Apology

I realize that most of my readers are probably not as enthusiastic about the political process as I am during this election cycle. Under that assumption, I’ve tried to limit the amount of political content so as not to drive my readership away. Election coverage is reaching a fever pitch and I’m soaking it all in. I know it’s been said a million times, but this election feels more important and more historic than any other in my lifetime. Watching the campaign retrospectives this weekend, I’ve been teary-eyed several times revisiting some of the more inspirational moments from the campaign. When that happens, I feel compelled to share it with you. If you’re not as enthusiastic as I am about the waning days of the campaign, I apologize for the increase in political content during the next few days.

Recent Changes to This Blog

You may or may not have noticed, but I’ve been making quite a few changes recently here. I changed the layout using a WordPress Theme called Limau Orange. This layout uses space more efficiently than my old theme and has a sidebar on each side of the content, which I really like. I’ve tried to put the more relevant “widgets” near the top where they are more likely to be seen. Recent additions are three randomly selected pictures from our photo gallery and ten recent links that I’ve saved to del.icio.us. You may have also noticed that I’ve added a few “Pages”, which are always available at the top of the left sidebar. “About This Blog” and the three articles beneath it offer a short history of how this blog came to be as well as describing what I write and what’s available in the sidebars. There are a few other useful pages and I expect to be adding more eventually.

What do you think?

What is “The Surge”?

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain has been criticizing Barack Obama this week for not supporting “the surge.” In a controversially edited interview on CBS News on Tuesday, McCain took Obama to task for saying that the so-called Anbar Awakening should be credited for helping to decrease violence in Iraq over the last 18 months. According to McCain “the surge” was responsible for the Anbar Awakening:

I don’t know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarlane (phonetic) was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history.

Unfortunately, as critics would later point out, McCain chose exactly the wrong time to invoke the word “history.” The awakening began in late 2006, at least three months before President Bush went to Congress and the American people in January of 2007 to announce a new strategy in Iraq. This strategy had a working title of “A New Way Forward” but became generally known in the press and with the American people as “The Surge.” Given that it wasn’t announced, much yet implemented when the awakening began, McCain is horrendously wrong, right?

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Fun with Wordle

According to their description, “Wordle is a toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide.” Also called a “tag cloud“, a word cloud summarizes the frequency with which certain words in a blob of text appear. Words that appear more often, are displayed larger while words that appear less often are smaller. Unlike the tag cloud for this blog (which appears in left sidebar), Wordle’s clouds are adorable. Their cloud editor is very easy to use and lets you change many aspects of the cloud. I used it to analyze the recent editorials that the Presidential candidates submitted to the New York Times about future Iraq policy.

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Misheard Lyrics

I recently discovered a new phenomena (at least new to me) on YouTube called “misheard lyrics.” The idea is to take a song where the lyrics are indistinguishable and caption it with incorrect (and presumably humorous) lyrics. Because it’s a video format, it is also necessary to add visual elements which also help convey the incorrect lyrics. Here’s a classic example:

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On Bitches and Sexists

Today, while reading about this story, I stumbled upon a blog called Shakesville which had an excellent analysis of the story. One phrase they used is “owning the context” which means that someone can commit racist speech even when they do not intend it. In the story above, I think that the man with the t-shirts is “playing dumb” and understands perfectly that comparing an African-American to a monkey will be offensive to African-Americans. However, even if he did not know of the historical use of that phrase to insult black people, that does not make the t-shirt any less offensive to those that do. When this happens, when one finds oneself ignorant of the context, the only acceptable action is apology. What a concise summary of the subtle racism that still exists in our society!

Suitably impressed, I began to scan the front page of the blog for more great content. How shocked I was to find that one of the writers had taken Wil Wheaton, one of my favorite bloggers, to task for something he had written the day before. It was even something that I had agreed with and laughed at. Now, if I had read this article before the one about the Obama t-shirt, I would have quickly concluded that this was a group of unreasonable feminists and left. But I had read that other article and the parallels were immediately obvious. Disparaging remarks about women also have a context and the context here is that portraying a woman as “crazy” means that she can or should be ignored.

I revisited Wil’s blog to review the comments and found some that were very thought-provoking. Someone named “Backpacking Dad” really hit the nail on the head:

The metaphor evokes a trope in sexual politics, that of the irrational girl who cannot accept that a relationship is over. Labeling, categorizing, pigeon-holing someone in this way “he’s a geek, she’s a slut, he’s a pig, she’s cow” is at once appealing to a fragment of truth, and also making the target controllable.

This is the historic context of how our society has marginalized women. Another commenter named Sarah made it more concrete:

Look, I don’t think you hate women– I think you mean well and want to be an ally. But that means you need to listen. If you don’t think something is sexist, but people who have to deal with sexism every day are telling you that it is, maybe you should take another look.

And that made me look at my own views on sexism. Too often I’m dismissive of women just because they are women. And sometimes, if I think they are deserving of it, I’ll refer to a woman as a “bitch”. But, when considered in the full historical context, that word is no different than the racial epithet that rhymes with “digger”. Both are considered derogatory and both can be labels worn proudly by some who have been the target of these insults. Whether or not the target is deserving of these words, the context that they evoke should preclude us from using them.

Today I have decided that I will never again call a woman a bitch.

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Gilmore Girls

I’m not a big fan of ABC Family, but the boys like Full House so the Tivo switches to that channel every morning to record it. One morning last year, I slowly woke to find that I had fallen asleep watching TV on our love sac. Full House had just finished and another show was starting. I hadn’t opened my eyes yet and still had one foot in dreamland but I slowly took notice of the dialog on this show. It reminded me greatly of David Mamet and was chock full of obscure cultural and literary references. I opened my eyes and took in my first episode of The Gilmore Girls. By the third commercial break I had acquired a Season Pass (i.e. I told my Tivo to record every episode on ABC Family) and Tina and I have been fans ever since.

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