Rachel Dolezal, currently this week's Object of Public Shame on the Internet, has apparently been fired from her job teaching at Eastern Washington State. Or rather, I learn from today's New York Times, they didn't have to bother firing her. You see, Dolezal was what's called an "adjunct instructor," someone who teaches on a course-by-course basis for low pay without any security for the next semester. There are more adjunct teachers than normal salaried professors in American universities today. So, EWU didn't have to fire her. She's just not hired for any classes for next fall.
So perhaps I don't get inclusiveness, but I'm not sure I understand why a man can feel he's really a woman and we encourage his transition to she - but a woman says she feels she's black and has certainly played the role for a number of years, but in this case it's a scandal.
By William K. Wolfrum on Tue, 06/16/2015 - 9:49am | Arts & Entertainment
The upcoming documentary "Michael Des Barres: Who Do You Want Me to Be?" began exactly 30 years ago. That's when a 14-year-old J. Elvis Weinstein watched Live Aid - the mega-concert created to raise funds for to help the Ethiopian famine. The Duran Duran off-shoot band Power Station helped kicked off the festivities, but without lead singer Robert Palmer.
By Michael Maiello on Mon, 06/15/2015 - 5:47pm | Arts & Entertainment
By sheer coincidence, I finished Neal Stephenson's Seveneves a couple of days before learning that two friends from college, including the former managing editor of The Daily Lobo, our independent school paper, were in town. Back in the 1990s, the staff of our paper passed around copies of Stephenson's Snow Crash, a witty send-up of the cyber-punk genre. We loved that book.
A few weekends ago I came home from commencement, hung up my silly robe for another year, cleaned my fridge, packed my car, and left town for the city where I live with my spouse. I won't be back until later in the summer. I've been making that five-hundred-mile round trip nearly every weekend for three of the last four years, with breaks for summers or sabbaticals. But this was the last time.
Bernie Sanders seems to be gaining some traction for the Democratic nomination and pits himself against the front runner Hillary Clinton. I doubt her campaign staff will be caught flat footed as they were in 2008 when Obama seemed to come out of nowhere. Already we see Clinton steering her rhetoric to left to counter Sanders. How much of it is just smoke to get through to the nomination we may or may not find out. Sanders has been consistently in his positions and voting. He is after all an Independent Socialist.
Just got the news that Iowa has decided to dump their traditional GOP fundraiser, their presidential-hopeful-quasi-indicator-of-nothing, their old-fashioned, hilariously awful Iowa Barbecue and Straw Poll . I thought I would be happy when they finally took my advice and got rid of that thing, but now I feel sad. I've laughed so much over their shenanigans, I feel the way I do whenever a favorite comedy show bites the dust. Sad, but so glad for the memories.
The Washington Post's jihad against American workers continues with its latest [June 10] unrestrained attack on critics of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Since March, the newspaper that Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos purchased in 2013 has promoted the multi-lateral free trade deal in a number of lead editorials.
Currently, Republican House leaders are trying to round up enough votes to grant President Obama Trade Promotion Authority (TPA). If TPA is granted, the House and Senate would only have the right to vote up or down after negotiators finalize the TPP's language. This would almost certainly lead to the bill's passage.
We can also make reference to all of the illustrious Black kings, queens and warriors of the past, and cite everything that Black people have accomplished throughout history. But what's the purpose of having all that knowledge if we don't use it to move ourselves forward?
When I read this it reminded me of Frantz Fanon. Six weeks after the riots in Baltimore what's changed? Modern day attempts at social movements end up being the equivalent of someone yelling in a quiet theater, sure the yelling snaps us to attention and forces us to focus on the disruption, but as soon as calm is restored we find ourselves fully immersed in the distraction on the screen. Likewise, as soon as the camera crews leave the epicenter of the hostilities we, as a nation, refocus on our individual distractions.
In her acceptance speech for the Barbara Jordan Gold Medallion For Leadership, given to her at Texas Southern University in Houston, Hillary Clinton doesn't mince words about the systematic suppression of voter rights in this country. She points out in detail the abuses in North Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin and Florida. But she doesn't stop there, she calls out GOP candidates by name that as governors signed laws that made voting more difficult for citizens. As she names them, she makes it know just what they did sign into law that will hurt voters.
“I walked into a nightmare. I have seen famine in Ethiopia and Bangladesh, but I have seen nothing like this – so much worse than I could possibly have imagined. I wasn’t prepared for this.” Audrey Hepburn, UNICEF photograph, Horn of Africa
Most anybody who has delved into social justice and environmental issues has come across the quote by Margaret Mead:
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
I awoke yesterday to the news that Beau Biden has lost his battle with brain cancer. The pain I felt, even though I didn't know Beau Biden personally, was a visceral as if I had lost a dear friend. It's no secret that I adore his father, Joe, and much of what I'm feeling, I'm feeling for him. (I wrote about him here.) The grief, the sorrow, must be awful. He lost his first wife and his small daughter in a tragic car-truck accident, and nearly lost Beau and his brother, Hunter. He should not have to endure another loss of a beloved child.
This is part 4 in a series. The first three parts are here, here, and here.
The truth is out there. Indeed it is Mulder and Scully. In fact, the truth can sometimes be found in such unpromising soil as a column by conservative pundit James Poulos or an address to investors by the CEO of Exxon. Poulos is known, if at all, for posing in print the antediluvian question: “What are Women For?” Yet Poulos provides real insight into how to solve anthropogenic global warming (“AGW”). As improbably, and in conjunction with Poulos,
A country is only as democratic as its police, and Constitutional rights are only as real as its police treat them. The fight over police work in America is ultimately a fight over whether or not the United States Constitution is real.
The right wing is all agog about Bill Clinton's "secret" company called WJC LLC. The "secret" company, which has twice incorporated itself with public documents naming Bill Clinton as its majority shareholder in two states (New York and Delaware), is not actually a secret company at all.
Matthew 7:15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Instead of pointing out the contradictions between Bill O'Reilly's and Josh Duggar's professed beliefs and their actions, I thought it would be more interesting to focus on the continued elevation, by many evangelicals, of media figures. Duggar and O'Reilly join a long list of fallen religious personalities who were (foolishly) placed above the flesh they reside in by Christians who should've known better. The need to maintain a pseudo-symbolic order is the modern day version of Aaron creating a golden calf. The idolatry lies in the false belief that political affiliation and social status can grant you direct access to the Most High.
In a startling conversation on Tuesday--three days ago by my calendar, not that you would know it by the mainstream media coverage--Chris Matthews, bless his passionate, irritating bulldoggedness, pulled the truth out of Michael Morell, George Bush's CIA intelligence briefer during the lead-up to the Iraq war: the Bush White House lied about WMDs in order to get us into a war with Iraq.
The Washington Post's jihad against American workers continues with its latest [June 10] unrestrained 
“I walked into a nightmare. I have seen famine in Ethiopia and Bangladesh, but I have seen nothing like this – so much worse than I could possibly have imagined. I wasn’t prepared for this.” Audrey Hepburn, 
This is part 4 in a series. The first three parts are 
