"DES MOINES n Gay rights advocates won a major victory Thursday when a Polk County District Judge ruled that the state's ban on gay marriage violates the Iowa Constitution."
This is a major development and I need to read the decision but it sounds like the ban on marriage was a form of sex discrimination. Of course, I am sure the decision will be appealed. We'll just have to wait and see for the next round.
read more | digg story
OK this is absolutely horrid and a complete power grab by Republican forces. Under the guise of "fairness" and "equality" an initiative is underway that will split up California's 55 electoral votes according to congressional districts instead of the lump-sum victory that is currently practiced. Only two states in the union have this model and they are not big electoral states like California.
I've read Barbara Boxer's op-ed piece and I generally agree with her assessment. It would make sense if all the states in the union adopted this plan to have true equality and maintain the Electoral College. But to have only California divvy up its vote is not only extremely disingenuous, but that the plan caters to nothing more than a Republican power grab.
See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-barbara-boxer/stop-the-gop-electoral-co_b_60728.html
And Fair Election Reform to sign the petition.
I would also add that there's generally no reason why immigrant and communities of color wouldn't vote conservatively. On the whole, these communities are socially conservative on issues such as preserving family values, protecting religious freedom, and extending crime control. They are also fiscally conservative emphasizing merit in work and education, and the lowering of taxes. This is an agenda that ought to play well for Republicans. But the Republican leadership, both on a local and national level, keep mucking things up on one issue: immigration. Republicans paid a price for invoking anti-immigrant sentiment under former Governor Pete Wilson, and they have continued to pay for it especially in recent years. The rhetoric has inflamed many voting immigrant communities away from the Republicans to the Democrats, and in one case, albeit anecdotally, some have voted to spite the Republicans for what they saw was a blatantly stereotypical, unfair, and uncivilized attack. If Republicans want to develop and secure an electoral base, they're going to have to deal with race and immigration productively, and not as a knee-jerk reaction. You cannot use or be associated with anti-immigrant rhetoric for the backlash has been, and will continue to be, quite severe.
I don't see that happening any time soon.
... a new semester begins today for me ...
... another round of students to teach ...
... a curious group of students known collectively as "freshmen" to deal with ...
... another hot and humid day ...
... and somehow I'm suppose to finish my dissertation this semester ...
I'm going to make one last big push to finish my conclusion and get on with my chapter revisions and edits. It's the last week of summer; the Fall semester begins next week. I finished my syllabus and it looks like crap. I have nothing but totally random notes for my conclusion. On a brighter note, one of my favorite committee members sent a very supportive email, reassuring me again that it will be done and that I will be an awesome academic.
Hooray!
I came across this chart on all the major presidential nominees and their political positions on major issues. It's pretty amazing to see the ideological fault lines occur between Democrats and Republicans, but to also see the differences within the ranks.
This is a sad day.
Bill Walsh, the imaginative and charismatic coach who took over a downtrodden 49ers team and built one of the greatest franchises in NFL history, died Monday morning at his home in Woodside at the age of 75 after a three-year struggle with leukemia.For the rest of the tribute, click here
So after watching the CNN and YouTube Democratic debates, I was immediately left with this question: So who won? Who moved ahead? Who stood out? Who fell behind? Who, in the end, looked Presidential?
I hate answering these questions. I'd rather deal with Michel Foucault's conception of power than Dennis Kucinich's proposal to stop funding the war to end the war.
I will state unequivocally that the YouTube-inspired questions were insightful, humorous, passionate, and the format added a really different energy to the debates. The "winners" of the debates were the folks from YouTube, and this debate, of user-generated material, will set the standard for political debates in the future.
I neglected to post what I said specifically when I was interviewed by the Swedish news team that I think might be useful here. One of the things she asked was this relationship between users of YouTube and a platform like CNN? I responded that it will be a unique format because you really are talking about two different communities and their own ways of gathering, presenting, and using information. YouTubers, and users like them, are very self-sufficient, very sophisticated and savvy about using the internet to find what they want to know and relaying that information to others. There's an inherent freedom that a powerful corporate media, like CNN, does not promote. It's "news" in their own way, while CNN is a medium in which information is presented to us, so there really is no way for "users" to define the material.
Of course, I'm not suggesting that all YouTubers do not watch CNN, and those who watch CNN do not use YouTube. That sort of distinction is not very useful to me. What is useful is the impact of the YouTube vids in a format that is still corporate controlled and it just happens to be a Democratic debate? This is similar to a live Q&A session in a debate that is covered on live television, but what the vids presented, that was fairly consistent, was how creative, insightful, provocative, knowledgeable, and powerful, user-generated content is in a live format. I should say, questions from ordinary people (the duo from Tennessee comes to mind and it was hilarious! On a separate note, I wonder if there's a way to rate the videos themselves.). What I thought was revealing was how each candidate responded to the videos themselves. The candidates seemed to fall along these lines: either they picked up the video and rolled with it, and did quite well, or, they looked awkward, distant, unsure, in a sense, almost out of touch with the people themselves.
Here are some high points that demonstrated what I mean: Obama's response to a video questioner who asked how does Obama deal with the charge that he's not "black enough?" Obama began his response about hailing a taxicab in Manhattan which drew a solid response. Another is Richardson's immediate answer to whether the No Child Left Behind Act should be scrapped or revised? His response was to scrap it which also drew a solid positive response. And finally, Hillary Clinton's response to her being a woman, which is a similar set of questions posed to Obama, was by far, smartly done and also drew some strong positive reactions and praise saying, "I couldn't run as anything other than a woman."
Dodd was smart, but he looked as though he was speaking on the Senate floor. Same with Biden. Kucinich, although had a high point on his call to end the war by cutting funding, was awkward. "Text Peace" which is a cool tagline, but once is enough. Edwards had his charm and high moments, but seemed only good at populist themes.
Richardson is interesting because as a governor, he can see the effects of federal policy from a local level, and it seems like he has a solid position from the ground up. However, there were some random moments in his responses, almost a stammering, the kind when someone is excited, who knows the answer, but stumbles upon his words. It wasn't pervasive, but it was memorable. The one I remember was some mentioning of "Muslims" which made me wince because of the context of his response. Maybe it's a good thing I don't remember the specifics.
Gravel was just an angry oddball, but I suppose being last in the polls you have nothing to lose so I thought of him as a "What the hell I'll say what I want to say at this point" of a campaign. His, "I took the train" after Anderson Cooper's question in regards to personal transportation and global warming, is one of those moments that marks Gravel's disposition.
So who do I think won?
Well ... ... ...
UPDATE: 07/24/2007, 11:18am EST
So I was reading the Washington Post and rewatching the debates again. On a lead article in the Washington Post was the tagline describing the YouTubers as "citizen-interrogators," their videos adding the necessary edge to the debate. I generally agreed, but I thought it was strangely unsettling. For reasons that I generally mentioned, the YouTube element was remarkably productive, but as I stated earlier, it's still under the context of a corporate medium. I'm not referencing this to YouTube as a corporation. That is not the focus of my attention. It's about CNN and, as a practical matter, the videos had to have been prescreened and selected based on a specific criteria: humor, wit, presentation, identifiable question, raising an issue, etc. Again, this is not my actual point, but important to remember that it is a specific selection of YouTube videos, and I agree with this pre-selection. I certainly do not want to see, what I believe, would be the vast majority of nimrods and nutcases using the debates to showcase their neurosis.
It's this notion of the "citizen-interrogator," and I think it's a particular social and political function of, simply put, asking the hard questions. I think it's great that the videos raised a number of difficult and personal issues for the candidates. I'm sure it could've went further, but it was just enough for me to see the differences amongst the candidates.
But, and this is my point, whose job is it to "ask the hard questions?" Where were the "hard questions" one year ago? Two years ago? Six years ago? I find it extremely disingenuous for CNN to pat itself on the back for utilizing a new form of "user-generated" content, of allowing and encouraging "citizens" to raise these questions, when it itself was suppose to do that for us because it's their damn job?!? I'm annoyed. It seems that using "citizen-interrogators" is a "safer" way to do the job that CNN is suppose to do, lest CNN be accused of being less than transparent. And through it all, CNN will take credit for this so called "innovation" when these practices of interrogation, criticism, and problem-solving have long been a staple of the very best bloggers on the internet representing all points on the political spectrum. All CNN did was distill and repackage a medium and community for mass consumption.
So I'm at Murky doing what I always do which is read, research, and write when the owner announced that a Swedish news team will be interviewing and videotaping patrons in regards to the upcoming CNN / YouTube Democratic debates.
So just 10 minutes ago, I was interviewed by the Swedish reporter, with a camera crew hovering over my table with my laptop, sipping my chai latte, and talking about virtual communities, politics, and the debates tonight. How weird is that?!? Afterwards, the reporter said I was sure to have lots of fans in Sweden. WOOT! I'm almost famous!!!
However, my only regret is that I couldn't catch her name or the station. It was Swedish after all, and I didn't want to press it after the second time or else I would look like an idiot. But throughout the interview, I had only one thought ...
I AM SO GLAD I SHAVED TODAY! ^.^
Egads! It's July 16th! The latest movie installment of the Harry Potter series is definitely a hit. So is Talk to Me starring Don Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor, and so is the newly redone Transformers! And I'm back to writing again. With a little over two weeks left into the month, I have to crank out my conclusion before August rolls around and I have to make preparations for the new Fall semester. Once again, time is running out.
Yes I did check out the iPhone and it is the coolest gadget ever, doing pretty much everything except use it as a phone. Crappy phone company = crappy phone service. Anyways, I thought I post a clip from Conan O'Brien about the many uses of the iPhone. Enjoy!
Kinda' back to work. Reading two anthologies at the moment. The first, Law in the Domains of Culture, edited by Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns, and Cultural Analysis, Cultural Studies, and the Law: Moving Beyond Legal Realism, edited by Austin Sarat and Jonathan Simon. Austin Sarat, by the way, the main guy on law, culture, and legal studies, and was the past president of the Law and Society Association. A pretty good discussion thus far on the nature and impact of interdisciplinary work in a rigid discipline like legal studies, but there are moments that made my eyebrow furl. The obvious one is their definition of interdisciplinarity, at least some parts of it is contradictory. On the one hand, it is clear that they are talking about the limits of legal methodology and the problem with defining "culture" as a legal concept. Hence, the use of literary, sociological, anthropological methods that have traditionally dealt with "culture" can be enormously useful as a legal method. On the other hand, there are moments when "culture" is used as a pedagogical tool in legal studies. For example, how I would use various episodes of The Wire to talk about practices of surveillance, containment, and policing. I'm just using these episodes as examples to illustrate theoretical concepts, but, as my partner often tells me, a media studies professor would talk about them in a totally different manner which, of course, furls her eyebrow whenever she reads how other disciplines use film and tv media as teaching tools as opposed to proper objects of analysis. So it's somewhat problematic, yet predictable, on how people think of interdisciplinary work in their respective fields. What I think thus far is that legal studies ought to write against the law, in similar ways that cultural studies write against culture.
More on this when I read further.
I came across another good article by Marc Fisher, columnist for The Washington Post, a video link of a press conference, and a discussion also led by Marc Fisher.
UPDATE: I like this Marc Fisher and I'd forgotten that he was among the few, if not the only one, who covered the recent appointment of Michelle Rhee to the top position of the D.C. school system of simmering Black-Korean tensions with the recent laundry pants case. Here's his article and check out the subsequent reactions to his post. It's very predictable.
D.C.'s Black-Koren Dynamic: A Simmering Tension
by Marc Fisher, Metro Columnist
What do the $54 million pants man, Roy Pearson, and the new D.C. schools superintendent, Michelle Rhee, have in common?
Their moments in the news in recent days have lifted the lid off a cauldron of black-Korean tensions. This relationship has a volatile history in Washington, running back to 1986, when Rev. Willie Wilson of Union Temple Baptist Church famously led a boycott of an Asian-American grocer in Southeast who had supposedly disrespected a black customer. The episode culminated in Wilson saying, after being asked if his demands were inflaming racial tensions, that if he and his followers hadn't forgiven the Asian shopkeeper, "we would have cut his head off and rolled it down the street."
Interestingly, until the start of last week's trial, the mail on the Pants Man was focused almost entirely on issues of abusing the legal system, the eternal battle over tort reform, and how the District could possibly have such a fellow serving as an administrative law judge. But once the trial started--and most importantly, once the first news photos of Pearson started appearing online, on TV and in the paper--the tenor of reader reaction changed dramatically. I still heard plenty of outrage about how Pearson was tormenting the owners of the dry cleaners and wasting the court's resources, but now that it was widely known that Pearson is black, a good chunk of the mail shifted to matters of ethnic rivalry.
Similarly, the surprise announcement that Rhee, a Korean-American woman, would become the first non-black chief of the D.C. school system in nearly half a century immediately engendered all manner of comment about supposed antipathy toward blacks by Koreans--all this from people who know nothing of Rhee's background, approach or personality.
I'll spare you the comments that consist solely of racist vitriol, but I think there's value in looking at the texture of the incidents and complaints that readers report about encounters with Korean merchants. I doubt that these incidents are much different from those that could be catalogued about any dry cleaner, no matter the owner's ethnicity, but here's one of the more thoughtful comments I've received from readers who believe the pants case is more about black-Korean tensions than anything else:
"The main thing here is the strained relationship between Korean businesses and Blacks with regard to customer service or lack thereof," wrote Keith Jones, a legal assistant at a major Washington company. He told of an Asian-owned grocery in his D.C. neighborhood where he says the owner routinely sells coffee creamer that has passed its sell-by date, as well as a dry cleaner that he says charges exorbitant rates.
"It is clear that the Korean merchants have a lot of businesses in urban America and that they are unified," Jones writes. "Blacks in these urban settings, for the most part, rely solely on Korean establishments in their neighborhoods. This is due to access and ultimately, their socio-economic status. I am certainly not saying that this justifies the Pearson case, especially not the amount. From the examples I gave from my own experience, however, one can only imagine what a Black person experiences daily dealing with the Koreans."
And here's an account from Rosemary Reed Miller, the longtime owner of Toast & Strawberries, which was one of the city's best-regarded boutiques, talking about her experience with a Korean dry cleaner:
"I had brought in a pair of pants which had a small spot. They cleaned that area, but left a larger spot on another area of the pant. When I pointed that out (unfortunately, I didn't see the spot until after I had paid), they told me that the large spot was on the pant when I brought the pants in. They wouldn't give me my money back, and implied that it would be another fee to get out the second spot. I decided to walk.
"When you're in business--and I had a small shop, Toast and Strawberries for over 20 years--I know you can't be perfect with everyone, but this I thought was unreasonable. I've lived long enough to share [Pearson's] pain. I am African American, but didn't sue. However, I feel as though I should have sued that cleaner even though my silk pants had a modest price tag. I've fought for the civil rights of all people all of my life. People need their rights to be addressed, and the people who 'wrong' them should be educated not to do something like that again to another person.
"I appreciate his suing on my behalf. Obviously $60+ million is 'over the top.' And I understand that
Korean-Americans have made efforts to be 'nicer' to their Afro-American clientele, but I think these cases are examples of their needing to be more sensitive. If they had listened with more understanding in the beginning,
and paid him for his 'lost' pants, I would hope that Mr. Pearson wouldn't have had such a strong sense of outrage."
Why do the kinds of poor customer service that might otherwise result in a grumble or a decision to shop elsewhere morph into ethnic tension in the black-Korean dynamic? This has been the subject of considerable study since the 1992 Los Angeles riots, in which some Korean grocers took up arms against black rioters, and the years that followed, when some rappers took after Korean merchants in their lyrics? (Warning: That link goes to a song with R-rated language.)
In part, this divide is a continuation of black-Jewish tensions that developed when many shops in American ghetto neighborhoods were run by immigrant Jews. But there's an additional element that many of the academics end up focusing on: It's a culture clash between two groups with very different behavioral mores.
Contrast a Korean social manner in which merchants may put change down on a counter rather than touch a customer's hand, or an infelicitous command of English that can make a shopkeeper seem distant and even disrespectful, against an African-American culture in which strangers are expected to make eye contact and acknowledge one another in a respectful exchange. Here's a black writer's perspective on this, and here's a Korean writer's view of a similar situation.
Did Roy Pearson sue the Chung family, owners of Custom Cleaners, because they are Korean immigrants? There's no evidence of that. Will the rank and file of the D.C. school system refuse to give Michelle Rhee a chance to succeed because she is Korean-American? Certainly most people are better than that. But in both cases, the noise around the black-Korean tension is loud enough to make hard situations much harder, and that's worth keeping a close eye on.
That's what a D.C. Superior Court judge ruled against Roy Pearson in his $54 million dollar suit against the Chung family. The Washington Post has a great article that includes a link to the court opinion. Apparently, Pearson called forth several witnesses to testify and one of them described the Chungs as "Nazis." Pretty strong words to use against your local laundry, and definitely not a comedic description like, for example, "The Soup Nazi" in Seinfeld. Judge Judith Bartnoff adeptly rebuked each of the witnesses and their testimonies, but I check it out in full because they can be read as narratives to be deconstructed. Aside from the dramatic use and intent of the witness, I want to know what would compel someone to describe the Chungs as "Nazis."
It's such a bizarre case when I first heard about it months ago, but unfortunately, there's the distinct possibility that Pearson will file an appeal. The Chung family will have a donation drive to support their legal expenses because their savings have been depleted as a result of this idiot.
Plaintiff Gets Nothing in $54M Case of Missing Pants
by Henri E. Cauvin and Debbi Wilgoren
The D.C. administrative law judge who sued his neighborhood dry cleaner for $54 million over a pair of lost pants found out this morning what he's going to get for all his troubles.
Nothing.
In a verdict that surprised no one, except perhaps the plaintiff himself, a D.C. Superior Court judge denied Roy Pearson the big payday he claimed was his due.
Delivering her decision in writing, Judge Judith Bartnoff wrote 23 pages dissecting and dismissing Pearson's claim that he was defrauded by the owners of Custom Cleaners and their "Satisfaction Guaranteed" sign.
"A reasonable consumer would not interpret 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer's unreasonable demands or to accede to demands that the merchant has reasonable grounds to dispute," the ruling said. " . . . The plaintiff is not entitled to any relief whatsoever."
It was a pointed rebuke of Pearson's claim, and came with an order to pay the cleaners' court costs. But even bigger troubles may loom for Pearson.
Financially, he could soon be on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees incurred by the owners of Customer Cleaners. Attorneys for the Chungs have said they will seek such payments, as well as sanctions against Pearson for bringing the lawsuit. Bartnoff said in her ruling that she would decide those issues after both sides have filed their motions, counter-motions and legal briefs.
Professionally, Pearson could find himself out of his $96,000-a-year job as an administrative law judge for the District government.
All that is certain right now is that he won't be getting the multi-million dollar payout he demanded when he filed suit in 2005 against Soo Chung and her husband, the owners of Custom Cleaners.
No one, not even Pearson argued that his pants were actually worth $54 million. The whole suit had cost just over a thousands dollars, and letting out the waist, as Pearson had asked the cleaners to do, was only going to cost him $10.50.
But this case -- decried by both trial lawyers and the defense bar -- was, to Pearson, about far more than the pair of pants.
It was about safeguarding the rights of every consumer in the District who, Pearson argued, might fall prey to signs like those once posted in Custom Cleaners. Satisfaction was in fact not guaranteed, Pearson argued, and his own experience put the lie to the supposed promise.
For years, Pearson had been a customer of Custom Cleaners, the only dry cleaners in easy walking distance of his home in the Northeast Washington neighborhood of Fort Lincoln. Even after a squabble several years ago over another pair of lost pants, Pearson continued to patronize the Bladensburg Road NE business.
So when Pearson was hired in April 2005 to be an administrative law judge and needed to have all of his suit trousers altered, he went to Custom Cleaners to have the work done.
Until he landed the judgeship, Pearson had been out of work. Strapped for cash and running up close to his limit on his credit cards, he brought his pants in one or two at a time to avoid maxing out his credit.
On May 3, he brought in the pants he planned to wear three days later. But on May 5, the pants were not ready, and the next day, May 6, they were nowhere to be found.
A week later Soo Chung found what she said were the missing pants. But Pearson said they were not the pants he had left to be altered. Not only was the pattern different, but the pants proffered as his had of all things, cuffs. Only once in his adult life, he said, had he worn cuffed pants, and never, he suggested, would he have so defiled his treasured Hickey Freeman suits.
Pearson demanded $1,150 to buy a new suit. When that didn't fly with the Chungs, Pearson swung into action, filing a lawsuit that would eventually make him the talk of the town and fodder for late-night comedy.
Along the way, he rejected offers to settle, first for $3,000 , then for $4,600 and finally for $12,000. A judge headed off Pearson's efforts to turn the case into a sort of sweeping class-action suit and tried to rein in his "excessive" demands for documents. But the judge found he could not simply dismiss the claim, and that meant Roy L. Pearson Jr. vs. Soo Chung et al. was going to trial.
By the time it did, on June 12, it was in the hands, a new judge, Bartnoff, and it lived up to its billing. Media hordes descended, including television crews from Korea, where the Chungs were born. CNN updated its viewers frequently.
A dozen witnesses testified. One, called on behalf of the plaintiff, compared the dry cleaners to the Nazis.
When Pearson testified, he lost his composure and began to cry.
When she took the witness stand, Soo Chung did the same.
Finished my final edits last night.
Printed a hard copy.
Went to Kinko's to xerox it.
Walked over to the Post Office and mailed the copy away.
Now what?
Oh yeah! A little free time to myself. Maybe go outside and embrace the first day of summer. Or maybe just recoup my lost sleep.
Yep I'm still waiting on the last edit to be turned in before I do any real work on my chapter. I don't like to start mashing up my chapter until I read all the edits otherwise I could be working on a section that needs nothing further. In the meantime, I tried writing my conclusion, but nothing concrete. Just random thoughts but I think the general idea is about the relationship between the disciplines of cultural studies and political science on questions of law, state, and power.
I got an email from my committee chair indicating that she's excited to read my last chapter and is eagerly anticipating its arrival. But she also said that her time may be limited because of other professional and personal obligations.
Translated: Finish now or else.
I picked this up by way of Digg. Participatory democracy in advertising? I'm intrigued!
Finished with my first round of edits and revisions. I still have to figure out decent titles for the chapter and subsections. I'm waiting on another set of draft revisions from a friend before I finalize it. I should be able to send it off by tomorrow or Thursday.
There are two kinds of light -- the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.
-- James Thurber, US author, humorist, cartoonist, satirist (1894-1961)
