Today, I had a driveway moments–a driveway moment is when you’re listening to NPR and you end up hanging out in the driveway because you can’t get out of the car until the current story’s over.

I was listening to this: http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152922457/an-afghan-shoots-a-marine-dies-mistrust-grows

It’s about the number of our service-people who have been murdered by our Afghan friends–their Afghan police and military forces–this year.

Part of the reason I was struck is because it occurred to me that we just don’t know how to do this yet.

I mean, we’ve been at war for millions of years. Millions of years.

Yet we do not know how to cope with or conduct war. We do not know how to re-integrate our soldiers into society successfully. We do not know how to stem the tide of spousal abuse and suicide that follows their returns home. We do not know how to tell them to violate one of the commandments in one situation, but to follow the others at seemingly arbitrary times. We are only starting to understand what even happens with head injuries, even though we’ve been hitting each other over the head for millions of years.

We said for years that women couldn’t be in combat because our male soldiers would find it too difficult to not do everything–including jeopardizing missions–to protect them. But the reality is that our women find the most danger from their comrades–they are raped at an amazing rate, by the very men whom we think will sacrifice to protect them from the enemy.

Many years ago, I wrote a poem from Lady Macbeth’s point of view. I was interested in why we blame for her Macbeth’s actions, when he contemplates murder before he ever writes to her about the prophecy. Undergraduates around the world write about how Lady Macbeth pushes him to commit horrible crimes–crimes against his king, his kin, his guest.

I have never seen an essay arguing that perhaps war — perhaps his joy in ripping men from nave to neck — had anything to do with the psychopath he becomes.

The only half-way comforting thought in my ruminations today (half-way because it’s not actually a cheering thought) was that there are several things we don’t know how to do yet.

We don’t know how to love, successfully, do we? How to love without jealousy. How to trust. How to practice monogamy when we’re not built for it.

We’ve had even more practice with love than with war, and yet we fail. A lot.

Other things we don’t know–how to parent, how to educate, how to balance religion with not being a bigot . . .

Lady Macbeth:  Where is She Now?

I’m always met with questions.
Did I really fall?
What was in that letter?
Aside from being none of your business,
It doesn’t really matter.
I’m always already judged—
“She wears the pants in that family.”
Well, it would have been more comfortable,
But around here it’s more accurate to note
Who was wearing the skirts.
It is Scotland, after all.

I am likened to those hags.
I change in your titles
From a dearest partner
To instrument of darkness.
You’re always painting me
Black or white.
And here I am—red all over.

I get in trouble for my images,
Because I say milk and gall and dash.
It’s beside the point,
But you try having your nipples
Cracked and chapped
By some colicky brat
And you try not to think of it.
In any case, I didn’t do it.
I merely said, hypothetically,
That I would.

Is that really worse than what he did?
Unseaming people from navel to chops.
Please—war is no excuse
When all the world is war.
Don’t be so naïve.
Is it because I’m a woman
That you’re offended?
Well, there’s an implicit war there, too.
And don’t think my body
Hasn’t played the battlefield.

I didn’t always talk this way.
But the hero
Kept coming home
And wanting to retell his exploits
To relive his victories
In our sacred marital bed.
It got so he couldn’t get excited
Any other way.
And so I steeled myself for him
Trained myself to taunt

     To take it

     To cry out

     As he cut me

     “Deeper!”

Why do you think
I’m so unphased by

      Blood

     Knives

     Poison

     Horsemeat?

So when I asked those that
Tend on mortal thoughts
To tend on mine
It was no big deal.
I’ve been plundered before.

Hereafter, when you ponder me
Remember
Hell is murky
And so is vision
With or without that candle.

This morning, I heard it again–the new talking point about mandating birth control coverage. A caller to NPR said that mandating birth control coverage for religious institutions that take federal funds was akin to forcing a kosher deli to sell pork.

In logic, that’s what we call a faulty analogy.

There’s no perfect analogy for this situation that I could think of. However, a less imperfect one would go like this:
I work at a kosher deli, but am not kosher. My boss has to give me a break because of the hours I put in. My kosher boss knows that I will totally chow down on some ham. My chowing down on ham won’t de-kosher his business, but he doesn’t like it, so he decides that I don’t get my break. Or maybe he decides that I don’t get my paycheck–he doesn’t want any of his money going toward eating that unclean animal.

He doesn’t get to do that, right?

Especially if he took federal money.

My birth control is covered through work. I work for UC Davis, meaning I work for the State of California, which means that there are some people in this state who are funding my birth control right now. They don’t get to not pay taxes because they don’t think I should have access. Students don’t get to not pay tuition because they object to my birth control. Even if the student is a Christian Scientist and believes that all medication is forbidden, I still get to have my asthma meds and the student and the state still help me to pay for it. Why? Because religious freedom doesn’t just mean you get to worship in your own way; it means you can’t foist your religion on me. This isn’t a theocracy.

And I don’t buy for a second that my pay (in either money or insurance form) violates your worship. Pray for me; pray against me; whatever. But unless I’m forcing you to take birth control against your will, I’m not making you do anything against your conscience by my working a job and getting the benefits I’m entitled to by law.

To think through the fallacy, we need only think about really allowing people’s religious beliefs to dictate how they treat their employees.

Believe, as the Bible says, that women should be segregated at their time of the month? Does that mean that allowing me to come to work and paying me for that work at my time violates you?

Believe that women must be fully covered? Does that mean UCD has to change my dress code for you if you’re a member of my state and thus contribute to my salary?

This all reminds me of all those movements some years ago when pharmacists refused to fill prescriptions for medications if they objected on moral grounds. Many states said that was fine. No matter what insurance a woman had, no matter what medical needs, no matter what was legal, no matter what a doctor was recommending.

Let’s go back to the restaurant analogy, because it does work here. Say I don’t eat pork, but I work at a restaurant that serves it. If you order pork, either I bring it to you or I get fired, don’t I? I don’t get to call you names or explain that my religion prevents me from doing my job.

The Bible doesn’t say that I shalt not bring others pork, only that I shouldn’t eat it. But what it says isn’t even germane to the argument, because this isn’t a theocracy.

Even though I think people who want it to be shouldn’t breed, I don’t get to force my beliefs on you–you can keep having babies. Don’t try to force your stuff on me–allow me not to if that’s my choice. (Besides, if you really disagree with what I’m saying, you don’t want me raising a whole mess of kids, do you?)

Many of us here at Davis are frustrated by the inaccuracies in the media about the motivation behind the protests at Davis. Yesterday, the Public Relations Committee of the UWP talked about ways in which this might be addressed.
This morning, after hearing even my local NPR do an oversimplification, I drafted this letter. A few members of the PR Committee have also attached their names, & I’ve just sent it out.
Dear CapRadio,

National and international press coverage of the incidents at UC Davis has included a fundamental error; and we have noticed this mistake replicated on our local NPR station, CapRadio.

Just this morning, CapRadio reported that the pepper-spraying incidents occurred after the chancellor told the police to dismantle the “Occupy Wall Street” tents. Although many of the protestors on campus support the Occupy Wall Street aims, and although some Occupy Wall Street supporters have joined the protest at UC Davis, reporting that these rallies and strikes are about the Wall Street movement is inaccurate. A brief outline of the actual events follows.

The initial movement, which has been called “Occupy UC” and “Reclaim UC,” is a protest against the proposed 81% tuition hike. Berkeley held protests as a part of this movement, and violence was used against those protestors.

UC Davis, with the authorization of the Davis Faculty Association, protested both the tuition hike and the brutality used against the Berkeley students. As part of that protest, UC Davis students erected tents on the quad. Their occupation of the space can be interpreted as a form of visual rhetoric that linked their protests to the larger Occupy Movement, but the larger views of the protests are still anti-tuition hike and anti-violence. That our students were attacked by police while protesting violence against Berkeley protestors is an irony ignored by the “Occupy Wall Street” label being applied to the protests. The strike called for November 28th is being lauded (and in some way claimed) by the larger “Occupy” movement, but we ask that reporters accurately state what the students are striking for.

Today, UCLA called for protests to support UC Davis’ anti-violence position and to decry the rise in tuition. We hope that coverage of the wave of protests sweeping the state will voice the actual concerns of the majority of the protestors, rather than oversimplifying and/or misrepresenting what the students’ concerns are. We are especially hopeful that our local station will be the source of the most nuanced and accurate news.

For more information about the movement, please talk to the leaders on the quad. Check out http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/; and of course, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Today is one of The Simpsons‘s anniversaries. I say “one of” because while this is not the day the full-length show first aired in 1989, it is the day the family first appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987.

I was there. I saw it. I was hooked.

I’ve written a lot already about the cultural impact of the show, so for today, I’ll focus on another aspect of the show: its prescience.

Somehow, all of the things I love, Margaret Atwood, Science Fiction, The Simpsons, etc. are great at seeing where our cultural trends are going to go.

The Simpsons has both commented on and anticipated many aspects of American culture. Our current political season is reflected eerily in Season 11’s “Bart to the Future.”

In the episode, Bart sees a vision of his future. He’s a loser, but Lisa is President. The beginning of her administration is plagued by a debt: “As you know, we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump.”

At the time, the line was funny–of course we would never be so stupid as to elect the Don. Now, the line evokes a sick feeling in my stomach as candidate Trump illustrates his lack of genius by siding with the birthers. A reality TV star courting the lowest common denominator? And winning? Yes, it could happen.

Lisa has to raise taxes to balance the budget, but doesn’t want to say that that’s what she’s going to do. Milhouse, her advisor, says that if she wants to “out and out lie,” she could call the “painful emergency tax” a “temporary refund adjustment.”

Doublespeak in politics is nothing new, but Jon Stewart was struck by Obama’s doublespeake last week enough to comment on it. Specifically, raising taxes (or, rather, allowing some tax breaks on the super rich to expire [did you know the richest 400 households pay 17% while I pay 30 something %?]) was “spending reductions in the tax code.”

This is why I love The Simpsons; they are us!

Happy 24th!

On NPR’s Talk of the Nationthis week, they did a show on the public’s perception of single mothers. The show opened with this:

“The American family has changed. The nuclear family in the house across the street is still there, but different kinds of families live on the block, too: unmarried parents, gay parents, people who choose not to have children at all and, of course, single parents.

“A new Pew Research poll asked Americans about these trends and found almost 70 percent believe that single women raising children on their own is bad for society.

“Of course, there is a wide array of single mothers. Some women choose to raise children by themselves. Others find themselves without a partner through divorce or abandonment. But when seven in 10 believe this is bad for society, it makes you wonder.”

I was surprised that the anti-single mother numbers were still so high. As a single mother, I’ve encountered prejudice. However, few people where I live are willing to voice their single mother phobia. Or perhaps since most people who encounter me now meet me as a scholar before knowing that I’m a single mother, they don’t apply the stereotype of the single mother to me.

When my child was young, my friend Miranda said that people’s perception of me would be completely different if they heard her describe my college work before my motherhood. Some people who heard that I was a young mother first basically said Miranda must be lying about what I’d managed to accomplish and the fact that I was a decent/smart person.

As Talk of the Nation noted, not every single mother “chooses” to be one. I know two women who have chosen this as a path. All of the other single mothers I know are single because of abandonment, divorce coupled with social/financial disappearance, their partner’s death, or because the woman had to flee from abuse. Being a single mother isn’t how we expected our lives to turn out, but this is our life and we’re trying to make the best of it and to do the best for our kids, just like everyone else. Thanks for making it harder by demonizing us, America!

Would it be best to have more than one parent? Probably. I think more than two would be ideal–kids are amazingly exhausting. Of course, having one stable parent is better than having two sucky ones, though. The biggest issue for single mothers–the one that “causes” problems for children and society–is money. The children of financially well off single mothers end up doing just as well as their well off peers. Poor children tend to have a hard life no matter how many parents they have. It might be more productive to blame poverty–to blame a lack of access to healthcare and childcare–to blame the fact that single mothers will inevitably suffer from the sex wage gap we maintain in this country. Don’t fight single mothers; fight inequality.

If you still want to blame people, I can’t stop you. I can, however, suggest that you remember that it takes two people to have a child. Now, it’s not a man’s fault if he dies or if a baby is conceived in a way that leaves him out of social and financial responsibilities, but we all know that a majority of single mother are on their own and struggling financially because a man is not living up to his responsibility.

These men get to live without society’s stigma while the women they’ve abandoned take the brunt of it every day. They don’t have to explain to their bosses why they have to take off because a child is ill. They are free to date without having to find a babysitter. They will miss less work because their kids won’t be bringing home every little illness from daycare. They don’t have to worry about finding healthcare for anyone but themselves. They don’t have to worry about a new boyfriend or girlfriend being jealous or not even going for it because they don’t want to be a step-parent. They don’t get called sluts. If they’re up all night, it’s probably because they’re doing something fun, not because someone is throwing up on them or screaming from nightmares.

Some men are single fathers. I’ve known a few. Their ex-wives are absent for a variety of reasons–death, drugs, jail, etc. If the woman’s not dead, she is routinely dismissed by all the world as the most evil thing in the universe–much worse than a man who’s skipping out on his child. The single fathers are praised by all who know them. It is never assumed that they’re single fathers because of some moral failing. Many women find them admirable and attractive–what an obviously wonderful man!

The Pew poll didn’t even ask people about their attitudes towards single fathers. On the show, the pollster explained that it was because the vast majority of single parent households are indeed run by women. But we all know the other reason–single fathers are never seen as a “problem.”

My son’s father left me when I was seventeen, two weeks before I gave birth. We had been engaged, and I honestly didn’t think I’d have to do this by myself. My son is seventeen now. Those of you who know him know how amazing he is. Have I made mistakes? Yes, starting with not thinking I’d have to do this alone. Of course, we haven’t been completely isolated. My grandparents took us home with them for the first few months when we had no where else to go. Many men who have loved me have loved my son too. My friends have been amazing. They have forged my signature on school forms when I was at a conference. They have become his aunts and uncles. They have gone to music recitals with me both to make sure I wasn’t sitting by myself and because they honestly care about my child and want him to know it. Melissa even taught him to ride a bike when he needed it. No one ever raises a child completely alone.

Thus, I don’t deserve your praise, but I don’t deserve your scorn, either. The problem isn’t single mothers, it’s bad parents of either sex and of any marital status. Please be able to tell the difference.

Florida, I’ve known you since I was a kid. I grew up in your underfunded schools. I started working at age twelve, serving your sunburned tourists. I’ve let you try to blow me away in your hurricanes.

In 2000, I said we should start seeing other people, so I moved to California. You see, when I lived in you, I couldn’t have health insurance for two reasons. First, you abhor unions, so even though I had a job that was unionized in most every other state, you wouldn’t let me. Second, since I didn’t have job-related insurance, you allowed insurers to turn me away due to my pre-existing conditions.

(Also, you were covered in hicks, and they kept trying to touch me.)

Right after I left, there was an election, and I voted absentee. You decided that my vote shouldn’t be counted.

I’ve come back to see you, though–to have your glorious fish and to marvel at your inhabitants, who see absolutely crazy weather changes and somehow deduce that this is proof that there is no global climate change.

Now you’re trying to use the court system to veto something that the majority of Americans still support–the health care bill.

Don’t you want people to live long enough to retire to you? Well, I guess just the rich people–you don’t want any poor people moving there since you have so many of your own poor people already.

Florida, I think it’s time for us to truly part.

Send us your homeless children, so they can be adopted by gay couples, since you would rather they stay homeless.

Tell all those rednecks with confederate flags on their trucks that they’re right–the South will rise again–right now. (In fact, import more of those people from the surrounding states before you go.) And then let them have you.

I might even get a visa so I can visit my family in the “Republic of Republicans-Only Florida,” as long as you can guarantee my safety from political persecution.

Goodbye, Florida. (If you’re wondering, it’s not me, it’s you.)

Sarah Palin, in defending herself since the Arizona shooting, has done what people people do when defensive–gone on the attack. On Tuesday night, both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert discussed the hypocritical move of saying this event shouldn’t be politicized and then totally blaming liberals for everything, as Palin enacted the double standard of saying rhetoric shouldn’t be taken as an incitement to violence, but then claimed that liberals wouldn’t be happy until they destroyed the country (she said something about bringing America to her knees).

My favorite comment was that “if it weren’t for their [liberals’] double standards, they’d have no standards” on her Hannity appearance.

I didn’t think that woman could incite me to violence, but . . .

I’m not actually motivated to attack, just to start gathering weapons for when her minions eventually come for me. My master’s thesis (and something I’ve been interested in all my adult life) is about how you use words to turn your neighbors into something you can kill–how you can make them an enemy, a traitor, an animal. When you research how rhetoric has been used historically, you do start to see the signs of when the villagers are going to start building a bonfire for the witch.

And while Palin keeps saying everyone’s coming after her, we know that’s not true. She’s on tv all the time. She’s not the lone woman on the outskirts of the village; she’s the powerful woman in the village who keeps deciding who’s a witch and making sure that everyone knows it.

Her comment about liberals having no standards is a way of making them sound like they’re not you–they’re not American, they’re traitors, they can’t be trusted. For example, it can’t be that they want health care because they’re bleeding hearts or because they have pre-existing conditions, but because they hate America and love Stalin and somehow want you to have healthcare so they can join a panel that will send you to your death. And even if they don’t want to kill you, they want healthcare to kill your job!

I’ve seen the villagers who are most likely to attack. Yes, some are just unbalanced. Others, however, are being trained to attack. They are the children of the quiverfull movement; they are the children in Jesus Camp. They are the fringes of the Republican party that is now gaining dominion over the moderates.

They believe–and people like Palin don’t correct them–that this is a “Christian” nation. They believe, like Palin, that liberals have no morals. I know some personally who believe in witches (and I’m not talking about the wiccan next door, but the actual sacrificing your baby in her dark sabbath kind).

They keep being told what Americans are–people like them (that’s how you can say that “Americans” want the repeal of healthcare when all of the studies show this is a minority opinion). I am apparently un-American. I teach at a university. I don’t believe in their god, and  am dedicated to the separation of church and state. I want healthcare for all of my fellow Americans. I have more faith in science than in the Bible in terms of understanding history and things like germ theory.

Once upon a time, they would have called me a heretic and burned me. Or witch. Or accused me of being a Jew. Later, the terms became “radical,” “communist,” “traitor,” and “terrorist.”

We need to be careful when we make everything “us” and “them.”  “Them” never fairs well in that scenario. You shouldn’t have to make me a “them” to vote differently than I do.

I disagree with Palin and those like her, and I may think they’re stupid (or brilliantly mean), but I don’t think they’re un-American. America is my family; like any family, it contains people I don’t agree with, but they’re still family. And just because I disagree with them doesn’t mean I want the destruction of our family unit.

So I don’t like it when I see the fires getting stoked and the words being thrown around that indicate that Americans/people like me are so different/evil that we aren’t even Americans/people.

On Monday, my friend Sasha Abramsky was upbraided by Rush Limbaugh. (The clip of his show and a discussion of one of the problems with it is here: http://mediamatters.org/blog/201011150020)

What sent the internet ablaze was the fact that Rush kept calling Sasha a “stupid babe.” Sasha is a man.

Now, this is an understandable mistake, especially if you don’t do any research on someone. Sasha is short for Alexander–Americans often make it a girls’ name even though it traditionally isn’t. As a Karma, which in most of the world is a man’s name, I sympathize with this kind of mix-up.

Rush’s mistake, though, points to his rather sexist language. He dismisses this “stupid babe” as a bimbo. When I listened to the clip, I kept thinking he was going to say “bimbo” or “bitch” because sometimes there were pauses on the “b”s. Since one presumably wouldn’t call a man a stupid babe, one should be careful about doing that with a woman.

At least in public if one wants to be taken seriously.

But I will admit that I use “sexist” language sometimes, although I generally use that language for everyone. I call both men and women “babe.” If you cut me off in traffic, you’re a “dick,” whether you appear to have one or not.

I’m not all that interested in Rush’s “babe” slip. It’s no great revelation that he’s sexist, and he’s said sooooo much worse that this little tidbit is almost cute.

What bothers me is the lack of fact-checking. He has a staff. If he’d done even the most basic google search, he would have not only seen that he should pick a new word, but that Sasha knew much more than Rush gave him credit for.

You see, Sasha was writing in Salon about the kind of President Obama wanted to be. Rush dismissed the short section he shared with his audience, saying this dumb babe didn’t know anything. Sasha is the author of “Inside Obama’s Brain.” If anyone is qualified to talk about how Obama thinks, it would probably be the guy who spent the better part of a year researching it. Sasha just got back from interviewing Obama’s sister as well.

The passage Rush attacked was one in which Sasha talked about what Obama believed in. Rush then said Sasha was wrong because Obama didn’t believe in them.

An example: Obama wants good government. Rush said Obama obviously didn’t and then ranted about more invasive airline screening procedures (at least I think that’s what happened; I was confused by the non-sequitor, but I refuse to go back and listen to that again).

It is perfectly acceptable to say that someone is engaging in “bad” government, whatever they believe. It is asinine to say that someone doesn’t even want good government. Rush and I seem opposed in almost every way, but I believe that he and I both want “good” government. We just have different ideas about what that is. I don’t think I know anyone who wants “bad” government, even those people who essentially want to do away with it.

Rush could have claimed that Obama wasn’t living up to what he wanted, but he had to take it that ridiculous step to the right and imply that Obama’s inherently bad by claiming that he doesn’t want good government.

That’s stupid, babe.