Another Friday, another day of travel for me. But that doesn't mean that I don't have time for Panda Party this morning! Perhaps we'll indulge in some more yé-yé music, if I can find an excuse for it. 

Got some tunes? Wanna play? Panda Party!

A suspect has been arrested in the Wisconsin terrorism case involving a bomb set off in a Planned Parenthood case. Francis Grady is facing federal charges. A couple of things that are important to keep in mind about this case and this suspect.

1) Profiles in terrorism. Because there's an allergy in the mainstream media to labeling terrorist acts committed by anyone other than Muslim men as what it is---terrorism---important information about the profile of a terrorist tends to go unlearned. Grady is a middle-aged white man. To those who observe anti-choice terrorism closely, this is roughly the least surprising news ever, and not just because of prior incidents of anti-choice terrorism. It's also because the bulk of the men having public conniption fits about women being sexually active are middle-aged white men. There's a sprinkling of women in there, but by and large, the people who are on the radio screeching about how women who use contraception are "sluts", who convene and sit on congressional panels about how contraception is the end of "religious liberty", who pass laws restricting abortion while making speeches comparing women to farm animals, who melt down on Fox News at the very idea that family planning clinics continue to exist, who try to eliminate all funding for contraception on the state and federal level, and who run for President while talking about the evils of contraception or why we need to "get rid of" Planned Parenthood? Middle-aged white men. For some reason, middle-aged white men in our culture are encouraged to take their generalized frustrations in life and dump all that anger on women who dare have sex with someone else without paying an enormous and unnecessary penalty for it. But because of the tendency to only label Muslim terrrorism as "terrorism", this phenomenon gets under-analyzed. There's been a lot of ink spilled about young men and terrorism, because of Muslim terrorism, but the profile of an American terrorist is one where he's just as, if not more, likely to be middle-aged. 

2) Grady is proud of himself. Getting the suspect to confess was no problem at all, it seems, since he's gloating about how awesome he is.

Francis Grady, 50, spoke to reporters who were covering his first appearance in federal court since the Sunday night attack. The Green Bay Press-Gazette posted video of him walking through the courthouse followed by a short clip of him speaking to reporters outside.

"There was no bomb," Grady said. "It was gasoline."

A reporter asked why Grady attacked the clinic.

"Because they're killing babies there," he responded.

The newspaper also got more from inside the federal courtroom, where Grady reportedly interrupted the judge to ask, "“Do you even care at all about the 1,000 babies that died screaming?"

Obviously, this is classic anti-choice delusion. They've convinced themselves embryos are "babies", and so it's not much of a leap to suggest that they therefore "scream", even though they have no mouths, lungs, or throats to scream, or brains that would compel this action. But we all know this isn't about "babies", so much as abortion and reproductive rights generally being a scapegoat for anger at declining male privilege and women's expanding opportunities.

Because of the aforementioned angry, middle-aged white men denouncing women's rights from TV and radio, from the halls of Congress to the presidential campaign, are we surprised that an anti-choice terrorist would get it in his head that he's a hero with widespread social support? Are we surprised that he's bragging about his crime instead of recoiling in shame? He probably thinks the Republican presidential candidates who were in the state campaigning when Grady set this bomb off are watching this on TV and approving of him. 

The mealy-mouthed unwillingness to take anti-choice terrorism seriously is a large part of the problem. It's not called "terrorism". Conservatives offer half-hearted denunciations, but then immediately turn around and continue to offer support for the narratives that create terrorism,  such as claiming that nearly every woman in America is out of line for using her access points to health care---whether it's private insurance or government programs to fill the gaps---to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Or claiming that the 1 in 3 American women who have abortions are murderers. As long as it's socially acceptable for men to be angry about women's bid for equality, and as long as that anger continues to be channeled into hatred for reproductive rights, some of the angry dudes are going to turn violent. Mild denunciations of crossing the line aren't enough. Anyone who continues to support the narrative that forced child-bearing is an appropriate social control placed on women is responsible for this. 

Aaron Traister at Salon has a moving piece today about the dangers of being a Luddite, where he bravely admits that his refusal to adapt to changing technology was a baseless pose adopted to make him look "cool", and now he's regretting it. Decades of refusing to learn how to operate new technologies lets the "new technology" part of your brain wither, it appears, making it really hard to approach what seems easy for others to use---such as an iPod---seem impossibly difficult. This makes a lot of sense, actually. From the research I've read, it really does seem brains are like muscles; if you don't use certain tasks they can do, your ability to do that will wither over time. I applaud Traister for being brave in writing a piece about his regret. It might not seem brave, because he's being humorous about it, but honestly, I think admitting that Ludditism is a self-defeating behavior is a brave thing for a Luddite to do. 

With all that underway, I want to point out that Traister is still operating under the unfortunate fallacy that gives birth to the Luddite in the first place: that there's a meaningful, time-based distinction between "technology" and "not technology". 

Technology wasn’t a big part of my family life growing up. In the ’90s, my friends would rip on me because the only movie machine we owned was a Betamax, and because I called it a “movie machine.” There were no video games in my house. I watched the evolution from Atari to PlayStation from the living rooms and dens of friends, and while those friends were comfortable transitioning from “Mario” and “Street Fighter” to “Call of Duty” and “Grand Theft Auto,” I silently struggled to make the shapes move in “Tetris.” As a defense mechanism, I decided video games were just another waste of time, and the upgrades in graphics and complexity were a hustle to get people’s money.

This is a great paragraph, but I have to point out that I'm highly skeptical that technology wasn't a big part of Traister's life growing up. I highly doubt his family lived naked outside, subsisting off food pulled directly off plants or killed with their bare hands. That he's literate suggests that they certainly embraced the technologies used for reading and writing. Anyway, he directly mentions technologies his family had in this piece: a Betamax, which suggests a television, and Tetris, which suggests some kind of video game system. But the larger point is this: Everything is technology. Pens and paper are technology. The stove is technology. Buildings are technology, as are windows and doors. And think of books! The invention of the printing press is one of the great technological achievements of history. A lot of Luddites have a great deal of affection for books as part of their self-image as musty old rebels against the modern world, but in fact, books are the direct result of one of those great technological shifts that strike fear and consternation into the heart of the Luddite. 

Which brings me to my point: Being a Luddite isn't about rejecting or being hostile to technology. It's about being hostile to new technology, for no other reason than it happened to be invented after you were born and/or became a Luddite. That makes it a completely illogical position, since it's based on the premise that the existence of you on the planet is a great historical event that represents the divide between old-fashioned, useful technology and the era when technology supposedly seemed to mean nothing but decay and despair. The fear of technology is almost always a fear of technology that's developed in your lifetime. I pretty much never hear Luddites gripe about having to use the stove, for instance, leading into rants into how all this indoor cooking is making us soft and weak, because we've abandoned the good, old-fashioned art of buliding a fire in order to cook our food. 

Which isn't to say all technology is good, anymore than technology is automatically suspect because it was invented in your lifetime and not before it. Lots of technologies ended up being a bad idea, or more frequently, had good effects and bad ones. But what's ironic about this is that Luddites I hear almost always save their biggest gripes for technologies that are the likeliest to be seen, when looking back at our era, to be the ones who had mostly good effects. I don't see a lot of Luddites complain about technological advances like guns that can fire endless rounds without taking much pause for reloading, an innovation that turns out to mostly be a bad one. I do see a lot of complaining about the digital revolution. Nothing sets off rounds of hand-wringing like our newly minted abilities to carry around extensive music collections in teeny boxes, or to make new friends online, to obtain information you need right when you need it with your digital devices, or to keep up with far-flung friends and relatives through social networking. I was even listening to "WTF with Marc Maron" the other day, because Carrie Brownstein was his guest, and they went off on a long digression about how they miss being lost, something that really has faded away in the era of smartphones. No, I'm not kidding. The illogic-spouse of Ludditism is misplaced nostalgia. If being lost is so much fun, you are free to put your phone away and wander around for hours, trying to figure out where you're going. It's a nice reminder that actually, being lost really sucks, which is why the great technological minds of our generation put uncountable numbers of hours into preventing that needless irritation. 

I think history shows that we should have a little faith in humanity's ability to interact intelligently with technology. Yes, we some times use it to express our worst impulses, but again, that's not the result of sheeplike behavior in the face of new technologies, but just another example of people adapting technology to their own ends. The fear throughout history has been that this is the shiny new technology that will take away our autonomy and intelligence, and that the technology will lead us and not us it. So far, that's been a pretty baseless fear. One of the cool things about technology is that users tend to adapt it to their needs. In the digital era, that process has sped up considerably, as the creators of a technology get much more rapid feedback about how it's being used, and they can adapt it to better suit people's desires even faster. 

As promised, this week's edition of The Orange Couch, where Marc and I analyze the latest episode of "Mad Men". I'm particularly pleased with my thoughts towards the end comparing the Michael Ginsberg storyline to the Rolling Stones one. Weiner is doing something much more interesting with the younger generation than simply positing that the times they are a changin'.

Next week, The Orange Couch will return to Mondays and with a special guest next time! 

Thoughts on this week's episode?

The Orange Couch isn't going anywhere. For what should be the only time in the run of our new online video series about "Mad Men", an episode will have to be delayed a day. But we have a very good reason!

Sorry, y'all. As much as I love "Mad Men", I wasn't going to miss Wild Flag's triumphant show that happened to coincide with the airing of "Mad Men" last night. No one with sense would have missed that; it's probably the best show I've seen in years. And I go to a lot of shows. It was an amazing reminder of what rocking out can really feel like. 

(Please, no "Portlandia" jokes. It just reminds me that Carrie Brownstein is more famous for a sketch comedy show on an obscure channel than for being a fucking genius of rock. Which makes me depressed, because it tells you what's so wrong with this country. I love that show, I really do, but the dwindling lack of interest in music as an art form, even amongst my generation, and even amongst the "hip" crowd that watches "Portlandia", is just depressing.) 

Despite this, I still have some quick thoughts on a TV show before we hit you with the wallop of "Mad Men" analysis. Who saw the most recent episode of "Community"? The answer is "probably not many people", which is a shame, because they actually found a great way to both get their product placement money and satirize the crap out of Citizens United and the claim that corporations are people, a claim Romney made famous. 

The joke was that because a business on campus had to be owned by a student, Subway actually incorporates into the body of a human being, so he can take some classes at Greendale and dodge the restriction. This was both hilarious and kind of depressing as a joke, because I'm guessing a lot of the audience wasn't able to piece together the connections between this supposedly over-the-top satire and real life, where corporations have been declared persons in the court---but only if it gives them more rights. (They still don't have person responsibilities.) 

But of course, corporations aren't people, and people aren't corporations. Because corporations can't do things like fall in love and have kinky sexual desires, but people can. And "Subway" falls in love with Britta---and vice versa---creating all sorts of chaos. 

A few things about this episode really stood out to me. One, while "corporations are people" is funny enough to build a sitcom plot around, the writers made the joke even funnier than that. They also managed to send up the relationship between out of control capitalism and the misogynist, sex-phobic bullshit that eats up so much of our political energy. Decades of Beltway belief that these are entirely separate issues is dismantled within minutes of scathing satire on this show, as the Subway representatives lay a major bout of slut-shaming on Britta because she knows how to have a good time when getting naked with someone. The conservative impulse to own and control and to squelch actual humanity with all its glorious passions is seen as the commonality between prudery and corporatization of America. Corporate-conservative America is not down with your kinky sex or your desire to eat tasty food, instead of that factory-stamped crap they dish out at Subway. 

This episode was also further evidence for my theory that Britta, and not Abed as some think, is the moral center of the show. They make ruthless fun of her all the time in the group, and she certainly has all the irritating flaws of the overearnest lefty, but Britta tends to be right more often than not, if you're watching carefully. (That's why people hate her!) As Alyssa Rosenberg notes:

Britta gets a bad rap for being a buzz-kill, but I appreciate the show acknowledging that it may only be within the disastrous dynamics of the study group that she’s a bore, and there’s a place where her passion is a better fit, and where there’s someone who shares her values and is available for gratifyingly kinky sex.

Once again, the show posits that Britta is just fine for being cheerfully liberated about sex, and that it's the people around her that pass judgment that are the problem. If anything, this was one of the most remarkably sex-positive plots I've ever seen on a TV show. Sex isn't just shown as being okay, but as a subversive force against the dulling of our country through corporatization. This isn't an accident, either, since the characters make overt references to "1984", and the way that sexuality is a symbol of subversion simply by virtue of being messy and human and wonderful for all of that. 

After this week, episodes of The Orange Couch will be coming out on Mondays. 

First, the press release:

New York, NY – This April 16th, 2012, at a time when our right to basic health care is under attack, New York dream pop band, Asobi Seksu, along with special guests North Highlands and Little,Big, will play the fifth annual Roe on the Rocks benefit concert at The Highline Ballroom. Award-winning comedian and writer, Sara Benincasa, will be the evening’s emcee.  All proceeds from the event will go to Planned Parenthood of New York City.

The Roe on the Rocks concert is held every year to recognize Roe v Wade, the historic Supreme Court Case which 39 years ago confirmed women’s right to privacy and thus access to abortion services.  The show couldn’t come at a more important time – amidst the worst attacks on not just reproductive rights but access to basic health care. Past acts have included Regina Spektor, Thao with The Get Down Stay Down, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and (others).

What:     5th Annual Roe on the Rocks Benefit Concert for Planned Parenthood of New York City

Who:       Asobi Seksu
Sara Benincasa
North Highlands
Little,Big
Planned Parenthood of New York City

You can buy tickets here for $25 a piece. The headliners are a great band:

But I also have two free tickets to give away! What I'm going to do is ask you to answer a trivia question by going on Twitter, and sending me your answer with the hashtag #pandachoice. I'll take the names that answer correctly, and draw out of a hat. I'll let you know on Sunday if you're the winner, and announce it on Monday. 

The trivia question: What Supreme Court decision established the right of unmarried people to access contraception?

It's been warm and then cold again, but gradually getting away from winter-cold temperatures. Between this and returning from SXSW, I feel that it's officially spring and time to take the time to enjoy it a little. And it's a perfect time to Panda Party! So join us. I should be there all day, as work is actually keeping me at my desk instead of on the road today. A couple of bands I saw at SXSW that really put you in that spring feeling mood:

Escort is an insanely fun Brooklyn band that has roughly a gazillion members and who plays kick-ass modernized disco.

Bleached hasn't got a full-length album yet, but I wait eagerly, because they put out hook-heavy sunny rock and roll that really rocks.

Come to Panda Party and hear more great music to enjoy this spring weather!

A million people have sent me this off-putting article by David Wong at Cracked trying to explain misogyny. The women have found it unnerving, and the men have loved it, for reasons they should be ashamed of that I will explain in just a moment. I didn't want to write about it, because having done this for many years, I'm less inclined to be critical of someone who means well, even if they're doing it all wrong, but this seems to be the only way to get people to stop sending me this article. Apparently, it struck a chord. 

The piece starts off on a good foot, explaining that men are taught from the cradle that they're entitled to women's affection, and he even touches on how women who aren't considered beautiful are often not considered at all. He's 100% right on this. This is the underpinning of the Nice Guy® complaint. They say that "women" overlook the "nice" guys because they're not as attractive or whatever, but if you scratch them, you'll find that they exclude a huge percentage of women from the category "women" for not fitting their beauty standards. Thus, the whine only makes sense if you assume that men are entitled to beauty, but women should settle for "nice", and give up on physical attraction.

The rest of the piece is based on the iffy theory that only men really know what it's like to feel horny. This is why liberal dudes were licking it up, since it was a purportedly anti-sexist piece, but it still had a soothing message that men still somehow are more than women, because they are more alive, you know. They have more desire. They really like sex, in a way that you women can never understand. 

Do you guys know how offensive this is? Imagine if you said that men naturally understood music better, or had a better ability to taste food, or just really enjoyed the sun on their skin more than women could ever understand. This article, while well-meaning, couldn't get past the notion that women are dull, because we don't have those all-important sex drives to create sharpness and ambition. Some quotes:

It's because, in males more so than females, the sex drive is completely detached from the rest of the personality.

By the way, he later says the sex drive actually creates the male personality, so he contradicts himself.

When that happens, when we get that boner at the funeral, we get mad at the girl showing the cleavage. Because we, ourselves, our own rational personality that knows right from wrong and appropriate from inappropriate, knows this is a bad place to get a boner. So it comes off like cleavage girl is conspiring with our penis to screw us over.

I appreciate that he agrees men shouldn't hold women responsible for this, but still embedded in this is the idea that men and only men have these remarkable will to live, to screw, to really enjoy life that comes out even in in the face of death. Women certainly aren't interesting enough to have inappropriate urges, you know. 

We're starving, and all women are various types of food. Only instead of food, it's sex. And we're trying to conduct our everyday business around the fact that we're trying to renew our driver's license with a talking pair of boobs. So, from about age 13 on, around 90 percent of our energy and discipline is devoted to overcoming this, to behave like civilized human beings and not like stray dogs in a meat market. One where instead of eating the meat, they want to hump it.......

Do you see what I'm getting at? Go look outside. See those cars driving by? Every car being driven by a man was designed and built and bought and sold with you in mind. The only reason why small, fuel-efficient or electric cars don't dominate the roads is because we want to look cool in our cars, to impress you.

Go look at a city skyline. All those skyscrapers? We built those to impress you, too. All those sports you see on TV? All of those guys learned to play purely because in school, playing sports gets you laid. All the music you hear on the radio? All of those guys learned to sing and play guitar because as a teenager, they figured out that absolutely nothing gets women out of their pants faster. It's the same reason all of the actors got into acting.

All those wars we fight? Sure, at the upper levels, in the halls of political power, they have some complicated reasons for wanting some piece of land or access to some resource. But on the ground? Well, let me ask you this -- historically, when an army takes over a city, what happens to the women there?

It's all about you. All of it. All of civilization.

I don't realize if Wong gets this, but he basically just argued that since women are just so asexual, we're also basically unartistic, unambitious, and even though he decried treating women like decorative objects, I don't really see how we fit into this. We don't have any desire to impress men and get sex, so we're never going to build and invent, right? 

I have a counter-theory. I don't believe that men build civilization to impress lazy women who keep saying no to sex, because we don't understand what it's really like to want it. I believe men built most things because women were shut out of political power, job opportunities, and education for most of history, and instead forced into servitude towards men in the home. I believe my theory has a lot of evidence for it, in the form of all of history. Plus, this theory doesn't do much to explain all the gay men who have been creators throughout history, of which there have been many. You know, it's not like Michelangelo was rumored to be doing the Sistine Chapel to catch a lady's eye. His theory doesn't really explain how it is that women, once given the opportunity to be creators, take it. 

Wong means well, but he's letting men off the hook. By making misogyny about men's supposedly overpowering sex drive, he makes it seem primal and nearly unavoidable. After all, if nature dictates that men want it and women don't, then there's not much you can do about it. 

But I think misogyny is rooted in something else, something Wong does hint at before scrambling away to make more jokes about how women can't know what it's like to really feel sexual desire. It's hard to talk about, because it cuts right to the bone in something humans don't like to talk about, but it's about the will to dominate. I think men become misogynists not because their intense horniness short circuits their brain. It's because they feel entitled to have women in a submissive position to them. They want to live in a world where women are considered automatically dumber, where women are expected to clean up after them, wipe their brows, and kiss their asses, all with a smile on our faces and without asking much more in return but an occasional bit of jewelry and a door-opening, which is just as much about the man feeling more powerful as it is about being nice to the woman. They want to control women sexually, not because they're more horny, but because sexual control is just one more form of control. Misogynists especially dislike women having reproductive control, because if a woman can't control her pregnancies, she's going to be more dependent on a man, and they believe that makes it easier for them. If women are dependent, you don't need to be nice to your wife to get her to stay. She doesn't have a choice, and that's how they like it. They believe in their hearts that women are inferior, and fear that if they're disproved in this contention, their entire sense of self will crumble, because that sense of self is all built on being a "man". They get angry and mock other men they believe are trying to hard to be pleasing to women---genuinely pleasing, not faux "build skyscrapers" pleasing---but men who take care of their looks to be sexually attractive (they get dismissed as "metrosexual") or men who treat women with respect. Those men are seen as undermining the united front to artificially lower women's standards. It's not an accident that the biggest misogynists are the first to flip their shit at the idea of swapping out big greasy burgers for some broccoli on occasion.

I see why the "men are hornier" gambit has appeal, even to men who should know better. For one thing, it allows you to feel superior to women and cling to that just a little bit, while wearing a false humility (gosh, we men are so hard to control!). Also, there's a rough sort of sense to it. Our sexual market is such that men are expected to do most of the pursuing and women are supposed to be more reticient, and this can feel for men who find it frustrating to be rejected like women just want it less. But it's actually just a result of the system. Men only hit on women they find attractive, so they get a skewed perception of how that works. Just because a man hits you up doesn't make him hot, you know. If women hit on men more, maybe men would notice that they don't actually want to fuck every woman they meet, because they mentally just exclude women they don't find attractive from the category "women". 

More importantly, men get to feel hornier because they're socially supported in this. The whole of society is geared toward titillating men and discouraging female sexual desire. It's inherent to the Nice Guy® complaint, where men are entitled to feel physical attraction, but a woman who wants more than "nice" is shallow. It's evident in the way men and women dress, with women always mindful to wear stuff that makes them sexually attractive, whereas men have the opposite problem, and have to avoid being too sexualized lest they seem feminine. Naked women are draped over every inch of public space, and the internet is full of visually interesting porn for men, but our society barely can imagine what it would be like to try to attract a female eye. (Though "True Blood" is really making up ground rapidly on this front.) Men seem hornier in no small part because their sexuality is celebrated and codified. It's easy for men to know right away how to be sexual, whereas women are still largely expected to figure it out for themselves---and even that's a recent invention, because pre-feminism, women were mostly just expected to do what men wanted. To a large extent, that's still true, but we're at least getting a few glimmers of liberty for women, but in many ways, the past few generations of women are real pioneers in trying to figure out what sex means when we're actually allowed to want it, even a little.

But even with the small amount of freedom we have, it's worth noting that a 30-year-old woman who admitted obliquely to having had non-procreative sex in Congress created a month long, nationwide scandal. Until that kind of pressure disappears completely, we can't even begin to measure what the "natural", unadulterated female sexuality would look like, and how it would compare to the celebrated and constantly titillated male sexuality. 

Either way, stop blaming sex for misogyny. If all men wanted was women to fuck them more, the English language wouldn't even have the word "slut" in it. 

Update: For some reason, the link to Doug Warren's scolding of people who protested this cartoon doesn't work. I don't know why that is, but I promise that it was up until just a few minutes ago. Luckily, someone on Twitter gave me this link, so you can see it with your own eyeballs. 

UT Austin's student newspaper is usually pretty progressive, but because there are a bunch of wingnuts lurking around on campus, occasional jaw-dropping lunacy gets into the pages of The Daily Texan on occasion. But even within that context, this was a surprisingly vicious cartoon that was recently published:

Needless to say, this is intensely racist, and not, as the butthurt are trying to pretend, simply because of the word "colored". People love to focus on individual syllables, wishing feverently to reduce racism to certain sounds said in a row, and ignoring more important issues such as content and action. No, this cartoon is racist because implicit in its argument is the idea that it's illegitimate for the media to treat what appears to be the cold-blooded murder of an unarmed teenager as tragic if the victim is black. Also embedded in this cartoon is the notion that it's preposterous for anyone to look at a 17-year-old black teenage boy and see someone who is "handsome", "sweet", or "innocent". The cartoon only works in the context Jesse outlines below, one where the reader believes black young men are criminally dangerous by definition and that anyone who thinks otherwise is clearly trying to sell you something. Without that racist assumption, this cartoon doesn't make any fucking sense. If you believe high school kids, even black ones, should be able to buy Skittles and return home unmolested, much less unmurdered, then a national outcry because that right is taken away makes perfect sense. 

Which is why the responses of the cartoonist and a staff advisor at The Daily Texan are unacceptable.

First, the cartoonist, who "apologized" by dodging the issue:

I apologize for what was in hindsight an ambiguous cartoon related to the Trayvon Martin shooting. I intended to contribute thoughtful commentary on the media coverage of the incident, however this goal fell flat. I would like to make it explicitly clear that I am not a racist, and that I am personally appalled by the killing of Trayvon Martin. I regret any pain the wording or message of my cartoon may have caused.

First the "I apologise for any hurt" thing, instead of the straightforward "I fucked up, and am sorry" thing. But she doesn't really apologize even then. She says the cartoon was intended to be a commentary on the media, but as I note above, unless you're racist, the media's concern about this thoughtless bloodshed is appropriate. If a white teenager was being gunned down randomly in the street and the police refused to arrest the murderer and the murderer offered a highly suspect story contradicted by his own 911 call, I highly doubt Eisner would condescendingly accuse the media of being upset over nothing. The only reason to think that it's a waste of time to run stories about the continued problem of racism in our country is if you don't have a problem with racism, full stop. Denying that you're a racist is just a tailsman in this case. It's really a pointless exercise that makes this all about how bad it is to suggest anyone is a racist, and to distract from the real problem here, which is that a young man lost his life for no other apparent reason than the color of his skin.

Then there's this offensive horseshit from Doug Warren, a staff advisor for the Texan:

Take a deep breath

Already with the headline, we're on typical ground here: Arguing that the offensive action the racist swipe at a murder victim and those who sympathize with his family's plight, but that the real crime is being upset about this horrible murder and the vicious responses that are emerging. Don't get all hysterical because a guy who shot an innocent kid for no real reason will walk free because he pulled the "black men are scary" card! Gosh, you'd think that cold-blooded murder was a serious problem or something.

The cartoon is admittedly flawed because it spelled Martin's first name incorrectly and it used a phrase ("colored boy") that is offensive and could have been avoided ("black teenager.")

I really, really hate the "racism is just a matter of using improper terms" argument. No, it's not. Even if the phrases  had been swapped, the cartoon---as noted above---makes no sense without the racist assumption that the safety and well-being of black citizens doesn't matter. 

I understand the outrage sparked by the Martin incident, but I trust I won't risk the anger of the mob when I point out that no one has been charged or convicted in the case thus far.

Which is the point. The country is beginning to realize that, in the state of Florida, you can just randomly execute young black men and get away with it as long as you claim you were scared. You don't even have to cool your jets in jail for a few hours while they rubber stamp your release.

The alleged shooter, George Zimmerman is claiming self-defense under a "stand your ground" law that is on the books in Florida and various other states, including Texas.

Well, gosh, if it's the law, that puts it above criticism, doesn't it? This guy is supposed to be a journalist, y'all. I wasn't aware that "uncritical stance towards law and policy as enacted" was part of our job description.

Where is the outrage over such an absurd law, which has been promoted across the country by the National Rifle Association? Who is angered by gun laws that allow "neighborhood watch" cop-wannabes like Zimmerman to walk around armed?

The people that Eisner and you are accusing of hysteria. By the way, I'm a little unclear on how we can both be in the wrong for being critical and not-critical of this law.

The newly minted civil rights activists and self-appointed media pundits

Oh wow, I love his unevidenced assumption that the people who are taking up this cause were utterly indifferent to racism before. Really? Because a lot of the heavy coverage of this that pumped it into the national media came from places like Colorlines, whose staff would, I'm sure, be surprised to find out they only just started to care about racism. 

might want to ask themselves what is more inherently racist -- a poorly executed student cartoon or the fact that the African-American student population at the University of Texas at Austin (6 percent) is only half the percentage of the overall population of African-Americans in the state of Texas (11.8 percent.)

This is a classic derailing tactic. Feminists know it really well---how can you care about abortion rights when women in Saudi Arabia can't drive?!---and the intent is never to actually address concerns about racism and sexism. The same forces that allowed Zimmerman to make up some bullshit to the cops and walk scot-free after shooting someone he was told not to chase are the same forces that result in these numbers. I'm intensely skeptical that letting vicious racism run in the pages of The Daily Texan unchallenged is going to have a positive or even neutral effect on the student body's racial diversity. On the contrary, it suggests to would-be black students that UT Austin is an unwelcome campus, and could actively work against the goal of greater diversity. More importantly, the underlying prejudice that assumes young black men are inherently criminal is probably the number one reason that black enrollment at UT is so low. These racist fears of black people work to segregate black students into underfunded schools. These fears are part of the reason that black students are more likely to face serious discipline in school. At every point in the public education system, black students face prejudices that make it that much harder for them to put together that college application and get into schools like UT Austin. Look at how conservatives are salivating over the possibility that Trayvon Martin might have smoked pot. A white kid in a suburban high school who smokes pot is Harvard material in the U.S., but a black kid who does the same can be expected to have people write off his death if he's shot in cold blood for no reason.  Anyone who thinks that doesn't have an effect on college enrollment numbers is an idiot. 

I may get tired of using Pete Campbell pulling faces to illustrate my posts, but not yet. Not yet.

I remember how, just a couple of years ago, there was a lot of hand-wringing in skeptic circles over whether or not to apply rationalist thinking to religious claims, mainly because some skeptics---who were all atheists themselves, by the way---were concerned that it was impolitic not to create a giant Shall Not Touch bubble around magical claims that were deemed "religious". Well, the Reason Rally this past weekend shows that the pro-atheists basically won that debate, and the increasing racial and gender diversity of the community demonstrates that it was a good idea. No, now it turns out that there's a cow more sacred than religion, with a number of self-identified skeptics and atheists freaking out at the increasing willingness of writers and thinkers in the community to apply critical thinking skills to political claims. Apparently, you can criticize religion all you want, but to dare insist on the facts when it comes to global warming or especially the offensive claim that women are full human beings? That's where some folks are drawing the line. 

Rebecca Watson has a post up about the problem of pseudoscience proliferating on the right, and the unwillingness of the supposed warriors against pseudoscience to do anything about it. She uses her spot on The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe to, on occasion, talk about things like states forcing doctors to read scripts full of medical misinformation to women seeking abortion, and every time she does, she gets a rush of letters from dudes scolding her to keep her focus on the important issues to skeptics, such as Bigfoot and UFOs.

Now, don't get me wrong. My eyes roll like a motherfucker whenever I see an advertisement for a Bigfoot or UFO show on TV. Still, there's a top limit of how much damage some of the more apolitical pseudoscience out there can do. Skeptics like to draw attention to when homeopathy contributes to illness or people waste money on fantastical claims, and these are important issues, but they are absolutely dwarfed by the amount of pain and suffering that misinformation about reproductive health causes. I rail against anti-vaccination idiots all the time, but even in the worst case scenarios---measles outbreaks, etc.---the cost in money and human suffering from the misinformation is really limited next to the cost in money and suffering from political pressures to force women to bear children they don't want. And that's just in the U.S. In other countries, where misinformation about abortion and contraception have even more influence on the law, maternal mortality rates are sky-high because of unwanted child-bearing and illegal abortion. I don't even want to talk about how much of the AIDS crisis stems from political concerns that these idiot so-called skeptics want to believe are hands-off. Without taboos around sex, homophobia, misogyny, and religious groups spreading misinformation about the effectiveness of condoms, we'd be looking at a much lower transmission rate worldwide than we're seeing now. 

Interestingly, one political issue tends to get widespread support in the skeptic community across partisan lines, and that's regarding evolutionary theory. Everyone is for it, and everyone thinks that religious claptrap denying it should be taken out of schools. I will bet you a lot of money that Rebecca doesn't get nasty emails about not getting political when the topic comes up on Skeptic's Guide. This, even though the opposition to evolutionary theory and the opposition to abortion rights are the same group of people, nearly exactly. I support this political activism against creationism, obviously. But let's not pretend it's not political. It stems from the same theocratic impulse as does the opposition to abortion rights, and frankly I see them as very similar issues.

But while I support activism around the evolution vs. creationism debate, I have to point out that the global warming issue is far larger and more immediate of a problem. If we can't get to a point where science trumps political bullshit on global warming, THE EARTH IS DOOMED. Okay, perhaps not completely doomed, but seriously fucked. We're already irreversibly fucked in many ways on this, but if we continue to treat it like a weird side issue, we're going to be fucked in all sorts of amazingly novel ways. I suspect a lot of global warming denialists don't really believe their own bullshit; they just figure they'll be dead before it's time to pay the piper. They may be right, though there's reason to believe the effects are coming faster than scientists previously thought, so their gamble may not be paying off. Either way, the utter lack of compassion for the rest of humanity is galling. Skeptics who refuse to discuss this issue because it's "political"---even though they happily dive into other political issues like creationism---are being cowards and babies. 

This is an open letter to my conservative brethren.

Many of you have decided to approach the Trayvon Martin case from the calm, measured perspective that black people are unhinged savages who want to find a white person to kill for murdering a hoodie-wearing drug-dealer. You may find such examples of this writing at Dan Riehl's blog, and I'm not going to link to the rest because I would prefer if Pandagon didn't come up as a hate site on your web filter.

I do, however, want to give conservatives a brief lesson in translation, however. There is a set of terms commonly used to describe the response to Martin's killing and other issues involve the intersection of race and your Google News reader. When put together into roughly literate sentences, it goes something like this:

The race pimps/hustlers who run the Democrat Party are once again advancing a racialist agenda that the blacks on their plantation buy into lock, stock and barrel, because they are cowed and brainwashed by their masters into believing that a drug-dealing thug wearing gang clothing was an innocent angel. You have to realize that you risk white resentment and backlash for threatening to destroy American society through Al Sharpton for a kid who looked like this:

This, however, is what most black people hear:

You niggers were better when you were fetching us lemonade.

I'm thrilled that women's rights are a front-and-center issue this campaign season, but it does come with an excrutiating price tag: Conservatives bloviating about how they looooooove "strong women". This is a standard talking point that Republicans trot out when they're called out for anti-feminism. At its core, it's a nonsensical claim and works more as a distraction than a real argument. The image of the steel magnolia---a woman who dispatches her responsibilities with ease, who has a lot of energy and occasionally is sassy to her husband, because she's far more competent than he---has a lot of emotional resonance, for conservatives, as well as feminists. Feminists admire the Joan Holloway type for her survival skills, because we know exactly how hard it is to survive in a system that is designed to make you fail no matter what you do. Conservatives love the "strong woman" image for an entirely different reason: Because the existence of these women means we don't need feminism, in their minds. The underlying argument of, "I don't hate women. I love strong women," is that we need patriarchy as a sort of litmus test for which women are deserving and which are not. If you can live under a system where you're a second class citizen, where you get paid less for equal work, where you don't have reproductive rights, and where men have a lot of personal power over you---and you can still get out of bed every day, put on your lipstick, and get shit done? Well, you've done proved you're a "strong woman". Here's a Mother's Day card as a reward, and remember, you don't need no stupid feminism. Just don't ask any hard questions about why men aren't tested this way.

Of course, there is a teeny bit of kinda feminism in the conservative wanking about "strong women". The celebrants of "strong women" are willing to go way out on a limb and allow that their favored form of female not be burned at the stake for her scary mouthiness. Conservatives love to pat themselves on the back for believing that the 19th amendment shouldn't be repealed or for allowing that some women may be allowed to draw a salary under some circumstances, and then get all faux-outraged when feminists say the vote is great, but it's really not enough. (We gave you the vote! How dare you actually use it for something, you stupid bitches, er, strong women?) I have a couple of examples from the campaign trail that have amused me.

Example #1: Rick Santorum is trying to suggest he doesn't hate women just because he believes their god-given role is to spend 30 years of their lives constantly pregnant. He's deploying his wife to defend him against charges of misogyny, since that's become women's work in Republican circles. 

Her argument is that Rick loves---you guessed it---strong women. Women with the strength to stand on two legs! Especially women who develop healthy pelvic muscles so that they don't have to wear pee pads all the time even after baby 8 or 10. By god, he's going to let her go back to work after all her kids are grown, which will be some time in her 70s, a well-known time in a woman's life when employers are scrambling over themselves to hire her for that resume with a 40-year gap in it. Did she mention that he supports her right to vote, because she votes for him? Who the fuck needs feminism?

But Rick Santorum is hardly the only man crowing about how his love of "strong women" means he doesn't have to answer for his votes against women's rights. Scott Brown has taken a hit for misogynist behavior and policy, and so he pulled the "strong woman" card out to argue against needing that stupid feminism stuff.

Brown was introduced at the press conference by his wife, former Boston television reporter Gail Huff.

Huff wasn't actively involved in the campaign that led to Brown's 2010 special election win to the seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy, but said she's able now to be more involved since she's no longer a reporter in Boston.

Brown said he's used to being surrounded by "strong willed women" and Huff said the family, including Brown and the couple's two daughters Ayla and Arianna, have open discussions around the kitchen table.

"The girls, now that they are 23 and 21, have very, very specific ideas about what they do and don't believe and they chime in with a lot of great ideas, and it's wonderful for both of us to be able to bounce things off of them because their generation sees things very differently," Huff said.

Brown declined to be more specific about the family discussions, but when a reporter asked Huff to name an issue that she and the couple's daughter have educated Brown on, Brown chimed in and said "how to cook."

"Yeah, how to cook, how to sew, how to clean," Huff added.

So let's see here. Brown deserves a cookie because he believes women are permitted to have political opinions, though he won't go so far as to suggest that anyone do something foolish like listen to those opinions. Women having opinions on politics is a lot like letting a kid repeat the plot of the movie he just saw to you: You let them rattle on because it's cute that they're trying, but they're not really ready to be Roger Ebert or anything. 

But that doesn't mean women don't get to know stuff! I mean, they know how to cook and how to clean and even how to sew! They are so strong. Even in a world where the men around them think of them as slightly dim children who can't be trusted with grown-up stuff like reproductive rights, they get up in the morning and get those stubborn eggs into that heavy frying pan. They are so strong! And feminism is trying to take that away, ladies. They want you to forsake the condescending head pats from men who think you're stupid, and replace those head pats with equality and respect. Which sounds good on paper, but you know what happens then, right? No more head pats. Are you sure you can give that up? 

Marc and I have taken our love of "Mad Men" and television in general to the next level. We've created an online video series called "The Orange Couch", where we discuss the latest episode of our favorite watercooler shows, over clips of the episode in question.The debut video is about---what else?----the premiere of "Mad Men".

After all, the main appeal of critically acclaimed, low-rated TV is that it gives the smart set something to chatter about. That's why Marc and I love it, and we have great conversations about our favorite shows, something I suspect is a common experience out there. By boiling down our rehashing and analysis into a short video, we thought we'd celebrate this aspect of these shows, and give everyone a chance to further the conversation. So please enjoy and tell me what you think in comments!

The plan is to replace traditional "Mad Men" recapping with this video recap/analysis, so please, feel free to offer not just thoughts and comments on the video, but the usual discussion about the episode. I'm especially curious to hear what people think of the show's attempts to grapple with race, and what you think of the Megan/Don situation.

Steve Kornacki at Salon has a piece up about Mitt Romney's continuing inability to win over evangelical voters. Personally, I'm not surprised evangelical Republicans are refusing to crown Romney the nominee. They were fed George W. Bush in 2000, and that led them to believe that they are the owners of the party, and Romney securing the nomination sends a strong signal that they aren't, and that the Republicans are primarily a pro-business party above all other things. The evangelical base is pro-capitalism, don't get me wrong, but they also believe, with reason, that capitalism may not be enough to preserve male dominance, gay oppression, and white supremacy. The reason they're so loud when calling Obama a "socialist" is because they're trying to convince themselves.  A black President does a lot to shake their confidence that capitalism alone will fulfill their goals, and his general pro-feminist and pro-gay leanings don't help. Now, more than ever, they want to vote for someone that reads as one of their tribe, like Bush did. Romney simply doesn't.

It's not a single thing. The Mormon thing doesn't help, but I think a different Mormon who emulated fundie culture better would perform better for them. But it's also that Romney does seem like a rich banker who finds all that culture war shit a distraction. (I'm not actually sure that he does, though his flip-flopping on these issues does suggest that he may not personally care that much. Which isn't to say that he wouldn't be a warrior on culture issues if he won. As Molly Ivins liked to say, you gotta dance with the one that brung ya'.) Also, it's important to remember that we're talking about culture warriors here. Culture warriors talk a big game about "values", but often you find that things like what you eat and how you talk actually matter more than these so-called "values". Santorum and Gingrich give a good impression of people who think going to Applebee's is a find way to spend an evening, and Romney simply doesn't. Which, I think, explains why this stuff doesn't matter:

But now that he’s regularly getting crushed by Rick Santorum, a Roman Catholic from Pennsylvania, the depths of Romney’s evangelical problem have come into focus. The question is what, exactly, it is that makes him so objectionable to Christian conservatives.

Santorum's Catholicism is the great red herring of this primary season. He disagrees with the Pope on more issues than he agrees with him on. Where he does agree with the Pope, it's because the Pope agrees with evangelical Christians, mainly on the question of whether or not women are full human beings with full human rights. (Both the Catholics and the evangelicals say no.) Santorum is, culturally speaking, an evangelical. When he denies global warming, it feels sincere; you really do get the impression that he can't believe that those muckety-muck scientists think they know better than he does just because they do stupid stuff like study and understand an issue. He also grasps that threatening to rain weapons down on Iran is a good ploy, because the evangelical base is nostalgic for the Crusades. He is also a full-throated supporter of theocracy, whereas Romney still has cultural memory of his family being hounded for their faith, and isn't reliable on this. You just get the impression that Gingrich or Santorum enjoys needling someone who orders the vegetarian entree, but Romney seems like someone who doesn't know he's supposed to go into a rage when he has to press 1 for English. Sure, Romney will pass economic policies that fuck the poor and working class, but they just feel entitled to that and oh so much more.

Even though I suspect the base knows that Romney will owe them if he wins, and will give them what they want, it's just about more than that. They want reassurance that they are the dominant class in America, and that their culture is winning. So they need someone who feels authentically like a full member of the tribe. They need someone whose resentments feel real, who devotion to ignorance feels absolute, and whose misogyny runs bone-deep. Not like that paternalistic misogyny of the banking class Romneys of the world, but the spittle-flinging anger at women that Limbaugh delivers and seems to be crawling right under Santorum's skin. Religion's relevance to this is that it's a quick shorthand for these more important, but difficult to articulate values. But in and of itself, religion isn't that meaningful. It's a tool, not the goal. 

Yes, I'm aware that the long list of videos I meant to include last week for cool bands I'd seen at SXSW got mostly eaten. I will be trying to figure that out, but in the meantime I'm traveling again. This time to Syracuse, to speak at the university about the relationship of feminism and atheism. But since I'll be taking Amtrak, hopefully I'll be on Panda Party for most of the day. In the meantime, check out this British rapper named Lady Leshurr I saw in the Driskill Hotel, of all places.

I'll be watching her career with interest. She really knew how to work a crowd, so I see big things in her future.