This too, shall pass

"Do you mind if I step out to smoke while you set up the next board?" Hip Gamer asked as Never Too Old started pulling out a new map and arranging mini-figs on it.

"No, go ahead. It'll be a moment," Never Too Old replied.

Hip Gamer and Something Catchy went outside while Sam and Curly milled around getting drinks and chatting with Never Too Old. Walking Hyperbole had left earlier that evening to rescue Adorable Nurse from a flat tire, so Curly was filling in for him.

I stayed in my chair, feet tucked under me to try and keep them warm. The weather had turned suddenly cold and wet that day, and the house was protesting the abuse. Pulling out my iPhone-turned-iTouch, I first checked in on Facebook and then scanned over Twitter to see what was what. As I idly made my way up the series of tweets an announcement that President Obama would soon be addressing the nation caught my eye.

That's strange, I thought to myself. Why would he be having a press conference this late on a Sunday night?

About that time, Hip Gamer and Something Catchy returned and took their places at the table, and the quest to rid the temple of invading Gnolls resumed.

My character (Moira, not Annie) had just buried an arrow in the shoulder of a Gnoll when the sound of Mario catching a mushroom filled the air. All eyes turned to Hip Gamer as he pulled out his phone to check the text message.

"Holy crap," Hip Gamer said, surprise plain upon his face. "I'm glad Rapier Wit keeps an eye on the news. Osama bin Laden's dead!"

"I had wondered why the President was holding a press conference..." I mumbled to myself, pulling my phone back out and accessing my list of political blogs.

Everyone babbled atop one another as more details of the raid emerged. Poor Never Too Old kept trying to push us through the encounter so we could wrap up for the night, but I at least was distracted from the game.

It was difficult to wrap my brain around the idea that bin Laden was dead. 9/11 occurred my senior year of high school, and in many ways was the defining moment when I entered into the adult world. That day marked the first time when I could truly understand the implications of a major event. Nearly ten years later, the man responsible was finally taken down.

The euphoria of the moment startled me.

It is a bizarre moment to realize that you are celebrating the death of another human being. But I also recognized that I would have felt that same euphoria had I heard that we had captured bin Laden, as opposed to having killed him. It wasn't that he was dead--it was that that particular chapter of our history was now, hopefully, closed.

An end of an era, if you will.

It's all Star Trek's fault

"I hate driving in Dallas. Assholes," grumbled Sunshine. Long strands of his hair were covered in oil and sawdust, sticking out every which way. It made him look a little like a mad scientist.

Several of us were sitting on the edge of the stage, injecting more caffeine and sugar into our systems on our break.

"Tell me about it," I replied. "Of course, my Dad would consider it a walk in the park. He went to high school in L.A. after all, and learned to drive there. Though, he says it wasn't nearly as bad back then in the sixties as it is today." I then proceeded to take another swig of Mountain Dew in a vain hope of not feeling quite so bloody tired.

"That explains it!" exclaimed Props Guru, looking up from where he was carving foam a little further down the stage.

"That explains what?" I asked, looking at my other coworkers and seeing they were just as confused as I was.

"You. I've been trying to figure you out for over a year. You grew up in Kansas, went to a Baptist school, and yet your whole outlook is incredibly liberal. I just knew there had to be something," Props Guru explained, long fingers flying about and emphasizing his words.

At the description of me as incredibly liberal. Audio Mentor had to suppress a laugh. I could tell. Honey, his eyes seemed to say. you are a moderate. Don't ever let them try to tell you otherwise.

Before I could say anything, however, Props Guru leaned forward, asking eagerly, "Your dad was a Californian hippie, wasn't he?"

For a brief moment, I considered setting him straight. As far as I knew my father was never an actual hippie, and he'd hated living in California. Dad couldn't wait to get back to Kansas.

But Props Guru looked so utterly pleased with himself.

With a bemused expression, I replied, "More of a biker, but yeah. I guess you could say that."

Sorry, Dad, I thought to myself. I don't have the time, patience, or heart to explain it's all Star Trek's fault.

My Brother's Keeper

By this point, I'm sure most of you have heard about the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona on Saturday which resulted in six dead and many more wounded. It's a horrific event, which is something I feel every person, no matter their creed, can agree on.

In the wake of the tragedy, there's been an instant, visceral response from both of the main ideologies in America. The left wing immediately started coming out decrying the violent political rhetoric which the right has been increasingly using over the past three years. The right wing's instant reaction was to reply that this man is obviously unhinged and how dare they presume that the right had anything to do with it. If anything his history suggests that he's a left-wing nutjob.


Watching it unfold, all I could think of was Cain's line to God in Genesis 4:9, when God is wondering where Abel is: "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?"

To me, that question goes to the heart of the differences between the right and the left. In any incident, no matter how great or how horrible, the ideology of the right says that they are not responsible for their brother, but only themselves. The ideology of the left would say that they are responsible not only for themselves, but for the life and conditions of their brother as well, and everyone should help whether they want to or not. For example, look at their views on things like market regulations, food stamps, climate control, gun control, unemployment, affirmative action... the list goes on and on.

With market regulations, the right insists that because everyone is looking out for themselves, people will act in their self-interest and won't do anything too detrimental, as in the end other self-interested people will react and make the instigator's business fail. The left replies that the other self-interested people wouldn't have enough power to truly affect the instigator, and so to prevent market failures regulations need to be in place to prevent people breaking the system. And back and forth and back and forth...

With food stamps/welfare, the right insists that by helping out those less fortunate, they're just encouraging those using welfare not to go back to work or improve their lives, and why should they have to pay for someone else's mistakes. The left replies that sometimes Bad Things Happen, and not having a safety net there to catch their brother when they fall will result in further Bad Things such as increased crime and poverty, and so You Should Help Them No Matter What. And back and forth and back and forth...

With climate control... well, you get the picture. Obviously, their views on these subjects have been simplified a bit to fit within the context (and length) of this post. Still, the underlying theme of their arguments, regardless of the topic, seems to run thusly:

Right: No matter what is going on, I am responsible only for myself. I do not want or need interference from anyone around me, especially the government, and I do not wish to involve myself in anyone else's problem, unless it affects me personally.

Left: Not only am I responsible for myself, but as a person I am also responsible for the common welfare of my fellow humans. As such, I need to make sacrifices and involve myself in the lives of those around me, regardless of their effect on me personally.

Of course, in real life people aren't generally this black and white, with people crossing over to one side or the other on various issues. But, again, we're talking about the underlying ideas.

And we can see it playing out in the discussion of rhetoric in the wake of the shooting.

The most obvious example that will get play again and again is Sarah Palin's website that had posted a map with gun crosshairs over various districts that Democratic representatives, including Rep. Giffords. Honestly, I doubt Ms. Palin ever intended or dreamed that someone may take that to mean that a person should go out and actually shoot one of the people listed on the map. And, to be honest, I doubt that her map had anything to do with why Jared Loughner attempted to assassinate Rep. Giffords.

However.

It very easily could have been. As Rep. Steve Driehaus stated last March (after then-Minority Leader Boehner suggested Driehaus would be a "dead man" for his vote on health care), "It doesn't really matter  the way you meant it, nor the way I accept. It's how the least sane person in my district accepts it."

It saddens me greatly that there are so many people who are unwilling to acknowledge that their words and actions, however indirectly, have consequences. If you tell people that a portion of the country (progressives) is a cancer that's trying to kill us all, that environmentalists are the same as jihadists, that having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and to not retreat but instead, reload, sooner or later the odds are someone is going to take you seriously.

I don't hold with the idea that we should restrict people's ability to express their frustrations, even if it uses violent imagery. I do, however, believe that if you use it, you need to be prepared to take responsibility for your words.

I don't blame Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck for what happened. I don't blame Barrack Obama, or Keith Olbermann either. But I would exhort everybody, no matter their faith, creed, or ideology, to truly think about the power of their words.

Because I do believe I am my brother's keeper.

Wacky Shenanigans

I forgot to mention this yesterday, what with all of the talk about being classy, but the 112th Congress started up this week. Why is this important? Well, aside from the obvious that our legislative body now has a Republican majority in the House, a bit of amusing going-ons happened on Wednesday.

You see, dear readers. the Republicans in the House of Representatives decided that they would begin the 112th Congress by reading the Constitution aloud. There's been some arguments throughout the blogosphere as to whether or not this was a waste of time or a wonderful show of patriotism, and that is neither here nor there. No, what's amusing (to me at least) is that on the very day that the Republican majority insisted on reading the Constitution in full (except for all of that embarrassing stuff about 3/5ths of a person in regards to taxes), two Republican representatives violated the Constitution by casting votes without actually getting sworn in.

From the Huffington Post:

Two House Republicans have cast votes as members of the 112th Congress, but were not sworn in on Wednesday, a violation of the Constitution on the same day that the GOP had the document read from the podium.

The Republicans, incumbent Pete Sessions of Texas and freshman Mike Fitzpatrick, missed the swearing in because they were at a fundraiser in the Capitol Visitors Center. The pair watched the swearing-in on television from the Capitol Visitors Center with their hands raised.

...

House ethics rules forbid fundraising in the Capitol.

Glad to know that fulfilling the job they were hired to do is so much more important than raising money for their camp--oh. Never mind.

The Complexity of Screen Names

There's a post over on GeekMom that has got the poor hamster back up and running the wheels turning in my head. To summarize for those of you who hate clicking on an embedded link within a post to find out what in the seven hills the author is talking about, Ellen Henderson blogged about how she doesn't understand why women would choose to include the word "mom" (or some variation of it) in their screen names.

Because I've put so much thought into my own choices, I’m always curious about what’s behind other people’s screen names. When I became a mother a few years back and started visiting parenting websites and message boards, I was surprised by the number of people — well, the number of women, to be precise — who chose screen names based on their status as mothers. “ProudMommy” and “Mom_of_three” and “Lucysmom” were common configurations, and while I understood the enthusiasm behind them — we were, after all, connecting through parenting sites — I was a bit taken aback by these names. And later, when I noticed similar handles on groups and websites totally unrelated to parenting, I was, frankly, a little dismayed.

Maybe it means I’m a bad mother or a raging egoist, but I don’t identify myself primarily through my relationship with my child. I am delighted and proud to be his mom, but that’s not the entirety of who I am, and I just can’t see myself using his name or my position as “mommy” to project myself into the online world. Neither, by the way, would I use my child’s photo as my profile picture on Facebook — he isn’t me, and I am something more complex than just the person who gave birth to him.

And then, in the comments, there's a continued discussion over those poor deluded souls who have no other source of identification except through their husband or children. [/sarcasm]

This relates back into my ongoing irritation with much of the feminism movement (or, at least, the aspects I've had personal exposure to). Allow me to explain; if you look along the right side of this blog, you will notice links to such sites as Sociological Images and Historiann, which often reflect upon the role of women and the ongoing fight for equality they have. I follow them because I find many of the ideas they bring up to be interesting and thought-provoking. However, sites along these lines also frequently frustrate me.

There is an underlying assumption amongst many feminists, both online and in real life (because, trust me, I was trained and mentored by two raging feminists) that if you find joy and satisfaction in things such as cooking, homemaking, or children, then that means you are either a) uneducated, b) foolish, or c) a victim of society. Furthermore, if the choice you've made is to take care of your home and forgo a career, then you are a bad woman who is betraying the cause of equality for all women.

Please forgive the language, but bullshit.

I recognize and understand that the world is not an equal place--women are frequently pigeonholed as care-takers and men are thought of as unmanly if they choose to take an interest in their home and children. I realize that it is true that many women make less than their male counterparts in the work place. I have witnessed and even, shamefacedly, participated in perpetuating some of these problems.

However.

I do feel that it is okay to be a woman who stays home and takes care of children. I see nothing wrong with taking joy in one's house and being proud of one's children and husband. I do draw a certain sense of identity from my husband, and one day will likely do so with my children as well. I also draw a certain sense of identity from my friends, my parents, my writing, my reading, the schools I attended, the churches I've been a part of, and the theaters I've worked in. For some reason, many feminists look down upon women who choose to be caretakers, thus unintentionally encouraging the patriarchal belief that caretakers are less important than workers. Ms. Henderson mentions later in her post that she has no problem with the handle of "GeekMom" because it shows that she is something else other than "just a mom."

I doubt she would bat an eyelash at the screen-names of "Angel Cole," "Lighting Angel," or "Li'lBookWorm." The first is a character name I came up with a long time ago, the second is a reference to my love of theatre and angels, and the last is a description of my reading habits. That doesn't mean, however, that I identify myself only through said story, theater, angels, or books. It's one aspect of my personality. Just as, if and when the day comes when I have a child, "NewMommy!!!11!" would represent only one aspect of my personality. But because it is a reference to childcare, in her apparent worldview that means that I only identify myself through my children if that's my name.

In the end, what I'm trying to say is that I support the cause of women trying to make the world a better place for all people. I would love to see laws enacted that provided more and better opportunities for working parents to provide care for their children, or that people would be paid equally depending upon skill and ability, or that no one would bat an eyelash if little girls liked Star Wars or little boys wanted to dress up as Daphne from Scooby Doo for Halloween. I just wish that these same women would support people like me who want to make a happy home and (hopefully) focus on my children, without assuming I'm either too stupid, too lazy, or too co-dependent to do otherwise.

I am myself, no more, and no less.

From the "I felt like sharing" files....

It may or may not surprise you to know that I'm a little bit of a political junkie. There are approximately 8-10 political sites I keep track of every day, and another half-a-dozen that I check sporadically if I think they'll have something cogent to say on a particular topic. In addition, over half of the bloggers I follow will reference said political sites and give their interpretation of events, even if they're not primarily political blogs.

(It's amazing how many authors have an interest in politics. Just saying.)

As I'm sure most of you know, there's a pastor down in Florida by the name of Terry Jones who's been making noises about burning the Koran on 9/11, which has lead to a media frenzy giving him exactly what he wants--attention. Recently, he has indicated that he won't actually burn the Koran, first if the Park 51 project (aka the "Ground Zero Mosque") was stopped, and then later if he got a phone call from the president.

However, there is at least one group that says they don't believe that Terry Jones will go through with it--so they will. Meet Bob Old in Tennessee, who says that Terry Jones waffling shows he isn't "committed to the cause," and so he and his church will proceed and YouTube the whole event.

I'm pointing all of this out, to set up a comment from MA I read on TPM:

I remember being sent to monitor a tiny Ku Klux Klan rally in, of all places, Ann Arbor, when I was a stringer for the Detroit News in the early 1990s. Clearly they had chosen an avowedly liberal college town in the spirit of provocation in the hopes of getting some coverage. The editors told me that they didn't want to give the KKK any free press, but I should show up in case anything newsworthy happened.

...

I suspect editors still have similar policies in place about the Klan, but it's fascinating to me that they're willing to give Terry Jones's hate speech so much play. What has happened to the media environment that makes it possible for a fringe freak like this to get the media attention he so desperately craves, and without which he would have to close shop and find something else to do with his time? Why are media outlets unable to just ignore this guy like they ignored the Klan's transparent attempts at media manipulation. Being an editor still means deciding whose attempts at media manipulation will get play -- is this a symptom of the decline of editorial control in the internet era? Is this coverage being driven by shifts in the media environment that make it impossible to ignore any member of the lunatic fringe who might do something creepy enough to gain saturation coverage in the blogosophere? Is it a function of the shift toward focusing on the most sensational and polarizing figures in order to win ratings by catering to the kinds of excitement and indignation a figure like Jones incites? If so, are we going to see editors start reversing their long-standing policies about not catering to the Klan's media strategies? It's kind of depressing to see how this guy can make the media twitch and dance -- and the international media are, of course, eating it up, since it confirms so many international stereotypes about the US. Just how low do you have to go these days to get saturation cable coverage by outlets who clearly take pleasure in fuelling a productive spiral of incitement and indignation?

Obviously, MA was focused on the decline of editorial control which media outlets have. However, while reading it I found myself thinking that if the media had not given Terry Jones such intense attention, then Bob Old and his church wouldn't be holding a "Koran-burning Festival." Or, at least, the likelihood of it would be drastically reduced.

What do you think?




Editor: A person employed on a newspaper whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
--Elbert Hubbard