Politics

You are currently browsing the archive for the Politics category.

Christian Privilege in America

December 13, 2009 in Politics | No comments

target-christmasAccording to interviews conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in 2007, 78% of American adults identify themselves as Christians. While that number is down 10% from 20 years ago, most aspects of life in America are still dictated by Christianity: we have “winter break” over Christmas, “spring break” over Easter, and not much thought is given by professors regarding scheduling an exam on days such as Yom Kippur or Eid ul-Fitr.

With the appearance of conspiracy theories in recent years regarding a “war on Christmas,” it has become evident that conservative Christians believe that they are losing their supremacy in popular American culture. Commentators such as John Gibson at Fox News Channel claim that “a cabal of secularists, so-called humanists, trial lawyers, cultural relativists, and liberal, guilt-wracked Christians–not just Jewish people” are persecuting the American Christian majority. Read the rest of this entry »

Women = Shopping!

December 6, 2009 in Media, Politics | No comments

I was so disgusted at this lede that I didn’t even read the rest of the article. That doesn’t sound like much, but I am someone who can’t help but read everything.

When you get 36 local women-owned companies and nearly 1,200 women in one room at Minneapolis’ Graves Hotel, there’s only one possible result — high-energy shopping.

Best/worst part: it was written by a woman.

9/11 texts: ‘Got my zebra thongs on!!!’

November 26, 2009 in Politics, Technology | No comments

Wikileaks has released a half-million pager messages from the hour before, during, and after the September 11th terrorist attacks, which were intercepted over the air by whomever was monitoring pager frequencies for unencrypted messages:

Text pagers are usualy [sic] carried by persons operating in an official capacity. Messages in the archive range from Pentagon, FBI, FEMA and New York Police Department exchanges, to computers reporting faults at investment banks inside the World Trade Center

The archive is a completely objective record of the defining moment of our time. We hope that its entrance into the historical record will lead to a nuanced understanding of how this event led to death, opportunism and war.

Read the rest of this entry »

Palin’s Bizarro Universe

November 14, 2009 in Crime, Politics | No comments

We are reaching new heights everyday in terms of how far some people will dig up their asses in order to pull some new stupid shit out.

From her alternate universe, Sarah Palin writes:

It is crucially important that Americans be made aware that the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks may walk away from this trial without receiving just punishment because of a ‘hung jury’ or from any variety of court room technicalities. If we are stuck with this terrible Obama Administration decision, I, like most Americans, hope that Mohammed and his co-conspirators are convicted. Hang ‘em high.

In her bizarro universe, a dude we’ve had locked up in Guantanamo Bay, representing himself against charges of scheming up 9/11, is totally going to slip by in a New York City courtroom. Did you hear these people bitching about the criminal trials of dudes like the “shoe bomber,” Richard Reid, back when Bush was still president? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Anti-ethnic gay penguins?

September 28, 2009 in Politics | No comments

It’s Banned Books Week! It looks like the results for 2009’s most frequently banned books isn’t out for a few more months, but the top ten lists for prior years is available.

2008’s most frequently banned book, for the third year in a row:

Tango has two daddies

And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group

Wait, what the hell? How can a story about cute penguins be anti-ethnic? (As it turns out, Maus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel memoir about the Holocaust, also sans human characters, was similarly charged with being anti-ethnic.) I mean, yeah, “anti-family” is code for “GAYGAYGAY!!!” and it could offend your “religious viewpoint” if you view gay people as subhuman freaks, but anti-ethnic? Penguins? Huh?

Social Justice Librarian looked into the matter of anti-ethnic gay penguins:

I did hear back from the ALA OIF in response to my previously posted follow-up questions, and in summary:

  • they can’t tell us what type of institution the “anti-ethnic” charge came from (but I assume it has to be public or school library, and more likely a school)
  • but they can tell us it happened in North Carolina
  • they don’t know of any books beyond Maus and Tango that have been charged as anti-ethnic but have non-human characters
  • they’re not sure how the anti-ethnic category came to be, and
  • it’s entirely possible that it was checked off by mistake on the report form for And Tango Makes Three

« Older entries