"This double murder is what many residents of Northeast Baltimore have always feared would happen if blacks started moving into their neighborhood."
Dear God, people make me tired. So very tired.
A woman and her daughter were murdered by the woman's husband in Baltimore last night. That event, which could have happened to anyone of any race, any time, any city, spawned an outpouring of bile on the Baltimore Sun's bulletin board. Apparently, it's the fault of "black Section 8 families" moving into good neighborhoods. (Yes, they were black; the murdered woman was the vice president of a company, the murdered daughter was an honor student, and the man drove a cab -- they weren't Section 8.) Because they were having severe financial problems, the man was apparently "a deadbeat". For another person, apparently it was the woman's fault because "you know how some women are, they just HAVE to have a man around the house, and ohmigod, what will they do without someone to take care of them and support them." Another person says, "Believe me, I've tried integration, it doesn't work" and "BUT when blacks do move into a neighborhood in significant numbers it goes to hell--and you know it."
And it's not just the United States, either.
What the fuck is the point of even trying? trying anything?
It's the sort of thing that almost makes me wish that the fundies were right, and that god should come, sweep the planet clean of the human virus, and start from scratch, having learned a lesson about how to work this free-will experiment a little better the next time. Maybe make an actual gene for tolerance of differences, for empathy, and make it strong. Clearly, we can't do it on our own; maybe some successor creature could do better.
At least one person kept sight of the people involved.
@ 04:11 PM CST [Link]
OK, THIS is very impressive. It is not, unfortunately, quite unique, but still, it's impressive. Apparently, we have powers previously unknown and undreamed of by mankind. All we need to do to tap these resources is to congregate in large enough numbers, and Things Will Happen. This, no doubt, explains why San Francisco has those earthquakes every so often. (How they explain the 1906 earthquake, I have no idea. Maybe the city by the bay was entirely gay at that time, but it was all in one giant collective closet. And I'm really curious how that would account for the 1800s New Madrid earthquake, since there were hardly any people living in the area at the time. Maybe if the population density is low enough, just one of us is enough to trigger Major Natural Events.)
You know what gets me about this theory? (Which has been scientifically disproven, even--apparently, places with a lot of us around are actually a bit safer. We could be natural occurrence good luck charms! But I digress.) This makes god out to be not only petty--doing in vast numbers of people for things they had no idea about--but forgetful. I mean, it's not like an earthquake or a hurricane or even industry decimating disease is going to stop people from doing what they do, is it? (Well, unless they actually die from the earthquake or hurricane or industry-decimating disease, of course. Death does have a knack for just cutting into one's social life.) If the disapproval is so strong that god wants to kill so many people, why wouldn't it be just one long unending earthquake or hurricane or industry-decimating disease until we changed our heathen ways? Our memories are short! Wouldn't reminding us be more effective? "Hmm ... still have heathens. It's half-past April, haven't had a major disaster for a day or two, better throw another one in."
@ 03:49 PM CST [Link]
So I saw the video for this song (RealPlayer required) on VH1 yesterday, and ever since, it's been lodged in my brain. It is kicky and different, yes. And basically, I like the sound of the song itself. But the part that's actually lodged in is that stupid smooching. So anyway, I went fishing and found out that, yes, she does have a site (provided by Universal Records, apparently), with music samples from other songs. (Interesting voice, too; on three of the four songs, she sounds like completely different people. Not just the type of song but her voice changes just enough to make her sound different.) Frankly, the whole Flash navigation for the interior page is the most interesting part. Both technically and in the whole "sex sells" sort of way. Oh, and it seems That Song is on an endless loop set to play while you go through the site.
It's never leaving my head. Never ever ever.
@ 12:57 PM CST [Link]
Well, that's .... different. And while I do understand the company's viewpoint (for once), somehow, this seems like it's going not only too far, but entirely the wrong direction. I mean, you're not allowed to wear a wedding ring? What court in the land is going to uphold a policy that restrictive?
@ 10:48 AM CST [Link]
10 episodes. The show ran a whole ten episodes. For this, Bette Midler gets a million bucks to write about it?
VERY nice work if you can get it.
@ 01:43 PM CST [Link]
Man, this guy is OBSESSED. It must be apparent by now that nobody believes him ... or cares, in a way. I suppose the guiding sentiment for most people might be, "well, if you'd kept your pene in your pants or used a condom, then you wouldn't BE in this situation, now would you?" I mean, yes, I suppose there probably is some issue lurking way way WAY beneath the surface of this case.
WAY beneath.
But still ... what sort of idiot doesn't use a condom in this day and age? I mean, really.
@ 01:18 PM CST [Link]
DanMan's Journal - "A Woman, A Fish, and A Pussy Cat" - I'm thinking that the end of this entry, all by itself, justifies me for never EVER letting the cat sleep with me. Especially as they enter their golden, uberbazooka-barfing years.
@ 11:09 AM CST [Link]
Apparently, the Cincinnati police were trying to incite further riots after Timothy Thomas' funeral. They don't have enough problems dealing with the public? They have to try to create more of them?
via unknown news
@ 03:20 PM CST [Link]
I wonder how much Big Tobacco contributed to George II Fraudulency's campaign to get this result.
@ 02:28 PM CST [Link]
"The century-long perspective is that there was a struggle to achieve integrated schools, and it has ended without integration having been achieved," says Tushnet, a constitutional historian at Georgetown University and a former law clerk to Justice Marshall. "It's been essentially a failure."
@ 11:37 AM CST [Link]
I don't understand what the Supreme Court has against minorities. (NY Times; registration required.) I don't understand what we did to them. I don't understand why they have to reach so hard; this case should never have been accepted by them, according to normal Court history and practice.
And I do sometimes wonder if Mr Justice Thomas ever looks about at what he's helping to come about, and thinks about whether or not it's worth it. He probably had aspirations of being as widely appreciated and admired among blacks, and indeed among most people in this country, as Thurgood Marshall was; how could he not? How could you not become only the second black justice on the court and NOT want to have people feel that way about you? And yet, the only sentiments most blacks can summon up about him are either indifference or disgust; almost everyone else, when asked how they feel about him, just says, "Who?" Surely not what he'd intended to happen when he reached the pinnacle of a legal career.
He complains
With respect to my following, or, more accurately, being led by other members of the Court, that is silly, but expected since I couldn't possibly think for myself. And what else could possibly be the explanation when I fail to follow the jurisprudential, ideological and intellectual, if not anti-intellectual, prescription assigned to blacks. Since thinking beyond this prescription is presumptively beyond my abilities, obviously someone must be putting these strange ideas into my mind and my opinions. Though being underestimated has its advantages, the stench of racial inferiority still confounds my olfactory nerves.
That said, people could be appalled by him because ... well, he doesn't seem to read very well, somehow. In Missouri v Jenkins, the case that allowed Kansas City, and thence Missouri, to cease all school desegregation efforts, he blatantly misreads Brown vs Board of Education. While quoting it, which is really rather impressive. Yes, the principal thrust of Brown was against state sponsored segregation. Nonetheless, that case, and the ones that followed it, don't simply assume that because a school is primarily black-attended, that makes it inferior. What they assume is that, given history, integrated schools fare better because it gives a broader investment in the results. If you make people with more resources attend other schools, they will demand more because they're used to more. It's very easy not to care that one neighborhood school is failing when the more visible parts of the school system are doing well.
That he will complain that this people's dislike of his reasoning is due to their assumption of his "racial inferiority" is both offensive and confounds the brain. That we could simply be observing his behavior doesn't seem to occur to the man, somehow. And, I note, he seems to want to have it both ways. If people are making assumptions about him due to his race, then it logically follows that people make assumptions about others for the same reason; in other words, many of the cases he votes against do, in fact, have some validity.
Mr Justice Thomas may well go down in history. It just won't be the way he planned or desired.
@ 11:33 AM CST [Link]
You know, the sad thing is that the Western Pacific gray whale reached this state on Clinton's watch. The most environment-friendly president in a generation, and still, he let this happen. Having ever expected the oil companies to participate in science that would, if done properly, have almost certainly indicated that no drilling should ever be done off Sakhalin Island was official idiocy on a high scale; expecting the oil companies to fund the research meant that it would be handicapped from the beginning. And now, of course, we have George II Fraudulency, aka the "Let oil companies drill off Florida's shoreline and in the Alaskan wildlife preserve while we back away from major international environmental agreements" president.
Those whales are toast. And clearly, once people discovered that they weren't extinct and where they lived, they always were. It was just a matter of time.
@ 10:44 AM CST [Link]
You know, you find the most INteresting things on the web by looking for them. On a list I'm on, a person has a site at http://www.unreal-estate.net. And, in one of those moments of hmm, let's see..., I figured that if that site was active, then http://www.unrealestate.com/ should be active. (It is, sort of; the domain is controlled by netincome.com, who I'm sure is just waiting to sell it to someone.) unrealestate.org is under construction. And then I figured if that was around, then SURREALestate.com would be active. And it is. (Certainly didn't expect that, though. The idea of a surrealestate.com email address does have a certain appeal....) And surreal-estate.net and surrealestate.net are both controlled by uk2.net; again, a reseller thing. surrealestate.org is under construction, as well.
I get impossibly geeky around midnight, don't I?
@ 12:56 AM CST [Link]
The people who invented SDMI--a technique for preventing users from putting copyrighted material onto their hard drives--are idiots, really. They have yet to learn that by threatening people, you draw attention both to the threat and to the thing that you're worried about. They've apparently threatened a professor who discovered ways around the encryption scheme. Since they've threatened him under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, significant parts of which are purely US codicils to the Berne Convention, as it were, The Register published the paper in their journal. Since they're British, the relief available to the SDMI coalition is quite limited; the Register does not publish in the US, as such, and so cannot be enjoined by a US court ... although I would think that the professor and his research team are still easily as liable as they were before.
@ 01:58 PM CST [Link]
I will admit, that these policies could make a difference to gays and proms, of all things never once occurred to me.
@ 12:40 PM CST [Link]
Well, DUH! (Although, given subsequent developments, one does wonder ....)
@ 12:18 PM CST [Link]
@ 10:20 AM CST [Link]
The mother of a murdered cross-dressing young woman whose story inspired the movie ``Boys Don't Cry'' deserves more compensation for her daughter's death, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled this week. In a scathing ruling on Friday that demanded a larger damages award against Richardson County, Nebraska, and its sheriff, Charles Laux, the state's highest court declared a lower court had erred in awarding just $17,361 to JoAnn Brandon for official negligence in the death of her daughter, Teena Brandon. [...] "The tape recording reveals that Laux's tone throughout the interview was demeaning, accusatory, and intimidating,'' the court said. "Based upon the undisputed facts in this case, we determine as a matter of law that Laux's conduct was extreme and outrageous, beyond all possible bounds of decency, and is to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.''
Good. Good.
@ 04:38 PM CST [Link]
Play .... COW? Well. My goodness. (You know, Jenny McCowthy is somewhat ... er ... underuddered, there. Especially when compared to Pamoola Anderson.)
@ 01:02 PM CST [Link]
Pride and prejudice, too. (NY Times, registration required.)
@ 12:22 PM CST [Link]
Well, that's certainly ... different. Good, but definitely different.
@ 12:03 PM CST [Link]
The head of the Sentinels, Cincinnati’s black police officers association, has apologized to black youth and the city as a whole for “discourtesy and disrespect” from Cincinnati police.
And--to the extent that an apology is meaningful at all--this would be more meaningful if it came from any part of the police department other than the Sentinels. Or if it came from the city government. Or any official entity. But to come from the head of the black police officers association, just as they're withdrawing their membership from the general police unions, only highlights the city's problems. The bulk, the core of the Cincinnati police department probably still feels that they did nothing at all wrong. After all, the Sentinels have been protesting the conduct of their fellow officers and making suggestions for changes (most of which have been roundly ignored) for at least the past four years. The head of the Sentinels has been punitively reassigned and received death threats.
To be sure, the city--or parts thereof--is trying to look at the problem. But it will do little good for the city as a whole to shred itself trying to come to grips with this problem if the people enforcing the laws continue to be a part of it.
@ 12:02 PM CST [Link]
It's a lovely fiction to think you could make black folks whole by writing a check the way you do when you dent somebody's fender. But it's a fiction nonetheless.
@ 11:30 AM CST [Link]
Indeed, for all the anguished searching for the roots of the Cincinnati riots and those of the numerous disturbances that preceded it last century, there's no great mystery about their cause. Almost invariably, an instance (real or rumored) of police brutality or abuse of power, capping a history of tension with a city's black community, has provoked this country's major riots. [...] But if the precipitating cause of urban riots is no secret, the explosive reaction of African-Americans to police misbehavior somehow keeps surprising most Americans, or at least most white Americans. Yet these reactions, which typically have followed long-festering grievances against an abusive police force, follow a certain logic. [...] Until the spotlight of responsibility for such mayhem is directed at the police as well as at black ghetto-dwellers, the racial uprisings that tour the country every generation will probably not abate.
And doesn't that provide great hope for the future.
@ 11:27 AM CST [Link]
You know, it's terribly juvenile of me, but this just makes me snicker anyway. (BTW, the Register's link to the archive is incorrect; try this instead.
@ 10:27 AM CST [Link]
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!