Election Snippet: “John McCain’s Ads Are Lies”

Greta Christina3 Comments

When I was doing my recent series on John McCain and Sarah Palin, I dug up a ton of fascinating videos and other tidbits. I linked to many of them in my posts… but I realize that these three posts were pretty serious linkapaloozas, and I didn’t expect anyone to actually click on them all. (I was almost tempted to have one of my links be to Eros Blog or Cute Overload, just to see if anyone was checking…)

But some of them really deserve attention. And given how strongly I feel about this election, I feel like I should be doing more about it, especially now that it’s drawing near. So from now until election day, every day that I blog about something other than the election, I’m going to provide an Election Snippet: an election- related video, or link, that I think y’all might be interested in.

Here’s the first one — a video evisceration of the distortions, misrepresentations, and flat-out lies of the McCain campaign ads. Video below the fold, since putting it above the fold mucks up my archives. Enjoy!

Continue reading “Election Snippet: “John McCain’s Ads Are Lies”” →

Election Snippet: “John McCain’s Ads Are Lies”
{advertisement}

Why I DO Care About John McCain’s Gay Chief Of Staff: The Blowfish Blog

Greta ChristinaLeave a comment

Mccain1

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It’s about the recent revelations that John McCain’s chief of staff, Mark Buse, is gay…. and why I think this is relevant and important.

It’s titled Why I DO Care About John McCain’s Gay Chief Of Staff, and here’s the teaser:

First, in case you haven’t seen the story yet: John McCain’s Chief of Staff, Mark Buse, is gay.

With a reported penchant for multiple partners, and a sling in his home to boot. (In, of all places, his closet. Sometimes the irony is just too obvious.) The story broke on the BlogActive site of the legendary Mike Rogers, who has given Buse the not so coveted Roy Cohn award “for working against the interests of the lesbian and gay community while living as a gay man.” And it’s corroborated by Michelangelo Signorile.

And I do, in fact, care. But I don’t care about Buse per se, or his ex life, or what it says about him and his character.

I care about what it says about McCain.

Because the point of this story is not, “McCain’s Chief of Staff is gay.”

The point is about McCain. It’s about McCain’s hypocrisy, and lack of integrity, and willingness to suck up to the hatefully homophobic far-right wing of the Republican party — in direct contradiction to what seem to be his own personal beliefs.

To find out more, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Why I DO Care About John McCain’s Gay Chief Of Staff: The Blowfish Blog

John McCain and the “Maverick” Snow Job

Greta Christina10 Comments

Of all the things that terrify me about John McCain and his Presidential campaign, one of the worst is this:

Maverick

The way so many moderates and liberals talk about what a “maverick” he is.

“I may not agree with him on all the issues,” the trope goes. “But I admire his independence. He’s not just a puppet of the Republican party. He’s a real maverick, a straight talker with a good head on his shoulders, who’s willing to buck the system and who cares about the little guy.” (I’m ashamed to say that I bought this line myself, back in 2000 when McCain was running against G.W. Bush. I certainly wasn’t planning to vote for him, but I thought, “If he gets the GOP nomination, we could do worse.”)

But on closer examination — and not even that much closer, really — this turns out to be total bullshit.

John McCain’s “maverick” schtick — the “independent straight- shooter who’ll buck the system and fight for the little guy” schtick — is, IMO, one of the most successful snow jobs in the history of American politics.

And it terrifies me to see how effectively it’s spread. It terrifies me to think that people who would despise McCain’s policies and actions might still vote for the man because they see him as a straight- talking, independent maverick.

So today, I’m going to do my best to grind this snow job into dust.

Mccain_bush

Would an “independent maverick” say that, ”on the transcendent issues of the day, the most important issues of the day, I have been totally in agreement and support of” the sitting President and leader of his political party?

Would an “independent maverick” vote with that sitting President — the completely disastrous sitting President — 100% of the time in 2008, and 95% of the time in 2007?

(Quick aside: True, this wasn’t always the case: his alignment with Bush and the Republican party has been somewhat lower in the past. But what does that tell you? That he’s willing to go against the GOP party line… unless he’s running for President? What does that tell you about what kind of President he’ll be?)

Sarah palin

Would an “independent maverick” fail to nominate either of his two top choices for Vice- President — and instead nominate a far- right- tip- of- the- right- wing extremist wackaloon with virtually no experience, who thinks dinosaurs and people lived at the same time and believes the war in Iraq is part of God’s plan — because the two guys he really wanted were pro-choice, and the party wouldn’t stand for it?

Would a “straight- talking maverick” speak out against torture, and yet repeatedly support policies that enable it? Especially someone who was a torture survivor himself?

Would a “straight- talking maverick” who’s “bucking the system” speak out against anti-regulation lobbyists who were a primary cause of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac crisis… and yet hire those same lobbyists to be part of his campaign? Including as his actual campaign manager?

Would a “straight- talking maverick” send out invalid absentee ballots to voters likely to support his opponent?

Africa percentage of adult population with HIV-AIDS

Would a “straight- talking maverick” dodge questions about AIDS prevention and condom distribution in Africa, by claiming that “I’ve never gotten into these issues before”? (Or worse: Would a “straight shooter who fights for the little guy” who’s been in Congress since 1982 genuinely have never thought about the issues of AIDS and international AIDS prevention?)

Would a “straight- talking maverick” try to weasel out of a debate with his intelligent, charismatic, wildly popular, extraordinary public speaker opponent, on the grounds that the economy is in crisis — a crisis that’s been in process for weeks and months, a crisis created by seven years of his party’s failed economic policies which he himself supported — and he has to pull an all-nighter?

Would a “straight- talking maverick” flip-flop, repeatedly, on dozens and dozens of issues, from the drilling moratorium to warrantless wiretapping to abortion and the repeal of Roe V. Wade… repeatedly changing his mind to get it more in line with that of the Republican Party?

And would a “straight- talking maverick” flat out lie? And lie, and lie, and lie and lie and lie?

Liar liar

Lie about his opponent wanting to teach sex ed to kindergartners? Lie about his opponent suggesting that we bomb Pakistan? Lie about his own support from veteran’s organizations? Lie about how many people turned out for his campaign rallies? Lie about his opponent’s tax plan — and do it again, and again, and again and again and again? Lie, even, about what a “tracking lies about politics” fact-checking site did and did not say about his opponent?

Lie so badly, and so often, that even Fox News and Karl Rove called him a liar? Lie so much that lying has become one of the chief hallmarks of his campaign?

I get that all politicians distort and conceal and spin the truth. (Or most of them, anyway.) But there’s a difference — a subtle one, but an important one — between distorting and concealing and spinning… and flat-out, outright, pants- on- fire, lie- like- a dog lying. And the latter is exactly what Mr. Straight Talk has been up to… again and again and again.

And perhaps more to the point: Not all politicians set themselves up as being different from all other politicians. Not all politicians push an image of themselves as straight-talking mavericks who are bucking the political system.

I could have gone on for many more pages. And I’m not even doing a thorough evisceration of his policies. (Partly because the flip-flopping has made it hard to know what the hell they are.) All I’m talking about here is the “maverick” line.

Which has proven to be one of the biggest and best snow jobs in the history of American politics.

And that’s saying something.

Shane

You want a straight- talking independent maverick who bucks the system and cares about the little guy? Go rent “Shane.” You want a weaselly, right- wing liar? You want someone who was always a pretty hard-core conservative and whose narrative arc of his Presidential campaign has been one of consistent capitulation to his party — the party responsible for this country’s worst economic and foreign policy disasters in decades? You want someone so desperate to become President that he’ll abandon whatever principles he once might have had in order to make it happen? Then by all means, vote for John McCain.

Shout-outs to Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Pandagon, and The Huffington Post, which is where I found a lot of this info.

John McCain and the “Maverick” Snow Job

Blind Men and Elephants: Religion, Science, and Understanding Big Complicated Things

Greta Christina25 Comments

Is there a good reason that different religious believers disagree so much about God? Could it just be that God is very large and complex and difficult to perceive, so naturally different people don’t all perceive him the same way?

Blind
Could religion be like the fable of the blind men and the elephant — where everyone’s perceiving a different part of God, but they’re all still perceiving the same real thing?

You’ve probably heard this fable before. There are different versions, but the basics are these: Six blind men are standing around an elephant, touching it to figure out what an elephant is. The one touching the trunk decides that an elephant is a big snake; the one touching its leg decides an elephant is a tree; the one touching its tail decides an elephant is a rope; etc. It’s supposed to show the limitations of individual perception, and the importance of not being narrow-minded, and how people with different beliefs can all be right. Or all be wrong. You get the gist.

Religious symbols

It was recently suggested in this blog that this fable makes a good metaphor for religion. God is too large (it was suggested), too complex, too multi-faceted, for any one person to perceive correctly. Therefore, Reason #2 in my Top Ten Reasons I Don’t Believe In God — the inconsistency of world religions — isn’t a fair critique. The fact that Muslims see God one way and Catholics another, and Hindus yet another, and Jews, and Neo-Pagans, and Taoists, and Rastafarians, and Episcopalians, and so on — in ways that are radically different, even contradictory — it’s just different people perceiving different parts of the elephant.

But I don’t actually think this fable makes a good metaphor for religion.

It does, however, make an excellent metaphor for science.

Or rather, it could.

Blind_men_and_elephant4

Here’s the thing. In some versions of the elephant fable, the blind men groping the elephant just fall to hopeless arguing with no resolution. In other versions, a wise man explains to them what’s really going on. And that does make it a good metaphor for religion. Either people trust what someone else tells them is true, or they squabble endlessly and even fall to blows, with no means of resolving their disagreements.

But here’s the interesting thing:

I have never seen a version of the fable in which the blind men start explaining to one another why they think the elephant is what they think it is. I have never seen a version where the blind men say, “Hey, come over here! Follow my voice, and check this out — this is why I think it’s a snake!” (Or a tree trunk, or a rope, or whatever.)

And yet, that’s exactly how science works.

Yes, of course, if God existed, he would be immense and complex and difficult to perceive and understand.

And what — the physical universe isn’t?

Galaxies

The physical universe is both far, far larger and far, far weirder than we had any conception of 500 years ago, or indeed 100. Billions upon billions of galaxies all rushing apart from each other at blinding speed; everything made up of atoms that are mostly empty space; space that curves; continents that drift… I could go on and on. It’s way too big, way too complex, way too multi-faceted, for any one person to accurately comprehend.

And yet, the blind men are coming to a fair understanding of what an elephant is.

Every century, every decade, every year, the blind men are getting a better and better picture of an elephant.

And here’s how.

Scientific_method

For hundreds of years now, thousands even, the blind men have been saying to each other, “Over here! Check this out! This is why I think it’s a snake!” And the other blind men come over and check out the snake, and one of them says, “I agree, this part has a lot in common with a snake, but it also has these differences… and interestingly, the surface feels very much like the tree trunk I was feeling yesterday.” And they each form departments to study the different parts of the elephant… and they compare notes and rigorously critique one another’s findings about the different elephant parts… and they come up with theories to explain what an elephant is, some of which make better or worse predictions about what they’ll find in between the snake-like thing and the tree-like thing… and then they embark on their Top Of The Elephant exploration program, and send probes and explorers and the Voyager Ladder to the top of the elephant and discover these amazing Ear things that they’d never imagined…

Indian_elephant_(PSF)

… and as each year and decade and century passes, we get a clearer picture of what an elephant is. It’s not perfect — there are big holes in the picture, and almost certainly mistakes as well. But we have theories about elephant-ness that make astonishingly accurate predictions about how the elephant will act and what we’ll find next on our continuing elephant explorations. And we have better and better forms of elephant perception all the time: both better techniques for exploring the elephant, and better methods for testing that our theories and data about the elephant are good. Our understanding of an elephant is better now than it was a century ago, and in another century it’ll be better still.

Why does this work?

Because the elephant is really there.

Because there is actually something out there that we can compare notes on. Because when two blind men feel an elephant’s trunk, they’re feeling the same real thing.

Now.

As I said in The Top Ten Reasons I Don’t Believe In God (and about 63 other places on this blog):

Compare, please, to religion.

Argue

In religion, we have no such consensus. The Snakians and the Treeists and the Ropafarians are still squabbling, still dividing up into sects, still coming up with no better argument for their beliefs than “Other people say it” and “I feel it in my heart” and “You can’t prove it didn’t happen.” And they’re still coming up with no clearer picture of the elephant: no better ability to predict what the elephant will do, no better skill at guiding the elephant in the direction that they want, than they had a year ago, or a hundred, or a thousand.

Why?

Slashed circle

Because there’s nothing there.

It’s all just stuff people made up. Consciously or un-. People can’t show each other the evidence for the Snake, or the Tree, or the Rope, and convince each other on the basis of the evidence… because there is no evidence. There is no snake, no tree, no rope. There’s nothing there. There’s just the conviction that the snake has to be there, because everyone else says there’s a snake, and our mother and father and all our teachers and authorities say there’s a snake, and we Snakians have believed in the snake for generations, and we’ve known about the snake since childhood, and besides we just feel the snake in our hearts.

The reason that there’s no increased consensus about religion? The reason that different religions today are as different, as inconsistent, as mutually contradictory, as they always have been, for thousands of years? The reason that prayer and prophecy haven’t gotten any more effective over the years?

The reason isn’t that God is a huge, complex, multi-faceted elephant that no one person can completely and accurately perceive.

The reason is that there is no elephant.

Blind Men and Elephants: Religion, Science, and Understanding Big Complicated Things

Come See Me Read! Perverts Put Out, Saturday Sept. 27

Greta Christina2 Comments

If you’re going to be in the San Francisco area this Saturday, come see me read! I’ll be reading at the pre- Folsom Street Fair edition of the fabulous and increasingly renowned Perverts Put Out sex reading series, on Saturday, September 27. In addition to ME ME ME ME ME, performers will include Meliza Bañales, Jen Cross, Thomas Roche, horehound stillpoint, Steven Schwartz, and Cherry Terror, emceed by Carol Queen and Simon Sheppard.

The event will be at CounterPulse, 1310 Mission Street in San Francisco, not far from the Civic Center BART station. It starts at 7:30 pm, and you’re advised to come on the early side, since the last edition was standing room only. Cost is $10-15, sliding scale. Hope to see you there!

Come See Me Read! Perverts Put Out, Saturday Sept. 27

God Is Magic

Greta Christina25 Comments

There’s an argument that gets made a fair amount by religious believers. It gets made by more thoughtful theists and by, shall we say, less thoughtful ones; it gets made in forms that are marginally clever and forms that are laughably bad. But none of the versions are ultimately very good, and none of them are convincing unless you already believe in God.

The argument:

Jesus is magic

God is magic, and he can do anything.

Here’s the more fleshed-out version of it. Phenomenon (X) currently has no natural explanation. Given our current understanding of the physical world, Phenomenon (X) can’t have a natural explanation. Therefore, the explanation must be supernatural. Or, at the very least, it’s reasonable to think that the explanation is, or might be, supernatural.

In other words: The physical world is bound by immutable laws of cause and effect. But God, by definition, is not bound by immutable laws of cause and effect. God is magic, and he can do anything. Therefore, if we don’t currently understand the laws of cause and effect governing Phenomenon (X), the best explanation, or at least a marginally reasonable assumption, is God.

Example. In the physical world, effects have to have causes. Things can’t bring themselves into being, and things can’t just have existed forever. But the universe itself must either have (a) always existed, or (b) somehow come into being from nothingness. Therefore, the universe must have been brought into being by an entity that is not bound by the natural laws of cause and effect. In other words — by God. God is magic, and therefore he can have created himself or always have existed, and he can have created the universe out of nothing but himself and the void.

It is, in my opinion, a terrible argument. I want to talk about why.

Time line of the universe

1: Sez who?

Who says that Phenomenon (X) — say, the very existence of the universe itself — can’t possibly have a natural explanation?

Just because we don’t currently have a natural explanation for it, does that mean we never will?

I’m going to make a point that I’ve made approximately 90,690 times in this blog (so my apologies to people who are getting sick of it, I promise I’ll move past it in a moment): Look at history. Specifically, look at the number of times that we thought Phenomena (A, B, C, D, E) had supernatural causes. Had to have supernatural causes. Could not possibly have been caused by anything other than the supernatural.

Origin of species

And look at the number of times we were wrong. Look at the number of times that supernatural explanations for phenomena have been replaced by natural ones. It’s thousands. Tens, or even hundreds of thousands, depending on how specific the phenomena are that you’re talking about.

Now, look at the number of times we were wrong in the other direction. Look at the number of times we thought Phenomenon (Y) had to have natural, physical causes, and wound up being wrong about that. Look at the number of times that unexplained phenomena have been carefully, rigorously studied, and all the best evidence pointed to the cause being spirits, or metaphysical energy, or God.

It’s exactly zero.

The question of “Where did the Universe come from?” (or “Did the universe just always exist?” or “Why is there something instead of nothing?”) is currently an unanswered question. But that absolutely does not mean that it’s an unanswerable question. In fact, it’s a question we’re trying to answer. It’s a question that’s being looked into. Physicists and astronomers are working on an answer as we speak.

Geodetic_effekt

Now, if and when they do come up with an answer, it may boggle our tiny little minds. It may completely rewrite our way of thinking about the world — much the way that heliocentrism and evolution and relativity did. It may even make us completely re-think the very concepts of cause and effect. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be real. It doesn’t mean it won’t be right. And it doesn’t mean it won’t be an entirely natural, physical explanation.

The fact that we do not currently have a natural, physical answer to this question does not prove — or even imply — that no such answer exists.

Some people will probably argue that this response shows a faith in science that is identical to a faith in God; that it’s essentially saying, “I don’t know what the answer is, but I trust that the answer will prove to be a natural/ scientific one,” in the same way that religious believers say, “I don’t know what the answer is, but I trust that the answer will prove to be a spiritual one.”

But it’s not.

It’s not a response based on faith. It’s a response based on evidence: the evidence of history. It’s not a blind faith in science; it’s an observation that, when it comes to unanswered questions about the world, the answers have always wound up being natural and physical… and that therefore, given any currently unanswered question, the existence of a natural, physical answer is an immeasurably better bet.

Blake_ancient_of_days

2: The universe just doesn’t look that way.

Let me put it this way. If the universe were created, and intervened with on any sort of regular basis, by a being who was magic, a being who was completely unrestricted by the natural laws of cause and effect and who had no limits to his magical power… wouldn’t that just be obvious?

Would there be any arguments at all about his existence?

Wouldn’t there be violations of the natural laws of cause and effect on a regular basis? Heck, would there even BE natural laws of cause and effect?

That’s not what the universe looks like. The universe operates by laws of physical cause and effect… laws that are remarkably consistent. Phenomenally consistent. “Insert superlative of your choice” consistent.

Claims of miracles — i.e., supernatural interventions that violate the natural laws of cause and effect — consistently fall apart on closer inspection. They just don’t happen.

Given that this is the case, we have one of three options:

MATRIX

A: There is a God, but he not only intervenes in the physical universe: he intervenes in our perceptions and our understanding, making us think that the universe operates by consistent physical laws when really it doesn’t. Otherwise known as the “Matrix” option, or the “stoned college sophomore discovering solipsism for the first time” option. Theoretically possible, but not very plausible. It’s also not falsifiable or testable one way or the other, and is therefore useless as a hypothesis.

Hands off manager

B: There is a God, and he created the universe, but he does not intervene in it in any way, shape or form. Since he created it, he just sits back and watches as it unfolds according to the laws of cause and effect. This is the Deism option. Also theoretically possible, and kind of hard to argue against, since the effective difference between a Deist God and no god at all is zilch.

But for that exact reason, it’s also not falsifiable or testable in any way, and is also useless as a hypothesis.

And, more to the point — it’s completely irrelevant. Again, for that exact same reason. If there is an infinitely powerful magical being who brought the universe into being, but who never intervenes in that universe in any way… why should we care? What difference would it make? The effective difference between a Deist God and no god at all is zero. What reason is there to believe in him, or to act as if he exists?

Or… and this is the one I’m going to go with, if for no other reason than Occam’s Razor…

C: There is no God.

Letting go of god

Julia Sweeney said it best, in her amazing performance piece “Letting Go of God.” After a long, arduous journey of spiritual searching, starting with her original Catholicism and going through New Age spirituality and vague beliefs that “God is nature” or “God is love,” she came to this conclusion: “The world behaves exactly as you would expect it would, if there were no Supreme Being, no Supreme Consciousness, and no supernatural.”

The world does not behave as if a magical being who could do anything were running the show. The world behaves as if it operated, entirely and 100%, according to physical laws of cause and effect.

Slash circle

3. There’s just no evidence for it.

There’s a point Ingrid keeps making, and it’s time I brought it up. She points out that every scrap of “evidence” that there is for religion comes from human beings. It comes from parents and religious teachers, from prophets and from sacred books, from just sitting around in your room thinking really hard.

And the “God is Magic” argument is exactly the same.

The “God is Magic” argument comes dangerously close to Anselm’s famously crappy ontological argument. That argument, for those who aren’t familiar, goes roughly like this: “I can imagine a completely perfect being, i.e. God. But an aspect of perfection would have to be actual existence: if something didn’t actually exist, by definition it wouldn’t be perfect. Therefore, God exists.” (No, really. Stop laughing. I am not making this up. I actually had to learn this when I was a religion major, as one of the classic arguments in favor of God’s existence.)

The “God is Magic” version of this essentially goes, “I am defining God as that which can always have existed and can create universes out of nothing. This magical God would provide a very neat and tidy explanation for any unanswered questions we might have. Therefore, God exists.”

But the fact that you can imagine and define such a being does not provide even one scrap of evidence that he actually exists.

Simpsons_church_sign

I realize that atheists sound a bit like a broken record when we say this, but it’s important and it’s true: It is not up to us to prove that God does not exist. It is up to theists to prove that he does: to prove that God is the best explanation for why things are the way they are, or even a plausible explanation that we should seriously consider.

Example: If you believe in theistic evolution — the theory that evolution is a process created and guided by God to create life and people — you can’t just say, “It could have happened that way. You can’t prove that it didn’t.” You need to show some evidence for why that’s a better hypothesis than evolution just happening as a natural process. You need to point to structures or processes that could not have evolved naturally, or to transitions in the fossil record that show unmistakable signs of intervention. (The intelligent design crowd has tried to do this, with laughably bad results.)

And if you believe in a God-created universe, you have to show some evidence for why that’s a better explanation for the existence of the universe than, for instance, the idea that universe has simply always existed. You can’t just say, “Well, we don’t know how it happened, and it had to happen somehow, and God is as good an explanation as any.” You can’t just say that the universe is impossible, define God as that which can do the impossible, and call that an answer.

Watch the gap

The “God is Magic” argument is really just another version of the “God of the gaps”; the God that is the answer to whatever gaps there currently are in the body of scientific knowledge; the blue crayon that gets used to fill in all the empty spaces in the coloring book… despite the fact that blue has never, ever proven to be the right color.

And it’s not actually an explanation. It doesn’t offer any clarity about why things are the way they are — a magical God could presumably have made things be any way at all, and the answer to why would ultimately just be, “God’s whim.” And it doesn’t offer any predictive power — ditto.

It’s not actually an explanation. It’s just a way of getting around the necessity of offering an explanation.

God Is Magic

The Obligatory Sarah Palin Column, Or, Why I Don’t Care About A Pregnant 17 Year Old: The Blowfish Blog

Greta Christina2 Comments

Sarah Palin

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It’s a piece about Sarah Palin… and what I do, and don’t, think are important questions when considering her (snicker) qualifications to be Vice President of the United States.

It’s titled The Obligatory Sarah Palin Column, Or, Why I Don’t Care About A Pregnant 17 Year Old, and here’s the teaser:

I just don’t care that much.

About the pregnant seventeen year old, I mean.

I suppose this is an abdication of my responsibility as a lefty sex writer. But I just don’t care that much that the 2008 Republican nominee for vice-president has a 17-year-old daughter who’s unmarried and pregnant.

I don’t even care all that much about the hypocritical double standard: how Sarah Palin and the Republicans want us to respect Bristol Palin’s personal and sexual privacy but don’t want to respect anyone else’s. That sort of double standard isn’t the most charming trait in the world, especially in an elected official… but it’s also very human. We all cut slack, and make excuses, and act protectively, for the people we’re close to. It’s probably not morally perfect, but I’m not sure I’d want to live in a world where it wasn’t true.

When it comes to Sarah Palin, here’s what I do care about.

To find out what I care about regarding Sarah Palin — when it comes to her views on sex, as well as other topics — read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

The Obligatory Sarah Palin Column, Or, Why I Don’t Care About A Pregnant 17 Year Old: The Blowfish Blog

Blog Carnivals!

Greta ChristinaLeave a comment

Carnival

I’m a little behind on these — sorry about that!

Humanist Symposium #25, at at Freethought Fort Wayne.

Skeptic’s Circle #94, at Reduce to Common Sense; and Skeptic’s Circle #95, at Skeptimedia.

Carnival of the Godless #99, at Oz Atheist’s Weblog, and Carnival of the Godless #100, at Prior Perceptions.

Carnival of the Liberals #72, at Washington Interns Gone Bad, and Carnival of the Liberals #73, at Redonkulous Reduncancy.

And the Feminist Carnival of Sexual Autonomy and Freedom #8, at Susie Bright’s Blog.

Happy reading!

Blog Carnivals!

Things I Like: Dexter

Greta Christina12 Comments

The blog has been a little heavy the last couple of days — fascinating, and I’m loving it, but heavy — and I have a couple of heavy-ish posts planned for the coming couple/ few days. So I’m taking a moment to indulge in my new “Things I Like” series. In the interest of fending off incipient crankhood, I am making a conscious effort to occasionally write something positive about things I like. Here’s one of them.

Dexter-dvd

It’s not just that it’s well- written and well- acted. It’s not just that it’s a fascinating character study. It’s not just that it manages to be both seriously grisly and seriously funny (a combination that I’m almost always fond of).

Here’s what I like about “Dexter.”

(The Showtime series where the protagonist is a sociopathic serial killer who works as a blood spatter analyst for the cops and only kills murderers. For those who aren’t familiar.)

When I tried to get Ingrid interested in the show, she watched one episode and argued through it the whole way. Ingrid is something of an aficionado of true crime, and something of an amateur expert (if that makes sense) about sociopathic serial killers. Which is what made me think she’d like the show. But throughout it she just kept arguing, “No sociopathic serial killer would be like that. No sociopathic serial killer would care about whether the people he killed were good or bad. No sociopathic serial killer would care about some code his policeman father taught him. That’s what makes them sociopaths. They don’t care about right or wrong, and they don’t care what other people think. They think of themselves as above all that.”

A fair critique, and one I can certainly understand. After all, if I were watching a TV drama series on a topic I knew and cared a lot about — sex toys, say, or atheism — I’d probably give up on it myself if it got the basic facts about its subject so very wrong.

But her critique made me think about what it is I like so much about the show, and why I like it despite its lack of realism.

I don’t watch “Dexter” as an exploration of human nature.

I watch it as a truly astonishing narrative exercise.

Dexter1

The exercise: Can you make an audience care about a serial killer? Can you make them root for him? Can you make them sympathize with him, identify with him, want him to do well? Can you even make them sympathize enough with him that they want him to get what he wants… which is to kill people, and keep on killing people?

And the answer, astonishingly, is Yes.

I like Dexter. The character, I mean, as well as the show. Watching the show, I find myself on the edge of my seat, hoping that he’ll be able to go through with this next murder, that he’ll be able to hide the evidence, that he’ll be able to successfully frame someone else for it, that he’ll be able to get away with it.

Which is an intensely compelling, if somewhat unsettling, experience. And it’s an amazing achievement in narrative.

Freaks talk back

There’s a book called Freaks Talk Back, about sexual non-conformity and tabloid talk shows. (No, this isn’t a tangent — stay with me.) I haven’t read it, but Ingrid has, and she’s told me many of the interesting bits from it. And one of them is this bit of fascinating information: The best predictive factor in determining whether a talk show audience will be with you or against you, cheering and hollering “You go, girl!” or booing and cussing you out? It’s nothing at all to do with your story. It’s whether you get to tell your story first. Whoever gets to tell their story first gets the audience on their side.

The character of Dexter gets to tell his story first. The show is almost all from his point of view, with his internal monologue narrating the proceedings. And so he gets you on his side.

Then, of course, you have the whole “he only kills bad people” thing. He kills people you have no sympathy for. He kills people you’re actively repulsed by. He kills people you yourself might want to kill, or at least feel a desire to kill, even though of course you wouldn’t. And that turns down the volume on the moral revulsion as well.

And then you throw in Dexter’s horrible childhood trauma. I won’t describe it, in case you haven’t seen the show yet, but suffice to say: Horrible. Makes you feel sorry for him. Makes you feel like maybe he can’t help being who he is, and doing what he does.

Dexter foot

All this — plus the pure likability of lead actor Michael C. Hall (of “Six Feet Under” fame) — and you get a likable, sympathetic protagonist who kills people for pleasure, in a truly gruesome way, and then cuts up their bodies and dumps them in the harbor.

I may be making it sound as if watching it were a cool exercise in aesthetic appreciation. But it’s more powerful than that. It’s not like I’m sitting back going, “Hm, this is interesting, I’m sympathizing with this character even while I’m finding him reprehensible and repugnant.” It’s more like I’m feeling both of these emotions at the same time: the compassion and the repulsion, the fervent hope for him to succeed and the fervent hope for him to drop off the face of the earth.

It’s unsettling as hell. But it’s also weirdly enlivening. It makes me question, and pay attention to, what I’m feeling. It takes the standards of the sympathetic- hero narrative and uses them to twist your emotions. Thus making you question, not just your emotions, but the narrative standards as well.

And that’s just neat.

Dexter blood spatter

It’s not a perfect series. It has a tendency — all too common on TV drama serieses — to throw too many curveballs at once, substituting lots of big dramatic moments for actual drama. And some of the inaccuracies bug me as well… like the ones about recovered memory. But ultimately, I don’t care. It’s clever, and it’s well-made, and it’s vastly entertaining, and it totally screws with the assumptions we make about what stories are supposed to be like and how they’re supposed to go. And it is, above all else, unique.

And that’s good enough for me.

(Dexter Seasons 1 and 2 are available on DVD, for purchase or rental; Season 3 starts on Sept. 28.)

Things I Like: Dexter