Excellent Dan Carlin this week, as always, about Iran and our changing attitude towards them. If you look at it pragmatically, Dan argues, engaging with Iran is really the only choice we have. I have to say he has a point.
In the second half, he engages in a fascinating thought experiment-what if corporate personhood were revoked, and corporations could no longer influence politicians in any way?
Dan is a disturbing, but fascinating way to spend an hour. I always end up thinking about topics from his show hours and days after I have listened to it.
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A while ago, I posted one of those Top Five Things on Facebook about the Best Opening Licks to rock n roll songs. For some reason, last night, I was thinking that I forgot Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Ohio”, and, of course, I did. If I had to make the list again today, and, apparently, I do, I would go this way:
1.CSNY, “Ohio”
2.The Beatles, “Revolution”
3.Pearl Jam, “Even Flow”
4.The Who, “Love Reign O’Er Me”
5.Aerosmith, “Same Old Song and Dance”
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An excellent point made on this week’s “Left, Right, and Center”(kcrw.com/lrc)-as bad as Muslim religious law is, in terms of its treatment of women and minorities, they are by no means the first or the only legal structure to encode despicable treatment of some of its people.
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Seeing someone get handcuffed (for shoplifting, I assume-I was curious, but not curious enough to eavesdrop) is a humbling experience. In a certain way, it is a reminder of state power-the state has the ability to take your liberty away, instantly, just on someone’s say so. (They can give it back later, of course, if you’re found not guilty or whatever-but you’ll never get that time back.)It also seems a little unnecessary-assuming it was shoplifting and the person was guilty-surely shoplifting is a crime against property, and people who do it aren’t all that dangerous. Maybe they handcuff everyone. I don’t know.
Those of us who argue about government and law and justice should remember that it is real people who win and lose and live and die with these decisions
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Fascinating TTBOOK (To The Best Of Our Knowledge) about men and masculinity, a topic particularly close to my heart, being, well, a guy. It is indisputably true that modern popular culture is hostile to men. It is also indisputably true that men have done much to earn the stereotypes that we are portrayed with. I’m not sure how to feel about all that. It is true that the reaction against thousands of years of sexism should not be reverse sexism. It is also true that oppressors always say this after they have been overthrown. I’m not sure how to feel about that either.
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Then a tremendous TTBOOK, that I am pretty sure I have heard before, about atheism and its critics. This series is tremendous in every way, and perfect for polymaths like me-ricochets from pop culture to history and art and science and law. Lovely.
I am a Christian, albeit a nonenthusiastic one, but a reader of Richard Dawkins as well. Maybe that’s why I get so many headaches lately-I’m trying to hold too many ideas at once. Either that or a brain tumor.
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School’s out, as Alice Cooper says, for summer. This event, which used to fill me with joy while a student, has just the opposite effect as a parent. I have never claimed to be an especially skilled parent-in fact, I rather steadily claim the opposite. But I am especially unskilled at parenting during the summer.
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The third TTBOOK for me today is “How We Learn”, another outstanding program, this time about education. I send my child, at great expense, to what I am pretty sure is a good school. But I don’t think I know what that is-I am extremely wary of school rankings, as I am about hospital rankings. In such a hugely complicated field, the measuring sticks we are using seem inadequate.
I like to tease my son that he’s lucky I was not in charge at his school, because I would double his workload at the very minimum. But there’s a sliver of truth there-I don’t think he’s working hard enough, and I don’t have the mental energy to pick up the slack. I try to tell him that there are kids his age in India and China that are going to want his spot in college in about 5 years, and his job in 10 years, and I am relatively confident that is true. Of course, as sons do, he doesn’t listen.
Neither did I, of course, so turnabout is indeed fair play.
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wow lots of stuff here that is interesting.
ReplyDeleteI agree that an attitude of male bashing in commercials, general conversation, etc. has become popular, for lack of a better term. One of my sons is extremely sensitive to this. He of course was not around in the male "pig" days and was raised by a woman who tried to make him into a "good man" who is fair and kind. So this bashing confuses him. He sees it as totally unjust.
And really, he's right. We should take people on an individual basis... the way I raised him. Men have become the dumb bunnies of commercials, just like older people need their middle aged children to think for them in commercials.
The author on the program points out how many men in pop culture (Homer Simpson, etc.) are fools and punchlines to jokes. The host tried to add that there are still women in pop culture that are arm candy (ie Bond girls).
ReplyDeleteThe problem with that is that even arm candy girls, which are harmful in their own ways, are becoming more powerful and full characters-more recent Bond girls are participants in the story, much more so than before.
I guess someone has to be the butt of the jokes, and it's men's turn.
Being handcuffed is a truly humbling experience. There are a few ways to handle it. Shut your mouth, obey all commands and sit and wait until you see a judge, which, based on my experience, was about 12 hours. Or, you can take the route I took, thrash about, proclaim your innocence (in fairness to the police, I was drunk and I was in public.) until the police decide to use "necessary force", to subdue you. In my case, that included multiple blows to the chest followed by 3 large police officers taking me to the ground. (I'm 5'8", 150 lbs.) They don't care what you have to say, you're accused of a crime and going to jail. It's a bit ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteAs far as reverse sexism, the womens movement has gone a bit too far. Thankfully, in society, when a pendulum swings too far one way, it always comes back.
Ananda girl - I'm the mom of a young, sensitive son too. It has deeply impacted how I view masculinity. I think about it more.
ReplyDeleteCeltic - what you said about the pendulum swinging it right on.
I once read something in an intro to James Joyce's Ulysses (in college...obviously, it's not my reading for pleasure choice) that has always stayed with me. The author said that the woman's movement allowed women to maintain all the positive traits of femininity (nurturing, sensitivity, etc.) while embracing traits traditionally associated with men (intelligence, physical pride, assertiveness). In effect, post-women's movement, women have the best of both worlds. The author argued that what was missing was a corresponding "men's movement" in which men could embrace those womanly traits without giving up the male ones. Until they do, women will basically have the upper hand.
I sort of think that is happening. All the Dads I know are far more hands-on than my Dad and his buddies were. A man crying isn't such a big thing. Maybe the "laugh at men" media portrayls is just society's way of dealing with a new, not-quite-yet- understood ideal of manhood.