And now for something completely different

Or is it? I’ve just been introduced to the work of Tim Wise, and it’s fabulous stuff: all about how we view race through the distorting lenses of denial and privilege and class. He’s a terrific speaker, I guarantee you that it’s worth your time to take an hour and listen to this lecture.

Oh, yeah, a white guy lecturing on race…shouldn’t we be listening to a person of color on these issues? Of course we should, but if you just listen to the first five minutes you’ll get his confession: there’s an esthetic to who people will listen to, and the neatly groomed white man is right at the top of the list. Deeper in, one interesting point he makes is that the use of the word “underprivileged” is endemic, but “overprivileged” isn’t even in the dictionary (hey, he’s right, too: as I wrote that, my convenient electronic spellcheck highlighted the word with a red underscore. I must have made a mistake…that concept doesn’t exist).

People are selfish bastards. If you have privilege — and I do to a high degree — it’s always a tendency to cling to it and hold it tightly to ourselves and rationalize our entitlements, which perpetuates the divisions. The “underprivileged” aren’t the source of the problem, it’s the overprivileged who work constantly to maintain our position. We are the problem. To think that we can tell the oppressed that it’s their responsibility to fix their problem is doubly wrong: it’s our responsibility to fix our problem.

(Also on FtB)

He and Bachmann could be BFFs!

The crazy Minnesotans keep crawling out of the woodwork and onto the political stage — it’s a little embarrassing. We’ve had a professional wrestler, a vampire, a crazy Jebus lady, and now…Gary Boisclair, an anti-abortion fanatic who’s running against Keith Ellison, our Muslim representative in the Fifth Congressional District. Here’s his ad (which he has no money to air, so only put it on youtube, where it got pulled for violating their terms of service), which makes a big deal of the fact that Ellison swore his oath of office on a copy of the Quran, which is full of bombastic Islamic tribalism and sectarian exclusivity, and threatens unbelievers with violence and horrible fates.

It’s a “book that undermines our Constitution,” says Boisclair. So what book would he take his oath of office on? The Bible, which is just as bad?

Bye-bye Perry

There was a Republican debate yesterday? Who cares — at this point, the only reason anyone is watching them is like watching NASCAR, hoping for a spectacular crash. And Rick Perry delivers.

Everyone is groaning over how he couldn’t even remember which government agencies he plans to axe if he gets into office, but seriously—the ones he remembers are education and commerce? He seriously wants to shut down education? We should be howling at that, but that’s the kind of wicked nonsense we expect of Republicans anymore.

Apparently, the third agency was the Department of Energy, which he rails against every day in his regular stump speech. Again, now is the time to cut off energy policy? The man is insane as well as stupid.

This is why I hate college football programs

I know, students enjoy them, and a weekend of sports can be a fun event, and yes, they do have a strong effect on college enrollments (which always seemed bizarre to me—students actually select their academic institution based on the performance of the athletic team? But the correlations in the enrollment/season wins data all bear it out). But they also turn into hyper-inflated domains of privilege, where the coaches are paid more than faculty, students and alumni vividly demonstrate the etymological source of the term “fan”, and the athletes too often turn into swaggering assholes. Can we just have small athletic programs where it’s all for fun, and no one makes the games more important than the academics?

I am speaking, of course, of the sordid events going on at Penn State. Children are raped by an assistant coach; the staff knows about it all for a long time, and either turns a blind eye to it or whimpers among itself; nothing is done. Paterno, the head coach and king of football in Happy Valley, was allowed to sail on unperturbably, still holding his job, still coaching, and the only change in his routine was that the university wasn’t letting the press talk to him. This is the guy who knew about his defensive coach’s behavior for a long time.

There have been questions about Paterno’s role, too. Pennsylvania’s state police commissioner said the coach fulfilled his legal requirement when he told university administrators that a graduate assistant had seen Sandusky abusing a young boy in the team’s locker room shower in 2002.

2002 — Paterno let a sexual predator run free for 9 years, doing the absolute minimum to hinder him. He reported him to a superior (at Penn State, there’s someone who can boss Joe Paterno around?), but the police say that that’s where it ended — they were not informed. PSU kept it all in-house, buried.

That’s changed now. Penn State students rallied to support Paterno — just like we hear about congregations supporting child-raping priests — but to no avail. Finally, the board of trustees has done the right thing: Paterno and the university president have been fired, effective immediately.

Now if only they’d go on to do the appropriate act of scaling back the athletics program as a whole and never again allowing any coaching staff to become the kind of royalty Paterno and his crew were.

(via Comradde PhysioProffe.)

Why I am an atheist – Kathleen DiRocco

I am an atheist for a few reasons. I love science, if I had my way instead of going back to school for nursing as I am now, I would be going back to be a paleontologist, preferably wanting to study the Cambrian explosion (I heart trilobites!) I also love reason and explanation of things with facts and truths as opposed to blind faith. As a child I grew up in the Catholic Church and was taught that if you were really quiet go would talk to you. Well I would sit there and be as quiet as I could get and nothing. I remember telling my sister and brother that this was stupid when I was in the sixth grade, that this makes no sense benediction, mass, the body and blood becomes him. I was being told cannibalism was awesome! As time went on, I figured that god really could not exist for many reasons, hell I was taught in school evolution and only learned about creationism in the Ken Hamm and Kirk Cameron sense was when I went to High School at Girls High. I thought these girls were insane. Who would honestly believe the Earth was 6000 years old? They would tell me how did we come from monkeys and even in high school I tried to explain the whole common ancestor thing but it was like talking to a brick wall. I refuse to a part of a hypocritical group of people such as Ken Hamm and Kirk Cameron, the oh god loves you but only if you do ABC, let’s put people to death yet lord help you if you have an abortion. Hypocrites such as these fools elect people and worship in a sense Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Ricky Perry, George Bush, etc. Supposedly men and women of god yet since these fools really never read Jesus’ teaching, they are the opposite of what Jesus taught.

I absolutely love science. I can watch any program on the evolution of life on Earth. I also love going to places to actually see these things. My favorite places to go include the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Smithsonian, the Natural History Museum of London and also took the time to actually see Lucy, aka Australopithecus afarensis, in New York (why did it not come to Philly I will never know.) I can see the history of life on this planet in fossils, I can look up in the sky and see how vast this universe is and while I do not understand physics, I feel biology makes more sense to me anyway(I am team Biology, my sister and dad team Physics.) I own a trilobite fossil, ammonite fossils and would love one day to own a larger trilobite fossil. I think learning about Anomalocaris is more interesting than being told if I don’t sew my seeds I will go to hell. I also look at some of the smallest living things on earth and technically nonliving things. Viruses and bacteria in my opinion explain more about life on earth and how it evolved, especially since we got those fun loving antibiotic resistant strains and how viruses technically are not even living things. But trying to explain that to creationist or theists is like trying to get a two year old to understand this as well, but they are more receptive to this thinking.

I find when someone tells me they are a Christian, Jew, Muslim, etc I look at them and think how sad. Why do you need to identify yourself. I don’t go around screaming HEY look at me I Heart trilobites! When I hear those words come out of their mouths I think how it like the blind leading the blind, how a grown adult can really think that there is some old white guy sitting on a throne and that one day they will be next to him. I love challenging them by asking what makes you really think you are going to heaven? Of course they start quoting stupid crap, saying that they believe in Jeebus because of their faith, because God is everywhere etc. Well I usually say, so is oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, etc. I get tired of arguing at times, because I think I get more of an intelligent response from my dogs then these folks. It is a shame because I have meet some nice people of all faiths and nonfaiths.

But in the end, I am an atheist because I know that there is no god. No proof that is tangible, no concrete evidence to prove otherwise. I have known this since I was 12. I also have known that I am good without God.

Kathleen DiRocco
United States

I’m not going to do any porn, either

And with that declaration, the universe heaves a vasty sigh of relief. I’m not interested, no one else would be interested, and I don’t think I’d be particularly good at it. Also, it’s the kind of behavior, along with selling illegal narcotics, pursuing a hobby of running a white slavery ring, or getting caught barbecuing babies that would move my university to revoke my tenure.

And that’s not right. If I were a sexually talented exhibitionist, why shouldn’t I be perfectly within my rights to have an avocation of filming consensual, legal activities? We have a rather puritanical attitude towards sex, and that means that we punish people for doing something that almost everyone does all the time. While I’m no more going to flaunt my sexual behavior publicly than I’m going to take up gymnastics as a hobby (and all of you, quit cheering every time I promise not to ever do porn), I can see where some people might enjoy it… like Greta Christina, who regrets that social mores mean she can’t both do porn and be a respected spokesperson for atheism.

I’m curious: can anyone give a good rational reason why performing in pornography should diminish one’s credibility in the public eye? Is it a more morally reprehensible line of work than, say, investment banker or Fox News host?

Another question: which do you think the general public would find a greater handicap to electability to government office, a career in porn, or a career as an atheist?