…And Now Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Curmudgeonry

Well we're finally back into the school year and things have settled down enough for a return to regular blogging. And why not recognize the beginning of another academic year with one of the most annoying annual traditions in higher ed: the completely ridiculous Beloit College Mindset List.

I've complained about this collection of banal observations masquerading as social insight multiple times in the past, but if Beloit can keep cranking out the same thing for page views, why can't I? Now, I know the list largely exists as a shrewd way for the leadership of Beloit College to get people talking about their tiny college in the middle-of-nowhere Wisconsin, but the cynicism of the creators has never before been an excuse for me not to hate something, so I figure it's worth another dive in.

So what are the things that this year's incoming students inexplicably cannot understand because they happened a year or two before their birth? Let's dive in and find out!

3. They have never licked a postage stamp.

This…can't be true, right? I mean, I get that it's there because the stamps with adhesive on the back were probably introduced sometime around their birth, but surely stamps you lick are still available, right? Even if they're not, surely some of them survived to find their way to these young'uns.

9. The announcement of someone being the “first woman” to hold a position has only impressed their parents.

This one is definitely not true. Remember how it was a big deal that the first ever women graduated from Army Ranger school? And remember how that was, you know, last week?

16. Their parents have gone from encouraging them to use the Internet to begging them to get off it. 

I don't doubt the second part, but I very much doubt the first part. Did these kids really need their parents encouragement to use the most ubiquitous means of information and entertainment available?

17. If you say “around the turn of the century,” they may well ask you, “which one?”

Kids these days, so confused by turns of phrase that could apply to more than one thing! People who have already finished college would never be confused by whether you meant this century or the last!

30. Surgeons have always used “super glue” in the operating room.

Well, sure, but it's been used in surgeries dating back to at least the Vietnam War, so this is something that's been true of people entering college for longer than I've been alive. Seems like a cheap one to round out the list.

33. Phoenix Lights is a series of UFO sightings, not a filtered cigarette.

Uh, what? I finished college years before these kids got there, and I have never in my life heard of Phoenix Lights cigarettes. Wait? Am I actually a first year college student? What's happening?

36. First Responders have always been heroes.

I'm assuming this is in reference to 9/11, but didn't most people hold a fairly high opinion of firefighters before then?

39. Heaven’s Gate has always been more a trip to Comet Hale-Bopp and less a film flop.

Again, this movie came out before I was born. Even for this list, which by definition is a reach to make pointless historical trivia into something meaningful, this is a pretty big stretch. Not to mention, the Heaven's Gate cult committed their infamous mass suicide in 1997, which means an 18 year old today would have just been born when it happened. Which presents a weird Beloit paradox, because usually they assume people apparently have no ability to understand anything that happened on or before the year of their birth, but apparently now things that happened when they were born are major events they mark their life by.

47. They had no idea how fortunate they were to enjoy the final four years of Federal budget surpluses.

Ha! Dumbass toddlers, not paying enough attention to macroeconomic trends!

But wait! It gets even worse! This year features a sort of inverse list, in which the obviously out-of-touch middle aged people who compile this list sound even more painfully out of touch by trying to explain the lingo of youth to the olds like me. It is exactly as painful to read as you think it is. They're all pretty hilarious, but this is the best one by far. Remember, this takes place in a section of the list described as "In fairness to the class of 2019 the following are a few of the expressions from their culture that will baffle their parents, older friends, and teachers …with translations."

6. A significant other who is a bit "too Yoko Ono" has always created tension.  

A partner too hard to handle…hard for your friends to compete with perfection.

They're seriously arguing that only the kids these days know who Yoko Ono is, and that their parents would't understand referring to a difficult partner by invoking Yoko Ono. Apparently kids these days are really into some small-time indie band called "The Beatles." And no, that's not a spelling error! That's how those rag-toppled boys actually spell their band name! What will these kids come up with next?!?

Living Life and Doing Shit

I'm currently on what is essentially a working vacation. Well, every vacation I take is a working vacation, but such is the life of the young academic. Anyway, since it's already enough effort to try to squeeze in both work and spending time seeing friends and family, I typically have to cut out all other non-necessary functions. So while I think I'm going to do things like keep updating my blog, I basically never do unless something really important happens.

So this is just a round about way of saying no updates for the next two weeks or so. But really, who's wasting their time inside reading blogs during the summer anyway?

Summer Sucks For The Self-Employed

I've written before about how summer is neither fun nor a vacation for professors. Mostly, it's because during the summer we're basically self-employed; I mean, technically I still work for the same university (although they don't pay me over the summer, so...), but there's no deadlines or meetings or really any externally-imposed schedule. How much I work and when I do it is completely up to me.

Which is great! In some ways. But in many ways, it's also terrible. Because I still have to get work done, I just have no one to force me to do it. Which leads to times like this, when it's a gorgeous day outside, but I'm inside working. Which I know is how it is for most of the working-age populace, but somehow it's far worse when you're the one doing it to yourself. At least when I had an office job I could curse my boss for making me work on a beautiful summer day, but now I have no one to curse. I am that horrible person making me work on a beautiful summer day.

So the point is, as always, that adulthood and responsibilities suck. This is, after all, why Funyuns continue to sell so well.

Moving Sucks

Moving sucks. I think that's a concept which is generally agreed upon. I've learned over the past week that moving sucks even more when you have inadvertently rented from a slum lord. The type of slum lord who acts as if you're a demanding prima donna for wanting outrageous things like "a back door that opens and closes" or "a shower that drains through a drain rather than through the light fixture in the kitchen below it" and seems confused when you ask them when they are going to do enough repairs to make the place up to bare minimum legal code. I can't really say too much more about it as I may soon be embroiled in a legal case against said landlord, but pretty much all of my conversations with them have gone like this:

In fact, here's an honest-to-God, as verbatim as a I remember it snippet of an argument with my landlord.

Landlord: I don't know what you're complaining about! I built you a beautiful new bathroom!
Me: Yes, but it doesn't work. Nothing in it works.
Landlord: How was I supposed to know that?
Me: Uh…try it? Like, after you install a new water fixture, turn it on to see if it works?

So anyway, in addition to the regular annoyances that go with a move, I got to add living out of boxes stacked in the middle of every room (because work crews were still constantly in and out of the house for 5 days after I moved in, so I couldn't unpack anything) and no working shower for about a week. It was…unpleasant. In fact, had my super awesome parents not come out to help me move and basically just made all the repairs the landlord is theoretically legally obligated to but definitely had no intention of doing, I'm not sure I would have been able to contain my murderous rage. But fortunately no one was murdered and the place is now almost up to bare minimum legal code, so life is settling back into an almost normal routine. Except now I can finally unpack, so my life more closely resembles this:

What's The Confederate Flag All About, Anyway?

I've written before about how concepts like "state's rights" are obviously just coded dog whistles for racist ideals, but possibly the biggest (and most poorly disguised) dog whistle of them all is center stage in the current debate over whether or not to remove the confederate flag at the South Carolina state house (and more generally, to get it out of common public usage).

Predictably, those defending the continued use of a symbol representing people who staged a violent, treasonous uprising to defend their ability to own human beings try to downplay that part of it all, instead focusing on how it's just a symbol of Southern heritage (while of course, leaving out exactly what that heritage entails). So much like the leaders of the confederacy would have been surprised to learn their treason was not about slavery or racism, given how often they spoke about defending slavery and upholding the racist social order, it would probably surprise the folks who came up with the confederate flag to learn that it's apparently not about slavery or racism, either.

But how can we know what those folks were thinking? If only there were some sort of written record of their ideas. Oh, it turns out there is. Here's William Tappan Thompson, the designer of the confederate flag, on why he designed it:

As a people we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause. ... As a national emblem, it is significant of our higher cause, the cause of a superior race, and a higher civilization contending against ignorance, infidelity, and barbarism.

—William T. Thompson (1863), Daily Morning News (Savannah, Georgia)

It's funny; I've read that quote several times and don't see anything about Southern heritage. I do see a whole bunch of stuff about racism, though. But I thought that flag wasn't about racism! Someone should really inform the guy who designed it.

Of course, it's very important to remember that flag is just one small token of our nation's horrible history of racism and that removing it is, at best, a symbolic gesture. And furthermore that taking it down simply for pr reasons is missing the entire point. That being said, let's please have a national conversation about race and try to begin to heal the wounds and make reparations. But let's do that without the shadow of a confederate flag flying over us.

Why Don't We Have Public Intellectuals?

Recently I was reading this insightful piece by Michael Schwalbe, an academic I greatly admire. In it, he makes an argument for why we don't see nearly as many public intellectuals these days, at least not in the form of academic professors actually making an impact on public opinion or public policy. He does a great job of detailing how the many economic pressures currently facing universities makes such a position untenable for the great majority of academics. Between budget cuts, a relentless assault from anti-intellectual politicians, and the proletarianization of the academic work force, most academics are so busy trying to get enough publications and funding to keep their jobs that there's simply no time to insert themselves into public debates like they used to. It's a pretty compelling argument, and well worth your time to read.

But I think there's one factor that's missing from Schwalbe's analysis -- namely, that the position of public intellectual has been over taken by pseudo intellectuals who are not at all beholden to "research" or "basic facts" like academics are. Take one of my most hated people in the world, David Brooks. Brooks obviously fancies himself a public intellectual, and while he is indeed quite publicly visible, the "intellectual" tag can only be applied in the most generous of settings. Really, Brooks is best understood, to borrow a phrase from this great takedown of Malcolm Gladwell, as what a stupid person thinks a smart person sounds like.

When he's not using banal observations of single cases and pretending they explain large swaths of humanity (as in the comic above), he's often just outright making stuff up. Though often even his "observations" are also completely fabricated, such as his infamous claim that you can't spend $20 at a restaurant in "red America" even though a cursory glance of the menu at said restaurant proves the claim false.

But more to the point, to give himself the sheen of an intellectual, Brooks is fond of making up stuff that sounds right to those who want to believe it, but has no actual basis in reality. In essence, he's pretty much the living, breathing embodiment of truthiness. Take, for example, this man's bewildering account of attempting to find out where Brooks got one of his favorite academic-sounding anecdotes.

The anecdote in question, which Brooks regularly cites in speeches and in print, concerns a survey that found in 1950 only 12% of high school seniors thought they were a very important person, while by 2006, that number was up to 80%. Ha! Those millennials and their damned self-importance! It sure sounds right, doesn't it? What with all these think pieces on the kids today and their tweetbooks and facetubes. The problem is, it's completely fabricated. There exists no such survey. And while the linked piece eventually locates some surveys that are kind of talking about the subject, they're so far off from what Brooks claims them to say that it's obvious this isn't a simple case of reading it wrong or forgetting one or two important details. No, this is obviously yet another example of a case in which Brooks just flat out made something up to give his rote condemnation of the kids these days an intellectual veneer.

Which brings me back to the absence of public intellectuals. If an academic of any field made stuff up as regularly as Brooks, or used one small piece of factual information to represent large swaths of society, they would be laughed out of their job. Yet in the much more forgiving world of opinion journalism, Brooks somehow still has a regular column in what is supposedly our nation's premier newspaper. The problem is that actual research is never as clear cut nor as convenient a story as the kinds Brooks and his compatriots tell; after all, this is why he has to make shit up. But in the chaotic marketplace of public ideas, in which very few readers are fact-checking these arguments, it's pretty hard for the nuanced, ambiguous, and hesitant findings of actual intellectuals to hold court against the pat, decisive, and often demonstrably false proclamations of the faux intelligentsia. So while Schwalbe is no doubt correct about the corrosive effect of draining resources from our nation's universities, I'd argue another important factor in the decline of professors as public intellectuals has been the usurping of their place by people who have the free reign to simply make up a better sounding story when there are no facts to support what they want to say.

Teaching Sociology: South Carolina, Charlie Hebdo, Terrorism, and Folk Devils (Part Something in a Never-Ending Pop Pedagogical Series)

Although the President has weighed in, as he must, on the tragic shootings in South Carolina, you might have noticed there hasn't been much of a world-wide outpouring of grief and rage as there was after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo. No sanctimonious cartoons about how white people just don't understand enlightened ideals of freedom, no denunciations of the act as not only bad in itself but as an attack on the very fabric of our society, no gathering of world leaders to express their solidarity for the victims and demand justice for them. Hell, we can't even seem to agree that this politically-motivated attack is an act of terrorism.

I choose to compare these two events quite consciously, because while the Western world quite quickly came to the agreement the Charlie Hebdo attacks were terrorism, it's quite easy to argue that the attacks at the Emmanuel AME church were actually worse. After all, the Charlie Hebdo attacks followed repeated insults from a group of people who quite specifically set out to provoke an angry reaction from people they viewed as moronic and beneath them. The Charleston attacks, on the other hand, were committed against people who had never intentionally done anything to anger the attacker, and even welcomed him into their church gladly. While both were obviously heinous crimes, would not most of us agree that being murdered simply for who you are is much more of a terrorist act that being murdered for deliberately enraging someone?

And yet, so many voices are cautioning us not to label what happened in Charleston as terrorism. As Glenn Greenwald so eloquently explains:

That’s why so many African-American and Muslim commentators and activists insisted that the term “terrorist” should be applied: because it looked, felt and smelled exactly like other acts that are instantly branded “terrorism” when the perpetrator is Muslim and the victims largely white. It was very hard – and still is – to escape the conclusion that the term “terrorism,” at least as it’s predominantly used in the post-9/11 west, is about the identity of those committing the violence and the identity of the targets. It manifestly has nothing to do with some neutral, objective assessment of the acts being labelled.

The last sentence there really gets to the heart of the matter. The idea that someone attacks innocent people to further a political agenda is a pretty textbook definition of terrorism. However, as the term is employed in the West post-911, it actually means "Brown people harming white people."

The term "folk devil" was first introduced by Stanley Cohen back in 1972 in his seminal book Folk Devils and Moral Panics. A folk devil, as the name implies, is a person or group onto whom we as a society project our fears and misgivings. They are seen as the literal embodiment of social problems, and through the control or elimination of them, we believe we can solve the issue at hand.

Importantly, the ascription of the status of folk devil to a group or person only works when that group or person has little to no social power. This is why Muslims serve a great folk devils in the post-911 world; it's not as if they were a particularly powerful or influential group previously, and they have little in the way of social resources to fight back against the label. As such, the actions of a few can be ascribed to the group as a whole, and ridiculously unjustified sanctions and restrictions can be placed upon them with little outcry.

This is what explains the difference in the reactions to the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the Charleston attacks: the former featured a suitable folk devil, while the later did not. While I'm sure people were genuinely upset by the Hebdo attacks, it also provided a very handy excuse to yet again condemn and ostracize the folk devil of the day.

The Charleston shootings, on the other hand, do not. It would be almost impossible to make a folk devil out of white men in America, seeing as they control the government, the judicial system, the media, and pretty much every other outlet and/or manifestation of power. Instead, the dominant story becomes one of figuring out why this one specific white person did something bad. This, of course, explains why the specter of mental illness is almost always immediately raised; after all, it just doesn't make sense. We all know scary, scary Muslims are irrational murder machines, so their crimes need no explanation. But White men are the epitome of ration and reason, so there has to be some sort of explanation for how one of them could have done something so wrong. Obviously, he had to be crazy. After all, he's acting like a Muslim!

The problem is, by all accounts the Charleston shooter was not crazy, just racist. But to actually grapple with that would mean having to deal with the very fabric of American society, which as Jon Stewart pointed out, just isn't going to happen.

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Meat Tenderizer, Old Dogs, and Love

That face. It makes up for a lot.

This is my dog, Dog. She's pretty much the greatest thing ever. She's also a bulldog, which means, amongst many other things, she has some pretty bad allergies. While she's on several (expensive) medications that manage them pretty well, sometimes they're just bad. Bulldogs gonna bulldog. And when her allergies get really bad, she'll often scratch her face folds or chew her paws until they're bleeding. Not badly, but she'll definitely break the skin and get her face and/or paws all bloody. And when she's scratching herself bloody, she's usually also rolling around on the couch, or on my bed, or some other piece of furniture. Blood, of course, is often quite difficult to get out of most fabrics.

As you may have guessed, Dog has recently had a bad bout with the ol' allergies, and managed to get blood stains all over my sheets and comforter. Which happens fairly often, but usually in small amounts easy enough to hide, so I generally just ignore them, hoping they'll come out in the wash (they don't, but I'm lazy). But apparently this spring has been really tough on the allergies, so there's a lot of dog blood stains on my sheets. Which is pretty much as gross as it sounds. So I've been spending all afternoon today scrubbing my sheets and bedspread and whatnot with meat tenderizer, which is one of several methods I'm attempting to get the stains out. It's precisely as fun as you image repeatedly slowly scrubbing every stain on a set of sheets to be.

Dog is also, like all bulldogs, very much a shedder. As in, she sheds so much hair I quite literally can't understand how she still has hair on her body. And I'm not abusing the term there, I definitely mean I have no literal explanation for how much she can shed. Seriously; sweep the house on Saturday and every surface will be coated in dog hair by Sunday. If I could find a way to monetize it, I'd be rich. If I could find a way to turn it into an energy source, I could solve global warming.

So between the two, pretty much everything I own is coated in dog hair and often with a few healthy smears of dog blood as well. Or to put it more bluntly, I live like a disgusting animal. As I've been engaged in the twin futile endeavors of sweeping and scrubbing out dog related detritus all day today, it occurred to me that due to Dog's fairly advanced age (especially for her breed), there will be some point in the not-too-distant future in which everything I own will not coated in dog hair and dog blood. And that will make me sad. I will somehow be legitimately sad for a long time at the fact that everything I own is not coated in dog hair and blood.

I guess this about as good a definition of love that I've ever been able to come up with. That I would quite honestly rather have everything I own coated in dog hair and blood than be able to ever wear dark colors (can't because they show the dog hair so well) or have sheets in any sort of light color (can't because they show off the dog allergy blood) again. Because as long as everything I own is covered in disgusting old dog detritus, it means she's still around. And I'll take her being around over pretty much everything else available.

NYC Government Afraid of Its Own Police Force

Official NYC housing authority posters?

All those working for the New York City housing authority will now be required to wear orange vests at all times when out on the job so they don't get murdered by "trigger happy" police officers. They're also required to wear their ID badges around their necks rather than keep them in their pockets, because reaching into one's pocket is yet another incredibly common action that could cause a police officer to murder someone. Given that it's not at all uncommon for the NYPD to shoot people for no reason inside of public housing complexes, this is probably a pretty sound policy from the perspective of the housing authority. Of course, from the perspective that police are supposed to be, oh I don't know, protecting and defending people, this seems pretty fucking crazy. I mean, we already live in a world in which we are apparently supposed to accept the fact that police will regularly kill innocent people for no reason. But it seems like an entirely new level of crazy that the very government which supposedly oversees and controls these people has taken to having to defend its other employees from its murderous employees. It seems like a simpler solution might be to just make the police stop murdering people for no reason, but failing that, I guess orange vests are an ok start...

Mike Huckabee: Petty Theft is a Far Worse Crime Than Sexually Assaulting Children

Well, ok, he didn't say that in exactly those words. But note the difference between how he talks about self-confessed child molester Josh Dugger and suspected petty thief Mike Brown.

Mike Huckabee on confessed child molester Josh Dugger:

“The reason that the law protects disclosure of many actions on the part of a minor is that the society has traditionally understood something that today’s blood-thirsty media does not understand—that being a minor means that one’s judgement is not mature.”

Mike Huckabee on suspected petty thief Mike Brown:

“It’s a tragedy that the young man got shot, but this is a young man that just roughed up a store owner, just robbed a store, and now he’s going after a cop’s gun. It’s a horrible thing that he was killed, but he could have avoided that if he’d have behaved like something other than a thug.”

I'm not going to say the difference in his reaction is entirely due to race, but...oh, wait. That's exactly what I'm saying. Because either Mike Huckabee is racist, or he feels that the sexual assault of multiple children is a far, far less serious crime than being suspected of stealing some cigars. In either event, Mr. Huckabee might want to rethink his priorities in life.

Friday Funnies: The TSA is Jeff Foxworthy

Recently leaked documents have revealed that the TSA has been employing what they call "behavior detection" (what the rest of us would call "make believe") as a tool in attempting to thwart potential terrorists. As is the case with most forensic science, there is, of course, absolutely no evidence this kind of profiling works, and every reason to believe it doesn't work.

Like all profiling programs, this one mainly consists of innocuous behavior which has no connection to terrorism or crime of any kind. Instead, it simply substitutes what someone deep in the bowels of the TSA feels like is probably related to terrorism. Things like carrying an almanac, or too many pre-paid calling cards. The fact that such profiling programs are laughably ineffective is so obvious I'm not going to even do the minimal work necessary to provide citations (fun challenge: find a single citation supporting any profiling program!), because these programs are basically putting a slight, psuedo-scientific sheen on what is basically a Jeff Foxworthy routine.

So the next time you're flying, remember that if you do any of these things, you just might be...a terrorist.

Yes, you're reading that correctly (this comes straight from a TSA powerpoint). If you complain about the screening process, you're a terrorist (or a hacky comedian at an open mic). If you've recently shaved, you're a terrorist (or trying to look presentable). If you comb your hair, you're a terrorist (or...no, I have to agree here. What do you need to look so fancy for?). But by far my most favorite is that if you whistle, you're definitely a terrorist hiding something. Because everyone knows, the only reason anyone would ever whistle is to rub everyone else's face in how nonchalant they're trying to be...

When Is Violence The Answer?

I made this snarky meme in response to the disingenuous arguments assholes were making about the Baltimore uprising. While it's pretty much just sarcasm, it does highlight the odd line we as a society make between legitimate and illegitimate violence.

Because while so many (almost exclusively white) people were tut-tuting about the violence in Baltimore (which resulted in no deaths), our nation is currently involved in multiple wars (which have resulted in many, many deaths). In fact, for someone born the same year as I (1982), the US has been officially at war roughly half of their lifetime. Of course, if you don't accept the absurd notion the linked Washington Post article (and pretty much all of our elected leaders) hold that somehow bombing a nation and killing hundreds of people doesn't count as war, and include every time we as a nation have found it fit to kill people of another nation, then the US has been at war for 214 our of our 235 calendar years of existence.

So given that our official policy as a nation seems to be to turn to violence at any provocation, no matter how small, on what basis are we condemning the people of Baltimore, Ferguson, or anywhere else turning to violence after experiencing decades of violent provocation themselves?

You Think This Is Funny? Well Right Now Millions Of Fans Are At Home Crying Like Little Girls!…Well, Ok, It's a Little Funny.

If Harry Shearer's tweets are correct, he is officially leaving The Simpsons. For those of you who have been living in a cave on Mars, with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears, Shearer is possibly the most central voice actor on the show, voicing (among others) Principal Skinner, Kent Brockman, Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Dr. Hibbert, Lenny Leonard, Otto Mann, Rainier Wolfcastle, the late Dr. Marvin Monroe, and about a billion one-off characters.

Apparently it's over a salary dispute, as Shearer wanted more of that sweet, sweet merchandising money (though he's also in his 70s now, so he might just be getting sick of the whole thing). This isn't the first time the notoriously prickly Shearer has threatened to walk (a long running rumor has it that the show was briefly cancelled in 2000 when he demanded too much money, only undone by the other principal voice actors essentially reigning him in). Apparently they plan to go on without him (the show did just get picked up for two more seasons), but it's hard to imagine how. Either they'll have to kill off half the town (a route they took when the voice of Maude Flanders quit, though she was far less central than many of the characters Shearer voices), or they'll have to bring in someone of Billy West's ilk who can imitate these characters. Really neither of these are desirable or even, frankly, acceptable scenarios.

I've long maintained that the only thing that would finally kill The Simpsons would be the death of one of the principal voice actors, as I assumed no one would turn down the dumpsters full of cash they're getting at this point. So will this be the final nail in the coffin of a show that's been steadily going downhill since I was about 17 or so? It's hard to say. This is, after all, the show they'll never kill.

Nothing has been announced outside of two tweets from Shearer himself, so it may be too premature to say anything. After all, this seems like the kind of thing that could be solved by simply driving a slightly bigger dump truck full of money to Shearer's house. Or it could spell the end of what has been inarguably the greatest cartoon of all time and arguably the greatest television show of all time.

If it's the former, we'll get at least two more seasons of a show that, while definitely a shell of its former self, can still have brief moments of greatness. If it's the latter, well…if you need me, I'll be curled up in fetal position clutching a bottle of whiskey.

Brown Sins Are Always Greater Than White Sins

I've been noticing a disturbing trend lately, in which otherwise progressive people feel free (hell, feel seemingly compelled) to be anti-Islamic in the name of some other ideal (current ideal du jour: free speech). That the left has it's own problems with racism and bigotry is nothing new, but this particular form has been popping up quite a bit in places I normally wouldn't expect it. As one example, take this racist claptrap, written by Jeffrey Tayler and published on what is supposed to be at least a liberal, if not terribly progressive, website. While I'm deconstructing this one singular bigoted rant, it's pretty par for the course for this type of argument, featuring the same augments I've heard from multiple sources, so it serves as a handy stand-in for progressive bigotry in general.

I'll save you the time/aneurysm of actually reading the article by pulling the most offending quotes and responding to them individually. I mean, you can feel free to read the article, but then you may also need to thoroughly scrub your eyeballs, so don't say I didn't warn you. Anyway, all quotes in italics are directly from the piece in question.

"From a rationalist’s perspective, any ideology that mandates belief without evidence is a priori dangerous and liable to abuse."

Remember this point, because we're going to be coming back to it quite a bit. Because this really underscores all of the logical problems with Tayler's (and other's) argument. Essentially, religion is bad because it is not based on empirical evidence. That's a fine argument, if not one I agree with. However, in arguing against the non-science of religion, this guy fails to give any actual evidence of his own. Instead, we're left to take his arguments on…well, faith.

"Europe’s colonial past and the United States’ current (endless) military campaigns in the Islamic world, as well as prejudice against nonwhites in Europe, have predisposed many to see, with some justification, Muslims as victims."

Yeah, some justification. Sure, our decades of indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people might have had something to do with the anger found in parts of the Muslim world, but only a little bit. But the real reason for this violence is that they're actually just all backward savages, and it's insane that you'd call him intolerant simply for pointing out the obvious truth that they're savages! So I guess he needs none of that evidence he criticizes religion for not having, because the point that following Islam makes one a savage is apparently just a given fact.

"All those who, à la Reza Aslan, maintain that Muslims today do not necessarily read the Quran literally have lost the argument before it begins.  What counts is that there are those (ISIS, say, and al-Qaida) who do, and they are taking action based on their beliefs.  To the contention, “ISIS and al-Qaida don’t represent Islam!” the proper response is, “that’s what you say. They disagree.”  No single recognized Muslim clerical body exists to refute them."

Ah, the old canard that a sufficient amount of Muslims have not yet denounced the violence done by extremists, so that means they obviously approve of said extremists (of course, folks like this never actually specify what percentage or total number of Muslims have to condemn these actions. Because thousands have, but that's apparently not yet enough).

But the bigger problem is that this logic is so patently absurd you really have to take it…on faith. For instance, this same logic would have to hold that Jodi Foster is responsible for the assassination attempt on President Reagan. "That's insane!" you might say, dear hypothetical reader. "Hinckley was obviously a nut! Just because he said he was doing it for Foster doesn't mean she was in any way involved." And sure, that would be a pretty reasonable reaction. But according to Tayler's logic, the proper response to any argument that Foster is not responsible for the assassination attempt on Reagan is "That's what you say. Hinckley disagrees. After all, there is no single recognized authority on assassination motivation to refute him."

Or to bring the example closer to home, George W. Bush invoked Christianity and the name of Christ constantly while launching attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan. So, again, according to Tayler's logic, that means these wars represent all of Christianity. And since there's no single recognized Christian clerical body in existence to refute that fact, this means the War on Terror is inarguably a Christian crusade, full stop. That might surprise some folks. Like say, Pope John Paul II who notably condemned the war as illegal and immoral.

"When “holy” books and their dogmas dominate, societies suffer.  Whatever Islam did for scholarship in the Middle Ages, the dearth of top-quality institutions of higher education in Muslim countries today stems at least partly from the reverence accorded to, and time spent studying, Islam and its canon.  Says a respected report, the highest-ranking university in the world within the Dar al-Islam occupies the 225th spot."

Yeah, sure, inventing math was fine, but what have you done for us lately?!? Here's where I have to diverge from talking about all Muslims and focus on the one Muslim-majority nation I have some expertise on. Having spent a lot of time in Iraq and years studying the nation, it's history, politics, culture, etc., I can speak with some authority on the subject.

Iraq used to have an amazing education system, with an incredibly educated society. In fact, UNESCO points out it was one of the most educated societies in the world. But you'll notice I say "was" because for some reason, Iraq's education system really started to go down hill in the early 90s, and then fell completely apart around 2003. I wonder what was happening during this period. They must have all just discovered Islam, since that's the reason their education system isn't any good, right? Wait, but Islam preceded this fall in education by generations. Actually, by centuries.

But how can that be? That almost seems to imply Islam is not responsible for this decline. So what could it be? Could it be something to do with the US-imposed sanctions and subsequent illegal invasion? Surely not, for Tayler already explained how Western imperialism has nothing to do with this. And, again, we just have to accept that on faith, since he provides no empirical evidence for this argument in any way. Wait, where have I heard someone denouncing that very idea?

Also, and this probably goes without saying but I still feel the need to point it out: "white people ranked everyone and white people came out on top" is not a super convincing argument.

"Islam’s doctrinaire positions on women are infamous enough to merit no repetition here. Their sum effect is to render women chattel to men, as sex objects and progenitors of offspring, and foster the most misogynistic conditions on the planet: nineteen of twenty of the worst countries for women, according to the World Economic Forum, are Muslim-majority.  Some Muslim countries are deemed more progressive than others, but their progressivity varies inversely with the extent to which Islam permeates their legal codes and customary laws – the less, the better.  Not liberal at all, that."

And of course! Can't have a bigoted article about Islam without concern about teh wimminz! Again, I might note that Iraq has more female politicians in office than America. Not just a higher percentage, but a higher raw number, even though the US has roughly 310 million citizens, compared to roughly 36 million Iraqis. Apparently Iraq is oppressing women by making them write laws and influence the direction of their nation, while the US protects women by not making them work in the government.

Or I might point you to this article about how the status of Iraqi women has worsened dramatically since the secular, brilliant America decided to intervene. But then that article was written by a Muslim, so we should probably not even bother reading it.

"The rising number of ethnically Europeans mesmerized by Islam who set off to enroll in the ranks of ISIS attests to this; and may prefigure serious disruptions, especially in France, the homeland of a good number of them, once they start returning."

"Hey everyone, there's a terrible future of death and totalitarianism on the horizon! Even real human beings (e.g. Europeans!) are being seduced by this terrible force!" Is there any empirical evidence at all to support this point? No? Oh, guess I'll just have to accept it...on faith. You know, for someone who says religion is backward because it requires you to believe with no proof, this fella sure wants you to believe a lot of stuff he says without offering any proof. It's almost as if he's holding Islam to a different standard.

"This is no call to disrespect Muslims as people, but we should not hesitate to speak frankly about the aspects of their faith we find problematic."

Yeah, it's totally not a call to disrespect Muslims. It's just a call to tell them that everything they believe is wrong, everything they do is bad, and that they need to either change to his way of life or be wiped out. Gee, where have I heard that perspective disparaged before?

"We must stop traducing reason by branding people “Islamophobes,” and start celebrating our secularism, remembering that only it offers true freedom for the religious and non-religious alike."

"There is only one way! All who don't believe as I do are a dangerous threat that must be wiped out!"

I mean, seriously, dude actually says "only it offers true freedom." Like…I can't even parody that. He's denouncing what he sees as totalitarianism by saying that only he is correct and that only his ideas are valid and must be followed by everyone. It's times like this I wish irony wasn't dead, because this sure as shit seems pretty ironic to me.

Bu the bigger point of all of this is that this bigoted drivel is written in response to two attacks by four people that killed eleven people total.

Now, I'm of the perspective that any deaths are far too many. But unlike Tayler and others of his brand of special progressive bigotry, I also understand that context exists. And the context of those two attacks are that they come after a decade-plus rampage of the West throughout the Middle East, which has featured thousands of attacks which have killed hundreds of thousands of people. Echoing Paul Pierce, at a certain point you've just got to call "game."

Because only if you remove all context of world politics and the two-plus wars which have been going on for well over a decade can you somehow say that two violent acts perpetrated by four people are somehow emblematic of the roughly 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Not to mention that at the same time you can somehow ignore the regularity of hate crimes perpetrated against Muslims here in the US. Or, you know, somehow separate the literally tens of thousands of Muslims slaughtered by the US from representing all Americans, or white people, or Christians, or whomever you'd like to attach random acts to in an attempt to smear them.

Really, I shouldn't be surprised by such bigotry. But it's the gall that gets me. Tens of thousands of murders of innocent people perpetuated in your name? Well, that's a complex issue and can't be said to reflect any single cause. A small handful of murders perpetuated in the name of foreign Brown people? These clearly represent everything about those people, and we must destroy their way of life before it destroys ours. But remember, calling that logic Islamophobic is to traduce the very concept of reason!

Things Jesse Currently Likes

So as to not make everything I post a dreary condemnation of the ills of our world, here's a happy post about something fun. As a television junkie, I watch way, way too much television. As in I watch so much television that in rare moments of clarity I'm forced to admit I probably have a problem. But the purpose here is not to catalogue the unhealthy levels of television I consume, but rather to make the case that when I say a show stands out as worthy of your time, I'm somewhat worth listening to.

So with that said, I cannot recommend enough the yahoo series Other Space* (incidentally, between picking up the recently-cancelled yet still brilliant Community and this show, the fledgling channel is really something to keep an eye on). Other Space is ostensibly a parody of old sic fi shows, with it's intentionally cheap sets and special effects and whatnot, but it's really more of an homage created by people who clearly have a great deal of reverence for the old classics, most notably the original Battlestar Galactica and, of course, Star Trek.

It's helmed by the brilliant Paul Feig (creator of Freaks & Geeks and director of about a million great comedies) and has an awesome, diverse cast. For one, it turns out the annoying skinny kid from those AT&T commercials and the annoying short lady from those other AT&T commercials are both pretty great comedic actors. But much more importantly, it also stars Joel Hodgson and Crow T. Robot! Ok, technically it's not Crow, but it is Trace Beaulieu voicing an obnoxious, sarcastic robot. Which is pretty much the same thing.

Being a web series, supporting shows like this with your clicks and eyeballs can actually have a direct impact on both this specific show continuing and more generally giving the chance to other similarly brilliant but not necessarily network-ready tv shows (Other Space was originally to air on NBC, but let's all thank the Lord that didn't happen, as it would have been cancelled after two episodes). Unlike standard broadcasting, where unless you happen to be a Nielsen viewer, your viewing habits don't actually make a difference in which types of shows get pick ups and which don't, these internet-based shows are actually somewhat democratized, in the sense that each view is actually counted and gives an accurate impression of who is actually watching. This is what allows shows with small but fervently loyal fan bases (again, Community) to have life when they would have been long shuttered by network television.

So go watch it. In addition to laughing uproariously, you'll also be supporting some cool people making cool stuff and possibly opening the door for other cool people to make yet more cool stuff. Or you can watch season 107 of American Idol and be a horrible person. Whichever.


*Yes, yes, on a very technical level this is not a television show as it is completely web based. But you clearly knew what I meant. Quit being a pedantic asshole.

Trudeau On The Same Subject

Following yesterday's post, a friend hipped me to this speech given by Doonesbury creator Gary Trudeau when recently receiving a Polk award. Basically, it's just a lot better version of the argument I was making yesterday, delivered by someone with much more authority on the subject. 

It's a quick, short read, so I highly recommend you just go read it, but here's two paragraphs from it that make the same argument I was trying to make, albeit it much more eruditely and succinctly:

I, and most of my colleagues, have spent a lot of time discussing red lines since the tragedy in Paris. As you know, the Muhammad cartoon controversy began eight years ago in Denmark, as a protest against “self-censorship,” one editor’s call to arms against what she felt was a suffocating political correctness. The idea behind the original drawings was not to entertain or to enlighten or to challenge authority—her charge to the cartoonists was specifically to provoke, and in that they were exceedingly successful. Not only was one cartoonist gunned down, but riots erupted around the world, resulting in the deaths of scores. No one could say toward what positive social end, yet free speech absolutists were unchastened. Using judgment and common sense in expressing oneself were denounced as antithetical to freedom of speech.

What free speech absolutists have failed to acknowledge is that because one has the right to offend a group does not mean that one must. Or that that group gives up the right to be outraged. They’re allowed to feel pain. Freedom should always be discussed within the context of responsibility. At some point free expression absolutism becomes childish and unserious. It becomes its own kind of fanaticism.

But seriously, just go read the whole thing.

The Difference Between Defending Free Speech and Being an Asshole

By now you've likely heard of the shootings that took place in Texas at a contest centered on drawing the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH). The shooters are suspected to have committed their crimes due to being upset by these depictions of the Prophet (something not technically forbidden by Islam, but strongly discouraged).

Quite predictably, many people have latched on to this event as an example of the savagery of Islam and its followers, as opposed to the decent, freedom-loving people of America. The organizer of the event, Pamela Geller, trotted out the idea that to not have a "Draw Muhammed" contest would be abridging "our freedoms so as to not offend savages." She went on to call the two attackers "enemies of freedom" to drive the point home (she apparently borrowed George W's hyperbole thesaurus).

But as I've noted previously, any time someone this far on the right is loudly talking proclaiming themselves to be defenders of Free Speech™, there's almost always some sort of other agenda present. In Geller's case, it's clearly her desperately trying to provoke some sort of negative reaction to justify her world view.

If a quick perusal of her website, which looks like it was designed by a very racist 9 year old, doesn't fill you in on her views, maybe the fact that her organization is designated a hate group and that she is not allowed entry to Britain because of her support for neo-nazis will tell you what you need to know. She was also the driving force behind the effort to stop the construction of the so-called ground zero mosque in NYC*.

So she's a racist hack. That in itself is not terribly surprising, but is definitely something that should be central in any discussion of this event or its results. In fact, her rabid racism is really what belies the whole idea that she's somehow doing any of this for the cause of protecting free speech.

For one, she claims the event was to "sound the alarm about Muslim encroachment into Europe and America." Seriously. "Muslim encroachment." That's the kind of wording I would use if I were attempting to satirize racists.

But the real heart of the matter is a simple question: why? Why does she feel the need to have drawings of the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH)? What purpose do these drawings serve? While she keeps asserting that not doing this would somehow damage freedom of speech, she never actually specifies why or how it does that.

Probably, I would venture, because it doesn't. Heck, look at me -- I've never once drawn any prophets of any religion, and I sure feel pretty comfortable saying whatever the hell I want!

That's the point I'm getting at -- she (nor any of the other people involved in this) are creating pictures of the Prophet for any reason other than to provoke people. These pictures just aren't serving any other purpose (seriously -- what the hell does anyone need a picture of Muhammed for?). They're just like the infamous cartoons in the Danish newspaper a few years back that provoked a similar reaction, cartoons which the editor of that paper fully admitted were published solely to provoke Denmark's Muslim community.

Really, this strikes me more as the same argument employed by white people who are just desperate to be able to use the n-word. There's no compelling need for any white person to ever use that word (outside of maybe some sort of very specific academic discussion) and not using it causes no harm to anyone. But that's the whole point, as it's not actually about using the word, it's about the problem so many white people have with the idea that "other" people are allowed to have views and opinions. Views and opinions which may even be *gasp* different than those of white people! After literal centuries of brutal, genocidal slavery, Black Americans have asked white people to not use one single, highly-insulting word. Seems less like an attack on their freedom of speech than asking them not to be raging assholes.

The continued demand from these same types of white folks that they be allowed to engage in the highly-offensive practice of drawing the Prophet comes from the same place. It's not enough that white Americans have slaughtered tens of thousands of Muslim people in the last decade alone. No! They must also be free to insult Muslims while they're at it. Anything else would be an affront to freedom!

As the Supreme Court famously noted, freedom of speech does not allow one to shout fire in a crowded theater, basically meaning that one should just maybe consider the effect of their words and then weigh that likely effect against their need to say them. In this case, Geller damn well knew the event would provoke people (in fact, it's really hard to argue she was putting on the event for any reason other than to provoke people) and yet she went ahead anyway and now two people are dead.

But hey, at least some rich, racist white lady has a bunch of drawings of a religious figure. And isn't that the true meaning of freedom?

*Not totally related, but back when that controversy was in full swing, a friend of mine summed it up perfectly, noting that it's a bit hypocritical to say you can't build a mosque next to ground zero when we've been building ground zeros next to mosques for decades.

Well, It's a Start (And It's Due to Rioting)

Freddi Grey's death has been officially declared a homicide. The finding of homicide is not that big of a deal in and of itself (nor that unanticipated), as in this specific context the use of the term "homicide" simply means his death was ruled as not due to natural causes. Many in-custody deaths are labeled homicides yet no further action is taken nor is anyone punished for it. Really, a more accurate label would be to call them "death from something other than natural causes," but that doesn't really roll off the tongue as well.

The much, much bigger news is that 6 officers are being charged with crimes. The driver of the wagon, likely the most responsible for Grey's injuries, is being charged with second-degree murder, while 5 other officers face a range of charges including manslaughter and assault. While the cynic and the academic in me are quick to caution that charges are a far cry from convictions (and I would be willing to bet a very large sum of money on the charges being reduced at some point in the process, likely as part of a plea deal), this is still a huge victory for the people of Baltimore, and really all people everywhere horrified by our racist criminal justice system.

That police officers are rarely charged for what are obvious crimes is not something that even needs citation at this point (Eric Garner, for instance, was murdered on camera by an officer using a banned chokehold and nothing came of it), so again, the very existence of charges is meaningful.

But what's also meaningful is why the charges came about. Obviously we can't actually speak to the non-existent counterfactual situation in which Grey's death did not result in widespread demonstrations and some rioting. However, even the state's attorney, Marilyn Mosby pointed out in her press conference announcing the charges:

“To the people of Baltimore: I heard your call for ‘no justice no peace’,” Mosby said at a Baltimore press conference. Praising young people who had taken to the streets to protest over Gray’s death, she said: “I will seek justice on your behalf.

Granted, this is likely in part due to the ever-present need of politicians to capitalize on whichever way the winds are blowing, but it is instructive that she felt the need to cite the unrest as one reason the charges came about. And as many have pointed out, it's pretty difficult to believe anything would have come from this if not for those pesky riots. Riots which supposedly "accomplish nothing."

Even more interestingly, a surprising voice weighed in on behalf of those rioting and looting and how those actions are a very legitimate display of anger and frustration toward an oppressive and unjust regime. Here's what none other than villain-from-central-casting Donald Rumsfeld had to say about the events of Baltimore:

"While no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime," he said. "And I don't think there's anyone in any of those pictures ... (who wouldn't) accept it as part of the price of getting from a repressed regime to freedom."

Rumsfeld was unusually exercised about critical press coverage of the lawlessness...saying coverage is repetitive and distorts what's really going on.

"I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny –- 'The sky is falling.' I've never seen anything like it!" Rumsfeld exclaimed. "The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over and over and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times and you think, 'My goodness, were there that many vases?'" 

Of course, ol' Rummy was actually talking about the rioting and looting in Baghdad following the fall of Saddam Hussein (I'm guessing he would not be quite so generous toward the people of Baltimore nor as critical of the media there). And yet, the sentiment is pretty dead on: when an unjust system continues to murder with no remorse, we should probably expect some anger about ti to bubble up sooner or later...

What Does Burning Down a CVS Have To Do With Racial Injustice?

This was quite literally a question I was asked recently when trying to put some context to some very racist statements about what's happening in Baltimore right now in the wake of the murder of Freddy Gray (and let's not mince words here: Gray's death, regardless of the outcome of the investigation being conducted by the very people responsible for his death, is murder. He entered the police van with an intact spine and exited with a severed spine, due solely to the intentional actions of the officers involved. That is murder, no ifs, ands, or buts).

While the person who actually asked it was being facetious, not actually wanting an answer and thinking they had stumbled onto some sort of incredibly witty rejoinder, I want to actually answer that question.

For one, as this great Al Jazeera piece from last year points out, riots have actually been extremely effective in creating social change throughout American history. Or as many pointed out in the wake of the murder of Michael Brown, the world probably would have known nothing about Brown's death had the community not poured into the streets demanding justice. One could pretty easily make the same argument that Gray would just be another statistic in our ever-expanding list of citizens killed at the hands of police were it not for the good people of Baltimore loudly proclaiming they've finally had enough.

But what the titular question of this post most often refers to (at least in my experience) is that the employment of violence and property damage will result in bad optics; that is, the great white American public hive mind will be turned off from what is otherwise a legitimate cause because of the actions of a few (if you've read anything about Grey that hasn't invoked this argument, you're doing a very good job seeking out a very particular kind of media source).

Beside the obvious fact that that it's pretty fucked up for one to be more upset over a CVS being on fire than one is about a person begin murdered by the very forces that are supposed to protect them, the optics argument is at best incredibly over-optimistic, but more likely disingenuous. Because the very premise of the argument is quite easily proven false; the only way you can argue violence and property damage may damage the chance at achieving some measure of justice is if you assume white America was primed and waiting to fully tackle our nation's vast and entrenched racial injustices. But now they're changing their minds because of the unrest in Baltimore. But if not for that unrest! Oh, if only the CVS hadn't been torched, then the majority of white Americans would have been pouring into the streets, demanding change and not settling for milquetoast reforms. If only! But alas, because of some minor violence, all good people must simply turn up their noses at what's going on and ignore the underlying issue. There's no other choice!

In case my dickish sarcasm hasn't made the point clear enough, the assumption underlying the optics argument is demonstrably (and frankly, laughably) false. In fact, it's pretty easy to view the history of police violence as a natural experiment: we as a nation are certainly not short on instances of unarmed Black people murdered by police. And in the vast majority of those instances, there are no resulting riots, violence, or property damage. Yet somehow, even without these damaging optics, there haven't been widespread demands from white America for tearing down the edifice of racial injustice. Why, it's almost as if the presence of violence and property damage doesn't cause people to not call for changes but instead gives people an excuse to justify their racist views!

To steal a great quote I saw on the face books this morning (attributed to a Dr. Kevin Browne, though a quick google search tells me there's a lot of people with that name and I don't know which one it said it): "When police departments protect white property BETTER than they protect Black people, they're actually punishing us for NOT wanting to be white property. 'How dare you not want to owned by us?' 'How dare you think yourselves more valuable than things?' 'Look how well we protect our things.'"

And as I've noted previously, what other choice is there? How are you supposed to calmly and politely ask for some form of justice when the people murdering you are literally subject to a different set of laws than everyone else? A set of laws that result in the murderers not only not being prosecuted, but rarely even losing their jobs. Let me throw out an obviously loaded hypothetical question of my own: how does asking a murderer to politely stop murdering accomplish anything? Especially when the murderer is legally protected from prosecution for their murders?

But the bigger point of all of this is to ask where are these people calling for calm and nonviolence when the police are routinely beating and murdering innocent citizens? Why are they only concerned with calm and order the second it's Black people who are causing damage (damage which pales in comparison to the actions of the police)? As the incomparable Ta-Nehisi Coates argues:

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is "correct" or "wise," any more than a forest fire can be "correct" or "wise." Wisdom isn't the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the rioters themselves.

So what does burning down a CVS have to do with racial injustice? Seems like quite a bit from where I'm sitting.

I Apparently No Longer Look Like Chelsea Clinton

Followers of this blog will probably remember the time I stumbled across this batshit crazy blog that was using a picture of me thinking it was a picture of Chelsea Clinton. Since then, I occasionally check back in on said blog to see if I'm still repping as the younger Clinton, and occasionally to read the hilarious screeds that populate it (seriously, it will bruise your brain to try to figure out what's going on there, but it's kinda fun at the same time).

Well, sure enough, wouldn't you know I'm once again featured in this person's indecipherably weird fever dreams. Once again, the me-as-Chelsea photo is used, but this time I'm apparently not the former first daughter. Now I've graduated to my actual name, but am now credited as being the son of Steve Wozniak (note: I am not the son of Steve Wozniak. Although I am a loyal Apple user, so…you know, pretty close). This is actually a bit of confusion that makes some sense; unlike Chelsea Clinton (who both spells and pronounces her name differently, and I would like to add again, looks nothing like me), the Woz's kid and I have the same name (I think. Google is pretty inconclusive on this one right now, but I believe I learned that factoid sometime previously).

But the funniest thing about this post is that it manages to use a different (even less unflattering) photo of me, claiming me to be the son of Woz. Funny enough, it's used directly next to a photo of Woz's actual kid, and other than the fact that we're both white dudes, we don't seem to look anything alike. But you can judge for yourself:

So now this crazy person has not one, but two, separate photos of me, attributed to being two separate people, neither of whom are actually me. And I've got admit, I'm more than a little creeped out. Does this person know something I don't? Am I actually both the only daughter of a former president and the eldest son of a computer magnate? Am I actually leading two secret double lives that even I don't know about? Am I really living in an incredibly weird and mostly boring episode of The Twighlight Zone? Can wealth be transferred between these various realities? Because I'm pretty sure both of those people have more money than this Jesse Wozniak will ever have in his life.

If nothing else, I hope someday someone else is googling me for some reason, and they slowly go insane trying to piece together how I manage to be so many people doing so many different things at once...