Athena's Mom

You Put the Boom Boom into my Heart

The only time you are going to see a play list that includes both the Indigo Girls and Donna Summer (seriously, also check out iTunes gay anthems list) is when you have "The Fifty Gayest Songs of All Time".  The list comes from the Australian website samesame.com, although you could totally see something like this coming out of Afters Elton or Ellen. Anyway, the list picked several classics, including: Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go"

My mom loves to dance to this song.  However, I think the Wham Rap is just a skosh gayer:

Number 5 was one of my all time favorites-- :

The first time I heard this song was at summer camp, during counselor talent night.  Several counselors did a dance routine to this song.

And yes, it was an all girls camp.  Camp Agawak: hot bed of lesbian action.  No? Wait.

Predictably Madge made the list a couple of times, including at number 9, Vogue:

In middle school, my volley ball team used to get ready on the court by chanting "strike a pose!"  There were surprising few hot women on that team.  Unless you are Roman Polanski or R. Kelly, you will probably find surprisingly few hot women in middle school.

What?

Gloria Gaynor's immortal classic, "I Will Survive" comes in at number 3:

Two things seen in this video that no longer exist, high wasted pants and roller skates.

For those of you looking to get your Jesus related camp fix this Easter season (It's Easter season, right?  I just got invited to a Passover seder.):

Also of interest is this scene from Priscilla:

  And Kevin Klein in In and Out:

Also from Priscilla we have, Finally (number 30 on this list, btw):

. 

And this:

, and:

. Speaking of ABBA, number one on the list is Dancing Queen:

  My first year of college, me and my friend Chris hung out in his room, played this song and danced to it.  Complete with hip bumps.

Another classic from Australian cinema that loves ABBA is Muriel's Wedding.  In the following scene we have a before they were famous Toni Collette and Rachel Griffiths nailing ABBA's moves:

For those days when your life just isn't better than an ABBA song.

Thanks for the tip, Wade Garret.

We're in Saskatchewan

For convenience, my new posts are going to be at Athena's Mom (wordpress).  Let me know how you like it.

Hey you rock n' roller

I've been hacking around with WordPress.  I am considering moving my blog over there.  I like some of the design features.  Oh, and it's free.* 

Admittedly, I have stuck with Typepad because I did consider making money off my blog (whore!) And the whole paying to keep other advertisements off my site was tempting.  Also, 3 years ago, Typepad, in terms of designs available and user friendliness was vastly superior to other options.

Of course, blogging for profit would require that I rest on a theme, and stop topic hopping. You know, do things that attract readers. 

Plus if when I end up working in my chosen profession, there is a chance I won't have the time to maintain a blog that garners a heavy readership.

But WordPress plans to offer a paid upgrade sometime in the future, if I do choose to blog for money.  In the future gives me just enough time to start writing about the topics that attract readers.  Like sex.  And dead blonde women.  And Islamo fascism.  And how the white male is losing out. 

It worked for Faux News.

Keeping my options open.

I'll keep my home at Typepad for a while more before making the total switch.

Here is my proto WordPress blog.  Let me know what y'all think.

* Don't get your knickers in knot.  My plan costs less per month than a Venti latte.  And paying a small fee for an enjoyable hobby doesn't really bother me.  I can also use paying for having a blog as an excuse to not budget money for a Netflix subscription.  You know, cause I already bought something to occupy my leisure. I'll shut up now.

Athena's H. Mom

I think we should all change our middle names to 'Hussein'.

For solidarity's sake.

Spandex Jackets for Everyone

Women used to have to sign up for self-defense classes to protect themselves in areas of questionable sketch.

Now we have the Taser for Girls!

And how do we know it's for girls?  Because it comes in girl friendly colors such as pink and magenta.  And it is smaller and lighter than an ordinary Taser.  Finally, the website sells this product with the following line: "Love her?  Protect her." 

Oh, l'il ol' me, what would my XX chromosomed self do without a big strong Taser to protect me?

The NPR story focused on women holding Tupperware parties, but with Tasers (for girls).  The women in the story lived in Fairfield, Connecticut, but sold the Taser as a useful device to have when going into nearby (and crime riddled) Bridgeport, thus playing on suburban women's irrational fear of urban blight.

Whatever happened to the three point self defense tactic, where you just had to poke the attacker in the eyes, and knee him in the stomach and groin?  Are women really too lazy to use these tactics?

Apparently, you can purchase a Taser with a built-in MP3 player.  Cool.  Does it emit shocks to the beat of your favorite songs?  Like the OhMiBod? 

In that case, I guess the Taser/MP3 player would be a practical purchase for people who listen to something other than the Nuge.  Good luck finding them.

But when we fight, those hungry wolves close in

You know what I really like?  Knowing what is best for poor people.  Apparently this is something one, such as me, that is a certified "white person", can like. 

Several people have discovered the tongue in cheek, stuffwhitepeoplelike blog [SWPL].   The sad thing is, the first time I read through SWPL, all I could think was "wow, it's like they are following me around."  Which is kinda creepy.

That and reading the blog reminds me of this old Dave Chappelle routine, where Dave considered the 'black people like fried chicken' stereotype, and how he thought he liked fried chicken because it tasted good, but as it turns out, he liked it because he is black.  I feel the same way about sushi, after reading SWPL.

Admittedly, a field guide to particular cultural affectations and fetishes of the White UMC population is both informative and amusing.

Especially since the guide provides advice on how to get on a white person's good side:

"White people universally love David Sedaris. So if they ever ask you “who are you favorite authors?” you should always reply “David Sedaris.” They will instantly launch into a story about how much they love his work, and the conversation will go from there, and you don’t have to talk about books any more."

There is part of me that wants to fight the tide and stop liking David Sedaris.  Although, to be honest, doing so would be akin to amputating my own toes without anesthesia.

Another part of me, upon finding SWPL, thought "that's handy."  As in, wouldn't it be nice if I could just refer people to this blog to explain my multitude of interests, hang-ups and world views.  Now, I have only been in like one situation where I found myself having to explain myself at the elementary level which SWPL taps-- Prior to going to law school, I had this nouveau riche boss who constantly asked me offensively intrusive questions about my tastes.   He questioned the neighborhood I lived in, my political leanings, my hobbies, my interests, my taste in food, my need to listen to NPR in the office.  Every fucking thing.  Beyond any actual class distinctions, I think he was just a nosy little parker.  So yeah, I might have sent a link to SWPL to that boss, if it had existed back then. 

Most people from backgrounds other than my own do not spend time nitpicking my tastes.  Actually, I have had some very cool conversations and open dialogs with people about their backgrounds.   Oh wait, that's #20 for SWPL, being an expert on YOUR culture.

SWPL does provide me with a new avenue of class consciousness and awareness, however.  For instance, renovation:

"All white people are born with a singular mission in life in order to pass from regular whitehood into ultra-whitehood. Much like how Muslims have to visit Mecca, all white people must eventually renovate a house before they can be complete.

Of course, most white people do not reach this goal until they are 35 or older. But the need to do it is as instinctual as walking.

But it is important to note that white people have little or no interest in renovating a suburban home built after 1960 (except in Southern California). All white people dream about buying an older property (”with character”) in a city, and then renovating it so the insides look all modern with a stainless steel fridge.

Though the seed is planted from birth, it really starts to grow when renovations take place in a family home during childhood. They don’t understand why there are so many men with mustaches in their kitchen, but they know that they will be gone in a few weeks leaving behind a nicer kitchen and a happier mommy/daddy/life partner of parent.

Please note that ALL white people went through a renovation when they were kids. This is a good subject to bond over, perhaps a story about how you were embarassed [sic] at a sleepover when a friend went to the bathroom and there was a contractor on the toilet. Embellish as necessary."

Wait, you mean not everyone renovates???  You mean there are people out there who never had the pleasure of three months of refrigerator in the dining room, gaping plastic covered hole in the back of the house, father now has twenty years worth of dinner conversation monopolizing complaints?  My parents renovated several times.  They redid the bathrooms in the condo when I was about four.  We got to pee in buckets for a week.  I really enjoyed playing with Neils the contractor and his assistants.  When I was 12, in preparation for my Bat Mitzvah, my parents had the entire house repainted, and my room redecorated and re-carpeted. 

Now, one could argue that SWPL is in essence just another form of self-aware post-colonial cultural crit.  And we should examine every entry with an eye towards determining the means that a contemporary white person uses to assert dominance in the race and class dialectics.  Yes, I have a BA.

Being refreshingly post-racial however, I am free to observe the differences between races without imposing any sort of imperial agenda.

Which is why, upon reading SWPL, I did not think the blog was racist (reverse racist, I guess????), but instead thought "I wish other races had their own blogs."  That's right, I want black people, Dominicans, various Asians, Poor White Trash, etc. to create their own blogs to explain in simple terms what they like.  'Cause I'm curious in that way.   Tell me about the import of acrylic nail tips, certain kinds of alcohol, top forty radio stations-- I wanna know.  I already understand the sublime experience that is shopping at Whole Foods (store brand soy milk).  What do non-SWPL types fetishize?

Of course, if we had a website titled something like "Stuff Black People Like", even if the sight was written by a black person, someone would think it was totally racist, and not in that benign way that a sight called "Stuff White People Like" written by white people would be; but instead in that pernicious one step away from reinstating slavery racism way.

Which is why, outside of a very small niche audience, any blog attempting to convey information about any race and or culture fails. 

Noticing racial differences is inherently racist as a pejorative.  For instance, noticing that a lot of black people you know like a band that a lot of white people you know do not is akin to saying that black people have lower I.Q.s than white people. 

Also, a didactic over-simplified discussion of race also has the fun of not knowing what to do with people who are neither black nor white, but say Chinese.  Really, you have to wonder how anyone has made any progress over the past 40 years (actually 44 years).

I will finish this piece with this bit I heard on NPR's This American Life.   That week's theme was "Shouting Across the Divide".  Contributor Shalom Auslander permalanced for an ad agency, and had been given the task of marketing a new soft drink to the African American community.   The assignment failed in that his team got caught up in figuring out whether or not  black people owned bathing suits. The absurdity boggles the mind.  I suspect part of the problem concerning racial disparities is that each group is caught up in the questions about the tastes of some other group.  We aren't saying "we are all brothers under the skin".  We're saying "wait, where do black people shop"?  Or "why do white people sleep with their dogs?"  And these questions are asked over and over again.  And no one really has an answer--- and the person who finally provides an answer is so offended at even being asked, that everyone just retreats to their own little corner of the world.  Which for white people, I guess that would be an ironically hip dive bar with a micro-brew beer.

No, seriously, SWPL has miles and miles of potential commentary.  It's going to be like when my dad read David Brooks' "Bobos in Paradise."

I played with your heart

Now, I know that this blog has gotten a little ranty as of late.

Now for something entirely different (tM).

The superficial got two age progressed photos of Britney Spears, factoring in "Britney's current fast food diet, drug and alcohol use".  Here she is at 30, and 46.  Both, but especially the second one, look like Subway cashier in rural America, but with better teeth.

I am hungry for any Britney related gossip.  I have to be.  The alternative is thinking about the looming economic recession, or genocide in Kenya and Dafur. 

It's not exactly that Britney generated media erases these problems.  It does distract me, however, from bad news over which I have very little control.  Being well informed is so depressing right now.

So how about a little drug addicted child star fueled schadenfreude.

You don't even know who Liz Phair is

I frequently read the Angry Pharmacist Blog.  I enjoy his jaundiced veiw of the human condition.  As someone who gets her rocks off lamenting the human race's propensity towards stupidity and annoying behavior, I can somewhat relate to the Angry Pharmacist. 

Angry Pharmacist is a hardcore libertarian.  I suspect that he got there having to deal with one too many tweakers bugging him continually to fill a vicodin script.   And one day, he just snapped.  If you are to read any pharmacist blog, or ER physician or nurse blog, you would be convinced that most people are either drug seekers, or undeserving poor.  Actually, ER blogs have a third category of person-- the "I can't imagine how it got up there" man/woman.

Ah, and here we part ways-- since I have pretty much worked with deserving poor.  Recently, the Angry Pharmacist had the following rant:

"Now its going to be "The Angry Pharmacist hates poor people".

Welcome to Fucking Livid-Land, Population: Me, Elevation: Through the fucking roof.

Yes, you ungrateful fucks, everyone hates the poor.  Lets see how much we fucking hate you:

• We give you discount/free housing.  I wish my rent was $0-$10/month.
• We give you free food via food-stamps.  Don't give me no fucking sob story that you can't get trade name fucking Cheerios.
• We give you $200 medications for a whopping free or $1.05/$3.10.  Boy, I wish my fucking copays were that low.  Maybe you'll get your head out of your ass and realize that you are on the /BEST/ insurance plan in the state.  How much do you pay for it? FUCKING NOTHING!
• We give you a fucking check every month for all of the cost of living expenses that you DONT HAVE TO PAY FOR BECAUSE YOU GET THEM FOR FREE (Food, Housing, etc)!
• I am forced to take a portion of my paycheck; the money that I woke my ass up in the MORNING (you know, before noon) and went to WORK to earn YOU don't have to.

Now you inbred bastards, since you obviously don't have to work (although you are fully capable of doing so), lets look at the poor son-of-a-bitch who is busting his ass doing shit-jobs for minimum wage so he can support his family.  Or the mother who gets to spend little/no time with her children because she is busing tables for 16 hours a day so she can make rent.  They bust their asses and pay taxes so YOU can sit around, fuck like rabbits with any cock that will wag in your direction, pop out fuck trophies, spend your welfare check on fucking weed, and be a burden on society.  What about those poor fucks who have enough personal pride to NOT rely on the state and who bust their ass so they can not only pay for themselves, but YOU as well. What do they get? Nothing.  Oh wait, they get their house and car broken into by your fucking welfare babies."

Admittedly, I would probably have a different perspective on the whole welfare debate if I encountered more people on the dole sitting around smoking weed, and trying to obtain Clomid (a fertility drug) through medicaid benefits.  I still contend that people like that make up a very very small fraction of those receiving public benefits.

The comments section provides a couple of amusing nuggets, as well:

Nikki from Pharmacy Slave provides the following example:

"My personal favorite is the fuckwads in the escalade that comes through the drive thru with their spinners, and 3 kids in the front seat on the lap of your high off his ass baby's daddy, to pick up all the breathing treatments for all the kids on medicaid...as you blow your newport smoke in the kids faces...."

Say what you will about perpetuating negative stereotypes, but I have got to say that the fuckwad in an Escalade is a character rife with amusing absurdities.  Think about it-- this is a person who cannot support herself, yet she is driving a lux SUV.  And she smokes around her children who have breathing difficulties.  She is making her own bed, and I guess is lying in it to some extent.

Being a naive white liberal, of course, I cannot begin to figure out how someone on welfare could afford to drive an Escalade, or afford spinning rims, or drugs, or even a pack of Newports.  Especially if you have children.

Hence my only response can be amusement.

More comments:

"So many times I've wanted to yell at those mothers in the drive-thru who scream at me with their cigarette hanging from their mouth that they "ain't payin $3.00 for that shit. I don't have a copay, look on my profile. I get antibiotics for my kids ALL the time and I have NEVER had to pay a copay!" But I only say, "yes ma'am you get Amox. for them every other week BUT obviously it isn't taking care of their earaches so the doctor prescribed something stronger that isn't as covered. This is on the insurance, it would have been more than $100.00" And then I get to stand there while they sit in their brand new Navigator, flippin their hair with their attitude and trying to dial their doctor's office on their new Razr phone with 2 inch long nails! Then of course the fun part, the dr. calls and changes it to the Amox."

I just love the image of 2 inch nails and dialing on a razor phone.

Shalom (R.Ph.)  said:                             

"I have to say, not all of the Medicaid people are like this. Lots, possibly even the majority of them, are actually unemployed or underemployed people trying to make ends meet. These are the ones you see driving fifteen year old cars with duct tape holding the seats together. It's the ones in the Lincoln Navigators that give the rest a bad name."

Exactly.

Shalom continues, however:

 

But you know what really, truly honks me off?

So these patients would come into my store in the Bronx and say they don't have any money, pick up their medicine for free (have you looked at reimbursements lately? Chain pharmacists are mostly insulated from this, but I've been working an independent lately and believe me, that $3.00 copay is sometimes all the profit you get) and then...

GO DOWN THE FRONT AND BUY A &*?*_@#!&!!&@ LOTTO  TICKET!"

We cannot judge people for being poor or down on their luck.  I reserve the right to judge, however, people who forgo paying for medication to pay what my maternal grandfather calls "the stupidity tax."

And here begins Athena's Mom's rant about lottery tickets.

You know what I fucking hate?  Getting stuck behind someone at a gas station or kiosk buying a lottery ticket.  Or 70 such tickets.  And you know how lottery ticket purchasing goes.  It is not the simple transaction, that say buying a pack of cigarettes is.  Now, I have never purchased a lottery ticket, so I have no idea how long a transaction of this nature should actually run.

But picture AM waiting to buy a pack of gum, stuck behind the only other customer in the store who is not only buying lottery tickets for herself, but her entire family, her entire office, and her entire neighborhood.  This requires that she frequently reference a multi-page list to figure out exactly which kind of ticket everyone wants (because there is no such thing as a simple lottery ticket any more.) And the list is not enough-- because the purchaser will have to take out her cell phone and call various people to verify that they want the ticket she is about to purchase.  Finally, during this production, she will be scratching off tickets for herself.  Basically, this one transaction takes like 15 minutes.  And I am always tempted to just cut in line with my gum, exact change, and say something along the lines of "May I pay for my purchase while you are figuring out just how much you owe for your stupidity tax?"

I never do this, however.  I think it may because the people who taught me such terms as "stupidity tax" and "too stupid to live" also raised me right.  As in I was raised to only think someone is stupid, without telling them to their face.

Nope, I save it for my blog.

I love the internets.
 

See that girl, watch that scene, dig in

Okay, I wasn't around when the phrase "welfare queen" was originally coined.  For those of you who were, did you feel like you were being played?

I ask this, because Krugman seems to pin the shift from having a war on poverty in this country to having a war on poor people to Reagan's iconic speech.

My brother and I once got into an argument over whether the poor in this country knew just how screwed they were.  My brother argued that they knew.  I argued that they couldn't possibly know the extent to which public policy worked against them.  My primary example being the low pay for public defenders, and how most people graduate from law school with 200K in debt, and thus find it very hard to make a career out of earning 40K a year.   

One problem when discussing poor folks and their plight is that someone in the room will always be able to come up with an anecdotal example of a welfare queen-- and people will just sort of make the logical leap that if our tax dollars are funding this one example of flagrant welfare fraud then we need to cut off everyone.

Here is the moment where you can inject "USA, USA, USA" into the conversation. 

Anywho, Krugman also discusses research that finds that children of the underclass experience "unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life."  While various complaints about welfare queens are perversely used to remind us all how we need to get up off our butts and work our way into the middle class, such speech also further marginalizes people who did not have the luck to be born into the middle class.

In working with people in this class, I have found that many of them probably wouldn't be accepting public benefits if at that moment in time they had another option.  And most of them just want public benefits, and free legal advocacy as a means to either move themselves or their children ahead in life.  They want safe places to live, a steady stream of food, and maybe a way to earn a living.  They aren't scamming the 'mer'can tax payer.  They are merely unlucky.  And as a moral society, we do not want them living in abject poverty, completely cut off from the basic needs (shelter, food), because what chance, then do they have in considering the more existential needs of finding employment, preparing their children for an adulthood of being productive members of society?

And sure, pundits will complain about the entitlement class.  But I cannot fathom that the alternative these pundits suggest to the current system would be better.

They took my whole pay check, and I know why

Dateline Albany:  New York Governor Eliot Spitzer proposes "making drug dealers pay tax on their stashes of illegal drugs." 

Basically, Eliot wants to tax dealers on their inventory.

He is using half of my idea-- taxing drugs.  The other half of my idea was to legalize drugs.  The whole idea is my "legalize them [drugs] and tax the shit out of them.   

In this way, my decriminalization of drugs stance leaves me in the good graces of libertarians. 

Spitzer's perversion of my idea, however, demonstrates  his enviable talent of proposing legislation that manages to piss off everyone. Drugs might be good enough to be taxed (pissing off anti-drug factions), but not enough to legalize (sorry NORML.)  And we get a new tax (club for growth just fired up its email.) 

We could close a budget gap, and maybe provide better funding for schools and infrastructure.  But we all know that much of that extra money will just go towards paying the salaries of agency heads and their staff.

From a legal standpoint this proposal is interesting in that the government wants to have some sort of interaction (and interference) with an underground economy.  I am more qualified to address the Constitutional issues that arise than the tax issues (so go my predilections as an attorney.  That being said, if there was an opening for a tax attorney, I would send in my excellent resume.  Being at the stage in my career that I am, I can apply for a tax attorney position while being a con law geek.  Lawyers just out of law school are sluts like that.)

WaPo provides a condensed discussion of several states that have attempted to tax illicit substances, pointing out that North Carolina taxes Moonshine.  Other states, "have designed distinctive drug stamps, often depicting a marijuana leaf. Nebraska's drug stamp depicts a rolled joint crossed with a syringe in front of a skull and what appears to be a headstone, with the label "R.I.P."  The article explains that Nebraska's unicameral legislature required that all citizens be able to purchase the stamp.  Apparently it is a collector's item, with only an occasional drug dealer making a purchase.

Now, from a stance of criminalizing drugs, a drug dealer who does not pay the tax, will be potentially guilty of tax evasion.  Which as we all know, Al Capone was convicted on.  Here is how it works, to prove criminal guilt you apply a stricter standard of proof ("beyond a reasonable doubt") than you would for a civil matter such as tax evasion (avoision-- it's a word, look it up.)

Now if Spitzer were to follow a watered down version of my proposal and legalize drugs in New York State, we might end up rehashing Gonzalez v. Reich.   The DEA could still assert its right to raid a grower or dealer in NY.  Reich is a case where the Rehnquist court determined that the selling and growing of marijuana in California affected the national marijuana market, and thus regulating marijuana fell under the federal government's power to regulate interstate commerce.  Meaning, effectively, that if marijuana (and other drugs) is legalized in NY, the effects of such legislation would have an impact on the national illegal drug market.  Thus federal law can preempt state law.  If anything, legalizing drugs in one state, even for tax purposes, would allow the federal government to reinforce its war on drugs with additional cases making their way to the SCOTUS, and more draconian legislation.

This is not what Governor Spitzer is proposing, however.  Drug use, purveyance, and possession  will still be illegal activities, with the attendant consequences (subject matter for another blog entry).  It's just under Spitzer's plan drug dealers will get to join low wage workers in their 'hoods in getting fleeced by H&R block in April.

I can no longer shop happily

I've been following the NIU shooting somewhat closely.  Having become a New Yorker, I now get to say that I grew up near DeKalb.  Note that no self respecting Chicagoan still living in Chicago would say something like that.  But I have adopted the provincialism that tends to gain a foothold in about one's second month of living in New York.  Face it, in a couple of months, I am going to be arguing that Toledo and Chicago should be like twins cities or something.   I am still at the mere going to any one of the outer boroughs is a schlep stage.  You know that stage.  The one where you leave like 2 hours before you are expected in Brooklyn Heights, just in case the 2/3 runs local.

Anyway, I have driven through DeKalb, but would not by any measure consider it part of Chicago-land.  To be honest, for me, Chicago-land effectively ends at 63rd Street to the South, the Glencoe/Highland Park Border to the North, and somewhere in Skokie to the West (just past Kaufman's).

Turns out that the gun man bought his guns in Champaign.  Well, I'll be.  Did you know that Champaign had a gun store?  I certainly didn't.   As a gun-nut, I am a consummate failure.

I am irritated that most coverage of the shooting takes pains to mention that the gun-man was off some sort of medication and was disturbed, lest we forget that mental illness and homicidal tendencies go hand in hand.  In actuality, a micro-percentage of people living with mental illness harm others.  The media does not make a person living with depression, for instance, dutifully taking his meds and going about a normal life headline news, however.  Something about ratings.

I said no, no, no

Lauri Apple at FoundClothing painted the following.

For those of you living under a rock-- this is a portrait of Alexyss K. Tylor.  She hosts a public access show in Atlanta, and has become a bit of a web-celebrity.  She's kind of the consumer reports for men.

If you want to earn your man, you gotta learn your man:

Y'all gotta be a pilot over the pussy, y'all:

Apple has painted portraits of other celebrities including:  Amy Winehouse, Richard Simmons and Dr. Phil.

Awesome.
 

Would You Think The Boy's Insane

Author Susan Jacoby asks "are Americans hostile to knowledge"?  I'm eager to read the book.  My caveat with Patricia Cohen's review, however, is that we begin with the following scenario: 

"A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”"
"Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”

And use it to illustrate that we, as Americans, are generally an ignorant lot.  And while Jacoby may be correct (her book is on my to-read-list), I tend to see Pickler and her ilk as aberrations.  You see in America, we try to provide a robust cosmopolitan education to the many.  Whereas other countries take their Kellie Picklers out of the game around 5th grade or so and put them on a vocational track.

Then there is my suspicion that Kellie Pickler, whose main claim to fame is being pretty and able to sing reasonably well on cue, really doesn't need to be smart.  Pretty people (boys and girls) tend to get a pass in knowing things.*  Watch a reality show with models one of these days.  Believe me, Tyra Banks has lost a good deal of her mystique since she began opening her mouth on prime time television. 

That being said, why is Kellie Pickler being held up as an example of a typical American not knowledgeable about the world?  A better illustration to begin the article might have been this:

"She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map."

I didn't watch that season of Idol.  Did they ever explain why Pickler was so dumb?  Mild retardation?  A drug problem?  A learning disability effecting both short and long term memory?  Come on, I need to know.

I did chortle at this example, however:

"The author of seven other books, she was a fellow at the library when she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”"

I admire Jacoby's tenacity.  Most people would have submitted the conversation to Overheard in New York, and called it a night.  She wrote a whole book.

I think I'd know more about ignorance if I watched cable news. 

*And here you can say something like "I went to college or law school with a pretty girl who knew a lot of stuff."  Yeah, but I bet that your pretty girl, like the pretty girls in my law school class, was merely pretty, as opposed to very pretty, and thus had learned like any normal person that one really needs to get by on something other than looks.  I happened to have chosen intelligence at an early age.  But that may have just been due to having the trifecta of glasses, braces and a bad hair cut.  And sucking at sports.

Shake Your Money Maker

Mittens sees the light. 

I'm sort of glad he waited until after super-duper Tuesday to do it, simply because for years I dealt with the frustration of my state holding its primary long after the major party presidential candidates had been decided.  This year, thanks to the stubbornness of several candidates, I actually had to choose someone.  While it would have been nice to have had Edwards (okay readers, this is really bugging me-- what did Edwards' father do for a living?) and Kucinich in the race still, it was nice to feel like I was making an actual choice when I pushed the switch for Obama.

Now that Mittens is out of the race, I have to say that I no longer harbor a visceral dislike against any of the candidates.  While you would think Huckabee's proposed policies would do something to piss me off- I have to say, dismantling the IRS is sufficiently Pie-in-the-sky, that I find it an amusing piece of political science fiction more than anything else.

The candidate I really hated was Giuliani.  Giuliani's problem was that McCain PWND him on defense, and Mittens did the same for fiscal policy.  And I guess Huckabee did that for the values voter contingent.  Not that Guilianni ever had much of a chance appealing to evangelical Christians, what with his mayoral administration focused on doing unchrist-like things such as persecuting the poor.  Oh wait, it was his 3 marriages and his estranged children that turned off the evangelicals.

People choose their candidates for the dumbest reasons.  For instance, refusing to vote for Mittens Romney based on the fact that he belonged to the Mormon religion.  I ended up in several conversations where my opponent explained to me that Mormonism was a cult, and didn't I feel uncomfortable that a member of such a cult wanted to lead our country.  Well, you know, I actually decided that Mittens was unfit to run our country for substantive reasons.  His fiscal policy, for instance.

In college, a friend of a friend purportedly voted for G.W. Bush (not G. H. W. Bush-- I'm not that old) because when Bush was an active Bonesman, the story goes that he took a hot piece of metal and branded another guy's arm.  And what this country needs is someone who can brand another human.  Or so that guy's line of reasoning went. Yes, let's choose our candidates based on what they did in college.  Kids, remember drinking until you pass out, campaigning to free Mumia, moving into the LARP themed dorm, or thinking you are bisexual for three months will have an impact on your political career.

I'm a hypocrit.  I voted for Barack Obama because he's a con law geek. 

So Young, I'm So God Damn Young

What is hell for liberals?   The year that a woman is a serious candidate for the presidency, her one serious competitor is a black guy.

Yep. 

NPR keeps interviewing college students about their views, and who they are voting for.  During the 2000 election, I was in college.  Trust me, no one cared what my age cohort cared about that year.  Many of my friends were pushing for Nader.  We were debating just how badly Bush would screw up the Supreme Court. Major media outlets just weren't interested in what we had to say.