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Friday, September 26, 2003

A choice blurb from the Empire of Kitsch, thanks to WorkingForChange's quote of the day:

BRIT HUME: When things go badly, as many people would feel they have been in Iraq with the continuing casualties and struggles and difficulties, do you ever doubt?

GEORGE BUSH: I don't think they're going badly. I mean, obviously I think they're going badly for the soldiers who lost their lives, and I weep for that person and their family. But no, I think we're making good progress.

posted by Jenny at 5:15 AM |

Edward Said has died, a key voice in mindfully unpacking the clashes between Islamic and Judeo-Christian cultures, both perceived and real, and a great loss to the global scholastic community. Here are some of his thoughts on "the orient" and resistance in the Arab world...

Update: More on Said from The Nation...

posted by Jenny at 5:08 AM |

If you can read German, then check out this interview with Dixie Chick Martie Maguire and Spiegel magazine (there's an English translation here--I'm just wary of translations into translations, so be forewarned). She says some things critical of the country music industry in the United States...and it makes me happy to realize that, on the periphery of the commodified bullshit that has steadily risen since country embraced kitsch in the sixties and went on to become "mainstream", people still hold to the integrity and social inquiry that drove people like Johnny Cash in the first place. Even if it's only a handful of them.

For more gutsy stuff from the Chicks, check out this recent letter from Natalie Maines. Via Hesiod, who thinks that she should just go ahead and get a blog of her own...

posted by Jenny at 4:57 AM |

Two from the Guardian: While even a CIA-led survey of Iraq apparently turns up no evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction (dum-dum-DUM!), the country itself slips into further turmoil with the assassination of a U.S.-appointed, female member of the Iraqi governing council and the bombing of NBC's Baghdad headquarters. Remember folks, we can still pat ourselves on the backs--liberated terror sure beats the alternatives!

posted by Jenny at 4:47 AM |

Totalitarianism imitates art, or something like that.

NEW YORK -- While privacy worries are frustrating the Pentagon's plans for a far-reaching database to combat terrorism, a similar project is quietly taking shape with the participation of more than a dozen states -- and $12 million in federal funds. The database project, created so states and local authorities can track would-be terrorists as well as criminal fugitives, is being built and housed in the offices of a private company but will be open to some federal law enforcers and perhaps even US intelligence agencies.

Dubbed Matrix, the database has been in use for a year and a half in Florida, where police praise the crime-fighting tool as nimble and exhaustive. It cross-references the state's driving records and restricted police files with billions of pieces of public and private data, including credit and property records.

But privacy advocates, officials in two states, and a competing data vendor have branded Matrix as playing fast and loose with Americans' private details.

They say that Matrix houses restricted police and government files on colossal databases that sit in the offices of Seisint Inc., a Boca Raton, Fla., company founded by a millionaire who police say flew planeloads of drugs into the country in the early 1980s.

"It's federally funded, it's guarded by state police but it's on private property? That's very interesting," said Christopher Slobogin, a University of Florida law professor and expert in privacy issues.

Matrix was initially intended to track terrorists, as was the Pentagon's Terrorism Information Awareness project, which sparked a congressional uproar and got watered down.

As a dozen more states pool their criminal and government files with Florida's, Matrix databases are expanding in size and power. Organizers hope to coax more states to join, touting its usefulness in everyday policing.

Federal and state law enforcement officials in Massachusetts could not confirm whether the Bay State was in the program.

It gives investigators access to personal data, such as boat registrations and property deeds, without the government possibly violating the 1974 Privacy Act by owning the files.

Texas and California, bless them, have backed out on privacy issues, and even ChoicePoint (who, if I am not mistaken, purchased those millions of intelligence files on Latin American citizens) won't bid on the deal, citing similar problems. Hmm...

posted by Jenny at 4:40 AM |

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

With dirt from the Daily Kos, skippy notes that the weird thing about the California recall isn't that it's going forward...but that Darryl Issa is urging Republicans to vote "no"!

posted by Jenny at 6:45 AM |

Sex and cultural difference

Interesting points...whether you agree or disagree, it's worth mulling over, even if they seem somewhat general.

As an outsider to American society -- I grew up in Belgium and have lived in many countries -- I wondered if these attitudes reflected cultural differences. I later talked with Europeans, Brazilians, and Israelis who had been at the meeting. We all felt somewhat out of step with the sexual attitudes of our American colleagues. Did they believe such sexual preferences -- even though they were consensual and completely nonviolent -- were too wild and "kinky" for the serious business of maintaining a marriage and raising a family? It was as if sexual pleasure and eroticism that strayed onto slightly outré paths of fantasy and play-particularly games involving aggression and power-must be stricken from the repertoire of responsible adults in committed relationships.

What struck us was that America, in matters of sex as in much else, was a goal-oriented society that prefers explicit meanings and "plain speech" to ambiguity and allusion. Many American therapists encourage clarity and directness, which they tend to associate with honesty and openness: "If you want to make love to your wife/husband, why don't you tell her/him exactly what you want?" These professionals in large part "solve" the conflict between the drabness of the familiar and the excitement of the unknown by advising patients to renounce their fantasies in favor of more reasonable "adult" sexual agendas.

...

Ironically, some of America's best features -- the belief in equality, consensus-building, fairness, and tolerance -- can, in the bedroom, result in very boring sex. Sexual desire and good citizenship don't play by the same rules. Sexual excitement is often politically incorrect; it often thrives on power plays, role reversals, imperious demands, and seductive manipulations. American therapists, shaped by egalitarian ideals, are often challenged by these contradictions.

In Europe, I see more of an emphasis on complementarity -- the appeal of difference -- rather than strict gender equality. This, it seems to me, makes European women feel less conflict about being both smart and sexy. They can enjoy their sexual power, even in the workplace, without feeling they're forfeiting their right to be taken seriously. Susanna, for example, is a Spanish woman with a high-level job at an international company in New York. She sees no contradiction between her work and her desire to express her sexual power-even among her colleagues. "If compliments are given graciously, they don't offend.We're still men and women who are attracted to one another, and not robots," she says.

...

It amazes me how willing people are to experiment sexually outside their relationships, yet how tame and puritanical they are with their partners. Many of my patients describe their domestic sex lives as devoid of excitement and eroticism, yet they are consumed by a richly imaginative sex life beyond domesticity -- affairs, pornography, prostitutes, cybersex, or feverish daydreams. Having denied themselves freedom of imagination at home, they go outside to reimagine themselves, often with random strangers. Yet the commodification of sex can actually hinder our capacity for fantasy, contaminating our sexual imagination. Furthermore, pornography and cybersex are ultimately isolating, disconnected from relations with a real, live other person.

A fundamental conundrum is that we seek a steady, reliable anchor in our partner, at the same time we seek a transcendent experience that allows us to soar beyond our ordinary lives. The challenge, then, for couples and therapists, is to reconcile the need for what's safe and predictable with the wish to pursue what's exciting, mysterious, and awe-inspiring.

Commodified sex...commodities would find their way into the discussion, wouldn't they?

posted by Jenny at 6:36 AM |

This guy is fun. If only all of us were so productive--and blessed with gas money--when pissed off.

posted by Jenny at 6:28 AM |

Monday, September 22, 2003

Supply Side Jesus

Now this is priceless...via Jeanne d'Arc.

posted by Jenny at 4:16 PM |

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: The Moviemercial

And now for the second...for those of you who have been watching the steady encroachment of branding in society,
this one should come as no surprise. Somewhere, Baudrillard is nodding.

Just read it.

posted by Jenny at 4:07 PM |

Ashleigh, taking a break from the finishing touches of her thesis, has sent us two articles from the NYT. The first deals with women's rights, and the groups whose funding the White House has cut because of their halting payments to the Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium. The reasoning? Supposedly, several of the affiliated organizations are linked to abortions in China--but as Nicholas Kristof explains, cutting funding to them for their "immoral" ways may have disastrous consequences for women in other corners of the world...

posted by Jenny at 12:33 PM |

I'm back...and I've got posts! Will get them up here tonight--stay tuned!

posted by Jenny at 8:32 AM |