At the end of the day, gay marriage opponents have a problem. Even if they can win battles in the short-term, they’re still arguing for discrimination, and ultimately, there’s nothing particularly fun or enjoyable about discrimination visited against fellow Americans. Gay marriage advocates can, meanwhile, launch protests like the one linked to above. It is likely to entertain everybody but those who will be offended by Jack Black portraying Jesus. (Although [Some] Christians would like us believe otherwise, there aren’t too many people who will be offended by the portrayal.) It is videos like this that will ultimately undo the opposition. They predicate their claims on the notion that gays are a threat, that they’re inherently evil people who are undeserving of equal protection under the law. But American views ultimately end up softening, because they realize that the alleged threat is, in fact, no such thing.

To put that differently: the racists and the sexists ended up losing. So to will the bigots.

(Incidentally, I made it five whole days without mentioning gay marriage. I think. That’s three more than I expected.)

Technorati Tags: Funny or Die, Gay Marriage

You know what this response is? Perfect. Motherfucking perfect. Odd that it takes the Daily Show to better explain my feelings on this issue than any political leader. It would have been tactless, but I almost wish it had been Barack Obama, instead of John Oliver, saying these things. Especially if he’d said, “There have always been motherfuckers. There will always be motherfuckers. But the important thing is not letting these people control our motherfucking lives.”

<a href=”http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/02/campbell.brown.rendell/?iref=mpstoryview”>Oh, he did?</a> 

Idiot. The Greek never would have stood for this.

Technorati Tags: Ed Rendell, Homeland Security, Idiot, Janet Napolitano

I had no idea…

Plaxico Burress is a wide-receiver who plays for the New York Giants. He accidentally shot himself in a club last weekend. He faces charges and Michael Bloomberg’s wrath. It’s a relatively big deal.

Unless you’re ESPN. Then you’d have to believe, if measured by the coverage they’ve dedicated to this issue, that Plaxico Burress committed genocide. Every episode of Sportscenter features nonstop coverage of this idiotic shooting. Everything circled in pink, above, is Burress related; there is apparently no other sports news going on anywhere in the world. The degree to which the network has gone overboard on this is shocking beyond words.

Two Other Observations

-Skip Bayless’s downright glee at all of this is edging uncomfortably toward racism. This morning, he was positively thrilled that the mayor of New York had issued a fatwa against Burress, essentially glad that the mayor had reminded Burress of his place. I don’t know; I just can’t imagine Bayless getting this excited if a white athlete had accidentally shot himself hunting.

-If this had been Brett Favre, ESPN’s offices would have drowned in the tears of its own adoring reporters.

Technorati Tags: ESPN, Plaxico Burress, Skip Bayless

(In No Particular Order)
1. “Four Leaf Clover” - a quintessential BDB song, cheery and sad at the same time. How else can you fathom an offer to lend out a lucky four-leaf clover with an opening line that goes, “Go on/Do what you’ve got to do/You’ve got your dreams/I’ve got mine too/Be strong/get off at the next stop/don’t worry about a thing/keep taking it easy.” So why’s he lending out the clover? Because he thinks they’re getting back together soon. That’s hope…and heart-breaking. And not nearly as bad as it’s going to get.

2. “Above You/Below Me.” I once dedicated an entire column to the premise of this song: tolerance. The song’s refrain, “Please accept me as I am/there will be something in the wind/to tell us we’re right/and show us we’re wrong.” In other words, truths might become evident of their own accord, but not because we’re busy shouting each other down. Or something like that. I hope that’s what the song means. (I had lunch recently with The Queen; she explained Leonard Cohen’s “Halleleujah” to me in ways that made my head hurt. I will never know enough to know fully understand what she said that day. Still, I think I’m relatively spot on with my interpretation here.)

3. “Once Around The Block.” It’s just a good song.

4. “You Were Right.” Ever been broken up with unexpectedly? Because even if you can ignore how good the song is generally, there’s this, “And I/Was busy finding answers/While you just got on with real life.” Never, anywhere, ever, has the pain of a breakup been so simply captured. For that, BDB deserves serious dap.

5. “Logic of a Friend.” I’ll be honest; much of this music stems from enjoying BDB’s overall delivery of the song. (I’d call them “tightly constructed pop gems” in an attempt to go all hipster on you, but I’m not sure his music qualifies as pop.) So, delivery it is. Put more simply, the sounds flow together in an enjoyable way.

Everything mentioned here is available from the iTunes store. Or, yknow, wherever you get your music.

Technorati Tags: Badly Drawn Boy, Music

Remember this, from yesterday? Of course you don’t. I’m the only person who cares about such things.

But still, somebody at the AP apparently objected to a headline so glorious, so they changed it. If you visit the same story now, you’ll find this: Palin implores GA. Republicans to back Chambliss.

Boring.

The real, original version is included. (Also, I love the terrible picture of Palin.)

In a word: no.

There is absolutely and positively no way that this is remotely accurate, for about sixty-five thousand different reasons. Let’s ignore the most obvious objection, which is the fact that psychiatrists weren’t the ones administering the surveys - trained interviewers were, who scored responses and the proceeded to make judgments of an individuals mental stability. There is a certain amount of subtlety in a mental health diagnosis, or at least, there should be. You can quiz 5000 people about their mental conditions and collate the responses, but the results are going to be questionable for all sorts of reasons, including the bias of the interviews, and the somewhat troubling reality that human beings rarely have any idea what they’re talking about. But…

Y’know what? I’ll tell you why this study isn’t true, and I’m going to use the least scientific method available: my own experience.

I was in a bad way several years ago, and started negotiating the student mental health services at West Virginia University. Eventually, I got an appointment with a “trained mental health professional” which was code for a Physician’s Assistant who had gotten some training…somewhere. I have nothing against PAs, but this particular one was awful, because it was clear that I was another mental disaster that she was going to fix. I was diagnosed as depressed, which was reasonable enough, because I was depressed. I was described medicine, which I was leery of, but that I took. It seemed reasonable enough. I went back for a checkup, reported that the medication had seemed to help me stabilize…at which point this particular Physician’s Assistant decided that she could really fix me with more medication. She upped my dose; I figured 10 more milligrams couldn’t hurt me.

I don’t really remember anything from June 2007, the month that I took more medicine, except that at the end of it, I called in, asked permission to go back to a lower dose, and was told to come in for another check up with the same PA. Which I did, stupidly. I was told that the increased medication hadn’t actually hurt me, but had revealed my underlying bipolar disorder, and that what I really needed to do was take more medication, adding a mood stabilizer to the anti-depression meds. I stopped going to see that particular PA, never took the mood stabilizer, and eventually quit with the anti-depression medication. Lo and behold, I function like a vaguely normal human being these days.

This study purports that society isn’t paying enough attention to mental disorders, but that isn’t the problem. The problem is that society is paying precisely the wrong sort of attention to mental disorders. Diagnoses, like the nonsense bipolar disorder one that I received, fly from the notes of doctors and nurses and PAs everywhere, because it is easier to assign a diagnosis that genuinely get to know the patient in front of you. A few casual questions from the idiot PA that I dealt with could have prevented her diagnosis, but she didn’t take the time to listen to me. She had already settled on my true problems before I started talking. And it isn’t difficult to figure that this is how a lot of health professionals work. College students take all sorts of mood-altering pills, not because they need them, but because they can get them. And does the medical establishment stand in the way of this nonsense? Do they stop writing bullshit prescriptions for Attention Deficit Disorder medications because “young adults” have figured out how to game the system? Of course they don’t; it’s easier to do the one than the other.

I should now say that there are plenty of wonderful people working in all sorts of health related fields. I met several of them during my cryptically referred to “troubles.” But there are plenty of people who aren’t wonderful, who instead take the easiest way out imaginable. They’re easy to spot, and they’re anxious to be played for the rubes that they want to be. There’s no work involved in being a rube, just a paycheck.

At this point, I’m starting to sound like an old man, but society is getting progressively more coddled; everybody rushes to blame something for their own failures, rather than themselves. It easier to say that “I couldn’t possibly have failed to achieve X. No, I must have some sort of underlying problem that prevented me from accomplishing X.” than to say something like, “I blew it. I’ve gotta get myself right.”

All this study is going to do is encourage more of the same, more of the rush to diagnose and less of the need to accurately treat. To whose benefit, I wonder? Yes, the psychological industry, and absolutely, the pharmaceutical industry. But the people themselves? Will the people themselves for whom these diagnoses amount to nothing more than a “Get Out Responsibility Free” card benefit?

Of course not.

Meanwhile, the individuals in our society with genuine mental instability - the sort of crippling instability that renders life practically impossible to live - will disappear into the progressively stronger tides of the misdiagnosed who abuse the system because the system routinely encourages it.

Argh.

Technorati Tags: Bipolarity, Depresson, Mental Health

First
The article discusses a movement initiated by The Campaign For A Commercial Free Childhood, in which companies are being asked to stop marketing products to children. Why? Because the economy is in bad shape, and if kids see things on television that they’ll want and inevitably ask for, their financially strapped parents are going to be forced to say, “No.”

Second
Got that? Companies should stop advertising products to children because it might force parents to be parents.

Third
Parents! Can you believe that? The notion that children would be forced to teach their children important life lessons like, “You can’t have everything you want,” and “Money’s tight right now, and that’s going to affect what you get Christmas,” and “You stupid little brat, stop asking for every damned thing you see on the television and grow up! Times are tough! We’re cutting back as a family!”

Fourth
Parenting isn’t that difficult, but parenting today become acting as a blank check for your horribly behaved children. I guess if you subscribe to the belief that you as a parent shouldn’t have to ever tell your children no, the CCFC’s movement makes a bit of sense, but if you’re one of the rest of us - a loving parent who understands that kids do not benefit from learning that everything wanted should be given instead of earned - this is outrageous.

Fifth
Lest this be mistakenly read as a defense of the aforementioned marketers, it isn’t. Those marketers are selling terrible toys that don’t teach anything useful to the children playing with them. Even Legos are coming preassembled.

Sixth
Children are not made of glass. They can deal with bad news. They can deal with disappointment. They can deal with reality. Shielding them from it by pretending that the economy isn’t in terrible shape is a horrible lesson to teach. Then, proceeding to blame the marketers teaches an even worse lesson. Children will respect a parent who sits them down and explains them that the reason they can’t have their every wished for product is a bad economy, even if they don’t understand the economy itself. Besides not being glass, they’re not dumb. They’ll understand that money is limited. They’ll understand that things aren’t the way they once were.

Seventh
Parents should be parents. It’s as simple as that.

Eighth
I’m done.

Technorati Tags: CCFC, Christmas, Parenting

The above was my tea this morning, and has been everyday for the past few days. What can I say? I enjoy its smoky beginning, its peaty finish, and its strong followthrough. Steep it for an extra few minutes for a real kick, a tea that cannot be submitted like so many others, a tea that…umm…yknow what? This is total crap. I like Prince of Wales tea because it makes me think of Maine, and more specifically, cold foggy mornings at my Grandmother’s farm. I like that memory. I’m big on connecting senses to memories.

Another Story
A year ago, my mother went looking for stocking stuffers for the family, including tea for me. She stopped by a local specialty shop. She asked for my favorite - Twinings’ “Prince of Wales” tea - and was told that while the specialty shop could order it, they generally didn’t like to stock, “grocery store teas.” The woman behind the counter must have been the hipster of teas, what with her not wanting to associate herself with the Twinings more proletariat offerings.

The condescension that comes along with everything these days is so incredibly off putting. Tea, golf equipment, music, art, stereo equipment, movies, food. People wrap themselves up in these things, assuming that their preferences are somehow indicative of inherent truths about the thing. The woman at the specialty store condescended to the so-called grocery store teas because she assumed that her own preferences were somehow themselves superior her customer’s son’s preferences. Of course, all teas are equal; nobody’s preferences are better than those of anybody else.

On some issues, it is silly to preach relativism - we should be free to judge cultures that persecute women for the crime of being women, for example. But music? Or golf equipment? Or tea? There is no reason to assume that our personal preferences are somehow superior to another person’s; there is no reason to endow our preferences with the ridiculous notion of truth.

Do I like the teas sold by the specialty store? Absolutely. But the tea for sale on grocery store shelves, like my favorite Prince of Wales, is equally good. I’d be silly if I thought I could rank order them for any number of nonsense reasons. I could say that I like Prince of Wales more than I like Twinings Darjeeling tea, but that’s not evidence of truths about the teas themselves. There are plenty of people who’d prefer the Darjeeling.

Needless to say, this absurd assumption that our preferences represent truths inherent to the thing that we prefer is madness.

Technorati Tags: Preferences, Tea

I live for great headlines, like this one:

Palin, Ludacris campaign in Ga.’s US Senate runoff.

Ignoring the fact that Palin and Ludacris are not facing one another in the Georgia runoff, it is perfect in every way. Also, a Palin/Ludacris matchup would no doubt be more interesting than the Martin/Douchebag runoff they’re having instead.

Technorati Tags: Chambliss, Georgia, Headline, Ludacris, Martin, Palin