At first I was just kind of exasperated by the internet uproar about that "Voting is for old people" t-shirt they're selling at Urban Outfitters. I mean, look at the model! You want to run him over even before you read his shirt, or at least I do...
But then someone pointed me at the Open Scerets website. If you search on the political donations of Richard Hayne, Urban Outiftters' CEO, you can see that he's given $20,500 to Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) and a bunch other Republican causes over the past 10 years.
Which makes that t-shirt not so ironic anymore. I mean, Republicans do better when young people stay home. Richard Hayne wants his customers to think that voting is for old people, because he wants the other side to win. More than a little chilling, if you ask me.
So, okay, most of why I like American Idol is that I'm a lemming and I like being on the reality-show bandwagon. I also kind of like that weird baffled feeling I get, though, when I just have no idea what either the audience or the judges are on about. Contestants will sound fabulous to me, and the judges will be all "you were off-key and your phrasing sucks", or someone will just sound dreadful to me and the judges will be all "that's some star power, baby, you're one of the best we've ever seen." Sure, even I can identify the obvious superstars, but as for the rest? Further confirmation that I'm only a half-step up from tone deaf, I guess.
I metioned below that "Marriage, as it is currently legally defined, does not translate well to groups larger than two." This could probably stand some elaboration.
There's a good list of the benefits awarded married couples here. I don't doubt for a second that certain groups of three or more could live within the framework of marriage fairly comfortably. Most of the problems arise in dealing with death or divorce. One thing that leaps to my attention is "Making, revoking, and objecting to anatomical gifts." Say, for example, four widow(er)s disagree over the disposition of their deceased spouse's organs. Who decides? Majority rule? Jury-like, berating each other until they reach unanimity? What about the remains? If two want a burial in the ancestral cemetary, and the other two favor cremation, what happens if there's no guidance in a will? Will all of these cases wind up in court?
I'm not saying that these questions can't be answered, but that the answers would require a fundamental revision of the legal identity of the "spouse." Currently, the spouse is an equal partner in a legally defined entity. When there are decisions to be made about an incapaciated spouse, the other spouse speaks for them both. But once multiple spouses can disagree, this doctrine falls apart. Ultimately, participants become more like shareholders in a corporation than individuals subsumed by a singular legal identity.
The other potential pitfall is abuse of the benefits of marriage. When you can only be married to one person and divorce is, at the very least, a headache, there are some institutional limits on marriage for the sake of benefits. But, when unlimited numbers can enter into marriage, there is less to stop somene from adding all her unemployed friends to her health coverage through marriage. Now, I'm not sure there's anything wrong with people doing that, and it's certainly not the best argument against why truly committed polyamorous groups shouldn't have the right to marry, but again, the ultimate result would be bad for marriage as an institution. In this case, health insurers would simply stop extending benefits to spouses, or do so at exorbitant cost. Again, I'm not sure what's right or wrong here, but it would require a fundamental shift in our understanding of what marriage is. I don't think we, as a society, are ready for that. And I don't see the need to implement it at any cost, as I do in the case of gay marriage.
The other argument says, "There is this thing called 'marriage,' which has traditionally been a union between one man and one woman. This legally sanctioned union represents an unacceptable intrusion into the personal lives of individuals by the government. We need to change the definition of 'marriage' so that anyone who wants to participate can, in whatever form is meaningful to the parties involved. The government should merely facilitate these unions by extending the relevant benefits to the married entity." I find this argument more troubling, not necessarily because I think it's wrong, but because it's exactly what opponents of gay marriage are worried about. As long as this is a fight about ending discrimination against homosexuals, I find it hard to sympathize with the other side. But if this is a fight to fundamentally change what it means to be legally married, I can at least see where the opposition is coming from. I'm still not sure what side I fall on, but this whole debate does become a different animal.
And I know that to different people, marriage means different things. And I appreciate that. But I'm not sure I can get behind legal sanctions for every form of meaningful relationship. Marriage, as it is currently legally defined, does not translate well to groups larger than two. So, our understanding of what legal marriage is would have to change considerably before group marriages could have any functional meaning. But there is no reason, other than intolerance, to oppose incorporating homosexuals into the framework already established for marriage.
So maybe our society needs to evolve to the point where its understanding of marriage is fundamentally different from what it currently is. But I don't think we need to make that jump to demonstrate why gay marriage isn't a threat to anyone. It's great to change the world, but opposing bigotry is a good first step.
My little temper tantrum has provoked some genuinely interesting discussion, all the better. The part I really want to clarify is this: I'm most concerned, right now, with the battle over semantics.
One common criticism that gay-marriage supporters are aiming at the actions of both San Francisco city officials and the Massachussetts courts is that it's too soon, that forcing the issue now will result in a backlash. Certainly it's something to be concerned about. I believe absolutely that this kind of change requries a bold action in order to come to pass, that it isn't something that's going to just appear as the result of increased social warm-fuzzies. I also believe absolutely that the bold action needs to come at a time when the groundwork has already been laid--if the social change you're pushing for is one that's too far outside of what society is prepared to accept, you're going to fail. So you have to take this kind of step, but you can't take it too soon.
Ten years ago, five years ago even, it would have been too soon. I think we're ready now. The pop-culture signs point to yes; I could elaborate, but I think we're all familiar with the difference between the fall of Ellen and the rise of The Ellen Degeneres Show, not to mention the difference between the gasp! of Madonna kissing Sandra Bernhardt and the yawn. of Madonna kissing Britney. Middle America may still be suspicious of gay marriage, but polling data indicates that they're not really prepared to deny Kyan or Rosie the right to a civil union.
And that's the real core of what I'm trying to get at. Down in that comments discussion, Jed suggested that the real problem is that the word "marriage" is fraught with connotation, and he's right, and that's part of the point. We already have in this country a commonplace and commonly-accepted institution of "civil unions", partnerships that carry all the legal weight of marriage without having the religious implications, but we call it civil marriage. From that starting point, the rest is mainly a battle over semantics. Where that battle is going to be lost is if it seems like shaking the religious connotations off of the word "marriage" is a strange and exotic thing, rather than a thing we've already done.
I'm always one to put my prognostications on the table, even when I'm getting hammered. So, here's my bracket for the WGC Match Play Championship, which started today. Golf doesn't get more exiciting than this, baby!
There is nothing but bad news so far. Check the leaderboard. Tiger's losing, at least three of my elite eight are done, and I may not have picked a single winner in the Hogan region. At least Mickelson's still in, so I've got a chance at picking the champ. But really. I better shape up before March.
While we're at ESPN, there's so much I want to say about Dream Job, but it will have to wait. For now, I'll limit it to this: Maggie Haskins is a rock star. Anyone who touts her prowess at beirut on national television is okay by me. Maggie, if this SportsCenter thing doesn't work out, there's a place for you at the agency sports desk.
The most disturbing thing I've read this week is probably L.A. Weekly's interview with Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, formerly a regional analyst at the Pentagon. Kwiatkowski has a few things to say on the Office of Special Planning (subject of a lengthy Seymour Hersh profile last spring) and what she calls the "talking points war" in Iraq, including her explanation of why a certain faction of Pentagon policy makers wanted the conflict in the first place. I'd always shied away from primarily economic explanations of the war on the grounds that they were overly cynical -- for a long while, I was a fan of Josh Marshall's AEI conspiracy theory that stated that a certain faction of policy makers had concluded that the Middle East needed democracy right now, and they were going to bully, harass, and invade until it was achieved. But Kwiatkowski offers little support on that count. She contends there were three primary motivations for invading Iraq:
Okay, you know what? I'm sick of this shit. I'm sick and goddamn tired of people responding to the gay marriage question by saying "what we really need to do in this country is to separate civil marriage from religious marriage." You think? Really? It's a brilliant fucking idea! So brilliant, in fact, that WE ALREADY DO IT.
Right. Sorry. I don't actually know why I get so worked up over this. The thing is, civil marriage actually is an entirely separate thing from religious marriage. Sure, many people combine their religious ceremony with their civil ceremony, but they're not the same thing. You can enter in to a legal marriage agreement without any kind of religious component. Religious institutions can (and do) perform religious marriages that have no corresponding legal component. And, in fact, anyone can throw a wedding and get married without having either the legal or the religious aspects involved. Don't tell me that we're moving closer to that situation, or that it's where we ought to be, or that you think it's a definite possibility. Start paying attention and acknowledging that we're already there.
No, you know what? I do know why I get so worked up over this. As long as the people who favor gay marriage keep framing the debate in terms of how we need to change what marriage means, we're going to be fighting from a defensive position. If we could shift the terms of the debate to pointing out that marriage in this country already means something that can easily, obviously, and almost inevitably encompass same-sex couples, suddenly we're not arguing from a position of weakness anymore.
Oscars: I loved Mr. Depp's pirate impersonation, but I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Bill Murray is the finest American comedic actor, and Lost In Translation demonstrated his range. Give him the hardware, Academy.
Nader: It's always sad to see a man publicly lose his mind. On Meet the Press this weekend, Nader railed against the "liberal intelligentsia," simultaneously speaking a language that only they could understand. "I urge the liberal establishment to relax and rejoice." Moving on.
Rule 11: I am also Rule 11.
California: Doomed. I like the potential toll increase, but still no word about property taxes. California has the most fucked-up property tax system in the country, and until that changes, California's finances willl remain in this sorry state. Proposition 13 is the worst public initiative ever to pass. Anywhere. If anybody really cares, I can elaborate.
FMA: I did a quick run through the Senate, and I don't see how this even goes to the states. Hell, even Senator DeLay isn't rushing out to cast his vote. This whole fiasco demonstrates to moderates that Bush is more conservative than he bills himself and to conservatives that he can't pass a right-wing agenda if he tries. Who wants that?
Your UC colleague Kevin Drum has provided a good rundown of the California initiatives you'll be voting on next week.
I think Proposition 56 is most crucial. Even the United States Senate exempts budget resolutions from the filibuster rule because this issue is too important and complex to leave open to obstruction. Consequently, the Senate can pass a budget with 51 votes while the California Legislature requres a 2/3 majority.
It's easy to see why the 2/3 rule is unsustainable. Within a legislative caucus, the party exerts enough discipline to keep pork at least a little under control. The more people you have to win over from the other side to support your budget, the more ridiculous pork projects you have to write into the budget to get it to pass, and the result is a pigsty.
The budget is an expression of partisan views, but it is also an essential tool for keeping the government running. Right now you have a large caucus that supports higher taxes and steady spending and a smaller caucus that supports steady taxes and lower spending. This difference goes to the very core of their partisan identities. What happens when you have to pass a budget that needs votes from both sides of this divide and pork won't answer the disagreement? Disaster. They compromise by borrowing money. Or they obstruct, refuse to pass a budget, and cause so much trouble that the state looks ungovernable and the governor loses his job to someone whose promises will only worsen the situation.
California is doomed.
So that Flanagan article about the nannies ("How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement") that I've been nattering on about is finally online. Even better, though, is a whole series at Slate where Barbara Ehrenreich and Sara Mosle take on Caitlin Flanagan in a three-way dialogue about child care, feminism, and Flanagan's enormous attitude problem. (Four days' worth, starting here.)
For purely selfish reasons, my favorite part was when Ehrenreich put words to my own baffled reaction in this way: "Caitlin, you haven't been dipping into those Manhattans prematurely, have you? If your 10,000 word piece was about how employers should pay their nannies' Social Security taxes, then my reading skills are in serious decline." I'm delighted to have my respect and admiration for Ehrenreich strengthened yet again, but I'll admit to ambivalence about the fact that she covered every one of my major points in her response to the article (as well as some that never occurred to me). On the one hand, I feel very clever for the confluence. On the other, this probably means that they'll never publish my letter to the editor.
I know, I know. It's not all about me.
So I have to vote next week. It's not enough that I have to make decisions on the education bond and some budget thing and the debt-recovery bond and the balanced budget thing. Oh, and the bridge toll increase and the other education bond and the Berkeley pig-in-a-poke runoff thing and a bunch of tax stuff I don't understand. I also have to choose between Kerry and Edwards.
I think I like Kerry. I worry, though. I know I'm not as informed as I could or should be. I know that a lot of people are wobbly on Kerry, say that he makes them uneasy or he seems like a jerk or, I don't know. (I'm not so worried about the disenfranchista argument that he's been bought and paid for by special interests--maybe I'm more jaded about this? I figure at least he's been bought and paid for by special interests I probably like.) I'm angry about how he's handling the gay marriage question. I suspect that I might like him just because I found something really compelling in that David Brinkley piece on Kerry's Vietnam tours. I worry that I like him because I like his wife, or because the pictures of him and his wife are so charming. Sometimes I worry a little bit that I like him because he's the frontrunner and I'm being lemmingish.
But I think I like him. But what am I missing? Why don't people like him? What do people like about Edwards? I'm having trouble getting past the "handsome charm" thing and the "son of a millworker" thing, I can't quite figure out what else he's about.
Maybe I'm only fretting this much because it's such a low-stakes decision for me? Probably they'd both be fine, so it's a decision on the details and the intangibles. Those are the hardest.
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Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?
YOU ARE RULE 11!
You were designed to make sure that attorneys in federal cases make reasonable inquiries into fact or law before submitting leadings, motions, or other papers. You were a real hardass in 1983, when you snuffed out all legal creativity from federal proceedings and embarassed well-meaning but overzealous attorneys. You loosened up a bit in 1993, when you began allowing plaintiffs to make allegations in their complaints that are likely to have evidenciary support after discovery, and when you allowed a 21 day period for the erring attorney to withdraw the errant motion. Sure, you keep everything running on the up and up, but it's clear that things would be a lot more fun without you around.
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In 2000, FedEx's air shipping service was given the official name of FedEx Express.
Work has me looking through the 2002 budget of USAID. I'm updating a chart that matches Uncle Sam's donations with Uncle Soros's for selected countries.
I'm a little surprised that as of this late date, the U.S. was still doling out about $20 million in economic aid to Ireland. America's donation puts Ireland in a charity group featuring underdevelopment all-stars like Romania ($38 million, and a hell of a lot more people), Bosnia-Herzegovina ($65 million, and a somewhat more recent civil war), and my ancestral home of Belarus ($11 million, and the only Brezhnev dictatorship left in Europe.)
I recognize that Ireland has a long history of poverty. But it's history. By 2002 they'd drawn on years of intense EU subsidies and good government to surpass Britain in per capita income. The only other non-recovering-Communist country on the U.S. bankroll is Cyprus. Why is this still going on?
The long Midwestern sojourn has finally ended--I lie, you know. It wasn't long, it was only a week, and a very pleasant week at that. I got a lot of good research done, I spent time with good friends in two different states (both cold and Midwestern), drank about a liter of Spatenbrau at the Schnitzel Platz with my mother's brother and his family, that kind of thing. I spent two hours sewing pillows for my cousin Karin's flag team (and, may I add, I was pleased to find that I've still got a decent backstitch despite it being fourteen years since my last session at the Needlecraft Sewing Center). I may have committed myself to going to Karin's high school graduation in June, not to mention spending a week at the Jersey Shore for a family reunion in August. These are the dangers of spending time with family.
Mostly, though, I spent a lot of the week in an internet and television blackout. It's not that they weren't available, it's that I mostly ignored them. I plotted out an afghan I want to knit, I spent a lot of time talking to people and playing with their kids, I did a lot of crossword puzzles, and I read.
I read a lot, actually. I've been so burnt out on reading, between school work and magazine work, that when I bother to read novels at all I tend to read ones that I've read before, ones that aren't going to surprise me. My whole travel week, though, I was grabbing books wherever I could find them. The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Kushiel's Chosen, some Nora Roberts, some PD James. Right now I'm about halfway through The Coffee Trader and I'm really loving it. I've missed reading.
That said, I've also missed having some goddamn idea of what's going on in both politics and news. Hello internet! Hello television! Now if I can just get through the next few days without someone telling me what happened in the Sex and the City finale (TiVo is grabbing the Tuesday-night rerun for me) I'll consider this a success.
Ralph Nader has $240 worth of pudding, and he wants to give it all to you, the American people. But who, who will take it? Some people don't seem too happy about the offer. (They also prove the adage: "Don't design web pages angry".) Even Tom Tomorrow wants no part of this:
Nader's critique is, essentially, that there is a cancer on the body politic--and he's right about that. The problem in the year 2004 is that the body politic is also suffering from multiple wounds and blunt force trauma
A hundred thousand commentators have already pointed out that the Nader selling point, circa 2000, is basically a joke now. So what, exactly, is this campaign about? I'm having a hard time figuring it out. Theresa Amato's message on the official site offers this tantalizing bit of ideology:
If you discouraged him and disagree with his decision, don‘t support or vote for him. But please keep an open mind and have the courtesy to recognize that others would like to have the opportunity for more choices and voices in the electoral process to move this country forward. And that is exactly what this campaign will be all about.
Apparently, this is a campaign about electoral reform.
...
I can't quite get my head around this.
