1. Thanks so much to Brian Timm for the extended cut DVD or Lords of Dogtown; for my money, this film was criminally underrated by critics. It has a great, washed-out street look, and a grittiness that perfectly matches the story of the Z-Boys. Thanks also to Paul Deignan for the Paul Verhoeven Collection – Limited Edition (The 4th Man / Turkish Delight / Katie Tippel / Business Is Business / Soldier of Orange). I’ve been very interested to check out some early Verhoeven, so this should provide me with my fill—and then some.
2. Sudden chills, disorientation, weakness, tingling in the extremities—these are the symptoms that convinced me to take an ambulance ride to the ER last evening, where a battery of tests revealed nothing other than slightly elevated blood sugar. Turns out I just needed a beer and a nap. But I’ll probably take it easy for the rest of the day. Which doesn’t let you off the hook—not so long as Dilbert and Christ keep pimpslapping me.
3. Stephen Meyer sends along Leon Wieseltier’s brutal, pointed review of Spielberg’s Munich. I’ll probably end up seeing it on DVD, but only out of curiosity. Spielberg is a very talented filmmaker (I count Jaws and Duel as among my favorite films), but his “serious” films pander to a worldview that finds ambiguity in and of itself intelligent. Which, while it may have worked in the seventies conspiracy potboilers, is a rather trite affectation today. Here’s Wieseltier:
[…]The makers of Munich seem to think that it is itself an intervention in the historical conflict that it portrays. For this reason, perhaps, they have devised a movie that wishes to be shocking and inoffensive at the same time. It tells the story of the Israeli retaliation for the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972–specifically, of the nasty adventures of a team of five Israelis that is dispatched to Europe to destroy eleven Palestinians. The film is powerful, in the hollow way that many of Spielberg’s films are powerful. He is a master of vacant intensities, of slick searings. Whatever the theme, he must ravish the viewer. Munich is aesthetically no different from War of the Worlds, and never mind that one treats questions of ethical and historical consequence and the other is stupid. Spielberg knows how to overwhelm. But I am tired of being overwhelmed. Why should I admire somebody for his ability to manipulate me? In other realms of life, this talent is known as demagoguery. There are better reasons to turn to art, better reasons to go to the movies, than to be blown away….
I am a sucker for 70s political thrillers. But there was something dangerous and challenging about Parallax View or All The President’s Men or Day of the Jackal or 3 Days of the Condor precisely because they sprung from a 60s ethos—from the Kennedy assassination up through Johnson and Nixon, from Vietnam to Watergate.
But try as they might to recapture that urgent political feeling, the filmmakers who came of age during that period have chosen unwisely to draw on today’s political climate as inspiration for a new set of films that pretend to ask difficult questions—be they about terrorism and counterterrorism, about the ambiguous nature of good and evil, or about the secret monied interests that lie just beneath the surface of things that only the initiated (read: politically active liberal) can see.
For my money, these new attempts are strained; in fact, in all my life, I cannot remember another time where I’ve looked out at the world and seen things so completely clarified. Not everything is black and white, of course; but then, neither is everything irredeemably gray. So when I take in this new wave of films, it will be as a psychiatrist trying to understand a set of manifest delusions, or as a literary critic examining a set of tropes that clashed with the prevailing ethos, though they managed to engage a particular political dialogic.
4. Allah is not impressed with this latest from my pal Lauren at Feministe, which post details an experiment in political empowerment that involved a Muslim student removing her hijab, and places it into the context of racism and feminism. Lauren sums up the meaning of the story this way:
I can’t even comprehend the courage it must have taken to take off that scarf, or the courage it will take to put it back on. I am still completely blown away.
Although I am aware that many feminists question hijab and women’s choice to don the Muslim head scarf, and that I myself have been skeptical of the choice to adhere to religious law associated with the Taliban, consider that in America being “hijabed†may be a radical act, an assertion of identity, willful acceptance of life on the margins in a time of a seeming holy war. Consider wearing the hijab as a feminist act, a performative act of aggression against the hypersexualization of young women in America.
[…] I got a valuable lesson from her today. Nothing, nothing, is ever as clear as it might seem. These cultural tangles prevail.
I think Lauren’s point is certainly worth considering—but in return I’d ask that she go beyond the easy lessons she seems to have taken from this story and run the particulars through a different (and competing) identity dynamic. That is, would Lauren—and other feminists (particularly those of the second wave)—consider the wearing of neo-Victorian garb by those active in the Christian modesty movement in the same way she considers the wearing of the hijab? Buttoning the argyle sweater all the way to the throat, for instance, and pulling back the hair into a prim bun—is this, too, “a performative act of aggression against the hypersexualization of young women in America”? Will doctrinaire feminists (like Amanda Marcotte, for instance) grant to young white Christian women the same nobility that Lauren does this young Muslim woman? Would a young white Christian—fighting for her beliefs and reacting to the taunts of young women taught that piercings and tattooes and a willingness to rebel are the sine qua non of identity and empowerment—be granted the same dispensations by the school?
As with Spielberg and Munich, Lauren seems to be reveling in the asking of the questions, allowing the open-endedness of the post’s premise to suggest an intellectual coherence that a particular way of pressuring those questions belies. So my question to her is this: are your beliefs truly idealistic? Or are they mere romanticism given the cover of seriousness by an invocation of the weighty topics—racism, sexism, identity, authenticity—they claim to address…?
5. Via Stop the ACLU, a notice that the ACLU loses a notable Koran case. From WRAL in North Carolina:
A judge threw out an ACLU lawsuit aimed at allowing the use of non-Christian religious texts in courtroom oaths, saying the civil liberties group had no active case to argue.
Superior Court Judge Donald Smith, who is based in Raleigh, revealed his decision to lawyers in the case on Thursday. A written ruling was to follow.
The North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sued in Guilford County in July, saying it was acting on behalf of members statewide who prefer to swear courtroom oaths on religious texts other than the Bible.
No specific plaintiff was named in the original filing, and the ACLU added the name of Greensboro Muslim Syidah Mateen only after the suit had been filed, saying she was blocked from swearing an oath on the Quran during a 2003 court hearing.
Smith tossed out the case because there is no active controversy involving someone prohibited from using a text other than a Bible, ACLU lawyer Seth Cohen said Thursday.
Expect this case to be retried in the future once the ACLU gets all it’s ducks in a row.
6. Terry Hastings sends along an interesting WSJ piece [subscription only] that he reads through the lens of identity politics:
The core of the Sachs argument—developed in his 2005 book “The End of Poverty”—is that poor countries suffer corruption because they are poor. Corruption must be measured not against some absolute standard of honesty but relative to poverty. If a country is less corrupt than should be expected given its level of poverty, it deserves a favorable rating in Mr. Sachs’s view.
Writes Terry:
Robert Mugabe is one of the richest men on the planet. He got that way by systematically looting an entire nation of aid donated by the west. Originally Mugabe was shielded by his ethnicity. Although it is evil for the western imperialist running dogs to establish commerce and trade based upon the profit motive, it is OK for a native born African to steal his own people blind in the name of unlimited greed. We now appear to be adding some additional relativity to the mix. So long as the African despots are no worse than the statistical norm for third world countries run by a despot they are OK.
How low can we go? Saddam wasn’t such a bad guy after all compared to Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. Maybe that will be Ramsey Clark’s next argument.
Terry puts his finger on a measure of identity politics that we don’t always think of as identity politics, because it tends to cross over the lines (gender, race, ethnicity) we traditionally rely upon to demarcate identity groups. But the structure is the same—and in fact we saw something similar in the last presidential election (and even now, in House debates over tax cuts) with the Edwards’ “two Americas” meme, a clear example of rhetorical class warfare.
The nobility of the poor animated the works of John Steinbeck—and it extends from the Rousseauvian idea of the noble savage. It is romantic, but it is also quite superficial, in that it reduces the quality of the human character to a measure of material means.
7. From Confederate Yankee: “As of the afternoon of December 7, 2005, Ward Brewer became the first blogger in the world to start a navy.”
8. Red State’s Mike Krempasky points me to a Joel Mowbray piece exposing pollster John Zogby’s questionable ties to organized labor and anti-Wal-Mart groups—ties that Mowbray and Krempasky note call into question Zogby’s much-cited report that notion that Americans have a negative opinion of Wal-Mart (even as, Mike points out in his email, “the company’s November sales numbers were through the roof and even though nearly 140 million Americans shop at Wal-Mart each week.”)
Bill Nienhuis has more.
9. Nice try. But my sexy new rimless glasses are far more beautiful, and—from what I can fathom from that picture (which reveals more than a few jagged edges)—much more nurturing and gentle as a lover.
10. Tom Elia points to this Bruce Bartlett piece that Tom argues “needs to be repeated over and over and over again…” An excerpt:
A few weeks ago, the Internal Revenue Service released data on tax year 2003. They show that the top 1 percent of taxpayers, ranked by adjusted gross income, paid 34.3 percent of all federal income taxes that year. The top 5 percent paid 54.4 percent, the top 10 percent paid 65.8 percent, and the top quarter of taxpayers paid 83.9 percent.
Not only are these data interesting on their own, but looking at them over time shows that the share of total income taxes paid by the wealthy has risen even as statutory tax rates have fallen sharply. A growing body of international data shows the same trend.
… we see that in 1980, when the top statutory income tax rate went up to 70 percent, the share of income taxes paid by the top 1 percent of taxpayers was just 19.3 percent. After Ronald Reagan’s tax cut of 1981, which reduced the top rate to 50 percent—a massive give-away to the wealthy according to those on the left—the percentage of income taxes paid by the top 1 percent rose steadily.
…A common liberal retort to these data is that they exclude payroll taxes, which are assumed to be largely paid by the poor. However, it turns out that when one includes payroll taxes in the calculations, it has far less impact on the distribution of the tax burden than most people would assume, because the wealthy also pay a lot of those taxes, too.
In a 2004 paper presented to the American Statistical Association, IRS economists Michael Strudler and Tom Petska calculated percentiles data that included both income taxes and Social Security taxes. In 1999, the top 1 percent paid 23.3 percent of combined payroll and income taxes, the top 10 percent paid 52.2 percent, and the top 20 percent paid 68.2 percent.
…In recent years, a number of foreign countries have also started publishing tax shares data. They show the same trend of higher and higher burdens on the wealthy even when tax rates are cut sharply.
…At some point, those on the left must decide what really matters to them—the appearance of soaking the rich by imposing high statutory tax rates that may cause actual tax payments by the wealthy to fall, or lower rates that may bring in more revenue that can pay for government programs to aid the poor? Sadly, the left nearly always votes for appearances over reality, favoring high rates that bring in little revenue even when lower rates would bring in more.
11. The Sunnis in Iraq today are praying for the release of western hostages taken by terrorists—this on a day when Iraqi locals turn in “the Butcher of Ramadi.” On a related note, Bill Turner sends along this, from the BBC:
Leaders of 57 Muslim countries have ended their summit with a warning that the Islamic world is in crisis because of the threat posed by terrorism.
The Organisation of the Islamic Conference statement urges decisive action to fight “deviant ideas”.
The meeting in the holy Muslim city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia called for changes in national laws to criminalise financing and incitement of terrorism.
…None of which, of course, will stop the Democrats from trying to shout down victory to embrace ennobling and humbling defeat.
From Ed Morrisey, writing in the Weekly Standard:
AFTER THE MURTHA COMMENTS, the GOP challenged the Democrats to go on record with a Congressional vote for retreat. Almost the entire Democratic caucus cut and ran from their embrace of the cut-and-run strategy–the House voted against the non-binding resolution for immediate withdrawal 403 to 3. The height of Democratic pusillanimity came when GOP Rep. Sam Johnson, a former Vietnam POW, asked for three extra minutes to complete his remarks. Several Democrats voiced objection. The speaker demanded that the members objecting identify themselves–and none would even stand for their own objection.
Since then, things have only gotten worse. John Kerry insisted that no Democrat had demanded a precipitous withdrawal or a timetable for retreat–and then demanded that the White House provide a timetable with dates for “transition of authority.†(In other words, after deciding at the end of last year’s election that the United States needed more troops in Iraq, he now demands a withdrawal after he demanded an escalation.)
At nearly the same time, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi held her own news conference demanding an immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq. Her second in command, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, shot back that he wanted no withdrawal and instead wanted the nation to focus on victory. Meanwhile, Senator Joe Lieberman returned from his fourth trip to Iraq and wrote that Bush has a plan in place for winning the war–and that it’s was working. Democratic leadership respectfully disagreed with Lieberman’s assessment–-and then changed course and suggested that Lieberman replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense.
More here, here, here, and here.
12. Meanwhile, back in the 1930s… (via INDC and Davids Medienkritik)
13. Finally—If you’ve found a common thread among these posts, you have recognized my unique genius. If you can’t find one, you have recognized my unique genius.
Is this last item part of that consideration? Answer that, and you will have recognized my unique genius.
Oh. And if you’ve read this far and haven’t voted? Shame on you.
I AM A SICK MAN! PITY ME!
WE WILL NOT REST UNTIL WE SEE A PICTURE OF YOU IN THE RIMLESS GLASSES.
yeah, yeah, you try doing that by hand…..in mspaint. i’m old school like that.
Worst part of the film Munich:
They replaced the Arab terrorists with white neo-nazis sporting British accents.
Sorry to learn of the ER visit. Pleased to learn it wasn’t serious. Stay well.
Jeff, somebody just came to my door claiming to be your unique genius, but I didn’t recognize him in the cocktail dress, pea coat, and head-sized burlap bag.
Then again, using rimless glasses for the Groucho Marx nose was kind of clever.
Jesus General now has twice as many votes as Kos.
I think somebody tossed their cookies over there big time.
No.
…
…
HOLY CRAP! I RECOGNIZE IT! IT IS… JEFF’S GENIUS… IT… It is so beautiful… oh… oh my… MY EYES! MY EYES! AUUUUGH! THE GOGGLES… THEY DO NOTHING! AUUUUUUUUUUUUGHBHHHHGUUUUGH!
Man, Dilbert is beating you like a $2 whore.
By the way…
2. [The ER visit.] That’s why I never go to doctors. I’ll just die first. Odds are, you’re going there to pay a couple grand just to have them tell you that you need to exercise and get some rest. Sure, I get periodic sharp, debilitating pains down my left side, but those are generally once in a blue moon, and are most likely gas.
Don’t get me start on letting them actually PRESCRIBE something. Heaven forbid you be so foolhardy, Jeff.
3. [Munich]
I’ve been through that paragraph three or four times with a fine toothed comb and I still cannot grasp yer meaning. Do you mean that you’ve never seen the world as “completely clarified” as you have in these thrillers, or what?
4. [The tale of Lauren and the hijabbed student.] Lauren found the young woman’s story so enlightening because she stood up in the face of the usual predominately white, southern, racist paradigm (I’m not sure if DIRECTLY against, all she did was confront and beat down a woman who called her sister a raghead. The school didn’t punish her for the fight “or for her religion,” says Lauren, which speaks to Lauren of enlightenment the same way it speaks to me of PCness. Still, I take the hijab girl’s side on that one. “Raghead” deserves fisticuffs if one is being so belligerent about it.). Lauren, I would likely assume, would have little experience in a setting where such Christian-oriented acts can count as “empowering.” (For those who haven’t hit up Lauren’s post, I am playing a bit off her claims that the students lack experience to quench their allegedly, but I don’t say unlikely, racist tendencies.)
And to round out the week and guide us into the weekend, I give Kanye West soiling his pants and telling us how fucking great (LOL!) he is, and why his album is the only one that should get the nod for album of the year at the Grammy’s.
Because he’s, you know, KANYE WEST y’all! KANYE FUCKING WEST!!! YAAAAGGGHHHHH!!!! POP!
“I miss that kind of clarity.”
Saw “Three Days of the Condor” the other day. Really enjoyed it once again. But Redford’s preaching at the end seems a little strained today, especially after that beautiful visual shot of the World Trade towers.
4. I’d be satisfied if Jill just accepted the healing power of baby powder.
Get well, Jeff. You’re a great American.
OHNOES —
It means the world today is more clarified than films like Munich like to admit.
Which is to say I don’t see people of Lauren’s world view conceding easily to the notion that Christianity gets the sort of elevated victim’s status, given that it and the white/redneck/racist/sexist paradigm it gets paired with probably look dominant where she is. She certainly has seen enough REAL examples of it not to discount her opinions on the matter as some Lefty, certainly, but I see such statements, like Lauren’s and MANY other people as standing up to whatever paradigm appears dominant, which, by its very nature, is conceived as oppressing minorities and bigoted to a certain degree. Again, she approaches this in good faith and, I would bet good money, good reasons to.
I’m rambling… Apologies. Do you all get what I’m trying to get at?
8. [The wild world of Wal-mart vs. Zogby polls]
Zogby runs polls. To assume then that Zogby is a neutral political observer in this day and age already REQUIRES a great leap of faith.
10. [The taxing tax trials]
ZOMG Lower tax rates = higher revenue? BEST MATH EVAR!
I like to exercise a little humility when it comes to economic or tax-related issues, lest it lead to the sort of self-important lefty value judgements leveled against the gas companies. Let the economists sort through THAT mess.
Granted, none of my lefty family members even know the MEANING of such humility. But, ennh, whatyagonnado, eh?
Pity we cannot give everyone the general understanding of economics require to see how bogus such claims are… Education being what it is, but… ennnh, such is life.
“Not only are these data interesting on their own, but looking at them over time shows that the share of total income taxes paid by the wealthy has risen even as statutory tax rates have fallen sharply.”
We would kind of expect that as income becomes more concentrated. Now we know that income is become concentrated at rates faster than the tax cuts can catch up to them.
Ah, thanks Jeff. Have a good rest and all.
Generally, I tend to subscribe to a somewhat Adamsian philosophy that if things start making TOO much sense in the world, I’m either missing one vitally confusing piece of information, or the universe is about to be replaced by something even more bizarre.
Either way, I get afraid.
OMG TAX HAX
Sorry for that one.
But, man, you would assume that such a conclusion would be MORE obviously visible than simply coming at it using this tax data…
I thought I recognized the unique genius angle, but unless #2 was ghost-written by your wife and submitted via you, I didn’t actually find it. Unless #2 doesn’t count either.
Glad you’re well. Your symptoms exactly parallel a moderate case of food poisoning I’ll never forget (disorientation, tingling hands, etc.) but the consumption of a beer proves that diagnosis incompatible.
TW: that which does not kill you only makes you stronger. Or something.
The unique genius of this humor blog is how funny it isn’t. If you laugh, you don’t get it.
BLT —
I didn’t have the beer until later. But I did have a few bites of a stuffed pepper which tasted funky. Ended up throwing it away.
So maybe you aren’t too far off. I told this to the doctor, be neither she nor the paramedic made that connection…
ss —
I think you might be onto something.
…Better get off it before it ejactulates.
Lauren sez :
Or, consider it the enslavement of one’s totality, the rendition of your body, mind and soul to Your Master – your husband, your brother, or father – to do with you as they please, and to demand that you fucking LIKE it. If done voluntarily, then consider it an act of treason against those who don’t have that choice, and who have risked their lives to get rid of it.
Common thread: No armadillo!
That must also be the unique genius of Jesus General cause I wasn’t laughing. Don’t get me wrong, I dig Hey Zues, but what passes for humor over there…………
Let’s just say you’ll never see the words “well coiffed labia on both sides of her head” on that site.
Jeff, you just wanted to write “tingling in the extremities”.
4. The short answer is no, Christian women who opt for long hair, low hems, and high necklines for all the same reasons (deference to scripture, as witness of belief and in reaction to current secular excesses, etc.)
They make Jill’s readers “want to throw up”, they should “know better”; Jills readers weakly and ironically protest that these Christian women are supporting a view of the world that believes itself superior, and merely “submitting” to the patriarchy they oppose, etc. etc.
I’ll tell you what makes me want to throw up. “feminists” who refuse to recognize that hijab is a mark of submission to male domination. Period.
Ditto on “Three Days of the Condor”, but the funny thing is, back then, the Left saw an internal CIA war directed at undermining the elected government as a bad thing.
These days … not so much.
Adding to the “allure” of the 70s crypto-thrillers was the seediness of it all. That of course had a lot to do with how seedy the decade was in general, especially in the cities.
That’s the decade that all the artistes and intelligentsia in New York want to return to.
My distrust of the
Medical ProfessionHealth Care Industry is something that I have cultivated over the years via empirical and anectdotal evidence. If you have a knife sticking in you or a bone sticking out of you, the ER is the place to be. Easy diagnosis, trained technicians = satisfactory results.If, by chance you are merely “not feeling well”, your chances of an accurate diagnosis and effective treatment are about a single digit percentage. I have known better shade tree mechanic “parts replacers” that have a higher success rate than many Doctors.
I’ll tell you what makes me want to throw up. “feminists†who refuse to recognize that hijab is a mark of submission to male domination. Period.
Today’s “feminists” are so pretentious it hurts. They saw a bandwagon and thought “cool!” – and hopped onto it. Now we are seeing the undoing of decades worth of progress for woman’s rights at the hands of – of all people – feminists.
Before y’all go crazy on me, read the comments.
Jeff
I prefer not trying to understand your genius. It just makes it that much easier to keep my sanity. Especially with the current issues today in polictics. True, I do chuckle at the posts from time to time. But does that mean I do not understand the content? I think not. What keeps me interested is the unpredictability of each post. Thank you very much, and yes I voted…..
And yes, I truly am enjoying this train wreck called the Democratic party….
Now for the PIE damn it!!!!!!!
Aw hell. I just posted a long response and I lost it.
Shorter Lauren: I have no problem with these things you listed unless there is a concerted effort saying that to don or not don them is inherenly moral or immoral. Considering that the student is from a liberal Muslim family, she made clear that while her parents have voiced their opinions, it is the choice of her and her sister to wear hijab.
There were all sorts of power issues at play there: the physical, the ethnic, the religious, beauty culture, and gender—and I thought the way she handled it was commendable.
Methinks you’re more offended by the identity politics at play than anything else.
The box is open and the MYTH has been substantiated. We now have empirical medical data proving that Jeff is sweet.
[If you are visiting from Feministe, The Countess, or Rox Populi, please help to continue the discussion here]
Here’s why Lauren’s post bugged the shit out of me. As we’ve discussed here before, nearly every argument that comes out of the feminist camp depends on bad-faith assumptions about their opponents’ motives. Jill, for example, never tires of reminding us that what the pro-life movement is really all “about” is controlling women. Concerns about dead babies? Just a big smokescreen for misogyny and uterus-harvesting. Literally every argument Marcotte makes employs this M.O.
The only variable is the degree of intent they attribute to each opponent. The more doctrinaire or powerful a conservative is, the more conscious his misogyny is assumed to be. For those less doctrinaire and powerful—well, they might not be evil per se, but at the very least they’re acting according to a false consciousness. Me, Jeff, most of the other commenters here, we only think we came to our political beliefs in good faith. If you could dig deep into our unconsciousness, you’d see we’re all just cheerleaders for the patriarchy too.
Thus goes the argument, and that brings us back to Lauren’s post. She and Jill and fucking Marcotte especially are willing to impute all manner of ulterior motives to folks like me and Jeff—even, as I just explained, if we’re not conscious of those motives. So here comes this Muslim woman mouthing platitudes about how her little quasi-chastity-belt hijab “empowers” her, and what does Lauren do? Accepts it entirely at face value. Eats it up with a fucking spoon. Never mind the colossal cultural pressures this woman must feel, and must have felt all her life, to show the “appropriate” degree of modesty in public. No unconscious influences there at all.
Lauren’s post made me wonder, what exactly would a feminist taxonomy of good faith look like? I think something like this:
1. Women of color. Presumptively always act in good faith.
2. White women. Presumptively always act in good faith except in matters of race, since they are, after all, white people, and therefore are irredeemably racist. At least on an unconscious level.
3. Men of color. Presumptively always act in good faith except in matters of gender, since they are, after all, men, and therefore harbor some secret desire to control uteruses or fucking whatever.
4. White men. Presumptively never act in good faith. Presumption cannot be rebutted, except insofar as to show false consciousness rather than malicious intent.
That about right? You can switch numbers 2 and 3 around depending upon whether the issue deals with race or gender.
What fucking bullshit.
Allah, don’t go projecting or anything. As I said, read the comments.
Jeez, I vote for Jeff and he ends up in the ER and I don’t get any armadillo porn, or even pie. It’s got to be Bush’s fault.
Allah, you pretty much nailed it.
I’m not projecting. I’m not accusing you of ulterior motives. I’m accusing you of employing an egregious double standard.
I read the comments. So, you’re ambivalent about the hijab. Per Jeff’s post, would you be ambivalent about Christian women covering themselves from neck to ankle in the interests of “empowerment”? Marcotte farted out a predictable post about the Christian modesty movement a few weeks ago, as I recall; anyone here want to bet whether Lauren agrees more with Marcotte or, say, Wendy Shalit on that one?
As for my little taxonomy, it’s worth noting how sympathetic you seem to be to Muizza’s notion of the hijab as a type of racial totem, i.e., a defiant expression of her Arab/Muslim identity (and cultural rejectionism!) post-9/11. Exactly as the taxonomy predicts: all she has to do is play the race card and feminist Lauren heads for the hills, quickly replaced by guilty white-girl Lauren. Well, good for Muizza, I say; wear that symbol of oppression as a badge of honor. The joke’s on both of you.
Anyway. We’re off into identity-politics now, and Jeff does that far better than I. Take it away, papa Goldstein.
Projecting? Not sure what that implies exactly in the context of Allah’s comment. Unless it was just a pseudo-psychological, all-purpose, smart-sounding “zinger” that you heard once but don’t understand, in which case touche’.
When someone says, “I could be like you… but I choose not to,” how is that not a self-righteous means of purposefully separating yourself from the “other”–in this case, the mainstream of that school? For a place so full of alleged racism, plenty of people seemed to accept her whole-heartedly once she attempted to meet them w/o such a huge social roadblock.
Sad comment on the reality of modern Hollywood: I can’t be sure if this is a joke.
In case you didn’t notice, Jill, Amanda, and I are different people and we disagree on a regular basis. Did you miss that, or were you so intent on chalking up an experience that I plainly stated was “tangled,” i.e. not settled in any way, shape or form, up to my willful naivete?
In my story, context is everything.
I thought I made clear the conflicting forces at play (and those implied). Perhaps not. But note that the day she chose to confront the girl who called her a raghead was the day she did not wear hijab, and THAT was the day she felt empowered enough to stand up to the name-caller.
In any case, I think it does take a certain amount of courage to wear hijab when your peers make it quite clear they think you’re a poor, submissive thing. Not only that, but to take it off, get a bazillion compliments for her beauty, and then go right back to being, in their eyes, the mouse under the veil. Whether or not I condone, reject, or passively accept hijab was really beyond the point. I was thrilled to see this girl get a chance to educate her peers on her religion and, if only for a day, come out of her shell and be ACCEPTED for the kid she is.
7. From Confederate Yankee: “As of the afternoon of December 7, 2005, Ward Brewer became the first blogger in the world to start a navy.”
Cool! Now if we could get the Mexican Air Force to give up some of those B-25’s…
SB: methods
Hey! You got methods in my madness!
Allah, i toldja, reading at feministe causes brain cell loss. Me, i prefer Jack Daniels.
Mistah Pundit, i also infinitely prefer Fitty (fifty cent) to Kanye. much more fun.
For a real hoot, read Jill’s post on men’s reproductive rights.
on second thought, don’t.
why subject yourself to the agony?
Not only that, but to take (the hijab) off, get a bazillion compliments for her beauty, and then go right back to being, in their eyes, the mouse under the veil.
Me? I think you missed the point, hon.
Just slightly.
SB: police
cheeze it!
Re: 3 Days of the Condor. One of my favorites and holds up really well, though Redford’s speech does seem as out of place nowadays as does Denzel Washington’s impassioned rhetoric in The Siege.
I suspect Syriana is likely to try that same anti-CIA message from Condor 30 years on—only now if the New York Times is held up as a beacon of truth, many in the audience will simply snicker.
Mojo, I never said she was the feminist. And you could tell she was conflicted by those compliments as well. It isn’t unusual for people to enjoy flattering attention, nor is it necessarily unfeminist.
But none of you have a sense of self-deprecating humor, and you are all waaay too high verbal for me.
Why can’t you all be more like Camille Paglia?
Three Days of the Condor: Max von Sydow was awesome.
“You have notmuch future there.
It will happen this way.
You may be walking. Maybe the fiirst sunny day
ofthe spring, and a carwill slow beside you, and the doorwill open, and someoneyou know, maybe even trust, will get out ofthe car.
And he will smile, a becoming smile.
But he will leave open the door of the car and offer to giveyou a lift…”
Look, feminism is so over. We just don’t need it anymore.
Lauren, the hijab is a cultural style like amish head scarfs and buttons instead of zippers. The difference is that the Amish men don’t stone you for violating their dresscode.
The basic argument is biology. And you can’t mitigate biology with law or religion or argument. The only thing that mitigates biology is science. Mona said this, too. Reproductive freedom for women depends on birth control and abortion. Don’t kid yourselves, if abortion was outlawed tommorrow, there would still be abortions. We have the science.
And for the XY, well, the japanese are working on an artificial womb. That will mitigate your biology.
What will happen when the two sexes don’t need each other for reproduction anymore?
Perhaps we can just enjoy stuff without guilt.
It takes a lot more courage to take that hijab off when your “peers” make it clear to you that you will be pushing daisies for doing so. What’s more, what this girl did didn’t take any more courage than say, a gay man coming out of the closet (and, unlike simply putting your hijab back on, admitting you’re gay is a genie that won’t be so easily put back in the closet).
Here’s the thing though, there’s a kernel of truth to your argument with regards to stereotypes. What bothers me, and I suspect Allah as well, is when cases like this are elevated to a level of valour it simply doesn’t deserve. It devalues the plight of the millions of other woman who suffer far greater consequences at the hands of that same hijab every day. For them, putting the hajib on, or taking it off, is a matter of life and death, not a matter of being complimented on their beauty, or not.
What does the word, “Islam” mean?
When did she show she was not “submissive?” What did she do to show this?
Yeah, if she was totally ug I’d be all, “put those things back on, sister! No one wants to see that shit.” But since she’s a fox, she totally didn’t have to do it at all. You go girl!
Care to come on over to Feministe and actually tell me where I went wrong? Really, “PlayahGrrl,” I’d love to hear it.
Don’t worry, we’ll use small words and simple sentences, just for you.
lol, sorry jill, high verbal means too many words, not too big or complex.
i’m more concerned over whether you can come up with a synthetic sense of humor.
But i’m going out dancin’!
haha, not being a feminist, and being an XX who actually enjoys the company of those penis-weilding, uterus-enslaving opressors, i have a date tonight! Or perhaps it is just a contrived occasion for amping up our neuro-transmitters and pretending to share gametes in the interest of species homo sapiens.
So I’ll come over tomorrow and give you a school, ‘kay?
Here’s sumpin’ to think about in the meantime–
My favorite, Brooke Valentine, Grrlfight!
Funny. I have a date tonight too.
I’m not a feminist anymore! Cured!
Lauren–
well, Jeff has led me to believe that you may be a closet libertarian. Perhaps there is hope for you yet.
Hmmm.
You’ve been using big words up til now?
Personally I’m pretty satisfied being the patriarchical walking penis-oppressor smut-lord. I even have a wonderful t-shirt that says
“Penis on board: don’t like it? Stick it where the sun doesn’t shine!”
Frankly the most amusing things to read are about aging feminists who have derided the necessity of men now in fertility clinics desperately seeking pregnancy.
Makes that whole fish-bicycle thing rather ironic.
Wait, now feminists can’t dance? You learn a new stereotype every day. I know that feminists hate men and never get dates (which must be REALLY confusing for the men in my life, particularly the ones who I date), but this dancing thing is throwing me off.
And you know what they say about people who have to brag about how attractive they are, and how many dates they have… it’s kind of the equivalent of men who drive huge trucks to portray a certain image. That is, the goods just don’t match up.
But then, with the handle “Playah Grrl,” I’m sure you have plenty of internet man-friends lining up for a cyber-session.
And am I being unnecessarily bitchy? You bet. Jeff, I like your site, and you seem like a nice human being, but this shit is really getting old.
Plus, I’m tired and have had too many glasses of champagne. My many non-feminist dates, you know.
Did I say something to offend you, Jill?
The threads that get Jill to show up are always quite amusing. Keep it up, Jeff!
BECAUSE OF THE OPPRESSION!!!
BTW, I’ve seen actual oppression of women (in Iraq, see my blog post named “Jenny”)and I hate it worse than anything I’ve ever seen in my life. Just to clear the air, so to speak.
BECAUSE OF THE MISUNDERSTANDINGS!!!
Anyway, it’s 2:30 am here, so I think I’ll watch that Kate Moss video again.
That’s good shit, I tell you…good shit.
Hmmm.
Frankly I think many men have unforgettable experiences in both everyday life and dating that involve ardent feminists. This isn’t to imply that feminists can’t be attractive or are spinsters in waiting. It’s just that those experiences tend to sour the whole ideal. I’d like to point out that it is possible, though not probable to many feminists, that not every action has an ulterior motive.
As for the discussion on hand, vis a vis the hajib, personally I’m not all that impressed. If you want me to admire the courage of a muslim girl taking off a hajib, then show me one doing so in Mecca, Tehran or Riyadh.
And surviving it.
Hell. Or even in Paris. Frankly it’s one thing to have the courage to take off the hajib when there’s no physical danger. It’s quite another when there actually is physical danger. It’s this discrepency that offends many of the posters here. Well that and the double standard with respect to devout Christians.
IMHO this all references back to the extraordinary difference in how Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton were treated. And in how Anita Hill and Paula Jones were treated by feminists. Frankly I’d respect feminists a lot more if solidarity with women were held to a higher value than political expediency, but it isn’t so there you go.
My opinion, which of course is perfectly safe to ignore, is that modern feminism is largely an urban thing and dying out. It’s like the labor unions. As long as you had something to offer then people perceived value in it. But for the past decade or more the only thing that feminism has offered has mostly been abortion. If abortion is ever reduced from a national issue to a state-level issue, it’s hard to see what other driving issue feminism could use.
Amusingly enough the current trends in college admissions are showing that there might be an necessity for menism sometime soon. It’ll be a curious thing to see the same mechanisms used by feminists then used against them.
As always YMMV.
*yawn*
i can’t resist–
read what Lauren said again–
gack! barf! hurl!
feminist act? young girls in southern utah get persuaded to join plural marriages for their religion, too. is that a feminist act?
I’m with Allah on this–that is the most incredibly stupid statement i’ve read in a long time. And you (Jill and Lauren) spout this crap alla time–it’s like your partyline.
tch, tch, jill, dissin’ me because i’m a grrl that likes to have fun? accusing me of frivolous cyber-relationships because of my name? Why, how very sexist of you!
it’ll be late tommorrow jill, i’m goin’ snoboarding.
see you then.
Believe me, it’s “confusion” that got them to date you in the first place. I once went on a date with a feminist. After 10 minutes it felt like I was married to the bitch. The only thing she had to offer, intellectually, was to complain about all the guys that dumped her, and how much she hates her sister’s kids. Fucking Yaaaaawn!!! I ordered dinner, told her I to go piss, and beat it. Life’s too short to waste.
My only rule of dating is: I like women who like me.
That tends to rule out women who self-identify as feminists.
What did you order Snake?
I guess words come to mean what they are used to describe. But I would describe myself as a feminist…just not the crazy-ass she-girl man-hater
the word has come to mean.
Men aren’t here to babysit me or hold my hand….I bring something to the table.
No, Jeff, you didn’t. Your post was reasonable, but the model of linking to either Lauren or I and then having commenters go apeshit over how terrible all feminists are is just tiring.
Personally I tend to date women who post side-by-side incoherent drunken rants on weblog comments sections at 2:00 on a saturday morning. That’s just me though, I’m weird like that.
Jill: WTF? Is that anything like the model of linking to some “conservative” site and having commenters go apeshit over how terrible all Republicans are?
APF
Jill thinks Jeff is Allah’s mouthpiece
Oh, BTW, Jill?
If commenter’s do go “apeshit” over feminists, it is the gender-feminists that arouse the ire.
Ok, there are a few males that post here that can’t stand the equity feminists either, but then they have issues.
It’s not feminism, per se, that many object to, it’s that so much of it, like liberalism, is no longer distinguishable from Leftism.
If I argue how terrible all feminists are, I’m arguing how terrible I am. Don’t you get it, Jill?
HERE THERE BE FEMINISTS.
It’s disgusting that anyone would support the hijab as a feminist statement. It’s anything but. As long as women in the world are being murdered because they refuse the veil, wearing it is a sign of solidarity with the violent oppression of women. An admission that women are dirty and satanic, and must hide themselves so that men can get along with each other.
I’m sorry, where did I say that? The quote you link to afterwards isn’t mine. Let me say it again, since apparently a few of you didn’t catch it the first time: Lauren, Amanda and I are different people.
Do I link to the exact same conservative blog over and over again? At least, what, 5 or 6 times now? Look, Lauren and I have been exceedingly patient. We’ve come here numerous times, answered questions, and responded to comments politely. But no matter what we do, and now matter how patient we are, it turns into a shit-slinging match with all the commenters relentlessly going after us. I thought being nice and polite and patient would work, but it doesn’t.
Pointing out people who are well-known conservatives, or who are being published by conservative groups to represent their views, is pretty different from going after private individuals and using them as a platform to “prove” that an entire group of people thinks one way. Do I read Townhall and criticize it? You bet, because it claims to represent mainstream conservative thought. Do I come to PW and assert that everything Jeff says somehow represents conservatism, or libertarianism, or the Republican party? No.
My apologies, Jill
It was Lauren stating that Jeff was Allah’s mouthpiece … AND equating Allah to David Duke.
Nice one, that.
Oh. Suddenly my comments at Feministe are “awaiting moderation”
Scratch that. My comment was deleted.
Nice one, that, too.
Chuckle. Looks like Althouse and Feministe are cut from the same cloth.
And to File Closer —> Tinyurl.com
Use it in good health, go forth and fry the page formatting of websites no more…
Oh, just so we know the parameters of Laurens “flame war, ahoy!” This is what I wrote that she found un-post worthy
TW: Kitchen. As in, if you can’t stand the heat …
Darleen —
Lauren says she didn’t delete the comment. Try reposting it.
Jeff
Just did. I’m back in the “moderation” que.
We’ll see.
Speaking personally, I’m thoroughly sympathetic to the idea of wearing the hijab, or in the case of women in the Holiness tradition, the ankle-length high-necked dresses and uncut hair–as an expression of religious faith and being ‘in but not of’ the world. People go to great lengths of self-denial for the sake of their faith–and the specific expression (in my opinion) is less important than the meaning which that expression (whether we’re talking self-flagellation by Medieval monks, the Stylites’ habit of standing on the tops of columns, or the Appalachian Pentecostals who handle poisonous snakes) has for the person who enacts it. A woman who freely chooses to submit herself to the more restrictive rules of one or another religion, that is, who does so while being fully aware that she could do otherwise–even if those rules apply differently to men and to women–is still equal to a man in the freedom of her choice to follow these rules.
The problem, of course, is that one woman’s free choice may be seen as tacit approval of what another women is unwillingly forced to do, whether or not this is the intent of the first woman.
I dated a feminist once……….
I faked it.
Agreed. The other main point being made here is that a woman who willingly puts on a hijab is no more courageous than someone who willingly gets herself a mohawk, or a nosering. How courageous is it to voluntarily put something on that is pretty commonplace to begin with, and which can easily be removed if you feel like it? There are universities in the US where it will take more courage to put on a gallon hat, than a hijab, for fucks’ sakes. Or worse, try being gay, and coming out of the closet. That’s courage. Not this petty shit. When I was in college, kids were being picked on for having pimples, being poor, too dumb, too smart, you name it. And unlike a hijab, you can’t go into the bathroom and come out rich and popular. You have to deal with it. There is no easy out.
This is why it is impossible to take the left seriously – their heroes are plastic and manufactured, like leftwing Barbie and Ken’s.
Sorry to have missed the fireworks. I just got back from nine hours of CLE in Manhattan, with another nine on tap starting at 9 a.m. Fuck water-boarding; if you want to make terrorists talk, give them a day’s worth of lectures on insurance law.
I glanced at Lauren’s love letter and will be happy to respond with a little sonnet of my own if the flames are still burning tomorrow, but my brain is fried and I don’t have time right now. I will say, though, that Jill’s point about her, Lauren, and Marcotte being distinct individuals with different agendas is well taken. Strong words indeed from someone who refers routinely to her political opponents as “the patriarchy.”
Oh, and Jeff? Thanks again for being my “mouthpiece.” Check’s in the mail. Someone alert Tony Pierce.
I don’t get how differently different bloggers deal with trolls. Jeff threatens to rape them like a redneck fucks a retarded chicken (that was it, right? It’s been awhile), which, personally, seems like the best tack. Althouse declares jihad and trawls through a bleeding parade live-blog for proof of moral turpitude on the part of the MAN WHO UNLEASHED HIS TROLLS on her. The single person who alternately goes by Amanda, Jill, and Lauren declares the comments in this post, or at the linked post (I’ve read both, and can’t figure out which is supposed to be the troll clogged one) a bridge too far? I’m sure there are similarly prickly rethug bloggers; I’m glad I don’t read them.
How courageous is it to voluntarily put something on that is pretty commonplace to begin with, and which can easily be removed if you feel like it?
I suppose my point is, simply, that I entirely recognize the validity of the hijab to a woman of a certain tradition as a aid to her own personal faith. The point of the exercise is entirely in its meaning to the woman herself, not in the effect of her outward appearance to others (except, perhaps, as the wearing of the hijab may provide occasions for spiritual trial and the testing of her faith through the questioning and mockery of others). Her actions are not calculated to get a specific reaction–they are the dictates of her faith which she follows regardless of the possible consequences.
On the other hand, a Muslim woman could also wear the hijab without attaching any specific interior religious feeling or importance to it–and yet not be, so to speak, ‘taking it in vain’–she might believe (like any number of ‘social gospel’/’radical evangelical’/’liberation theology’ Christian folk of my acquaintance) that radical feminism/pacifism/multiculturalism are part of the dictates of her faith, and that the wearing of the hijab is primarily important as an agent of social change. In this case, her wearing of the hijab indicates a belief that the possible positive corrective effect of her actions upon what she percieves as the intolerance of the Western society in which she lives for Muslims, outweighs the possible negative effect of her wearing (and thus seeming to condone as a purely external social symbol) the hijab on predominantly Muslim societies in which the hijab is not a choice in any sense of the world, but can only be called (if anything may truly be so called) a tool of patriarchal oppression.
Apologies for the long tedious post.
Boy, I’m glad Chris Clarke is so much more civ…il… waaaiiit.
This is how blogs work, Jill. The pendulum swings both ways, be it at Pandagon(Only with more cursing.), BitchPHD (Only with more flat-out lies.), or LGF (Only with more Nuke Meccas.).
KEKEKE.
alex, thass all fine.
my violent objection is to the insane notion that the hijab is a “feminist statement”.
I am manifesting a lot of prejudice and bigotry against feminists since i’m back at work, so i asked a friend for help–he said something very wise, i think.
haha, my comment on Jill’s post (that i left last night) is still awaiting moderation.
Shades of Ann AltHouse!!!
do all feminists delete comments?
careful playah
Embarrassing Feministe by pointing out here that you’re in moderation/been deleted there only gets their intelligent, reasonable, civil, ontopic commenters to charge you as a complainer* … on topic and civilly, of course ..
Well, i have a better suggestion. Given that women’s rights is pretty much a solved problem in this country, let’s export the feminists to where they can do some real good! Rather than rag on Laurence Summers for speaking science, and wil’n out on Allah for pointing out the truth, let’s send Jill and Lauren to Saud!!!!
Surely that is a country that needs feminists, and Lauren can can expand on her thesis, that wearing the hijab is a feminist action!
lol.
Ragging on Lauren and Jill for their comments policies is pretty silly. I’ve never had an issue, and my posts there have been respectfully disagreeing with them for the most part. Lauren and Jill generally act in good faith, we’re not talking the sort of general purposes idiocy one sees out of, for instance, Chris Clarke or Amanda Marcotte (Or the BitchPHD lying bit.), or many of the nitwit commenters that frequent Feministe. Granted, we have our own nitwits, but nobody wants to call a nitwit someone on their own team. It’s a sign of weakness too much for the factionalized political world to allow.
Besides, each side needs their “OMG COMMENTERS ARE MEANIES” ammo.
I’ll take that chance, Darleen, playah grrrl, lay off, alright? Jill and Lauren both deserve a minimum amount of respect. You can rag on Amanda all you want, she’s the one who actively deletes comments.
I must also grant, Allah’s comment was far more… well, loaded with venom I should say, than the hijab post merited. There was probably a better time for this rant, but it expresses frustrations that are not entirely without merit.
Of course, the venom of it all allowed Lauren to dismiss it with trite platitudes. Meh. Even still, Lauren and Jill not the cartoon characters some of the other bloggers are…
Extending the logic, when will we learn that catching a beating is an expression of feminism vis-à-vis faith?
Really, if a lady believes believes that God’s plan is for a man to correct his wife in the manner he sees fit, then she’s really saying “I am woman, hear me roar” when she gets her ass whipped with something no thicker than his thumb.
Tomorrow’s topic: Not leaving your house without a mahram as an expression of liberation and enlightenment.
Nope.
Read this again OHNOES–
According to that logic, teenagers persuaded into plural marriage in southern Utah are committing feminist acts. Lauren raves on about it like its some glorious statement.
Jeff, glad that you escaped the ER unharmed.
Thanks for the link to Ward Brewer’s site re the ship recovered from Mexico. Really interesting. And then I read his latest post(quite long) about MARAD and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. Blatant criminality. This guy is really brave taking them on like he is. I’m sending all the information to my senators and congressman, with his permission.
OHNOES, Lauren deleted my comment.
no diff from that nutter AltHouse.
Lauren wrote:
You could say this in four words:
“would Laurenâ€â€and other feminists (particularly those of the second wave)â€â€consider the wearing of neo-Victorian garb by those active in the Christian modesty movement in the same way she considers the wearing of the hijab?”
You don’t have to go all the way back to the Victorian era – “tzniut” (modesty in Hebrew) is a very big issue in the Orthodox Jewish community. Normative for women is to not wear pants or skirts above the knee, sleeves shorter than elbow, or tops that show anything below the collarbone. Married women cover their hair. To dress like this signals that you are part of that lifestyle and belief system.
But a crucial difference is that people who don’t want to lifestyle and belief system can leave, without violence being threatened against them. I think a big difference between Muslim and Jewish communities is that Orthodox Jews just want their space and to be left alone and have no desire to take over the government and make everyone else live the way they do.