Wishful Thinking

2009-05-05T13:55:00.000-07:00

You Call This News?

Turns out Fox News manipulates its coverage by "cropping comments by progressives and Democratic political figures in a manner that misrepresents them."

Who would've thought?

PS: These are the same people who make big production out of slandering a President for his choice of burger condiment.

2009-04-22T05:48:00.001-07:00

So, at long last, torture has become part of the national conversation. Too bad the press would never talk about it when it was more relevant, but that does nothing to diminish the fact that we've got to have it out as a nation: how far do we want our military-intelligence program to go in our names?

A review of some notable news items:

The CIA waterboarded self-described 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 183 times in one month, March of 2003.
The NYTimes reports that a large consenus on torture regimes for the CIA was possible, largely because no one involved "investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate." For example, no one rummaged around to find out that the program they were modelling after "had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans." Nor did they look into the history of waterboarding long enough to learn that "waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition."
WaPo reports that "intelligence and military officials under the Bush administration began preparing to conduct harsh interrogations long before they were granted legal approval to use such methods--and weeks before the CIA captured its first high-ranking terrorism suspect."
And perhaps worst of all, McClatchy reports that "the Bush administration put relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime". A former senior U.S. intelligence official is quoted as saying, "'But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.'"

And that's to say nothing of these oldies-but-goodies:

A June 2007 piece in Salon demonstrates that psychologists and physicians were part of the effort to prolong the experience of torture.
A December 2008 piece in Vanity Fair quotes FBI Director Robert Mueller as saying that he is unaware of any attacks having been disrupted by what the administration was then calling "enhanced interrogation techniques."

It's clear that torture was a premeditated policy that originated from the highest levels of the Bush administration. And yet here are some of the responses coming from the loony Right:

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan went on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” to make the following comments about Obama administration's release of torture memos: “Some things in life need to be mysterious”; “Sometimes you need to just keep walking [as in, with blinders on]”; "It’s hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, oh, much good will come of that.”
Former VP Darth Vader went on Fox "News" to make the claim "that the interrogation methods were 'enormously valuable' in thwarting terrorist attacks."

Meanwhile, MediaMatters does a piece showing how "media outlets continue to cite Dick Cheney's criticism of President Obama for releasing previously classified Justice Department memos authorizing the CIA's use of harsh interrogation techniques while ignoring Cheney's self-acknowledged role in authorizing the use of those techniques" (emphasis added).

Isn't torture something better left to Nazis and Spanish Inquisitors? I'm baffled as to why people think there's any room for debate on this--especially since there is no reason to believe that torture yields actionable results. That methodological question mark might be raised if one were to wonder why it took 183 times to waterboard Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. And it's especially troubling that this is one of the primary methods used to forge the claim that Iraq and al Qaeda were in cahoots in the planning of the September 11th attacks.

And that's to say nothing of the moral questions...

Update: Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, says here that the primary impetus for the Bush administration to advance the torture agenda was to help bolster the claim that Iraq was working with Al Qada on the 9/11 attacks. The so-called "interrogation" program's "principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda," Wilkerson said.

So not only was torture used to make the bogus link that led us into a disastrous mistake (I feel like "mistake" doesn't begin to cover the problem, but I lack a better synonym), but it also was in use well before the Justice Department claims having authorized it. It leads one to wonder if the Justice memos were post-hoc justifications of what was already going on. That certainly seems to be what this NPR story is getting at: " It is clear that increasingly abusive interrogation techniques were used on Abu Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee, in the months between his capture and the first Justice Department memo authorizing harsh interrogations. But the legal guidance that authorized those early interrogations remains shrouded in secrecy. Zubaydah was picked up on March 28, 2002. The Justice Department issued its first memo on torture four months later on Aug. 1."

Update: The media frenzy continues. If only this conversation had been aired out during the emergence of the torture policies. Here a Salon columnist identifies the 13 people responsible for the torture policies, in order of culpability.

2009-04-14T19:20:00.001-07:00

This Whole Fuckin Thing

So you know how the GOP is trying to blame all of the economic meltdown on unions? Funny thing, all those people at GM are living pretty high on the hog, what with the company gas cards and the brand-new, free company ride they get every each year.

I guess it's true that such perks for 8,000 employees won't make the difference between success and bankruptcy for a billion-dollar corporation. But how can they be serious when they tell lay people off by the thousands without making cuts to their pet perks? Really?

2008-11-29T11:41:00.000-08:00

Signs of the Times

I was talking to my bro-in-law about Him Who Must Not Be Named and about His Highness's imperial disregard for the balance of powers. A lot of that conversation revolved around W's insidious use of presidential signing statements, and Todd was completely unfamiliar with that phenomenon. So I looked up some news stories and editorials on the subject and sent them to him, and while I'm at it I'll post them here for future reference:

Charlie Savage's Pulitzer Prize-winning report that broke the news
A NYTimes editorial on how W uses the signing statements to avoid more public actions like the presidential veto
Another NYTimes editorial that covers some of the legislation impacted by W's signing statements and details the unparalleled proliferation of this tool under his administration. Spoiler: "Over 212 years, 42 presidents issued 'signing statements' objecting to a grand total of 600 provisions of new laws. George W. Bush has done that more than 800 times in just over five and a half years in office."

Worst. President. Ever.

PS: In completely unrelated news, here's one response to the Obama election from Huntsville, Arkansas. It seems the owners of the Faubus Motel--yes, previously owned by the Faubus you're thinking of--have raised a Confederate Flag to protest the President Elect. And they've flown it up until at least Nov. 28.

2008-11-25T06:16:00.000-08:00

"I've found a flaw."

I've gone a long time without a post, missing out on the big news of the last couple months: the financial meltdown leading our economy into recession, and Obama's election. Both are historic, but I just want to focus on one little issue relating to the former.

On October 23, responding to the initial mortgaged-fueled bank failures that set off the economic slide that continues today, Alan Greenspan was called into Congress to talk about the state of the economy. What did Greenspan, a lifelong neoliberal ideolgist, have to say for himself?

When Henry Waxman asked him, “Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?”, he gave this response: “Yes, I’ve found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I’ve been very distressed by that fact.”

Wow. Nice avoidance of responsibility, Al. And let's make sure to add that it could just be a minor flaw. I mean, maybe that little flaw wouldn't lead to the failure of Detroit, fast-rising unemployment, or the worst economic crisis in a century, would it?

2008-08-07T19:00:00.000-07:00

Wanna hear something fucked up about the War on Terror? No, seriously. I mean, want to hear something really, really fucked up about the War on Terror?

So there's this guy, and he's been chauffering Osama bin Laden (funny how we can find this guy but not his boss, right?), and he gets picked up by counterterrorist forces and taken to Gitmo. God only knows what happens to him there, but later on he's tried for supporting terrorism and for conspiracy to murder. Conspiracy with whom is never fully articulated, but then such details aren't exactly salient in a military tribunal. I digress. This guy has the deck stacked against him: the jury was made up of uniformed officers handpicked by the Pentagon, and the prosecution was allowed to use evidence never seen by the defense--evidence that may well have relied on hearsay and may have been acquired through torture.

Does this guy look familiar?

Turns out that he's acquitted on the charge of conspiracy to murder, and he gets five and a half years for supporting terrorism. Since he's been detained for five years or so, he might be released in another few months. Justice carried out, right? Well, here's where the fucked up part steps in: after he finishes his sentence, the Pentagon will still hold him as a so-called "enemy combatant".

That's right: the Bush administration rigs the proceedings, and when that fails to get the result they demand, they just go ahead and do as they please anyway.

Now, I don't know the details--after all, this is a show trial and such details aren't exactly shared with the public--so I don't have any special thoughts on Salim Hamdan as an individual. I doubt he's totally on the up and up, and I doubt he's some kind of Al-Qada Sith Lord. I mean, you can't be totally oblivious to what's going on when you're driving bin Laden around ("This seems to be the limit for RPGs in the trunk, sir!"). But then again, he's just the driver, and I can't imagine he would be consulted on the Al-Qada actions for precisely the reason that he might get picked up for being bin Laden's driver.

Dude's innocence is not the point here. I don't know why, but I'm kind of surprised that, after the goddamn show trial that was an international embarrassment for our Crusade in the Name of Democracy, the juridicial proceedings were completely discounted by throwing this guy right back into the slammer.

If she weighs the same as a duck,
she's made of wood, and therefore, a witch.

So the press has covered this affair as a rebuke to the Bush administration, in so far as their "legal strategy" did not yield the desired verdict. Kind of funny that people are making so much of the rebuke, though, when it's clear that the verdict doesn't mean a damn thing to the administration in the first place. It's clear that they're not interested in anything more than the appearance of legal legitimacy.

UPDATE: Hamdan will be released, according to a report published some 3 months after the show-trial. Could it be that the Bushies are trying to get on the good side of the history books, recognizing the inevitability that Obama will close down Gitmo?

UPDATE: As of 8 July 2009, the Obama administration is claiming the right to detain non-citizens accused of terrorism "even if they have been acquitted of terrorism charges by a U.S. military commission." Looks like that gesture to close down Gitmo is all but symbolic.

2008-06-04T07:57:00.000-07:00

Propagandist on Campus

(Goebbels addressing a crowd with Nazi propaganda)

In February, UF's Turkish Student Association hosted Justin McCarthy, who spoke on the Armenian genocide. The title of his talk was "'So-Called' Armenian Genocide," which should give you the idea that his argument was that the genocide didn't really happen.

Why write about this almost 4 months after the fact? McCarthy's name came up in the summer 2008 newsletter of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Intelligence Report. Intelligence Report tracks hate groups and their movement across the US. In the newsletter's lead story, the SPLC identifies an "Armenian genocide denial industry" that's largely funded by the Turkish government and that has been trying to get its tentacles into the American university system. And it indicates that Justin McCarthy is a big wheel in this movement.

The archives of The Alligator include a preview story indicating that ACCENT co-sponsored the event. There's also a pro-McCarthy letter to the editor and a review article that recaps McCarthy's argument, mostly focusing on his intent to keep the "debate" open.

The review article remains "objective" merely trying to recap the "debate" without intrusive "editorializing." I don't hold the Alligator staff responsible for uncovering the national trend of revisionist propaganda, but this does raise an interesting question: had they known, would they have given this event the same treatment as a campus-sponsored, revisionist-funded speaker who wanted to keep open the "debate" on the Holocaust?

------

Update: The Turkish-American Legal Fund is suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for decrying the work of another genocide denier, Guenter Lewy. It's a pretty brutal assault on the right of academic freedom to disagree with or criticize another's work.

2008-05-26T14:33:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day

This weekend the Gainesville chapter of Veterans for Peace held a Memorial Day protest of the wars. Courtney and I went today to see it. On a stretch of 8th Ave that a VfP volunteer said ran for 9/10ths of a mile, they had laid out miniature tombstones, Arlington-style, for all the soldiers who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq since the 2001 and 2003 invasions. The markers stood four across with about 48 inches between each row, and each displayed the soldier's name, rank, hometown, date of death, and number in the death catalogue. There were 4, 581 tombstones, divided by markers that grouped them by nation and year (Afghanistan 2003, Iraq 2007, etc).

Here are some pictures

Front of the procession

"Mission Accomplished" marker. The number of tombstones after this marker is nothing short of shameful.

The end of the procession makes the sad recognition that we have at least one more year (who knows? maybe 100 years) to run up the body count.

Looking back from the end of the procession.

On the opposite side of the street, pinned to the fence that marks the southern limit of a city park, the VfP volunteers had posted some panels from the Peace Ribbon Project. Here are a few of the many dozens of panels:

Then, finally, there were a series of posters the VfP people had put together to announce the cost of the wars--in dollars, in deaths, in injuries, in families displaced, etc:

Out of the 4,581 tombstones, only 4 belonged to Gainesville residents. That might be a little misleading since a Gainesville native may have listed his base (Tampa, Jacksonville, etc.) as his hometown, but the fact remains that this town is remarkably insulated from the wars--which you'd expect, given the density of reasonably affluent white young people running around here. It's so insulated, in fact, that it's front-page news when a UF student simply deploys to Iraq, much less meets any harm there. I hope the VfP demonstration did at least a little to make the cost of this invisible war more recognizable for the people around here.

2008-04-26T07:02:00.000-07:00

"Things cost more than they used to"; or, The Pit, redux

We're looking at major price hikes in staple foods right now--skyrocketing hunger rates in southeast Asia, looming food riots in Haiti. According to some UN numbers cited in an NYTimes article, the price of wheat has risen 130% since March of 2007, and soy has risen 87% during the same period so that now 60-80% of consumer spending in developing countries goes to food. The same story says the World Bank notes that food prices have risen 83% over the last three years. Another article reports that the price of rice has doubled over the last three months and predicts it will rise "dramatically" over the next two months. These problems, of course, run deeper than the inflation we see at our grocery stores--inflation that's largely motivated by transportation costs according to the excessive leaps in gas prices (see post 31 Jan 2008)**.

So what's motivating the food crisis? The media is a hodge-podge of narratives for the the problem: Biofuels are subtracting goods from circulating as foods so that they can fuel our cars. Global warming is creating droughts that are killing off food production. The human population is growing beyond our farming capacities. They narratives are hard to parse out and often may not coincide in one account of the food crisis, but each thread bears a little thought:

1) The goods taken out of food circulation for biofuels are mostly corns, which are not really factoring in to the food crises we see in rice and wheat commodities. Now, long term, the loss of edible corn to biofuels could have some significant drawbacks for industrialized foodstuffs--imagine how many commercial food products in your pantry list high-fructose corn syrup as a significant ingredient, and you'll get a sense of the stakes--but those eventual problems aren't really related to the food crises we have at hand. (And that's to say nothing of the inefficiency of corn-based biofuels. An NYTimes article reports that Brazilian sugar-based ethanol can produce eight times the yield of U.S. corn ethanol with zero impact on food prices. Screw you, Iowa.)

2) Global warming is indeed a germane issue, and it's not one I want to dismiss. As a 21 April 2008 article reports, "More than 10 million people in parts of Thailand's rice bowl region have been hit by drought, the government said Monday, causing further concerns as prices of the staple grain soar." Surely over time global warming will produce drastic changes in the way we farm and eat, and just as surely it is being felt in the case of Thai rice. But this still doesn't explain the total picture of the food crises.

3) The human population is booming, and like global warming it's a problem that cannot continue to go unchecked. "The growth in world population is 78.5 million people each year, and by 2050, the global population will have risen from six to nine billion," UN food agency chief Jacques Diouf says. But that doesn't fully explain the drastic leaps in food commodity prices that we've seen in the last couple of months, as the population growth rate hasn't spiked inordinately during that period.

So while there's truth to each of these narratives of the food crisis, none really explains the total picture of the drastic, punctual leaps in food prices. Try this one on for size: market speculation. Say Beat Balzli and Frank Hornig, "But classic supply and demand theory offers only a partial explanation. Sudden price hikes since last January have been alarming. The UN estimates that at least $500 million (€312 million) in immediate aid will be needed by May 1 to avoid serious famines. Agricultural scientists at the world body's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have presented a report on the world food crisis. And criticism is growing that hedge funds, index funds, pension funds and investment banks bear part of the blame." And that's to say nothing of the rest of the article, which is pretty alarming.

I don't guess ethics are even relevant here. If we allow unchecked profit motive to generate "security contractors" who outsource their labor to developing nations, it only makes sense that futures markets can deepen the poverty and suffering of millions and millions of people they'll never meet.

The market has decided. And it has decided that you, young woman in Mauritania; that you, hungry family in Ethiopia; that you, impoverished farmer in Indonesia; and that you, starving children in Cameroon--it has decided that all of you are simply fucked: voiceless, hungry, and in many cases dying.

**NB: About the inflation rate, is it true that it doesn't factor in fuel and staple foods? I'd heard on NPR that this was the case, a provision in the government's inflation math that would avoid short, presumably temporary, spikes in a given price that might exaggerate inflation figures (you can imagine some bovine virus that would make milk $10/gallon that might misrepresent the state of the economy if it figured in to the inflation numbers). If that's the case, though, the current numbers on inflation are ridiculously underestimated, as our increases in gas and now evidently food prices are not temporary fluctuations so much as they are lasting trends cutting deep into the pockets of those who can least afford the increases.

***

Update: A 5 June 2008 NYTimes story reports that the speculation has broadened from the food commodities themselves to the infrastructure that supports them--farmland itself, fertilizer, grain elevators, etc.

2008-04-24T09:52:00.000-07:00

The Outsource Outsources

Not terribly surprising when I stop & think about it, but what I read about Blackwater USA today frightened me. It's old news that they provide paramilitary services so we can keep a draft at bay and that those services are provided outside the boundaries of the Geneva Conventions (whichever ones the Bush administration still observes, anyway). What Mother Jones reports, though, is that Blackwater is skimping on the $10K/month they usually pay an US civilian to play shoot-em-up in Iraq. Why pay that kind of money when you can get a Chilean--not some rifle-toting peasant, mind you, but a formally trained commando--to do the job for $1K/month? Let's let the market decide:

"As profit margins in the private security industry have narrowed—Blackwater clears just 10 percent on its primary State Department contract, [Blackwater CEO Erik] Prince testified—the CEO has increasingly looked beyond American shores. More and more of his foot soldiers now come from Third World countries, and his corporate network is aggressively pitching for business from foreign governments."

The nativists might actually see this (if Fox news deigned to report it) and be outraged that swarthy foreign operatives might be lying in wait to undermine our military efforts. And undermine they might, cause you can bet your ass that some of these "professional commandos" are practiced in the arts of human rights violations. But they'll probably fit right in with their Blackwater cohorts, and anyway I'm not inclined to worry much about their nationality. Facts is facts: a hired gun is a hired gun.

Let's just set aside the casual approach with which most media and the vast majority of Americans approach contracting out our military services--not to mention the casual avoidance of thought about the war itself. Are we really going to send people to work, fight, and die in Iraq for $34/day? That is, by the way, less than a grad student makes per year at UF, and grad students here are poor enough. When will people wake up to the fact that this war is openly an experiment in predatory neoliberalism and that we've got to put a stop to both? What will it take for our fellow voters come to that realization--to draft our youth to fight alongside Chilean Blackwater ops?

And anyway, if Blackwater is laying plans to stick around for a while, what will they do if and when the US leaves Iraq and terminates that contract with them? Prince says he's looking to get into the peace-keeping business, and he soothes naysayers by promising that he won't contract with hostile foreign governments. After all, doing so would imperil his US business relations. But how else might an idle private army occupy itself? Strike breaking? Dissenter intimidation?

* * *

Update: A 5 June 2008 piece in The Nation reports that Blackwater has received a contract with the Pentagon's Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office to fight drug trade-related terrorists and especially to train counternarcotics police in Afghanistan. Working for the imbroglio against drugs could be Blackwater's biggest job ever. Moreover, Blackwater is eying "a move into the world of privatized intelligence services" for Fortune 500 companies, offering "'surveillance and countersurveillance, deployed intelligence collection, and rapid safeguarding of employees or other key assets'". Impressive.

2008-01-31T09:07:00.000-08:00

What It's All About

As the leading Democrat candidates continue to fail to offer radical critiques (don't really know why I'm surprised there) of our position in Iraq and our unbridled consumption of oil, I am so disheartened that I don't know what to do.

Consider: Bush's reckless use of Presidential signing statements is nothing new, nor are the record profits that oil conglomerates have been posting in the last few years as the price-at-the-pump has skyrocketed and put a WWF-style smackdown on working families, nor is the neocon program for permanent US bases in the middle east. But it is utterly inconceivable that none of these issues are adequately addressed by Democrat frontrunners--not how they would reverse the momentum toward an imperial presidency, not how they would de-imperialize our foreign policy in the middle east, not how they would do anything to make me proud enough of my country to stand up when the band plays the national anthem at sporting events.

So it should come as no surprise when this week Shell breaks UK records for oil profit s, Exxon does the same in the US, and Bush uses a signing statement to circumvent a Congressional defense act's ban on permanent bases in Iraq. After all, why the fuck would he let something like that pass and undermine everything he's been working for?

The worst part about this, though, is that our beloved Fourth Estate, the supposed bearer of our democracy, has nothing to say about this news on Bush's signing statements. Why is ThinkProgress the best coverage of Bush's signing statements for permanent bases?

I swear to god, I've just about reached the point where I have to leave. I mean, I don't see what other options I have if I want to have any semblance of ethical conduct.

...

Update: And it goes on. A 20 February 2008 piece on the Washington Post asks how it is that "pause" seems to equate to "permanence" in Iraq policy.

Update 2: A 5 June 2008 piece from The Independent reports that the Bush administration is working on an agreement with the Iraqi government under which the US would maintain 50 bases indefinitely, as well as control Iraqi airspace and garner legal immunity for all US soldiers and, of course contractors.

2007-02-02T19:58:00.000-08:00

The Wekk Winneth,

and the Lord Taketh Away

Sorry for the lapse in my postings here. I've had my head up my ass with all the chaos around these parts. But I would like to take a minute to respond to Evan's rather brilliant dig: "I couldn't help but think it to myself as I watched the Gators win last night: 'So that's where the funding for Wekk's department is.'"

Now, funny as that statment is, I need to explain the workings of Florida's UAA (University Athletics Association). Recently, I found that the UAA is designed to function much like an autonomous corporation--which is to say that it is independent from the University's goings-on and it's beyond the purview of the state. So, want to pay that new coach a salary equivalent to the GDP of a small, underdeveloped nation? Hells, yeah; it's not like we have to share that money with them parasitic learnin' types! Want to throw some freebies to our athletes? Sure, it's not like the state or its citizens can open our books to see where the money goes!

I mean, the University gets a certain percentage of all sales of its licensed products (and that's probably been a shitload since the BCS champs), but all the earnings directly associated with the team itself--that hefty bonus for winning the BCS, for example--stays with UAA. I don't know what they'll do with that $17M payout over there, but it certainly isn't money that'll ever affect me, my studies, my department, or the College of Liberal Sciences (CLAS)

So, oddly enough, all that money going into UAA--money that the UF administration could use to bail itself out of its ill-conceived underfunding of CLAS--is stuck there. So just as the wekk winneth, the wekk loseth. This should come as no surprise, dear readers, but I thought you'd like the more complicated version of sports & academe down here on the dong of the US.

Now, all that said, I can't help but say, goddamn what a game. I mean, I don't remember much of anything after the first quarter. But my wife and my friends assure me I had a good time, and since I've been able to watch the game replayed on TV around here, I can say that I'm almost embarrassed for Ohio State after that game.

And now a parting question: what is it about "Guellah Papyrus" that makes me so happy?

2006-11-15T21:01:00.000-08:00

A Return to the Rockage of Football

It's fair to distinguish the two footballs: one with a capital 'F' to designate its commercial whoring (yes, of course, at the college level, too) and another to signify the more organic (bullshit term, I know) spectator experience that occurs without the direct mediation of the television.

To be sure, I'm not advocating a viewing experience punctuated by Nike ads and Verne Lundquist's Madden-esque statements like, "Well, it's going to come down to the team that has the most points. That's how you win games, Al, by scoring the most points and holding their offense to less points than you score by moving the ball into the endzone." We can apply all of the traditional critiques of television to broadcasts of sports games without oversimplifying TV criticism or being unfair to televised football in particular. Each of those charges is completely fair. (And, btw, it's not "almost as if the sport was made for commercial breaks." It simply is tailored to commercial breaks. Indeed, this year's new gameclock rules are clear indicators that the college game is paced to generate maximum TV income, following cues from college basketball and the professional sports.)

But I do think there's room for some carry-over from the live experience which I've been pushing with my "experiential thesis". What I mean is this: there's some residue from the live experience that, if you're really hooked on the stadium vibe, can resonate a little on TV--though of course that sentiment is diminished by all the critiques we've already addressed. I'm not trying to reject the appeal to "admit that watching football on TV is a depressing, boring, and soul-draining experience" as most TV-watching tends to be, but I think there's something else that comes into play to make all the Tostitos commercials a little more bearable.

A great analogue is the Phish experience. Does the experience of a live bootleg ever compare to that of the live show? Hell no. And the live bootleg has far less persuasive power to a Phish neophyte than would the live show. But for those of us who've had the live experience, we can find a bit of joy in the bootlegs that maybe won't be understandable for the folks who've got nothing more than the bootlegs to go on. I don't know how that transference works, but I think it's there somehow.

Then again, what the fuck do I know about sports? My NBA Fantasy team is so disgraceful I've been thinking about playing the bench for the rest of the season just to make sure my starters don't shame themselves into oblivion.

2006-11-13T13:35:00.000-08:00

So Charley has made a cameo in my BBQ post, but I guess it's time I do some fatherly doting here. He's a miniature shorthair dachshund, who's about to turn 1-year-old. A sociable fellow, he enjoys doggie treats (preferably gourmet) and long walks around the apartment complex, wherein he barks at and chases after cats, children, and anything else that isn't much bigger than he.

Here's Charley taking a break from his favorite pastime: looking out the window and barking at people passing on the sidwalk.

Here's Charley at his second-favorite pastime: sleeping. He seems to be training for some kind of marathon--that or he's been nursing a stashed horde of sleeping pills that were leftover by the previous residents. Note the ever-so-cute fetal position that allows him to keep his nose warm.

Here's Charley at his third-favorite pastime: tunneling under whatever he can find to tunnel under. He's particularly pleased to get under the covers while we're sleeping and ransack the whole bed so that we wake up pissed at each other for stealing the covers, hogging pillows, taking up too much space, etc. If he weren't so damned cute, we'd have to send him downstairs to sleep on the cold tile floors.

Anyway, that's just an intro our buddy Charley. We hope you get to meet him sometime soon. By then, hopefully he'll have outgrown his puppy phase of pissing all over his new friends by way of salutation--a habit that has earned him the reputation of "The R. Kelley of Dogs" among our Florida friends.

2006-10-07T20:18:00.000-07:00

Has anybody seen Inside Man, the latest Spike Lee joint?

I'm curious if we can make an argument by putting some pressure on the term 'cell,' as used by Dalton Russell, the bank robber played by Clive Owens. As you might remember, Russell opens and closes the film with a line to the effect of "The Where can most readily be described as a prison cell. But there is a vast difference from being stuck in a tiny cell and being in prison." The pun here (spoiler coming) is that you're led to believe he's been imprisoned, only to find later that he's been hiding out for a week in a narrow cavity within the very bank he robbed.

But there seems to be another sense of 'cell' at play here, and one that requires some extratextual imputation. We find that Russell has pulled off the heist with a crew of 4 or 5 confederates--among them an older Rabbi. But they don't take a cent from the bank, instead stealing only a swastika-laden document that proves that the bank's owner got rich off unseemly relationships with the Nazis. We can assume that Russell & co have invested a hefty sum in the heist operation, and they certainly don't recoup any of that money from the bank. So one has to wonder if an outside party fronted the set-up money, and if so, what kind of organization would be interested in revealing the Nazi history of a prominent American banker?

What I'm getting at here is that Russell might well be the leader of some kind of cell for an Israeli agency or some similar organization. Is that reasonable, or have I just been thinking about the Israeli-cell-structure- to-defeat-the-terrorists'-cell-structures element of Munich too much?

2006-10-01T11:22:00.000-07:00

WHY FOOTBALL ROCKS: A Response to Evan Rogers's Calumnies of the Second Greatest American Sport

In a post dated September 20th, Evan let loose a torrent of vitriol for the sport of football. His chief complaints where that 1) manipulation of the game clock too often upends the suspense of the second half; 2) complaints against officiating are too predominant; 3) the kicking conventions make no sense in a game based on seizing territory; 4) come-from-behind wins are rare. Commenting on Evan's post, Joel added the fifth criticism that football is "a coach's game" that negates whatever teamwork you think you're seeing on the field. Allow me to dispel these harmful allegations from the best vantage point imaginable--the first row of the end zone.

Which is, in case it isn't obvious where this is going, where I sat with Courtney and Nicole, a UF friend of ours whom you might recall from the wedding's after-party, at yesterday's game between UF and Alabama.
It's from this vantage point that I can debunk all of Evan's criticisms, because at the end of the day, a football game is an experience you have to have first-hand. None of this TV nonsense will do. I'll come back to this, but first let me address the accusations made by Evan & Joel.

1) When you're on the field, the elapsed time of clock management doesn't register--except for in the last minute or so of some games when the leading team often intentionally downs the ball in order to run out the clock. On the field, the effect is actually quite the opposite: you see the players scrambling to get the play in order, and a sense of panic sets in as the playclock approaches zero. On TV, the suspense of that device may seem ill-motivated, especially since the pace of TV viewing is hastened by advertisement montages, but on the ground the clock situtation is more fretful--not so much a deliberate wasting of time (as in my strategies to maintain a lead in the waning moments of a game of NBA Jam '94), but a rush for the offense to get a sense of the defense's plans before deciding what to do with one of their precious possessions.

2) Evan's post came after a week when two games (LSU-Auburn and Oregon-Oklahoma) had controversial calls that affected the outcomes of the contests. Frankly, both of those calls deserved to be contested by all parties because both of them could have gone either way, but the media coverage of those 'scandals' was an exception to the rule. Mostly that kind of bitching just takes place in sports bars.

3) I could hedge here and say that other sports have wacky conventions, too, but that would be poor argumentation. Instead, I'll take the high ground here and just say that it makes more sense when you see it, like here, as kicker Chris Hetland spots up for an extra point:
Moreover, on punts and kick-offs, the effect is that it creates a whole field of chaotic openings through which the receiver can run. The chaos of those returns rarely occurs during the course of an average drive.

4) In each of Florida's three SEC games, the Gators have overcome a deficit to win. So while generally the stronger teams do win out--as they do in most sports--there's still room for all the drama and tension one comes to expect from a sporting event.

5) Yes, this is a coach's game. All team sports are. The only games where that maxim isn't in effect are golf, bowling, and a bunch of other shit that's never televised. Moreover, sports is never a place to think through an allegory for class or other fields of power relations because, frankly, the athletes are treated way too well to be analogues for the working poor, the sexually oppressed, or what have you.

Now, on to my own thesis: that the value of the game is experiential. Functionally, a D-I football game shares a lot of characteristics with other events that people in our circle might more readily assent to--Phish concerts, to name one example. The energy in such a place is simply huge. There's no way of adequately putting it into words. The energy of the band, here shown marching up to the student section before closing off the half-time show,
radiates throughout the stadium, and the energy of the fans is intense. You could take legitimate potshots at the kind of folks who tend to create that energy, and you could even take legitimate potshots at the role that kind of energy has played in history--say, in Nazi rallies--but it's an energy that's addictive and it completely changes the experience of the game. Here's Dallas Baker (#81) and company celebrating his touchdown reception that gave us the lead for the rest of the game:
Can you really tell me that that kind of enery doesn't radiate?

I know that may seem like an unfair argument for football since so many of the Hendrix gang haven't had that kind of experience, but believe me: it's true. I was incredibly reluctant to even go to a game, but when someone offered me a spare ticket to the Arkansas game in my first fall at UF, I figured I couldn't pass by the opportunity to socialize. Only then did I come to enjoy the game.

So you guys should try to come down here and visit on a game weekend. Give me some notice, and I ought to be able to rustle up a couple of tickets for you.

PS: The Gators won 28-13. "Take that, you fucking George Wallaces," say Al and Alberta:

2006-09-05T18:18:00.000-07:00

I don't barbecue because I like pork. I barbecue because I hate pigs.

Above is the centerpiece for a party Courtney & I threw for Labor Day. Set around a glorious 9-pound pork shoulder, which I smoked for upwards of 10 hours, the party was themed as The First Annual Quentin Compson Celebration, subtitled "I don't hate [the south]. I don't hate it!" We had some friends bring over appropriately southern dishes--homemade macaroni & cheese, corn bread, gin & tonic, some cobblers, etc--and Courtney made some good sweet tea. The sum total was a really great meal.

But I have to say that I was really pleased with the pork. I mean, after many pounds of hickory went into the smoker (below), the meat was more tender than I could have reasonably expected for my first try. It took almost no effort to get the meat off the bone.

And Courtney and I made a great Memphis-style sauce to match it. We culled a few recipes from my BBQ cookbooks, made a few alterations, and came out with a nice sweet sauce that had enough kick to be called a proper Arkansas sauce--a nice blend of Memphis sweet and Texas heat. Courtney even went the extra mile and got a gingham table cloth to make our meal feel like a more proper picnic.

But most importantly, it was a great community dinner, and it made me miss the hell out of the Hendrix gang. So whenever you're down this way, give me a few days' notice so I can get the smoker in gear!

PS: Here's one more pic of Charley, our miniature dachshund, who made a last-minute bid for my spot at the table. I can't really blame him, though, because it smelled a helluva lot better than his dinner did.

2006-05-01T19:52:00.000-07:00

Yup, that's me with Al Horford, my former student and the starting forward for the Gators' NCAA Champion basketball team. And if I look small next to him, it's only because the camera is pointed up, which really exagerrates his height and general bulk.

Make no mistake: I'm just as imposing a presence on the basketball court (I'm talking to you, Michael Simeone).

2006-04-13T15:04:00.000-07:00

I found this when I was filing away some old digital photos. Now, you probably know that I'm not computer-savvy enough to have photoshopped this little gem. No, I took this on the side of some road in north-central Arkansas--I want to say it was Imboden--on the way to the Donimal's batchelor party in the summer of '04.

Enjoy.

2006-04-09T07:53:00.000-07:00

V dropped it like it's hot.

Not only is that a little homage to the brilliant V Dub (representing Deutschland!) commercials, racist though they are, but it's also my critique of V for Vendetta, which I regrettfully saw tonight. Indeed, V dropped something on me tonight: ass.

I'm a little embarrassed to say it, but I had rather high expectations for this film--and not just because Natalie Portman has a certain flair for shining up pretty drab movies. I was really eager to see a superhyped, big-budget film address fascism in a way that was unambiguously linked to our current political climate of fear. But, to paraphrase the comment of a participant in last week's MRG conference, V for Vendetta is just "a fascist film about fascism."

It's not that I minded all of the film's hamhanded dialogue and symbolism. To be sure, it became tiresome, but sometimes agitprop is necessary to make a point. The problem was that the film's point was hopelessly confused.

--The film is supposed to be about revolution, but the protagonist, the mysterious V, spends his time tracking down the people who tortured him in a dissenters' prison (and we never know the nature of his original dissent). His revolution has nothing to do with fascism at all. It's solely predicated on revenge, so at least the title isn't completely misleading. Frankly, the "revolutionary" motive is so polluted that V could just as easily be tracking down gas station clerks who stiffed him on change instead of corrupt fascists. It just so happens that the people who fucked him over were part of the fascist government, but that's really immaterial to his desires. This is the most repugnant aspect of the film: it portrays revolutionaries as terrorists inspired only by hate, devoid of any totalizing political agenda.

--The film tries to make the point, Batman Begins-style, that such crusades are not about "the man behind the mask" so much as they are about the ideas those persons embody. That's a fair enough claim, but then the film systematically contradicts itself, valorizing the man in glamorous hero shots. Evey, Portman's character, seems to have more respect for V's conviction than for his methods, again privileging man over idea. Sigh.

--This egoism plays out in V himself. Evidently the guy spends a lot of time setting up dominos so that they'll fall into an artsy representation of his initial. He paints his initial all over town instead of graffitiing any meaningful populist slogans to inspire the people. He's so vain that he convinces Evey to watch one of his demolitions, knowing that doing so would put her in the eye of the fascist surveillance. V also (spoiler coming........) convinces Evey that she's been caught by the fascists just so he can dramatically "liberate" her in a narcissistic display of his own cunning. This liberation has nothing at all to do with freeing the people from fascism.

--The film also spends an inordinate amount of time queering its plot, showing the plight of several homosexuals under the fascist regime. That social commentary is welcomed, but what about the racing or classing of the impulse to fascism? Those elements, if present at all, have been buried under a deluge of special effects and Wachowski-trademarked philosophical soliloquies.

What V for Vendetta does accomplish is an envigoration of the broader debate on terrorism. Is V wrong to endanger civilian lives in the pursuit of his (quasi-)political goals? Can you be a terrorist if you represent a groundswell of popular support? At the very least, the film can jump-start discussions about the messiness of what is so often falsely posited as a binary of state and terrorism. But that's definitely not worth the $7.

2006-04-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

Sure, it's a pretty self-aggrandizing little photo, but the Gators deserve it. I have to say, I'm rather disappointed in the media coverage of UF's chompionship. I mean, we had an average margin of victory of 16 points throughout the tourney, and still everyone's saying that we had an easy path or that there was no talent in this year's pool or that the finals would have been more exciting if they featured one of those teams that sells its merchandise in malls thousands of miles away from its campus (yeah, I'm talking about you, Duke, UNC, and Texas).

I mean, I know our guys are nothing to look at. In fact, some of our guys look downright goofy. Corey Brewer, above, has some of the googliest, freaky-deaky eye sockets you can encounter outside of a circus tent. But these guys play team ball the way that makes college basketball fun to watch--the way that would make NBA basketball fun to watch if every NBA team were the Pistons.

Moreover, where's the media focus on our narrative? Sure, nobody on our team has diabetes, but we're the fucking Seabiscuit of college basketball! To my knowledge, there hasn't been another team to go from being unranked in the preseason to winning the NCAA championship since Nova's run in '85.

(And speaking of coming from behind, this photo doesn't even need any of Christopher's photoshopping genius to make you hear that melancholy theme from Brokeback Mtn):

I wish I knew how to quit you, Gator basketball.

2006-04-05T06:52:00.000-07:00

73-56.

Yeah, I know those other statistics: the viewer ratings fell 25 percent to 11.2, marking the second lowest turn-out in the history of the Nielsen records. But peep these: Horford cranked out 14 points and 7 rebounds in just 24 minutes on the floor.

I have to say that even though nobody was watching the game, I enjoyed the hell out of it. Where was that much-hyped Bruins defense? In my estimation, it went the way of the much-hyped Adam Morrison: you could see both crying on the floor at the end of regulation.

God, I love me some college basketball.

PS: That guy who's flying through the air, dunking on some Bruins like they were little girls on a playground? Did I mention I taught that guy everything he knows about punctuation?

2005-12-09T22:03:00.000-08:00

So tonight I watched Syriana, and I have to say that I am tremendously impressed. Its plot is very hard to follow, and I must admit that I still don't grasp all the details. The film interweaves several storylines, jumping across national boundaries and diving into legal, financial, and cultural vagaries that are at times nearly incomprehensible to laity. But that measure of uncertainty, frustrating as it is, is perhaps the best way of representing the unrepresentability of total relations (yup, I'm borrowing from The Geopolitical Aesthetic here).

Syriana, as the NYTimes reported earlier this week, was released by Participant Productions, a two-year-old outfit which released Good Night, and Good Luck and North Country earlier this year. The interesting thing about Participant is that it is committed to the advancement of a left-leaning political agenda. Its website explains that the company's goal "is to deliver compelling entertainment that will inspire audiences to get involved in the issues that affect us all." Some skeptics might charge that this is a clever ruse to pander to leftist audiences (I get the sense that this is the case with the people marketing the Narnia movie to Christian movie-goers), but coming out of the theater I really felt that the political motives in Syriana are sincere.

Now, the agenda of the people at Participant may not be as radical as we would like, and I may be naively liberal to believe, along with their mission, in "the power of media to create great social change," but the conviction behind their message is something we should support. That kind of conviction, rampant on the right and lacking on the left, is the prerequisite for positive social change.

2005-12-08T14:21:00.000-08:00

Well, chaps, I have just finished the first draft of my last seminar paper. Not a great paper, but I feel pretty good about being almost done. Just a few more revisions, some touch-ups on my PhD applications, and I'm set to coast on into winter break.

In other news, Don Wise, founder of Incompetent Design, is my hero.

2005-10-13T19:41:00.000-07:00

Anybody Octoberfesting this weekend? I'm curious if any local stores sell OPB around here.

2005-10-10T22:06:00.000-07:00

I have become a crotchety old grammar hawk. Or, to be more specific, I have become Dr. Crowder.

Why the zeal for grammarian peevishness? Because my students, in spite of a week's worth of lessons on grammar, cannot seem to write more than a paragraph without spitting out at least one comma splice. Out of 19 papers, only three received As, and of those there were two 90s and one 92.

I think I hate myself more than ever.

2005-09-29T21:42:00.000-07:00

Well, there you have it: the media is coming to find that a lot of the chaos reported during the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina simply didn't happen. Natural chaos? Sure. Criminal chaos? Not so much.

The NYTimes reports, in a Sept 29 story titled "Fear Exceeded Crime's Reality in New Orleans," that a lot of the coverage of extreme hostility, violent looting, and rapes was wholly inaccurate. To be sure, people were looting the local businesses, taking things necessary for survival and, in some cases, pilfering some shit they'd been wanting for a while anyway. But the bottom line is that the media gave us a picture of dark savages unleashed on the unpoliced streets of New Orleans, and this picture, predictably, had no foundation in reality.

Let me give you a few pieces of the NYTimes piece:

--[Police] Superintendent [Edwin P] Compass said that some of his most shocking statements turned out to be untrue. Asked about reports of rapes and murders, he said: "We have no official reports to document any murder. Not one official report of rape or sexual assault."

--For military officials, who flew rescue missions around the city, the reports that people were shooting at helicopters turned out to be mistaken.

--A contingent of National Guard troops was sent to rescue a St. Bernard Parish deputy sheriff who radioed for help, saying he was pinned down by a sniper. Accompanied by a SWAT team, the troops surrounded the area. The shots turned out to be the relief valve on a gas tank that popped open every few minutes.

And I'm totally not making up that last one.

The piece frames the paranoid coverage as a product of the rumor mill and of fearful imaginations. What it doesn't mention is the true underlying mechanism driving the representations of a city gone criminally insane: racism.

It's easy to see that this whole scenario--once the white people left town and before the National Guard showed up (fashionably late, of course)--was cast to be the manifestations of whites' fears of black 'savagery.' This is especially the case with the rape stories that circulated so widely in the media. In the absence of the rule of law, the black man, in accordance with his primitive nature, immediately reverts to his bestial behaviors.

It's almost like our nation's media took Birth of a Nation and rescripted it for the setting of post-Katrina New Orleans. And what's worse is that now that some branches of the media are coming to realize their poor handling of the situation, they still can't see how race dominated the coverage itself.

2005-09-21T19:48:00.000-07:00

Tonight I followed Michael's link to Flow, where I found an article entitled "Bring the War Home" by Aniko Bodroghkozy. The article neatly links FX's new series Over There, publicity for which claims it is the first TV series to portray fictional US soldiers in the same context in which their real-life counterparts are fighting and dying in a real-life war (M*A*S*H, you'll recall, was set in the Korean War and broadcast during Vietnam), and the media coverage of Cindy Sheehan.

The basic thrust of Bodroghkozy's article is that Over There and the Sheehan story allow the American public--those who oppose the war, at least--to feel as though they are engaging in the issue without, of course, doing anything about it. One might watch Over There with moralist approbation at the US's lack of casus belli or watch Sheehan bemoan the loss of her son, all without having to leave the safety of one's home. To 'bring the war home,' then, is to engage in something like passive resentment, which bears no likeness to active resistance.

But there is another meaning for the phrase 'bring the war home,' and Bodroghkozy is right not to mention it because it is completely absent from today's political landscape.

To get to that other meaning, we can look at Bodroghkozy's bibliography. It's telling that he references Todd Gitlin. A professor of journalism at Columbia U, Gitlin was president of Students for a Democratic Society, the national New Left conglomeration of student activists, in the early 60s. Gitlin presided over SDS during its phase of nonviolent resistance, before the organization was overtaken by an internal sect calling itself The Weathermen.

The Weathermen abandoned SDS's methods of nonviolence, instead opting for a violent means of calling attention to the war in Vietnam. Their goal was to end the war by giving the American public a small taste of the experiences that the US was inflicting on Vietnam and its neighbors. For a little less than a decade, The Weathermen evaded FBI manhunts while bombing some dozens of public institutions that they felt symbolized imperial oppression. Their slogan was, simply, "Bring the War Home."

In the end, The Weathermen's methods for halting the war had no effect on public policy. They were handily marginalized as criminally insane miscreants, and their political objectives were largely overlooked by the mainstream media.

But the notion of truly 'bringing the war home,' of jarring the public into a profound understanding of how our foreign policy affects the Middle East, seems to carry some (at least theoretical) potential. Could a campaign to 'bring the war home' work today?

2005-09-19T21:08:00.000-07:00

Last night as I was going to bed, I had an idea for reinvigorating the left. Actually, it's more an idea about destabilizing the right: take a few plays from the FBI's COINTELPRO playbook and use them against right-wing hackery.

In case a brief reminder is in order, COINTELPRO comes from our good old McCarthyist friends, and it was designed to foster factionalism within leftist radical groups so they would either implode or take violent enough action that the government could crack down on them. The feds have disavowed the methods of COINTELPRO, but there's a strong likelihood that those methods are in use against contemporary peace activists--remember that brief story in Fahrenheit 9/11 about the peaceniks who found that they'd been infiltrated by a local sheriff's deputy?

Anyway, it's rather inconceivable that we could infiltrate a radical right organization and bring about internal disorder with any efficiency. What we could do, though, is embed ourselves in such an organization to make a negative impact externally. What I'm suggesting is that we could create PR nightmares for these people, much like their own leaders (Pat "Rob the Katrina Fund" Robertson, for example) do sometimes, but with more precision.

Imagine this scene: some rather polite students are holding signs on campus to support, say, the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to the Supreme Court. Their signs are reasonable, though misguided: "Support a Real 'Minority Opinion' on the Court," "Gonzales is a Patriot," etc. Off to the side stands a man who seems to fit in with the rest of the pro-Gonzales crowd, but his sign is more extreme: "Torturers Make the Constitution Proud." So long as it's not too over the top, a COINTELPRO II operative can pass himself off as an insider, causing significant trouble for the organization he infiltrates.

The ultimate goal here is not parody or sarcasm. It's the exposure of these righties' true motivation. Consider this potential COINTELPRO II slogan at one of Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform speeches: "No Way I'm Payin Fer Them Yeller Folks' Medicine." Or this one for a NRA rally: "I'll Favor Gun Control When You Favor Segregation."

Isn't it time that somebody unveils just how truly dangerous these groups' true motives can be?

2005-09-14T20:46:00.000-07:00

It should come as no surprise that I've been mulling this over since the event: was God finally drowned in the floodwaters of Louisana and Mississippi?

We've all seen the dramatic photos from the first Sunday after the storm: a few congregation members and their pastor gathering on the concrete foundation of what used to be their church to praise the Lord for his generosity. Really, it's a pretty powerful display of faith--and of course of the need for comfort--that some of those who were most directly affected by Katrina could sustain their belief in a God worth praising. Where's the Joban outrage? Why can't this raise some dissonance for believers?

Of course, it's easier to avoid that dissonance when you're not experiencing the loss--just as Job's peers couldn't understand his questions and scolded his doubt. It's just this kind of unwillingness to question one's own beliefs that I witnessed over Labor Day weekend. I sat with Courtney's family in a hospital waiting room, awaiting news on her ailing grandfather. We passed the time telling stories about their patriarch and talking about the Katrina news that was pumping in from the continuous CNN coverage. Then, when a doctor came in to say that Papa only had a few hours left, a certain member of Courtney's family made a remark along these lines: "Well, praise be to God that we've had this time to gather ourselves, that it didn't happen immediately, that we can brace ourselves."

In a word, I was incredulous. How could this person really believe that God would intervene to buy the family time to prepare for the worst of news, but that God wouldn't intervene to save the lives and lands of thousands of people?

Some people may never be capable of self-interrogation, but perhaps the fallout from the hurricane will lead some others to realize that progress is only going to come from earth-bound, collective action. If anything good can come of Katrina, maybe it's the emptying of some church pews across the country as people withdraw their energies from hymns and chants and redirect them to the business of looking after their brothers and sisters.

2005-08-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

So it looks like the good people of the Florida Coalition to Protect Marriage are getting closer to banning gay marriage in the Sunshine State. By early next week, they should have enough signatures on their petition to put before the Florida Supreme Court an amendment that would "protect and preserve natural marriage between one man and one woman."

Of course, nothing about his front of the culture war is new. Just short of 20 states have already beaten Florida to the proverbial punch. The fact that this movement has continued past the state-to-state ballots of 2004 is troubling. Kansas jumped on the gay-hatin' train in April of this year. Texas has a same-sex amendment on its ballots for November 2005, and South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee will vote on similar legislation in November 2006. It appears that the far right will reap the benefits of this political capital for years to come.

Now, I don't pretend to have a finger directly on the pulse of this state; I've never taken any rudimentary state history course, and my brief time on the Dong has been spent in the insulated environment of the English Department here in Gainesville. That said, I think Florida may offer one of the few opportunities for this kind of legalized discrimination not to be passed.

At the risk of oversimplifying the politics of states that have already passed anti-gay marriage legislation, I think it's worth considering that Florida actually does have a gay population. And that gay population might be big enough to fight back, especially if the amendment shows up on a ballot that doesn't host a major national election. What I mean is that most of the states that now have gay marriage bans--say, for example, Utah--have smaller gay populations that couldn't contend with waves of crazed right wingers, apathetic moderates, and disinterested progressives. What if the gay population in Miami--that virile tip of the Liberty Dong--could muster enough votes to cripple the anti-gay movement in Florida?

Again, this is all a long-shot. Pure conjecture. But what if Florida--the land of Death without Dignity, the state that deprived many of its black citizens of their votes in 2000--somehow rebuffed a gay marriage ban? Wouldn't that be something?