You know, the military could mishandle these protests even more. Although, short of actually seriously injuring someone or doing even worse, it's hard to see how. So far, they've held and arrested a US Representative (my representative, for that matter), they want to strip search people for civil disobedience misdemeanors, of all things ... and there's another three years of this to go. Yeesh.
@ 12:28 PM CST [Link]
Well ... it ought to be an interesting thing to see, in any event.
@ 12:10 PM CST [Link]
The Rev. Darlene Franklin's voice rises and falls with a preacher's familiar rhythms as she delivers a radio sermon. But Franklin, the 44-year-old leader of Full Truth Fellowship of Christ Church on Detroit's west side, is not a standard-issue pastor. Last week, she became the first openly gay African-American minister to have a religious radio show in Detroit. Her show, Getting the Word Out, airs on WMKM (1140-AM) from 7:30 to 8 p.m. each Thursday. "It's about explaining to people who are gay, lesbian and transgender especially that the Bible is not about condemnation," said Franklin, a divorced mother of two who came out about her sexuality 15 years ago. [...] As is true of other groups, Metro Detroit's major African American religious groups take a conservative approach to homosexuality. But Franklin argues that this approach, which she says leads churches to ignore gays, is more threatening to the black community, which is seeing an increase of HIV and AIDS cases among young black men and women.
@ 10:54 AM CST [Link]
NOT Al Sharpton. Not Jesse Jackson. It turns out America's most powerful black leader is still . . . Bill Clinton, who'll soon open his office in Harlem.
You know, this is incredibly bad news for Al Gore. Not that Clinton is still so popular, but that when asked to think of influential democrats, Al's name didn't even come to mind. I mean, you have to figure that these are people who voted for him, and they didn't think of him at all.
@ 10:51 AM CST [Link]
Irony ... ah, the stink of it ...
@ 10:44 AM CST [Link]
Three years into a four-year pilot program giving the New York Police Department control of safety in the public schools, sexual assaults have increased so dramatically that the City Council is now arguing for the addition of 200 more cops plus surveillance cameras in stairwells. [...] Board of Education member Irving Hamer now regrets his role in the decision, which in the last two years has led to the citywide doubling of court summonses for kids 16 and up, all while sexual assault has grown—by nearly 13 percent this year—and slashings and robberies continue. "I just hate that I was even in on it," says Hamer, who joined the unanimous vote but now believes the arrangement has "criminalized school buildings." [...] In white suburban America, where the most brutal acts of student violence have taken place, parents and community leaders resist metal detectors and police, arguing that criminalizing schools is too high a price. But in New York City, where 85 percent of the students are kids of color, these procedures have silently become daily routine. As of June 2000, there were 191 baggage X-ray machines and 305 walk-through metal detectors in use in 72 schools, with more to come. [...] These kids go to schools with metal grates on the windows, steel doors, and surveillance cameras. When suspected of breaking a rule, they're held by officers, detained, and interrogated in rooms the students call "the cells." For all this, the schools don't feel much safer. In November, the Joint Committee on School Safety, staffed equally by representatives from the mayor's and the chancellor's offices, produced the first official report since the takeover. The committee wrote that 67 percent of all principals polled said "there has been no change in their school's climate of safety" since the transfer.
@ 12:55 PM CST [Link]
Badgett's research shows something else. It constitutes the first true picture of queer economic reality. Among other things, Badgett found that:
But . . . try finding representations of poor or working-class gay people on Will & Grace. See how hard you have to search for media images of queers who are part of the vast working poor in this country. Find the homeless transgendered folks. Find stories of gay immigrants, lesbian moms working three jobs, bisexual truckers falling asleep from too many hours on the road, gay men in the unemployment line. Try finding an image of queer people who are balancing on the edge—or have fallen off. The myth of our wealth goes deep, so deep that even other gay people seem to believe it.
@ 11:45 AM CST [Link]
He attacked Cookie Monster?! Cookie Monster pushed a little girl?! Egad, what is the world coming to these days?
@ 11:23 AM CST [Link]
[Toronto] Mayor Mel Lastman was accused yesterday of making racist jokes about Africans, jeopardizing Toronto's bid for the 2008 Olympics. Lastman issued a written apology after remarks he made prior to his recent trip to Kenya to promote the city's 2008 Olympic bid were published yesterday in a Toronto newspaper. [...] "What the hell would I want to go to a place like Mombassa ... I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me," he said. In his apology, Lastman said, "This comment was made off the cuff and was never intended to offend anyone. I should not have made this comment."
Lastman was sent to Europe and Africa to talk up the media and raise the city's profile.
Well, I dare say he succeeded in that latter goal, didn't he?
I can't imagine what would make any politician with a quarter of a functioning brain cell say such a thing. I should think it would jeopardize Toronto's bid -- it certainly should, in any event. About the only way I can see that his remark wouldn't guarantee an automatic 16-0 African block vote against Toronto is if they were planning to vote against Toronto en bloc in any event. I should also think that it made governing his city just ever so much more difficult. (And don't you just love the one councillor's knack for understatement? "Not helpful", indeed.) And coming just when the mayor is acquiring such a reputation as a "family values" man ...
@ 11:18 AM CST [Link]
Ultimately, lily-white prime-time lineups are only one symptom of a larger, more ominous trend. The real problem is that, when they watch television, blacks, whites, and Hispanics increasingly segregate themselves into racial and ethnic ghettos. Blacks' favorite 20 shows hardly overlap with whites'. Hollywood writers, producers, and executives talk unabashedly about "black programming," a quantity so distinct and well-defined that networks can deliberately vary it, adding and subtracting as if it were a recipe ingredient, to manipulate the color of their audiences. [...] Unlike old-fashioned segregation, the segmentation of TV viewing is voluntary, and it isn't hard to understand how it came to be [...] Instead of watching "what's on," viewers can tune in to what speaks directly to them--and, it turns out, the language that speaks most loudly is often racial or ethnic. Neither Hollywood nor Madison Avenue creates these preferences; they merely respond to them. Executives claim, echoing Jerry Springer, that the media's only responsibility is to give the people what they want. But just as television shapes viewers' attitudes about sex and violence, so it powerfully shapes their views on race. And, like the end of the draft or the decline of the common school, the demise of integrated TV viewing means Americans from different backgrounds share less and less.
@ 10:54 AM CST [Link]
Perhaps many African American viewers have developed some sort of pop-cultural Stockholm Syndrome: having subsisted on a force-fed diet of coon images for such a long period, they have come to enjoy the taste. They certainly have not come to think critically about the subject. [...] . In the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Goldstein argued: "Thanks to the enormous influence of hip-hop music, a generation of young white teenagers has become as colorblind about movies as they are about music." Goldstein's comparison is unwittingly apposite: hip-hop and coon comedy both commodify black stereotypes and pass them off as an expression of racial authenticity. Thus, a century after Bert Williams and George Walker formed Two Real Coons, rap group N.W.A. produced a song called "Real Niggaz." Hip-hop loves to believe that it is "keepin' it real"; but by extolling negative behavior among African Americans as the only genuine blackness, these comedians and many rappers are keepin' it surreal.
@ 10:50 AM CST [Link]
James Turner is taking Big Brother to small claims court. Turner's taking his own car. Big Brother's driving a rental. A rental outfitted with a high-tech device that tracks your every move. One that records your speed. One that enables rental car agents to rip off unsuspecting drivers.
Well, it will be interesting to see how it all turns out. I don't imagine he'll win -- after all, he signed the contract, and it's not the company's fault he didn't read it. The only grounds for ruling against the company are (1) it's not the company's place to track whether or not people are breaking the law, it's the police's job, and (2) the language is unclear.
That said, if they do win, it looks like a Pyrrhic victory for Acme, doesn't it? I mean, knowing what they do, would you rent from them?
@ 10:38 AM CST [Link]
"We talk about racial profiling by the cops," said Anthony Stevenson, a social studies teacher and an African American. "We have to talk about the same thing in education." [...] "If we are routinely moving students from Philadelphia into modified classes, regardless of achievement level, we must change that," he said. "If Philadelphia is another word for black, we must change that." ... In many districts, low expectations have been virtually institutionalized in a sorting system called "tracking." Common in American education for decades, it is increasingly being singled out as a prime suspect in the continuance of the achievement gap. ... Tracking, they contend, too easily becomes a mechanism by which minorities are funneled into low-level courses, with the least capable teachers and boring coursework.
@ 11:44 AM CST [Link]
My, but this church would seem to be having quite the run, wouldn't it? Two ministers in a row.
@ 11:30 AM CST [Link]
And the answer to today's nonmusical question is: no, pro-feminist men cannot use that word in mixed company. (Unless, of course, you're talking about the Bond character, and even then, it's iffy.) Women won't find it irresistable. Really. Truly. Would I lie to you?
(And this entry also let me discover that if you use asterisks in Greymatter entries, it thinks you're trying to reprogram it, and it reacts with malice aforethought. Nasty. Very nasty.)
@ 11:14 AM CST [Link]
Ah, class and race-based prosecutions are such fun, aren't they? I mean, does anyone seriously believe that middle- and upper-class women would even be looked at this way, never mind having themselves and their children tested without their consent? The first time the state tried that with someone wealthy would be the last time they tried it, regardless of the results. A good lawyer would slice and dice the state: illegal search and seizure, selective prosecution ... on the other hand, this will (and has, in one form) go to the Supreme Court, and this Court is notably ... inconsistent at defending individual rights.
My suspicion is that it will be yet another 5-4 decision with Queen Sandra leading the way. Leading the way where ... well, that's the question, isn't it?
@ 03:37 PM CST [Link]
I am so glad that I'm not in high school these days.
@ 03:26 PM CST [Link]
A kiss on the hand may be
Quite continental
but Gadgets Are a Girl's Best Friend .....
However, I am at a loss as to how mobile phones or palmtop computers improve your lovelives THAT much. Or at all, really. Unless it's the whole yelling-I-love-you while you're on the train thing.
@ 01:32 PM CST [Link]
Oh, my goodness! Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!
@ 01:14 PM CST [Link]
You know, I understand, up to a point, a 16-year-old thinking that he was invulnerable enough to get away with this. (Well, actually, I don't, but I and most of the 16-year-olds I knew were bright enough to understand the whole "fire bad + 18 foot drop hurt = fire + 18foot drop really REALLY hurt" equation. Apparently, there are more and more people out there to whom this equation is not obvious. The genepool is being purged even as I speak, no doubt.) In any event, maybe the teen has some excuse for himself, but his father is absolutely and completely baffling. I mean, the best I can figure is that the stepfather was maybe exercising the sort of "tough love" that parents of toddlers do: "If he touches the hot thing and burns himself a little, then he'll understand that he shouldn't do that." Touching a hot pot is somehow radically different from jumping off a roof onto a flaming pool table, I would think.
@ 01:26 PM CST [Link]
I don't see how they can produce a meaningful document if you can't address sex when talking about a sexually transmitted disease. People in some countries can't even get their governments to tell them the truth about how they're getting the disease.
@ 01:00 PM CST [Link]
You know, I'd wondered what the horse had been doing these past few years ...
@ 12:36 PM CST [Link]
The interesting thing to me, regardless of whether the issue is increased contact or increased reporting, is that either way, people lie about sex. Overall, they'll lie about how frequently they're having it -- men generally say more often, women less -- and with whom. As the study author says: It's possible that the real number of people who have engaged in gay sex is actually higher than reported because people are still reluctant to admit it, Butler says. "You'll never know to what extent people are being truthful. With stigmatized behaviors, most estimates from surveys tend to be underestimates," she says.
If the survey data is anything like polling on racial attitudes, the actual numbers are likely to be 5-10% higher than those reported. Of course, this is simply about encounters, not about actual numbers of gay people. The one doesn't particularly imply the other.
@ 12:07 PM CST [Link]
@ 11:47 AM CST [Link]
I don' t know that I'd call all these organizations "helpers", exactly. Certainly not if I were one of the directors or studios on the receiving end of all this "help".
@ 10:29 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!