Today Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska and in her tenure she demonstrated none of those qualities. Yes, as the voice of reason the Commentator lands squarely in the middle of the argument about this woman. Actually I take that back–we probably land outside of these arguments, probably on a couch somewhere smoking weed and watching “Entourage”. Republicans like to argue that this woman is a trailblazer for women’s equality while Democrats like to scoff at whether or not she can “see Russia from her backyard”.
So what’s our opinion about this woman?
Nothing. A big, fat nothing. She’s from a state where bears outnumber humans and quite frankly no one would care about her if she didn’t look like your friend’s hot mom who you just know was totally giving you the eyes. The controversy surrounding Palin is also the only thing propping her up. Therefore people should regard her as what she really is–a nonexistent blip on the radar of American history. (The Civil War, The Declaration of Independance, D-Day, for God’s sake the Teapot Dome Scandal. These are the things to be remembered in American history.)
But what about the fact that she’s a woman, isn’t that something? Actually, no it isn’t. First of all she didn’t do anything for the “first time in American history”. Last I heard some bald guy was VP. Many “minorities” have been involved in the electoral process before–Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Alan Keyes, Bill Richardson and so on. Just because your invited to the party doesn’t mean you’re going to get let in, and it’s asinine to think that Palin has “made a difference” for women whatsoever in America.
Second, it shouldn’t be a landmark event for a woman to be a VP candidate–it should be a given that women can do and should be appointed to that position. Just because she’s a the first woman doesn’t mean she made a difference–we should all know that women can easily do Presidential and Vice-Presidential jobs just as well as men–Palin’s nomination doesn’t make her fucking Jackie Robinson. Her nomination alone shouldn’t be cause for the celebration of her person–for all we know she was just in the right place at the right time (unlike those wolves she shot from a helicopter). Simply being nominated for something isn’t an accomplishment. Well, you know, unless you’re Heath Ledger and they totally boned you on Best Actor. But I digress.
Last, if you want some truly amazing historical women why don’t you look back at some real Americans? Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman. If you’re looking at Sarah Palin as a historical figure in women’s rights then you seriously don’t know anything about America. Including her name in the same breath as these women does a great disservice to their memory and their actual accomplishments for women.
But I’m really forgetting something, aren’t I? I forgot about the whole “President” thing. If you’re one of the idiot Republicans backing her 2012 bid or one of the idiot Democrats demonizing it you should seriously give yourself a break. All your efforts, both in glorifying and denouncing Sarah Palin are all for not. Know why?
Because it’s not going to happen.
If you aren’t smart enough to figure out why, then I guess that’s your time and energy to waste isn’t it? But you can’t say I didn’t warn you.
So now she’s out of office. What’s she going to do? Is she going to run in 2012? Is she going to stay at home with her family? Is she going to go on a book signing tour? The answers to all of these questions are for jabbering idiots whose lives revolve around people who don’t matter. Sarah Palin resigning is sort of like one of the Teletubbies being gay; it’s big news for a day but eventually it gets put into perspective and it just becomes another Wednesday.
Sarah Palin will go the way of Sisqo, Lou Bega and Beanie Babies. She will eventually become one of those things you find in your garage only to look back and ask, “Why did I care about these things so much?”
Well, tonight saw President Obama’s “health care forum”. The ABC network has come under a great deal of criticism for its perceived kowtowing to the Obama Administration and refusing to sell ad time to the dissenting Republicans (can you imagine the outrage had the players instead been Fox News and President Bush, circa 2004?). The Republicans are calling the whole thing an “infomercial“. Media Matters is calling Fox News a bunch of hyporites (I guess whether “turnabout is fair play” or “he who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster” is a more appropriate slogan for the left’s sudden enthusiasm for uncomfortably close ties between the government and the media depends on which side of the aisle one hails from…). Meanwhile, reports indicate that ABC employees donated to the Obama campaign by a factor of roughly 80:1 ($124,421 to Obama, $1,550 to McCain) and Michelle Malkin is howling about “astroturfing“. Other statistics (”damned lies…” and all that…) indicate that 89% of Americans are more or less satisfied with their health care, raising the question of why exactly it’s so urgent to push through health care reform right now — as others have mentioned, maybe fixing Medicare first would provide an encouraging example of Obama’s brilliant ideas on health care — or is Walter Reed a harbinger of state-run health care (actually Walter Reed is state-run health care…)?
But never mind all that. The masthead says “a conservative journal of opinion” and, since we’re not getting any of that sweet, sweet, free stimulus money (and since we find the idea of the government bailing out newspapers utterly repugnant– sorry journalism majors), I thought I’d call attention to Cato’s crucial coverage of what’s poised to be a total health-care debacle — one of positively federal proportions. In any case, you can find an informative live-blogged response to the President’s err… “highly adversarial” appearance on ABC here.
And in case you don’t give two squirts of piss about the de facto socialization of health care in this country, I invite you to instead discuss this article, which seeks to establish whether or not the “FreeCreditReport.com band” is “legit” or not. But I’ll never respect you again.
“Obama refuses to ‘meddle’ in Iran“. I guess letting the world know that the President of the United States stands behind people who’re being beaten and shot by “security forces” for demonstrating against corrupt elections might run the risk of “offending” Iran.
The President is in full-on “grovel” mode, it seems. Martin Peretz has some related thoughts regarding the “Cairo Speech”.
Rather than trying to append this to the smoking, charred remains of the last post that dealt with intellectual diversity, I thought I’d give this piece from Kenneth Anderson at The Volokh Conspiracy its own space.
Much has been made in the comments section of this blog about what the problem actually looks like and what can be done about it, and I think that Anderson does a reasonably good job of crystallizing a few of the major concerns regarding the lack of intellectual diversity in the academy.
He makes clear the results of a lack of intellectual diversity in the academy, and it’s not just that students run the risk of ending up in a classroom with biased instructors. Rather, courses that approach subject matter from a conservative or libertarian perspective simply are not taught. This is due in large part to the fact that many existing faculty are either uninterested or unable to teach such courses, with the outcome that classes in conservative political thought or historical interpretation, etc. have more or less disappeared from curricula. For support he cites Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, who writes:
To be sure, a political science department may feature a course on American political thought that includes a few papers from “The Federalist” and some chapters from Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.”
But most students will hear next to nothing about the conservative tradition in American politics that stretches from John Adams to Theodore Roosevelt to William F. Buckley Jr. to Milton Friedman to Ronald Reagan. This tradition emphasizes moral and intellectual excellence, worries that democratic practices and egalitarian norms will threaten individual liberty, attends to the claims of religion and the role it can play in educating citizens for liberty, and provides both a vigorous defense of free-market capitalism and a powerful critique of capitalism’s relentless overturning of established ways. It also recognized early that communism represented an implacable enemy of freedom.
[...]
While ignoring conservatism, the political theory subfield regularly offers specialized courses in liberal theory and democratic theory; African-American political thought and feminist political theory; the social theory of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and the neo-Marxist Frankfurt school; and numerous versions of postmodern political theory.
Berkowitz argues that, far from actively seeking “conservative” scholars during faculty searches, departments should instead look for professors who, regardless of their political background, would be able to convincingly teach a courses about conservative interpretations of history, ideas, politics, etc. to complement the stable of scholars in virtually every humanities or social science department who are fluent in leftish ideas.
This approach would likely have the effect of attracting a more “diverse” group of applicants and nullifies the basis of the argument that only “liberal people apply to liberal schools” (or the even more absurd notion that conservatives are simply too thick to be academics) while at the same time avoiding any sort of political “litmus test” during the hiring process.
While approvingly quoting Berkowitz’s admonition against “affirmative action for conservatives,” Anderson also notes the stultifying results of the left-liberal coccoon in academia:
… within an academic institution, I find myself treated as “conservative” - either to recoil from in faint horror, with a certain advice to students, well, if you take him, you have to know what you’re getting, or with a certain faint institutional pride that we’re broad-minded enough to have someone like him, which is to say, there is nothing an academic institution cannot praise itself for if it tries hard enough. I’ve had conversations - earnest, well-intentioned - that amounted to saying, “We’re so glad you’re our token conservative.”
If a quality education that exposes students to a wide variety of ideas and perspectives is indeed the mission of this institution (and sometimes one wonders…), then it simply isn’t enough to retort “well, go take an economics class” whenever someone complains that conservative ideas are given short shrift in the academy. Students actually need to be able to expose themselves to a truly diverse set of ideas that are taught by people who’re interested in and qualified to teach them, regardless of their political background (I mean, can you imagine what a class at the UO campus on the ideas of Ronald Reagan or William F. Buckley might look like?).
As it stands, students are often presented with the illusion of choice and given the option of taking courses in any number of subjects, a large number of which approach the course material, whatever it may be, with much the same theoretical framework.
That’s not diversity, and telling conservative academics to get out of town and move to Texas doesn’t change that.
Well, anyone who’s been following the news in the last few days knows that the European Left took a bit of a drubbing in recent elections. In some ways it’s heartening. But then you remember that fascists like the BNP won some seats and that kind of puts a damper on the whole thing.
Anyways, the preceding paragraph merely served as an excuse for me to link to this YouTube video:
Journalism grad student Dan Lawton has a new post over at his blog with responses to his recent ODE opinion piece on the lack of ideological diversity on campus. The responses are all very predictable (”There are no Republican professors because you have to be smart to be a professor. Hurr hurr hurr!”). But then you get to the comment from UO journalism teacher Dan Morrison, who is on the record as saying (emphasis added):
You may be very upset that the University of Oregon, which, I may point out, is funded by people who live in a liberal state, and therefore, no surprise, tends to be liberal, attracts professor applying for a job who tend to be liberal. But as a student you have a choice. You do not have to come here. You most certainly can choose to spend your money to go to school in Alabama, or Texas, or Mississippi, or Georgia, or Louisiana or South Carolina. And if you like conservatism, you can certainly attend the University of Texas, and you can walk past the statue of Jefferson Davis every day on yourway to class.
Whoa, whoa, hold on. Full stop. Really? I don’t know where Morrison gets off, but the last time I checked, being conservative does not mean one is some sort of neo-Confederate. In fact, that’s a fairly disgusting and disingenuous statement to make. Way to really raise the level of discourse there, tiger. Of course, maybe Morrison has just been yukking it up with his UO colleagues so long that he doesn’t realize everyone’s not an effete, latte-sipping pinko. (Do you see how that works?)
Second, perhaps some of us can’t afford out-of-state tuition. Perhaps some of us simply want a decent education at the state’s supposed “flagship university.” And as a “flagship university” or a “hot brand” or whatever the UO’s touting itself as these days, maybe we’re upset because we’re paying to sit in class and listen to pious, liberal professors tell us how evil cars/Bush/guns are instead of trying to provide us with an actual education.
P.S. I forgot to mention: Lawton challenged Morrison to an open debate of the subject, which Morrison declined.
There is no training manual for being a legislator. You don’t have a boss, you have 60,000 voters. Heck, you don’t even have an official job description to fall back on.
Like many jobs, this is one you learn by doing. As my second legislative session draws to a close, I can assure you that I am still learning.
Well, golly. It’s nice to know Ben’s learned something from this massive waste of taxpayer dollars. I guess now that he’s got a little experience under his belt, he realizes what a terrible idea his proposal was, and has abandoned any illusions of trying to resurrect it, right?
Absolutely not… I have tried to apply the above lessons to a new version of the tax.
The first thing on his list of reasons why we need to increase the tax?
Oregon hasn’t raised its beer tax in more than 30 years.
One of the posts in the comments section put it nicely:
I love the rationalization the just because a tax hasn’t been raised in awhile it is your profound duty to see that it be raised.
Gov Schwarzenegger believes internet activities such as Facebook, Twitter and downloading to iPods show that young people are the first to adopt new online technologies, and so the internet is also the best way to learn in classrooms.
I think there may be a logical fallacy skulking around in there somewhere.
I’ll confess: until a few days ago, I’d never heard of Dr. George Tiller. I’m basically pro-choice, but the abortion issue is just not one that I follow particularly closely. While I’ve heard of (and very much dislike) some of the more notorious anti-abortion groups like “Operation Rescue”, my general sense is that most people on the pro-life side of the debate are fundamentally good people who simply have different values (on this question, at least), than I do.
But my intent is not for this post to muse over whether abortion is right or wrong — so please keep your comments on that issue to yourself; no one here cares what you think about it, so I’ll just delete those that try to turn the comments section into an abortion screaming match.
What I want to talk about instead is identity politics, the flawed notion of collective responsibility, and attempts to shape the narrative by seizing on events like the murder of George Tiller and using them for political gain.
Speaking of The Gay, New Hampshire just became the sixth state in the U.S. to legalize gay marriage. Congratulations to NH and all its residents. For being so “forward-thinking” and “progressive,” Oregon is starting to look a little sad.
A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about Dan Lawton’s research into political diversity at the UO. Well, Lawton penned an opinion piece for the Ol’ Dirty yesterday that expands on his original article.
Among the full-time faculty of the University departments of journalism, law, political science, sociology and economics, there are 111 registered Oregon voters. Two of them are Republicans.
[T]here were 98 Democrats, nine Independents, two Republicans and two members of the Pacific Green party staring back at me. Both of the two Republicans were in the School of Law, and one of them was University President Dave Frohnmayer.
Frohnmayer, you ol’ polecat! But seriously, you should read Lawton’s whole article. It’s an argument that we at the Commentator have voiced many a time: namely that a politically homogeneous faculty is doing a disservice to students who come here to be intellectually challenged.
I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” said Judge Sotomayor, who is now considered to be near the top of President Obama’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.
It’s nice to see that the President of the United States is nominating an open believer in race-based identity politics to the highest court in the land.
I am not yet sure what position to take on President Obama’s selection of Sonia Sotomayor. My general sense is that she is very liberal, and thus likely to take what I consider to be mistaken positions on many major constitutional law issues. I am also not favorably impressed with her notorious statement that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Not only is it objectionable in and of itself, it also suggests that Sotomayor is a committed believer in the identity politics school of left-wing thought. Worse, it implies that she believes that it is legitimate for judges to base decisions in part on their ethnic or racial origins.
Once again the mask slips and the race politics espoused by people like Diego Hernandez, the Commentator’s erstwhile punching bag Nate Gulley, and Sonia Sotomayor is exposed as little more than racism by another name.
Not appearing together at the Rose Garden: Van Halen!
I wrote an article about a month ago about a trend I was noticing among our “classic” bands–their ability to travel under their original moniker even though their main influencing members left or had died some time ago. I never sent it in to our editor because it was the result of a drunken, 3am conversation with a friend of mine that somehow concluded that Eric Clapton was responsible for this phenomenon because he likes to leave and form bands (and is a general douche). Anyways, I decided this was a crap argument and was best when viewed under the light of alcoholic favor and decided to shelve it.
Apparently the Oregon state legislation has become so bored that they’ve decided to steal my ideas. In case you haven’t noticed, they are working on passing a bill called the “Truth in Music Act” which entails laws requiring bands to bill themselves as such if they do not include at least one original member of the band. Basically this is a protection for people who are too retarded to remember that Freddie Mercury died in ‘91 and that they shouldn’t expect the mustachioed singer to show up at Spirit Mountain July 7th-13th.
Other than the disappointing promise of more laws that go against the process of natural selection, I find it continually disheartening to find the Oregon lawmakers wasting time with such writs of obscurity. People don’t need to be protected from this–they need to be protected from things like SuperAIDS and sobriety. My question for the Oregon state senate is this: How many Heineken Mini-Kegs did you go through when you were thinking about this issue?
Well, campus today is all aflutter for the impending “march on Johnson Hall“. In what seems to be a deliberate attempt to rekindle past glories, the “Step Up, Oregon!” faction is going to demand that Oregon distance itself from a clothing manufacturer accused of employing sweatshop labor, breaking the law, and generally being very, very bad.
I want to avoid weighing in on whether Russell is an evil company or not; They may very well be, and I’m in no position to say they aren’t.
The problem I have with virtually every argument that I’ve seen advocating breaking with Russell (apparently in violation of OUS rules) is that they do little more than repeat Workers Rights Consortium talking points without even a hint of skepticism.
We’re told that closing down a factory “…prompted Worker Rights Consortium investigations, which found that the decision to close the factory was at least partly because of [unionization attempts], constituting a violation of Honduran labor laws.”
That’s all very well and good, but did anyone honestly expect them to come to any other conclusion? The WRC has painted a proverbial target on Russell’s back, and I think everyone would be absolutely shocked if they didn’t reach the exact conclusion that they did, in fact, reach.
To put it another way, I find the WRC’s “findings” about as convincing as a report reading something along the lines of “an investigation by the Democratic National Committee found that George W. Bush was a bad President” or “investigations by the Communist Party of the USA found that capitalism is bad”. Those statements may or may not be true, but, like anything coming from the WRC, they’re not exactly unbiased.
As part of their college education, students are expected to show at least a modicum of skill in critical thinking.
It would be nice if those skills could be put to use questioning the veracity of claims of corporate wrongdoing made by an organization whose express purpose is to accuse corporations of wrongdoing.
I’m not necessarily disputing the claims that Russell may in fact be a rotten company. I’d just like to see people be a bit more careful about repeating what amounts to little more than propaganda.
