Pandagonians, I need your collective wisdom.  Here is a photograph of a dog:

And the question for you is: Photoshop? Or real dog?  What’s your take on this burning question?

Even though the proper beginning and end of decades should start with 1 years instead of 0 years, the panic over Y2K means that we’re all in the helpless thrall of pretending that 0 is a better starting point than 1.  With that in mind, I won’t apologize for joining the “review the decade” list-making.  And since New Year’s Eve is a time of alcohol consumption and subsequent regret, I thought I’d make a list of those major events that seemed like a good idea at the time, but in retrospect, were really fucking stupid things to do.  Some of them I participated in, but then again, I dare say none of us were innocent.

10) Buying the idea that throwing votes to Ralph Nader on the grounds that Bush wasn’t that bad would be a good way to teach Democrats a valuable lesson on the dangers of centrism. 

9) Forwarding along that Paris Hilton sex tape.

8) Giving “Crash” the Best Picture Oscar.

7) Watching reality TV shows without considering the ramifications, i.e. that this would only encourage them to make more.

6) Snuggies.

5) Crocs.

4) Electing George Bush to office in 2004, after all we’d learned.

3) Buying a house on a variable rate mortgage on the grounds that you could always sell it for a higher price.

2) Betting that the market for high end condos would never stop growing.

1) Taking seriously the Bush administration claims that there could be WMDs in Iraq and/or we had a special responsibility to depose Saddam Hussein and be greeted with roses thrown at our feet. 

Leave yours in comments!  Happy New Year’s Eve, and let’s hope the next decade proves a better one.

The new New World Order is afoot!

Barack Obama signed an Executive Order amending one of Ronald Reagan’s executive orders, which rescinded the exclusion INTERPOL would otherwise have from American tax laws. 

Short version: INTERPOL employees are no longer liable for American taxes.  That’s about it. 

Of course, if there’s one thing we know about the great body of conservative bloggers, it’s that their collective vocabulary is about 75 words, and roughly a third of those are synonyms for “Sharia”. 

Let’s start with Erick Ericson at Redstate:

The best and most reasonable take comes from Andy McCarthy. Let me put this in perspective for you.

[...]

For no discernible reason whatsoever, last Wednesday when no one was looking, Barack Obama signed an executive order giving all immunities of foreign powers to Interpol.

In other words, Interpol is now in a better position than any American law enforcement institution that operates on American soil. It cannot have its records searched or seized and it is not subject to the restraints of sunshine and transparency that FOIA requests can bring.

At a time when Obama is worried about ensuring the rights of terrorists against the abuses of the American government, he has no problem surrendering American rights to an arm of the United Nations.

Predictably, the fact that Barack Obama has allowed the World Police to operate within our borders and given them all of West Virginia to use as concentration camps (READ BETWEEN THE LINES, PEOPLE) is setting off alarms among the most vigilant of our civilian security forces.  The Anchoress is worried that this is the beginning of Kristallnacht, and that INTERPOL and ACORN are somehow going to join forces to form the ultimate acronym, CLARINET PORNO.  Confederate Yankee is pretty damn sure that they still have actual Nazis running INTERPOL, and that somehow these tax regulations will allow them to kidnap American soldiers for gay sex in Amsterdam.

The Astute Bloggers believe Barack Obama has empowered INTERPOL to capture George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes.  Protein Wisdom is pretty sure that Obama plain hates the constitution and was a shitty law professor, which burns most of all.

Now, sure, all of these people are total morons.  But they’re actually super double special fucking morons, and for a very special reason. 

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Taking a mental breather this week, so blogging might be patchy.  But I couldn’t let this discussion slide.  Anna at Jezebel is concerned that straight people demanding recognition for their domestic partnerships, complete with the benefits that unmarried gay couples registered as domestic partners get, is somehow a problem because of straight privilege.  This line of thinking shows the limits of using “calling out privilege” as a substitute for demanding justice and radical change.  This is no small thing; for a long time, many gay rights activists have expressed the concern that focusing on marriage rights would distract from the larger struggle to not privilege one family type over another in terms of rights—-basically, that focusing on allowing gay people to marry would distract from things like the health care needs of the unmarried, and reinforce the incorrect belief that married people are superior to unmarried people.  And some of us, like myself, have argued that the struggle for equal marriage rights is a step towards the ultimate goal of de-privileging the married over everyone else.  Ironically, an example I’ve always used in this argument is domestic partner benefits for straight people—-that the fact that they are a result of the struggle for equal marriage rights, and that they undermine the privileging of the married over everyone else (gay or straight), proves that the struggle for same sex marriage is ultimately going to serve the radical goal of equality for all.

When you apply the concepts of equality for all and enthusiastic consent to the question of whether or not domestic partnerships should be available to straight people, and not exist strictly as a half-measure for gay couples that don’t have the right to marry, then the answer is, “Of course”.  Add to that the principle that whatever the people at the Family Research Council wants is almost surely wrong, and of course, that’s the case here.

And Peter Sprigg of the conservative Family Research Council says the unmarried straight couples’ argument “illustrates one of our concerns — that once you open the door to anyone other than married couples, you’re beginning a process of the deconstruction of marriage.”

This exposes how openly conservatives believe that “traditional marriage” is and, more importantly, should be a coercive institution. This sews it up for me.  It’s immoral to use basic rights like health care and the right to define your own family as a tool to coerce people into marriage.  I agree that it’s icky that this comes up because some straight couples are suing for discrimination because they’re being shut out of a right that gay couples have, but we should remember that this is merely a legal argument and the assault is not on the rights of gay couples, but on the privilege of the married over everyone else.  Which is why I thought this “yes, but” from Anna was inadequate:

That said, given the prohibitions against gay marriage in this country, it’s hard to view the lack of benefits for straight domestic partners as the primary discrimination here.

The problem with Oppression Olympics kind of arguments is that they can always be employed.  You could just as easily—-and some people have done this—-argue that gay rights are secondary to [the Iraq War, the economy, the labor movement, racism], and that we should therefore put that battle off to another day. Feminism has always been attacked from this angle.  The irony of this is that only by fighting multiple oppressions can we even get close to achieving the main goals.  De-privileging marriage will only benefit gay couples who want to marry.  More importantly, gay people in general will be served by de-privileging marriage, because it’s tied up with de-privileging straightness.  Also, not all gay people want to get married any more than all straight people want to get married.

Anna is on board with the goal of de-privileging marriage, but surprisingly, some Jezebel commenters agreed with Peter Sprigg that marriage benefits are a reward that should be reserved for those who comply with a coercive institution.  Like, oh, the first commenter out of the gate.

What I do say is that marriage is a privileged state in part because it implies a legal permanent commitment that is enforceable and that has long term benefits for both individuals and the state, and can be chosen or not to be entered into freely – thereby conferring obligations on each spouse as well as privileges.

While she claims she’s not saying married people are superior, her argument is shot through with that assumption, commonly made more by conservatives, that the unmarried are less committed because we are less interested in the idea of having outside forces hold us in the relationship should we choose to leave.  No matter how fancy you make it, this is the argument that unmarried couples want to have their cake and eat it, too.  Which implies, in turn, that living unmarried is “cake”.  Which undermines the pro-marriage arguments you hear when people’s backs aren’t up against the wall, or they aren’t begrudging unmarried people basic rights to things like health care and hospital visits.  We’re otherwise told to marry is a choice made for pleasure, for love, for good, wholesome reasons.  But when the whiff of coercion enters the room—-when rights to health care are held over your head, for instance—-then it’s hard not to ask, “If marriage is so great, how come you’re trying to force me into it?”

I will admit it: I’m addicted to terrible romantic comedies. 

I watched Made of Honor voluntarily.  All of it.  I saw The Proposal, and marveled at how two people who hated each other could break themselves down and rebuild themselves back up in the space of three days (however, Betty White was involved, so it all made sense in context).  I even did the inexplicably terrible back-to-back of 27 Dresses and P.S., I Love You, the latter of which was a goddamn comedy no matter how they branded it.

The reason I love them is not because of the movies themselves - the romantic comedy genre is rotting from within, a shambling, misshapen narrative hulk bumbling down a well-worn path, every movie trying to be Sleepless in Seattle...again.  Upper middle class white people with love issues meet each other, there are hijinks, one of the principals either turns out to be insanely rich or in competition with someone who is, wacky parents are somehow intertwined, there’s a misunderstanding, everyone wanders off hating each other, someone realizes that they actually love the other person and they run to stop that person from marrying the well-meaning but doomed other love interest who stumbled into this insanely fucked up situation.

Hopefully, Craig T. Nelson is involved somewhere.

There’s also its offshoot, the romantic dramedy.  In this case, the protagonists are usually poorer - think middle class or the newly graduated aspiring to be upper middle class.  The infamous Manic Pixie Dream Girl usually makes an appearance and flounces around while our depressed yet witty hero dicks around in his oh-so-hard life of whiteness until he is inspired by her.  She runs away, he chases, she’s got some problem that makes the romance problematic.  If the film is uplifting, they overcome it together; if it tries to be realistic, something takes our MPDG off into the sunset and our depressed hero is slightly less depressed for having met her.

What Up in the Air does (and does an excellent job of) is take the ungrounded, magical reality of romantic comedies, where work, bills, other relationships, everything falls understandingly to the wayside in the face of True Love, and grounds it. 

(Spoilers ahead.)

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I wasn’t surprised to see that this weekend set the record for highest grossing weekend, in part because we paid $15 a pop for a matinee to see “Avatar”. Of course, that’s in New York; I’m sure that it wasn’t so expensive everywhere else, though having gone to see 99% of the movies I’ve seen in the past 7 or so years at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, I have no idea what a movie costs.  But rising costs are going to result in rising receipts, even if the same number of tickets sell. 

But that’s not all there is to it.  Even when they’re expensive, movies are still a relatively cheap form of entertainment, and so they actually can do much better in a recession, as people choose movies over other, more expensive ways to get out of the house.  I’d bet that Netflix and other forms of at-home movie and TV are going to do a lot better, too, as staying in is the cheapest of all.  But on Christmas especially, people are looking for an excuse to escape their families, and so the movie business wins and wins big. 

However, I suspect that this recession may really be the end of the music industry as we know it.  They’ve been dying for a long time now, due to downloading, competition from indie labels, and alternative distribution that gives people what they want (the music they want to hear on demand) for free, like YouTube does.  People justify spending on movies, because movies are better than alternatives.  But the alternatives to buying music more diffuse.  They do include illegal downloading, but it’s also true that people will just skip it and listen to the radio or YouTube instead.  The corporate tendency to play it safe doesn’t do the music industry any favors, because if you flatten all music out and make it sound the same, then the consumer only has to buy one album to get that sound, even if they like it. 

I’d also argue that the recession is going to create an obstacle to selling more music that’s a little harder to overcome, which is that people are more attracted to comforting things in hard times.  When it comes to movies, this might mean seeing more formulaic comedies and action movies, but with music it’s a little different, because records are so much more replayable than movies.  So, if you want something comforting with music, you’re going to just play your favorite stuff, instead of exploring new stuff.  Again, this is going to be all the more true when the product the industry is pushing is designed to be as disposable as possible, making your favorite albums sound more timeless by comparison.

All in all, what economic hard times mean for the entertainment industry is a complicated thing, and actually pretty fascinating.  Radio really came into prominence during the Great Depression, and it’s hard not to wonder if the actual economic downturn played a part in that, because it encouraged staying home for your entertainment.  We’re looking at a surprisingly similar situation now, both in terms of the severity of the recession and in the fact that there’s all these infant technologies that provide cheap entertainment in the home that stand to benefit. One thing that indicates that the same thing may in fact happen is the fact that Kindle books outsold real books at Amazon this Christmas. I don’t know why that might be.  It’s probably a combination of factors: the novelty of Kindle books makes them easier to push for Christmas than regular books, the sense that they are less wasteful than real books probably helps them sell when “green” has become a marketing tool, and just the fact that Kindles were given as presents, and so Kindle books were sold on that like video game sales tag along after console sales. 

But I also have to wonder if the perception of thrift during a recession plays into this.  I say “perception”, because I’m not sure a Kindle is actually cheaper.  The books aren’t much cheaper, and the device itself is expensive.  (Though Kindle books on iPhones probably help push sales.)  But what Kindle books do is they don’t take up space, and so they create the perception of thrift for that alone.  That, plus the association of “green” with thrift helps make something that reduces paper waste and tree usage seem thriftier.  I think that people also tell themselves that buying a Kindle will help them read more books, which is both considered a virtuous thing and a great way to get bang for your entertainment buck.  The same money spent on a 2 hour movie will buy you 6 or more hours of reading entertainment, after all. Kindles create an opportunity to indulge these arguments while getting rid of the downside of walking around with a bag full of physical items that will take up space in your house.  (Of course, you can’t resell Kindle books, but I doubt as many people are devotees of the resale shop as I am.) 

Anyway, thought I’d toss out some random ideas on how the recession will affect entertainment.  What trends do you see, Pandagonians?  Which do you think will stick, and which do you think are flashes in the pan?

It gave Ross Douthat the vapors, so kudos to James Cameron for that.

It’s hard for me to pick my favorite part of that hysterical diatribe about blasphemy badly disguised as intellectual analysis (Douthat was born a cranky old man, I’ve realized), but I think this is it:

Richard Dawkins has called pantheism “a sexed-up atheism.” (He means that as a compliment.)

I love that he feels he has to explain this to his readers.  Why?  Because if there’s anything worse than atheism in Douthat’s book, it’s sex.  He can’t think of a single good thing about either sex or atheism, and assumes that you the reader would be equally baffled.  What a strange world Dawkins must live in, where getting laid and sleeping in on Sundays could be considered anything but hell itself.

The allure of the number “3” and the letter “D” drew Marc and me to see “Avatar” on Christmas Eve. (It sucked.)  Marc got into the longest concessions line of all time while I held out seats in the theater, which he thought sucked for him, but was actually a blessed relief from the torture that I had to suffer, a preview of an upcoming Garry Marshall movie called “Valentine’s Day”.  Just the act of putting the words “Garry Marshall” next to “Valentine’s Day” is enough to cause screaming nightmares, but believe me, this trailer makes it so much worse.

Garry Marshall clearly hates humanity.  That’s the only reasonable explanation for this.  I was happy to see that I wasn’t the only person who saw this and wanted to commit an act of violent retribution; Jessica Grose beat me to making fun of this. 

With jokes like, “I’m checking in for two… I mean, one and a dog.” [SADFACE], Valentine’s Day doesn’t look like it will be any better.

But I tell you that this doesn’t even come close to expressing how fucking stupid this trailer is.  For those who can’t bear to watch it, there are many other “jokes” along those lines.  Some woman who surely will get her comeuppance for being a slut asks her married parents Hector Elizondo and Shirley MacLaine what kind of crazy people have sex with one person for the rest of their lives, and they exchange a Meaningful Look and pretend to be embarrassed that they’re those crazy people.  Jessica Biel cries about how her fucked-up-ness drives the dudes away while stuffing her face full of chocolates.  I did a face plant in the theater.  When Marc got back, I announced that I had to break up with him in defense of single people.  He talked me down off the ledge, of course.  Good thing he didn’t also see the trailer, or he might have been more sympathetic to my feelings at that moment. 

The question isn’t, “Why did Garry Marshall make this piece of dreck?”  Marshall’s oeuvre, especially “Pretty Woman”, makes is clear that he hates humanity. No other explanation is needed.  The question is, “Who pays good money to see this shit?”  The answer appears to be “the same people who leave dumb ass YouTube comments”.

See, I went to YouTube to get this trailer so you could share my pain, and discovered that this video had a 5 star rating from 2,808 viewers, indicating that most raters aren’t, like I was, watching this video through their fingers with two fingers of Maker’s nearby for reinforcements. This video has been viewed over a million times.  I don’t know if the million-ish people who didn’t leave ratings were running like hell from this like I was, but those deeply invested enough to leave comments are staining their shorts with pleasure at the idea of watching two hours of stories about how people who aren’t in monogamous relationships should hate themselves, but people in monogamous relationships have a lot of Hard Work ahead of them.  The commenters are so very excited.

I WANNA WATCH THIS!!!?

This looks? so good.

I? can’t wait to see this movie!

fuckkk i cant wait till this comes outt.

Not that there aren’t dissenters, though their motivations are suspect.

LOVE ONLY FOR LOSERS?

Yesterday, I argued that atheists should feel free to celebrate Christmas, if only because it pisses off Garrison Keillor.  But I don’t think there’s any hope for Valentine’s Day, which is a holiday that clearly exists to make everyone feel inadequate, because you’re either not in a relationship, or your relationship isn’t all fulfilling.  What I don’t understand is people’s enthusiasm for crap like this.  You’d think that since most people have intimate knowledge of what it’s like to be single or coupled (and most of us have knowledge of both), they would be able to see right through this dishonest drivel.  But no.  Some people appear to be willing to eat up these insults to their dignity with a spoon.  I’ll bet some people even go on dates to this movie, sitting there absorbing misanthropic, poisonous messages about romance while attempting to conduct one. No wonder self-help books sell so well.

After all the moving, etc., Marc and I decided that we really couldn’t do Christmas this year with family, and so had as close to a non-holiday as you get.  We decided not to really do presents this year, because moving cost so much money, and the atheism and rather lackluster enthusiasm for traditions did the rest.  We didn’t have a tree (I hate trying to rearrange around them and have never done a tree), just a cowboy Santa Claus my sister sent us.  I did cook a big meal, on the grounds that there’s no time like the present to experiment, but the only even remotely traditional thing was the mashed potatoes, and even then they were sweet potatoes.  I did end up participating in the grand holiday tradition of laying on my ass until I really couldn’t put off assembling that new thing that I got, but alas, it wasn’t a gift but shelving for my record collection that I had to buy because a small New York apartment means you don’t have room for records to be scattershot all over the living room.

But my relative non-participation shouldn’t be chalked up to hostility, when laziness is the better explanation.  Which is why I agreed with this post by carr2d2 at Skepchick that the very few atheists who straight up want to boycott Christmas are misguided.  Yes, it’s offensive that this national holiday is technically a religious one, and the handover of our entire society to it emboldens angry Christians to believe that non-Christians don’t count as much. But unfortunately, a boycott is the wrong way to go about it. But let’s look at the arguments for it boycotting Christmas, as described by carr:

Flynn’s argument, which appears to be shared by some of our readers, is a highly idealistic one, based on the idea that by going along with the holiday as it is, or even by celebrating an alternative holiday (Festivus, Newtonmas, Kwanzaa, etc.) a person helps to perpetuate a society in which Christianity is seen as the norm, and fundamentalism is tolerated. He views his refusal to participate as an act of consciousness raising. He hopes that letting people know that he doesn’t celebrate will reduce the arrogance he perceives in society’s insistence that everyone take part.

Carr fears that people will merely think of you as a crank or a weirdo, though:

In my opinion, you don’t win people to your cause by making yourself an alien. My philosophy is that people are more likely to respect your beliefs and listen to what you have to say if you show them that they can relate to you; that you are a regular person just like they are. Because of this, I think it is good to share in cultural holiday celebrations, especially ones like Christmas whose mainstream face is largely secular.

I will go a step further.  I would say that when non-Christians either a) celebrate Christmas their own way or b) celebrate their own holidays that fall around Christmas as boisterously as possible, we are doing more than a boycott ever could to make Christmas a secular occasion, and therefore not a weapon of Christian dominance over the rest.  The proof’s in the pudding; the people who claim there’s a “war on Christmas” mean that there’s a slipping of their right to feel superior to everyone else and their ownership of American society just because they are Christian.  That’s why they get livid when they see the term “happy holidays”, which implies that other people have a right to have a holiday, and they won’t stand for it.  And even those of us who enjoy Christmas itself, but not in the prescribed way, are considered a threat.  Not much right now, because I don’t think the freaked out wingnuts are even much aware that people put up solstice trees or putting up ironic tree substitutes.  (For years, I had a statue of a leopard that I would hang tinsel on and put presents under. It was smashed up in a move.  A friend of mine does a Satanic Christmas tree, decorated exclusively with devils and skeletons, with red lights.)  But as the practice of celebrating Christmas in your own, often secular way grows, then it’s sure to have an effect. 

And plus, we should all stick it to Garrison Keillor, for writing this nasty essay, where he screeched about the nerve of Unitarians and Jews who think they have a right to write Christmas songs. To make his column even crankier, he lashes out at Ralph Waldo Emerson for rewriting “Silent Night” for his congregation, an incident that happened, in irreverent layman terms, a long fucking time ago.  Has this been bugging Keillor his whole life, only to come out now in his cranky old age?  Is he that desperate to find examples of people offending his delicate sensibilities that he has to reach that far into the past?  Either way, it’s just a warm-up for what really offends him: Jews who wrote Christmas songs that have come to define the holiday.

This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write “Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah”? No, we didn’t.

Well, he’s fighting a battle that’s already been lost.  Attacking Irving Berlin for writing “White Christmas” makes even less sense than attacking Ralph Waldo Emerson for rewriting “Silent Night”.  “White Christmas” is a done deal.  It defines the holiday more than a nativity scene now.  We are all about Santa, snow, images of comfortable warmth in the home, presents, and yes, Rudolph.  And that’s why it’s sort of silly for atheists to boycott the holiday, since something so secular and silly couldn’t have been better made for us.  I’ll bet the first word that comes to most people’s mind when they think about what Christmas means to them is something like “love” or “family”, and not “Jesus”.  And if they were to picture what Christmas looks like, it would probably involve, well, what I looked like at about 10PM last night: standing in my slippers over a piece of brand new furniture, screwdriver in one hand and glass of wine in the other, while we watched Christmas-themed episodes of “30 Rock”.  Substitute “It’s A Wonderful Life” or “Elf”, and you probably have a scene that was going on in a majority of American households last night.  Even on those few occasions in my life where church figured into Christmas celebrations, it was seen as a way to kill time before the big event, which was eating too much, opening presents, and then the inevitable setting them up and screwing around with your new stuff.  Flinch at my bold materialism if you want, but don’t deny that you likely share it.  Christmas mass, when I had to go, always felt to me like it was mainly there so that you could transition between the shopping mode to the eating-and-opening mode, with a little Jesus thrown in for the same reason that even adults who don’t believe in Santa Claus like Santa imagery.  Because it’s tradition.

Secular Christmas won.  Atheists should relish the victory and mull some wine.  I understand that people that are from non-Christian religions might see it differently, but that’s because they have their own religious holidays to attend to, and Christmas has a different resonance in that context.  But for non-believers?  Screw it.  We own this motherfucker just as much as the Christians.  Peace on earth, y’all, and Disco Ball bless us, every one.

Here’s a quote from The Hill so perfect in its cluelessness that I hope the pleasure laughing at it makes your Christmas morning:

It is difficult to pinpoint when or why Lieberman has taken a hit: In the past two weeks, he not only crucial in helping remove the healthcare bill’s public option and Medicare buy-in provisions, but also subsequently announced that he would join with Democrats to support the bill after those provisions were removed.

So confusing!  I rewrote the sentence so as to encapsulate how perfectly annoying this is:

It is difficult to pinpoint when or why Lieberman has taken a hit: In the past two weeks, he not only stabbed puppies to death and kicked a grandmother, but also subsequently announced that he would not laugh at you while you cried over dead puppies.

So confusing!  So that’s why this Genius ten is dedicated to The Hill.

Original song: “Confusion” by New Order

1) “Atmosphere”—-Joy Division
2) “Hot Hot Hot”!—-The Cure
3) “Hallelujah”—-The Happy Mondays
4) “Shoplifters Of The World Unite”—-The Smiths
5) “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”—-Bauhaus
6) “C30 C60 C90 Go!”—-Bow Wow Wow
7) “I Wanna Be Adored”—-The Stone Roses
8) “Warm Leatherette”—-The Normal
9) “Just Like Honey”—-The Jesus and Mary Chain
10) “Pearly Dewdrops Drops”—-The Cocteau Twins

Videos below the fold.

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As we slow down for the holidays (particularly if you're snowed in, thankfully I'm not) it’s always good to stop and discuss topics that aren't part of a news cycle.

While many people now know I'm not one of those "big city gays," I still find myself in conversations with blogtopia peers where they make an assumption that I must be writing out of DC or New York City since I'm a political blogger.

When I say I live in Durham, NC, a number of people have a vague notion that it's located in a relatively progressive area of the state, others don't know where it is or what it's like politically. Many assume I'm not a native of the South since I don't have a very noticeable accent (neither does my brother, we're not sure why).

Anyway, here are the thumbnail facts: I was born in the Bull City back in the stone age of 1963, and moved to New York, specifically first to Hollis, Queens (Run-DMC!) and later Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. That was from 1976-1989. I returned to Durham in 1989 for the pace and quality of life—all I need now is my civil equality (no small matter).

Sure, we could pack up and move to a Blue state where our Canadian marriage was recognized, but Kate (who hails from Birmingham, AL) and I love Durham, the people here, the interesting political environment, and the fact that we can live a pleasant existence in our progressive bubble as we work to make more of our state Blue and LGBT-friendly. Someone has to do it, we can't all leave the places that need more, even difficult work to move closer to equality.

LGBTs here have to move our lawmakers in the right direction by city and by county, letting people see we are neighbors, co-workers and members of the community. That's still a powerful cultural step of social change, particularly since decisions at the federal level will likely occur on issues like marriage before our legislature ever spines up.

Anyway, enough soapboxing…get on with the photos. I actually took these almost two years ago, as Kate and I decided to do a little Aunt Pam video tour of Durham for my nephew Mr. E., who doesn't know anything about the town his dad Tim grew up in.

More below the fold, including a little family history and photos around town.

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It’s been a rough week.  But it’s now Christmas Eve, and so give yourself permission to chill out, have some drinks, eat some food, and relax.  You deserve it.  And you deserve to watch this mash-up of all the funniest cat videos out there.

Sorry, Philly Eagles. Anything Michael Vick experienced is a result of his cowardice and cruelty in training innocent dogs to fight, then maiming, beating, shooting and abusing the ones who couldn’t “measure up.” It’s not “courage” to make a comeback in the NFL after doing time in lockup for that sadistic, sick behavior.

Michael Vick’s peers appreciate his tough journey back to the NFL. Vick won the Ed Block Courage Award, voted on by his teammates on the Philadelphia Eagles. The once-disgraced star quarterback returned to the league after spending 18 months in a federal prison for his role in a dogfighting ring.

...The Ed Block Award honors players who exemplify commitment to the principles of sportsmanship and courage. All 32 NFL teams select a recipient, and each winner will be honored at an awards ceremony in Baltimore on March 9.

“I’ve overcome a lot, more than probably one single individual can handle or bear,” Vick said. “You ask certain people to walk through my shoes, they probably couldn’t do. Probably 95 percent of the people in this world because nobody had to endure what I’ve been through, situations I’ve been put in, situations I put myself in and decisions I have made, whether they have been good or bad.

Check out that humility. Holy mother of dog. It’s one thing to give the man a fresh start to work (some wouldn’t believe he deserved that), but to honor someone as having courage just because of the media circus he endured that evolved out of the dogfighting catastrophe makes me ill. It only tells me that his teammates and the Eagles need their moral compasses adjusted.

The War on Christmas goes right up to the 11th hour.  Build-A-Bear has a series of videos on their website which mention global warming, and, well, they’re building “eco-fascist Manchurian candidates”, although I’m not sure what the normal Build-A-Bear audience is going to be running for.  Third grade class president?  Are they going to exercise a carbon tax on the field trip bake sale money?

Children shouldn’t be exposed to things like Christmas being imperiled.  It’s just…un-Christmaslike, you know?  Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was a Soviet plot to get our children to engage in pagan animal worship, people. 

I, for one, will never again take my nonexistent children to the marketing website of this teddy bear assembly store.  Before, I knew I could rely on it for straightforward, unbiased information about how a Build-A-Bear Teddy Bear would be my child’s best friend forever.  Now?  That sacred bond has been irrevocably violated.  For shame.

I suspect the main reason Republicans continued to use obstructionist tactics to stall the vote, even after it was a done deal, was that they were hoping that forcing Robert Byrd to come to the Senate every day to suffer through procedural shit in ill health would result in him being too sick to vote, or worse, dead.  They failed; this morning, Byrd voted for the health care bill and touchingly dedicated his vote to Ted Kennedy.  But I think that the Republicans also realized that delaying tactics bought them time to increase the acrimony on the left.  Every day this dragged out, the more rooted the narrative about the Crazy Left vs. the Reasonable Liberals took hold—-the same narrative that was established during the Iraq War run-up.  The problem with that is that it’s dangerous—-pre-existing roles to snap into discourage people from looking at the facts and making their decisions that way.  And every day that this process drags out, the more entrenched the “sides” get, and the more they look to the unique times when their “side” was right—-kill the bill people are claiming the left and taking moral authority from debacles like Iraq and NAFTA, people who say that the Senate bill is far from great but needs to be passed are referencing Ralph Nader, who is making this all worse by running around doing kill the bill stuff using racist language.

This entrenchment has resulted in nothing but digestion problems.  Jonathan Chait is crowing triumphantly to see The Left get egg on their face by being wrong on this issue.  But it’s really not that simple.  Many of us with pretty radical politics on the whole are not engaged in this “kill the bill” rhetoric.  I’ve been a little cowardly and not posting too much on the actual Senate bill because I don’t want to deal with the “kill the bill” crowd—-or worse, people starting to talk third parties and other such nonsense—-but I have been tweeting in support of getting through this process with our wits about ourselves, including reminding people that, contrary to mainstream media insinuations to the contrary, the House does matter.  The continued dismissal of Nancy Pelosi’s power has left me really uneasy, because I detect more than a whiff of unintentional sexism to it, though part of the reason that people overlook Pelosi is that she’s a publicly unassuming person. That, and there’s also the way that the House is treated like the rabble compared to the Senate.  Anyway, the point is that I’m The Left—-I hate corporate sellouts, I think the war in Afghanistan is a bad idea, I’ve got big time socialist leanings—-and I’m far more into the “eh, we’re not going to get anything better by killing it, and killing it would be criminally negligent, so let’s calm down” camp.

The reason is that I read arguments like this or this or this and think that they make their case, full stop.  One of our bloggers at Pandagon—-Auguste—-has written before about how he pays 19% of his income to an insurance company, and so the anger that you may have to pay 8% of your income to an insurance company rings a little hollow to me as a complaint.  That would be a massive cost savings to Auguste, should he be able to benefit.  (Right now, this is mostly aimed at the uninsured, so people who are going through employers have a different shakeout.)  I agree with the defenders that we have to work with the Senate we have, and not the Senate we want.  I also agree that it’s premature to blame “The Democrats” for this, which unfairly punishes the majority of Democrats who were pushing for a way more progressive bill but were stymied by conservatives.  Howard Dean is playing gadfly on this, but I have to point out that he was a cheerleader for increasing the rolls of Democratic politicians by recruiting conservatives.  Well, conservatives are going to be conservative.

If we want better legislation, we need better politicians.  And if you think health care is a daunting task, then fighting for better politicians is going to defeat your patience at every turn.  The netroots has only been around for like 6 or 7 years, and only really been a player for 4.  Taking over a party takes longer than that, and that’s all there is to it.  I think there’s a tendency to fight for scorched earth tactics designed to get a lot of results in a very short period of time, and a defeatism when that doesn’t work.  I’ll admit that impetus baffles me, because a lot of us are into politics because we love the game, and so we should have the disposition for a long term fight.  And by “long term”, I mean taking a truly radical stance, which is that political means alone will not get us where we need to go, but that we have to change society itself.  We shouldn’t despair of this task; we have had remarkable achievements in a short period of time, which is why Obama got to be President in the first place.  But we need to understand that there will never be a time to rest on our laurels, and therefore it’s not some sort of betrayal of our deeply held beliefs to allow that “better than nothing” is better than nothing.

That said, I think that the tendency of defenders of the Senate bill has been to scold instead of understand, and that’s also worrisome.  The links I provided do try to rein it in, arguing on points and not resorting to the DFH intimations, and that’s because Ezra and Sir Charles certainly count themselves in the DFH fold, as people who think that there’s a moral argument for social welfare and that the DFHs were 100% right on Iraq.  But unfortunately, as I noted above, some people are absolutely ecstatic at an opportunity to take a giant piss all over the DFHs, even though a lot of us are far from being “kill the bill” sorts.  (But I’d say that we may even be scarier DFHs to the cluck-clucking “moderate” crowd, because we’re not happy with how conservative the U.S. in general is, and are looking for massive social change to get our way.)  This is only going to entrench the anger of people who want to kill the bill, and make them more suspicious of the motivations of those of us who are generally on their side, but think killing the bill is a bad idea.

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