Syndicate and Hague

One of the great luxuries of having Wednesdays off for these few weeks in which I do not have to do homework for 3 classes is that I can sit and really listen to podcasts of shows I enjoy. Today was the most recent episode of Radiolab, “Diagnosis.”

I dig Radiolab. Actually, I just dig science shows in which they look at things from a variety of angles. Radiolab in particular, however, often leaves me in a state of rehashing and thinking about at least one element of the show.

This week, it was the part of the show on SIDS and how the doctors initially discovered a problem and diagnosed it with terrible consequences.

So this is the knowledge I came away from the show with: back in the early part of the 20th century, they started realizing that SIDS was a thing. A few thousand babies, otherwise healthy, would just die while sleeping and no one could figure it out. Stymied, the doctors decided to do what they do, and research (autopsy) the babies who died to see if there was some part of the anatomy that was different. What they discovered was that all these babies had enlarged thymuses, which they thought may be pressing on the trachea and suffocating them at night.

Score, right? Well. Their solution was to irradiate the throats of babies if parents were concerned about SIDS, which resulted in tens of thousands of deaths of people who got thyroid cancer. Oops. Sidenote: I guess radiation was all the rage back then. People could get x-rays of their feet at shoe stores and Marie Curie was plunging her own arms into radioactive things. That didn’t go so well for her, you know, though we gained a lot of knowledge from it.

That stuff is interesting in and of itself, but the show goes on to talk about why all these babies had enlarged thymuses. (You’re totally trying to guess right now, I know. I was too.)

They didn’t.

Going back to the old days of grave-robbing, you know that’s how our early doctors got bodies to study anatomy, the well-off folks started finding ways of warding off the grave-robbers. Complicated caskets, vaults, etc. The grave-robbers were stuck digging up poor people buried in sacks a few inches under the ground in paupers’ graves. Eventually, in a number of countries, any unclaimed poor person who died was automatically donated to science–essentially codifying the existing practice.

So take that knowledge (our doctors way back then were only looking at the anatomies of the poor) and combine it with the knowledge that nutritional deprivation and stress physically messes you up, and combine that with the knowledge that constant stress shrinks the thymus…and voila! Those babies didn’t have enlarged thymuses, they were the first healthy thymuses the doctors had ever seen.

Huh.

It’s no secret (or maybe it is for you, I don’t know) that a lot of our medical knowledge was built on the backs of the poor. A lot of it was also built on the back of slaves — horrible, unspeakable things were done to slaves in the name of medicine. If you want to hear about it (and I’m telling you, listening to this made me cry), SPH had Harriet A. Washington speaking on Medical Apartheid this past year and it was intense.

The irony of this for me was that because science so abused the poor, middle/upper-income children died. Because the burden of discovery was not shared across class lines (some lives and deaths are more sacred), doctors couldn’t diagnose problems that affected children regardless of class.

To those of you who have pointed out to me lately that my blog is lacking in its previous copiousness…you’re right. I have been a bad blogger, which is partly due to a hectic life, partly due to a newfound sleep schedule (seriously, wow!), and to Twitter.

Twitter has served me well during this mess of a Democratic primary and it has also served to mute the flow of blog postings because quick hits that might have wound up in my blog before now sit in 140 character form on my twitter feed. I will consider pulling the feed into the blog here, but that’s not going to happen right away. If you’d like to keep tabs on my quick and dirty comments about random things, you can find me at http://twitter.com/saralovesyou.

I’ve been feeling a little social-networked/Web 2.0′d out lately, as well as a little politicked out, which has resulted in sluggish blogging on my part.

All that said…

It is time for you to stop now, Geraldine Ferraro.

It’s actually time for all Clinton supporters to take a step back, breathe, and realize that it is over. Game. Over. Obama won, fair and square. He out-campaigned, out-finessed, and just plain old out did the Clinton campaign.

But them’s just the numbers. While I’m irritated by the Clinton campaign’s Rovian fuzzy math, I’m downright angry at Ferraro and other feminists of her generation who are not temporarily being, but showing themselves as flat out racist in the course of this election.

I actually heard a few days ago, and I will not repeat my source because I personally would be embarrassed to have anyone know I’d said such a thing, from an older woman who said that “In my opinion, Obama is just another white man.”

And here is a problem among many…the intention of that remark was that Obama is just as sexist and mistreats Clinton based on her gender as any other man with power (read: white man) has. But the implications of that remark run a much more troubling path.

I will be the first to argue that all men–men of color included–have access to ways of power/privilege in ways that women do not. This does not mean that they have it any “easier” or “better,” but that there are avenues of communication that are shared between them as men.

However, it is tragic that the same women who recognize male privilege don’t see the ways white women have access to ways of power/privilege in ways that men of color do not.

I just can’t bring myself to go over all the intricacies of this argument because I am So. Tired. of all of it. And all over these here Interwebs, there are people making headway into the very basic nature of both of my statements. Try Jack and Jill Politics or Feministing for a sample. In posts and comments you’ll see problems. You’ll also see compelling arguments.

I’m firmly situated behind Obama as a candidate, but I see his flaws. There’s a certain “chivalry” to his dealings with Clinton that have struck feminists as being condescending (pulling out her chair for her at the debate, for instance). More troubling about how he deals with women was when he called a reporter “sweetie” when she kept annoying him as TV reporters tend to do.

The women who came before me in particular had to deal with men casting them aside professionally, dismissing them, muting their interactions with endearments, and downplaying their intelligence and decision-making skills. This isn’t relegated to the past: just as we don’t live in a post-racist society, we don’t live in a post-misogyny society.

However, there is no argument for the racism of the white feminists in response to Obama. There just isn’t. He’s a compelling candidate in his own right. A candidate whose speeches inspire and whose ideas are based in a solid liberal philosophy. He’s a candidate who established a community-based campaign fueled by small donations from a broad base. He showed himself to be the better candidate. If he can organize this well in the general election, we will be handing McCain his ass on a platter. It will be beautiful.

Nonetheless. Clinton lost. Obama won. We need to move on from that, but we’ll be dwelling in the racial/gender divide for some time now. I hope it becomes productive.

*Note: I’m not super happy with this post because I’d like to dissect everything more. As I said, however, I’m so freakin tired of all this.

I’ve developed a new morbid addiction. The Ron Paul Survival Report is an awesome site that is essentially devoted to showing what is wrong with Ron Paul. The blogger is thorough as hell. Every time I’ve checked his sources to make sure he was accurate (I try to vet the people I quote, you know), he’s been right on.

Most recently, Ron Paul is doing another one of his “money bombs” on MLK day. Ignoring his history of racist statements and affiliations, the general philosophies of extreme free market economics he espouses (which disenfranchise the vast majority of us), and the plethora of white supremacists who have flocked to his campaign (seriously)…RP is reinforcing his status as racist by actually speaking at Bob Jones University tonight at 5 p.m. It’s currently on his website (I checked).

So. Do you folks know about Bob Jones University? Well…let me enlighten you. Back in 2000, candidate George Bush spoke at Bob Jones, which set of a firestorm even from some of the most ridiculously conservative folks around (Bill Kristol, I’m looking at you). Why? From the Salon.com archives.

The school refused to admit any African-American students until 1971. From 1971 to 1975, most unmarried African-American applicants were denied admission, presumably to prevent interracial dating. After 1975, the school — under court order — began admitting unmarried African-American students, though according to the U.S. government, it rejected “any applicant known to be a partner in an interracial marriage.”

After the 1975 court order, Bob Jones administrators established rules requiring expulsion for any student who married or dated outside his or her race or belonged to an organization that advocated or encouraged others to marry or date outside his or her race.

In 2000, this was still the policy. After the controversy stirred up by Bush’s visit, they subsequently dropped the policy. In 2000. Eight years ago.

Now, you could argue: “But they changed the policy!” Despite the fact that I think that’s crap, I still think a candidate (or anyone) should not speak somewhere that is this misogynistic. From the Bob Jones website:

Dress Code for Women

Classroom/general dress consists of a dress or top and skirt; however, pants may be worn for some recreational activities. Shorts may never be worn outside the residence halls and fitness center.

Pants

• Loose-fitting pants may be worn between women’s residence halls, for athletic events, and to homes in the area.
• Loose-fitting jeans may be worn in and between women’s residence halls and when participating in activities where the durability of the fabric is important, such as skiing and ice-skating.
• Low-riders are not permitted.
• Shorts may be worn only inside the residence halls and fitness center

Other

• Combat boots, hiking boots or shoes that give this appearance are not permitted. Leather sandals, including those with a strap between the toes, will be permitted at times when women are not required to wear hose. Flip flops made of rubber, plastic, etc., are not permitted in public.
• Hairstyles should be neat, orderly, and feminine. Avoid cutting-edge fads and cuts so short that they take on a masculine look.

For some added hilariousness:

Abercrombie & Fitch and its subsidiary Hollister have shown an unusual degree of antagonism to the name of Christ and an unusual display of wickedness in their promotions. In protest, we will not allow articles displaying their logos to be worn, carried, or displayed (even if covered or masked in some way).

Anyway, so, whatever. I’m not worried that RP is going to win the Republican nomination, much less the general election, but I do feel concerned that a certain segment of people respond to his rhetoric. It’s isolationist, self-interested, and generally loathsome. Anyone who believes we shouldn’t be funding public education is setting up a situation in which the poor remain poor and the rich get richer. From his website:

The federal government has no constitutional authority to fund or control schools. I want to abolish the unconstitutional, wasteful Department of Education and return its functions to the states. By removing the federal subsidies that inflate costs, schools can be funded by local taxes, and parents and teachers can directly decide how best to allocate the resources.

Yeah. Um. Hello? If schooling is funded by local taxes, poor areas will not have competitive schools. I see no way in which this doesn’t disproportionately (moreso than now) advantage people who already have money and power. If your local tax base is small, where is money coming from to fund education?

Here’s the thing. This whole “personal liberty”/”I know what’s best to do with my money”/”personal responsibility” argument is just one thing: extreme selfishness. We live in a society, which is like being part of a household. A household has expenses. Let’s say we each need to put in 50% of our incomes so that we can pay our bills and improve things. Great. I’m a contributing member of the household. I’m willing to do what I need to in order for this to be a good place to live.

Now here comes along someone who says “This is ridiculous! Why should I put in 50% of my hard-earned money? You don’t do things right. You waste money on things I don’t think we should bother with. Let’s just leave it up to each individual to pay for each thing as it comes.”

You’d never live with someone like that unless you are a fool. You’d think they were supremely selfish and wonder how they expected to be part of a household when they obviously placed no value on it.

Anyway.

The images below are from the Ron Paul Chalk Flickr set. They make me laugh about us.

Tonight when I got home, I was perusing these here interwebs taking in the results of Iowa (don’t despair/congratulate any of yourselves yet, folks) and I came across an article published in The Nation that discusses Obama, Race and the Presidency in a way that lays things out better than I could in my previous post that touched on Ron Paul’s racist ass. All of the quotes below are from Ari Melber’s piece that I linked to above.

By the way, I highly recommend reading the entire article.

So I don’t really know who I’m going to vote for when it comes to be Minnesota’s turn. Obama is on my short list, so I was pleased to see him win over Clinton in Iowa. Though I’d love to have a woman in the Oval Office, she’s too economically conservative for me. I digress, however.

Win or lose, he is arguably the first black American to be treated by the political and media establishment as a fully viable presidential contender…We should not gloss over this development. It is a meaningful step towards addressing a resilient, uncomfortable American fact: our national power structure has always been, and stubbornly remains, overwhelmingly white, from all forty-three Presidents across history to ninety-five of the one hundred senators serving today.

When I was listening to Olbermann tonight as I read through the news, I heard either him or Tim Russert say that Republicans don’t think about electability as much as Democrats do when they’re voting. Whoever said it has a point. The higher the profile, the more we Dems are sooo self-conscious. And in politics, as in life, the hesitant are often trampled. The Republicans aren’t any less processed or polled, but even when they contradict themselves or make no sense or are just being complete assholes, they do it with aplomb.

Obama is popular, intelligent, and completely viable as a candidate. If he chooses a running mate with foreign policy experience, he would have a pretty sweet ticket. And despite the fact that he has made history as a candidate because of the sheer amount of money his campaign has brought in (which leads to its viability), despite the fact that I think we should be talking about race, if I hear one more blowhard Dem worrying about Obama’s “electability” as shorthand for “we’re wringing our hands because what if people won’t vote for the black guy?” I’m going to start throwing things at my TV like dear old Grandpa Dan used to when Reagan was on.

Know what? We’re not going to know if America will vote for the black guy or the woman or the white guy or the other white guy or the other white guy or the latino guy or anyone until it happens.

When I was going through my grandfather’s things after my grandma died in 2002, I found a letter that was sent before the 1959 Democratic Convention. From one Irish pol to another. The awe and anticipation in that letter have similarities to what’s going on with Obama now. I’ll look for the letter sometime soon to see if I can find the actual text, but in essence it said: “Do you really think America would vote for a Catholic? Is it really possible? An Irish Catholic!”

It was full of hope. And some fear–that maybe America wouldn’t elect Kennedy. You never can tell before it happens.

Melber goes on:

That segregated power structure was reinforced by the Supreme Court’s sharply divided June decision to ban integration programs in public schools. Most educational policies that consider a student’s race for the purposes of integration are now illegal. Like the original Brown opinion, this year’s decision is not neatly confined to K-12 schools, either. Brown consecrated a new national ambition for racial equality in the public sphere, delegitimizing both explicit and implicit racism in government, and laying a foundation for remedial measures to equalize many other facets of our society. Many critics contend that this case, Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, augurs a disturbing slide backwards. It bans integration programs, sharply restricts race-based government remedies and sets the stage for future bans on other remedial programs, such as affirmative action, as Justice Stephen Breyer warned.

Melber’s argument is that this thinking extends to our treatment of candidates. A reinforcement of “they don’t belong” or “they’re trying to take something away.” You know. Fear-mongering.

Hostility towards affirmative action runs so deep, in fact, it is a staple of attacks against black political candidates. Senator Jesse Helms perfected coded campaign racism in 1990, with an infamous attack ad darkly juxtaposing his black opponent’s face with the text “For RACIAL QUOTAS.”

This next part brings us back to Obama.

Some commentators have latched onto Obama’s success as proof for the flawed claim that the United States has completely achieved equal opportunity for all, obviating remedial programs like affirmative action. “Obama embodies and preaches the true and vital message that in today’s America, the opportunities available to black people are unlimited if they work hard, play by the rules, and get a good education,” writes Stuart Taylor Jr., a columnist for The National Journal (emphasis added). Taylor presents one man’s unusual political arc as a universal lesson for all “black children”: “Obama’s soaring success should tell black children everywhere that they, too, can succeed, and they do not need handouts or reparations.”

Because, well, you know that racial inequality exists because people are lazy. /sarcasm

Thing is, that’s a pretty entrenched idea. I’m betting some people reading this believe that. I could extend this to class mobility as well, but that would just make this post positively book length and it’s already too long. Too bad.

I am going to cut this off though. Please read the article. It’s fantastic. Goes on to talk about Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell and Bush’s Cabinet and the Supreme Court as it goes into the future. Such good stuff.

Good night, folks. Here’s to a long slog through election season.