Round-Up
I'm trying to figure out what to do with my $8. With my family of 5 it seems $8 means precisely jack. And it's an expensive $8. Where the hell does my elected government find such funds? The usual places, I think, which means me. So now I've bailed out banks and sent CEOs on joy rides. And just when I think it's not going to get worse, our president has added insult to injury. $8 measly bucks.
I find I feel more stimulated to annoyance.
The flip side is on the other side of the world. See what Reason.tv has to say about economic stimulus in India:
What Slum Dog Millionaire Can Teach Us About Economic Stimulus
It's pretty exciting stuff, and certainly filled in some knowledge gaps for me about why India has been stuck for so long, and why it's recently begun to boom. Go, India!
In other news, there's the NY Post's terrible decision making.
Whenever I see something so astonishingly stupid, instantly I think of the chain of decision-makers who acknowledged and validated the thought every step of the way. I know you've seen it, but I have to chime in. For the record.
Missing the problematic racial tie-in (at each level of approval?!) is idiotic. Seeing the connection people would inevitably make, and publishing it anyway is heinous. I don't know which it was. And I do know jobs are hard to find right now. But whether the employees of the Post are "unhappy" (at it's being published, or about being called out?) is not the issue.
I think Edmund Burke put it best. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
In the interest of Free Speech, I must also add, the NY Post can publish anything they like, for now at least. But obviously there will be natural consequences if such an institution makes choices such as those leading to Wednesday's face-plant.
On a personal note, I'd like to mention I have a neighbor from West Virginia who likes to yodel, bark with the dogs, and sing mountain music at twilight. He also cuts our lawn. Tim is alarmed that I can mimic his accent, with appropriate content, exactly. I mention this because I have written this post while listening to his bizarre serenade and eating an arugula salad from the garden.
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6 comments:
I've seen several cartoons comparing Bush to a chimp, even before conservative bloggers pointed out more. I've heard him called Chimpy McHaliburton.
The cartoon wasn't calling Obama the author of the stimulus--even with the precedent of calling Bush a chimp, that would be going too far.
We have a problem if there are some things you can't say, not because of what you are saying but because of the way it could be misinterpreted. Eric Holder is complaining that we are cowards when talking about race--This controversy is an example of why we are afraid.
You make a good point, Sevesteen, about the misinterpretation factor, and the issue of preventive self-examination (to use the Maoist term)stopping viable ideas from being even discussed.
But people will misinterpret. It's inevitable. While my libertarian leanings force me to post things like the video from Reason, I can't extend libertarian thoughts to the cartoon issue because I'm not willing to cut the necessary strings of caring about how things will be perceived, even if it's a misperception.
Where Semiotics and group psychology converge, there can be no question of whether it's prudent to depict any governmental gaffe using other primates, no matter how many times Bush was likened to them, now that we have a Black president. It's impossible for the American mind not to make a racial connection, even if it isn't a completely accurate connection.
My Libertarian friends would say, well, to hell with them for being idiots. But that's not good enough. Especially when the critics, even while off base about particulars, and so very quick to the trigger, have a point.
There's no getting around it. Our national psychology is deeply effected by our past. And it's not pretty. Clearly we're working on it, what with a Black president and all, but we're going to have to spend a fair portion of the next four years "working it through", as they say.
One thing that bugs me about the usual conservative position is the complete unwillingness to believe racial division, subtle as it is today, is still a cause of pain. And further unwillingness to address Semiotics because of its Marxist origin. We throw the baby out with the bathwater, I'm afraid.
I willingly accept that it isn't yet prudent to use a primate for any presidential satire, and the cartoonist could have done a better job of separating the two--Maybe something like "The president will have to find someone else..."
I don't accept that we can not use a primate for anything political until Obama is out of office.
(my word verification for this post was raceripa...)
We really need to be able to talk honestly about race--even if that means racists get to talk too. Many of our racial issues aren't due to current racism, and many of those issues fuel current racism.
I think you're right about dialogue, but I'm not sure there's much point in having racists (on either side) be part of that. I can't see what they bring to the table, except examples of what not to do. Not to say they won't insinuate themselves into some national dialogue either way.
Perhaps you mean to have particular and structured conversation that might show people who are not overtly racist where they might harbor some ideas that are. We all have cultural hold-overs and points of blinkered insensitivity. It might be useful, in every direction. It's also extremely unlikely. It seems we must leave it to the jesters, after all.
One thing the cartoon did was get us talking, but it wasn't elegantly done.
It would, perhaps, be instructive to have the cartoonists who did chimpy caricatures of Bush, do side-by-sides of Obama. It might also be interesting to hear what thinkers (not propagandists) on both sides think about our cultural "readiness" to move beyond racial tie-in and let Obama just be the president.
It could be argued that protecting Obama, the President, from the same treatment all presidents have had is actually more racist than anything else we could do as a nation. Why does he need protecting, just because he's Black? If his Blackness makes him so precious, we're falling into the racial equivalent of feminism's madonna/whore model.
Not that any amount of thought about it on this, or any, blog is going to make any difference when it comes to the mass perception and resulting frenzy.
Sevesteen, thanks for being provocative!
By saying that racists have to be able to talk too, I don't mean we should start taking the Klan seriously. An essay by Paul Graham talks about the ideas that were mainstream in the past that seem outrageous now--What are the chances that we don't have similar outrageous ideas today?
If the discussion is limited to mainstream views, the results will be status quo.
"Leave it to the jesters" is apt--Some of the best discussion of race I've heard have been on Opie and Anthony, a usually very juvenile shock jock show on XM radio.
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