As I was growing up, and receiving my education as to the government of the United States, if you'd have told me that, in my lifetime, there would be a candidate for the United States Senate that had no idea that the First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state, I'd have told you that you're completely fucking nuts.
It appears, then, that I'd have been wrong, and that wrongness comes, of course, in the form of Chrstine O'Donnell, the Republican nominee for the US Senate in Delaware, who recently expressed bewilderment when told by her opponent that the First Amendment says just that. This video simply has to be seen to be believed.
Here's my attempt at a play-by-play.
"Where in the constitution is the separation of church and state?" she asks, her tone a bit snippy, following a question from the audience.
There's nervous laughter from the crows, many of them probably thinking (or at least hoping) that she's being sarcastic.
Later, her opponent, Chris Coons, in fit of understatement that can only be described as "heroic", notes "I also think you just heard, in the answers from my opponent, and in her attempt at saying 'Where is the separation of church and state in the constitution?' reveals her fundamental misunderstandings of what our constitution is, how it is amended, and how it evolved (?). The First Amendment ... the First Amendment, establishes a separation, the man fact being that the federal government shall not establish any religion, and decisions of law by the Supreme Court, over many, many decades, clarifies..."
O'Donnell, unable to resist any further, asks, "The First Amendment?"
"...Clarifies that there is a separation of church and state that our courts and our laws must respect."
After some talking over one another, we cut to a bit later, and O'Donnell pipes in: "Let me just clarify: you're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?"
Coons responds with (nearly) the direct applicable text: "The government shall make no establishment of religion."
"That's in the First Amendment?" O'Donnell clarifies.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
I wouldn't have thought it possible: there's a candidate even dumber, and even more ignorant, than Sarah Fucking Palin.
How does someone that doesn't know what's in the first amendment have the fucking balls to even run for Senate in the first place? This woman would get laughed out of any Junior High civics lesson.
I know, I know, I'm wasting my time being bewildered by this. She's not going to win. That's not the point. The point is that, when it comes to Republicans, the inmates have taken over the fucking asylum. The party has gone completely bug-fuck insane. How does a woman this incompetent become the best possible Republican choice for the fucking US Senate in the entire fucking state of Delaware. This is the best that they can do. This is their representative. This is the spokesperson for their philosophies.
Or if she's not, then fucking disown her. If you can't do that, you've drunk the Kool-Aid.
The fact (and it is indisputable fact) that the Republican spin machine will attempt to defend her ignorance is evidence of how far we've fallen as a society. The insane reality that some of these loons are actually going to win is even worse. Sharon Angle, the Tea Party candidate in Nevada that is in a dead heat with Harry Reid, may not be as outwardly ignorant as O'Donnell is when it comes to the text of the constitution, but she holds to the same bug-fuck insane set of beliefs. She's the one that said that Dearborn, MI (which has a higher-than-normal Muslim-American population; in the city there are 7 Islamic mosques and 60 Christian churches) had been "taken over" by Islamists and was now subject to "Sharia Law".
Remember what the "Tea Party" is supposed to stand for: a return to the values espoused in the Constitution. I propose that there isn't an irony meter in existence that won't overload when presented with the full extent of their constitutional ignorance.
And the people eat it up, because we live in a society where actual knowledge is shunned, where everything is an opinion, and where all opinions have equal validity. As the Fox News talking heads run in circles trying to defend the latest insanity that the players on their team spew forth, the bobbleheads that eat their shit up justify their bias by saying "...but the Olbermans and the Maddows on the left are just as biased!" It's not true, of course; you can bet everything you own that if a liberal Democrat went bugshit insane and started spouting the sort of shit that O'Donnell just did, they'd be in a foot race to throw said candidate under the bus. This is because, as their argumentative styles, they rely on facts, logic, and reasoning, no matter how forceful their conclusions or left-leaning their opinions. Either is a sharp contrast to the non-stop shouting match/bullying technique employed by O'Reilly, the smug and empty condescension displayed by Hannity, or the never-ending 24/7 Chewbacca Defense of Glenn Beck.
I'm actually curious how a Republican can defend this sort of shit. I know that there are a great many intelligent political conservatives out there, people that *must* be as appalled by the ignorant takeover of their party as I am appalled by the ignorance in general. The question is, where are the Republicans repudiating the Tea Party, denying the message that the Repubs have made loud and clear with their endorsement of teabaggers as their representatives: that they'd rather see the country drown in ignorance than see their side lose.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network, and so-called Nerd Misogyny
As part of my normal morning Internet perusing routine, a day ago I was directed to a response Aaron Sorkin had made to a blog comment that addresses the lack of strong female characters in The Social Network, the David Fincher movie for which Sorkin wrote the script. Although generally a reasoned response, and of an appropriately apologetic tone, this little posting has caused a minor wave in some Internet circles for its general handling of what's in the process of being coined "Nerd Misogyny." Of particular note is this response by Sarah Lacy that (correctly) takes Sorkin to task for on one hand having bragged that he didn't know much about the Internet but in this particular response shielding his portrayal of deeply misogynistic characters as being backed by absolute fact. While the two states of being are not necessarily contradictory, the details of his posting reflects more about what appears to be his own agenda than it does about the demographic he's supposedly dissecting. Of note is this particular money quote:
It's an efficient, simple story, depicting a truly contemptible demographic and taking it to task for some deep-seated issues, even going so far as to hypothesize the root psychological causes for those issues.
It's too bad, then, that this vision of Nerd Culture exists only in Sorkin's mind.
The quote got me to thinking about a recent interview with Felicia Day. If you don't know who that is (and too few people do), Day is something of a self-made goddess in Nerd World, at once existing as an authentic gamer chick, a beautiful young woman, a working Hollywood actress, and the writer and lead actress of the most popular web series on the Internet, "The Guild." She's an omnipresent entity in the culture of all things Geek, has over 1.75 million Twitter followers, and juggles her schedule as an actress with a long list of appearances at conventions all over the world. She's a Rock Star in the geek entertainment world, one of its most potent internal celebrities, a pinnacle of the demographic's adulation.
The content of the interview was largely without much in the way of biting substance (and forgive me as I can't find a link; I'm also paraphrasing heavily), more along the lines of a casual, at times silly conversation where both interviewer and interviewee came down with a case of the giggles, but one particular exchange stuck out in my mind. The interview came a few days after the enormous San Diego Comic Con, at which Day was a staple presence, and she was still recovering from a bit of a flu bug that she caught at the Con. She mentioned offhand that, mostly as a result of the germs in the air, she "doesn't do hugs" anymore as a means of greeting her fans, a decision she seemed a bit conflicted about (she didn't want to seem aloof in terms of interacting with her fans, but stressed that it was more about self-preservation than anything; she also admitted that it was a rule she couldn't help but break half the time anyway).
"Well, also," the interviewer responded, "as a girl, you're probably always having guys try to grab your ass."
"Actually, no," Felicia said. "That's never once happened to me. That's not what my fans are like at all."
Think about that for a moment. These nerds, so bitter and hateful toward women as a result of their lack of ability to get a date, when given a chance for close, almost intimate contact with one of their culture's most desirable female idols, respond by ... well, actually, by politely returning the hug, striking up a nice conversation, and sometimes asking for something to be signed.
I can already see the steam building from the ears of anyone with any feminist sensibilities whatsoever. Those Mother Fuckers.
In all seriousness, the degree of misogyny floating around on the Internet is (and long has been) lamentable. Anonymity is a powerful force, and all too often hateful messages, toward women among many other subsets of the populace, get brushed aside as harmless, ironic counter-punches to the drab pseudo-polite banality of a politically correct real life. YouTube comments, QED. Trouble is, it's not as if the Internet exists as a Nerds-only stomping ground anymore. It hasn't been that for at least twelve years, and in that time its level of general discourse has unquestionably dropped.
But think about it. Is Sorkin truly asking us to believe that the Nerd culture he's so intent on attacking is actually more misogynistic than, say, the culture of professional athletes? Or of rock stars? And remember, those were the guys that got laid in High School; those were the guys that had no problem whatsoever picking up the cheerleaders.
The major flaw in his reasoning is in his perception of the Nerd's raison d'etre: wanting to get the cheerleader, and failing. The reality is that the cheerleaders, by and large, bored us.
No doubt the feeling was mutual, or mirrored; I'm not arguing that we could have gotten the cheerleaders if we wanted to, but rather that that's a moot point, because by and large we didn't want to in the first place. Nerds are defined, more than anything, by the ease with which we get bored. That, and not some interminable fetish for the abnormal, is largely why we pick up the intricate hobbies that so many others see as strange. It's also why the girls we covet tend to be those that have something interesting to say. This fantasy about the least popular guy in the school lusting after the hottest cheerleader on the squad is by and large an effort of projection on the part of Hollywood screenwriters (often exaggerated to a ludicrous degree); these were the girls they wanted, so they must have been the girls that everyone wanted, right?
In short, we rejected the girls that couldn't challenge us, the girls that bored us, before they ever got a chance to reject us. The less socially apt of us tended to build up personas that functioned as a built-in filter. It wasn't always pretty, to the outsider, but it worked, and the lives that we built from this basic principle were not generally ones of bitterness; the perception of that bitterness is an illusion of extrapolation; we must be bitter, because we didn't get the girls you would have been bitter if you hadn't been able to get them yourselves.
If you are unconvinced of this, consider the fact that as a demographic, we pay more attention to Felicia Day than we do to whatever starlet-of-the-week the establishment tells us we should think is hot. It's not that we don't appreciate a pretty girl (and most of the women that receive our attention, including Ms. Day, most certainly fit that bill), but that we'd rather choose the pretty girl with a brain we can relate to than the unbelievably hot one whose head is full of rocks.
Does that mean that we're inoculated from frustration, that we'd never get drunk and refer to a particular woman as a bitch? Well, no. We're not perfect, we get frustrated by the opposite sex as everyone does, and we occasionally say stupid things. So does anyone. The fact that Facemash was the result of one such night, in the hands of one such nerd, does not exemplify the entirety of the culture, and does not even exemplify the existence of the person behind that one night. Those familiar with Mark Zuckerberg, by and large, so not describe that mindset as part of his persona today. It's worth mentioning that, while the concept of Facemash was no doubt insulting to women, its extreme popularity with the student body for the brief period of its existence proves that the misogynistic impulses that led to its creation were not, by any stretch of the imagination, limited to its creators or to their immediate social circle.
Mr. Sorkin, you are a fine storyteller and a gifted writer, The Social Network is top quality entertainment, and your elite status in the Hollywood establishment is well-deserved. But as a social anthropologist, which is the role you've taken on with this attempt at a broad categorization, you suck. Don't pretend you know us, just because you did the research required to write your movie. That may have taught you some of our notes, but I suspect the music itself remains largely unheard.
More generally, I was writing about a very angry and deeply misogynistic group of people. These aren't the cuddly nerds we made movies about in the 80's. They're very angry that the cheerleader still wants to go out with the quarterback instead of the men (boys) who are running the universe right now. The women they surround themselves with aren't women who challenge them (and frankly, no woman who could challenge them would be interested in being anywhere near them.)
It's an efficient, simple story, depicting a truly contemptible demographic and taking it to task for some deep-seated issues, even going so far as to hypothesize the root psychological causes for those issues.
It's too bad, then, that this vision of Nerd Culture exists only in Sorkin's mind.
The quote got me to thinking about a recent interview with Felicia Day. If you don't know who that is (and too few people do), Day is something of a self-made goddess in Nerd World, at once existing as an authentic gamer chick, a beautiful young woman, a working Hollywood actress, and the writer and lead actress of the most popular web series on the Internet, "The Guild." She's an omnipresent entity in the culture of all things Geek, has over 1.75 million Twitter followers, and juggles her schedule as an actress with a long list of appearances at conventions all over the world. She's a Rock Star in the geek entertainment world, one of its most potent internal celebrities, a pinnacle of the demographic's adulation.
The content of the interview was largely without much in the way of biting substance (and forgive me as I can't find a link; I'm also paraphrasing heavily), more along the lines of a casual, at times silly conversation where both interviewer and interviewee came down with a case of the giggles, but one particular exchange stuck out in my mind. The interview came a few days after the enormous San Diego Comic Con, at which Day was a staple presence, and she was still recovering from a bit of a flu bug that she caught at the Con. She mentioned offhand that, mostly as a result of the germs in the air, she "doesn't do hugs" anymore as a means of greeting her fans, a decision she seemed a bit conflicted about (she didn't want to seem aloof in terms of interacting with her fans, but stressed that it was more about self-preservation than anything; she also admitted that it was a rule she couldn't help but break half the time anyway).
"Well, also," the interviewer responded, "as a girl, you're probably always having guys try to grab your ass."
"Actually, no," Felicia said. "That's never once happened to me. That's not what my fans are like at all."
Think about that for a moment. These nerds, so bitter and hateful toward women as a result of their lack of ability to get a date, when given a chance for close, almost intimate contact with one of their culture's most desirable female idols, respond by ... well, actually, by politely returning the hug, striking up a nice conversation, and sometimes asking for something to be signed.
I can already see the steam building from the ears of anyone with any feminist sensibilities whatsoever. Those Mother Fuckers.
In all seriousness, the degree of misogyny floating around on the Internet is (and long has been) lamentable. Anonymity is a powerful force, and all too often hateful messages, toward women among many other subsets of the populace, get brushed aside as harmless, ironic counter-punches to the drab pseudo-polite banality of a politically correct real life. YouTube comments, QED. Trouble is, it's not as if the Internet exists as a Nerds-only stomping ground anymore. It hasn't been that for at least twelve years, and in that time its level of general discourse has unquestionably dropped.
But think about it. Is Sorkin truly asking us to believe that the Nerd culture he's so intent on attacking is actually more misogynistic than, say, the culture of professional athletes? Or of rock stars? And remember, those were the guys that got laid in High School; those were the guys that had no problem whatsoever picking up the cheerleaders.
The major flaw in his reasoning is in his perception of the Nerd's raison d'etre: wanting to get the cheerleader, and failing. The reality is that the cheerleaders, by and large, bored us.
No doubt the feeling was mutual, or mirrored; I'm not arguing that we could have gotten the cheerleaders if we wanted to, but rather that that's a moot point, because by and large we didn't want to in the first place. Nerds are defined, more than anything, by the ease with which we get bored. That, and not some interminable fetish for the abnormal, is largely why we pick up the intricate hobbies that so many others see as strange. It's also why the girls we covet tend to be those that have something interesting to say. This fantasy about the least popular guy in the school lusting after the hottest cheerleader on the squad is by and large an effort of projection on the part of Hollywood screenwriters (often exaggerated to a ludicrous degree); these were the girls they wanted, so they must have been the girls that everyone wanted, right?
In short, we rejected the girls that couldn't challenge us, the girls that bored us, before they ever got a chance to reject us. The less socially apt of us tended to build up personas that functioned as a built-in filter. It wasn't always pretty, to the outsider, but it worked, and the lives that we built from this basic principle were not generally ones of bitterness; the perception of that bitterness is an illusion of extrapolation; we must be bitter, because we didn't get the girls you would have been bitter if you hadn't been able to get them yourselves.
If you are unconvinced of this, consider the fact that as a demographic, we pay more attention to Felicia Day than we do to whatever starlet-of-the-week the establishment tells us we should think is hot. It's not that we don't appreciate a pretty girl (and most of the women that receive our attention, including Ms. Day, most certainly fit that bill), but that we'd rather choose the pretty girl with a brain we can relate to than the unbelievably hot one whose head is full of rocks.
Does that mean that we're inoculated from frustration, that we'd never get drunk and refer to a particular woman as a bitch? Well, no. We're not perfect, we get frustrated by the opposite sex as everyone does, and we occasionally say stupid things. So does anyone. The fact that Facemash was the result of one such night, in the hands of one such nerd, does not exemplify the entirety of the culture, and does not even exemplify the existence of the person behind that one night. Those familiar with Mark Zuckerberg, by and large, so not describe that mindset as part of his persona today. It's worth mentioning that, while the concept of Facemash was no doubt insulting to women, its extreme popularity with the student body for the brief period of its existence proves that the misogynistic impulses that led to its creation were not, by any stretch of the imagination, limited to its creators or to their immediate social circle.
Mr. Sorkin, you are a fine storyteller and a gifted writer, The Social Network is top quality entertainment, and your elite status in the Hollywood establishment is well-deserved. But as a social anthropologist, which is the role you've taken on with this attempt at a broad categorization, you suck. Don't pretend you know us, just because you did the research required to write your movie. That may have taught you some of our notes, but I suspect the music itself remains largely unheard.
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