NPR has a nifty list comparing what parents worry about versus what they should worry about. I wonder what the lists would look like comparing what Americans in general worry about versus what they should worry about. Here’s my prediction:
1. Terrorist attack
2. Gasoline prices
3. Dropped cellphone calls
4. Being last in line–any line
5. The Other
I found a Gallup poll from almost a year ago that asked, “How often do you, yourself, worry about the following things –frequently, occasionally, rarely, or never?” The top five worries:
1. Identity theft
2. Having car stolen or broken into
3. Home burglarized when you are not there
4. Being a victim of terrorism
5. Home burglarized when you are there
Posted 14 hours, 21 minutes ago at 3:32 pm. Add a comment
The Los Angeles Times announced that it will publicize the ranked names of 6,000 Los Angeles public school teachers alongside their students’ test scores. According to the Times’ reporters Jason Felch and Jason Song, the project was done in the name of in the name of transparency. Felch and Song say that they evaluated data that the Los Angeles Unified School District keeps but does not use. But many disagree over the move to put these numbers in the paper.
[Union leader A.J.] Duffy … grouched that the Times was “leading people in a dangerous direction, making it seem like you can judge the quality of a teacher by … a test.” [Ellipsis in the original.] Gee, Mr. Duffy, aren’t students judged by test results?
“We have yet to identify the common threads between teachers who create a constructive learning atmosphere,” said Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of the book “Why Don’t Students Like School?”
For a couple years in college I partnered with a friend and we wrote a political column for the school newspaper. We were the designated liberals–I think we saw our beat as Noam Chomsky and American imperialism. I distinctly recall editorial meetings when we would shout and point shaky fingers into the face of the conservative columnist. On better days we would be more playful with the conservative guy, who had a penchant for speaking in cliches, and we would try to invent or mash-up cliches that we hoped would enter his cliche lexicon to later embarrass him (“Tony, I think you’ve got your mistress’ underwear in your closet on this one …”).
We helped to start a student political group that aimed to be a sort of an umbrella organization of the disparate liberal groups on campus. We handed out condoms (taped to flyers that read, “Condoms not Contras”), protested against Nazis (Cue Blues Brothers: Elwood: Illinois Nazis. Jake: I hate Illinois Nazis), organized an April Fools Day Tribute to Ronald Reagan. I tried to grow facial hair and scowled. His girlfriend later became my girlfriend and we drifted apart, then drifted back to being good friends. Over the years we’ve stayed in irregular contact. I moved away from political writing, wanting to write something that had more of a shelf life (still working on that). He went into union organizing. We both got married and had children. I moved to the South …
The political fixations we had back then all seem almost quaint now.
In a recent email, he asked,
Can you imagine if we could have magically brought ourselves forward to this point in time from our vantage point back in 1986? What would we make of the shift in American politics? And would we be hopeful, or terrified? (Remember when the idea of using American military in foreign countries was unthinkable? We were protesting proxy wars then.)
Ah, proxy wars. Them was the days.
It’s often assumed a person grows more politically conservative as they grow older. Personally, that’s not the case. Politically I’m pretty much the same, though I’m not quite as in-your-face about it as I once was. And I like to think I’m wiser, that I have a longer view of things. I’m less certain and see complexity where I once saw simplicity. I find meaning in my family and in my writing and other creative endeavors, not in abstract political goings-on. I’m happier, too.
But lately I’m feeling more and more angst about political matters. This whole Cordoba House near ground zero controversy has really gotten to me. But it’s not just that, it’s the whole array of bullshit “issues” the right wing keeps dreaming up. Oh, how offended people are. Sometimes it seems like we’re just a nation of outrage junkies.
Over the past year my brother (12 years older) has sent me a slew of ludicrous chain emails, everything from Obama isn’t American to all Muslims cannot be trusted. Each time I have dutifully fact checked the nonsense (it doesn’t take long to cut and paste into Snopes.com). All of my adult life I’ve been having these kinds arguments with my brother. I’ve grown better at avoiding emotional investment in his nonsense, mostly because his political beliefs lack content and are really just feelings, but lately I’ve found myself thinking that I don’t want to have anything to do with him anymore. And that’s sad. Yet his home is our designated hurricane evacuation destination, so I suppose I’ll be seeing him sometime in the next month or two. And that should be fun. He’s also prone to saying stupid shit about New Orleans.
Could it be that things have actually gotten worse in the past 20-25 years?
I know the culture doesn’t move in a straight line. There are always backlashes, fits and starts. In 1986 I would have been shocked that gay marriage would ever seem inevitable. In 1986 I would not have been shocked that I would someday marry an African American woman and have a child together, but to have a biracial president? No freaking way would I have seen that one coming.
I think the right wing hyperbole we’re witnessing is essentially the last gasps of a white majority culture not coming to terms with the vast demographic changes our country faces. Add to the mix the 9/11 attacks, a whacked economy, a brown president, a mid-term election, and here we are.
There’s one other change I didn’t see coming that I really like: Senator Al Franken. Senator Al yesterday said the conservative attacks against the proposed Cordoba House are “one of the most disgraceful things that I’ve heard.”
Shocking, I know, but I came across a nearly incoherent quote from Sarah Palin this morning at Politico:
“Nobody argues that that freedom of religion that the Muslims have to build that mosque somewhere,” Palin told Greta Van Susteren. For the mosque to be “so adamant about this exact location just a block or two away from 9/11, again, is that knife, it feels like.”
The first thing that caught my attention was her use of the word “that”–4 times in the first 16 words! And the last bit, “again, is that knife, it feels like” has an echo of weird Yoda speak about it … let’s see, converting Palin’s sentiment (“Building a Muslim center near ground zero in New York City is like a knife to the heart.”) using a Yoda converter gives us:
Like a knife to the heart, building a Muslim center near ground zero in New York City is. Yes, hmmm.
But let’s step beyond Palin’s tortured use of language. She refers to the 9/11 attacks as “that knife.” Here Palin is trying to scrape the national 9/11 scab, coax out the blood, in the guise of protecting us from the knife aimed at the 9/11 scab by a caricature of Muslims. I get the feeling that for Palin personally, she couldn’t have been more delighted when she heard about the Muslim Center proposal. She absolutely loves to nurture anger. She gets off on it. She’s an anger junkie.
I’m not breaking ground here by noting that Palin is the vengeful sort. It’s even part of her self constructed identity. She is, after all, a Mama Grizzly.
Now, not to get all East Coast about it, but it seems venting one’s anger only serves to sustain it. Venting keeps the hurt alive. And it feels good:
If you think catharsis is good, you are more likely to seek it out when you get pissed. When you vent, you stay angry and are more likely to keep doing aggressive things so you can keep venting.
It’s drug-like, because there are brain chemicals and other behavioral reinforcements at work. If you get accustomed to blowing off steam, you become dependent on it.
The more effective approach is to just stop. Take your anger off of the stove. Let it go from a boil to a simmer to a lukewarm state where you no longer want to sink your teeth into the side of buffalo.
[Psychologist Brad] Bushman’s work also debunks the idea of redirecting your anger into exercise or something similar. He says it will only maintain your state or increase your arousal level, and afterward you may be even more aggressive than if you had cooled off.
Still, cooling off is not the same thing as not dealing with your anger at all. Bushman suggests you delay your response, relax or distract yourself with an activity totally incompatible with aggression.
Over at Nola.com’s “comment of the day,” veganola argues a vegan diet can teach children about social justice. Okay, so veganola probably isn’t being especially fair when s/he suggests the chicken and cow industrial complex leads to a
a system which feeds [children] carcinogenic, diabetes and stroke causing food, so that they can become fodder for a medical system determined to hook them an expensive medications instead of encouraging a good diet.
It’s not automatic a diet that includes animal products leads to all these bad things. But the comments that follow (I know, not surprisingly) are a parade of ignorance about veganism. This one by mjzapjr is pretty representative:
Vegan? Yeah, here kids, eat these plants and take these 48 vitamins to fill the big whole [sic] in your daily values.
How about teaching kids to make healthy choices instead of cramming crap down their throats?
Leaving aside the misinformation about “the big whole” veganism would leave in one’s “daily values,” what’s with the contemporary obsession with having ____________ crammed down one’s throat? I guess we’re all Foie gras, eh?
I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out that “crap” isn’t vegan.
Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago at 3:50 pm. Add a comment
A hot new book by a trio of cutting edge Republican Congressmen aged 40, 45, and 47 years old is called Young Guns (sub-title: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders). Woo-hoo! I’m right at the median of the Young Gun age range!
[Note: The above image of course isn't me--that's Grecian Formula model Young Gun Rep. Kevin McCarthy. ]
Posted 1 month, 4 weeks ago at 10:02 am. Add a comment
That nutty birther woman, Orly Taitz, apparently has a shot at getting the Republican nomination for secretary of state in California. Here’s a neat quote from her:
“Our country will turn into a banana republican until we disclose information that is related to voter fraud,” she told POLITICO.
I like a good typo as much as the next guy, but god, please, let it not be a typo. I just love the idea our country could actually turn into a banana republican. Think I saw one a while back …
I accept I probably don’t fully grasp how prayer is supposed to work, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with communing with god, even as most people seem to approach it as they would a letter to Santa Claus. Here’s where Joe “the unlicensed plumber” Wurzelbacher comes in. He just got elected to some county Republican committee in Ohio and TPM interviewed him:
“I have a 14-year-old son that I want to spend as much time with as possible,” he said. “Once he’s gone to college I’m going to sit down and talk to God” about whether he should run for another public office. But he says he’s reluctant to surround himself with those “liars, cheaters and thieves” in government.
Bonus:
“I pray that he doesn’t want me to run for office,” Wurzelbacher said in an interview last night.
So Joe’s praying to god, asking god to answer “No” when, in a few years, Joe again prays and asks if he should run for political office. But how do we know Joe hasn’t already prayed to god asking him to ignore today’sprayer requesting he ignore his future prayer requests to run for political office?
