Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 960
November 4, 2015
We choose to be anxious, stressed, afraid: “We set ourselves the goal of trying to avoid things that are utterly out of our control”
As if we weren’t already feeling stressed out enough – today is National Stress Awareness Day – a new report by the Pew Research Center just came out, describing the levels of stress that otherwise privileged American families are under. “The data are the latest to show that while family structure seems to have permanently changed,” a New York Times story reports, “public policy, workplace structure and mores have not seemed to adjust to a norm in which both parents work.” (The piece is headlined "Stressed, Tired, Rushed: A Portrait of the Modern Family.") As the Atlantic described the study’s two-income families: “these parents are stressed and harried, struggling to bring their family lives into alignment with their work lives.” What is stress? Where does it come from? And is there something about contemporary life that’s amplifying it? We spoke to University of Texas psychology professor Art Markman, author of “Smart Thinking” and co-host of the radio show Two Guys On Your Head. Salon spoke to Markman from his office in Austin; the interview has been edited for clarity. Before we get into specifics around stress, let’s start with the basics of stress. What causes it? All of the emotions you experience are related in one way or another to the motivational systems in your brain. The feelings you have are basically your motivational system’s way of telling you if you are succeeding or failing at whatever you are trying to do. And because your motivational system is buried so deep inside your brain, those feelings – the emotions you experience – are basically the only mode of communication that that very evolutionarily old system has to communicate with the rest of the brain. With stress in particular, the motivational system has two distinct modes: The one you engage when you’re trying to approach some really positive or desirable thing in the world – having a really great meal, hanging out with a friend, listening to really great music. And then there’s a second system, the avoidance system, that engages when there’s something really noxious in the environment you’re truing to avoid. It could be a source of danger – a bus bearing down on you – or it could be a somewhat more diffuse danger, like the prospect that you might get fired. When that avoidance system is active – there’s something in the world you’re trying to avoid, but you haven’t avoided it yet – you end up experiencing emotions of stress, anxiety and fear. Part of the reason we’re talking about this today is that it’s apparently National Stress Awareness Day. It seems like a bizarre name for a holiday – aren’t people who are stressed out typically aware of it? Or do people end up walking through stressful times without noticing? People who are stressed are aware they’re stressed, but they’re not always aware of where that stress is coming from or what they can do about it. There are lots of places stress can come from. A new New York Times story describes its origins in middle-class family life. Does that report surprise you? It’s not surprising – particularly when it comes to parenting. Parents, at least in the United States, often frame most of what they’re doing with their children as the avoidance of calamity. I don’t want my child to fail, I’m worried that my child won’t get into the right school or college, I’m worried they won’t be happy. But how are they going to learn to be happy from a bunch of stressed-out parents? We spent all our time trying to avoid calamity, but don’t ask, What is a beautiful, desirable thing I could do today? Parents don’t model that kind of behavior for their kids: They create all these wonderful opportunities for their kids, and then they over-schedule them and make stress them out about being late to stuff. “Hurry up, we’re going to be late to dance lessons.” So now we’re all stressed by the time we get to this thing that’s supposed to be fun. You’ve talked about the roots of stress that go back to early human evolution. But I imagine there are more specific factors amplifying stress in contemporary life, especially economic and technological factors. Well, let’s put this into perspective. Almost anything in the world can be framed as something I’m trying to avoid, or something I’m trying to achieve. The sources of stress in our world: There are specific things we choose to worry ourselves about. But what we should bear in mind is that… we’ve mostly got plenty of food – most of us. Again, not everyone – there are definitely people who don’t have anything to eat, don’t have a place to sleep, don’t have clothes. Who have legitimate survival concerns. But I would venture that the bulk of people who will read this piece are not at that level – they’re more existential crises. Once we get to that level – people talk about Maslow’s hierarchy, once we get off the bottom of that – you have a real choice, in almost everything in your life, about how you want to frame it. There are health concerns – people get sick. There are truly fearful things in the world. But an awful lot of what we encounter in the world, we have a lot of choice about. And we choose to frame them, as a society, in terms of avoiding negative outcomes, as opposed to trying to approach desirable outcomes. And that matters – because you can’t experience joy unless you put yourself in a situation in which there is a potential positive outcome you can achieve. Because when you are anxious and stressed and fearful – when you’re trying to avoid something – the best outcome is that you successfully avoid it, and now you’re relieved. “I lived to fight another day.” And that’s no way to live. We worry about money, but we don’t have to set up our lives that way. What are some small, desirable things I can do for my family? If I don’t have enough money to go on that great vacation that we hoped for, what’s a wonderful place we could walk to, or drive to? Or a hike we’ve always meant to take in town? Or frankly, connecting with other people is a great thing. Can we volunteer at the animal shelter this weekend? Hang out with a dog – it doesn’t worry about much. What does stress cause people to do? What’s the wrong way to respond to stress? If we set ourselves the goal of trying to avoid things that are utterly out of our control, we put ourselves in a situation where we worry a lot about the future without there being anything we can really do. Remember, the motivational system is all about getting you to act. So the trick in life is to focus on things you can do rather than things where you don’t have much control. So find an action you can perform, and then engage with it. And if your life is really not in peril, find a way to think about it in a way that allows you to enjoy the activities that you’re doing. Find the desirable piece that’s going to happen today. [image error]As if we weren’t already feeling stressed out enough – today is National Stress Awareness Day – a new report by the Pew Research Center just came out, describing the levels of stress that otherwise privileged American families are under. “The data are the latest to show that while family structure seems to have permanently changed,” a New York Times story reports, “public policy, workplace structure and mores have not seemed to adjust to a norm in which both parents work.” (The piece is headlined "Stressed, Tired, Rushed: A Portrait of the Modern Family.") As the Atlantic described the study’s two-income families: “these parents are stressed and harried, struggling to bring their family lives into alignment with their work lives.” What is stress? Where does it come from? And is there something about contemporary life that’s amplifying it? We spoke to University of Texas psychology professor Art Markman, author of “Smart Thinking” and co-host of the radio show Two Guys On Your Head. Salon spoke to Markman from his office in Austin; the interview has been edited for clarity. Before we get into specifics around stress, let’s start with the basics of stress. What causes it? All of the emotions you experience are related in one way or another to the motivational systems in your brain. The feelings you have are basically your motivational system’s way of telling you if you are succeeding or failing at whatever you are trying to do. And because your motivational system is buried so deep inside your brain, those feelings – the emotions you experience – are basically the only mode of communication that that very evolutionarily old system has to communicate with the rest of the brain. With stress in particular, the motivational system has two distinct modes: The one you engage when you’re trying to approach some really positive or desirable thing in the world – having a really great meal, hanging out with a friend, listening to really great music. And then there’s a second system, the avoidance system, that engages when there’s something really noxious in the environment you’re truing to avoid. It could be a source of danger – a bus bearing down on you – or it could be a somewhat more diffuse danger, like the prospect that you might get fired. When that avoidance system is active – there’s something in the world you’re trying to avoid, but you haven’t avoided it yet – you end up experiencing emotions of stress, anxiety and fear. Part of the reason we’re talking about this today is that it’s apparently National Stress Awareness Day. It seems like a bizarre name for a holiday – aren’t people who are stressed out typically aware of it? Or do people end up walking through stressful times without noticing? People who are stressed are aware they’re stressed, but they’re not always aware of where that stress is coming from or what they can do about it. There are lots of places stress can come from. A new New York Times story describes its origins in middle-class family life. Does that report surprise you? It’s not surprising – particularly when it comes to parenting. Parents, at least in the United States, often frame most of what they’re doing with their children as the avoidance of calamity. I don’t want my child to fail, I’m worried that my child won’t get into the right school or college, I’m worried they won’t be happy. But how are they going to learn to be happy from a bunch of stressed-out parents? We spent all our time trying to avoid calamity, but don’t ask, What is a beautiful, desirable thing I could do today? Parents don’t model that kind of behavior for their kids: They create all these wonderful opportunities for their kids, and then they over-schedule them and make stress them out about being late to stuff. “Hurry up, we’re going to be late to dance lessons.” So now we’re all stressed by the time we get to this thing that’s supposed to be fun. You’ve talked about the roots of stress that go back to early human evolution. But I imagine there are more specific factors amplifying stress in contemporary life, especially economic and technological factors. Well, let’s put this into perspective. Almost anything in the world can be framed as something I’m trying to avoid, or something I’m trying to achieve. The sources of stress in our world: There are specific things we choose to worry ourselves about. But what we should bear in mind is that… we’ve mostly got plenty of food – most of us. Again, not everyone – there are definitely people who don’t have anything to eat, don’t have a place to sleep, don’t have clothes. Who have legitimate survival concerns. But I would venture that the bulk of people who will read this piece are not at that level – they’re more existential crises. Once we get to that level – people talk about Maslow’s hierarchy, once we get off the bottom of that – you have a real choice, in almost everything in your life, about how you want to frame it. There are health concerns – people get sick. There are truly fearful things in the world. But an awful lot of what we encounter in the world, we have a lot of choice about. And we choose to frame them, as a society, in terms of avoiding negative outcomes, as opposed to trying to approach desirable outcomes. And that matters – because you can’t experience joy unless you put yourself in a situation in which there is a potential positive outcome you can achieve. Because when you are anxious and stressed and fearful – when you’re trying to avoid something – the best outcome is that you successfully avoid it, and now you’re relieved. “I lived to fight another day.” And that’s no way to live. We worry about money, but we don’t have to set up our lives that way. What are some small, desirable things I can do for my family? If I don’t have enough money to go on that great vacation that we hoped for, what’s a wonderful place we could walk to, or drive to? Or a hike we’ve always meant to take in town? Or frankly, connecting with other people is a great thing. Can we volunteer at the animal shelter this weekend? Hang out with a dog – it doesn’t worry about much. What does stress cause people to do? What’s the wrong way to respond to stress? If we set ourselves the goal of trying to avoid things that are utterly out of our control, we put ourselves in a situation where we worry a lot about the future without there being anything we can really do. Remember, the motivational system is all about getting you to act. So the trick in life is to focus on things you can do rather than things where you don’t have much control. So find an action you can perform, and then engage with it. And if your life is really not in peril, find a way to think about it in a way that allows you to enjoy the activities that you’re doing. Find the desirable piece that’s going to happen today. [image error]
Louisiana police kill 6-year-old boy after high-speed pursuit
A Louisiana state investigation has been opened after law enforcement officers killed a 6-year-old boy named Jeremy Mardis on Tuesday evening. Pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said that Mardis was “caught in the line of fire” in the passenger seat of his father's fleeing vehicle. Although it's unclear if the father, Chris Few, was armed, city marshals apparently “discharged their duty weapons, at a vehicle” in pursuit of Few in Marksville. Few first fled from city marshals trying to serve him a warrant, but eventually reached a dead end. Officers claimed that after Few’s SUV backed into one of their own vehicles, the marshals got out of their patrol cars and began firing through the driver’s window. Few is in critical condition after being air-lifted to an Alexandria hospital. [image error]A Louisiana state investigation has been opened after law enforcement officers killed a 6-year-old boy named Jeremy Mardis on Tuesday evening. Pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said that Mardis was “caught in the line of fire” in the passenger seat of his father's fleeing vehicle. Although it's unclear if the father, Chris Few, was armed, city marshals apparently “discharged their duty weapons, at a vehicle” in pursuit of Few in Marksville. Few first fled from city marshals trying to serve him a warrant, but eventually reached a dead end. Officers claimed that after Few’s SUV backed into one of their own vehicles, the marshals got out of their patrol cars and began firing through the driver’s window. Few is in critical condition after being air-lifted to an Alexandria hospital. [image error]A Louisiana state investigation has been opened after law enforcement officers killed a 6-year-old boy named Jeremy Mardis on Tuesday evening. Pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said that Mardis was “caught in the line of fire” in the passenger seat of his father's fleeing vehicle. Although it's unclear if the father, Chris Few, was armed, city marshals apparently “discharged their duty weapons, at a vehicle” in pursuit of Few in Marksville. Few first fled from city marshals trying to serve him a warrant, but eventually reached a dead end. Officers claimed that after Few’s SUV backed into one of their own vehicles, the marshals got out of their patrol cars and began firing through the driver’s window. Few is in critical condition after being air-lifted to an Alexandria hospital. [image error]
Harry Reid takes to the Senate floor to rip “Morning Joe” for its fawning Koch brothers interview
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid ripped into "Morning Joe" hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski during a speech on the Senate floor today for hyping the Koch brothers' "propaganda campaign" with a softball interview this week. On Tuesday, the MSNBC morning show aired its much hyped sit-down interview with Charles and David Koch from the billionaire Republican donors' childhood home in Wichita, Kansas. Reid, a frequent critic of the Koch Brothers, clearly took issue with the fawning coverage and was dismayed that the businessmen were not pressed on how their political involvement has evolved to include bankrolling such minute, local issues as a zoo in Ohio to Colorado Springs' Republican-led effort against potholes. "This Koch media tour has failed to bury one simple truth," Reid declared. "The Koch brothers are trying to buy America":
The Kochs have also procured a media that is intimidated by their billions -- too intimidated to hold them accountable. Consider yesterday's interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show. This is classic, listen. Here are some of the questions that Joe and Mika asked the Koch brothers. Joe Scarborough asked, "It's hard to find people in New York, liberals -- we were talking about this before -- liberals or conservatives alike, who haven't been touched by your graciousness, whether its toward the arts or cancer research. Do you think you got that instinct from your mom?" Huh. Mika asked, "Sitting here in your childhood home" -- they were doing this interview in Topeka, Kansas -- "we have the Koch brothers, which was the good brother?" Another tough question. Joe then asked, "You guys both play rugby, right? Play together?""Wow, those were some really tough questions asked by the hosts of "Morning Joe," Reid said mockingly. "Most of the time, they weren't even questions, they were just compliments." "Those questions are so easy, they may even qualify them to moderate the next Republican presidential debate," Reid continued. "It seems that some journalists are determined not to get on the wrong side of the Koch brothers and their billions." "When the media rolls over for these modern-day robber barons as it's doing now," Reid warned, "our country's in trouble." “We should be working to rid the system of the Koch brothers’ dark money, but this cannot and will not happen if reporters and journalists refuse to ask Charles and David Koch questions, maybe even probing questions,” Reid said. “Otherwise, no one is holding these two oil barons accountable for their nefarious actions." Reid didn't reserve his criticism just for the Senate well, as he also took to Twitter to call out "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough specifically on Twitter: https://twitter.com/senatorreid/statu... Scarborough responded to Reid's taunting by rehashing his longstanding contempt for Reid's attacks on the billionaire brothers. During his interview with the Kochs, Scarborough asked Charles how surprised he was at "the level of vitriol leveled against you and your family, even Harry Reid calling you un-American." https://twitter.com/JoeNBC/status/661... Scarborough then compared Reid's calling out of the Koch's political involvement as un-American to a "Joseph McCarthy routine": https://twitter.com/JoeNBC/status/661... In a statement to Politico, Scarborough further responded to Reid's critique and defended his interview with the Koch Brothers:
It is easy to understand why Harry Reid is enraged by the kind of thoughtful discussions we have with our Democratic and Republican guests on Morning Joe. It was Reid, after all, who brought shame to the Senate floor last year by quoting Joseph McCarthy and calling his political opponents ‘un-American' [...] If Harry Reid were not so blinded by hatred toward Charles Koch, he would have noticed that Koch harshly criticized Republicans for supporting corporate welfare, called George W. Bush a failed president for running up massive deficits and reckless wars, and said that he was unimpressed with the field of Republican presidential candidates. In fact, he saved his harshest criticisms for Republicans he once supported. [...] Reid's unbridled rage toward the Kochs led to a failed electoral strategy that cost Democrats their majority in 2014. I can understand why he remains so bitter to this day.Watch Harry Reid take "Morning Joe" to task on the Senate floor for failing to hold the Koch Brothers accountable for what he calls their "nefarious actions": [image error]
The secret history of bathroom panic: Inside the right-wing campaign that paved the way for Houston’s anti-LGBT vote
On Tuesday, voters in Houston chose overwhelmingly to rescind the city's equal rights legislation, which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and a host of other categories.
The campaign against the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) may have taken place in 2015, but it played on some very old, primal and nasty fears. "No men in women's bathrooms"—a breathtakingly bigoted piece of transphobic slander—was the opponents' rallying cry. Take this ad from former Houston Astros player Lance Berkman:
"No men in women’s bathrooms, no boys in girls’ showers or locker rooms. I played professional baseball for 15 years, but my family is more important. My wife and I have four daughters. Proposition 1, the bathroom ordinance, would allow troubled men to enter women’s public bathrooms, showers and locker rooms. This would violate their privacy and put them in harm’s way."
The proponents of HERO found that, despite their celebrity backing and financial muscle, they could not overcome such scaremongering. The bathroom line was the single most potent one in getting people to oppose the measure.
A simple equal-rights bill supported by famous people gets destroyed by a hysterical fear campaign: Where have we heard that one before?
My thoughts turned instantly to the 1970s—specifically to Phyllis Schlafly, whose improbably successful campaign to torpedo the Equal Rights Amendment reads like a textbook that the anti-HERO forces in Houston studied thoroughly. When Schafly began her fight to take down the ERA, the amendment—which simply stated that "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex"—appeared unstoppable. Then Schlafly got involved. She shrewdly twisted the seemingly straightforward text of the amendment into a supposed nightmare scenario for American women (there was also some nice homophobia thrown in, too). As she put it in a 2007 op-ed:
"The amendment would require women to be drafted into military combat any time men were conscripted, abolish the presumption that the husband should support his wife and take away Social Security benefits for wives and widows. It would also give federal courts and the federal government enormous new powers to reinterpret every law that makes a distinction based on gender, such as those related to marriage, divorce and alimony."
ERA supporters vocally objected to this interpretation of the amendment, but they lost the argument. Schlafly was tapping into visceral fears people had about a changing society.
Besides all the doomsday situations mentioned in the passage above, one of the anti-ERA campaign's most effective lines of attack concerned—you guessed it—bathrooms.The notion that the ERA would mandate unisex bathrooms became known as the "potty problem." People got very agitated about this. "Fear Of Unisex Bathrooms Doomed ERA," one headline from the Orlando Sentinel read years later.
As in the '70s, so it was in 2015, when bathrooms killed HERO. It is appropriate, therefore, that Schlafly has been weighing in on the bathroom question. "They're trying to turn our boys into Peeping Toms," she told the rightwing Newsmax on Monday. "I can't imagine why else they would want to go into the girls' restrooms."
It's obvious why bathrooms or locker rooms work so well as a line of attack. They are intimate, private, sexually charged spaces. Remember all the drama surrounding how Michael Sam's straight peers felt about him showering with them? Or how incendiary the notion of black people using bathrooms with white people once was? Bathrooms make the abstract real. The Other is not just out there somewhere; he's right next to you.
The fall of HERO on such horribly antiquated lines shows that, despite this being the year of Caitlyn Jenner, the Phyllis Schlaflys of the world still retain a great deal of power. If they are to be defeated, we have to tackle the bathroom bigotry once and for all.
[image error]
On Tuesday, voters in Houston chose overwhelmingly to rescind the city's equal rights legislation, which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and a host of other categories.
The campaign against the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) may have taken place in 2015, but it played on some very old, primal and nasty fears. "No men in women's bathrooms"—a breathtakingly bigoted piece of transphobic slander—was the opponents' rallying cry. Take this ad from former Houston Astros player Lance Berkman:
"No men in women’s bathrooms, no boys in girls’ showers or locker rooms. I played professional baseball for 15 years, but my family is more important. My wife and I have four daughters. Proposition 1, the bathroom ordinance, would allow troubled men to enter women’s public bathrooms, showers and locker rooms. This would violate their privacy and put them in harm’s way."
The proponents of HERO found that, despite their celebrity backing and financial muscle, they could not overcome such scaremongering. The bathroom line was the single most potent one in getting people to oppose the measure.
A simple equal-rights bill supported by famous people gets destroyed by a hysterical fear campaign: Where have we heard that one before?
My thoughts turned instantly to the 1970s—specifically to Phyllis Schlafly, whose improbably successful campaign to torpedo the Equal Rights Amendment reads like a textbook that the anti-HERO forces in Houston studied thoroughly. When Schafly began her fight to take down the ERA, the amendment—which simply stated that "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex"—appeared unstoppable. Then Schlafly got involved. She shrewdly twisted the seemingly straightforward text of the amendment into a supposed nightmare scenario for American women (there was also some nice homophobia thrown in, too). As she put it in a 2007 op-ed:
"The amendment would require women to be drafted into military combat any time men were conscripted, abolish the presumption that the husband should support his wife and take away Social Security benefits for wives and widows. It would also give federal courts and the federal government enormous new powers to reinterpret every law that makes a distinction based on gender, such as those related to marriage, divorce and alimony."
ERA supporters vocally objected to this interpretation of the amendment, but they lost the argument. Schlafly was tapping into visceral fears people had about a changing society.
Besides all the doomsday situations mentioned in the passage above, one of the anti-ERA campaign's most effective lines of attack concerned—you guessed it—bathrooms.The notion that the ERA would mandate unisex bathrooms became known as the "potty problem." People got very agitated about this. "Fear Of Unisex Bathrooms Doomed ERA," one headline from the Orlando Sentinel read years later.
As in the '70s, so it was in 2015, when bathrooms killed HERO. It is appropriate, therefore, that Schlafly has been weighing in on the bathroom question. "They're trying to turn our boys into Peeping Toms," she told the rightwing Newsmax on Monday. "I can't imagine why else they would want to go into the girls' restrooms."
It's obvious why bathrooms or locker rooms work so well as a line of attack. They are intimate, private, sexually charged spaces. Remember all the drama surrounding how Michael Sam's straight peers felt about him showering with them? Or how incendiary the notion of black people using bathrooms with white people once was? Bathrooms make the abstract real. The Other is not just out there somewhere; he's right next to you.
The fall of HERO on such horribly antiquated lines shows that, despite this being the year of Caitlyn Jenner, the Phyllis Schlaflys of the world still retain a great deal of power. If they are to be defeated, we have to tackle the bathroom bigotry once and for all.
[image error]
Bernie Sanders’ latest racial blind spot: Hillary’s right on gun control — urban vs. rural really means black vs. white
Perhaps it is time for Bernie Sanders supporters to accept that he's weak on gun control move on. The defensiveness isn't helping anyone. The latest example comes courtesy of William Saletan of Slate, who is lobbing an accusation at Hillary Clinton -- that she's playing the "race card" on gun control -- that would more normally come out of Republican mouths trying to silence the opposition on this issue. Saletan previously wrote a piece denouncing Hillary Clinton for teasing Sanders over a moment in the Democratic debate when Sanders told her not to shout. The anger of that piece felt like an overreaction; Hillary and her supporters delivered more of a mild nose-tweaking than some outraged accusation of misogyny. Now Saletan's overreacting to an even more reasonable point -- though not a joke -- that Clinton is making about one of Sanders' talking points justifying his lax voting record on gun control: That there are some ugly racial implications to it. At issue is a comment Clinton made during a speech to the NAACP: “There are some who say that this [gun violence] is an urban problem. Sometimes what they mean by that is: It’s a black problem. But it’s not. It’s not black, it’s not urban. It’s a deep, profound challenge to who we are.” Saletan thinks this is an unfair dig at Sanders. The Republicans haven't called violence an "urban" problem during the debates -- though Saletan fails to note whether they have said such a thing in non-debate circumstances -- so it must, in his opinion, be a talking point aimed squarely at Sanders:
In the debate, Sanders began by saying, “As a senator from a rural state, what I can tell Secretary Clinton [is] that all the shouting in the world is not going to do what I would hope all of us want.” A couple of minutes later, Sanders told former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley: “We can raise our voices, but I come from a rural state, and the views on gun control in rural states are different than in urban states, whether we like it or not.” O’Malley insisted that the issue was “not about rural and urban.” Sanders replied: “It’s exactly about rural.” Only one other candidate used the word “urban” during the debate: former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb. A week later, on Oct. 20, Webb quit the campaign. So when Clinton, on Friday, spoke scathingly of people who call guns an “urban problem” but mean it’s a “black problem,” it’s obvious to whom she was referring.No doubt Clinton is poking a weak spot in her opponent's case, but Saletan is also missing the forest for the trees here. Sanders most likely didn't intend for his talking point about rural vs. urban gun ownership to have any racial implications. But those implications are nonetheless there. I doubt that Clinton or any of the other people troubled by his remarks believe he is speaking out of anything but ignorance. But that ignorance is still a problem. Racism is baked into the DNA of the gun control debate. The gun lobby loves to gin up support and sell weapons by scaring white people with poorly concealed racist fantasies about black people coming to get them, and how they need guns -- apparently a lot of guns -- to keep the scary hordes away. Take, for instance, a video released by NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre last week where he, using thinly veiled code words, and basically tells white people that Obama is arming up black criminals while taking their guns away to leave them helpless. "Nothing illustrates America's breakdown like the way the president's hometown celebrates its holidays. Memorial Day: 12 dead, 56 wounded. The Fourth of July: 10 dead, 53 wounded. Labor Day: 9 dead, 46 wounded. This kind of third-world carnage has become absolutely … normal," LaPierre begins, going on to insinuate that Obama is deliberately trying to cover up "multiple people were murdered by criminal gangbangers with illegal guns in Chicago." "Under the existing federal gun laws, he could take every felon with a gun, drug dealer with a gun and criminal gangbanger with a gun off the streets tomorrow and lock them up for five years or more," he continues. "But he won't do it, his Justice Department won't do it, and the media never asks why." Duh duh DUM. You, the viewer, should be picking up on his implication, that Obama is somehow conspiring with Chicago "gangbangers" to make "the good, honest Americans living out in farm towns in Nebraska or Oklahoma" live in fear. Of people in Chicago. (He also tosses in a reference to good people "working"---though he doesn't say living---"two jobs in inner-city Chicago or Baltimore," but that bit of ass-covering fools no one.) This is far from the only time that LaPierre has used barely concealed racist fears that black people are criminal to suggest that white people need to arm themselves heavily to protect themselves. And let's not forget that Ronald Reagan was for gun control when the fear was Black Panthers owning guns, but against gun control when it was perceived as preventing white people from getting guns. If you're familiar with this history and rhetoric, it's not hard to hear the racial implications of suggesting that "rural" folks are responsible, safe gun users -- while "urban" folks are not. On the contrary, it's hard not to hear that. Sanders may mean well, but his constituents who insist that they are just wholesome gun owners, unlike some people, probably do not mean well. Is Clinton using this fact to garner support? Absolutely. But the bigger picture is this. Racism fuels much of the opposition to gun control. We live in a country where black men (or boys) have been shot for holding toy guns or even just a toy sword in one case. "I thought he had a gun," is the excuse we expect after police shoot unarmed black men. But when a white man was openly walking around the streets of Colorado Springs shooting people dead over the weekend, one witness said her call to 911 was blown off initially because open carry is legal in the state. Also, there's this: Sanders is wrong. The assumption that "rural" people who own guns are responsible and that it's just those urban people who are screwing it up for the rest of us is not borne out by the evidence. Research compiled by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center shows that there's a strong correlation between homicide rates and gun ownership, both on a state and household level. While some cities do have a criminal gang problem that leads to high murder rates in neighborhoods that have a gang problem, there is a lot of gun violence beyond that, much at the hands of those "law-abiding" citizens we hear so much about. In addition, the suicide rate is strongly correlated to the gun ownership rate, because having access to a gun makes someone in the throes of a depressive episode that much more likely to both try and succeed at suicide. Look past the racially tinged stereotypes of responsible-rural people and lawless-urban people and a much more complex picture emerges. There's no use in denying that race is an issue in how people think about gun control and the threat of gun violence. If Clinton scores a political point on this, well, good. Maybe Sanders will rethink that horrible talking point about rural people. Whether he intends to or not, he is perpetuating ugly stereotypes about who is and isn't responsible. [image error]Perhaps it is time for Bernie Sanders supporters to accept that he's weak on gun control move on. The defensiveness isn't helping anyone. The latest example comes courtesy of William Saletan of Slate, who is lobbing an accusation at Hillary Clinton -- that she's playing the "race card" on gun control -- that would more normally come out of Republican mouths trying to silence the opposition on this issue. Saletan previously wrote a piece denouncing Hillary Clinton for teasing Sanders over a moment in the Democratic debate when Sanders told her not to shout. The anger of that piece felt like an overreaction; Hillary and her supporters delivered more of a mild nose-tweaking than some outraged accusation of misogyny. Now Saletan's overreacting to an even more reasonable point -- though not a joke -- that Clinton is making about one of Sanders' talking points justifying his lax voting record on gun control: That there are some ugly racial implications to it. At issue is a comment Clinton made during a speech to the NAACP: “There are some who say that this [gun violence] is an urban problem. Sometimes what they mean by that is: It’s a black problem. But it’s not. It’s not black, it’s not urban. It’s a deep, profound challenge to who we are.” Saletan thinks this is an unfair dig at Sanders. The Republicans haven't called violence an "urban" problem during the debates -- though Saletan fails to note whether they have said such a thing in non-debate circumstances -- so it must, in his opinion, be a talking point aimed squarely at Sanders:
In the debate, Sanders began by saying, “As a senator from a rural state, what I can tell Secretary Clinton [is] that all the shouting in the world is not going to do what I would hope all of us want.” A couple of minutes later, Sanders told former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley: “We can raise our voices, but I come from a rural state, and the views on gun control in rural states are different than in urban states, whether we like it or not.” O’Malley insisted that the issue was “not about rural and urban.” Sanders replied: “It’s exactly about rural.” Only one other candidate used the word “urban” during the debate: former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb. A week later, on Oct. 20, Webb quit the campaign. So when Clinton, on Friday, spoke scathingly of people who call guns an “urban problem” but mean it’s a “black problem,” it’s obvious to whom she was referring.No doubt Clinton is poking a weak spot in her opponent's case, but Saletan is also missing the forest for the trees here. Sanders most likely didn't intend for his talking point about rural vs. urban gun ownership to have any racial implications. But those implications are nonetheless there. I doubt that Clinton or any of the other people troubled by his remarks believe he is speaking out of anything but ignorance. But that ignorance is still a problem. Racism is baked into the DNA of the gun control debate. The gun lobby loves to gin up support and sell weapons by scaring white people with poorly concealed racist fantasies about black people coming to get them, and how they need guns -- apparently a lot of guns -- to keep the scary hordes away. Take, for instance, a video released by NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre last week where he, using thinly veiled code words, and basically tells white people that Obama is arming up black criminals while taking their guns away to leave them helpless. "Nothing illustrates America's breakdown like the way the president's hometown celebrates its holidays. Memorial Day: 12 dead, 56 wounded. The Fourth of July: 10 dead, 53 wounded. Labor Day: 9 dead, 46 wounded. This kind of third-world carnage has become absolutely … normal," LaPierre begins, going on to insinuate that Obama is deliberately trying to cover up "multiple people were murdered by criminal gangbangers with illegal guns in Chicago." "Under the existing federal gun laws, he could take every felon with a gun, drug dealer with a gun and criminal gangbanger with a gun off the streets tomorrow and lock them up for five years or more," he continues. "But he won't do it, his Justice Department won't do it, and the media never asks why." Duh duh DUM. You, the viewer, should be picking up on his implication, that Obama is somehow conspiring with Chicago "gangbangers" to make "the good, honest Americans living out in farm towns in Nebraska or Oklahoma" live in fear. Of people in Chicago. (He also tosses in a reference to good people "working"---though he doesn't say living---"two jobs in inner-city Chicago or Baltimore," but that bit of ass-covering fools no one.) This is far from the only time that LaPierre has used barely concealed racist fears that black people are criminal to suggest that white people need to arm themselves heavily to protect themselves. And let's not forget that Ronald Reagan was for gun control when the fear was Black Panthers owning guns, but against gun control when it was perceived as preventing white people from getting guns. If you're familiar with this history and rhetoric, it's not hard to hear the racial implications of suggesting that "rural" folks are responsible, safe gun users -- while "urban" folks are not. On the contrary, it's hard not to hear that. Sanders may mean well, but his constituents who insist that they are just wholesome gun owners, unlike some people, probably do not mean well. Is Clinton using this fact to garner support? Absolutely. But the bigger picture is this. Racism fuels much of the opposition to gun control. We live in a country where black men (or boys) have been shot for holding toy guns or even just a toy sword in one case. "I thought he had a gun," is the excuse we expect after police shoot unarmed black men. But when a white man was openly walking around the streets of Colorado Springs shooting people dead over the weekend, one witness said her call to 911 was blown off initially because open carry is legal in the state. Also, there's this: Sanders is wrong. The assumption that "rural" people who own guns are responsible and that it's just those urban people who are screwing it up for the rest of us is not borne out by the evidence. Research compiled by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center shows that there's a strong correlation between homicide rates and gun ownership, both on a state and household level. While some cities do have a criminal gang problem that leads to high murder rates in neighborhoods that have a gang problem, there is a lot of gun violence beyond that, much at the hands of those "law-abiding" citizens we hear so much about. In addition, the suicide rate is strongly correlated to the gun ownership rate, because having access to a gun makes someone in the throes of a depressive episode that much more likely to both try and succeed at suicide. Look past the racially tinged stereotypes of responsible-rural people and lawless-urban people and a much more complex picture emerges. There's no use in denying that race is an issue in how people think about gun control and the threat of gun violence. If Clinton scores a political point on this, well, good. Maybe Sanders will rethink that horrible talking point about rural people. Whether he intends to or not, he is perpetuating ugly stereotypes about who is and isn't responsible. [image error]
Love to laugh at Fox News? The new sitcom “Fair and Balanced” sounds amazing
Good news for people who love to laugh at Fox News (or things loosely inspired by Fox News): According to Deadline, Kal Penn is re-teaming with “Harold and Kumar” writers Hayden Schlossberg and Jon Hurwitz for “Fair and Balanced,” a new ABC comedy about "an aspiring NPR reporter who is swayed to work at a Fox News-type channel." The project will be inspired in part by Penn’s own life, as he has worked as a Vice News correspondent in addition to stints at the White House Office of Public Engagement and as a member of Obama’s National Arts Policy Committee. No word on whether any other "Harold and Kumar" alums will be joining the project, but we think Fred Willard would kill it as a Bill O'Reilly-style blowhard. Thoughts and feelings? [image error]Good news for people who love to laugh at Fox News (or things loosely inspired by Fox News): According to Deadline, Kal Penn is re-teaming with “Harold and Kumar” writers Hayden Schlossberg and Jon Hurwitz for “Fair and Balanced,” a new ABC comedy about "an aspiring NPR reporter who is swayed to work at a Fox News-type channel." The project will be inspired in part by Penn’s own life, as he has worked as a Vice News correspondent in addition to stints at the White House Office of Public Engagement and as a member of Obama’s National Arts Policy Committee. No word on whether any other "Harold and Kumar" alums will be joining the project, but we think Fred Willard would kill it as a Bill O'Reilly-style blowhard. Thoughts and feelings? [image error]
Robin Williams’ last gift: His death is helping us talk about letting go of life with courage
We do not live in a death-friendly culture. A woman in her eighties and in coma is lovingly encouraged to "get back to work." The family of a child with a disease for which there is no cure is castigated for "borderline assisted murder" for allowing her to "choose heaven." And when mortality — which comes for all of us — strikes, the end of life is often wrapped in terms of defeat, a simpering, insulting announcement that the individual "lost a battle." But here's what you realize when you see up close a suffering so cruel it makes you question everything you ever thought you believed about the value of life: There are far worse things than death. Death can be a mercy. And as Robin Williams' widow says of his choice to end his life, "I don't blame him one bit." Speaking this week with "Good Morning America" and People magazine more than a year after her husband's sudden and shocking suicide, Susan Williams said that "It was not depression that killed Robin. Depression was one of, let’s call it 50 symptoms, and it was a small one…. Lewy Body Dementia killed Robin. It’s what took his life." An autopsy report last year confirmed the Lewy Body Dementia, a condition that "shares symptoms with better-known diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s." (Williams also had Parkinson's.) Williams told Amy Robach on "GMA" that near the end, her husband was "just disintegrating before my eyes," and that "If Robin was lucky, he would've had maybe three years left. And they would've been hard years. And it's a good chance he would've been locked up." She says that at the end, as emergency responders were working on him, "I just wanted to see my husband. And I got to see him ... and I got to pray with him. And I got to tell him, 'I forgive you 50 billion percent, with all my heart. You're the bravest man I've ever known.' You know, we were living a nightmare." She added, "There are many reasons — believe me, I've thought about this — of what was going on in his mind, what made him ultimately commit, you know, to do that act. And I think he was just saying, 'No.' And I don't blame him one bit. I don't blame him one bit." Williams says she hopes now to "shed some light on Lewy Body for the millions of people and their loved ones who are suffering with it," and she already has received an outpouring of support. In a rare example of how surprising a place the Internet can be, the commentary around her story has been remarkably gracious and empathetic. On People, a reader wrote, "I would like to thank Susan Williams for bringing this disease to the forefront. I KNOW that my dad had LBD and it's awful." And on Yahoo, commenters have been sharing their own experiences. "The last few years were really hard for Dad," wrote one man. "By the end he could not communicate, speak or take care of himself. Thank God for my Mom and my brother and sister-in-law, who all took the best of care of him. Another person, writing about her grandmother, admitted, "I spent years watching her health, mental state, and dignity decline. When she took her last breath, I was honestly glad, because she was FINALLY at peace after years of suffering." And as another person put it, "I had a few Parkinsons patients when I worked in a nursing home years ago. As I watched them get worse over time, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of sadistic #$%$ would insist that someone ride that diagnosis to the bitter end." The painful paradox of loving someone with a vicious disease is desperately wanting to hold on to him or her as long as possible, and desperately wanting the suffering to be over. Life alone is not a victory, a feeble heartbeat is not a triumph. And if you've experienced the toll of sickness from which there is no return on the person enduring it and those who love that person, you know that Susan Williams is right. It can be a profound act of bravery to let go — for both the one who dies, and the ones left behind. [image error]
November 3, 2015
The terrifying consequences of open carry: Neighbor’s pleas for help go unheeded before gunman kills three
When Naomi Bettis called 911 on Halloween morning to report a gunman going on a shooting rampage in the streets of Colorado Springs, Colorado, it was her second call for help. Bettis had earlier called 911 to report a suspicious man brandishing a rifle, only to be told by the emergency operator that no help was coming because Colorado is an open-carry state.
“I don’t remember what they call it— open arms,” Bettis recalled to the Washington Post, referring to the 911 operator’s explanation of Colorado’s law allowing residents to openly carry registered firearms in public.“She said, you know, we have that law here. And it just kind of blew me away, like she didn’t believe me or something,” Bettis explained incredulously. “I don’t think she probably thought it was an emergency until I made the second call, and that’s when I said, ‘That guy I just called you about, he just shot somebody.’”
33-year-old Noah Jacob Harpham calmly opened fire on his neighbors Saturday morning, first killing a passing bicyclist after he pleaded for his life before walking down the street with a rifle and a revolver and shooting dead two women sitting on their front porch.
Bettis told the Denver Post that the gunman, whom she recognized as her neighbor, "did have a distraught look on his face."
"It looked like he had a rough couple days or so." Harpham, a recovering alcoholic, later died in a gun battle with police. Police say it took seven minutes for them to respond after the initial phone calls, which they claim were made after the rampage began. Law enforcement officials have yet to comment on Bettis' account. President of the Colorado Association of Police Chiefs, Rick Brandt, told the Post that Colorado lacks a uniform policy on how to handle calls of residents openly brandishing guns. [image error]When Naomi Bettis called 911 on Halloween morning to report a gunman going on a shooting rampage in the streets of Colorado Springs, Colorado, it was her second call for help. Bettis had earlier called 911 to report a suspicious man brandishing a rifle, only to be told by the emergency operator that no help was coming because Colorado is an open-carry state.
“I don’t remember what they call it— open arms,” Bettis recalled to the Washington Post, referring to the 911 operator’s explanation of Colorado’s law allowing residents to openly carry registered firearms in public.“She said, you know, we have that law here. And it just kind of blew me away, like she didn’t believe me or something,” Bettis explained incredulously. “I don’t think she probably thought it was an emergency until I made the second call, and that’s when I said, ‘That guy I just called you about, he just shot somebody.’”
33-year-old Noah Jacob Harpham calmly opened fire on his neighbors Saturday morning, first killing a passing bicyclist after he pleaded for his life before walking down the street with a rifle and a revolver and shooting dead two women sitting on their front porch.
Bettis told the Denver Post that the gunman, whom she recognized as her neighbor, "did have a distraught look on his face."
"It looked like he had a rough couple days or so." Harpham, a recovering alcoholic, later died in a gun battle with police. Police say it took seven minutes for them to respond after the initial phone calls, which they claim were made after the rampage began. Law enforcement officials have yet to comment on Bettis' account. President of the Colorado Association of Police Chiefs, Rick Brandt, told the Post that Colorado lacks a uniform policy on how to handle calls of residents openly brandishing guns. [image error]
10 people who could also sue Taylor Swift for plagiarizing lyrics to “Shake It Off”
The haters keep coming for Taylor Swift. Last week, an R&B singer named Jesse Graham filed a lawsuit against Swift alleging that she swiped the “haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate / and the players gonna play, play, play, play, play” refrain that made her 2014 single “Shake It Off” such an instant earworm from his 2013 crooner “Haters Gone Hate,” which includes a version of the phrase as well. He’s seeking $42 million in damages — in Swift dollars, that’s about a week’s worth of work, or roughly 28,000 Scottish Fold kittens. "Her hook is the same hook as mine," Graham told the Daily News this weekend. "If I didn't write the song 'Haters Gone Hate,' there wouldn't be a song called 'Shake It Off.'" This is no “Blurred Lines” debacle, or even a friendly Sam Smith/Tom Petty oopsie. The two songs, frankly, sound nothing alike. And according to "Know Your Meme," the ubiquitous online catchphrase dates back at least six years, which is a lifetime in Internet years. Even so, its origins go deeper. So if Graham is alleging that the terms “haters gonna hate” and “players gonna play” are his intellectual property, that if someone else hadn't conjured them out of thin air then Swift never could have grabbed these incredibly trite clichés out of the modern parlance to anchor her sassy little pop juggernaut, he should go directly to the back of the line, because the following 10 people — by our very conservative estimate — have dibs on this juicy, frivolous lawsuit first: Ice T, who cautioned us "Don’t hate the player, hate the game" in his 1999 single "Don't Hate the Playa," which I can absolutely imagine motivating 10-year-old Taylor Swift to pursue future world domination The following year, 3LW released the excellent jam "Playas Gon' Play," which is way overdue for a retro comeback — and features, of course, the inverse to "playas gon' play," which is, and always will be, "haters gon' hate." Dave Chappelle, whose Comedy Central classic "Chappelle's Show" featured the sketch "Playa Hater's Ball" — featuring Ice T! — in 2003 Omar Noory, credited with the first animated gif of record featuring a proud avatar (in this case, a strutting chubby child nicknamed baller.gif) blithely shrugging off the haters, which he first shared online in 2009 This cat your college dormmate has probably claimed as her "spirit animal" The authors of these Urban Dictionary entries of "haters gonna hate," the first of which date back to 2010 Whomever first captured the very essence of this almost-nude Batman rollerblading like a boss and not giving a single fuck This very proud eagle your Republican uncle won't stop posting on every Trump-bashing post he sees on Facebook Every single creator of every single gif in this 2012 Buzzfeed list Tyga, who would like to remind you he dug into the thorny player/hater dichotomy all the way back in 2013, can't he get a little credit for that? No? [image error]The haters keep coming for Taylor Swift. Last week, an R&B singer named Jesse Graham filed a lawsuit against Swift alleging that she swiped the “haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate / and the players gonna play, play, play, play, play” refrain that made her 2014 single “Shake It Off” such an instant earworm from his 2013 crooner “Haters Gone Hate,” which includes a version of the phrase as well. He’s seeking $42 million in damages — in Swift dollars, that’s about a week’s worth of work, or roughly 28,000 Scottish Fold kittens. "Her hook is the same hook as mine," Graham told the Daily News this weekend. "If I didn't write the song 'Haters Gone Hate,' there wouldn't be a song called 'Shake It Off.'" This is no “Blurred Lines” debacle, or even a friendly Sam Smith/Tom Petty oopsie. The two songs, frankly, sound nothing alike. And according to "Know Your Meme," the ubiquitous online catchphrase dates back at least six years, which is a lifetime in Internet years. Even so, its origins go deeper. So if Graham is alleging that the terms “haters gonna hate” and “players gonna play” are his intellectual property, that if someone else hadn't conjured them out of thin air then Swift never could have grabbed these incredibly trite clichés out of the modern parlance to anchor her sassy little pop juggernaut, he should go directly to the back of the line, because the following 10 people — by our very conservative estimate — have dibs on this juicy, frivolous lawsuit first: Ice T, who cautioned us "Don’t hate the player, hate the game" in his 1999 single "Don't Hate the Playa," which I can absolutely imagine motivating 10-year-old Taylor Swift to pursue future world domination The following year, 3LW released the excellent jam "Playas Gon' Play," which is way overdue for a retro comeback — and features, of course, the inverse to "playas gon' play," which is, and always will be, "haters gon' hate." Dave Chappelle, whose Comedy Central classic "Chappelle's Show" featured the sketch "Playa Hater's Ball" — featuring Ice T! — in 2003 Omar Noory, credited with the first animated gif of record featuring a proud avatar (in this case, a strutting chubby child nicknamed baller.gif) blithely shrugging off the haters, which he first shared online in 2009 This cat your college dormmate has probably claimed as her "spirit animal" The authors of these Urban Dictionary entries of "haters gonna hate," the first of which date back to 2010 Whomever first captured the very essence of this almost-nude Batman rollerblading like a boss and not giving a single fuck This very proud eagle your Republican uncle won't stop posting on every Trump-bashing post he sees on Facebook Every single creator of every single gif in this 2012 Buzzfeed list Tyga, who would like to remind you he dug into the thorny player/hater dichotomy all the way back in 2013, can't he get a little credit for that? No? [image error]
Chris Christie plays a desperate, shameful race card and will still never, ever be president
Chris Christie is languishing in the Republican presidential primary polls---even John Kasich is beating him in the latest polling data---so it's not surprising that he's throwing his Hail Mary pass. But boy, is it a distasteful one. Christie is now trying to win Republican voters over with the old Richard Nixon playbook of playing on white, suburban fears of "urban" crime. Barack Obama has been making moves to address the problem of over-incarceration and police violence in our society, by releasing non-violent drug offenders and pushing employers to be more open-minded about hiring people who have done time. He made this speech in New Jersey, and so naturally, Christie just had to respond. As Talking Points Memo reports, he's not being very subtle about it:
Christie used the president’s visit as an excuse to travel to Camden, a city where the county government’s sheriff’s department took over policing three years ago. There, he did something he has ridiculed in the past: he signed an executive order declaring a day of appreciation for a particular constituency. Because of Christie’s actions, Thursday November 5 will now be Law Enforcement Appreciation Day in the Garden State. Why did the governor’s office on Friday hastily schedule a Monday event to announce a ceremonial action? Counter-programming of course. Christie took the opportunity to press what is in many ways a lock-em-up, tough-on-crime agenda just as politicians across the ideological spectrum are deciding that mass incarceration has gone too far.Why Christie is doing this isn't a big surprise. Huge chunks of the Republican base live in constant fear of crime and mindlessly applaud police violence, the excesses of the war on drugs, and over-incarceration as a response to that fear. This fear has no real attachment to actual risk of being a victim of crime, but continues to be what it was when Richard Nixon's Southern strategy to capture the white vote banked heavily on the phrase "law and order": A socially acceptable way for racist white people to express fear that people of color are out to get them. The ridiculousness of Christie's gambit was exposed back in September, when Christie went on Morning Joe to claim that he would reinstate "stop and frisk" in New York and that the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, is somehow turning the city into a danger zone by not continuing the policy. "It’s the liberal policies in this city that have led to the lawless that’s been encouraged by the president of the United States," he warned. The problem is that the city Christie believes is devolving into a dystopic nightmare actually had one of the safest summers in years. But Christie pooh-poohed that, because conservative fear-mongering on crime isn't really about crime, but just about perpetuating fears of big cities, racial diversity, and liberalism generally. The detachment from reality has only grown more bizarre, as Christie went on Face the Nation last Sunday, once again saying that, "There's lawlessness in this country. The president encourages this lawlessness. He encourages it." Then there was this bizarre and unsettling exchange between Christie and host John Dickerson:
DICKERSON: Encourages it how? CHRISTIE: Oh, by his own rhetoric. He does not support the police. He doesn't back up the police. He justifies Black Lives Matter. I mean... DICKERSON: But Black Lives Matter shouldn't be justified at all? CHRISTIE: Listen, I don't believe that that movement should be justified when they're calling for the murder of police officers, no. DICKERSON: But they're not calling for the murder of police officers. CHRISTIE: Sure, they are. Sure, they are. They have been chanting in the streets for the murder of police officers.Obviously, we're in the email forward, conspiracy theory-mongering zone so beloved by the right. But Christie has his floundering poll numbers to consider, so pushing every unhinged right wing paranoid meme is what he's going with. While it seemed for a time that the fear-mongering about crime was in decline on the right, in the past few months, it's been coming back to life, which is why Christie is pouncing. A couple of things have been going on to bring it back, starting with the surge of liberal criticism of over-incarceration and the Black Lives Matter movement. There's been a lot of media attention to stories about unarmed black civilians dying at the hands of aggressive cops and other racially loaded violence, particularly against teenagers who haven't really done anything to merit being physically abused by police. These stories, and the protests that have emerged in response, are creating a defensive reaction in conservatives that support these abusive, racist practices, due to their inchoate fears of crime. There's no police violence against black people that conservative media figures won't excuse. Christie's comments about Black Lives Matter, in fact, stem from a growing narrative on the right that is trying to paint the movement as somehow pro-violence, when obviously their purpose is to stop violence and pointless death at the hands of police. In addition to all this, you have the issue of gun control. In response to a seemingly endless stream of mass shooting, liberals have been increasing pressure to enact some kind of gun safety regulation. But of course, conservatives need to blame anything but easy access to guns for gun violence. So instead, they raise fears about "lawlessness"---fears that just so happen to justify conservatives who want to buy more guns to protect themselves against this supposed tide of violence. All this fear-mongering probably won't help Christie's poll numbers---really, coming out for Social Security "reform" will never ingratiate you with the elderly white people that make up the backbone of the Republican Party, making his a lost cause---but that doesn't mean that his behavior isn't a big deal. Stoking baseless, racially loaded fear of crime will likely have ramifications that extend past this election cycle. Putting the face of a ostensibly mainstream figure like Christie on the racist fears that Black Lives Matter activists are out to get you will help justify those fears. It's beyond irresponsible of him to pander like this to gain some points in a race he's never going to win. For shame, Christie.Chris Christie is languishing in the Republican presidential primary polls---even John Kasich is beating him in the latest polling data---so it's not surprising that he's throwing his Hail Mary pass. But boy, is it a distasteful one. Christie is now trying to win Republican voters over with the old Richard Nixon playbook of playing on white, suburban fears of "urban" crime. Barack Obama has been making moves to address the problem of over-incarceration and police violence in our society, by releasing non-violent drug offenders and pushing employers to be more open-minded about hiring people who have done time. He made this speech in New Jersey, and so naturally, Christie just had to respond. As Talking Points Memo reports, he's not being very subtle about it:
Christie used the president’s visit as an excuse to travel to Camden, a city where the county government’s sheriff’s department took over policing three years ago. There, he did something he has ridiculed in the past: he signed an executive order declaring a day of appreciation for a particular constituency. Because of Christie’s actions, Thursday November 5 will now be Law Enforcement Appreciation Day in the Garden State. Why did the governor’s office on Friday hastily schedule a Monday event to announce a ceremonial action? Counter-programming of course. Christie took the opportunity to press what is in many ways a lock-em-up, tough-on-crime agenda just as politicians across the ideological spectrum are deciding that mass incarceration has gone too far.Why Christie is doing this isn't a big surprise. Huge chunks of the Republican base live in constant fear of crime and mindlessly applaud police violence, the excesses of the war on drugs, and over-incarceration as a response to that fear. This fear has no real attachment to actual risk of being a victim of crime, but continues to be what it was when Richard Nixon's Southern strategy to capture the white vote banked heavily on the phrase "law and order": A socially acceptable way for racist white people to express fear that people of color are out to get them. The ridiculousness of Christie's gambit was exposed back in September, when Christie went on Morning Joe to claim that he would reinstate "stop and frisk" in New York and that the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, is somehow turning the city into a danger zone by not continuing the policy. "It’s the liberal policies in this city that have led to the lawless that’s been encouraged by the president of the United States," he warned. The problem is that the city Christie believes is devolving into a dystopic nightmare actually had one of the safest summers in years. But Christie pooh-poohed that, because conservative fear-mongering on crime isn't really about crime, but just about perpetuating fears of big cities, racial diversity, and liberalism generally. The detachment from reality has only grown more bizarre, as Christie went on Face the Nation last Sunday, once again saying that, "There's lawlessness in this country. The president encourages this lawlessness. He encourages it." Then there was this bizarre and unsettling exchange between Christie and host John Dickerson:
DICKERSON: Encourages it how? CHRISTIE: Oh, by his own rhetoric. He does not support the police. He doesn't back up the police. He justifies Black Lives Matter. I mean... DICKERSON: But Black Lives Matter shouldn't be justified at all? CHRISTIE: Listen, I don't believe that that movement should be justified when they're calling for the murder of police officers, no. DICKERSON: But they're not calling for the murder of police officers. CHRISTIE: Sure, they are. Sure, they are. They have been chanting in the streets for the murder of police officers.Obviously, we're in the email forward, conspiracy theory-mongering zone so beloved by the right. But Christie has his floundering poll numbers to consider, so pushing every unhinged right wing paranoid meme is what he's going with. While it seemed for a time that the fear-mongering about crime was in decline on the right, in the past few months, it's been coming back to life, which is why Christie is pouncing. A couple of things have been going on to bring it back, starting with the surge of liberal criticism of over-incarceration and the Black Lives Matter movement. There's been a lot of media attention to stories about unarmed black civilians dying at the hands of aggressive cops and other racially loaded violence, particularly against teenagers who haven't really done anything to merit being physically abused by police. These stories, and the protests that have emerged in response, are creating a defensive reaction in conservatives that support these abusive, racist practices, due to their inchoate fears of crime. There's no police violence against black people that conservative media figures won't excuse. Christie's comments about Black Lives Matter, in fact, stem from a growing narrative on the right that is trying to paint the movement as somehow pro-violence, when obviously their purpose is to stop violence and pointless death at the hands of police. In addition to all this, you have the issue of gun control. In response to a seemingly endless stream of mass shooting, liberals have been increasing pressure to enact some kind of gun safety regulation. But of course, conservatives need to blame anything but easy access to guns for gun violence. So instead, they raise fears about "lawlessness"---fears that just so happen to justify conservatives who want to buy more guns to protect themselves against this supposed tide of violence. All this fear-mongering probably won't help Christie's poll numbers---really, coming out for Social Security "reform" will never ingratiate you with the elderly white people that make up the backbone of the Republican Party, making his a lost cause---but that doesn't mean that his behavior isn't a big deal. Stoking baseless, racially loaded fear of crime will likely have ramifications that extend past this election cycle. Putting the face of a ostensibly mainstream figure like Christie on the racist fears that Black Lives Matter activists are out to get you will help justify those fears. It's beyond irresponsible of him to pander like this to gain some points in a race he's never going to win. For shame, Christie.
