Links – Weekend Edition
Kabobfest – First Poll on US Opinion on Gaza: Democratic Politicians Ignore Public Opinion
In one of the more interesting analytical writings on the American (non-)debate on the Israeli assault on Gaza, Glenn Greenwald considers how alarmingly out-of-step Democratic politicians are with their party’s rank-and-file views. He cites the first poll on American public views of Israel’s attack. While there is a general tie between those supportive and opposed, Democrats are against Israel’s onslaught in Gaza by a significant margin.
The New York Times (Op-Ed) – The Evil Behind the Smiles
Western men who visit red-light districts in poor countries often find themselves surrounded by coquettish teenage girls laughingly tugging them toward the brothels. The men assume that the girls are there voluntarily, and in some cases they are right.
But anyone inclined to take the girls’ smiles at face value should talk to Sina Vann, who was once one of those smiling girls.
Merced Sun Star – Hollywood, Race, and the Age of Obama
As “Crash” was earning plaudits (and a Best Picture Oscar), any number of much knottier and more daring movies were being ignored by viewers entirely. Spike Lee’s “She Hate Me” (2004), a freewheeling, vastly underrated consideration of, among many other things, white America’s anxiety about black male sexuality, managed to earn only $366,000 at the domestic box office – by far the lowest-grossing movie of the director’s career. Alan Ball’s brazen and compelling “Towelhead” (2008) – a portrait of a Lebanese-American girl molested by a white neighbor, who also has an African-American boyfriend – died a similarly quick death.
Even more mainstream efforts have had trouble connecting. The movie I tend to regard as the most important one made this decade about race relations is a knotty romantic comedy-drama called “Something New” (2006), about a black woman (Sanna Lathan) who believes she can’t find a decent black man to date and who eventually decides to go out with a white man (Simon Baker). Its mixture of tenderness and severity, cynicism and hopefulness, proved consistently arresting – and yet it pulled in only $11 million.
New York Times (Op-Ed) – Bleeding Heart Tightwads
Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.
Tanzania Standard Newspapers – The guarantee of Albinos’ right to life is under threat
In military conflicts you can avoid the battleground and increase your chances of survival, but Tanzanian albinos face a potential threat from the general public that can include parents, spouses and neighbours. Regardless of who, what or why these criminal acts have occurred, the constant risk of death remains and any human being should at least have the right to seek refuge anywhere it can be found.
Daily News Egypt – Inside the World of Arab American Youth
While the findings are seen as a step in the right direction, author Moustafa Bayoumi says other forms of discrimination continue to affect the lives of Arabs living in the US.
In his new book, “How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America,” Bayoumi reveals how “state oppression” has impacted the lives of second generation Arab-American youth. The book chronicles the lives of seven 20-something Arab-Americans living in Brooklyn, New York who have encountered diverse problems in a post-9/11 America, ranging from employment discrimination to government detention.
The Las Vegas Review Journal – NEVADAN AT WORK: Harrah’s executive looks beyond external to see diversity in experience
“People talk about diversity being good,” he said. “It simply is. It’s not good or bad unless you channel it and make it focus on something that actually creates good from it.”
New York Times – A Moving 40th Birthday Gift
[F]or a truly one-of-a-kind gift, nothing could beat what Michael Chambers received for his 40th birthday on Thursday: a world-class runner from Kenya for a day.
“What a birthday present,” a stunned Chambers said as Richard Kiplagat, 27, entered his SoHo apartment, ready to run.
It was like a take-home fantasy camp, akin to hiring a Brazilian soccer star to kick the ball around in the backyard, or a Chinese table-tennis champion to play a few games in the basement.
Kiplagat was paid $400 to run with Chambers and have lunch with his family. A driver in a Lincoln Town Car picked him up at dawn at his home in New Milford, N.J., and returned him late in the afternoon.
The Washington Post – Why Can’t a Kiss Just be a Kiss?
“I didn’t want to screw it up,” Franco told Letterman on “Late Show” last week.
“See, if it’s me, I’m kind of hoping I do screw it up,” Letterman shot back. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“To screw it up?” Franco asked.
“I mean, do you really want to be good at kissing a guy?” Letterman said as his audience howled with delight.
New York Times – Preaching Moderate Islam and Becoming a TV Star
Mr. Shugairi and others like him have succeeded by appealing to a young audience that is hungry for religious identity but deeply alienated from both politics and the traditional religious establishment, especially in the fundamentalist forms now common in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
In part, that is a matter of style: a handsome, athletically built 35-year-old, Mr. Shugairi effortlessly mixes deep religious commitment with hip, playful humor. He earned an M.B.A. during his California years, and he sometimes refers to Islam as “an excellent product that needs better packaging.”
But his message of sincere religious moderation is tremendously powerful here. For young Arabs, he offers a way to reconcile a world painfully divided between East and West, pleasure and duty, the rigor of the mosque and the baffling freedoms of the Internet.
Global Voices Online – Is France Ready for a Black President?
Martiniquan blogger le blog de [moi] writes about the effect Obama’s victory has had on France’s identity as an ethnically diverse nation.
En effet, dès le lendemain de l’élection du 44ème Président des Etats-Unis, la France s’est découverte multiculturelle ou plus précisément multiethnique. Elle a semblé se souvenir qu’il puisse y avoir des Français “de couleur” (on va se la jouer pudique) etpireparmi eux des Français Noirs ou métissés. La belle affaire !The day after the election of the 44th President of the United States, France discovered it was multicultural or, more precisely, multiethnic. She seemed to remember that there could be French “of color” (to put it modestly) and
worseamong them French Blacks or biracial French.
(Thanks to Rob Schmidt, thatphil, zazel, Fatemeh, pullapartgirl, and serentitynow78 for contributing.)
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
ephraim wrote:
re: bleeding heart tightwads
isn’t the whole point of pushing for more government spending on social services to distribute the burden (ideally, proportional to income/wealth), so that it doesn’t fall on individuals and their “generosity”? it makes perfect sense to me that conservatives give more individual donations. it’s ideologically consistent with their worldviews.
Posted 03 Jan 2009 at 12:53 pm ¶
MK wrote:
Really good collection of posts. Don’t know which one to comment on first…
Posted 03 Jan 2009 at 3:01 pm ¶
Vanessa, Michigan wrote:
SHe hates me bombed b/c it sucked….and completely offensive to all lesbians.
LIke a woman has to have sex with a men to get pregrnant…..the turkey baster or artificial inseminaton doesn’t work.
Don’t get me started how a totally lesbian female is willing to fuck a dude…just to keep her lover.
That film just pissed me off on so many levels.
Something new was an okay film but I wished that it was promoted well b/c I really didn’t hear about that film until it came out. I felt that film was only directed more towards the black audiences than the overall general audience. Honestly, there wasn’t major stars in it….if there were huge stars in it …like A listers it would have done better…IMHO.
Towelhead…wasn’t promoted at all…and was not seen in all theaters.
Posted 03 Jan 2009 at 5:11 pm ¶
Anonymous wrote:
Re: ephraim
Isn’t the logic behind government provided welfare the idea that people are too greedy to help out their fellow man without government coercion?
Posted 03 Jan 2009 at 6:17 pm ¶
Alexis wrote:
We don’t live in a post-racial American just because Barack Obama won. The people who didn’t vote for Obama because of his race in this election are not going to reelect him in the next election. I don’t think Obama’s win is going to change how white America (or non-black America in general) looks at us. Especially since he’s biracial and it’s been made very clear that Obama is not your average black person. Or person.
Posted 03 Jan 2009 at 8:52 pm ¶
Sobia wrote:
Re: Democrats position on Israel
Considering many Democrat supporters understand resistance movements of the oppressed against the oppressors, (or at least try to) the news that many Democrat supporters are against Israel’s bombing of Palestinian people is not so surprising (though considering they are exposed to pro-Israeli media it is still a little surprising).
The whole situation is a case of the oppressor (Israel) vilifying the oppressed (Palestinians) to justify its continued violent oppression of the Palestinian people and suffocation of Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation. After all, didn’t White South Africa at one time label Nelson Mandel a terrorist? Its easier to get away with oppressing people once you’ve made the world believe they are bad people.
Posted 03 Jan 2009 at 10:26 pm ¶
AnonymousForNow wrote:
I was glad to read the comments on “Something New”. It looked interesting to me from the previews, but I actually avoided it because I thought it was going to be one more Hollywood movie that pretends to address race but doesn’t. Glad to hear it actually went a little deep…I’ll check it out on DVD.
Posted 04 Jan 2009 at 1:35 am ¶
Monie wrote:
Something New was just another attempt to portray Black love as dysfunctional and that for women of color, and Black women in particular, White men are their love saviors.
The film didn’t do well because this kind of propaganda is getting old.
Posted 04 Jan 2009 at 12:36 pm ¶
allheavens wrote:
Can’t a Black woman have a relationship with a white male without it being propaganda?
Just asking.
I liked Something New, saw it in the theater. I did not feel that Simon Baker’s character came off as Sanaa Lathan’s love savior. Just thought Sanaa’s character was a Black woman who opened herself up to the possibility of love outside of her own rigid requirements and found someone who was right for her.
And don’t get me started on She Hate Me, so wrong on so many levels but that’s Spike when he fails it’s EPIC!
I’m still waiting for Spike to learn how to end the third act of a film without sucking the emotional life out of the entire film.
Posted 04 Jan 2009 at 1:54 pm ¶
Lisa J wrote:
I’d forgotten that Crash won a best picture Oscar. That movie was such a let down and I think it should have been called Trash rather than Crash. But sometimes, as with life in general, it is more about behind the scenes politics. I found that movie to be so racist and misguided on so many levels. Something New was better but still problematic, especially b/c it showed a white woman putting a black woman with a white man who had few racial hang ups and the black woman had most of thre problem. Now anything is possible but I have been around white people most of my 35 years and no white woman has ever tried to hook me up with any white man (but a few inappropriate black ones) and the white guys I’ve dated were either proud of themselves for going out with a black woman or who had some kooky ideas about race (one told me that black kids shouldn’t learn black history b/c it makes them hate white people-big fight ensued and that was that). Of course that is just my experience but it made some of the movie hard for me to swallow. As for Hollywood getting it right or better on racial issues, well except for tv sci-fi I don’t have high hopes and even with that I get disappointed (like Battlestar replacing the two strong black men in the original with a white man and a woman of color with no other strong black male characters any where to be seen).
Posted 04 Jan 2009 at 2:35 pm ¶
EB wrote:
everybody misses this line in the ‘conservatives give more money’ debate -
“It’s true that religion is the essential reason conservatives give more, and religious liberals are as generous as religious conservatives. Among the stingiest of the stingy are secular conservatives.”
Posted 04 Jan 2009 at 3:37 pm ¶
jsb16 wrote:
I’d be interested to know how the “tightwad liberals” numbers were counted. From the first paragraph, it looks like raw numbers. Given that the wealthy tend to be conservative, it’s not surprising that conservatives give more: they have more to give. There’s a hint that the trend might hold for income-adjusted giving, but no details. As for the red-state/blue-state division, after watching the returns on Election Night, I want to slap the author of that article with a printout: even the reddest states have a significant number of liberals.
Posted 04 Jan 2009 at 3:48 pm ¶
jen* wrote:
I watched Something New, but wasn’t impressed. I was really interested, and hopeful, but it just didn’t seem to have been made very well, IMO. It didn’t seem like the story was well researched, to really be believable – but maybe my experiences are just vastly different than those the writers talked to. All in all, I’ve seen suckier rom-com’s, but it wasn’t great.
I’m trying to wrap my head around this African birthday present. I mean, an actual African person as a birthday present for a day. That..something about that….I don’t know…no words…
I’ll be back once I’m coherent.
Posted 04 Jan 2009 at 3:55 pm ¶
lunanoire wrote:
What about other forms of giving? Do liberals give of their time often? Do conservatives give their time beyond religion and family or any group they’re a part of? How many people give to orgs that they have a weak affiliation with? Are liberals more likely to work in nonprofits? How many people do conservative institutions, especially religious ones and nonprofits, employe?
Posted 04 Jan 2009 at 10:46 pm ¶
Pheagan wrote:
Lisa J— I was totally unaware of that Battlestar Galactica factoid. I’ve always had a problem that there are no visible black men on that show (of course, whenever I say this, people are like “But Dualla! And that Cylon guy!” Who is almost never seen, like ever, even though he seems to be a perfectly good actor). Anyways, wow.
I also can’t believe dude who didn’t want black children to be taught black history. I guess I can’t believe he would say that to an aware black woman. Who he was going out with. Although you didn’t like the movie, it reminds me of the scene where Simon Baker asks Sanaa Lathan if she has to talk about race so much.
Posted 04 Jan 2009 at 11:21 pm ¶
Westerly wrote:
Interesting reading through the thread at Kabobfest about Palestine/Israel. Frankly, I expect that Obama will tow the line and make the same noises and gestures (and more) about supporting Israel that every other US president makes. It would take a massive and obvious shift in public opinion before he would even dream of doing otherwise.
And with militaristic Hillary as Foreign Secretary…
RE: I thought that “Something New” skimmed over the surface of racial tension at times, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with portraying ‘black love’ as dysfunctional or some pointed critique of black men in comparison to white men.
“Just thought Sanaa’s character was a Black woman who opened herself up to the possibility of love outside of her own rigid requirements and found someone who was right for her.”
I agree. While race was certainly an element at play and a context, the characters were actual characters rather than archetypes. I didn’t see him as her ’saviour’ either because she chose him despite her misgivings about his race, and despite their personality differences. (If he were her saviour she would have chosen him precisely BECAUSE of them.)
Posted 05 Jan 2009 at 4:52 am ¶
Lisa J wrote:
@Phaegan, as for BSG in the original Colonel Tighe was a black man, not a drunkard (or a cylon) and was an excellent upstanding officer very straight-laced. Boomer was a black man too, sort of a side-kick to Starbuck (who was a guy) and Apollo but also a stand up guy, a good officer, laid back and a hero too. Not great, but for the 70’s (shoot even for today), not bad, especially Col Tighe.
I also found it sexist that they made Starbuck a woman and a hyper-masculinized at that, but got rid of several female characters. Originally Athena (the name picked later by the replacement Boomer who married Hel-0) was Apollo’s sister who was also an officer and there was Casopiea (not in the new one at all) who was a high-priced call girl before the invasion, but had some medical training and became a nurse as the series went on. Neither were great characters, but I would have liked to have seen those characters built up, not so Farah Fawcettesque (tons of big feathered hair) and given more dimensions, rather than say, “ah lets just turn a character into a woman and change that character from being a fairly nice, though rougish person, with a pretty good personality into a total hardass.” The old Starbuck was sort of a womanizer but the new one is I guess for lack of a better term a manizer(?) and they’ve made her behave in a more sterotypical masculine way than the male one, at least initally! I’ve gotten used to it and like the new Starbuck now but I’d have rather they hadn’t just introduced a new character or given the character a different name, or maybe made Adama’s sister like that. Oh well.
It also bothers me that they call everyone Sir. I’ve worked around the military and they always address female senior officers or senior enlisted as Ma’am and there is no reason why womanhood or terms of respect for women has to be excised entirely just b/c they are in a military environment. And many of the women in the armed forces manage to still be feminine while being in the military and not just like the guys or more instense but with ovaries and breasts. Not that there is anything wrong with a woman being tough or butch but I think they tried to really exagerated it with that character of Starbuck, like she was compensating for something. The first scene she was in they showed her punching a senior male officer, twice her size and age and this was before the attack. I know it is sci-fi but in any service an officer male or female who engaged in that kind of behavior, and who had a history of that type of behavior which they indicated she did, would have been jettisoned long before that incident, outstanding pilot or not. They give pilots some lee-way but not that much. And how many women would even do that? Some, but still somewhat unusual, and it just seemed over the top for me. Maybe I’m wrong.
Sorry for the rant.
Posted 05 Jan 2009 at 12:54 pm ¶
gatamala wrote:
lunanoire~good point on the non-profits. I know lobbyists for non-profits and social issues who make jack squat. They don’t count?
It seems that this giving was mentioned in terms of $$$ giving – which lends itself to church/religious (as EB pointed out) and the canape fundraiser set like Kristof who can afford not to reinvest the $ that we give him.
Posted 05 Jan 2009 at 2:31 pm ¶
Ugly Deaf Muslim Punk Gurl! wrote:
Rich white businessmen who travel to red-light districts in poor countries are nothing but SCUMBAGS!!!!
Secondly, what the fuck is up with Letterman making such a homophobic dig at James Franco for kissing another guy in a film??? Who cares? It’s just a kiss!!!! It’s amazing how American men are so uncomfortable with the sight of 2 guys kissing, but get so excited at 2 gals kissing.
LMAO, what a pathetic world we live in.
People need to get the fuck over themselves.
Posted 05 Jan 2009 at 2:44 pm ¶
jvansteppes wrote:
I’m kind of surprised to hear of Towelhead being described as ‘brazen’ and ‘compelling’; I found it worse than Crash. I was not exactly impressed with the contrast of Jasira’s backward racist Lebanese father with the white-liberal-couple-to-the-rescue who reason with him by ’speaking to him in his own language’.
I understand that there are conservative, problematic parents of every kind, including, no doubt, Lebanese Americans, but that juxtaposition with the benevolent white neighbours rubbed me the wrong way.
And I also think Alan Ball has weird issues with older men/young girl relationships. In American Beauty Kevin Spacey’s creepy obsession with a teen girl is set up as part of his resistance to his constrictive suburban lifestyle; in Towelhead the sexual assault scene between the teen girl and the older man is heavily eroticized. I didn’t read the novel, and I wonder how the author feels about Ball’s rendition of her book.
Posted 05 Jan 2009 at 2:55 pm ¶
Rchoudh wrote:
That article about the evil smiles made shivers run down my spine. I can’t believe there are people who would torture children like this and force them to cater to pedophiles. It disgusts me to know that there are men frequenting these brothels; how sick! What a terrible world we live where a child’s innocence is forever destroyed by sex and money crazed adults.
Posted 05 Jan 2009 at 9:10 pm ¶
NancyP wrote:
Kristof is a conservative patriarch with a savior complex. He loves to obsess about teenage girl prostitutes, but is far less interested in women-friendly development policy that would lift families out of poverty, make women self-sufficient, and reduce the likelihood that families would sell daughters into prostitution. Kristof may have some serious rescue fantasy involving an endlessly grateful and sexually skilled ex-prostitute (see old Hollywood movies). He likes to claim that feminists don’t do anything for poor women, and that he’s the only journalist that mentions international women’s issues. He claims that all feminists want is the key to the executive suite (as if he doesn’t care about such trivialities and would be content doing public service at $30K a year). I resent that Kristof is given space in the influential NYT, while women like Katha Pollitt or Patricia Williams (both with a long record of very well written opinion columns in The Nation) aren’t given permanent columns. Instead the token woman’s spot is taken by Mo Dowd, who is self-absorbed, obsessed with taking potshots at the Clintons, and generally ignorant of international and US news concerning the poor (or for that matter, anyone outside the Upper East Side of Manhattan or Georgetown).
As for Arthur Brooks’ claim that conservatives are more charitable than liberals (cited by Kristof ), apparently there are huge definition issues (what is a “conservative”, what is a “liberal”, to which category are “libertarians” assigned in a conservative v. liberal two group analysis), statistical issues (a very large variance within each group compared with a very small mean difference between groups), data collection issues (which groups are more likely to over-report their charitable donations or miscategorize their donations – I’d guess the regular churchgoers as a group are more likely to over-report than groups who attend less regularly or who are non-attenders). Brooks also does not appear to have a primary demographics focus but instead has a policy/politics focus and a stated interest in (and history of) promoting conservative ideology.
Posted 05 Jan 2009 at 9:59 pm ¶
Mountain Moderate wrote:
Kristof is shoveling what Jonah Goldberg was shoveling two years ago, and Brooks’s book is still full of it. First, Brooks is a professor at Syracuse, but he gets his real money from the American Enterprise Institute, so he’s paid to preach the neocon party line.
Second, to say his methods are seriously flawed is an understatement. The book seriously downplays a major point its sources make, namely that liberals are more likely to volunteer time. It also only pretends to deal with the issue of income discrepancy between liberals and conservatives. After all, if conservatives make more than liberals, it only follows they would have more to donate. Brooks has four data sources: the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS) and three more recent General Social Surveys (GSS). The GSS are drawn from statistically representative samples; the SCCBS is not. The SCCBS says liberals make more money; the three more recent GSS say conservatives do. Guess which data set Brooks uses?
Third, where does conservative charity go? Churches. How much of that really goes to charity? If you’re Catholic, how much of it goes to pay lawsuits over pederast priests? If you’re evangelical, how much goes to build megachurches, defend abortion clinic protesters, or lobby for anti-gay legislation? If you’re Mormon, how much goes to the billionth cookie-cutter ward house (The LDS Church has more churches than McDonald’s has served hamburgers.), buying downtown property for a commercial development, or lobbying for anti-gay legislation? Let’s take a measurement of how much conservative charity actually goes to charity.
Finally, let’s measure how charitable their lifestyle is. Do “charitable conservatives” ever stop to think of the effects on the poorest people on this planet of their SUVs, their McMansions, their sweatshop-made clothes, their opposition to labor and environmental protections? Have they ever thought about how much charity has been made necessary by their systematic dismantling of the social safety net? In all their compassion and giving, has any of this even crossed their minds?
Posted 09 Jan 2009 at 11:25 am ¶