If you know me at all, you know that I love Margaret Atwood (who sometimes refers to me as Karmel). My dissertation was on her work, I’m the former President of the Margaret Atwood Society, and I run a weekly book group that started out as an all-Atwood reading group some six years ago. One of the great pleasures in my life is getting people to read Atwood if they haven’t done so already.

Like most people, my first glimpse at Atwood was with The Handmaid’s Tale, which we read in High School. It was banned by the district, so my private program required it be bought. One of my aunt’s found it in a used bookstore and came home to announce that I shouldn’t be allowed to read it. Apparently, there was sex with three people described vividly. My mother decided I could handle whatever it was. The sex scene referred to was far from sexy (it was the opposite of sexy, actually), but the book was glorious. It was poetry and it was social justice. It scared me and thrilled me.

After I left high school and before I went to college, I found a book of Atwood’s poetry. I wasn’t in the habit of reading poetry then, but I had loved Handmaid’s Tale so much that I took the book home and read it. If you’ve never read her poetry, check out “Variations on the word Sleep,” “Siren Song,” “This is a photograph of me,” and “you fit into me.”

If you haven’t read Atwood, you should. Because of her breadth and her use of various genres, she’s written at least one thing you would like. Not everyone loves Handmaid’s Tale, but if you’re a sci-fi person, you need to read Oryx and Crake. If you like historical novels and/or psychology, you will love Alias Grace, which is based on a true story. Shoot me an email; tell me what you like; I’ll find an Atwood for you.

My book group is throwing Atwood a birthday party in absentia today–we’re having our favorite main dish (crock-pot lasagna) and a birthday cake on which a flying pig will wish all our dreams come true. And then we’ll raise a glass to her and wish her happy birthday and many more years (and many more books).

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.

A prominent critic of the “theory” of climate change wants Margaret Atwood to be removed from her position on PEN. (article here: http://www.torontolife.com/daily/informer/mediaocracy/2010/11/11/climate-skeptic-wants-margaret-atwood-off-pen-board/).

PEN is an organization Atwood has been at the forefront of for years–it fights for the free speech of authors around the world (it’s akin to Amnesty International, but has a specific focus).

The critic seems not to like Atwood because of their differing views on climate and the environment, but is using a petition Atwood signed as the main evidence that Atwood should be removed. You see, Atwood signed a petition against a FOX News-like channel coming to Canada.

(There are many reasons why someone might sign such a petition. Perhaps you think the channel won’t be clear about news versus entertainment–Bill O’Reilly was on Bill Maher last week and when Maher asked him about a fact that FOX had reported, O’Reilly’s response to the completely wrong fact was that FOX wasn’t “reporting” it because it was on one of the entertainment/opinion shows. If you’ve seen the show, you know that the distinction is not at all clear. Perhaps they should change their tag to “we give you the facts (well, on the following shows, which don’t air when most viewers are watching–on the popular shows, we’re saying whatever comes into someone’s head); you decide).”

Or perhaps you might object because FOX news breaks up families. All 24 hour news makes my head hurt and the crawl seems only to have been invented to make me want to cut myself, but FOX makes me especially wary about going home, because it is impossible to avoid there.)

To recap: Atwood signed a petition. This critic says her signing the petition means she’s anti-free speech & thus should lose her position.

Petitions are free speech, though. I believe in free speech. I believe that I have to fight for your free speech, even when I think you’re wrong (unless that speech is an incitement of violence). However, I get to say that you’re wrong. I get to say that you shouldn’t say x, because x is a lie or because x is irresponsible. (Shouldn’t is different from can’t–one is censure and one is censor.) Signing a petition is exercising free speech & this critic doesn’t have to like it & this critic can say Atwood shouldn’t have, etc., but you shouldn’t say someone hates free speech because they said something you didn’t agree with.

I know I haven’t posted in a long, long time. Fall quarters are always really hard and this may be the hardest. If I stopped to list all the reasons why, I’d be late to class. Let’s just say that I was hanging on by my fingernails & then I got the stomach flu and it broke my nails.

Diane Ravitch, former assistant secretary of education under George W. Bush, has come out with a new book explaining that the Bush education agenda was flawed.

Of course, this is one in a long line of such books. Cheney seems to be the only one who thinks everything went just fine.

I read an excerpt the book in a recent American Educator. I was shocked (shocked!) to discover that apparently, making tests the only test for whether education is working is a bad idea. It leads to people teaching only to the test, to cheating, and to students knowing how to fill in bubbles while their little minds are unfilled. It leads to an incomplete understanding of whether a teacher is successful or not.

And under George Bush’s plan, it leads to rich schools getting richer and poor schools getting poorer, as schools are punished for low scores. It leads to putting all of the blame on our low-paid and ill-respected educators when the scores don’t turn out right. It leads to a perpetuation of class stereotypes–rich people are just better and smarter and poor people deserve to be poor because they’re lazy and stupid–if they all take one test, surely we can see that (never mind that they are starting off on a teeter-totter rather than a level playing field due to the money coming from property taxes rather than fair allocation).

Wow. Who would have thought that No Child Left Behind would have left children behind? Well, any of us who opposed it from the beginning. Ravitch basically says that everyone in the administration was well meaning, that these were honest mistakes. I will buy that they were well meaning. And some of these mistakes might have been innocent. I mean, all of the consequences were totally forseeable, but not everyone is smart enough to actually think things through. I would guess that some people were fine with letting certain children fall behind–because it defended the class and power status quo, because it might have ultimately led to the dissolution of public education, etc.

Ravitch is good when talking about what went wrong; she is less effective in talking through what needs to be fixed.

Here’s what needs to happen. 1. The ideologues need to look at the reality and to see that this policy is flawed. People on both the right and the left need to make sure that Obama doesn’t keep this policy in place.

2. We need to level the damn playing field–all children have a right to equal education. We will all be stronger if we are all literate.

3. We need to think about the mental infrastructure of this nation. If I want a nation of smart, educated, critical thinkers, which I do, I need to be as supportive of mental infrastructure as I am of the other kinds. Our current economic crisis has meant that banks and car companies and airlines have gotten bailouts, even when those companies have been spending and making money willy-nilly. We have invested a lot of stimulus money in public works–even while the schools in my district (including the university for which I work) are struggling, we have tons of crews working on the roads downtown and the down the street.

Why don’t we consider our schools too big to fail? Wouldn’t giving stimulus money to educators to create smaller class sizes be a good idea that would pay off a thousand times? How many teachers could we hire for what one bank CEO makes? How many decent textbooks could we buy, so that each child has access to one (one of my friends knows a teacher who has 25 books total for six classes of 35 students)?

America is all about investment. Why aren’t we investing in our children? Why aren’t we investing in ourselves?

is here: http://www.matchflick.com/column/2242

Let the arguing begin!

From “The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless” in the collection War Dances:

Despite all the talk of diversity and division–of red and blue states, of black and white and brown people, of rich and poor, gay and straight–Paul believed that Americans were shockingly similar. How can we be so different, thought Paul, if we all know the lyrics to the same one thousand songs? Paul knew the same lyrics as any random guy from Mobile, Alabama, or woman from Orono, Maine. Hell, Paul had memorized, without any effort or ever purchasing or downloading one of their CDs–or even one of their songs–the complete works of Garth Brooks, Neil Diamond, and AC/DC. And if words and music can wind their way into and around our DNA strands–and Paul believed they could–wouldn’t American pop music be passed from generation to generation as easily as blue eyes or baldness? Hadn’t pop music created a new and invisible organ, a pituitary gland of the soul, in the American body? Or were these lies and exaggerations? Could one honestly say that Elvis is a more important figure in American history than Einstein? Could one posit that Aretha Franklin’s version of “Respect” was more kinetic and relevant to American life than Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 speech that warned us about the dangers of a military-industrial complex? Could a reasonable person think Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” was as integral and universal to everyday life as the fork or wheel? Paul believed all these heresies about pop music but would never say them aloud for fear of being viewed as a less-than-serious person.

First, if you haven’t read the boy’s first movie column, you can find it here: http://www.matchflick.com/column/2223

I’ve just returned from a short vacation–went to the redwoods (where I was tricked into hiking), San Francisco, and Ashland, where I was lucky enough to see Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, and Henry IV, Part 1. One of the actors in the company is deaf, so certains characters in each play (including Hamlet’s father), were deaf as well, and some dialogue was signed in each show. I like the way this normalized difference, although one scene in Hamlet ended up having extra dialogue (just because I couldn’t understand it doesn’t mean that there weren’t extra lines). I’m not sure how I feel about adding lines, and I was distracted every time they had characters signing even when they couldn’t possibly see each other’s hands.

I’m surprised that it took me so long to get up to Ashland–I’ve wanted to go ever since I moved here ten years ago. The town was quaint, though not as quaint as Niagara on the Lake, where the Shaw festival is held. The production quality was high. A few of the local businesses try to Shakespeare it up–the vitamin store is “All’s Well,” for example. I’m looking forward to going back next year, if only to see Henry IV, Part 2 (I can’t wait to see how this turns out!).

While I was away, Denise discovered that an article I wrote had been stolen by this guy: http://www.bobholtonline.com/article/298.htm You’ll note that even though every word is mine, my name is not mentioned, nor is Mental Floss, the fine magazine I wrote the piece for. I have sent the gentleman an email requesting that he revise the post to credit the author. This is the second time I’ve seen someone post my work as their own on the internet. I feel violated.

Last night I saw MacHomer for the third time. It was at the California Shakespeare Theatre in Orinda. We headed up for a picnic before the show, which was interrupted briefly as I went to talk to a documentary crew about the show–they’re apparently producing a DVD version of the show to be used in schools and I was called upon to talk about the educational potential of the show, as the Simpsonologist I am.

I had gotten front row seats, only to find that two of those seats had been accorded to the DVD crew; the solution ended up being to move all of the seats down by two.

Rick Miller’s performance was, as usual, amazing. The show is fascinating and funny. Most people have heard that it’s a Simpsonizing of Macbeth, but not everyone knows that it’s full of other popular culture references, self-referentiality, and even political jokes (the newspapers have Quebec separatist jokes). The show routinely incorporates that week’s news and local names as well.

It demonstrates Rick’s mastery of voice work, body work (each character he portrays in the one man show has a distinctive body posture), art work (he does all the music and art for his shows), understanding of the Bard and The Simpsons and theatre conventions, and rapid wit.

Was going to add a picture of Rick and I, but I can’t get the uploader to work . . .

Let’s get the morbid ones out of the way–Alexander is now the age I was when I had him. I am now the age my father was when he died. Neither of us will be replicating those behaviors, but it’s on my mind.

Had a wonderful birthday–got to see many friends, the btp made me dinner, and even the boy said happy birthday (from a different room than the one I was in . . .). It was especially nice because I’d finished grading the day before and that means that I have a few weeks off now. I get to finish the very last of the unpacking, get that to-do list pared down, and get organized (my desk still has that “end of the quarter” look). Am also going to watch a lot of movies because I simply can.

I’m also going to try to get out and see some shows–I’ve already seen Paula Poundstone (who was very funny–I’ve always admired her ability to work a room and to do the audience engagement stuff that most comics can’t do); I’ve done my own stand-up set at Luna’s; I will see MACHOMER at CalShakes tomorrow; I saw Al on Sunday.

Al was amazing, by the way. He performed for two and a half hours. There were props and costume changes, and he did six songs that I’ve never seen him do live before. I got a starter pack of Al trading cards and now I want more (that’s the whole point, right?). I wish it hadn’t been at the fair, though, because I don’t like fairs (unless they’re Renaissance, cause I’m white & nerdy), and I wish the lady beside me hadn’t taken up half my seat in addition to hers–it meant I left with a neck crick.

In other news, Proposition 8 has been declared unconstitutional because it, um, is. The whole reason we have a bill of rights is so that a biased/prejudiced majority can’t deny rights to a minority. Jefferson wouldn’t sign without that bill because he knew what we were like–he knew what we would do. For example, I would like to deny bigots the right to procreate. They tend to raise children who are accepting of a “bigoted lifestyle.”

The hysterical right keeps bringing up the same old points. That these are special, not equal rights. That this is a threat to marriage. Well, I have to say that I managed to have two failed marriages before I was thirty. That’s because I made bad choices; it’s not because my homosexual friends were having more successful relationships than I’ve ever managed to. And my current desire to not marry nor to cohabitate has nothing to do with gay people, except for the knowledge that if I could turn gay (like the hysterical right thinks I can), I maybe could cohabitate successful with a woman, as Courtney’s presence seems to indicate that it’s the heterosexual roommate pairing that doesn’t work for me (unless the other person is my son, who theoretically has to do what I say).

It’s also nice that California is now once again keeping up with places like Iowa and Argentina–because it was embarrassing when we weren’t.