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People say this all the time, and apparently, employ it as a guiding principle when dealing with others. I am encouraged, over and over again, to give one person or another "the benefit of the doubt." I freely admit that I have never really even been able to parse this phrase, ("what doubt? whose doubt?") even though I can easily define all the words in it. So I went and looked it up.
The Free Dictionary has it as "to believe something good about someone, rather than something bad, when you have the possibility of doing either." That's pretty mild, but going with just one source when there's a big, verdant Internet waiting for me to run naked in its fields of information seems supremely foolish, so Wiktionary says this: "1. A favorable judgment given in the absence of full evidence," and "2. in Cricket, the principle employed by umpires in cases of uncertainty concerning a batsman possibly being out, in which the decision must be made in the batsman's favor." Finally, Dictionary.com gives me this one, dating it between 1840 and 1850 - "a favorable opinion or judgment adopted despite uncertainty," which is just a more succinct version of the first one. This was helpful to me.
Essentially, a legalistic and/or sporting principle (and sports rules are themselves legalistic) which says that when there is any doubt whatsoever about which way you should fall, based on the available evidence, you should land on the side of the person in question. Instance by instance. When applied to human interaction, this is a sheer rock wall of faith. Great. Throwing aside all of the facts and data in favor of blind leaping coitus with a rolling donut whilst you decide to just put your faith in the other person. A massive level of trust would be required, and you would never, never deign to do this for someone whose historical and recent behaviors were anything less than ideal, and were, in point of fact, incendiary. Right?
The principle makes no mention whatsoever of the continuous, over time agglomeration of evidence, or how that sort of precedent would erode the applicability of this concept. Briefly? Seems to me that fully grown and developed people would only reap the benefit of the doubt ONCE. After that, their continued behavior, intentions and results should dictate how one responds to them in various situations, yes? If someone continues to act like a butthead, the intelligent and responsible thing to do is treat them like a butthead. In fact, I posit that it's the responsibility of all mature people to treat people according to their evidentiary and historical behavior, because to do otherwise is potentially harmful inasmuch as it ignores who they are as people. Maybe they're striving to be the best butthead they can be, and you're fucking it up for them. I think I'd prefer application of the Golden Rule here; judge me based on my actions and words, and I will do likewise for you.
The benefit of the doubt is a dangerous concept, and has only a very limited use. To trust someone in spite of what they've done, over and over again, might make for a great Lifetime Original Movie, but has no real application for anyone who wants to live happily. Some incidences demand it, like dealing with kids in any capacity, or perhaps with someone who's deranged or emotionally immature. Otherwise though, I'm not seeing it. Every half decade or so, Charles Manson is hauled out of his hole and given a chance to prove he should walk the streets a free man. If they gave him the benefit of the doubt, you'd be upset. What they do instead is chuck Chuck back in his hole when they see that's he still an unremorseful fuckhead. Because that's what makes sense. They deal evenly and directly with him based on the facts presented. Solid.
And now I go to spend the weekend with my mother-in-law.
I suppose that any state with a police force that opens the doors for Jack Ruby, or turns a failed battle into a rallying cry with spin and propaganda, or who elects the Monkeyface to the governor's office, shouldn't surprise us anymore with the rampant idiocy that lies under the stars at night so big and bright. But Texas has once again shocked the nation. This one's going to be important, so pay the fuck attention, please.
Don McLeroy, a dentist and outgoing conservative Republican member of the Texas State School Board, is trying to get some changes made in schoolbooks there that reflect some pretty outlandish things that he believes should be taught in schools. A lot of it is just language-oriented spin, like referring to America's imperialism abroad as "expansionism," and capitalism being exclusively referred to as a "free-market system." Some of the changes are more worrisome, however, like writing Thomas Jefferson out of history because of his ideas about the separation of church and state, giving Joe McCarthy a reprieve for the communist witch-hunts on the grounds that the USSR had "expansionism" on the agenda during the Cold War, and reducing the impact in the text of blacks, Latinos, and the liberal movements of the 1960s. Ralph Nader & Ross Perot would be dropped from the historical record in favor of Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson, and hip-hop in favor of country music. Ahhh, smells like Texas already.
And these are just a few of the things Don believes. He's also a young Earth Christian, which is exciting, since that would mean that not just he, but the whole human race, was born yesterday. He's tried, in the public forums available to him at church and as a School Board member, repeatedly to discredit evolution. This puts him in the minority, even in Texas, and has led to his "evidence" itself being discredited. If he could experience shame, it would be his predominate emotion. Don also believes in Abstinence ONLY sex ed, and would get it into health books if you'd let him. Don may also support the English Only folks here in the US, based on some of his other comments.
What you'd really like to see is Noam Chomsky calmly punch Don in the teeth.
Why does this matter, if you don't live in the Lone Star State? Well, Texas overprints its textbooks, and they find homes in other states, so if Texas goes this way, so might everyone else who buys their books. Of course, this Times editorial points out that this is no longer completely the case in the age of digital publishing, and this is a "free market system" so other states might be able to find alternative suppliers of grade-level factbooks, but this remains troubling. Spin is one thing, but to live in the supposed "information age" and still have people burying the facts by simple omission is galling. It has always been the responsibility of the student of history to do his or her own research, and dig into the past on their own, reading supplementary and often primary texts that leave the textbooks in the dust. But this kind of additional reading is hard, and requires discipline and desire to accomplish, and I despair that these qualities will be present in the coming generations.
And now I have to vet my kids' textbooks until they get out of high school.
I was watching a "documentary" on the "History" Channel yesterday called The Ku Klux Klan: A Secret History. (I would put quotes on that, but there are already too many quotes up there, and correct me if I'm wrong Kappelmeister, but the ear can only hear so many quotes in the course of one evening.) It was kind of okay, sort of, very cheesy - the narration was terrible, but it had lots of good people doing talking head duty. It also fell into some of the classic problems with talking about the Klan (not enough synonyms for the words 'hate', 'stupidity' or 'racism;' trying to get inside the head of someone whose headspace is unattractive and underutilized), and reinforced a wrong-headed idea about the Klan's formation into which people often stumble.
Namely, that the Klan's formation, initially, was as a fraternal organization. A social club, nothing more, like the Elks or Moose or Ladies Auxiliary Stitch N Target Shoot. This is crap, as they (5 Confederate Civil War Vets & a one judge) got together in a guy's house once - and no one can really say exactly why (and anyone who does is speculating) - and the first time anyone saw them doing anything at all, it was riding the streets, masked, engaging in moonlight terrorism. You know, like your frats do all the time. Horseback in the streets, doing keg stands and intimidating blacks into not voting. Just for fun, you understand. It's just that back in the day, they had to date-rape the horses after slipping them street drugs.
I realized something about myself watching this. Early on in the program it became obvious to me that I wasn't really looking to learn much about the Klan - I grew up in Tennessee, have lived primarily in the south and have been paying attention to the racists around me my whole life. I wasn't watching it to get a better grasp on history and racism. I actually did learn a couple of things and the perspective was valuable - but that's not why I was watching this, I began to understand. I was watching this thing so I could rubberneck at the chinless, porcine, inbred sons of ignorance as they spewed their idiocy. They have long since ceased to be scary or intimidating, but seeing them act out their fears from the privacy of my living room allowed me the luxury of not smelling them, and also gave me the power of the remote control, so I could play back the moronitude that they embody. I was able to watch carefully without any kind of emotional reaction.
Racism, as a specific kind of hate, seems to me to be like a kind of faith specific only to the very stupid. It's an emotional process requiring a leap - in this case, a leap of generality, where one assigns the characteristics, either real or imagined of a few to an entire race on a general level - and is not justified by logic, and is not meant to be. Attempts to do so simply confuse those in opposition to your point of view, while simultaneously chipping cracks in the foundation of the belief, at least from a logical standpoint. Perhaps all non-logical reactionary behavior fits this model, and someone smarter than me has got that down in a book somewhere. Likely, even. The application & comparison here is only useful inasmuch as I don't get it - racism, that is - and I'm positing that no end of thinking about it is going to get me any closer.
But I can damn sure look at 'em.
And here, I thought everybody loved lesbians.
Not so, the fuckwitted school district of the great metropolitan area that is Fulton, Mississippi. The Itawamba County School District and the principal of the Itawamba Agricultural High School have cancelled the senior prom for the graduating class of 2010 rather than acknowledge the existence of lesbians. Like lesbians were sasquatches or something. Can't have them coming in there, tearing up the social fabric and encouraging "alternative lifestyles." Everybody knows that's how the GAYS get converts, right? They brainwash straight people and win them over with high fashion, dance numbers and energetic community participation. Unless you're in Fulton, Mississippi, where not only the dork principal, but the mayor have come out against gay kids going to prom. I guess they assumed gayness at prom would have upset the 4000 people who live in Fulton, Mississippi. I also guess that they forgot Fulton was attached to the rest of the world, like an inconsequential but annoying nodule that might just need to be removed.
18 year old Constance McMillen's not rolling over for this, she and her ACLU attorneys are hitting the talk show circuit, and trying their best to get the message out there that there are still backward places in the world where they'd rather call shit off than allow progress and change. The seniors are pissed that there's not going to be prom, and they don't really know who to blame. A prom hosted by someone would certainly go a long way towards dampening a potentially incendiary situation. Constance, in my opinion, deserves her night, just for having stood up for it in the first place. Imagine being told you can't bring your date because some old conservative farts don't like it. Fuck that noise, sez I, and I'm setting up a fund!
On the left is a widget where you can contribute money to Constance and her girlfriend having a night out. She can wear her tux, they can rent a limo, they can leave the state of Mississippi, if need be. I'm trying to raise a grand, which might seem excessive, but think of it as a donation to the ACLU if that makes you feel better about it. The Squidbag calls upon you to drop some dinero in the digital bucket and support Constance McMillen.
Stay strong, Constance. Stick to your guns, be who you are, and know that there's a big world beyond Fulton.
"Wow. They sold one of Ronald Reagan's testicles online this morning. I can't believe there's a market for something like that."
"You'd be surprised."
You're absolutely right, you fucking assbrain, I would be, that's WHY I JUST FUCKING EXPRESSED SURPRISE! Multiple goddamns and candied yams if this shit doesn't go down pointy and sideways for me. I express surprise, and you come back with "you'd be surprised?" You toad. What's with you, Captain Obvious? Were you actually thinking during our discussion of Reagan's ball(s) and their alleged commercial value, or did you just memorize some segues your retard mom taught you, and you trotted this one out for the occasion, all dolled up in stupidity? It's a bad choice for talking to people, I'd point out, since it implies prior knowledge on your part that exceeds my own, since "I'd be surprised," but you wouldn't be. You've already got eBay fucking stats on what people have bid for Ron's left nut, yeah? Obnoxious, arrogant bullshit, this is. "Oh, you'd be surprised." You know when you'd be surprised? When I bust you in the teeth with The Fantastic Mr. Fist, you superior prick.
This does have a proper use, but I rarely hear it.
"Hey, do a lot of people really use rainbow striped, blueberry flavored, kosher death's head titanium tipped vibrators these days?"
"Oh, you'd be surprised. I work at Dick's Box of Fun, and we sell a fuckton of those things, especially on holiday weekends and religious feast days."
See, here's a person with actual prior knowledge who's been asked a legit question by someone seeking further information about sex toy proliferation of a very specific variety. The response is neither cloying nor patronizing, and is in fact filled to bursting with additional useful data. This is - to put a razor sharp point on it - the proper use of the much overused (and maligned by me) phrase.
You'd be surprised by how often I have to explain this shit.
Corey Haim is dead in Burbank, California, aged 38, the victim of an apparent drug overdose. All these years, and I had no idea that he was only three years older than I am. I hadn't kept up with him at all over the past 23 years, because my friends and I back in 1987 universally agreed that he was the one lame element to an otherwise awesome movie about vampires, the Lost Boys. (Guys who knew me then and who read this: Back me up, here.) We thought Corey's character was unrealistic, and this was in a movie about teenage vampires. Mostly, it was the bathtime scene, where Corey had his hair shampooed up and was singing. In a loud falsetto. While taking a bubble bath. When startled by vampire noises, he throws on the world's most homosexual bathrobe (which he procured while it was engaged in congress with another bathrobe) and goes downstairs to be a whiny pansy. He was so eclipsed by the Frog brothers, who were awesomeness in sneakers: vampire slayers who work in a comic store.
I didn't know anything about his show with Corey Feldman (the cooler Corey, who was in Gremlins, the Goonies, the 'Burbs and was a ninja turtle, for chrissakes - there's an 80s resume for your ass) or his decades-long battle with coke and crack. I knew he was on Robot Chicken as himself occasionally, but Google has told me all of these other things, and now I pass them along to you. I do dimly remember that this Corey was the "cute" one, and that I had a cousin who had a crush on him. And that this annoyed me, even then.
Good-bye, teen icon from the 80s, Corey Haim.
One of the major problems with us as a race of people is that we tend to vote for & support people for completely illogical reasons, such as what they look like, or what they tell us about themselves (as opposed to our finding out about them by doing actual research, instead of just going along with what we're told) or how we might respond emotionally to a charismatic personality. None of these factors is very reliable when one is building a relationship, unless you want to be led around by the nose & lied to by someone who's attractive. Adolf Hitler and Jim Jones both had charisma, so you see what that leads to. (There, I got my Hitler mention out of the way.)
The cult of personality has been in use since ancient Rome, and stands upon the twin pillars of hero worship and propaganda. I set myself up as awesome, and then I take great pains to remind you, either on my own or through agents, of how awesome I am. President Obama used it to great effect to win an election not long ago, and Sarah Palin's using it now, to make sure that ADHD America still remembers who she is come 2012. The big difference, to my mind, between Obama and Palin, aside from several hundred IQ points, is when you look into what they're actually about, after you step around what they've told you they're about. Sarah Palin's not about anything, and she doesn't have to be. People love her and they don't even know why - read the things people say about her, there's no content there. The same people who glossed over Michael Jackson's young boy fetish to laud him as a musical hero are sticking with Sarah Palin despite the fact that she's an empty vessel.
There has never been any secret, no dodge or con, about Barack Obama. He's not afraid to engage in cutthroat politics, as long as it works and gets results. He seeks to grasp and wield power, and makes no bones about that, either. He is qualified, by the depth (if not breadth) of his experience to hold the highest office in the land, and what remains to be seen is what he will do with the power of the office. Many of us who voted for him think that the message has become muddled, and that we have lost our way (for various, complex reasons) on things like gay rights and the public option - but we wait to see if the Obama White House will figure out how to tell its own story. Short version: as much as I accept the old chestnut about politicians and lying, I don't think most Dems currently in power view America as filled with idiot children who need a corrective hand. Like a narrow-minded parent. Which brings me, at last, to my point.
The extant hypocrisy of leading Republicans is amazing, and born of this kind of parental arrogance. Two things come from an attitude like theirs: One, is the idea that since I, as your elected leader know better, I will dictate policy for you, whether you like it or think it is proper. We're doing this for your own good, and you'll thank us later. The second factor is the idea that having put in place rules for the rabble, those rules don't necessarily apply to them. It's a difference in Jeffersonian vs. Hamiltonian ideas about "those people," and it's what leads to a conservative Alaskan former governor and current mouthpiece for self-promotion going over the border for drugs and joking about it later, and an anti-gay actually gay California State Senator getting picked up for DWI while leaving a gay bar. None of this hypocrisy is surprising on a global level anymore, but the individual instances seem to imply such gall on the part of the participants that it still resonates and makes me want to vomit.
So, to sum up: People are sheep, Hitler, Jonestown, Rome, Obama, Palin, pedophilia, agendas, schills, liars, philosophical differences, Ashburn, vomit. Have a good morning.
I hate news.
Really. I hate it when most people of the people I know have found out stuff before I do, because they get this smug, superior air about them when they impart the news, and because it's only fair to let them inject their opinion into it, since they have the information you want, so you get to sit through that, too. There's also the fact that most of the news people actually want to (or feel that they should) impart is bad news. This borders on sadism with a large percentage of the population, as you can see them taking a macabre smirking glee in telling you about the bodies, or the fire, or the money lost, or the shame or guilt or the heads coming off. In short, I wish that I could get the news without interacting with anyone.
And that includes the news agencies. Putting aside (if you are able) all the fucking corporate domination, short attention span, sixth grade level spin and bias for a moment, there's the empty faces and yapping heads that deliver the news - people you'd smack in real life rather than listen to, with rare exceptions. I can think of about six. But that's just the reportage. The real problem I have with institutionally-generated news is with the journalism itself. I have a splinter of a problem stuck in my third eyelid, and I can't get it out. And this is why I share.
Chile and Haiti and Taiwan are only the latest examples of this trend (for lack of a better word), which dates back... well, fucking forever, really. I can encapsulate my problem with a question that I myself cannot answer: When should the news gatherer become involved in the news? Never? To save someone's life? Is objectivity more important than eventuality? I hate more than anything watching the news, seeing a photograph, or listening to a radio broadcast and thinking, "Why didn't you help them, yutz? You were RIGHT THERE. Your award-winning picture was more important than helping out?" Nowhere is this more pronounced than in a recent PBS something-or-other about the Taliban that I half-watched. "This night, Shaleeb confided in me that they would place IEDs along the northeast road from the village." And you didn't fucking tell anyone? What the hell?
I'm familiar with the idea that without proper reportage, no attention is paid to dire situations. I'm also aware that I don't know what happened after they took the shot or finished the in-depth whatever. I make a distinction here between the guy who was just there and happened to get the shot and the newscrew who shows up after the thing happens. Or worse, imbeds to make news. The problem for me is that they rape the moment for its immediacy and sometimes overall relevance, and I get to feel complicit if I merely gather information.
Up next, One of these prophylactic products can kill you - find out which one at eleven o'clock!
After a couple of disappointments at the movies recently - and the inexplicable nomination of fucking Avatar for fucking best picture - I have turned to old movies for entertainment, and I have discovered something; they're a hell of a lot more fun. Whether you're enjoying them on their own merit, or laughing at them instead of with them (which MST3K discovered years ago), I find there's a lot more to enjoy. Specifically in the Sci-Fi / Horror realm of films.
Some are obvious classics - I recently watched the 1931 Frankenstein and the 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still, and these stand on their own merit. Frankenstein's weird, and kind of a silly departure from the book, but Boris Karloff is not be dissed under any circumstances. Neither is James Whale, really. I also recently watched the 1941 The Wolf Man, and kind of don't get why it was popular. Did you know the Wolf Man is called Larry? I had trouble taking the film seriously after that, and also because Bela Lugosi turns up playing a cursed gypsy named "Bela." These things always strike me as odd. A couple of other recently viewed films were total tankers: the 1980 movie The Fog, a John Carpenter film with leprous sailor zombies (really) and War of the Colossal Beast (1958) which was just five kinds of terrible, from its shitty effects to its bad acting and cliched characters, its in the "so bad, it's boring" category. I fell asleep.
One that stands out, though, is the 1957 Blood of Dracula. Watched it this week. Let me start out by saying that by no one's standards is this a good movie. First off, Dracula's not in it, and it'd be hard to make a case that his blood is, for that matter. It does have a creepy mind controlling giant amulet from "the Carpathian mountains" and some weird lesbian overtones, and lots of speeches about how men don't respect women, (okay) how stupid male dominated governments will eventually destroy the Earth, (sure) how women's contributions to society are often overlooked, (amen) and how each of us has inside our bodies the limitless destructive potential of an A-Bomb, if we only knew how to harvest it. (Wait - what?) The movie's silly and pointless, but the characters are too nonconformist for it to be boring. And there's a very unruly God speech towards the end. I enjoyed the hell out of it, wondering simultaneously how the makeup in older films is so convincing while this is so bad. See it for the vampire chick, who admittedly doesn't show up until almost an hour into the film.
Anyway, I'm going to re-watch the 1954 Godzilla (Gojira) really soon, and then I'm open to recommendations. I'm also posting what I'm watching in the movies list, if you want to take a look at some of the non Sci-fi/Horror stuff from recently.
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