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Hooray for Hollywood
(cont) Josh wrote: "...That half of professors are Republican, and half Democrats? Or, that most don't even discuss politics, if the class they're teaching doesn't relate to the subject." Josh, I seriously hope you can wrap your mind around the fact that most people who argue everything in shallow, binary, political topicalities are just going around in circles, including yourself. "Half" D, half R? Huh? If you logically conclude, as I have repeated time and again, that our politics, our ideologies, our cultural biases inform everything we do and think, of course topics non-related to politics will still be 'flavored' by a professor's personal ideology and political bent. This seems to be the only time you'll even consider this kind of thing in action, because lord knows there is no profiling happening on your big gulp runs. Whatever a professor's political leanings, as I said, his or her position is--if s/he is a good scholar and intellectual--going to trot out opposing viewpoints, and examine the rhetoric. This goes for political hotbeds like anthropology, performance studies, literature depts, sociology, etc. In comparative lit and performance studies, where I spent a lot of time, you are dealing with narratives that span centuries, and you treat all but the most biased and silly of texts with respect. Again, a good scholar's foremost wish is to further knowledge, to expand the knowledge base and to work the problem by intelligently complicating the question, as necessary. (This is why I would have a kick-ass scholar in the White House, rather than a cowboy). Josh, I realize that the problem with you and me is that you always deal in absolutes, and consider only one or two probable causes, often linear in shape, in any situation. I speak a different language, shy from misleading absolutes, and prefer to work a problem from as many known and established causals as possible. Yeah, I'm exasperated with the way you grasp at straw men, but I'm not trying to show myself as superior--that really doesn't give me much pleasure after so many years--I just wish that you would think harder, man up, and own the logical conclusions of your often dangerous and ignorant premises.— June 11, 2009 10:41 a.m.
Hooray for Hollywood
Josh wrote: "...are you also telling me (as per the argument in another thread) that bad schools have bad teachers? And good schools in good neighborhoods, are that way because they have all the good teachers?" Of course not. Time and again, you miss my points. I don't think in linear, single causes, Josh, because this is rarely how reality works. It isn't at all about 'winning,' and this isn't a situation where you just "shoot" points with your gun or basketball--especially when you do not, as you do not, work remotely with any connection to any given school system. Remember, people's lives are at stake in many of the issues you bring up. My point was that I have seen a variety of teachers in action, just as your interviewee confirmed. There are multiple causes for scholastic failure, and my, attention, major point: is that one contributing factor happens to be residual, insidious workings of racism and cultural bias. Obviously this is geographic and economically traceable, but I ain't gettin' paid to trot out proofs to you, and you have yet to show that you even admit the existence of such factors--which truly boggles the mind.— June 11, 2009 10:41 a.m.
Idiotic Football Players
Here: http: //www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/daily-crasher/2009/may/30/in-the-news/#comments you wrote: "I'm guessing they don't test for 'roids because, well...if these guys become huge, it's like human/Robo Cop hybrids running around. That doesn't sound like such a bad thing." And here, your irrefutable evidence: "You know how stupid a cliche that is? I go into 7-11 every day to buy a Big Gulp...and never have I seen cashiers look at any customer of a different race that way." Fantastic support! Again, of course you don't. You don't have the first idea what someone else's experience might be. Yes, I used a cliche, and an easy example I thought you could understand. Why do you use the words "stupid" and "idiotic" so much? Methinks he doth protest... 'I've' seen too many movies? I don't make a habit of jumping between current events, pop cultural happenings, and film in blogs that do not focus meaningfully on topics at hand (Uh, and that reminds me of Bret Michaels...)— June 10, 2009 4:37 p.m.
Can’t Do This by Aaron Taylor
grae, I hope you focus on my previous message, and find some help. It is not romantic or noble to waste away or dwell on insanity when you are alone. Please consider finding a therapist, and starting the process.— June 10, 2009 3:53 p.m.
Can’t Do This by Aaron Taylor
grae, this is a touching story, and very common--you are not alone. Your ex sounds like a sociopathic personality--they are often able to fool many people for a time, but not forever. His relationships will cut off in similiar manner, one by one. Be glad you are no longer under his spell, and can see who the 'crazy' one is now. Here is a website to do some reading on abusive and controlling relationships, and the common tactics used by these people. You might feel a little better knowing you are not alone. Many many otherwise intelligent women have been trapped in this kind of relationship: http://www.rickross.com/groups/abusive.html I do hope that you recover through finding a good, supportive therapist. Please write back and confirm that you will do so. If you cannot afford one or do not have health insurance, grab a phone book and go to your local medical clinic. They will refer you immediately. It is not noble to grieve forever, and proves nothing to your ex, who is incapable of ever feeling your grief. Prosper and forget--that is the best revenge!— June 10, 2009 3:42 p.m.
King of Late Night (and other things)
I haven't heard anything yet, so will turn on the tv now, and see if anyone's talking about Carradine being found in women's clothing, and the rest. I think that while some consider it an undignified death, people are are far more complicated and interesting than their public personae suggest, as we find with dead celebrities time and again. I am sorry these things had to be made public, but have no problem at all with what Carradine chose to do in the privacy of his own bedroom, and it does not affect my appreciation for him at all. I just feel sadder that his death was such an accident. Perhaps at his funeral/memorial services, they can celebrate his as having been a richer and more faceted life than many were aware of, and perhaps it will encourage more tolerance for those of alternative tastes, who would play more creatively with notions of sex and gender.— June 10, 2009 2:13 p.m.
Pop Corn, Red Vines, Bon Bons or Beer?
We generally spilled them in our laps, and over the picnic blankets. Oh the days...— June 10, 2009 1:30 p.m.
Hooray for Hollywood
I don't need to "trust" you on this--I have spent nearly twenty years in a university setting! That fact that you homogenize scholars in such fashion, and don't take into consideration the content of their lectures, shows that you do not have much experience with it. There is a big difference between simply pushing an agenda and the more difficult, painstaking work of exploring its logical conclusions.— June 10, 2009 1:27 p.m.
Idiotic Football Players
(cont) These kids do what they have to do to survive, mentally and physically, and I have observed their struggles intimately, first-hand. I worked with high-schoolers to help them stay in school here in SD. On my caseload was a 16 year-old girl whose non-gang affiliated boyfriend had just been shot in a drive-by shooting—a case of mistaken identity—and she had just discovered that she was pregnant by him, and was sleeping in his room at his mother’s house. Her own mother abandoned her and did not feed her. The only real meals she had were through the school, and when she was with me, I fed her breakfast. I sat in her and other kids’ classes as a mentor, to experience first-hand the hostility and low expectations of them on the part of the teachers. I saw the disconnect between the philosophies of the educators with whom people the kids spent their entire day, and the daily horrors with which these kids lived and live. How is such a girl going to relate to, much less appreciate, the aesthetic symmetry of figures on a Greek vase or a poem about daffodils, when she is traumatized by senseless violence, emotionally neglected, and saddled with problems that would stump a well-adjusted adult? She would certainly need a strength of mind and spirit that you were not likely required to develop yourself at her age. Your complaints easily circle around a rhetoric of false victimhood, and the only solution I’ve heard from you, besides tacit approval of assimilation, is to shoot criminals, in the back as they run, if necessary. You even think steroids for cops is ‘cool,’ and might help win the war against bad guys. Put down your comic books and open your eyes. When you start arguing for heavier racial profiling and a stronger police state based on ill-founded notions of “us” and “them,” and when you consistently ignore the social problems we continue to have in this country when you pass judgement on people and their life experiences about which you know nothing, you are lazily wading into some mighty sewage-ravaged waters. I don’t think you’re quite aware of who your true ideological friends are—look around, but I warn you, it isn’t going to be pretty. Unexamined words can hurt and spread ignorance. I can only suggest that you examine your rhetoric and agenda more closely, follow on their inevitable conclusions, and finally, to take more seriously the public pulpit you’ve been chosen to man.— June 10, 2009 1:12 p.m.
Idiotic Football Players
(cont) Your weak (and contradictory) arguments about these kids having the power to choose between being upstanding citizens or gangsters or criminals utterly, completely ignore the daily struggle minority kids have to try and fit in, to articulate themselves within the dominant culture in which just about every cultural marker favors the image of the fair-haired WASP. These kids KNOW and FEEL and experience what it is like to not measure up, to not fit the standard of beauty, so important in our culture, and to suffer constant profiling—how do you think it feels to be a young black kid walking into a 7-11 and the store employee eyes him as a potential criminal, and treats you rudely? To live in a world where everyone automatically expects you to be a dangerous thug? You will probably argue—‘tough: if you are wearing baggy pants and look like a gangster, you should expect this kind of profiling.’ You will argue that assimilation is the way to go—act and look as much as you can according to the norm, and fit in. But you don’t know the first thing about the pain and frustration these kids go through daily, and how difficult and tall an order assimilation can be when everyone around you is affiliated with a gang, and you don’t yet have an adult’s strength of mind to resist such ideology, which can offer the lure of a family unit and belonging. I suspect you don’t know much about child development and the struggle of forming one’s identity—though you may be aware of having some difficulties yourself as a kid. We all suffer such transitions as kids, with or without the extra pressures. What if in your experience such pressures logically led to race on race violence? Teen pregnancy rates and STD infection through the roof?— June 10, 2009 1:11 p.m.