Thirteen "no" votes. Every single one cast by a Republican state senator. And yet they wonder why we feel that they don't want us.
In the meantime, The Oklahoman feels that the state should have a much more limited role than it has committed to, especially regarding reparations. This despite the fact that the governor said that he felt that payment to survivors should be allowed if liability could be shown on the part of the state, city or county.
Well, let's see -- according to the final commission report:
Yet The Oklahoman feels that the governor should repudiate his words. That since it happened in Tulsa, that city should bear the brunt of the costs.
In what may be considered a mild miracle, should it come about, Tulsa may actually do something. To be sure, I suspect it's somewhat unlikely that Tulsa will authorize direct payments. After all, the events are years past; most of the actual survivors are dead. The one point on which The Oklahoman and I might be said to agree is that this has remained in Oklahoma's public eye for a startlingly long time. But now, the monument is authorized, the scholarship and redeveloment funds are established. Now that something has been done, the public will feel more comfortable in letting it fade somewhat. That would be unfortunate ... but very human. And, after all, the riot had faded from view for nearly 80 years before it came to light again.
@ 01:48 PM CST [Link]
@ 12:35 PM CST [Link]
First Ashcroft, now Olson. Apparently the punishment for flat-out lying to the Senate during your confirmation hearings is to receive the position you were nominated for.
That said, it's nice to see that at least one of George II Fraudulency's guns may get spiked: Democrats said today that they were hoping to use their new power not only to block strongly conservative nominees but also to discourage the Bush White House from considering such candidates. To that end, [Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who will become the chairman of the Judiciary Committee] said the committee would not conduct hearings on judicial nominees until it received an evaluation on the candidate's fitness to serve as a judge from the American Bar Association. That would largely foil the Bush White House's efforts to eliminate the special role of the bar association in evaluating judicial candidates.
@ 11:54 AM CST [Link]
A federal appeals court Friday lifted a lower court's injunction against publication of "The Wind Done Gone,'' a parody of the Civil War classic "Gone With the Wind.'' [...] The Nashville, Tenn., writer said she wrote the book so that black and white Americans could have a "belly laugh'' together about the painful period of slavery and the Civil War.
Well, it'll be interesting to see how long this injunction stays lifted. I would imagine the swiftness with which the injunction was dismissed might be indicative of the court's opinion of the merits of the Mitchell estate's case. I would also imagine that the Mitchell estate will appeal both to the full court of appeals, and to the Supreme Court if they lose. So I don't think we're yet done hearing about all this.
@ 11:50 AM CST [Link]
Well, it's time once again for the annual Orlando Gay Days, including trips to various and sundry Disneyness as well as other theme parks! This means, of course, that it's also time for the annual denunciation of Disney by the creepy "christian" people and, of course, for the annual Florida disaster which the creepy "christian" people usually blame on the gays! (Because, clearly, their god is all about punishing innocent people and wildlife just because we're there!) So nice to have some reliable things in life, isn't it?
Meanwhile, here in Chicago, we're having International Mr. Leather and Bear Pride 2001 going on at the same time! Yes, that's right, it's just one big festival of gaiety here right now! And yet, somehow, a studied lack of creepy "christian" people blaming us, say, for the flooding downstate. Curious, that.
@ 11:26 AM CST [Link]
Tampa high school suspends senior class president for putting condoms in prom bags. Pity, really; it was an alarmingly sensible thing to do. I mean, what do those administrators think? They confiscated the condoms, so the kids won't have sex? Has not having condoms ever stopped a significant number of teenagers before? What makes them think it would work now?
Considering the excess they went to in trying to find the Killer Condoms, I'm surprised they didn't wind up strip searching everyone. Probably would have if they'd thought of it.
@ 10:59 AM CST [Link]
Well ... it's certainly a different sort of animal problem. Although whatever it is that they're after, somehow, I just don't think it's ... that.
@ 10:43 AM CST [Link]
@ 12:12 PM CST [Link]
You know, at this rate, soon we'll be hearing about people swapping sex for net access. Dealers will set up areas where they sell net access for ever escalating prices and .... whaddya mean, they already have? Egad! Things are worse than I thought! Call your representative! We have to get the net classified as a Schedule II substance! (Addictive, but with some known benefits; available only via highly restricted prescription)
@ 11:59 AM CST [Link]
People are still talking about that letter from the Editor at Out Magazine to his pro-baseball boyfriend.
And so on, and so on ...
One question I would like to ask Mr Buzinski of Outsports: what country is he living in? Children take weapons to school. Gay men and women are beaten and assaulted for no other reason than that every day. Why is it difficult to believe that assault with a deadly weapon is an issue? (That said, I do think that being attacked in the stadium by a fan with a gun is less likely than being attacked on the streets by a group of fans with weapons ... which I think quite likely. This is not the country of Jackie Robinson's time; all you have to do is look at the crime stats to see that.) In 1973, Hank Aaron received death threats, because he was black and dared to surpass Babe Ruth's home run record.
The plain fact is this: as things currently stand, a midcareer, midlevel baseball player -- or a midlevel player in any team sport, for that matter -- can't afford to come out unless he's prepared to immediately lose that midlevel career. They compare the situation to Jackie Robinson, but what they forget is that Jackie Robinson was a legitimate star, a person whose talent was so great that a team was willing to deal with what both he and management knew would be a truly hideous time. A player who was gay would have to be much much better, comparatively, than Robinson ever was before management would be willing to stand by him.
They also forget what Jackie Robinson endured:
The 1947 Dodgers ... reached the World Series. But the racial abuse didn't stop. "You'd hear a lot of insults from the opposing benches during games," shortstop Pee Wee Reese recalls, "guys calling him things like `rigger' and `watermelon eater,' trying to rile him." The abuse reached new heights when Philadelphia manager Ben Chapman led a barrage of foul language that continued for a three-game series.
And that's the other team, the ones who had relatively little opportunity to do anything. For a gay player coming out, his own locker room would be ... singularly awful. There would be "comments" -- you know the ones. There would be "pranks", such as words painted on his locker or his clothes and equipment fouled. There might well be more, and worse; after all, athletes have forced teammates to drink alcohol and perform degrading acts and even raped them with objects -- and these were people they wanted on the team. (And don't kid yourself that professionals would be much better than these high school and college students. Many baseball players start from high school or college, so there will be a lot of younger players. And as an example of the fun professional athletes get up to, the Chicago Bears football team ran into trouble because one of their rookies was quite seriously hurt when the veteran players hazed them -- I believe he lost some of the sight in one eye and thereby lost his career. And they liked him.)
To be sure, I do fully expect that sometime in the future, possibly within my lifetime, there will be an out, gay, team sports player. He'll appear one of two ways: either he'll have always been out, in high school and in college, but his talent is so incredible that the teams grit their teeth and go forward, or he'll be outed somehow, and decide that he's just tired of hiding. (One hopes for the first, but expects the second. And if it's the first ... by the time he gets to the pros, he'll have been tested in fire, anyway.)
All that said ... do I think that Lemon should have published that letter? No, of course not. Frankly, I believe the letter itself, where it's strongly implied that the boyfriend hasn't seen the letter, and not his later comments, where he insists that he shared it with the boyfriend before publication. After all, why wouldn't you simply say: I discussed this with my boyfriend before publishing, so he knows that I'm doing this. And I simply don't believe that you blindside people you allegedly care about in that way. (There is also, according to Ziegler, the matter of a longtime partner who also apparently didn't know about the boyfriend. I'm guessing that this is not entirely accurate or possibly it's outdated; throwing that many bombs into your own life would be spectacularly stupid, and while Lemon strikes me as quite calculating, he doesn't seem precisely stupid.) To be sure, given publication lead times, it's quite possible that the boyfriend didn't know about the letter before it was written, but was told before it was published ... but in that case, it's also likely that he didn't intend to tell the boyfriend when he wrote it, and only had a change of heart near publication; otherwise, it would be phrased quite differently.
The player is probably going through hell right now. And the sad part is, it's likely that the only person he can really talk to about it is Lemon, who caused it.
As for Lemon himself ... I honestly believe that Lemon got what he wanted, which was not necessarily his boyfriend out of the closet. What he got was a long buzz of discussion about his letter (signifying nothing, but that's beside the point), himself in the spotlight, and everyone on every east coast baseball team looking at all the unmarried players and wondering, "Is it him? Him? maybe him?" If his boyfriend had come out, that would just have been the lagniappe.
All THAT said ... I do hope the guy comes out, but I certainly don't expect it. Like Ziegler, I hope that he dumps Lemon, as well. In fact, I don't think he ought to wait until he comes out; anybody who would use and abuse you in public in this way is not anyone you ought to be involved with.
@ 05:49 PM CST [Link]
My goodness. I get to keep my congressman after remap. (Assuming he keeps getting elected, that is.) Most people were betting that they'd make his district make more geographic sense (it was sort of horseshoe-shaped; now it's got a lump at one end of the shoe's U) and it would essentially go away. (There's also the small fact that the Hispanics in the district aren't all the same ethnicity -- some are Mexican-American, some Puerto Rican, many from elsewhere in Central and South America -- and have resented being lumped together in "the Hispanic district".)
It will be interesting to see if they challenge the district in court again; they sued about it last time. (Which, before the state won, resulted in me voting for two different congressmen in three elections without either me or them moving.) It sounds like they might have better grounds; while producing a reliably Democratic district is clearly allowable, it sounds like the fact that the new voters for the district are Hispanic is more prominent in considerations this time. And that, according to Queen Sandra Day, is a no-no.
@ 03:57 PM CST [Link]
I truly, SINCERELY wish that someone was kidding.
Unfortunately, I don't have much support from the black community. However, a lot of African-Americans understand me," he said without a hint of irony.
Well, frankly, no irony needed. After all, most of us do understand him. (The loathing and disgust, of course, are implied in the understanding.)
I wish the reporter had asked more, though. I mean, what does smoking pot have to do with the death of squirrels? Those concepts are just not logically connected.
@ 03:26 PM CST [Link]
Two federal lawyers arrive from Washington, D.C., today to start an unprecedented civil-rights investigation of the Cincinnati Police Division. Their presence signals the start of a process that, as in other cities, may result in a consent decree, a court-supervised list of changes the police division has to follow.
Well ... if it's been done in other cities, then it's not unprecedented, is it?
And had the Justice department responded the first two times Cincinnati requested a probe, maybe a few others would still be alive, and the riots would not have happened.
But still ... a civil rights probe under Ashcroft, of all people ... somehow, I suspect that many in Cincinnati will be unhappy with the results.
@ 03:06 PM CST [Link]
Good grief. It's made the national news.
@ 11:06 AM CST [Link]
Win an Emmy, come out a little.
@ 11:04 AM CST [Link]
Or at least the art of the weird. Getting effective control of the Senate without an election and without Strom Thurmond kicking the bucket. The Democrats must be doing the little happy dance of joy.
Well, we'll see what they do with it.
Assuming that it happens, of course, since he's just put off his announcement another day. A happy dance deferred. Several ulcers prolonged
@ 10:31 AM CST [Link]
Woo-hoo! My old junior high has the highest dropout rate in the city! (Let's just ignore the fact that allowing dropout at that age is illegal, shall we? Let's shall.)
Not a surprise, really. I would imagine that when the figures finally do come in for the high schools, me alma mater (can you say that about a high school?) will be one of the three leaders in the city in dropout rate. (The top three -- or bottom three, depending on how you look at it -- absent a drastic shift in the city's income distribution, will be Albuquerque HS, Valley HS and Rio Grande HS. AHS drew from six of the city's then-eight designated poverty-level districts, Valley drew from three, and Rio Grande drew from either three or five -- I don't remember which. When you've got a very poor population, you get a high dropout rate. Any road, I'm sure that the city has more designated poverty areas now.)
It shouldn't surprise anyone, really. I'm not sure about the junior high level, but when I graduated, i was officially 35th of a class of 335 ... of which 187 actually received diplomas. Near 50% attrition rate, there. From what I understand, there's no reason to assume that things have gotten significantly better.
@ 03:01 PM CST [Link]
So basically, as long as the military ignores everything -- not only following the wondrous "don't ask, don't tell" policy, but serenely ignoring evidence of harrassment -- they won't be held responsible for anything that happens.
Well, that works, right? If the person can't say, "Hey, I'm gay," then how can they report anti-gay harrassment? They can't even try to report it without saying that, because the only possible response left to the military is, "Well, tell them you're not gay. Go out with someone of the opposite sex. Act like a hetero, dammit! And they'll stop bothering you." Because, of course, the military is filled with MANLY men! (And if they try hard enough, they'll get rid of those pesky women.) And MANLY men do not complain about a little name calling, a little shoving, maybe a fight here and there, or a baseball bat repeatedly applied to the head -- oops! forgot! you can't complain about a baseball bat to the head, because, of course, you're DEAD! Silly me.
@ 12:42 PM CST [Link]
Well ... if he did attack the woman, you certainly can't say that he didn't deserve it.
@ 03:44 PM CST [Link]
"I still believe in standardized testing," [Fort Wayne, Indiana, testing director John] Kline said. "I just don't think the industry is ready to give us the tests we need."
You wonder what it would take for this guy NOT to believe in standardized testing. (We'll ignore the notorious biases of standardized tests, shall we? Let's shall.) To be sure, Indiana got off easy; because the one sensible decision they made was not to base everything on standardized test results, and because they got CTB to adjust the scores the first time they insisted that something was wrong, not much happened that wouldn't have happened anyway. In New York City, nearly 9,000 students were unnecessarily forced to attend summer school during a particularly brutal summer, and several teachers and superintendents were fired. Nevada wound up spending money unnecessarily on schools rated as "inadequate" that could have better been spent on a school that actually was inadequate. And on top of that, the company blatantly lied about what was going on. (I still find it remarkable that Tennessee actually makes sensible use of test results -- as sensible as you can get with standardized tests, anyway. And they're apparently virtually alone in taking this approach, which baffles the mind; why wouldn't you prefer to track a particular student's progress, rather than simply comparing students to people who were previously in that grade?)
@ 03:01 PM CST [Link]
Some will say this is reverse discrimination, that people would be justifiably appalled if a player said he was choosing a school or team because it had a white coach. But it isn't the same thing at all. This is affirmative action. This is about correcting decades-long discrimination. This is about forcing the people in power to finally examine a problem they've ignored for too long. This is about giving people a chance denied for too long.
I don't know ... I suppose it's a good idea, but it makes me twitch. I suppose because I'm still naïve enough to believe that some athletes go to college to get an education, and making this decision now could compromise the quality of the education you wind up getting, and compromising your chances to get into a different old boys' network, as it were.
@ 01:46 PM CST [Link]
Good grief. It was a PROM, for heaven's sake. Ultimately, not all that important. Not likely to change the course of the world. I frankly don't see how anything that happens at a prom "imposes something on society that, if truth be known, our society is not yet ready to accept" -- it doesn't even impose it on the school; it's ONE prom in ONE year.
The prom queen was Kara Johnson. [...] "It's not that big of a deal," she said. "It's high school. Let it go."
@ 01:25 PM 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!