U of C's Wheaton-style incident

Back at Wheaton, there used to be a "forum wall" at the post office, on which people engaged in debate, sometimes informative and sometimes less so. Every spring like clockwork, some freshman guy would post a note addressed generally to women in the campus community, asking them--sometimes indignantly, other times apologetically--to dress modestly so as not to lead the men, for whom the author claimed to speak generally, into temptation. Sometimes he would speak in quite degrading terms of the women in question. Other times the whole thing was couched in a softer, pleading, come-on-sisters-in-Christ-enough-with-the-sundresses-already tone.

Then all forum-wall hell would break loose: between the feminists and the putters-of-women-in-their-place, between the libertines and the prudes, between the straight shooters and those who danced tortuously around the word "masturbation."

At some point some older student--I did this at least once--would point out that a) the feminists are right and, whatever you think of sexual ethics, it's way out of line for men to blame women for their own issues, and b) seriously? again? This stupid thing gets posted every damn year. (What we needed was an archive of past posts, perhaps some sort of Web-based log, to refer back to.)

Anyway, I always figured this sort of thing was an issue peculiar to conservative religious institutions of higher learning, in this case, to what administrators and distinguished guests often referred to as "the Harvard of the Midwest," though "the Notre Dame of evangelicalism"would have been more accurate. Turns out this spring saw a somewhat similar controversy at the ACTUAL Harvard of the Midwest, the University of Chicago. Huh.

Yes we can! Look the other way!

Good question raised by Justin Raimondo in the first major magazine to oppose the Iraq war back in 2003, The Nation Washington Monthly The New Republic In These Times The Mennonite The American Conservative: where are the antiwar Democrats now that their favorite mostly-antiwar candidate is the not-so-antiwar president?

What will be the next exhibit A?

OMG, the religious right is dead!

Exhibit A: the NAE's main lobbyist is an anti-global-warming advocate.

UPDATE: Exhibit A: There's a campus Democrats group at Liberty University.

UPDATE:

Tough guys and nature hymns

I recently learned that I'm not (quite) a real man. So I was heartened when the Daily Mail informed me that hymns can be macho. I love hymns!

Unfortunately, the actual list of macho hymns is a mix of hymns I don't like and hymns that don't strike me as particularly macho. I love "How Great Thou Art," but really? If memory serves:

When through the woods and forest glades I wander
And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze
When I look out on lofty mountains' grandeur
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees

Makes me want to watch some wrestling or whatever!

The Republican health care plan

According to Ezra, it looks as though the Republicans are putting forth a health care plan that bears little resemblance to the awful one McCain offered during the election. Instead, it's acknowledging that serious reform is needed and that some, though not all, of the Democrats' ideas as to what KIND of reform are not partisan ones to be fought but simply good ones to be embraced.

Good for them.

This week's must-read comes from...

...of all places, the Washington Post. DeNeen L. Brown's article on how expensive it is to be poor paints a vivid picture of financial barriers and inequities that those of us who are not poor rarely see.

My current favorite blogger:

Adam Serwer at TAPPED.

He's been damn sharp lately: here he is on the curious disconnect between opposition to affirmative action in college admissions and quiet acceptance of legacy admissions. A good point: either it's racist, it's classist, and/or it makes absolutely no sense.

Here he is pointing out that saying that the CIA lies to Congress is not slanderous and unproductive. It's a well-documented fact and a tacitly embraced status quo.

Here he is ably busting the stereotype that liberals are just a bunch of uncritical Obama heads. (This was never entirely fair even during the election, and several Wall Street giveaways, South Asian military escalations, and sneaky union-screwings later, why should it be now?) Also: here and here.

And here he is on the vile, hateful, offensive Wanda Sykes. Decent Americans unite!

"Local" Lays and local fish

Ethicurean calls foul on junk food companies advertising their products as "local food" just in those media markets that happen to be near where they mass produce the junk food...and ship it all over the country.

Fair enough. But Tom L points out that the Times story buries the real lede: big farms moving from growing commodities for junk food and livestock feed and toward diversified crops that feed their human (regional, not hyperlocal) neighbors. Which is...not greenwashing at all, but exactly the main things that's needed to scale sustainable agriculture beyond its current niche. Good on them.

Meanwhile, while I don't eat fish--even before I quit eating meat, it was never a favorite of mine--if I did I'd be real excited about this development: CSFs. (Via Liz.)

A day in the life of our bizarro-world red-scare politics

The president and the majority leadership--that is, the most powerful Democrats in the country--are making it really, really clear that single-payer health care (aka the system that would be a massively positive change for everyone involved except the insurance companies and the politicians tarred as socialists for supporting it, a senseless accusation since private care providers would stay that way) is off the table. Not even going to talk about it, except to remind people that they're not talking about it and that they love America and free markets.

Meanwhile, the Republicans keep it classy.

"Waterboarding may make a person talk, but it won't make 'em talk English."

Pretty funny Jon Stewart clip here, but I can't even muster a smile:

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If only the church were that powerful

Awhile back I pooh-poohed the idea that going to church makes anybody MORE likely to support torture. The problem, instead, is that the church's power to PREVENT people from supporting torture--or to shape their political/social/ethical beliefs in any particular way--is far more limited than we often like to think. Or as Dave put it in the comments, "I WISH churches exerted that kind of influence ... then we could stop torture from the pulpits."

Sarah Sentilles goes in a different direction, exploring the ways Christian theology/ies can in fact, in often subtle ways, nurture a tolerance for torture. It's a fairly compelling argument, based on the starting point that religion's power over people's thinking is not only or even primarily about explicit teaching.

Still, it's interesting that evangelical leaders--who are presumably more immersed in religion than the average layperson and thus even more susceptible to its subconscious influence, good or bad--have been pretty bold in opposing torture. Why the disconnect between the leadership and those in-the-pews-at-least-once-a-week? I don't think it's because their theology is different to such a degree that it pushes them in opposite directions on such an enormously important question.

I still think it's because, as David Neff hinted at recently without coming out and saying it, many white evangelicals are Republicans first and Christians second.

And yes, certainly many liberal Christians are Democrats first, as I said in my previous post. And anyway the problem is not that a lot of Christians are Republicans. The problem is that a lot of Christians' faith-based ethical commitments seem unable to match the power of political loyalties in their lives, whatever those loyalties. This is bad for everybody except the political powers so adept at manipulating people of faith to their own purposes. The GOP mainstream seems committed to defending--not denying or downplaying--U.S. torture practices. Sadly, I fear that this alone does more than any other factor to produce the sobering sorts of findings we saw from Pew.

According to Esquire, I'm either half or two-thirds of a man

I opened up Esquire's "How to be a Man" special issue with more than a little skepticism. And seriously: "a man knows how to bust balls"? He loves "the physics of the human skeleton, the alternating current of the flesh"? I'm not a regular reader, so maybe you get used to this sort of thing, but--what the hell?

Before I put it down in disgust, however, I came across this:

A man has had liquor enough in his life that he can order a drink without sounding breathless, clueless, or obtuse. When he doesn't want to think, he orders bourbon or something on tap.

Well, I thought, I don't know about calling people obtuse because they don't know how to order a trendy cocktail smoothly. Of course, I NEVER want to think--and I felt a flush of manly pride when I realized that I, too, generally order bourbon or something on tap. These are two of the three things I drink, in fact. I must be a real man.

But then: "Never the sauvignon blanc."

That's the third. Oh well.