Tea Party

[purejuice]

The Tea Partiers are not, as I deduced from a previous NYT story, boomers out of work. There's a new NYT poll which explains who they are.

I am ready to consign them to the scrapheap of history I shall dub The Racist Backlash Against the 1965 Voting Rights Act That LBJ Said Would Last 50 Years. Five years to go. Buh-bye.

I must say, I think the blogosphere pundits' Gotcha, argue with every word uttered by every asshole on the planet, attitude, is counterproductive. Ignore them, deprive them of a venue, do not repeat or listen to what they say, and they will go away.

Comments

[panjianlien.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Depriving trolls of oxygen is very effective. Don't know why it is that Americans these days seem to feel that every fuckwit and assclown "deserves" discourse space.

And there's a difference between open discourse and entitlement. It's called discernment of worth.

An open discourse that actively strives to discern worth and pursue it can allow any idea but still get somewhere in the end.

Entitlement eats its own shit.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

ohhh grrrl.
i wanted to discuss feminism and the veil with you. i'm kind of exhausted now but i hope you will discourse upon it at greater length.
western feminism has a great deal to answer for. still, when i see pix of the women of RAWA being beaten by taliban thugs for -- whatever, for not wearing the veil, for learning to read and write -- i have to think that they're being beaten for not doing something that is rotten and fascist to the core.
and, i'm very interested in the frenchies' args on headscarves in the state schools.
finally, i do very much understand that there are many many points on which white people of good will should STFU. and the Ms feminists are just such an one.

[panjianlien.livejournal.com]

Mostly, my view on all forms of hijab is that it is complicated and I don't thoroughly understand it and I have been paying a fair bit of attention to Muslimah feminists for about 10 years now, since I discovered Fatima Mernissi.

In light of this, I feel obligated to resist the tendency, on the part (mostly) of Western non-Muslims, to decide that they know everything there is to know about it and what it is and what it means and whether it is Good or Bad For Women.

What I do know, and what history knows, is bad for women: not allowing them to be autonomous human beings with meaningful decision-making power in their own lives.

Including how and whether they wish to cover their bodies or clothe themselves.

There are people, male and female, on all sides of the hijab issue who are more than happy to deprive women of their autonomy. Some want to make sure women wear hijab. Some want to make sure they don't. Either is bullshit.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

what of fatima's should i read?

[panjianlien.livejournal.com]

The Veil and the Male Elite and Islam and Democracy, together, for starters.

After that, Dreams of Trespass and Scheherazade Goes West, also taken together.

The recent Les Sindbads marocaines, but I think it's only available in French.

And then anything else that appeals.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

oh yum. and yay. and thanks.

[the-macnab.livejournal.com]

Don't know why it is that Americans these days seem to feel that every fuckwit and assclown "deserves" discourse space.

Americans don't feel that every fuckwit and assclown deserves discourse space. I know that I'm preaching to the choir here, but we all know how hard it is to get a left-wing march, rally, cause et cetera covered in the media. It's the same phenomenon that we see in overseas coverage: you never heard anything out of Bolivia, say, until Morales was elected president, and then suddenly the NYT had relatively frequent stories about protests in the richer, whiter parts of the country.

My point is just that trying to explain the excessive coverage of the Tea Partiers through reference to the Interweb's "Gotcha" culture, without paying attention to the correspondence between the Tea Partiers' hatred of Obama and the people who own the country's hatred of Obama, misses much of the point.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

correspondence between the Tea Partiers' hatred of Obama and the people who own the country's hatred of Obama

not getting this. who are the people owning the country's hatred of obama? what does owning hatred mean? and what is the correspondence between that and tp's hatred of obama? gnomic, i'd call you!

[the-macnab.livejournal.com]

I meant the hatred that people who own the country feel toward Obama. Rich people, not to put too fine a point on it. The other half of the Republican Party.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

ah, thank you.