This mock-trailer was created for a Disney film about the current Vice-Presidential *situation.*  It was created by some very creative people after Matt Damon likened Palin’s candidacy to “a bad Disney movie.”

Well, we now have our bad Disney movie and the scariest part of the trailer was that, at its end, I was thoroughly excited to see the entire film!  The idea of her holding office is that ridiculous!!!

I’ve been waiting for a pseudo-scholarly woman leader mash-up in the wake of Clinton’s rise (or fall, as the case may be after Saturday.) Thank you, Nic Kristof, for writing this amusing romp through pop history.

So my question is, do we believe his thesis? Kristof is basically arguing that women are under more scrutiny today from the eyes of the masses and media, which makes it more difficult to be a monumentally groundbreaking leader. Considering the bias toward and high standards for women possessed by regular peeps and media alike, it is difficult for women leaders to achieve respect and admiration. This is in contrast to women monarchs, who were, by Kristof’s account, more successful than men because they had unique skills and perspectives, and had fewer people to prove themselves to in the pre-civil society era.

Since I only know about Russian History, I’ll put in my two cents about ‘women leaders.’ Yes, Catherine the Great took up the mantle of Peter I’s progressive reforms; she established some universities, encouraged the arts, freed up the presses from national control…and talked the “Enlightenment” talk. But before Catherine there were three relatively superfluous tsarinas: Catherine I, Anna, and Elizaveta. That makes the good-woman-leader to average-woman-leader ratio 1:3 in Russia. This renders Nicky’s argument kind of lame: lady monarchs weren’t necessarily special in any way, even though we continue to be fascinated by them.

Furthermore, Kristof implies that women leaders should be more compassionate or at least care about their fellow woman more so than men. He says “women have been mediocre prime ministers or presidents in countries like Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Often, they haven’t even addressed the urgent needs of women in those countries.”

True dat—and this is because the women leaders from his Southeast Asian list, or at least Gandhi and Bhutto, are from powerful dynasties of politicians (kind of like Clinton, the Argentinian president, etc) and identify less with women than they do the ruling family from which they inherited power.

So: Is it really fair to lump all the women leaders together in one pan-national, pan-era blob? Is it even useful?

Is Kristof making a valid point about women leaders of old vs. the new?

Am I taking this article too seriously?

In the immortal words of fellow IDS Columnist Indira Dammu, “Obama supporters are just like Ron Paul supporters…but more attractive.”

This isn’t to say that Ron Paul supporters are ugly, but to indicate that Obama supporters (or Obamaniacs, as they are sometimes called) express the same cult-ish adoration for their candidate as the notoriously passionate Paul supporters… But unlike Ron’s Revolutionaries, Obamaniacs come outside every once in a while and are more fully integrated with the non-blogosphere world. Paulites rarely see the light of day as they are too busy googling Paul’s name every five minutes to find the latest mention of him on a blog. (Heaven save me from their wrath for implying they are a bunch of computer nerds.)

By now it’s been well observed that supporting Obama is a college fashion statement. Today Slate posted a humorous article written by a young white guy who supports Clinton and consequently is now a social pariah, since all his friends support Obama. The Guardian has also noted this phenomenon here.

Both Paul and Obama have been getting the youth vote in droves. Obama looks the part more than anything; it’s way hipper to support a black dude than crusty old folks, so says conventional wisdow. (But if hear ONE MORE JOKE/SNYDE COMMENT about OLD WHITE MEN being innately conservative I will punch someone. Newsflash: Obama and Hillary are not that different from the old white men.) Paul has attracted the youth through his radical Iraq plan and has tapped into libertarian leanings of our youth, and richly deserves his followers.

I know there are good reasons to support Obama; I have many informed friends who support him for one specific reason or another. But on the other hand, I have heard more young people vomiting back the line about ‘hope’…Young, uninformed people seem to like the friendly, non-confrontational, optimistic, non-partisan Oprah-philosophy Obama’s message draws on. And that’s pretty annoying.

As one friend asked me, “How can you disagree with hope?”

I ask myself, “How much longer can I put up with this?”

Indira Dammu is a junior majoring in political science.

If you are considering taking an introductory economics class at IU, I’ll save you the trouble. A semester’s worth of learning can be reduced to two maxims — tax cuts are always good and globalization will save your life. While the merits of the first are still in dispute, the verdict on globalization is clear. Neoliberal economic policies have been credited with alleviating global poverty, increasing net economic prosperity and leveling the economic playing field. This self-congratulatory back-patting among economists and pundits alike often obscures the ugly face of globalization — the one that screws over the middle class and places profits over people. Thanks to policies enacted by both Democrats and Republicans, more people across the country are reeling from the harmful effects of free trade, and Indiana is no different.

Click here to read more…

After Mark Bittman’s article about the meat industry, “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler,” was published on the NYT the other day, it shot right up to the top of the coveted ‘most emailed’ list, wedged in between day-old opinions and Caroline Kennedy’s Obama endorsement. Why? Because the article surprised Americans, who hold that meat-eating is a fundamental tenet of our national identity, right next to stars and stripes and SUVs. Americans were surprised that eating meat can be unhealthy–for our bodies, for our environment, and even the global food supply.

People often ask me, “Why are you a vegetarian?” I think they expect to hear, “Because I love animals.” But here’s the truth: I don’t love animals. I don’t think cows or chickens have feelings. I don’t think humankind should return to the animal-prohibition of the pre-Noah-flood history. (In Genesis, God only allows eating animals AFTER the flood, since he lowered his standards for humankind’s capacity to choose good. Before the flood, Adam, Eve and their progeny were vegetarians. I can only assume that Abel was a shepherd in order to exploit the animal for wool and milk, and not meat.)

I am a vegetarian because of the excesses of the meat industry. Bittman suggests in his article we cut back on meat. I suggest this too.

This is where you get your protein when it’s not from a slab of meat: in dairy, but more healthily in legumes like beans and lentils, in some whole grains, and in nuts.

Hummus recipe after the jump…
Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past few years, I have sensed a growing hostility toward politics by young would-be academics. These people don’t object so much to the study of politics as they do the idea that political debate, as written by opinion columnists, or between presidential hopefuls, is not intellectual debate, but something lower and dumber.

But I’ve got news for you, wanna-be intellectuals: hostility toward politics is no better than apathy.

Read the rest of my column here.

As an avid reader and participant in the online community, especially when it comes to television, I’m no stranger to spoilers. And frankly, I don’t mind reading a few blurbs here and there about an upcoming episode of one of my favorite shows. But when it comes to bums on the production staff’s of shows leaking highly-sensitive, highly-thorough information about full episodes online, everyone gets a raw deal. These people are trusted members of a staff, and yet they betray their employer. And for what reason? To stick it to “the man?” I really have no idea.

Either way, at the end of last season, someone spoiled the entire episode, scene by scene of the LOST season three finale, “Through The Looking Glass,” which of course, included the mind-blowing flash-forward reveal. Thousands read it, and ABC even challenged a few episodes to take the info down. To avoid this crap, LOST producers – a group who are very vocal and friendly with the fan community – decided radio silence was the best bet for S4. But of course, now detailed spoilers are out there for the first four episodes of the new season. These idiots are at it again.

I, for one, plan on staying away from spoilers, no matter how tempting. Who is with me?!

January 22nd marks the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade. Indira Dammu of the IDS has already written a thought-provoking piece on the anniversary here.

I have a lot to say about Roe v. Wade—where to begin? Should I go through the arguments on both sides, and explain why this issue has become so divisive in our political climate? Should I list the reasons abortion needs to be safe and legal? How best to talk about the issue?

I’ve decided instead to historically situate the American abortion debate. With all the anti-abortion activists waving banners of aborted fetuses in our faces, and all the dooms-day pessimism of the feminist left declaring “the end of reproductive rights,” it can be difficult to remember how things came to be as they are.

In early America, social and legal conceptions about abortion revolved around the tenuous concept of ‘quickening.’ ‘Quickening’ refers to fetal activity about 4 or 5 months after a woman first conceives, when she first senses the fetus moving inside her. It was believed, in 18th and 19th century America, that the fetus had reached a certain degree of autonomy when it began to move on its own. Obviously, a lack of medical expertise led to the emphasis of this otherwise arbitrary point in pregnancy.

At this time there was no stringent or formal legal practices or court rulings in place; ideas about abortion were handed down from British Common Law to the states, which held that a woman should be penalized (though rarely harshly) for terminating a pregnancy after ‘quickening.’

Up until the mid-nineteenth century, abortion was mostly sought by lower class women who had conceived out of wedlock; it was an act of desperation and fear of the social consequences of an illegitimate child. Abortion was almost always expensive with the assistance of a doctor. Considering the economic circumstances of most women who sought abortions, it was not uncommon for women to consult medical manuals, knowledgeable friends, midwives, or indigenous remedies to terminate pregnancies without the medical establishment (ie, male doctors). Most of the methods used by women in the 18th and 19th centuries had been used by women for hundreds and probably thousands of years, with the use of purge-inducing plants and herbs, sometimes poisons, as well as other even more crude methods. As abortion was relatively rare and not predominantly used as a form of birth control, there was not a united social or legal opinion on it.

Some time in the period between 1840 and 1860 (historians note it is difficult to establish details about the history of abortion, as it is rarely documented in any form), a different demographic of women began using abortions as birth control. These were native-born, white, upper and middle class Protestant women. Both the difference in usage (for birth control as opposed to a desperate last resort) and the difference in demographic signaled a shift in attitude about abortion in American society.

Only after society woke up to the fact that rich white women were procreating at a slower rate than poor white women, new immigrants, black women, indigenous American women, and other less valued American populations, laws and social attitudes about abortion changed and became institutionalized through state laws. What had previously been a murky moral territory transformed into something a little closer to what we know today. By 1867, most states had passed laws to make abortion illegal.

Incidental with the rise of abortions among rich white women was the rise of the medical establishment. Male doctors realized they had been uninvolved and largely ignorant of the entire realm of women’s reproductive health. (Midwives in the Colonies delivered babies at sometimes astoundingly low rates of women and infant mortality during childbirth. When doctors began replacing midwives in delivery, the infant mortality rate sky-rocketed. This was because doctors used forceps and did not wash their hands, thus crushing babies skulls and spreading disease in one fell swoop.) The medical establishment sought to control and codify medical practices, which meant pushing out practices they knew nothing about, such as abortion.

Finally, we see that during the Great Depression and other times of great economic strife, women more frequently sought abortions. As ever, rich white women could afford to go to a doctor secretly and receive a relatively safe (albeit expensive) abortion. Poor women could not afford a doctor and often induced abortions on their own. This led to higher abortion-induced mortality rates among poor women than rich women; this trend continued until Roe v. Wade.

On a side note:
First wave feminists believed abortion was immoral; this is in contrast to today, obviously, as abortion rights are one of the milestones of American feminism. However, there are some pro-life feminists. I know this because I found their website (You have to see it to believe it), and I have written about it here. “Feminists for Life,” as they are called, use the precedent set by early feminists like Liz Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony to justify their position. It is not inconceivable to me that people with feminist leanings would also be pro-life, although there are clearly contradictions between women’s rights and fetus rights. My main argument with “Feminists For Life” is that a position cannot be justified as feminist just because early feminists also believed it. Early feminists believed a lot of things. For example, Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s argument for women’s enfranchisement boiled down to this: Black men, who are uneducated barbarians, can vote, while we civilized white women cannot. Early feminists also believed in eugenics to purify society of undesirables (take for example Margaret Sanger, birth control pioneer.)

There are lots of facts and figures to argue about (or at least it seems to me that the other side does a whole lot of cherry-picking); and of course lots of different positions to take in the abortion debate. One thing is absolutely certain: ideas about abortion are not absolute. Like all ideas, conceptions about abortion have changed with social circumstances. Furthermore, it is obvious that class has been a major player in shaping the way our country thinks about abortion. Only when rich women began seeking abortions in large numbers did the issue first become a major one in America. Furthermore, rich women will always be able to get an abortion safely, whether it is legal or not. Poor and middle class women have suffered (and will suffer again if Roe should be overturned) more health consequences when abortion was illegal.

Ultimately, I agree with the saying abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” It can only be rare through comprehensive sex education (not abstinence only education!) and access to affordable birth control. These are simply requirements for women’s health.

Nicholas Kristol isn’t the only famous New York Times Kristol any longer. Much to the chagrin of liberals, William Kristol has landed on the op-ed page.

I thought to myself: Why not? Times readers need not feel threatened by the one outspoken conservative on the New York Times page. Poor Davey Brooks is all alone with his right-leaning moderation, under attack from Krugman one week, Herbert the next. (Not that he didn’t deserve every word of their recent criticism concerning Ronald Reagan.) Opinion columnists are not held to the same standards of objective distance as other journalists. As long as Kristol could prove he’s more than an ideologue or a pundit and contributed meaningfully to debate on current events, I pledged not object to his presence on the page.

So I waited for his debut. And oh boy, was I disappointed. His article, “President Mike Huckabee?” was lackluster from its completely uninspiring title down to its smarmy poke at Democrats in the last sentence. (I believe Maureen Dowd has the Times’ smarminess trademarked.)

To anyone who follows the primaries, his treatment of the Huckabee phenomenon appears as flaccid and lazy as his prose. An example:

A Republican says to Kristol:

“You know, I’ve been a huge skeptic about Huckabee. I’m still not voting for him Tuesday. But I’ve got to say — I like him. And I wonder — could he be our strongest nominee?”

He could be.

He could be, Kristol concludes. Is that all he’s got? The point of the article—to illustrate both the caveats and strengths Huckabee presents to Republicans—has already been beaten to death in the past months of election coverage. We get it already! We know it’s hard to imagine a Republican who also cares about poor people, and who was poor himself at one time. But we’ve accepted this fact. Now Kristol joins the fray months too late, with nothing to add.

Maybe Kristol knew that readers were unlikely to be dazzled by his article, so he shoved a few opinions sure to get any liberal’s blood boiling:

“We (those who oppose a liberal Democrat for Pres) don’t want to increase the scope of the nanny state, we don’t want to undo the good done by the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and we really don’t want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq.”

How out of touch is this guy? “Jaws of victory?” I am amazed. Maybe Kristol missed his paper’s chart of 2007 casualties.

If anyone is interested in Huckabee, by far the most interesting and well-articulated article on the topic of whether or not/how Huckabee fits in the Republican picture, read Timothy Egan’s article here.

Hopefully Kristol will shape up and write articles better than this one. From the looks of things, he’s got a lot to prove.

Atheism for Kids?

Whether it’s evangelical Christians banning their children from reading Harry Potter’s magical adventures, or extreme Muslims burning Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses,” religious fanatics the world over are hostile to books that go against their Books.

Religious intolerance to literature is positively medieval, yet quite common today. So pardon me while I invoke the inflammatory anti-religious fanatic Christopher Hitchens: Religion ruins everything. Especially children’s fantasy series.

This time around, it’s the Catholic League v. “His Dark Materials” series.

Normally Catholics tend not to jump on the culture-warrior bandwagon. We leave the puritan-abstaining/censorship-loving/bible-thumping to the Protestants.

But of course, most crazy Protestant antics barely hold a candle to the historical record of the Catholic Church. Catholicism is in many ways the O(riginal) G(angster) of religious censorship, or at least religiously-motivated folly. The Church is one of the most powerful institutions…ever. Just like a nation or an empire, the Church had waged wars, owned land, carried out mass killings, built monuments to itself, experienced power struggles between ruling parties, etc.

Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass, the first installment of “His Dark Materials” trilogy, sees the Church as a powerful state-like institution. His books take place during a pseudo-dark ages in a world similar to but not quite Earth, in which the Church is a looming authoritarian presence. “The Magisterium” (as the Church is called) persecutes heretics, controls the academy, and is in the middle of enacting an Inquisition-meets-eugenics campaign on little kids.

Indeed, Pullman’s books are anti-Church. More importantly, they are anti-dogma, and that is different from being pro-atheist or anti-Christian. But never mind those niceties. According to the head of the Catholic League, Bill Donohue, Philip Pullman’s books ‘sell atheism to kids.’ The organization has called for Catholics to boycott the film version, which was released earlier this month.

The Catholic League calls the book bigoted, implies that any supporter of Pullman is a ‘Christian-hater,’ and declares that Pullman’s agenda is to do no less than to “seduce (children) into embracing atheism and rejecting Christianity.”

In step with the Catholic League, Catholic parishes in my Catholic town of South Bend, IN, have sent letters to parishioners denouncing the ‘agenda’ of Pullman’s books and warning against seeing the film. This was particularly horrifying to me since I bought “The Golden Compass” for my nephew last Christmas, and was afraid my brother and his wife would think I too was attempting to turn little Catholic Colin from the Church.

Actually, I was just introducing him to a fantasy series that is better-written and more thought-provoking than the Harry Potter books.

I would not be saying anything ground breaking if I were to explain that religious censors rarely understand the nature of what they are censoring, banning, boycotting, or burning. Nothing says “Dark Ages” like tossing books (or humans) into a heaping pyre of religious fervor.

What is particularly interesting about the censorship this time is that it is cloaked in the language of civil rights. “The Golden Compass: Agenda Unmasked,” the official document written by the Catholic League to educate parents about the books, frames the Catholic Church and Catholicism as a minority under attack from atheism on all sides. Criticism of the Church is not called heresy, but hate-speech.

The document attempts to frame anti-Church sentiment in the context of better known bigotry: “There is little doubt that if a movie were about to open that was based on a trilogy of children’s books that were undeniably racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, or anti-gay, there would be an uproar from the civil rights organizations that represent these communities,” reads the conclusion of “Agenda Unmasked.” It is absurd to draw a connection between Pullman’s books and these forms of bigotry. There is not a strong or organized current of anti-Catholicism any where in the world, excepting the casual anti-Catholicism of a few other religious institutions. Anti-Semitism and racism, on the contrary, have been historically both strong and organized with historical manifestations like in genocide and slavery to prove it.

When it comes down to it, the Catholic Church is upset that they have been again confronted with their own bloody, corrupt, and bigoted history. Pullman and others are correct to warn about the dangers of orthodoxy from powerful institutions. The Church, unfortunately, only proves Pullman right when it (in the form of American parishes and the Catholic League) forbids any knowledge of ideas that contradict the Church’s authority. What is even more frightening, condemnation of Pullman’s books forbids any meaningful examination of the history of the Catholic Church as an institution.

If the Catholic Church ignores its past or glosses over the ugly parts, it has already become, like the god of Philip Pullman’s trilogy, irrelevant and dead.