Why have culture wars and identity politics been such a theme in this election?
Culture wars have always been a part of American politics, but it feels more blatant in this election. The McCain/Palin speeches seem devoted to championing the ideals of small town America – not quite sure what those values exactly are, but that’s neither here nor there — and bashing cities, intellectuals, and elites. There was almost no discussion of public policy whatsoever.
Contrast the McCain/Palin speeches with Reagan’s acceptance speech in 1980. Reagan’s speech has actual policy proposals in it.
So, back to my question. Why have culture wars and identity politics been such a theme in this election? Anyone? Anyone?
On this topic, please read/watch Megan McArdle, Dan Drezner, …(more to come)
Apt. 11d 
Because I think that’s most of their appeal- “I’m like you, identify with me.” It’s easy for the politicians, and easier for people to digest.
They don’t talk about policy because it doesn’t work in sound bites, and I think there are all sorts of people who think policy is distressing. It’s complicated. They want an easy fix or they don’t want to think about it. Better to think about how you’d like to have a beer or latte with a candidate.
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” She is familiar to me in a way that Hillary Clinton has never been. I don’t understand HRC after all these years, but I get SP. ”
See, part of what has me so upset about Sarah Palin, was that I was trying to get her, too (and, I’ve never really gotten Hillary, who comes from a different generation, with different choices).
I was defending Palin here. I could identify with her as a working mother, as someone who has been married to her husband exactly as long as I have (her wedding date was the day after mine, though I’m a bit younger than her — yes, I’ve also been married for 20 years), and as “someone who loves her children fiercely.” I was willing see past her being a gun-toting, beauty contestant, who went to six different colleges to values we might share.
but then, to quote Michael Kinsley, she stood up on national television, and said
“. . . she is a better American than you because she comes from a small town, and a superior human being because she isn’t a journalist and has never lived in Washington and likes to watch her kids play hockey.”
And, Palin aligned herself with those who seek to divide us, rather than unite us (now, of course, I understand that this is who she was all along). The twitter quote, after her speach that’s being passed around is “Thanks Sarah, I forgot for a moment that in America we are all supposed to hate each other.”
Yes, we have fundamental disagreements (I am just as passionately pro-choice as anyone can be anti-abortion). But, community building, is about finding where we can agree and trying to build from there. Are we, Americans, a community? Or is it only Wasilla, AK, with the rest of us standing on the outside looking in? The republican party has a lot of people thinking the latter (and the convention reinforced the theme).
Obama’s campaign is built around the theme of finding the shared values in spite of the differences that also exists. It has to be, because the half-kenyan, half kansan, hawaiian raised, harvard educated lawyers are a really really small constituency.
Yes, if inclusion is one side of the war, Obama is fighting it too, but I don’t see equivalence between inclusion and exclusion.
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Lisa V is just showing her elitist side. No lattes with these candidates! Just a cuppa coffee.
Unfortunately, the beer or coffee (or lunch) test is what matters to a good number of voters. The country is sufficiently closely split that the GOP believes that syphoning off those voters may make a difference.
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“Yes, if inclusion is one side of the war, Obama is fighting it too, but I don’t see equivalence between inclusion and exclusion.”
Seriously. If that is the case, maybe the Democrats should compromise by being slightly less all-embracingly wonderful.
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“Seriously. If that is the case, maybe the Democrats should compromise by being slightly less all-embracingly wonderful. ”
no, we just can’t. we’re just that good and honorable. we even tried really really hard to love Sarah Palin.
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Is it simply Rovian, fear-mongering, 50 + 1 politics. It has worked before, most notably getting W elected in 2000 and 2004, and it can work again. Anyone who disagrees with “real American values” is an elitist, arugula-eating, effete, weakling etc.. It’s so obvious and so repetitive and, ultimately, so depressing because it may well work. The uplift that Obama brings must be beaten down by Republican sleaze, and vacuous culture wars get that job done….
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Culture war has been a huge theme for the Republicans (I have seen much less than usual from the Democrats) because it’s all they have. On the policy side, they have nothing to offer; they’re the “Well, this time take 10 aspirins aand STOP CALLING ME” party.
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I agree with Sam — on what else can McCain run? The war has disappeared from the news, and he won’t win independents by reminding them that he’s in favor of more of it. The economic policies of the past 8 years have not left people feeling better off (he certainly doesn’t want to be the Bush surrogate in an “it’s the economy, stupid” campaign). Vocal elements in the evangelical movement are suggesting that poverty and international aid are more important to them than gay marriage and abortion (and in any case, most of the states that will pass anti-gay amendments, have already done so).
Labeling Democrats with the east-coast elitist tag is not only all that McCain has left, it’s also a proven winner. Choosing Palin was his announcement that it’s on this issue that he wants to run.
I’m certain that the Republican leadership wouldn’t endorse this strategy without extensive polling. Now we see whether this will be enough to carry McCain over the top.
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Why is it so effective?
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From Wikipedia: “The culture war (or culture wars) in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting values.”
Laura, would you say that conservatives and liberals (or rural/cosmopolitan, east coast/western) Americans share the same values but merely disagree about the right way to put them into practice?
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What about this take on generational differences at the Volokh Conspiracy? Although I’m technically a Boomer (born 1961), I identify more with GenX.
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The Civil War was a cultural war? I’m confused.
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Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have thrown that it in without an explanation. Of course, the Civil War was more than a culture war, but you can find many of the themes in the modern culture wars in the Lincoln/Douglas debates. Self-determination and state rights are the grandparents of the modern culture wars.
But I’m not sure that this election’s culture wars are about conflicting values, Mrs. Ewer. Or even something that I can feel sympathy towards like the rights of localities. There’s a huge anti-intellectual theme going through this election that’s really really bothering me.
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In my opinion, the anti-intellectualism is driven very largely by anti-technocracy.
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Don’t you think it’s fear, plain and simple? People are afraid, they long for a simpler time (or at least a time when they knew of an effective response to the problems they face).
At least in my house when everyone’s stressed out we have a tendency to fight more about small things. God save us if the catbox doesn’t get cleaned when we’re also getting slammed at work; it does not end well. You don’t want to say, I’m not really upset about the catbox, I’m upset about work. Because then you end up closer to that super-scary conversation where someone says, one of us needs to quit our job and we might have to sell the house if that happens. Some days it’s just easier to fight about the catbox.
Truly, I wish I could expect more of the future president. The president of all people should be able to say, listen, we need to talk about the real issue. I am so desperately wishing for some real leadership!
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That “anti-intellectual theme” is also really bothering me. Why would being less than knowledgeable be something people want to identify with?
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When I was a hairdresser, I had a close friend who used to say he had never met anyone with a college education he trusted or liked.
He came from a very small town, his people were miners and horse trainers.
I think people like him thought that intellectuals looked down on him, and so he viewed them with suspicion. I think educated people do view people of lower classes paternally. I think equality and protection can be viewed as “I know what’s best.” It’s the difference between “I’ll fight for you or with you” versus “You don’t know what to fight for, so I’ll tell you.”
I’m not elite. I graduated from a state university after many years. My husband’s lay off last year makes it so we would qualify for free school lunch.
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Now they have an ad up that says Obama wants to talk sex with your kids before they can learn how to read (it’s on TPM). It is simply a way of pasting the word “sex” over the picture of the black man. Get it? This is what it has come to, and this is what it will be until November. The worst kinds of Republican assaults and lies. Why does it work? Because it conjures up primal fears of black men on the prowl. McCain is now 20 points up in N. Carolina.
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I’ve also been thinking about what you are asking: why the identity politics stuff is so intense right now, and why it “works”. I don’t feel like I have any good insight – mainly, it just seems like this is a transitional time for the good old “USA!”, what with energy reality dawning, the continuing military engagements during which we have seemed less potent than we might have liked (and that seem to have brought us NOTHING), and other world actors rising as we flail. Feelings of insecurity and failure usually put people in a mood to blame and lash out, and so maybe we just get more focused on specifying who among us deserves the blame.
I also keep thinking about other examples of angry us-and-them face-offs, and I’m thinking that there seem to be different kinds. To take a tired example: at-home moms vs. working moms – on the one hand, even though I have worked full-time since my kid was a few months old, I usually don’t really feel like I am in any way in opposition to those who have stayed home. But I *can* get really worked up & think pretty nasty thoughts about them – IF I am confronted with claims that I’m an abuser and they’re saints (or worse, that their kids are thriving and happy and mine must be suffering and sad).
However, I am always able to step back, cool off, and return to my general view: that there is some good stuff (not just material) that my kid gets only because of my work, and that she doesn’t get some other good stuff that the at-home mom provides, and that overall she is more than ok, as are the kids of the at-home moms that I know.
But other cases are not like this. Think about segregation clashes, and Leonard Skynard (sp?) singing: “I hope Neil Young will remember, Southern man don’t need him around, anyhow.” Southern man was shouting out to rally his brethren in opposition to Young – but in this case, southern man was just wrong, and his cause was nasty, and I think that the “identity clashes” were in large part due to his going ballistic in order not to see that.
Whatever… as you can see, my thoughts are all over the place (and my post too long, sorry). I like reading what you all are saying about this.
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my half-baked ideas when I really should be prepping for tomorrow’s class…
There’s a whole lot of people who are signing onto the McCain/Palin message not because of any strong policy conviction. Sure, there are a lot of Republicans who feel strongly about abortion rights and a strong military and that’s fine. But there are those who feel that that they have been left behind by the new economy. The steel mills are closed and their pensions have been lost. Their boss is half their age and knows more about computers than they do. They don’t think that Jon Stewart is funny. They feel that the lessons that have guided their lives – hard work, following rules – don’t work any more. Their homes have lost value and are worth a quarter of the price of similar homes in other parts of the country. They feel that others are laughing at them for their silly religion and their community colleges. The chasm between the elites and others have grown too wide. There might be an element of racism in there as Sam and bj say, but I’m not getting that. I think it’s more of a socio-economic/generational/regional thing. Certain parts of the country are struggling more than others. Those who aren’t fluent on the computer and the inside of jokes of the internet are struggling. Those who don’t have the SAT scores to go to a good college are struggling. Those who are too busy aren’t going to the gym to look beautiful. They turn on the Food Network and find out that people are laughing at their food. They turn on MTV and see people laughing at fat people and disregarding their standards of behavior.
I think that Democrats should bring those people on board. Compassionate liberalism. Democrats have to do that not by lecturing them on why their policies are better for them and telling them that they’re stupid for not knowing that. Frum might have said that Republicans were losing out to the Democrats, because of the increasing economic divide. That might be true in DC, where most of the poor are black. But the white poor and working-class and even big swatches of the middle class are going Republican, because of the increasing economic/social class divide.
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Laura, I’ve been sitting here looking at your comment for 10 minutes. You are definitely on to something. But really, what is there to do? Look, for example, at working class kids who go to college. They often find themselves become increasingly distant from their families. Their parents wanted them to have a better life, but they didn’t realize what would happen.
I like teaching “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker because it illustrates this divide so well. Walker so obviously sides with the mother and Maggie, the anti-intellectualism, but I like to point out to my students how ironic that is given that Walker was more like the Dee character herself. And the Dee character is a lot like my students, going off to college while their working class/lower middle class parents work their asses off to pay for it. They get huffy about Dee’s intentions for the quilts, but I ask them how many of them have family heirlooms on display.
It goes back to what I said to MH, that I don’t know how to deal with people who are wrong (factually) but have no interest in the truth. Now you’re telling me it’s a cultural war thing, with people standing by the lies and misinformation because they don’t like being told they’re wrong because it makes them feel stupid.
What do you do with that? I work on it in my classroom bit by bit by teaching info literacy and debate whenever possible. But that’s only 50 students a semester. Instead, I am a big mass of outrage and I occasionally burst out with “YOU FUCKING IDIOTS!” Not helpful, but I’m only human.
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“There might be an element of racism in there as Sam and bj say, but I’m not getting that.”
I actually didn’t say racism, which I regard as being more pernicious than bias, in which race plays a part. There might be real racism (the sex ed ad is pretty disgusting), but white working class women thinking that Palin reminds them of themselves (or their aunts or mothers or daughters) is not what I call racism, though race plays a role in it. We’re not human if people who look like our mothers don’t remind us of our mothers.
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My understanding is the sex ed ad is totally misplaying a program that was to teach children about how to avoid sexual predators.
The McCain camp is low to twist it into something else.
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Oh man, I just reread my comment. You guys know I don’t yell You Fucking Idiots at my students, right? I was talking about while I’m online. Not that that’s much better, but at least it’s not a violation of my profession.
I swear, I had to get up and unlock the door for my husband in the middle of writing that comment.
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Before I say why I think the culture wars might have resonance, I recognize the implicit fallacy in thinking I can understand how other people, very different from me, think. To quote Kinsley again “Democrats are cute when they’re being pragmatic. They furrow their brows and try to think like Republicans. Or as they imagine Republicans must think.” I can’t pretend not to be an elite by pretty much any standards one can come up with (except the one that recognizes where I came from less than a generation ago — America truly an amazing land of opportunity).
I that the wars have resonance because it’s the holding on to a way of life that depends on an imagined homogeneity that has never actually existed in America, but that people, in certain communities (christian/white/rural/maried/straight) thought (or wished) did.
To be blunt, I believe in a free society, tolerance (acceptance? permissiveness?) of other people’s behavior wins out over intolerance/restrictions, in the long run. For example, when the American Republican/conservative VP is pictured in US Today with his sixth grandson: the son of his gay daughter and her long time partner, the train on a family is “one man & one woman, married to each other & their children forever” has simply left the building. It’s not coming back. When the unwed, pregnant, teen of the VP candidate is featured on stage with the father of her child, at the Republican convention, the days of hiding your pregnant teen at the farm and then pressuring them to give their baby up for adoption are over (and mind you, anyone who doesn’t think that might have an impact on teen sexual activity, just as much as Jamie Lynn Spears’s pregnancy is deluding themselves). There’s really no going back.
As long as our society remains free (not, mind you, an easy task) our world will become more heterogeneous in thought, and personality, and behavior. There are people who do not want this, who think that authoritative rules can bind (or at least hide) behavior, as it could in a perceived more homogenous past. Frankly, I think it’s the same battle that fundamentalist Islam is fighting, with somewhat greater success, because the societies in which they are strongest are less free.
Why does it work? because it was easier to keep your child from being gay or having sex when such behavior would result in banishment from society. But the very actions of families show that’s not the consequence of breaking the rule any more. Authority itself isn’t going to keep people from breaking the rule. So, what’s a liberal’s reaction. We hope to get people to behave according to our values by explaining, and giving them choices, and mitigating the most significant negative outcomes. We change our rules.
This is the direction society is going, and there are people who don’t want it to go there, and they’re using their vestige of power, to vote, in a democracy to try to slow the rushing train.
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“Laura, would you say that conservatives and liberals (or rural/cosmopolitan, east coast/western) Americans share the same values but merely disagree about the right way to put them into practice?”
I don’t think so, and I think that when we liberals fall into that trap: “if everyone would just listen to each other, we would all agree.” we’re deluding ourselves. There are fundamental differences in values among different people with different beliefs.
But, the nature of a heterogeneous society is that we need to figure out ways of working with each other anyway, even when we disagree. Our society is not going to become homogeneous. We are not going to agree on everything, but nevertheless we need to find ways to live with one another and work together. What that requires is finding shared values where we can.
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Yeah, what about the anger/’derangement’ of people like me (degrees, nice academic job, decent house) and Wendy? My material circumstances are fine and yet this past week whenever I heard or read about McCain or Giuliani or Palin or their partisans talking I felt like I was going to lose it. I want them exposed, denied and GONE, now. So if we explain the Palinphilia with the fact that lots of people feel left out and laughed at, how do we explain the Palinphobes? (is it just those that are blindly fighting to maintain their privilege?)
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“As long as our society remains free (not, mind you, an easy task) our world will become more heterogeneous in thought, and personality, and behavior.”
If we are moving toward a high-entropy society, it seems likely that it will become harder and harder to harness individual members of society and to accomplish common goals. There will be fewer shared values, and members of society will feel less connected to and less responsible for others. On the bright side, your fellow citizens won’t judge you. On the other hand, they also won’t help you much.
This is a pretty dystopian vision, and I suspect it would be very unpleasant for women and children. As somebody once said, freedom’s just a word for nothing left to lose.
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“So if we explain the Palinphilia with the fact that lots of people feel left out and laughed at, how do we explain the Palinphobes? (is it just those that are blindly fighting to maintain their privilege?)”
That’s the tack that Crispin Sartwell takes over at Eye of the Storm. (The lack of capitalization is vile, but he’s an anarchist, apparently.)
“you’ve got to understand that “class” is not income-level. class is a semiotic system. it’s affect, diction, alma mater, what you drink. it’s how your house is decorated, no matter how big it is. it’s hair style, musical preferences. those are the ways that sarah palin is wrong and barack obama is right, even though they both emerged from “humble beginnings.” she just signs wrong, and what the hostility really shows is a very familiar liberal death-knell: we are supposedly in this to help people like you. but we despise people like you, from your head to your toes, coiffure to pedicure. we will help you if you put us where we ought to be: in charge of your life. but the idea that you could have power over us is not only scary and strange, it’s some kind of cosmic misapprehension. it’s on its face absurd and incomprehensible. this, boys and girls, is how you keep losing elections, and it’s the way you’ll chuck this one. if you had killed her with kindness, perhaps with just a hint of condescension, you could have won.”
http://eyeofthestorm.blogs.com/eye_of_the_storm/2008/09/youve-got-to-un.html
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I actually don’t really know whether or not liberals are all that condescending. I just think that there are insecurities out there and real economic hardship and this is a sore point for many people. There are definitely people who are being left behind in the new economy. And I think that Republican strategists know this and are hammering away at these themes.
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“If we are moving toward a high-entropy society, it seems likely that it will become harder and harder to harness individual members of society and to accomplish common goals. ”
See, I see that this is the vision that the other side of the culture wars is worried about, and why you think you’re fighting it. But, we are moving towards it, without a doubt. An unwed pregnant teen on the convention stage is proof of that, that our even the true believers “judge others” as a means of inducing a desired behavior has already been destroyed.
So, what we need is a way to work together on what values we share, and a way to induce individuals to work for the common good without the ease of authoritarian rules (and religion, which we will not share). Either we figure that out — a way to work together for the common good in spite of being very different from one another, or the dystopian vision will come to be. It won’t be halted by trying to return to an imagined past America, which never really existed anyway.
You’re basically stating that a heterogeneous society is inevitably a dystopian one, where we cannot connect with others. That’s exactly what Obama has spent his life trying to disprove. He grew up a heterogeneous child in a heterogeneous world, but made it his business to figure out how to get people to work together anyway.
Maybe the people who think that we must all be the same, believe the same in order to have a functional society will manage to hang on for a little bit, but, eventually, they’ll fail, absent the advent of repressive government.
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Laura — your comments seem a bit of extension of SamChevre’s, that their an antagonistic feeling against what he calls the technocracy (I’m not exactly sure what this is, but I think it’s something like the chattering classes). That people who are in economic distress feel like there’s something kind of wrong with society and are troubled by those who tell them that their wrong, that there isn’t anything wrong with society, and that it wasn’t better before.
But, I still don’t see how that brings on the culture wars. As Harry B has said in other threads, there’s no reason to believe that liberals are likely to behave on any of the values (abortion, marriage, adultry, . . .) any differently than the conservatives. So, why do they believe that we have the wrong values?
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BJ, if you are going to argue that we can all be happy in heterogeneous Obama-led society maybe you should put a paragraph of filler in between that and statements like “An unwed pregnant teen on the convention stage is proof of that, that our even the true believers “judge others” as a means of inducing a desired behavior has already been destroyed”.
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The thought of life in a happy Obama-led paradise gives me the urge to litter, stop recycling, replace my compact fluorescent bulbs with incandescent, adjust the AC to 72 degrees Fahrenheit, and buy an SUV. Unfortunately, I can’t afford the last three items.
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You have to admit that this Republican strategy is genius. If you criticize their ideas, then they call you elitist. For example, I think that the blogger that Amy P quoted above sounds like a complete idiot lacking any originality and political awareness. That entire passage has been regurgitated so many times that it has been molded in plastic. But if I criticize it for stupidity and predictability, then they’ll just counter charge that I’m a snob with a PhD. It’s a genius strategy.
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laura,
From what little I know, the blogger I quoted is a bit of an oddball. He’s apparently a philosophy professor at Dickinson College, Richard Rorty was his thesis supervisor, and says he’s an anarchist and that he’s probably voting for Obama.
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“The thought of life in a happy Obama-led paradise gives me the urge to litter, stop recycling, replace my compact fluorescent bulbs with incandescent, adjust the AC to 72 degrees Fahrenheit, and buy an SUV. Unfortunately, I can’t afford the last three items.”
That, my friends, is personal responsibility we can believe in.
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Richard Rorty? I call “elitist” on Amy.
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Never mind. I had Rorty confused with Rawls.
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“Richard Rorty? I call ‘elitist’ on Amy.”
No, no, MH, it’s ok if you’re a Republican. That’s rule #1. Rule #2 is, when in doubt, see rule #1.
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Maybe liberals are not actually condescending, they just ACT in a condescending manner. That’s my observation both personally and looking at typical politics. As a native Texan now living in NY, I can relate to many of the comments over at McArdle’s blog.
Both sides have some members who will vote for those candidates with whom they identify, without thoughtful consideration of the issues. Obama/black vote, anyone? Yet, the charge is that the Republicans are the prime offenders. That feels like condescension to me.
Culture/values drive many public policies, don’t they? Therefore, it would seem to be a useful indicator in the voting booth. Especially for all those poor yahoos who don’t have hours to devote to online reading.
For me, and maybe for many like me, much of it revolves around government control by the “experts”. Yes, it’s an old and unoriginal issue, but it resonates.
On another thread, there was a discussion about how librarians should ignore community input on which books will be in the library and how educators should have sole authority to decide curriculum. Well, okay, I know there are some fundamental values that underlie that view. However, it sounds like government experts controlling my life.
Maybe I don’t want my kids to be instructed about safe anal sex in 6th grade. Maybe I don’t want numerically illiterate educrats deciding what math curriculum my kids will be taught in school. And maybe I don’t want an Obama administration to decide that my son’s Boy Scouts volunteer hours will not qualify under his campaign’s proposed government-mandated high school volunteer program.
Aren’t these some of the battles in the culture wars?
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My knowledge of modern philosophy is pretty weak and getting weaker as time goes on. I blame the Germans. I’d rather do my taxes without a computer than read Habermas again.
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Doug and MH,
Guilty as charged. This weekend my husband and I are hosting some graduate students and showing Kieslowski’s Blue from his Three Colors trilogy. I’m hoping to show a movie every month if we can get an audience. I’d also like to show Breach, Devil’s Playground, Jonestown: Life and Death of the People’s Temple, Therese (the French one), Leila, The Cardinal (the Polish movie), The Queen, The Dinner Game, Downfall, and maybe Barbarian Invasions. We did a weekly movie for undergraduates when we lived in residence and did art and culture programming, but philosophy graduate students are different. We showed The Last Supper and Babette’s Feast last year, but I’d like to do more.
I think you have to draw a distinction between elite lifestyle and an intellectual elite since they don’t always go together. Upthread, people were talking about anti-intellectualism vis a vis Obama. I found that puzzling, because I’ve never thought of Obama as particularly bright or cultured, but I believe what’s happening is conflation of elite lifestyle and elite intellectual identity.
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MH, you are so very right about that. Allgemeine Schuldentraeger.
The comments about librarians were about how it wasn’t such a good idea for partisan Mayors to have carte blanche to say what books go into the library. And for what it’s worth, librarians and booksellers are some of the toughest, unsung heroes in the fight to preserve privacy and free expression in the US. Look at the people who have fought the FBI and the so-called “national security letters,” and you’ll find librarians and booksellers prominently represented.
As for sixth-graders, Tex, maybe that’s why there’s a prominent opt-out clause built into the legislation on sex ed? Maybe you could get the guys in your party to stop lying about this sort of thing? Or maybe I should just go back and check rule #1, above.
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Amy: “I’ve never thought of Obama as particularly bright or cultured,”
Um, WTF? The man was president of Harvard’s Law Review, fer cryin out loud. That spot does not go to dummies. (And it’s not like he was exactly a legacy pick for admission either, unlike a certain son of an admiral and grandson of an admiral, or indeed the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania.)
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Doug, I picked up my German the usual way, from Col. Klink. Babel Fish translates “Allgemeine Schuldentraeger” as “General debt carriers”, which makes me think I’m missing something idiomatic.
As for the culture wars, “We’ll do it our way and you can pay for it then opt-out if you don’t like it” is hardly a neutral position.
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“The comments about librarians were about how it wasn’t such a good idea for partisan Mayors to have carte blanche to say what books go into the library.”
Doug,
Actually, bj and I were getting down to more basic philosophical issues, rather than talking about the specifics of the Palin case. She and a couple other people wanted book choices to be made by librarians, experts in their field. SamChevre and I objected that that’s just censorship by another name–it’s just that the decision-making process happens off-stage where the public can’t see what’s going on. I’m not comfortable with that kind of black box arrangement. Maybe librarians are some sort of super-race that never make mistakes and whose choices never need to be scrutinized, but that seems unlikely. Trust, but verify.
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Doug,
You’ve heard of the Peter Principle?
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I know nothink!
Babelfih isn’t bad, but like old-line Presbyterians switches “debts” for “tresspasses,” or, slightly less idiosyncratically, “guilt.” Thus “General bearers of guilt.”
Paying a share for things you’re not particularly enamored of is the way that any cooperative enterprise works, isn’t it?
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Amy: “You’ve heard of the Peter Principle?”
Rising to the level of one’s incompetence in the context of a highly competitive three-year closed environment?
No. Nice try.
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Just to be clear, I wasn’t blaming the Germans for anything worse than impenetrable prose.
As for cooperative enterprises, that is how they work. Except that if the enterprise is cooperative, everybody gets their say in what exactly the enterprise is.
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They get their say, but they don’t always get their way. I think the Rs have misunderstood this rather badly of late.
And having the Mayor ask the head librarian about how one goes about banning books sends a very clear signal. It’s like the governor and the governor’s staff leaning on a civil servant to fire a cop because of a family vendetta. Oh wait…
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Sorry about the German, btw, here’s a paragraph of what I’ve been translating in the background:
“Arbeitsteilung, Vernetzung und Optimierung sind nur einige Themen und Ansatzpunkte, mit denen Krankenhäuser einen entscheidenden Vorteil im kommenden Wettbewerb auf ihrer Seite haben – natürlich unter Beachtung der besonderen menschlichen und personellen Umstände der klinischen Praxis.”
Now it’s quittin time.
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Doug, is this like EU membership voting? Once a decision goes the right way (but not before), everybody is presumed to have already had their chance to get their opinion in and the question is settled for all time.
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Whatever the legalities, that Troopergate thing is going to backfire on whoever tries to use it against Palin. It’s true that the McCain campaign is currently overshooting with the whole “lipstick on a pig” thing, and that may mark the turning of the tide against McCain/Palin.
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“She and a couple other people wanted book choices to be made by librarians, experts in their field. SamChevre and I objected that that’s just censorship by another name–it’s just that the decision-making process happens off-stage where the public can’t see what’s going on.”
No, choice, editorial decision making, is not censorship, censorship is the government preventing choice.
See, this is part of the problem with equivalence. A librarian’s ethics would make them perfectly willing to consider suggestions of books, just not to consider suggestions of exclusions of books. It is the challenges that are unacceptable according to librarian ethics (which, incidentally, what the librarian in Alaska said, in clear terms to Mayor Palin, when asked). And, the challenges are unacceptable because they are used to limit access to minority viewpoints and to a free exchange of ideas.
Amy keeps thinking she’s going to come up with a book where I’ll say “OK, well that book, that book I agree should be excluded.” And, there isn’t one.
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Also, the local libraries make appropriate choices to discourage books like Joy of Sex or whatever (didn’t someone mention their kid reading about anal sex?) being easily viewed by children. If my kids wandered up two floors to the reference room, and reached the highest shelf in the back corner, they would likely see books that would be age inappropriate. At that point, I would admire their perseverance, and realize I needed to supervise them more.
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One of the scariest things about the current administration has been their willingness to consider themselves beyond the rules of law when convenience or “necessity” demanded it. That’s what I find most scary about the troopergate scandal. I understand Palin’s desire to protect her sister, but in a naive way, she appears to have ignored the rules, and thought that she could get her way by force of will. I don’t think it’s going to be an effective political argument for those of us who believe in the rule of law, but it is something that seriously worries me about Palin (that combined with the laughing reference to reading “terrorists their rights.”). It reinforces the one thing that I find most frightening about the Bush administration — the belief that their version of “right” trumps the law. (well, I’m not sure that’s the most frightening, ’cause the other one is the whole sale disregard of science).
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Are the culture wars about our kids? Do you think we’re telling you how to raise yours, because we think that certain things should be taught in schools, and that books should be available in libraries even though you don’t want your kids to read them?
(presumably, you don’t object to having books in libraries because you think someone will force you to read them, so I’m wondering exactly why someone would want a book to be unavailable).
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Come on, Amy P, the whole design of the electoral and funding system tends to ensure that people who are unlikely to do the job well are selected, and then thrown into an environment in which it doesn’t matter much because coherent policy design is all but impossible. Sure, I can think of 150 people who’d be better presidents than Obama (and many more who’d be better than McCain) but they are disqualified from running because they a) don’t have a compelling personal story or b) are ugly or c) don’t want their possibly entirely innocent private lives splashed all over the place or d)…well you get the idea. Certainly, the Peter Principle applies to the current incumbent.
Anyway, what’s this with elite lifestyles? Who thinks that John McCain does not have an elite lifestyle? (Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, had an affair with and then eventually married another silver spoon). How does this get to be an issue? I’d understand if Obama were running against Ralph Nader. But he’s not (well, not really).
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“However, it sounds like government experts controlling my life.”
Oh wait! I know the answer to that one!
Buy your own books.
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Btw, just as a quick aside because my students are doing some quick writing, I am finding that my biggest allies in the school residency battle I’m having are the local Republicans. Now political affiliation isn’t exactly intuitive here in SE Mass, and I myself have voted for a Republican in a local race, but it’s interesting how, without the constant drumbeat of “We must have a Republican in the White House” from Fox News, which doesn’t care about the issues of my Corrupt Small Town, people of different political parties are finding common ground over issues of civil liberties, due process, and the rule of law.
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harry b,
I was questioning the talk of anti-intellectualism. I just don’t think of Obama as a pointy-headed intellectual. He just doesn’t sound that bright.
bj,
You wrote:
“Are the culture wars about our kids? Do you think we’re telling you how to raise yours, because we think that certain things should be taught in schools…”
Pretty much. The library stuff is pretty theoretical to me. I’ve personally never seen a book in a library that I wouldn’t want to be there. But I want to defend the democratic process and democratic institutions, so I think a challenge should in principle be possible. School is a bigger issue, because kids are captive audiences for thousands of hours of instructional time. I believe you dislike the idea of homeschooling, but I would point out that homeschooling is often a direct consequence of parents feeling alienated by the values of their public schools and feeling powerless to change things. If we want fewer parents to homeschool or to leave for private schools, we need to create a more responsive and inclusive public school environment.
Speaking of which, I was just reading moss-place.stblogs.org today. The blog title is “Two Sleepy Mommies” and the bloggers write as Pansy and Peony (those are their hobbit names). Pansy is biracial and Roman Catholic and is the homeschooling mother of a large family. Two of her older children have finally started public school, and as she reports: “Day 3 of school-my daughter’s global studies teacher for no apparent reason, had the typical “well I’m Catholic, but of course I don’t agree with Church teachings, especially on birth control. ” Along with a discussion about how it is acceptable to be Catholic and not go to Church, because most Catholics do that.”
In a separate post, Pansy reflects on the incident: “Why is it then the first time a teacher starts his anti-Catholic rhetoric, I start to panic? I mean it is expected, it’s popular intellectual thinking, how the Church ruined the world throughout history. How the Church kills people with Humanae Vitae. How the Church is made up of misogynists because they preach against abortion. When I thought about it, I was ashamed of my own answer: the teacher was telling my daughter her parents are wrong. I want to say because “he is misleading kids” and other more altruistic answers, which I do feel, but the heart of the matter is I was insulted. This is my culture and he is dissing it. He probably has no idea. Just like all the Albany priests say they cannot preach about abortion, contraception, divorce from the pulpit, because you might insult someone, I have a feeling it didn’t occur to this teacher that there might be a child of a practicing Catholic family in his classroom who embrace Catholic teaching right down to the no-divorce/no-contraception teachings. So after my own personal revelation, I decided, (like hopefully sane people usually do) get over myself, to stay my course and move forward.”
So that’s how that type of stuff feels when you are on the receiving end.
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Regarding the sex ed, I really just want the government to stay out of it and to put precious tax dollars towards what I would consider more basic educational needs. I was not even thinking of the Illinois bill referred to in the “lying” McCain ad.
Here in NY I cannot opt out, and the anal sex instruction happened last year. Bear in mind that the infrequent sex ed tidbits I do hear about make me shudder to think of the discussions that happen every day in health classes around here.
The culture wars are about my kids, and about many other aspects of my life. It’s about the government taking my money for wasteful &/or harmful programs, and about taking things out of my control.
BTW, I’ve been none too happy with most Republicans, W included, over this issue during the last 8 years.
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“Buy your own books.”
But, that takes us back to one of Amy’s points from yesterday (about it being harder and harder to get people to work for common goals). The natural rebuttal to “buy your own books” is “no, you buy your own books.” Whoever loses this type of debate often enough is likely to support less government or to move to some exburb or in some other way seek to retain more autonomy.
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I wonder how many other parents have had sex ed experiences like mine, and are pleased to hear Palin declare she is opposed to “explicit” sex ed. And then what do they think when they hear the “lie” that Obama supported sex ed for kindergarteners?
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“Buy your own books.”
I generally do, since I like to underline for later and don’t want to subject library books to humid bathroom conditions. And then there’s the question of library fines–my husband’s got a whopper coming up, due to his leaving a translation of a classic Chinese novel in his cart at Walmart. In the good old days, I used to fill one or two IKEA bookcases every year. The library is great, especially for authors who I don’t want to enrich. We usually only check out public library books for the kids. The kids were recently very taken with one dealing with the reproductive life of coral, and were loudly calling for the “book with sperm.”
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Henry has a good post on all this:
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I wish I had time to participate in this discussion more thoroughly.
Note that “inclusion” sounds nicer than “exclusion”; it’s more–what do you say–inclusive. But for me, “Sam, you’re awesome! We want to include you on the football team*” would not have been at all desirable.
I think a lot of the “culture wars” consist of people who feel about being included mainstream society as it runs now pretty much like I would have felt about being included on the football team, trying to figure out either how to opt out, or how to get society to be something they ARE willing to be included in.
Also, Doug Muder’s Red Family, Blue Family(PDF) is still, I think, the best short description of the underlying dynamics.
*Of course, you won’t have as much time to read the books you enjoy, since we practice 2 hours every day. But we’re including you! And if you get banged up all the time, well, that’s how being a football players is; we get banged up too. We’re including you! And we’ll mock your clothes, and your skinniness, and your books–but we ARE going to include you.
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But when I talked about inclusion and exclusion, I wasn’t complaining about you choosing not to be included, I was complaining that you (i.e. Sarah Palin) were excluding me, from what your concept of American meant.
It’s true, that we *want* to include your children, that is, that we want to offer them access to our world, and I understand Tex’s alienation in New York, but, I’m sure that’s no greater than the alienation felt by others of our ilk in Texas, to use an example. You just haven’t gotten used to being a minority, like the rest of us have. We’ve always had to raise our children in a world where people are different from us. In the America I see, this is likely to be true for everyone. Welcome to our world.
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I’ve got a long essay up at Easily Distracted on this theme today, inspired partly by this thread.
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“It’s true, that we *want* to include your children, that is, that we want to offer them access to our world, and I understand Tex’s alienation in New York, but, I’m sure that’s no greater than the alienation felt by others of our ilk in Texas, to use an example. You just haven’t gotten used to being a minority, like the rest of us have. We’ve always had to raise our children in a world where people are different from us. In the America I see, this is likely to be true for everyone. Welcome to our world.”
It sounds like alienation is the word of the day (although I wonder how thrilled Tex’s fellow NY moms really were by what their barely pubescent kids were learning at school). It doesn’t sound like a very plausible setting for utopia.
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“It doesn’t sound like a very plausible setting for utopia.”
no really alienation can be good — it breeds creativity and independence, and all kinds of other good things. Ask any teenager. Honestly we immigrants & Jews have gotten used to it. We think that’s why our kids do so well in school.
(and, honestly, from my point of view, since I actually had to discuss teen pregnancy with my seven-year-old daughter because of the Republican VP candidate, I have little sympathy for a Republican complaining about what their child was learning in a much more controlled setting. talk about wanting to opt out of mainstream society — like the Republican convention).
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Amy P,
Your statement that Obama isn’t particularly bright is absurd. That’s the kind of partisanship which makes conversation impossible. I mean, really, what do you base that on? By all accounts he is a highly intelligent man, one who graduated summa cum laude at Harvard Law School, which utilizes blind grading.
Here is Akhil Reed Amar (Yale School of Law), describing the tests and answer sheets that Obama gave in his law school classes:
“First, as a constitutional law professor, I came away impressed — dazzled, really — by the analytic intelligence and sophistication of these questions and answers. A really good exam — an exam that tests and stretches the student, while simultaneously providing the professor with a handy and fair index to rank the class — is its own special art form. Composing such an exam is like crafting a sonnet or a crossword puzzle. We don’t have Obama’s answer key every year; but the questions themselves are in many instances beautifully constructed to enable students to explore the seams and plumb the depths of the Supreme Court’s case law. I am tempted to use variations of several of these questions myself in some future exam.”
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I was being facetious about the “buy your own books” line. That’s what I felt a pro-privatizing Republican would say.
Tex, I am really sorry to say this, but I don’t believe your story about anal sex being taught in 6th grade. I would need more information as it’s so easy to overdramatize something that’s actually pretty innocent/acceptable.
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Lisa SG,
Maybe Obama was brilliant in law school, but he’s made a series of iffy choices this year. He doesn’t seem to have a highly developed strategic sense.
1. Obama didn’t immediately realize that Jeremiah Wright was going to be a deal-breaker, and he gave an eloquent speech about not dumping him anymore than he could dump his grandmother. And then he had to dump Wright anyway.
2. He didn’t pick Hillary Clinton as VP. (Hindsight is 20/20, but see item 3.)
3. He chose Biden as his VP. There was a huge build-up for the VP pick, and then…Biden. On paper Biden is fantastic. In real life, he’s done almost nothing over the past couple weeks to increase Obama’s chances of winning in November, and he keeps doing and saying goofy stuff. But who knows? Biden may blow us all away at the debates.
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Just to be clear: the tests and answer sheets were written by Obama for HIS students when Obama was teaching in Chicago. He’s being praised as a professor, not as a student, in the quote above.
Plenty of extremely bright people might not run a political campaign well. If what you mean is that he is not good at making political decisions that impress the American people, that’s what you should say, not that he is not bright.
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We’ve switched from the bookstore to the library for most of our books. Going to the bookstore costs too much. You have to buy a book and one of Thomas’s friends to get out of the bookstore.
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Amy, seriously, you are confusing two completely separate things:
1) Is someone a good tactical actor about politics?
2) Is someone intelligent, well-educated, knowledgeable?
You’re using your opinion about 1) to judge 2). (And I have to say, if you think the putative mistakes you’re describing in #1 make someone a *poor* tactical actor, by that standard, pretty much every single living and dead politician would have to be called such.)
There are a great many well-educated, intelligent and knowledgeable people who are not terribly good political tacticians. Even a few of them who are politicians. There are also some very skilled political operators who are not especially well-educated, intelligent or knowledgeable though they may have a lot of horse sense or intuitive intelligence.
Either you can see the difference and you’re just trolling or you can’t see the difference, which I think is simply kind of confused.
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Oh, come on, who is conceding that Obama has *not* been a brilliant political tactician. He came out of nowhere, against a heavily weighted favorite, and won the democratic nomination in a contest that more people had ever voted than before. He’s raised more money than anyone ever has before, in numbers that were practically unimaginable. And he’s put an incredible ground game in place.
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Timothy Burke, I kind of think you have to be reasonably intelligent to be a good tactical actor in politics. Doesn’t mean you will be good at it if you are smart, but you have to be smart to be good at it. Now, smart. We have Palin, exhibit A. She has taken on the Murkowski Mafia (the Murfia?) and beaten them like a gong. She has risen to Governor from a standing start in about six years. Murray says that the swell schools have been hoovering up all the smart kids from all over America and the lower quintiles have nothing left, but I think they missed this one.
Democrats and condescension – which was the start of this enormous thread. It’s not new. Remember Adlai Stevenson? Saint Adlai? A political groupie said to him, ‘of course you will win, all the intelligent people will back you’ and he said, ‘Madam, that’s not enough, I need a majority!’
My Dem precinct captain spoke – last week! – of Palin as ‘this gidget McCain has picked’. And there is Obama’s ‘bitter’ remark.
The Dems have a terrible problem in their disdain for the folks for whom they think they are working. They may yet win, they have enormous positional advantages in this election. But they are working hard to throw it away.
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I’m working really hard not to have disdain for people who would continue the policy disasters of the last 8 years, but it’s really hard. How am I supposed to respect people who would continue the war, increase economic inequities, give up our civil liberties, and promote corruption?
They don’t support this because they mean well. They don’t support this because they think it’s better for everyone. They don’t even support it because they think it’s better for them.
They apparently support it because it makes them feel better about themselves.
So, any advice, Dave? If I tell these people they are smart, then they have no reason to change their attitudes. If I tell them they’re stupid, they whine about being victimized by the elites.
We’re fucked, just fucked.
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“You have to buy a book and one of Thomas’s friends to get out of the bookstore.”
This has been driving me crazy. The last time we went to a bookstore, we came home with the Eric Carle’s Hungry caterpillar (not the book). We gave in that time (we felt bad, but our little man saw it, and alter drew us a picture of the caterpillar over lunch, when asked what it was he wanted. It was very hard to say no). But we have now instituted a firm rule that nothing but books can be bought in bookstores.
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Wendy, maybe you should mail a copy of Downs “An Economic Theory of Democracy” to David Axelrod? Or Howard Dean?
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This is only ONE side of a narrative about condescension. Why is it ok for my Ohio neighbors to condescend to coastal populations? Why aren’t people living in big cities “real Americans?” Why are the values of great American cities like New York, San Fransisco, Chicago, etc. considered so much worse than “small town values” whatever those might be? Why is it OK for my students to tell me that Catholics aren’t real Christians and that prayer in school is ok because everybody in town goes to the same church (I’m Jewish)? I see a lot of the condescension running the other way. I can think of maybe ONE thing Barack Obama has said that could be construed as negative (bittergate), yet John McCain and Sarah Palin can make New York city sound like a dirty word and mock community organizers. Who is putting these small town people down? Nobody in my neck of the woods, yet they are resentful as heck. Isn’t getting a good education something everyone should aspire to? Isn’t the middle-class dream sending your kid to Harvard or Yale? I think back to graduation this year, when one of my first-generation students was graduating and I heard her older brother say, “I suppose you think you’re better than us now that you have a college degree.” That girl worked so hard and had succeeded at something really important, but her family was intent on tearing her down (on the very day of graduation no less). That’s how I feel America is now–some people just want to bring everyone down to their level.
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“Why is it OK for my students to tell me that Catholics aren’t real Christians ”
This is what kills me about Catholics who align themselves with right-wing Republicans. Christians of Palin’s ilk will throw them under the bus at the first opportunity because they don’t consider Catholics to be “real” Christians. All that bonding over “pro-life” values”? Won’t mean a thing if they think the rapture is imminent.
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It’s been 150 years since any of my ancestors killed or were killed by a Protestant, so that’s long enough past. Of course, those were Anglicans and that’s probably not what you are referring to.
Anyway, I’ve never heard any Christian say that Catholics weren’t Christians. They don’t mock the pope to openly and we don’t make fun of them for using grape juice in public. What’s the problem?
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Many thanks to SamChevre for the Doug Muder link — a far better model than Lakoff’s. It’s turned me on to the other things he’s written, like the clash between Palin and the other wing of the Republican party, or the liberal theology vs working class experience dichotomy.
A lot of Muder’s insights seem to mesh well with that Johnathan Haidt article Rod Dreher posted about.
I do wish I could find a serious exploration of differences between liberal and conservative worldviews written by someone who wasn’t a liberal wearing a pith helmet, though.
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“Isn’t the middle-class dream sending your kid to Harvard or Yale?”
Not really. Depending on where you live in the US, Harvard might not register as being a big deal. Anyway, how can Harvard be a real university without having a serious football team?
Wendy, there’s always Canada. I was just looking the immigration info up, and if you invest $400k in Canada and have another $400k on hand, you’re in. They do have some free speech issues, but nothing that you can’t work around. They don’t mention if that’s $800k US or Canadian, but it’s pretty close nowadays.
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MH I’ve been told a couple of times that Catholics worship Mary rather than Jesus. I also had one friend who said her parents would never allow her to date a Catholic, because she might marry one.
I don’t know how common the bias is, but it exists.
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Yeah, Miranda. That’s what I’m starting to take personally, too. Gail Collins plead with Sarah Palin to at least give the big city folks credit for honoring their war dead, ’cause they have monuments too.
A random Dem precinct captain called Palin Gidget, and Dave S, my go-to “moderate” tars all Dems with the “condescension” brush. A currently serving Republican representative from the South calls Obama “uppity” and we’re supposed to shake it off. If it’s acceptable for the person who could be *our* president, mine too, remember, to call us condescending snobs, well, it’s seems reasonable to call the Repubs some pretty nasty names, too.
Are Palin & McCain even interested in being my leaders? Or are they planning on pretending we don’t exist?
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“maybe you should mail a copy of Downs “An Economic Theory of Democracy” to David Axelrod? Or Howard Dean?”
Why, would it tell them that the Republican party is going to fracture between the economic haves & the zealots, producing two parties, which will let our newly unified Democrats triumph?
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“This is what kills me about Catholics who align themselves with right-wing Republicans. Christians of Palin’s ilk will throw them under the bus at the first opportunity because they don’t consider Catholics to be “real” Christians. All that bonding over “pro-life” values”? Won’t mean a thing if they think the rapture is imminent.”
What’s the worst thing they’re going to do–pray for me? I can take that.
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“Isn’t the middle-class dream sending your kid to Harvard or Yale?”
It’s the middle-class dream for Asians and Jews the world around.
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Lisa V., I have heard the Mary one, but it has been a while. Whenever a Protestant dies and I want to say some prayers for them, I only say Our Fathers. Why irk the dead?
And while I certainly don’t think it is a good idea to tell your kids who to date, why is wanting your kids to marry in the faith is a bad thing? I would prefer my son to marry a Catholic, why should I be upset if a Baptist wants their kid to marry a Baptist?
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“Wendy, there’s always Canada. I was just looking the immigration info up, and if you invest $400k in Canada and have another $400k on hand, you’re in. They do have some free speech issues, but nothing that you can’t work around. They don’t mention if that’s $800k US or Canadian, but it’s pretty close nowadays. ”
No, we’re not leaving, and America is going to change. It’s inevitable. Not sure where the right can go, though, looking for the world exhibited at the national convention (95% white, english-only, with all the culture warrior stuff thrown in), since it doesn’t exist anywhere in the real world. Perhaps into TV land of the 1950’s?
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“What’s the worst thing they’re going to do–pray for me? I can take that. ”
Don’t count on it. Right now you’re not so other, because I’m so much more so. But, if they ever got their way, you can count on zealots who say you are not of them coming after you, too. (with apologies to Pastor Niemoeller)
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“Don’t count on it. Right now you’re not so other, because I’m so much more so. But, if they ever got their way, you can count on zealots who say you are not of them coming after you, too. (with apologies to Pastor Niemoeller)”
The biggest problem with dealing with mainstream Evangelicals is that you might accidentally get hugged to death. If you don’t believe me, check out the list of bestsellers at christianbook.com. It’s by and large a very squishy, feminized world.
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“Why, would it tell them that the Republican party is going to fracture between the economic haves & the zealots, producing two parties, which will let our newly unified Democrats triumph? ”
Not unless the U.S. gets proportional representation.
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“The biggest problem with dealing with mainstream Evangelicals is that you might accidentally get hugged to death.”
Ugh, that’s spread to Catholic churches now. Sure, it isn’t a theological problem, but still.
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James Fallows compares HRC’s arrival in Bosnia with Palin and the Great Bridge:
Twice in the last six months we’ve had the spectacle of a candidate clinging to a provably false personal narrative. Each tale was meant to show something admirable and significant about the candidate’s character. But in each case the press had the goods to show that the tale was too tall to be believed.
One, of course, was Hillary Clinton’s “hail of bullets” account of her arrival at the airport in Bosnia.
The other is Sarah Palin’s “thanks but no thanks” claim to have opposed funding for the “bridge to nowhere.” …
There can’t be any difference in gender or race bias in treatment of these two cases: they both both involve successful, married white female politicians. There is no essential difference in the falseness of their claims, though there was a greater comic potential in the film footage of Sen. Clinton’s “harrowing” arrival. The major remaining difference is that one case involves a Democrat (though the more conservative of the primary-campaign finalists) and one a Republican.
So here are the controlled-experiment questions:
1) At any point will the right-wing press join the effort to hold Palin accountable for her false claim, as all of the press held Clinton responsible?
2) If Palin keeps making the claim, will press critics redouble their debunking, as they did with Clinton, or taper off for fear of seeming biased or boring?
3) At any point will Palin herself — or, far more significant, McCain — acknowledge that there are such things as fact and fantasy, and stop making a demonstrably false claim?
I pose it as a set of questions rather than an assumed conclusion. For now.
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Tex, I am really sorry to say this, but I don’t believe your story about anal sex being taught in 6th grade.
Given the opinions expressed here about Republicans, I shouldn’t be surprised to be accused of lying. Hmm, maybe I should ban myself from this blog.
I’m not sure there’s anything I can do to “prove” I am being truthful, except maybe provide names and dates. Since I wish to remain anonymous, I won’t do this.
However, I would like to clear up one point. This did not happen in my school, but in a neighboring school attended by my friend’s children. Although I never posted that it happened to my children, I can see where readers may have gotten that impression.
Just one more thing. Before this incident I never even knew what a dental dam was.
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Tex, I understand and repsect that you want to keep your anonymity. But you have to understand why I find the details to be so hard to believe.
And why shouldn’t we believe supporters of Sarah Palin are liars? After all, she lies, and those who claim to be all in favor of truth refuse to call her on it:
<i.Actually, Congress put the kibosh on the Bridge to Nowhere back in November 2005. Since Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) was then head of the Senate Appropriations Committee he was able to force a compromise in which the earmark for the bridge was killed but Alaska got to hold on to the money — some $442 million of federal tax dollars.
Fast forward to November 2006. That's when Sarah Palin was running as a staunch supporter of the Bridge to Nowhere — that is, after the feds had themselves already said 'No Thanks.'
In 2006, the Democrats took over both houses of Congress. So by the time Palin got into office it was clear that not only was the first Bridge earmark killed but that Congress was not going to be ponying up any more money. That meant that Alaska was going to have to pick up the tab all on its own. So since she couldn't pay for it with the federal pork barrel, in September 2007, Palin officially halted the project which was then a state project since Congress had said 'Thanks. But no thanks' two years earlier.
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Tex, I understand and repsect that you want to keep your anonymity. But you have to understand why I find the details to be so hard to believe.
And why shouldn’t we believe supporters of Sarah Palin are liars? After all, she lies, and those who claim to be all in favor of truth refuse to call her on it:
<i.Actually, Congress put the kibosh on the Bridge to Nowhere back in November 2005. Since Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) was then head of the Senate Appropriations Committee he was able to force a compromise in which the earmark for the bridge was killed but Alaska got to hold on to the money — some $442 million of federal tax dollars.
Fast forward to November 2006. That's when Sarah Palin was running as a staunch supporter of the Bridge to Nowhere — that is, after the feds had themselves already said 'No Thanks.'
In 2006, the Democrats took over both houses of Congress. So by the time Palin got into office it was clear that not only was the first Bridge earmark killed but that Congress was not going to be ponying up any more money. That meant that Alaska was going to have to pick up the tab all on its own. So since she couldn't pay for it with the federal pork barrel, in September 2007, Palin officially halted the project which was then a state project since Congress had said 'Thanks. But no thanks' two years earlier.
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Tex, I understand and repsect that you want to keep your anonymity. But you have to understand why I find the details to be so hard to believe.
And why shouldn’t we believe supporters of Sarah Palin are liars? After all, she lies, and those who claim to be all in favor of truth refuse to call her on it:
<i.Actually, Congress put the kibosh on the Bridge to Nowhere back in November 2005. Since Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) was then head of the Senate Appropriations Committee he was able to force a compromise in which the earmark for the bridge was killed but Alaska got to hold on to the money — some $442 million of federal tax dollars.
Fast forward to November 2006. That's when Sarah Palin was running as a staunch supporter of the Bridge to Nowhere — that is, after the feds had themselves already said 'No Thanks.'
In 2006, the Democrats took over both houses of Congress. So by the time Palin got into office it was clear that not only was the first Bridge earmark killed but that Congress was not going to be ponying up any more money. That meant that Alaska was going to have to pick up the tab all on its own. So since she couldn't pay for it with the federal pork barrel, in September 2007, Palin officially halted the project which was then a state project since Congress had said 'Thanks. But no thanks' two years earlier.
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Tex, I understand and repsect that you want to keep your anonymity. But you have to understand why I find the details to be so hard to believe.
And why shouldn’t we believe supporters of Sarah Palin are liars? After all, she lies, and those who claim to be all in favor of truth refuse to call her on it:
<i.Actually, Congress put the kibosh on the Bridge to Nowhere back in November 2005. Since Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) was then head of the Senate Appropriations Committee he was able to force a compromise in which the earmark for the bridge was killed but Alaska got to hold on to the money — some $442 million of federal tax dollars.
Fast forward to November 2006. That's when Sarah Palin was running as a staunch supporter of the Bridge to Nowhere — that is, after the feds had themselves already said 'No Thanks.'
In 2006, the Democrats took over both houses of Congress. So by the time Palin got into office it was clear that not only was the first Bridge earmark killed but that Congress was not going to be ponying up any more money. That meant that Alaska was going to have to pick up the tab all on its own. So since she couldn't pay for it with the federal pork barrel, in September 2007, Palin officially halted the project which was then a state project since Congress had said 'Thanks. But no thanks' two years earlier.
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GAH! Sorry! I’m posting and running and I just made a mess. 😦
To sum up: Me right, Tex wrong. 🙂
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It might be that anal sex was not a part of the sex ed curriculum, but was discussed in response to an anonymous question. All the sex ed programs I know about (which is two–my daughter’s more conservative public school one, and the one at my Unitarian Church) allow students to submit anonymous questions. That could put the teacher in a rather tough position if it were a tough question. I don’t know what my daughter’s public school does about that, but my church answers all questions no matter how explicit or odd in its fifth grade sex ed program.
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Wendy,
If Tex is talking about what I think she is, I saw her friend in NY blog the event around the time it happened.
“And why shouldn’t we believe supporters of Sarah Palin are liars?”
Just a few days ago, Laura was laying down the law about civility and “dinner party etiquette”. Accusing people of making up stories because you don’t share their politics is not “dinner party etiquette.” On a previous occasion, I believe you thought that I had made up a story about skipping 8th grade and then needing lots of math help from my dad throughout high school, as if a person couldn’t be gifted in one area and basically average in another.
I think it would be swell if it were understood that there will be no accusations of lying or bad faith. I don’t want to belabor the point, but “lying” requires the conscious statement of untruths. In my daily life, I’ve known maybe only one real liar (who was a drug addict trying to present the illusion of normalcy), but lots of exaggerators and people with poor memories who make mistakes.
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“In my daily life, I’ve known maybe only one real liar (who was a drug addict trying to present the illusion of normalcy), but lots of exaggerators and people with poor memories who make mistakes.”
Amy, you might want to be more cynical when you do try to buy a house.
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MH,
I’m going to charitably assume that a mortgage broker who thinks we can afford a 50% of take-home mortgage is a making an honest mistake. And then I’ll go find a different one.
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MH,
Before we left DC, my husband talked to a mortgage broker to get a quote as to how big a loan we could get approved for. The mortgage broker recommended a 80/20 ARM for up to $615k. Needless to say, freshly tenured professors don’t make enough to carry that kind of mortgage very far.
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Amy, Fair enough. I’m not abiding by Laura’s rules for this community, so she and any member of the community should feel free to smack me down.
Wish I could find the place to call a liar a liar, though. Any ideas? I’m too busy to travel to McCain/Palin events.
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Amy, I was actually thinking of realtors, including the buyer agent.
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Yay. Self-monitoring. Good job, comment beasties.
re: anal sex info in 6th grade. I think you’ll find pretty broad consensus amongst commenters here that 12 years old shouldn’t be learning about anal sex in 6th grade. I think you’ll find pretty broad consensus among Democrats and Obama supporters on that score. I think that there can be a sex ed curriculum without discussing all of that. And I would need more than one anecdotal account to believe that this is a widespread practice around the country.
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Laura, I agree that hardly anybody wants anal sex taught to 6th graders, that this doesn’t differ by party and that you can have a sex ed curriculum without getting to into too much detail. But I don’t think this necessarily means there is no difference on the issue across the parties. This is just a guess because I haven’t seen any polling data like this. However, I’m thinking that Republicans might want to be sure the instruction errs on the side of not discussing things like anal sex while Democrats might be more likely to want to err on the side of making certain that the kids get information.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates weighs in on why culture wars:
“Conservative bloggers have been in quite a lather over alleged liberal sneering toward Sarah Palin. But if Palin’s sneering toward ‘community organizers’ wasn’t condescension, then the word has no meaning.
“What we have is a kind of bullying–ugly demagoguery in the robe of righteous principle. The fact of the matter is that the problem isn’t whether liberals or conservatives condescend, it’s who they condescend to. This is a numbers game–there are simply more white people then blacks, thus the market for righteous outrage and umbrage is bigger in white America. Ditto for the gays. This is why we can agree that the Manhattanite who disses NASCAR having never seen it is condescending. But the exurban church-goer–armed with no evidence–who says two men marrying is an abomination is ‘traditional.'”
+++
I’m apparently all about The Atlantic today.
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Doug, speaking of Germany (which I admit we haven’t been for about 70 comments), what’s going on with the toilets (the shelf in the bowl)? Or did I just hit a weird sample of rest rooms when I made my (brief) visit?
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Toilet design is one of those things that you grow up never thinking about because there’s obviously only one way in the whole universe to do and it’s already been figured out because look, the toilets are the same all around you. And then you travel around a bit and you discover there are a whole heap (pardon the word) of different ways of doing all these mundane things.
As near as I can tell, though, the nasty German shelf business is the sinister product of a conspiracy between don’t-use-too-much-water environmentalism and the descendants of early nineteenth century physicians who hold that it is important to examine the contents of what your body has produced. Once this conspiracy set the design, path dependency took over and nobody knew any better.
Which goes to show that out of the many different ways of accomplishing mundane tasks like toilet bowl design, some of them are Just Wrong. (Let us not mention the Turkish squatter, which dispenses with the bowl altogether.)
Ok, now I’ve really ruined everyone’s appetite. And probably killed the thread. Next?
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Thanks Doug. I had thought it was so you could berate your leavings (“You are weak and unworthy, so I rejected you and leave you to the sewers.”) before flushing.
Its too bad we aren’t really placed well to travel much right now. I think my wife wants to be more elitist. She had arugula last night.
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