I Don't Think "Bad" Is the Word They're Looking For...

Living with someone who loves reality TV has sparked many thoughts in my active mind...

Mm-kay... re: "The Bad Girls' Club,"

Given Amber's bi/homophobia ("How can you not know what you like?" "Unless you just like licking vagina, why would you be a lesbian?" "I don't understand [bisexuality]!"

and

Kate's racism ("I don't feel like going to a club and being hit on my black men... but I'm not racist." "I'm not racist, but I just prefer to have white friends.")

and Natalie's... everything...

why are these people on TV?

My Block

Just heard this song for the first time in a while.



Not exactly like my little neighborhood, but made me miss Lake Terrace and Louisiana, all the same. No place like home, no matter how much I critique it. In my heart, "I'll never leave my block; my ****** need me."

And, oh my God, I need them.

Music Lessons

I'm researching 60s music for my parents' anniversary. My child, who thinks he is a music connoisseur, has been helping me. We got into a discussion of records (actual vinyl LPs) my parents owned. I asked him if he knew what I meant by records.

"Uh-huh," he said.

"Describe them."

He sighed and said, "Records, Mama! They're the CDs that DJs use!"

GRRR!!!

Just saw this headline on CNN.com: Biden, Cheney spar via talk shows.

Am I the only one wondering why Cheney's smirking, lying, evil ass still has any sort of platform?

I'm So Dreading Valentine's Day

I saw this slideshow, catchily entitled "Where the boys aren't" last week at NYT, discussing the major issue raised by the fact that women "have represented enrollments at American colleges since at least 2000." You might be surprised that said major issue is not "schools are hostile to boys" or "this is proof that men are underprivileged."

Nope. It's that college women can't find dates and face bitterness, desperation, and meaningless hookups. (Read the captions, f'real)

So, let's follow the NYT's premise for a minute--which seems to be something along the lines of "all college women are interested in men and see dating as a significant part of their college experiences." This sad state of affairs produces not only a sex ratio imbalance, but a power one, in which men have all the control. Note the following quotes:

The on-campus gender imbalance puts guys in a position to play the field, and tends to mean that even the ones willing to make a commitment come with storied romantic histories.

"On college campuses where there are far more women than men, men have all the power to control the intensity of sexual and romantic relationships," said Kathleen A. Bogle, a sociologist at La Salle University in Philadelphia.

The accompanying pictures are primarily of social settings in which women outnumber men (7 to 1 in the last one), highlighting how serious this crisis is!!! I mean, a girl can no longer go to college and pursue what her real goal should be--finding a man???

Particularly touching to single me, however, was this lovely quote:

Thanks to simple laws of supply and demand, it is often the women who must assert themselves romantically or be left alone on Valentine's Day, staring down a George Clooney movie over a half-empty pizza box.

I couldn't help thinking, "Wow! It's eerie how accurate the NYT is on the lives of single women!"

Update: Apparently there's a whole article linked to this travesty. I started writing this a few days ago and just saw Jill's post on it:

It seems to be a problem of perception more than statistics — if there are roughly equal numbers of men and women in a room, or if there are a few more women than men, we perceive the situation as thoroughly female-dominated. The same phenomenon happens with race. We’re used to seeing men (and white men in particular) as the standard; we’re used to them dominating higher education and the workforce. When we up the numbers of non-men in a situation where men have traditionally made up large majorities, the perception is that no more men exist – even though men are nearly half of the room.

Co-sign!

Also, the article talks in much more troubling terms than I did about a "power imbalance." Even my flippant self paused and wondered about this:

“A lot of my friends will meet someone and go home for the night and just hope for the best the next morning,” Ms. Lynch said. “They’ll text them and say: ‘I had a great time. Want to hang out next week?’ And they don’t respond.”

Even worse, “Girls feel pressured to do more than they’re comfortable with, to lock it down,” Ms. Lynch said.

As for a man’s cheating, “that’s a thing that girls let slide, because you have to,” said Emily Kennard, a junior at North Carolina. “If you don’t let it slide, you don’t have a boyfriend.”

...

Women on gender-imbalanced campuses are paying a social price for success and, to a degree, are being victimized by men precisely because they have outperformed them.

...

“If a guy is not getting what he wants, he can quickly and abruptly go to the next one, because there are so many of us,” said Katie Deray.

Emphasis mine.

Just in Time for Black History Month...

...we find out, according to Vanity Fair, that the up-and-coming female actors of "Young Hollywood" all have a certain thing in common:



See Prof Susurro's analysis.

Randomosity

Maybe it's because I just had to re-read U.B. Phillips's "The Plantation as a Civilizing Factor" in which he encouraged a return to and reliance on the plantation system to keep black people from "sliding into barbarism"--on the plantation, they'd come into contact with the good white folk. He couched it in the terms popular during the Progressive Era in which he wrote--the plantation was like a "social settlement" in which the white planter and his family acted as guidance and examples.

Or maybe it's because Mark Krikorian's assessment that Haiti wasn't colonized long enough is still ringing in my ears eyes...

But, having seen Avatar and Blindside nominated for best picture Oscars...*

And, having read about the folk who were trying to smuggle children out of Haiti and set up an orphanage with said children, some of whom were not orphans...

My first thought was, "Goodness! How do white people, with that heavy burden and all, have time to do anything else?!"
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*My co-worker/friend talked me into seeing Avatar this weekend. She's a sci-fi fan and wanted to see the images and such. I think our jaws remained on the floor 97.3% of the time until she finally said, "Really, elle, don't listen to the words, don't think about the plot. Let's just wait for the fight." I have not seen Blindside. I have, however, seen multitudes of "Captain Save-A-Negro" movies which, I would argue, qualifies me to speak :-)