Blinded by the light

Tracee Hutchinson asks in The Age today:

just why has Palin become such juicy fodder for comedians when comment on Obama’s race and colour are completely off limits? Clearly it’s OK to pillory women but it’s not OK to pillory people of colour.

Sarah Palin has not become ‘juicy fodder’ because she’s a woman. She has not become ‘juicy fodder’ because she is untested.

She has become ‘juicy fodder because she is arrogant, out of her dept, and utterly incompetent. This misguided feminist reading of her candidacy is perpetuating the same sexist agenda that Hutchinson claims to reject.

Hutchinson continues sarcastically:

It would just be uncool to make fun of black people, so let the woman take the hit

Is it sexist to criticise or ridicule a woman who states that rape victims should have to carry a baby to full term?

Is it sexist to criticise or ridicule a woman who argues that she is ready to be President because you can see Russia from Alaska?

I could go on.

The only sexism surrounding Palin comes from McCain. His choice of an incompetent and unqualified ideologue ahead of any of a number of qualified men AND women from within or without the Republican party is more demeaning to women than making jokes about an inadequate vice-presidential candidate.

Discrimination against any group is unacceptable, but to claim that Palin is discriminated against because she is a woman is just plain wrong. Moreover, Hutchinson’s attempt to play ‘blacks’ and women up against each other is fallacious, dangerous and offensive.

 

What the?

Why on earth do both the ABC and SBS insist on showing the US presidential debates an hour delayed in Queensland? Surely the ABC could have run the generic history program they’re showing now AFTER the debate? I don’t get it. I realise that they do this in order to conform to NSW/VIC times, but this really pisses me off.

Another reason to introduce daylight savings in Queensland.

 

How do you even rank that?

From the Huffington Post:

John Mellencamp, one of the first to oppose the war in Iraq…

What? He managed to get in before everyone else? How on earth do you become “one of the first” to oppose something that was opposed by the majority of people in most Western countries from the outset?

Just asking.

 

McCain owns the hate

A new threat is re-emerging as more dangerous to the American democracy than Bin Laden. More dangerous than Chavez or Ahmadinejad. More dangerous than the non-existent WMDs in Iraq.

The hate and fear that McCain and Palin is stoking around the country in their questioning of Obama’s motives, and in their insinuations that he supports terrorism, is the biggest threat to America as a prospering democracy.

Although McCain today partly realised the extent of the damage he has caused his own country, his campaign can’t take back what they have started. These people are out there, and will sadly exist as long as there is fear-mongering and hate on this planet. What McCain and Palin have done is legitimise them. They have brought them into the mainstream. They will have to take ownership of the hate and the potential violence that they have incited. THAT is terrorism. Sitting on a board with a university professor is not.

 

Lying, cheating, and other basic elements of politics

How can a man who has a WINE TASTING ROOM in his house represent middle America? How can a man that has never had to take out private health insurance understand the pressures of normal people? When you have been wrong every step of the way on the war in Iraq, how does that qualify you to make those decisions over the next eight years?

How can a woman that has had an ‘interest’ in foreign policy only in the last five weeks understand the dynamics of the global problems that the US faces? How is a woman who got a D in macroeconomics supposed to understand and rectify the current economic problems, especially when her ‘teachers’ are the ones who got us in this mess in the first place?

What kind of values are we teaching kids if some of the most powerful people on the planet can get away with blatant lying and distortion of facts in their ferocious quest for power?

We need humility, not arrogance. Truth, not talking points. Respect, not sneers. Knowledge, not ignorance. Peace, not war.

 

McCain’s VP choice

Selecting a grossly unqualified woman for a position of this magnitude because of her gender will do nothing to improve women’s rights.

That’s all.

 

Memory and notes

I have just spent the last hour trying to find a quote from an article I read for one of my papers this semester. I take such careful notes, but still I often seem to recall quotes or concepts that I have come across recently but not noted down. I guess my notes are not that careful after all.

I didn’t even find the bloody quote. I’m sure it’ll turn up the moment I stop looking for it. Like my keys and my wallet.

 

Food prices in remote communities

Last year I had a conversation with an Aboriginal man from Cape York about the community that he grew up in. He said that when he was a child, most families grew their own vegetables. He identified the day that the local grocery store was opened as the beginning of the decline of the community, as people no longer needed to grow their own vegetables, but could just pop down to the store and pick up frozen ones in stead.

Now keep in mind that I am paraphrasing here, and that this man obviously knows all the other complex reasons for the decline of many Aboriginal communities. But I remembered this snippet from our conversation when Hoyden directed me to a couple of stories in the SMH about food prices and nutrition in remote communities.

The reporters became aware of the situation when they decided to arrange a barbecue party and were presented with a $150 bill at the local grocery store for food for eight people. One manager at the store blamed high freight costs, stating that they were “probably triple what we pay for our stock. It’s a joke.”

Hoyden suggests aid projects to set up communal gardens, and to subsidise freight costs for food. How expensive would these two projects be, even if you did it for every remote community in the country? Maybe they could use the $50m they saved from implementing the means test on solar panels.

Or did that money go straight into the $5bn subsidy to the clean coal fantasy?

Here’s another idea. Take the $50m and buy communal solar panels and fridges so that the residents of Mulan and other similar communities can buy in bulk and save money. And spend the change on vegetable gardens.

 

The missing piece in the jigsaw?

If Kevin Rudd, Noel Pearson and mining magnifico Andrew Forrest get it their way, 50,000 jobs for Indigenous people will be created in the private sector in the next two years. These sort of big promises should of course be taken with a grain of salt, but why not shoot for the moon?

In Crikey, Professor Jon Altman points out a number of challenges this scheme faces, but his most interesting point is how this announcement reverses the established perception of the supply and demand aspects of Indigenous employment:

In a labour market policy sense, this proposal represents a shift from seeing Indigenous unemployment as primarily a supply-side problem linked to the poor human capital endowments of Indigenous people (due to historical, structural, locational and cultural factors). Fix this legacy and the workings of the labour market would o [sic] the rest. Now it is suggested that there is a demand-side problem, inadequate demand for Aboriginal labour [...]

Over at Larvatus Prodeo, more issues are pointed out:

One of the criticisms of such programs [...] is their paternalism and the lack of an integrated and properly public focus on the true dimensions of a problem – and the tendency or at least the temptation to focus on outcomes which make for good pr. Of course, in the symbolism driven political environment in which we live, you could make equally telling criticisms of a lot of public sector programs. This proposal also obviously partakes in the notion – beloved of Noel Pearson – that work and all its associated ethical dispositions are the solution to most – if not all – social ills.

Now, I have a lot of issues with Noel Pearson, but the above swipe at him is misguided. Have a go at his endless belief in private enterprise and free market economies, but don’t attribute paternalism to the notion that employment, responsibility and discipline is a social good. And that comes from a student with no responsibilities and very little discipline.

I struggle with paternalism myself, and I believe many well meaning policies and programs fail because its intended recipients feel condescended. However, and I think this is probably what LP is stating above, the ideas behind the programs are not necessarily wrong, it is the implementation and the required political outcomes and perceptions that let them down. Protecting children in the Northern Territory is right. Removing land rights as a part of that program is wrong. In the same way, providing jobs for unemployed Indigenous people is right. Let’s wait and see what goes wrong this time.

Either way, us progressives and academics can whinge all we want about paternalism and ideological deficiencies in public policy, but will it change anything? I’m going to give Noel Pearson and this mining fella the benefit of the doubt, and cross my fingers for a successful implementation of a very ambitious plan. We need more of those.

 

The times they are a’changing? Really?

This story was broken a few days ago by the National Indigenous Times, and subsequently picked up by the Fairfax papers and other mainstream outlets. The story itself is so outrageous that nothing really needs to be said about it. However, I find two aspects of the media coverage of it interesting.

1. The directive to ban groups of ‘coloureds’ from the Taree liquor store had been in place since February, but wasn’t reported until August. Even though this was an internal memo to staff, how on earth can something this extreme remain hidden from public view? Did really none of the staff think of running to the media with this the moment they received it?

2. I cannot find any mention of this story in ‘the heart of the nation’, the Australian. Either the editors of our only national newspaper do not see the newsworthiness of the story, or the search functionality of the Australian online edition is useless. I know which option I would put my money on.

Apparently the manager acted on the advice of a local police officer, stating:

I took his advice – in the belief that as an officer of the law – that he would not advise me to recommend anything that was unlawful or racist

Right.