Category: Politics

I’m sick of the term “politically correct” being used in the negative. The implication is that the person with the politically correct viewpoint doesn’t actually believe in their own position, but is just concerned with being sensitive, hip, diverse, inclusive, anti-establishment, or whatever. While there are people who take positions on things for the wrong reasons (e.g. to be on some bandwagon), the fact that a proposition is currently considered politically correct has nothing whatsoever to do with the truth value of that proposition .

It may be politically correct to suggest, for example, that the spotted owl is entitled to its habitat, and we all may be sick to death of politically correct bandwagoneering, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with deciding whether the spotted owl is in fact entitled to its habitat. Casting the issue as “politically correct” is a way of steering the discussion away from the issue itself and onto the character of the person holding the viewpoint. Political correctness has nothing to do with the price of tea in China (or spotted owls, or Nestle boycotts…)

Same with the way many right-wing commentators use the word “liberal” not as a description of political leanings, but as though it were an epithet to be hurled, an insult, an adjective just shy of “turd,” to be prefaced with adjectives like “bleeding heart,” “fuzzy,” etc. By casting “liberal” and “politically correct” as insults, discussion is tipped into the realm of name calling rather than issue analysis, and people are put on the defensive. It’s a technique for logjamming the dialog.

Sometimes “politically correct” is simply “correct” (and sometimes not).

Three of our grad students are in Iraq for a while, reporting on post-invasion conditions. I set up a Movable Type blog for them, where they’re posting words and images daily.

“I guess if Ari had to rebel, being a Republican is better than being on drugs, but not by much.”

—Alan Fleischer , Ari Fleischer’s father, in The Advocate

Oddly, this much-linked-to piece seems to have gone offline. The same quote appeared in Newsweek, but isn’t online there either. Hmmm.

Stirring campaign announcement speech by Howard Dean. The more I learn about him, the more I like. And more than any candidate I’ve known of, Dean is using the collaborative power of the internet to build support. All politicians and candidates have had web sites, but Dean has a blog and a meetup space. More importantly, he’s somehow managed to generate more backing funds in a shorter period of time than analysts figured he’d be able to. There’s a lot to his platform, bu what seems to be lighting fires is his blunt declaration that we’re not just living through a standard right-wing pendulum swing — the country has been taken over by extremists who don’t represent what most Americans believe America stands for.

Gives me hope. Take it back.

In an interview with UC Berkeley’s Public Affairs dept., J-School prof Michael Pollan throws water on McDonald’s announcement of intentions to cut back on antibiotics in beef. Pollan distinguishes between antibiotics used to spur growth and those given to fight disease. McDonald’s has only agreed to cut back on antibiotics for growth.

What McDonald’s has done is say that they will favor suppliers that are not using antibiotics for growth promotion. Now they didn’t say anything about the other use of antibiotics. “Prevent disease outbreaks” is key. In that sentence is the license to continue including antibiotics in the feed every day. The other question that comes to mind: If you’re using antibiotics both for growth promotion and to control disease, how do you know which is which?

Something I didn’t know before reading this: Cattle are now ready for slaughter in 14 months, rather than in three years. Good thing, too, because they couldn’t live much longer on account of their livers being shot full of holes by an acidic diet of corn, rather than the mellow grass they’ve evolved to eat. That’s why we don’t eat beef liver anymore – 40% – 60% of beef livers are full of abcesses by the time the cattle are 14 months old.

This just makes me so, so sad. I really do need to read Fast Food Nation.

Stirring piece at The Email Activist summarizing the story thus far re: absence of WMDs in Iraq, and the total public apathy about it. We bombed the hell out of a country and were wrong about the reasons why we did it. And no one seems to care. This is serious stuff, but you’d think from watching the news that Lacie Petersen was more important/interesting than 3,000 dead innocent Iraqis.

The piece goes on to connect our collective apathy to right-wing media control. A recent CNN piece on the absence of WMDs stepped through a long list of reasons why we haven’t found a smoking gun, but did not even mention the possiblity that there were no WMDS to begin with. Feed the public a steady diet of subtle manipulation and this is what you get:

A recent CNN-USA Today poll revealed that nearly 80% of Americans believe that the war was justified even in the absence of WMDs.

Sums up with an interesting example/argument showing why claims that the media is left-manipulated are false:

The Radical Right has been railing for over a decade against the biases of the “liberal media.”  But if they truly believed their own claims, then shouldn’t they be protesting with us against the loosening of media ownership regulations?  Shouldn’t they be shaking in their jackboots at the prospect of a monopolized liberal media?  Ah…but on this subject all is silent from the bad boys of talk radio and trash TV.  They seem to know the truth about who pays them and why.

In The Chicago Tribune (free registration required):

“The federal government is America’s biggest polluter and the Department of Defense is the government’s worst offender. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, unexploded ordnance waste can be found on 16,000 military ranges across the U.S. and more than half may contain biological or chemical weapons. In total, the Pentagon is responsible for more than 21,000 potentially contaminated sites and, according to the EPA, the military may have poisoned as much as 40 million acres, a little larger than Florida. That result might be considered an act of war if committed by a foreign power. ”

Responding to suggestions that Dubya’s administration is more an extension of the Reagan cabinet than of his own daddy’s admin, Reagan’s son Ron Jr. says “My father crapped bigger ones than George Bush.” Such eloquence, such a lovely homage to history and family pride.

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What I hate about the thought of war being a permanent human condition is that it forces me to think of it as normal, and I don’t want to.

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A bit after the fact now, but the Iraqi Information Minister‘s spinning made Bill O’Reilly’s look like child’s play, and put Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field to shame.