Tom McMahon

One Nice Thing About Living In Berkeley Is That You Can Be Sure That God Agrees With Whatever You’re Thinking

Excerpts from a trip report on four days spent in the East Bay by Philip Greenspun:

For roughly 60 years, Berkeley has offered more services to its residents than virtually any other city in the U.S. The schools are expensively funded. Welfare programs have been lavish. People can borrow a full set of tools from the public library. There is a non-profit organization on every block. Yet Berkeley has a poverty rate of 21 percent, higher than the state average of 12 percent (source). The school system tracks student performance by race and ethnicity so that they can reveal to local employers that “white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse” (source). Anywhere else in the country one would be considered a vicious racist for claiming that black and Latino high school students are intellectually inferior to white and Asian students, but in Berkeley broadcasting this information marks one as a concerned liberal. Sixty years of failure had not daunted any of the East Bayers with whom I spoke; all were in favor of even bigger and more expensive government. ...

I had breakfast with two white males. One founded a mobile phone tech company and mentioned that they are soon to go public. He is already pretty rich but stands to make tens of millions of dollars in the IPO. Our entrepreneur grew up in the U.S., attended the best private schools, and then went on to the most elite universities. His family happens to come from Argentina. I asked the other white male at the table, a wage slave for a big company, how he would feel if his own daughter were rejected from college in favor of the rich entrepreneur’s kid, due to that child’s Hispanic status. This turned out not to be a tough question. Of course he wanted his daughter to go to the most prestigious school, but Affirmative Action was important and his own daughter would surely get into at least some college somewhere. So on balance he thought it would be fair for his daughter to be rejected. ...

At a CVS in Oakland, we bought sundries from a 70-year-old working as a cashier. I asked my local companion if he thought it was moral for the government to tax this poor old working person and hand the money over to a comfortable 50-year-old retired former public employee, which is essentially how California is now set up. He had not thought about the question.

Eco-Warrior Richard Branson's Private Jet

Eco-Warrior Richard Branson's Private Jet

From Grant Martin:

Ever wonder what it's like to be rich and famous and have your own private jet? Well, it looks a lot like this. Passing through the Mojave Desert airport last week, Gadling spotted Richard Branson's Falcon 900EX, the French made, long range, ultra luxe corporate jet.

Sporting a blown up decal of Branson's iris on the tail fin (the same, minus additional artistic work, done for Virgin Galactic), this jet has a maximum cruising altitude of 36,000 feet, speed of mach 0.87 (662 mph) and in its factory configuration can seat up to fourteen passengers. One can only imagine what sort of extravagances the Branson family has upgraded the aircraft with though. The range and speed of the aircraft make it perfect for important jetsetting moguls like Branson, who frequently needs to commute from his home United Kingdom to his island in the Caribbean to business in Southern California quickly.

And some insight into Branson's Bogus Eco-Drive:

The Virgin boss’s much trumpeted pledge of €1.9bn to tackle global warming is nothing but smoke and mirrors.

In September 2006, Virgin boss Richard Branson pledged €1.9 billion towards tackling global warming. For the next ten years, he announced, the profits from his aviation and rail businesses would go towards combating the biggest, most complex problem that mankind has ever faced.

The promise earned Branson headlines around the world. Media outlets carried photos of him, Bill Clinton and Al Gore at a Clinton Global Initiative press conference in New York. Adults, Branson solemnly told the assembled media, had a duty to pass a ‘‘pristine’’ planet on to the next generation. Politicians and campaigners were effusive in their praise for his imagination and generosity.

However, a look at the not-very-small print revealed that this amazing gesture would not be a matter of taking the profits from Branson’s polluting industries and using them to protect vast tracts of the Amazon.

In fact, the money would go to a new division of the Virgin conglomerate, called Virgin Fuel. Branson was simply gearing himself up to make more money. But as always, the PR spin was that he’d be doing the rest of us a favour in the process.

2004 United States Mint Lewis and Clark Coin and Pouch Sets Containing Pouches From the Shawnee Nation United Remnant Band of Ohio

From the official United States Mint website:

It has come to the attention of the United States Mint that the Shawnee Nation United Remnant Band of Ohio, one of the organizations whose artisans produced pouches for the 2004 United States Mint Lewis and Clark Coin and Pouch Set, is not officially recognized as an Indian tribe by state or Federal authorities. Accordingly, we are informing members of the public who own a set containing a pouch produced by the Shawnee Nation United Remnant Band of Ohio that the pouch is not an authentic American "Indian" arts and crafts product.

Pursuant to the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-644), a product is an authentic American Indian creation only if crafted by a member of a federally or state recognized Indian tribe, or an individual certified as an Indian artisan by an Indian tribe. (See http://www.doi.gov/iacb/ for more information on the Indian Arts and Crafts Act). Because the pouches created by artisans from the Shawnee Nation United Remnant Band of Ohio do not meet these criteria, they do not qualify to be marketed as authentic American “Indian” merchandise.

To make a long story short, you can get your money back if you want.

The Fringe Of The Democratic Party

From Mark Belling:

Local blogger and fellow Freeman columnist James Wigderson, troublemaker that he is, happened upon the Web site of the Waukesha County Democratic Party last week. Right there on the home page of the official party site was a notice of a party meeting to be held June 7 at Schwefel’s. One of the topics to be discussed was the evidence that the U.S. government, not Osama bin Laden, brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center on 9-11. The notice explained that a movie would be showing that proved the explosion of the towers was a "controlled detonation," and darkly informed that President Bush’s own brother was in charge.

The paranoid left has been prattling about this for the last seven years. A couple of university professors roam the country claiming they have proof Bush killed all those people on Sept. 11. The nine people remaining who still listen to Air America are really into this stuff. But this was an official meeting of Waukesha County Democrats!

It gets better. Not only was the meeting on the home page of the Waukesha County party, it was linked on the official Web site of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Republicans have their own lunatic fringe - consisting of people with Ron Paul bumper stickers and mumbling "Bilderberg" ominously. But it appears as though the Democrats who are sane are the fringe and the majority of the party is the lunatics.

Since you don't see any of the local left-wing blogger disavowing this sort of lunacy, you've got to assume that they're OK with it.

Homosexuality, Freedom: Pick One

Where Antidiscrimination Laws Take You by Clayton Cramer:

I mentioned a while back that a photographer who refused an assignment to photograph a same-sex civil commitment ceremony was being sued before the New Mexico Human Rights Commission for discriminating against homosexuals. The photographer has now been ordered to pay costs of $6637.94. Professor Volokh discusses the issues involved, and predictably, lawyers and law students are piling on, most of them defending why this is a good thing.

Homosexuality, freedom: pick one.

This is why State Senator Corder's bill prohibiting employment discrimination based on sexual orientation is so dangerous--it creates all sorts of opportunities like this.

Where's Willy?: The Redesigned Logo of the Nordic Battlegroup

Where's Willy?: The Redesigned Logo of the Nordic Battlegroup

Redesigned because a group of female Swedish soldiers filed a sex discrimination complaint with the European Court of Justice.

Wife Beater's License

Wife Beater's License

From Doug Pappas' Roadsidephotos:

From the 1940s through the 1960s, every tourist trap had a rack of postcards. Every postcard rack displayed views of the local attractions and a selection of comic cards. Some of those comic cards seem to have come from another world.

In the world of comic postcards, all women start as man-crazy airheads, then become either stern, overweight battle-axe wives or desperate "old maids." Southerners are hillbillies with outhouses and moonshine stills; after their annual bath, they mate with their kinfolk. African-Americans are shuffling, bug-eyed, thick-lipped caricatures. Someone could write a dissertation, or at least a master's thesis, about the audience to which these cards were marketed.

But not me. I'll just present a sample of the way women, Southerners and blacks were depicted in comic postcards. (I know many of these images are offensive. That's why they're here.) I've also assembled a few military postcards from World War II, and some British comic postcards with a different sensibility. Enjoy!

The Truth About High Point Church and the Funeral of the Gay Gulf War Veteran

Excerpts from Paul Edwards:

The mainstream media wants you to believe that a conservative evangelical church deep in the Bible belt has refused to bury a Gulf War veteran because he was gay. Some in the Christian media want you to believe that the church hasn’t shown the love of Jesus to a dead man’s family. Neither is anywhere near the truth.

Here are the facts. High Point Church, a non-denominational church in Arlington, Texas, had been praying for Cecil Sinclair after Cecil’s brother, Lee (the only member of the Sinclair family who was a member of the church) requested prayer for his brother who had been awaiting a heart transplant. When Cecil Sinclair’s health became critical last week, the family called a staff member from the church to be with them at the hospital. In the hospital, in the moments immediately following Mr. Sinclair’s death, the family asked the staff member if the church would be open to holding a memorial service for their loved one. The staff member assured them the church would be available to help the family in any way appropriate, a response any pastor would give in that situation.

Cecil Sinclair was not a member of High Point Church, yet this church selflessly and sacrificially ministered to his family in the wake of his death, preparing and delivering food for the family and one hundred relatives and friends, along with many other expressions of kindness. The church offered to produce a video retrospective of Mr. Sinclair’s life for use during the memorial service. When the family provided the pictures to the church it was then that the church learned of their intention to make the memorial service a celebration of Cecil Sinclair’s gay lifestyle. One of the photos provided by the family “showed a man with his hand touching another man’s genitalia,” along with other inappropriate photos, according to a statement on the High Point Church website.

The family also requested that “an associate of an openly homosexual choir” officiate at the service and that the homosexual choir sing during the service. “It became clear to the church staff that the family was requesting an openly homosexual service at High Point Church - which is not our policy to allow,” the statement on the church’s website said. After initially agreeing to host the memorial service, the church informed the family it could not do so based on the direction they were taking service. The church then secured - and paid for - another location for the memorial service, which the family declined. The church also produced the memorial video without the inappropriate photos.

High Point Church did not refuse to host the funeral of a gay man, as is being widely reported in the mainstream media. The church refused on biblical principle to allow a celebration of the homosexual lifestyle in its sanctuary, a decision most theologically sound churches would make under similar circumstances. ...

The church did not refuse to host the memorial service because Cecil Sinclair was gay. They refused to host the memorial service because the family was turning it into a celebration of the man’s sin - his homosexual lifestyle. Churches and ministers bury sinners every day. But we don’t highlight their sin on the big screen while we are doing it. We exalt Christ. We proclaim the gospel. And we celebrate the triumph of the cross over sin and death, none of which the family had in mind for Cecil Sinclair’s memorial service.

Multicultural Futures: Cultural Diversity and the Desire of Belonging

Multicultural Futures: Cultural Diversity and the Desire of Belonging

Excerpts from the Keynote address presented to the Austrian Association for American Studies annual conference, Salzburg, November 2004, by Deborah L. Madsen, University of Geneva:

The Miss Universe beauty pageant, screed by NBC in June this year, featured a special award for “the delegate who displayed her country's pride and spirit best in costume.” Miss USA, Shandi Finnessey, appeared wearing a body-length war-bonnet style costume. She also wore straps studded with circular metal medallions – and very little else.

The imitation headdress was perceived as an insult by Native American tribal groups; Tex Hall, the President of the National Congress of American Indians, condemned the costume and demanded an apology of NBC and Donald Trump who owns the pageant. Hall was particularly offended that a woman should be seen wearing a war-bonnet which is reserved only for men.

The controversy focuses then upon the question of who has the right to wear “authentic” costumes. A photograph of the Women's War Bonnet Society quickly circulated to contradict Tex Hall's claim that this headdress is only for men though the counter-claim was also quickly made that these women photographed here belong to tribes that traditionally use the war-bonnet. To the objection that Miss Oklahoma 1940, Martyne Woods, wore a war-bonnet as part of her traditional costume came the response that she belonged to the eastern woodland Choctaw tribe and so is also “inauthentic.” The struggle to identify “authentic” people who might qualify to wear this “authentic” costume places in question just what it is that the costume is doing in this representation of identity. What is being “recognized” here? In one of the official photographs of Miss USA, it is significant that the image of her disembodied face appears projected against the US flag. She is shown in three-quarter profile, with her blonde hair cascading down to her shoulders. Here she is the all-American girl, identified by her bodily characteristics with the “Political” nation. But she is also is the same woman who wears faux Native American regalia. She is performing a kind of cultural authenticity that relates to the “Political” nation rather than to her bodily ethnic identification. She chooses Native America in the way that Gish Jen's Mona chooses Judaism – and by choosing they demonstrate their “Americanness.”

This pluralism, which is more a kind of performativity, can be seen also in the photograph of Cher, which features on the cover of her 1973 album Half-Breed. I use the word “performative” because the knowing choice of ethnic identification (as opposed to the unearthing of some core of personal identity), the voluntary act of adhesion, requires action – the performance of that identification.

Cher's performance differs from Miss USA's in that she is identifying with her “Americanness” in relation to a negative life-script: “ We weren’t accepted and I felt ashamed / Nineteen I left them, tell me who’s to blame / My life since then has been from man to man / But I can’t run away from what I am.” Now, we can simply see Cher’s Native costuming as a cynical marketing strategy but even in such terms it is curious to find this identification with a negative life-script, with an image that represents absence: the inability to belong or to discover one's “Americanness.” This makes the example interesting to me. It seems to point to the fact that not only the indigenous or ethnic American experiences hybrid subjectivity. Cher as Cherilyn and Cher as the anonymous Cherokee half-breed each alike represents the dynamic of belonging and not-belonging characteristic of American cultural identity.

Gives you a better appreciation for diversity and multiculturalism, eh?

WordWeb: Freeware, Except For SUV Owners

WordWeb: Freeware, Except For SUV Owners

It's a nice piece of software nonetheless.