The continuing popularity and apparent clout of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, whom I like to call the Great Whistling Anus of American Political Opinion, baffles me. His melodious malodorousness on such topics as Iraq and neoliberal economics has been debunked, pilloried, ridiculed, savaged, and more often than not proven to be dead wrong by innumerable commentators, aided by an examination of these rare quantities known as “facts.” And yet, his column continues, his Idiot Wind keeps blowing, and his books are bought in the millions by people of the type who sit next to me on airplanes.

Enter David Rees, political satirist and author of such books as Get Your War On — a comic genius with a heart, who donated the royalties from the aforementioned book to landmine removal in Afghanistan. His latest piece in The Huffington Post takes on Friedman on the 5th anniversary of his proclamation of the “Suck. On. This.” rationale for invading Iraq, which has to be heard to be believed (the article contains a handy YouTube link; be sure you watch it before you read Rees tearing into him.)

Being mocked by Rees has a certain … definitiveness to it, a sense of finality. It’s as if, once Rees has gotten to you, nothing more needs to be said. You’re done. Cooked. Ridiculed to within an inch of your life. You should just take your ass that’s been handed to you, hang your head in shame, and limp off the stage.

Or to put it more simply, in words Mr. Friedman can relate to, just “Shut. The Fuck. Up.”

Last night I concluded 2 evenings’ worth of guest-lecturing and assignment-giving to a class of high schoolers. The class was taught by a friend of mine, and the subject was audio for films.

At first, the major concern was getting over my fear of public speaking, which according to surveys, most people actually rank higher than their fear of death. That turned out to be the easy part; 2 minutes or so into the lecture, the tremors and stammering had vacated.

The hard part came in the interactions afterward, where I was giving the assignment and helping the students along. The project was (I thought) a nice even mix of left-brain rigor and right-brain creativity that allowed multiple approaches and let kids show their differing strengths. But I soon ran into the realization that some kids were far advanced, got it right away, and took it and ran … while others were left in the dust, laboring just to get the basics. The latter part was, honestly, a little frustrating. I realized I was going to have to summon some inner reservoir of patience that I wasn’t even sure I had in order to help these kids. That first night, I basically faked said patience as best I could and tried to absorb some of it from observing my friend.

I ran into a problem, also, with the “bright” kids, the ones who immediately got it. As I observed them working, I noticed some very creative and astute approaches being taken, and I couldn’t help singling them out and holding up their work as an example to their classmates. But then came the question: When does praise like this cross the line into favoritism? How does it make the other kids feel about their own work in comparison?

Going home after that first night, with my Ipod on shuffle, Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2″ came on. Gee, how poignant. I thought about how easy it would be to become one of those tyrannical “thought-controlling” teachers the song decries. It happens, I suspect, *very easily*, usually without the teacher even realizing.

By the second class, some of these concerns had abated. My friend gave me some advice about the praise issue: Don’t be afraid to dispense it, but spread it evenly — find something in every student’s work to praise, and also give constructive criticism no matter what. Then another interesting scenario presented itself: I was helping one of the kids who was really struggling, going laboriously over every step, surprising myself with my own patience level, when I realized a pattern in the way she was relating to me. She kept asking, am I doing this okay? Do you think this is right? Over and over, enough that I realized she was motivated to do the assignment mainly by the desire to get my approval — not (primarily, at least) because she wanted to do well on her own terms. This struck me as a Very Bad Thing, a wrong-headed habit to let a student fall into.

To clarify: I didn’t take it as one of those dangerous teacher-idolization scenarios. I could just tell that she’d internalized, over the course of her schooling, the idea that she was there to conform to her teachers’ expectations & to do things by rote without thought given to her own role in them, or the value of the assignments in themselves. To just please the teacher & get good grades, so she can keep them off her back. Which makes the assignment, in my mind, nothing more than busywork.

I called time-out on the project and explained that I wanted her to be the judge of her own work, to do it because she took an interest in it, not because some authority figure was looming over her. I don’t know how deeply it registered, but it seemed to take away some of her anxiety.

Before I got into all this, I’d read a book by Derrick Jensen called “Walking on Water” which detailed his philosophy on teaching, gleaned from years of giving writing instruction to college kids as well as prisoners at a maximum-security institution. The major lesson I took away from the book is that a teacher should not see, as their primary job, the instilling of blind obedience in students (which, sadly, I’d say is the attitude taken by many if not most teachers as they help prepare kids for a life of obeisant wage slavery,) but instead, to help each student become Who They Are.

Which is all fine and dandy, I thought, when you’re teaching creative writing, Derrick — but how do you help a person find their core essence through something like chemistry, algebra, or I dunno, audio for films? You know, the more “prosaic” [ha ha] stuff?

Now I get that this directive stands at all times, and applies to any subject. Being a fair and helpful, rather than damaging, teacher of any kind takes perpetual vigilance and self-examination. And I’ve got lots of respect for anybody who can do it (like my friend.)

The best part of the experience came when, 10 minutes before wrap-up, a student gave me an unsolicited compliment:

“Thanks for helping us step up our game, James.”

Wow. Effing sweet. That was, like, the best thing anyone could’ve said. It means I was helping this kid do something he wanted to do, rather than force-feeding him unwanted knowledge and unquestioning obedience. Awesome. Worth far more to me, ultimately, than the paycheck.

Taken near Crescent City, CA, mid-September.

I’m becoming increasingly convinced by a certain model of social relations which has recently come to my attention, which posits that American culture in general (and even Civilization writ large) mirrors the dynamics of an abusive relationship.

It’s too big to really go into here, but the gist is that the abusers run the show, and they generally base the legitimacy of their rule, ironically enough, upon the fact that there are other, worse abusers out there in the world, from whom the rest of us (the victims) need to be protected. This “protection racket” presents us with only the false choice between an unfamiliar, savage, and too-frightening-to-contemplate form of abuse, generally perpetrated by people with non-white skin, and the more benevolent, refined, civilized form of abuse with which we are familiar. In the classic way that an abuser tries to prevent his victim from recognizing alternatives to such an artificially-limited scenario, the culture tells us that this is the only way. “We need bullies to protect us — from the other, scarier bullies. If we don’t do it to them first, they will certainly do it to us. And you, in the meantime, will stay quiescent and meek, and don’t you dare question the abusers’ prerogative, or the abuse will be turned upon you.” (Never mind that it always is, no matter what you do.)

The metaphor of domestic violence extends, for me at least, way beyond just the political sphere and into the general fabric of our culture. It is especially obvious in the way in which it pervades our attitudes toward the natural world and toward women — even when no “outright” violence is being performed. And I’ve realized that I now have but one basic question, the answer to which will determine my stance toward a given person or group — the one question that’s most important to me in determining who I’ll side with, who I’ll support, who I’ll enter into a relationship with, the one question which nullifies all other considerations of political party, religion, etc. And the question is:

Are you a bully?

Or are you perhaps an otherwise kind person who has sided with the bullies, either unwittingly due to the mystificatory cloak of righteousness they wear to fool you, or due to a conscious acceptance of the terms of the Protection Racket?

If you’re in the former category, I no longer have time for you. I accept your incorrigibility. It’s not my responsibility to attempt to cure you of your pathologies, and to attempt to do so only perpetuates the same situation. My only obligation is to stop you, or at the very least get the hell away from you.

If you’re in the latter camp … all I can say is, I hope the “abusive dynamic” model will gain popularity. And maybe it’s my selective perception, but I see it popping up fairly frequently now. Here’s an excerpt from a great article I came across today, written by an advocate for victims of domestic abuse:

… We are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.

As victims we can’t stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can’t seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating.

You have to be an intrepid (or foolhardy) soul to venture into the snakepit that is Bill O’Reilly’s program with an opposing viewpoint. Those who dismiss him as a mere egomaniacal blowhard (which he is, but not merely so) and thus an easy debate, are dangerously underestimating someone I consider to be a Master Sophist and a Master Baiter (ha ha.)

I mean, to anyone with a understanding of the usual underhanded rhetorical & debating tactics (straw-manning, “Have you stopped beating your wife lately, yes or no?” -type questions,) O’Reilly is a hack. But his utter shamelessness in employing these cheap tricks often makes him, to the average person who’s not hip to them, apparently the winner in his fixed fights.

I’ve seen intelligent, articulate people — some of whom I’ve met and spent time with — go on his show, only to crash and burn. And it is painful, knowing the wisdom and insight these folks possess, to watch them get somehow unwittingly sucked into the trap. But one of these people, Geoffrey Millard of Iraq Vets Against the War, has apparently mastered the art of flustering O’Reilly by sidestepping his rhetorical traps and staying on message. And it’s a beautiful thing to watch.

Watch and learn …

My friends Audrey and Stan made this:

This is video of Stan that I shot last year:

[Jena mayor Murphy] McMillin has insisted that his town is being unfairly portrayed as racist—an assertion the mayor repeated in an interview with Richard Barrett, the leader of the Nationalist Movement, a white supremacist group based in Learned, Miss., who asked McMillin to “set aside some place for those opposing the colored folks.” [emphasis mine]

[FULL STORY]

Wow. Do we even need satire these days, really?

I grew up and spent the majority of my life in Louisiana, and I can report that this kind of doublethink — while entertaining enough as a kind of unintentional self-parody — is depressingly commonplace. Very few people, it seems, want to consciously assume the label of racist any more, but very few, also, want to make the kinds of revolutions in thought & action that would belie that characterization. They want it both ways — the appearance of tolerance and the reality of white supremacy.

A commentator on Huffington Post laid it out: Whenever something like this happens, the white folks all chime the same refrain: “We’re not racist, we’re just decent, churchgoing, God-fearing folks” … (who probably — if they’re anything like the white churchgoers in my hometown — would immediately eject any black person who tried to join in their worship service. This was the policy at the church I went to as a kid.) They always defensively throw up their Christianity like - ahem - a white sheet to protect them from charges of bigotry.

I hope this doesn’t apply to anyone here, but if anyone anywhere was thinking of giving the white residents of Jena, the D.A., et al, the benefit of the doubt on this, I would entreat them to lay off the funny cigarettes for awhile. These Jena-ites protesting their innocence to the media are absolutely, unequivocally, f**king racists — the only difference between them and the Klan is that they’re too cowardly to don the actual white sheet and pointy hat.

From Daily KOS:

Dave Cline will someday, in a better world, stand recognized as one of the great figures in the history of the United States since the Second World War. After a tour in Vietnam as a grunt, where he was shot and shot at others, he returned to become an early member and leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

Through tireless organizing and dramatic events like Operation Dewey Canyon III, where hundreds of vets threw their medals on the Capitol steps, and the Winter Soldier Hearings into war crimes committed during the occupation of Vietnam, VVAW did much to finally doom the U.S. government’s murderous assault on the heroic people of Vietnam.

I have here on my desk a 1969 flier from SDS (the original one, not version 2.0) on the GI Revolt. It’s an interview with Dave and another vet, fresh out of uniform and into the anti-war struggle. I am reminded by it to recommend that everyone reading this check out the recent documentary “Sir, No Sir!” Dave is featured in it as a young vet and as a present-day fighter against the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

And this last role is where Dave truly became great. He stayed active in VVAW right up to the present day, but also joined another organization called Veterans For Peace, which united vets from all eras in an essentially pacifist oppostion to war, military recruitng, US aggression abroad and the neglect of those who had served in the armed forces.

Dave Cline was in his first term as president of Vets For Peace when the attack on the World Trade Center took place. He helped guided the small group through a period of war fever and jingoism in this country and growing concern as the Bush/Cheney regime prepared to attack Iraq–and did. Dave presided over the rapid, severalfold growth of VFP and its conversion into a dynamic and leading force against the war. He helped forge a tight alliance with Military Families Speak Out and birth the Bring them Home Now! campaign. The handful of young men and women just back from Iraq who initiated Iraq Veterans Against the War consulted with Dave on a near-daily basis and grew to become the most dynamic element in the alliance.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/15/184813/758

It wasn’t too hard to tell, in my very brief time in Dave Cline’s orbit (during the Veterans’ Gulf March,) that his health was less than optimal. But also, he was quite evidently animated by an uncommon vibrancy of spirit & sense of purpose that made his physical frailties seem immaterial. The photo above, to my mind, seems just perfectly emblematic of that.

The thing I remember most was how excited he was to take in the energy of the Black Baptist churches we attended, and how he did his best to transmit that energy back to us in the form of “Hallelujah”’s and “Amen”’s and “Can I get a witness?” As strange as it may have sounded coming from a white guy from Jersey, none of us doubted his sincerity, and we all were enlivened by it.

History will remember him as a brave and righteous voice of conscience. It was a privilege to have shared just a small portion of the road he walked.

A female friend just wrote a great post. We’re both in the same industry, characterized by technology-fixation and near-total male domination. While I despise the prevailing boys’ club atmosphere, being in possession of the preferred genitalia has provided me with the luxury of gender-camouflage, and a level of automatic acceptance that my friend has to fight tooth and nail for. She writes:

As women’s interests branch into what were traditional male hobby zones (gear-headedness, technical activities, electronics & gaming to name a few), we see more women in related industries. Where blatant sexism in the workplace is tempered, the bitch or hoe scenario continues to rear its ugly head between professional and aprofessional contexts. Allow me to generally define this scenario:

As in many competitive industries, networking and contacts are rather necessary for success. Not to mention that it is nice to have friendships with members of the opposite sex with whom you share common interests and professional goals. It is my observation that there are still many guys who can’t help but lump women into 3 categories: 1. unattractive 2. bitch 3. hoe

If said guys find you attractive, especially if single, you will find yourself in a no-win situation.

The awkward inevitability is that in your efforts to reach out, make friends, and/or assimilate, you will be cornered. You will be (romantically or sexually) propositioned (usually directly), at which point, you decide your fate as either a bitch or a hoe. Reject or discourage and you are a ‘bitch’ for showing general interest and getting his hopes up. Embrace sexual desires for someone/s who share a common career path, and you become a ‘hoe’ who is going to be taken even less seriously than before.

The problem is these particular men are unaccepting of diplomatic attempts to side step this categorization. They simply cannot think of women they find attractive as colleagues or peers. They don’t appreciate that it is not only men who must use charisma and affiliative friendliness to form political and personal bonds.

Addendum:
Some tell-tale signs (from my experience) that you are dealing with the 3-category guy:
1. He doesn’t tend to have non-sexually driven contact with women
2. If you smile, he seems to take it as definitive flirtation
3. If you make direct eye contact, he seems to take it as definitive flirtation
4. You feel like you’d have to wear a burka to prevent mixed signals
5. He indicates that you have misled him
6. He seems oblivious and/or doesn’t attend or listen when you speak

Reminds me of my friend Audrey’s words in another recent blog post over at Feral Scholar:

It doesn’t surprise me that people use gender slurs, or equate women and their bodies with all that is bad, and men and their testicles with strength of character and all that is good. Our culture pours these thoughts into our heads …

It’s filled with derogatory words for women who are sexually active, and for women who aren’t, and for women we wish would be more sexually active, and for women who walk around in public without looking sexually attractive enough, for women who speak when they should be making themselves more sexually attractive, and for women who haven’t learned yet that speaking makes them less sexually attractive.

These words don’t have male counterparts, because we don’t have a need, in our culture, to keep men in their place … Women’s value is, at the end of the day, based on their potential as objects for men’s sexual gratification.

http://stangoff.com/?p=523

Of course, within my industry, this kind of cogent critique of boys’ club culture serves merely as proof of women’s “hypersensitivity” & inability to “hack it with the big boys.”