our most ‘established’ modern monotheisms…
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The film ‘starts slow’, with gorgeous panoramic shots of the French vineyards and landscapes, little vignettes of the scientists, gradually circling into the barely-lit closed-in majesties of the cave itself. This feels like a ‘Wernerism’ to me, although I haven’t seen enough of his films to be sure. It closes with a brief ‘Postscript’ about the albino alligators fortuitously bred in a biodome using the excess heat generated by a giant nuclear-power complex “just 20 miles from Chauvet, as the crow flies”. Those alligators seem to be a sore point for many of the professional reviewers, but they make perfect sense in context. We’ve just spent some 85 minutes trying to appreciate / understand why our distant ancestors chose to put “the first human-produced art” inside caverns that have been blocked off for the last 20,000 years; who knows what our inheritors, thirty thousand years from now, will make of gorgeous moonstone-luminescent reptiles with strawberry-tinted catseyes, born as the unimagined offshoot of the grinding generation of power?
Why bother having the election?
In order to register for the event on Tuesday where Erick Erickson is slowly and sensuously going to remove each of his items of clothing live on camera before giving Donald Trump the oral servicing of his dreams, I had to sign up to RedState email.
I haven’t seen that much dumb in my computer since George W. Bush came to visit Shady Pines and got his hand caught in my hard drive because I told him there were magic elves with chocolates living in there.
My favorite email so far?
Do mainstream media polls reflect your views?
Join thousands of others and cast your vote now.VOTE NOW: www.myteaparty.org/poll
In partnership with Contract from America and American Majority, we are conducting the 2012 Tea Party Presidential Poll, which gauges support using a unique “run-off” matchup methodology. The methodology is designed to elicit deeper preferences from voters and make it much more difficult for well-organized campaigns to “game” the system. The results continue to be compelling.
Over the next year, the 2012 Tea Party Presidential Poll will be regularly updated to reflect changing preferences, and should serve as an important election tool for the media and campaigns in determining tea party support throughout the 2012 election cycle.
They have even included President Obama and Hilary Clinton in the match-ups, presumably so they can crow about how poorly Mr. Uppity is polling in their unbiased poll.
Current results:
I have blue eyes
This Jane Elliot documentary seems to me to have a lot of useful things to say about racism – although here within the context of UK society – although, as will become apparent if you watch, the things it has to say are sometimes confused or even contradictory.
It is, however, a wonderful illustration of the process whereby white people such as me, and perhaps you, who don’t want to be racist and certainly don’t try to act in a racist manner, can fall into the trap of not recognizing racism or inequality when it happens, or of discounting the reactions of people of other races when they identify something as racist, simply because we exist in a different frame and have not experienced theirs.
At one point, the wonderful and articulate* black woman participant who is interviewed throughout the program summarizes it as:
You can be in a situation where [racism] goes completely over your head because it doesn’t affect you, and because it doesn’t affect you, it doesn’t exist.
There are moments here which are genuinely shocking to me. A blond teacher, who has spent the entire day denying that she needs to learn anything about racism, and who I would quite happily strangle, notes how one of her black students was injured and she was surprised that her skin was pink underneath the graze.
I would be horrified to think that I might react the same way, but self aware enough to recognize that I might unwittingly do so.
As the little old lady says towards the end:
I’m learning.
* Yes, I know “articulate” is a loaded word, but as one who is in love with words, the thing that struck me most powerfully about her was how beautifully she composed what she said.
Please ignore the comments on the Youtube, including those of the racist arse who uploaded the video.
You Can’t Handle The Truth (and yes, I’m looking at you, John Cole)
Bad videos? You want bad videos? You can’t handle bad videos…
And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the (blessedly) short version of the semifinal of Eurovision 2011.
Yes, I am that cruel.
You’re welcome.
(And did I mention that the semester just ended. Does it show?)
PPS: Moldova at 3:44 is not to be missed.
You Can’t Handle The Truth (and yes, I’m looking at you, John Cole)Post + Comments (66)