Blog and Live Forever

I have survived the full-day meeting discussing the future of my academic department. Such events are the second-worst aspect of this job (the worst being grading). I have been around long enough to know that nothing will actually be decided in these meanings. On the contrary, all the important decisions have already been made before any of us set foot in that room. The meeting is just about giving the illusion of democratic process.

The low point of this meeting came when we had the opportunity to opt for a half-day gathering next year. “No, no,” my colleagues cried out, “We must have a full day wasted on things that we won’t remember discussing two months from now to critically discuss all the salient issues facing our program.” Why? Why are they so cruel?

To be honest, for most of the meeting, I zoned out into my own world. What do I think about when zoning out? This is a pretty accurate representation of what goes through my mind:




It really makes everything feel better.

Alas, though, my little bloggy hasn’t had much attention lately. Such is the way that it must be until I can finally put the Never Ending Research Project of Doom to rest. Only sporadic entries here at CoG for the next several months. I know, I know. I hear you crying out, "How can you be so inattentive, GayProf? We crave every moment of your attention. Our lives depend on your guiding gravitas!"

Okay, maybe you aren't saying that exactly. To paraphrase Charles DeGaulle: The nation’s graveyards are full of indispensable bloggers.



Given that this blog is currently on life-support, it made me consider what indicates the status of various blogs. Many bloggers become devoted to building a massive readership.

What changes a blogger from being ordinary to catapulting him/her/hir to internet celebrity (currently the lowest grade of celebrity possible)? Here are some signs to look out for in determining one’s social status in the blogosphere:

Anonymous: You say that spam advertising penile enlargement “still counts” as a comment on an entry.

Obscure: You get one or two incisive responses to your most provocative posts.

Middling: You have a loyal core of readers who will give a comment, even if it is just out of pity.

Celebrity: You are guaranteed a minimum of forty comments even if the blog entry is nothing more than a picture of your empty breakfast bowl.



***
Anonymous: Your blog is not linked by anybody.

Obscure: Your friends and family link you.

Middling: People you have never met link you.

Celebrity: People link you only out of the hope that you will link them back.

***

Anonymous: The only e-mail generated from your blog is a secret offer from a Nigerian who needs you to open a bank account for him.

Obscure: You occasionally get e-mail from people you don’t know in real life.

Middling: You get birthday cards from people you don’t know in real life.

Celebrity: You get mail from people that you probably don’t want to know in real life.

***

Anonymous: Google doesn’t even know you exist.

Obscure: People can find your blog if they type its exact name into Google.

Middling: You find that Google sends people to your blog for incoherent search strings that have little to do with your actual blog content (For instance, “What are the dangers of tanning my vagina?”).

Celebrity: Google is currently attempting a hostile take over of your site.

***

Anonymous: The government has no idea that you exist.

Obscure: Some really low level government bureaucrat once looked at your blog.

Middling: The government is watching your blog to see if you are earning income that you are not reporting on your taxes.

Celebrity (If on the political left): Your blog has resulted in the White House naming your blog part of the “Axis of Evil” and/or the FBI's watch list.

Celebrity (If on the political right): Your blog has resulted in the White House giving you a medal for being their unpaid mouthpiece.

***

Anonymous: When you wrote your last entry, you said that it was about practicing your own writing skills.

Obscure: When you posted your last entry, you wrote it with one particular reader in mind.

Middling: When you wrote your last entry, you imagined that it would later be published by Vogue magazine.

Celebrity: When you wrote your last entry, you told yourself that it was just filling the time until you finally get your own television show.

***

Anonymous: You are most often naked while you write your blog.

Obscure: You have given away t-shirts based on your blog.

(Modeled byVUBOQ)

Middling: You can actually sell t-shirts based on your blog at CafePress or other such sites.

Celebrity: Designers send you their new clothes in the hope that you will wear them while you blog.

***

Anonymous: You have posted pictures of celebrities.

Obscure: You know another blogger who had a brush with a real-life celebrity.

Middling: A celebrity stopped by your blog – once.

Celebrity: You are currently in litigation for slander and/or copyright infringement with a celebrity

***

Anonymous: If your blog was a retail store, it would be Montgomery Ward.

Obscure: If your blog was a retail store, it would be Hot Topic.

Middling: If your blog was a retail store, it would be Target.

Celebrity: If your blog was a retail store, you couldn’t afford to shop there.

***

Anonymous: You tell yourself you that you are blogging “for your own enjoyment.”

Obscure: You tell yourself that you are blogging because you want to meet new people.

Middling: You tell yourself that you are blogging because your ego leads you to imagine that other people expect you to blog.

Celebrity: You blog because it's your main source of income.

***

Anonymous: Nobody knows that you or your blog exists in the real world.

Obscure: You once overheard somebody mention a blog that also happens to link to you.

Middling: People recognize you based on your blog name.

Celebrity: You have had to file restraining orders against readers of your blog.

***

Anonymous: You link to current news articles in your blog.

Obscure: Your blog is the first place that somebody hears of a particular news story.

Middling: Other people build an entry using your blog’s coverage of a news story.

Celebrity: Your blog is the news story.



***

Anonymous: Nobody takes the time to speculate on you in real life.

Obscure: People will mention that they think “you seem cool” in the comments section.

Middling: People will take time out of their life to leave anonymous comments saying how much they dislike you and/or your blog.

Celebrity: People have devoted their own blog to documenting how much they hate you.


***

Anonymous: You have no social contacts based on your blog.

Obscure: You have social contacts who read your blog, but they already knew you before you ever blogged.

Middling: You have met new friends through your blog that you would have never met in real life.

Celebrity: You have slept with people through your blog.

***

Anonymous: Readers have no memory of your blog.

Obscure: Readers remember your most recent entry.

Middling: Readers remember one or two of your best entries.

Celebrity: Readers claim to remember when "your blog was actually good."

***
Anonymous: You still have perspective that the mainstream media shapes public opinion far more than all blogs combined.

Obscure: You feel that a small community of bloggers might be able to sway some people and therefore post a banner for your favored candidate.

Middling: You write extensive political posts imagining that somebody will take notice.

Celebrity: Your ego is so out of control that you conclude that the 2008 election hinges on your blog.

***
Anonymous: If your blog was one of Charlie's Angels, it would be Tiffany Welles.

Obscure: If your blog was one of Charlie's Angels, it would be Chris Monroe.

Middling: If your blog was one of Charlie's Angels, it would be Kelly Garrett.

Celebrity: You would be too cool to fully understand these references.



***

Anonymous: You take the time to write a blog entry when you want to do so.

Obscure: You write a blog entry on a regular schedule.

Middling: Your regular job is suffering because you are blogging all the time to “reach the next level.”

Celebrity: Nobody has noticed that all your entries are really just summaries of news feeds. You have not posted an original idea in years.

***

Anonymous: Nobody writes about you.

Obscure: People make an entry in their own blog discussing having met you.

Middling: People express disappointment that you are not as interesting/entertaining in real life as your blog persona.

Celebrity: Somebody has sold naked pictures of you to a tabloid.

***

Anonymous: It would never occur to you that your blog could be a source of swag.

Obscure: You write a review of a movie/product hoping for swag.

Middling: A company asks you to write a review in exchange for swag.

Celebrity: You have your own swag that you give out.

***

Anonymous: 100 percent of the general public doesn’t care what you write in your blog.

Obscure: 100 percent of the general public doesn’t care what you write in your blog.

Middling: 100 percent of the general public doesn’t care what you write in your blog.

Celebrity: 99.999 percent of the general public doesn’t care what you write in your blog.

School's Out for Summer

Summer is upon us. Well, not technically – That won’t officially start until June 21. Given that my life is dictated by the nine month academic calendar rather than the actual calendar, it has already started for me. Screw the solstice.

This leads to my annual list of things that I must accomplish in the coming months. Here are items that must be done by September 2:

* Complete the Never Ending Research Project of Doom. Yeah, this has been on my list consistently. This time, though, I really mean it.

* Ruthlessly exploit friends and colleagues by having them proofread drafts of the Never Ending Research Project of Doom.

* Attend an all-day meeting to discuss matters deemed critical for the direction of my academic department.

* Struggle not to slit my wrists out of boredom while attending an all-day meeting to discuss matters deemed critical for the direction of my academic department.

* Single-handedly heal the wounds of the Democratic Party once they finally decide on a candidate. The key will be baking enough delicious Bundt cake for everybody.

* Lose eight pounds. I am at that awkward stage where my regular clothes are a tad tight, but my fat clothes are still too large.

* Take my Honda Civic for much needed service. It’s odd that at the point that I finally paid it off, I decided to see if I could destroy it by not bothering to get its oil changed.

* Quash my environmentally-dubious desire to purchase the insanely hot Dodge Challenger. I am not ashamed to say that I would probably have sex with that car. I would do it on camera too as long as I could keep the car afterwards.



* Vigorously shake working-class whites until they realize that the Republican Party is their worst enemy.

* Spend ample time in the sun to obtain a much needed tan and to stave off rickets.

* Invent a new cocktail and name it the Gravitas.

* Travel to New Mexico for research purposes.

* Seek medical treatment for guaranteed heat stroke while in New Mexico.

* Enjoy refreshing TaB cola.

* Enjoy even more refreshing tequila.



* Travel to Philadelphia and New Jersey for an event on my mother’s side of my family.

* Contemplate just how much worse traveling by air will become if we allow Delta and Northwest Airlines to merge. Do we even remember that this nation once had anti-trust laws?

* Solve the mystery at Lilac Inn.

* Use my federal tax stimulus check to buy a single week’s worth of gasoline.

* Update CoG more often (Unlikely if I want to accomplish the first thing on this list).

* Remind the nation that allowing John McCain to assume the presidency would be to install somebody who has no moral conscious; enjoys war as a pastime; voted against the federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.; has promised to continue the disastrous economic policies of the Bush presidency; and smells like Bengay.


* Watch films that center on an alcoholic industrialist with a metal suit; a cowled misanthrope with abandonment issues; and an aged archeologist who probably also smells like Bengay at this point.

* Wonder aloud about why Gwyneth Paltrow has a screen career. Conclude that it has to do with the U.S.’s incredibly low standards for acting.

* Change my currency into something less likely to lose its value than the U.S. dollar – Like the Colombian peso.

* Purchase a new bed and/or couch – Depending on whether I imagine that I will have more house guests or overnight guests.

* Laugh at the fact that the media/government is trying to spin the loss of jobs in the economy as a sign of growth. Hey, we didn’t shed as many jobs as we expected, so things are looking up. That’s a great strategy that I am going to start using with my credit card companies. Hey, my check wasn’t nearly as late as I thought that it would be, so, really, we are ahead.

* Completely redesign the syllabus for one of my fall classes (Unlikely if I want to accomplish the first thing on this list).

* Wrestle control of the Federal Reserve Board away from the incompetent and dangerous Ben S. Bernanke and the other conservative white men who currently staff it (Yep, all conservative white men on the Fed – Nobody else seems to have noticed that).

* Spend some quality time playing with my Mego Wonder Woman doll.



* Convince my friends that spending quality time playing with my Mego Wonder Woman doll is not evidence of the long anticipated mental breakdown.

* Celebrate the genius of Dolly Parton.

* Be grateful to Guadalupe that I don’t have to move this year (unlike the previous three years).

* Start a movement to finally dump the 1789 Constitution and replace it with a parliamentary form of government for the U.S. Why do we cling to a document that stated that some individuals only count for three-fifths of a person? Why do we tolerate a system where one person, one vote is not the standard? We have the technology to rebuild it. We can make it better, stronger, faster.

What is Wrong with Arizona?

Republicans in the Arizona legislature are at war with the state’s universities. Last year the legislature attempted to limit professors’ ability to assign texts that might make students “uncomfortable.” Basically, the end result of that measure would have meant that students could opt out of having to read anything at all. It also included a provision that would have forbidden professors from taking any action that might “endorse, support or oppose any pending, proposed or enacted local, state or federal legislation, regulation or rule.” Yeah, because why would we want universities to be places where people think and discuss legislation? Apparently Arizona Republicans have taken a look at higher education in their state and said to themselves, “You know, I would really like higher education to be less educational.”

This year, the Republican legislature has proposed an even more insidious bill. SB 1108 would forbid students from participating in groups organized around racial solidarity. So, for instance, students could not join the Black Business Students Association, Native Americans United or MEChA (Moviemiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán). Whether one agrees with these groups or not, one would have thought they would be protected by freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. Arizona Republicans say "No!" You can sign a petition against this measure here.

Moreover, the measure would also forbid courses to be organized around race. Latino/a Studies, African American studies, and Asian American studies would all be illegal. Note to self: Never take an academic job in Arizona. Note to current Arizona Professors: Get out, if you can.

Republicans have called this measure part of “Homeland Security.” They promise to cut state funding to Arizona schools whose courses “denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization.” SB 1108 also would bar teachers from “overtly encouraging dissent” from those values, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious toleration. All teaching materials would have to be approved by the school superintendent for review.

We can set aside the stuff that is just plain confusing or nonsensical (How exactly has Mexico not participated in “Western Civilization?” Why is participating in the Black Business Students Association against capitalism?). We can focus, instead, on the ways that this measure combines Republicans' favorite forms of disinformation.

First, of course, it upholds the myth that we live in a “color-blind” society. It ignores that African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately poor, excluded from higher education, and earn less than their white counterparts. Whites remain the majority of university students (even in states (like Texas) with a non-white majority) at most flagship institutions. Yet, these measures place the blame for racist institutional practices onto minorities. MEChA emerged forty years ago to combat racism in the United States. In a classic Orwellian move, however, Rep. Russell Pearce (R-Mesa) and other supporters of the bill have declared that it is groups like MEChA that are “real” racists.



Republicans and other conservatives get testy when notions of race move beyond their control. Clearly MEChA doesn’t understand that racial categories are only supposed to be used to oppress people. Using race as a means to organize for social justice is so missing the point.

This isn’t to say, obviously, that every member of MEChA or similar left-leaning organizations is automatically a saint. Both individually and collectively, they make mistakes. A few members of the left on university campuses, for instance, have wrongly tried to silence people on the right. They must also be educated about the importance of universities being sites of free speech and intellectual engagement.

Don’t be fooled, though. People on the right are not interested in “academic freedom.” They are interested in crushing any person who dares to say they are wrong.

For over a decade, members of the right have been attacking universities and attempting to control their curriculum. A former - liberal - turned - neoconservative named David Horowitz led the charge starting in the 1990s. In essence, Horowitz claimed that university-level humanities departments had become secret havens for Democrats. He put forward (without any real evidence) the outlandish claim that these same faculty keep conservatives out, deprive them of funding, and openly indoctrinate their students to blindly vote Democrat. In an unexpected twist, Horowitz and crew claim that their own Academic Freedom is being impinged.

The notion that college humanities departments are hotbeds of radicalism seems fairly laughable. From my vantage point, these departments are pretty darn conservative. The faculty is not racially diverse (not even coming close to representing the general population of the nation); they loathe change; and they maintain the status quo more than they rock the ship of state.



Moreover, Republicans give faculty way too much credit while giving university students none at all. If, as a professor, I had the power to “indoctrinate” my students, do you think that Bush would still be sitting in the White House? I have no special power to brainwash my students into being radicals. Heck, I can’t even convince my students to use the spell checker on their wordprocessor before submitting a paper. Just imagine how little power I have to foment revolution.

This is not to say that my politics don’t inform my research and my research doesn’t inform my politics. It would be impossible for me, as a Latino historian, to disentangle those two components. I own and make explicit my political perspective to my students and suggest that it does, indeed, influence my teaching.

Being explicit about my perspective does not mean that I am trying to dazzle or trick students into sharing my political ideas. Instead, I believe that students are smart enough to grapple with the information presented in my class. They always decide what to think on their own (as they should). Trust me, students can be asked to question social relations of power, government authority, imperialism, and resistance without having a single one fly off to Cuba the next morning.



Unlike those on the right, moreover, my own political ideology is not threatened knowing that other professors express viewpoints counter to mine in their classrooms. Students should hear as many ideas as possible.

Universities are supposed to be places where students encounter a wide-range of ideas and perspectives. Students learn how to reconcile those ideas for themselves – that is the point of an education – Learning to think independently and stuff.

What the right wants to do with these measures is silence dissent. The right’s vision of “not indoctrinating” really means that we should never hear or learn from people different from themselves. Apparently people on the right imagine that their own intellectual positions are so fragile that they won’t survive a confrontation with alternative epistemologies. Ironically, by shutting down university professors who propose radical ideas about the nation, the right implies that those ideas are more attractive than the status quo.



Finally, it is not surprising that this effort would occur around the time that Arizona is projecting a massive budget deficit for 2009. In a classic move, Republicans look to distract Arizona from their economic mismanagement of the state. Instead, they claim that they are in an ideological war with the “left” to “preserve” the nation. If they really want to preserve the nation, they might look into the collapsing value of the U.S. dollar. That will destroy this nation much faster than a prof who dares to suggest that Mexican migrants have basic human rights.

GayProf Loses His Zen

The semester is rapidly coming to an end. The one good thing about returning to work so early in January is that I had my last final April 17. Now it is just the grading.

Of course, the end also means that I have been (even more) crazy busy over the past few weeks. If I have to attend one more meeting, I might be sentenced to Arkham Asylum. Seriously, if you see GayProf in unflattering clown makeup, head in the other direction.

I think that I underestimated my frazzled nerves until I lost my shit late last week. Normally it takes a great deal for me to lose my temper. Most times I construe anger as a waste of emotion. Trying to cross the street, however, sent me over the edge.

You see, Big Midwestern University merges entirely with Midwestern Funky Town. Major streets bisect the campus. At least one of these roads clearly has too much pedestrian traffic competing with motor traffic. In my mind, it should be closed to cars altogether.

Nobody, alas, has decided to make me a city planner. As a result, I have to play full-scale Frogger to get to my office in the morning. Students drive too fast and refuse to stop at crosswalks (though motorists are legally required to yield to pedestrians or face a $130 fine (I looked it up)).

Most of the time I am merely frustrated by drivers’ lack of civility. Last week went beyond the pale. Some student, driving an oversized gas-guzzler, literally refused to stop at the cross walk that was filled with people. He forced all of us who were already in the middle of the road to get out of his way or be run over. Then he had the nerve to flip us off for being in his way. I might have responded with a less than scholarly vocabulary or intonation.




Being prone to hyperbole, I immediately concluded that he represented everything that was wrong with the United States. Our selfish emphasis on the “individual” encourages Americans to think that they are right all the time, even when they are clearly wrong. Both as individuals and as a nation, we are loathe to consider that our particular needs might not be the most important.

This doesn’t just come out through incidents of near vehicular manslaughter. Take, for example, the tempest that surrounded an Absolut Vodka advertisement. To peddle their booze, the company capitalized on a utopian vision of the world where U.S. imperialism had been checked in the nineteenth century. Though the ad never circulated in the U.S., Absolut was flooded with irate mail from U.S. citizens. One angry writer noted that he had poured all his vodka down the drain (N.B. to protesters: Companies don’t suffer if you dispose of a product after you already paid for it. Whether or not you actually consume your purchase is fairly immaterial to them as long as they got their money in the first place).



Angry letter writers couldn’t entertain the idea that the U.S. might have been wrong to wage war on a neighboring republic for no other reason than an ambition for territory. They were also clearly unprepared to consider that there is a residual anger and resentment towards the United States for that war (which deprived Mexico of half of its territory, left it bankrupt, and opened the door for future invasions from other nations).

Don’t get me wrong. I am not endorsing the ad per se. After all, Absolut created it as a crass capitalistic attempt to profit from Mexico's legitimate frustration with U.S. imperialism. Rather, I am concerned that many (most?) people in this nation are unable or unwilling to admit that the nation’s history is filled with immoral decisions that we should regret. The fact that an ad for a mid-tier vodka can call the nation out on its hubris should concern us.

It is much the same thinking that resulted in the criticism of Barack Obama last weekend. He only spoke the truth (however imperfectly that he delivered it). The white working class has been voting against their own economic interests since the 1980s. Republicans have depended upon messages of fear (You need guns, and lots of them) and hatred (Gays will destroy civilization as we know it. Mexicans are our enemy.). Obama probably didn’t realize that it was a secret that the Republican party had been using the religious right to satisfy their own agendas.

Much of the response to Obama’s comments have centered around his supposed audacity to suggest that these voters were wrong and had the wrong priorities. Indeed, both Clinton and McCain suggested that Obama was “out of touch.”

To my mind, it is the U.S. voters who have been out of touch. From human rights, economics, and environmentalism, the U.S. has been on the wrong side of every issue for the past seven years. This isn’t just the fault of the Bush administration, either. Though only 5 percent of the world’s population, we consume 25 percent of its natural resources. How has the U.S. population responded in the face of both an economic and environmental melt down? Shockingly, U.S. citizens have decided that we should have a baby boom. It was something that I had suspected based on first-hand anecdotes, but was confirmed this past fall with statistics. Yes, the U.S. is totally out of step with every other industrial nation. Just how selfish are we? How depraved have we become that we think nothing of compounding the world's overpopulation? Is there any discussion about population control (beyond this blog)? Is anybody willing to entertain the notion that having more than one child is an immoral and selfish decision?



The election of either Obama or Clinton will not magically solve the problems facing this nation. The best that we could hope for from either is that they will not actively impede the reshaping of our society.

Instead of celebrating the cult of personality around these two figures, we need to alter the conversation in this nation. Rather than a nation driven by self-centered individualism, we need to start thinking as a community. We need to take seriously the responsibilities of citizenship, not just the rights of citizenship. We also have to be willing to acknowledge that just because we made a decision doesn't mean that it was the right one. Don’t run me over, man.

For What It's Worth

This past weekend I hosted my long-threatened charity cocktail party for the Midwestern Funky Town queer youth center. The attendance was a bit smaller than I anticipated (some of my extended entourage were out of town at an academic conference), but it still generated a reasonable sum of money for the group.

To be honest, that is the type of volunteer work that I can really get behind. More public service should revolve around drinking (though I am contemplating joining VUBOQ’s liver-resting April).

Even without the drinking, it gave me opportunity to break out my fabled Bewitched-style warming tray. What self-respecting host(ess) doesn’t have one?



Given that I am in charitable mood, I decided that it was time for me to solve many of the nation’s other problems. I am generous like that – a giver, if you will. Here are the simple solutions to many of our greatest challenges:

The Housing Crisis: The value of houses is falling dramatically across the nation. This might be a crazy first idea, but how about a moratorium on building new shit? Throughout the Midwest, there are tons of empty homes and even giant skyscrapers. Driving through Detroit is much like journeying to a future dystopia. Amazing twenty-story buildings (with stunning Beaux-Arts architecture) sit empty. One expects to see the Ωmega Man lurking about.



In the meantime, wild building is occurring in areas of the nation that literally lack the natural resources to support the population growth. People who are moving to Phoenix, you realize that it is a desert, right? By desert, I mean there is no water -- Like, not at all. Shouldn't that be a sign that a city of 1.5 million is a bad, bad idea? (Stay out of New Mexico – It’s not for you).

Let’s treat the nation like the spoiled child that it is – No new toys until you finish playing with the ones that you already got. No new homes, office building, hotels, or other buildings until we have 100 percent occupancy on the stuff that we already got. If people need a house or an office, they can pay to remodel existing properties in the Midwest. This will keep the construction industry busy for years to come.

The Tumbling Value of the U.S. Dollar: The value of the dollar (or, as I like to refer to it, the U.S. peso) has fallen to all time lows compared to the euro, British pound, the yen, and even the Canadian dollar (!). It’s just another thing that Republican voters (and those who stayed home) created in 2004.

I ain’t no economist, but it seems like the Federal Reserve’s one-step catch-all solution of lowering interest rates is nothing but crap. Lowering interest is flooding the market with money, which leads to inflation, which leads to making the problem worse and devaluing the dollar even more. Where did Ben Bernanke get his degree in economics? An on-line course? A cereal box?

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I think the U.S. dollar could use some product re-branding. It did wonders for Kentucky Fried Chicken when they renamed themselves KFC. It’s the same old grease and slaw, but people clearly don’t think about the “fried” bit anymore (or the blocked aortas).

Let’s relaunch the U.S. Dollar under a new name, like the U.S. Slammer. That will make our currency more hip and at least sound powerful. Imagine a sales clerk telling you that your total was “three slammers” rather than three dollars.

Of course, the re-branding would also require a redesign of our currency. Aren’t we tired of dead, straight white men on the face of our money? I have always been in favor of this:



The United States’s Difficult Relationship with Iran: According to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, there are no gays in Iran. Well, no wonder Iran is so angry with the U.S.! We thought that it had to do with our blanket imperialism and unilateral military actions in the region. It turns out that the real problem is that we have been hoarding all the gays for ourselves. That’s awfully selfish of the U.S. Why, West Hollywood has a bumper crop of gays this year. Clearly it’s time to send some of them into Iran and brighten up the place. Gay sex, after all, makes everybody happy.



The Democratic Nomination: Obama or Clinton? To listen to the followers of each candidate, one would think that the choice was between eternal salvation or a new definition of pain and suffering as we are slowly digested over a thousand years. For my part, I really don’t see all that dramatic of a difference between the candidates (Though Obama’s speech on race plus his endorsement by Bill Richardson has nudged me toward his corner in recent weeks).

Wake up, people. Neither is great on gay issues, immigration, or even basic economic policies (All of my favorite issues). The best we can hope for is that they will be quasi-reasonable and work with those of us who are interested in actual social-justice issues (rather than the aforementioned hyperbole and rhetoric).

In my mind, either one is vastly preferably to McCain and a huge improvement over the incompetent moron in office today. Hell, my cat is more competent than the moron in office today (and darn cute).

All the same, the Democratic Party is divided. Even some of my own family members are threatening to boycott the 2008 election if their chosen candidate doesn’t win the primary. That’s just crazy talk.

I am tired of the hyperbole that has been flying around from both sides of this election. People who fall for the cult of personality in politics make me nervous. It also distracts them from worshiping their true savior: Me.

There is only one solution to this mess: Appoint Laura Roslin to be president in 2008. I mean, she doesn’t feel the need to be elected (always coming into office through the back door), but she does a hell of a job all the same. Trust me, fighting off Cylons is going to be a piece of cake compared to repairing the damage created by eight years of Bush and Cheney.



The Current Administration: Jail time for everybody.

My Dinner with. . . Diana of Themyscira

StinkyLulu recently asked me to participate in a meme about which famous person, alive or dead, I would invite to dinner. StinkyLulu opted for Rita Moreno. It was a good choice. Of course, I was surprised he didn’t say “GayProf,” which would have made more sense. But, whatever. I think we all know who I would choose:

1. Pick a single person, past or present, in the film industry who you'd like to have dinner with, and tell us why you chose this person.

I believe that people demand a predictable GayProf. They don’t want a GayProf willy-nilly choosing unexpected people. So who else could I choose but Wonder Woman? Yes, I grant that she wasn't technically in the film industry. And, okay, she doesn’t really exist – allegedly.

Still, Wonder Woman (a.k.a Diana Prince, a.k.a. Princess Diana of the Amazons, a.k.a. the woman who is too often incorrectly identified as "Superwoman") is beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, swifter than Hermes, and stronger than Hercules. Plus, she really knows how to accessorize. Who wouldn’t want to have dinner with her?

2. Set the table for your dinner. What would you eat? Would it be in a home or at a restaurant? And what would you wear? Feel free to elaborate on the details.

Well, Amazon feasts tend to get a little peculiar. Apparently all the dinner guests are first expected to dress like deer:



Then they are hunted and “skinned”:



And, finally, baked into a pie:



Somehow, my kitchen just doesn’t seem big enough to accommodate an Amazon tart. Plus, I don't have a self-cleaning oven. I really hate to make things that I know will splatter.

So, I think my dinner would be much more simple. Given that Wonder Woman is a vegetarian (cannibal/deer references aside), the menu would be high on the soy protein, veggies and fruits. I’ll make darn sure, though, that all my fruit is remarkably fresh. Produce with blemishes seems to piss her off:



Maybe I can distract her with a good bottle of Rioja. Thank the gods that we know that Diana drinks wine. Just because you have to deflect bullets with your bracelets doesn’t mean that you should be concerned about drinking something that depresses neural activity and impairs motor skills.



3. List five thoughtful questions you would ask this person during dinner.


A. Diana, when you worked at NASA, who convinced you that hot-pants and a plunging blouse was the ideal outfit for work on spaceships?



B. While we are on the subject of work, you have had a hard time holding down a regular job. So far, you have been a nurse, a Navy yeomen, a secretary, the owner of a dress boutique, a guide at the U.N., an astronaut trainee, a U.N. special agent, an ambassador, a monarch, and now an agent for metahuman affairs. Have you ever thought about seeing a career counselor?



C. Has the spiking gas prices affected your use of the invisible jet? Also, don’t you think that it is environmentally dubious to just let it fly around the sky empty all day? I mean, it's bad enough that you don't carpool. Shouldn’t you at least be looking for an invisible hanger?



D. You once explained your unusual star-spangled short shorts:



After the Bush administration, do you ever feel dirty wearing your uniform? Maybe all the torture, war, death penalties, sexism, and disregard for social justice suggests that the U.S. is beyond hope of being reminded of its once lofty ideals.

I say that if you want to really send a message, opt for a wardrobe change. Maybe you should think about an outfit that is red and yellow with some columns?



E. Unlike Batman or Superman, you have constantly been shafted with bad writing and a total disregard to your origin material. First, they took away your superpowers and killed your boyfriend. Then they gave you back your powers and your boyfriend. Then they killed your boyfriend again and took away your secret identity. Now they have decided to split the difference so you lose your superpowers while you are under your secret identity. They call it a "reward from the gods" to experience mortality as Diana Prince. I call it a cheap plot device. Ugh.

Why don’t you get the same respect as Superman and Batman? Where is your movie and product tie ins?

You might be one of the “Big Three,” but clearly D.C. considers you the Chrysler of that metaphor. Superman and Batman are out driving Mustangs and Corvettes. You, on the other hand, have been saddled with a 1981 Plymouth Horizon. It’s not right, girl.

Bob Kane is one step away from canonization, but who mourns for William Moulton Marston? It’s because of the weird Amazon deer ritual thing that he created, isn’t it?


Okay, so maybe that wasn't so much of a question as a rant. Instead, let's ask another question.



E. Here you tell Hawkgirl that you will wait for her while she changes her clothes:



By "waiting," did you really mean "watching her undress?" Just what are your eyes so fixed upon? Her eyes are above her mouth, not her bellybutton. Come to think of it, you never did spend much time mourning Steve Trevor's many deaths. I am not sayin', I am just sayin'. . .




4. When all is said and done, select six bloggers to pass this Meme along to.

Anybody can play who wants to do so.

Enough Minorities, Minority Enough (Part II)

One of the things about being a minority faculty member that is not discussed a great deal is the amount of isolation that one experiences. Most scholars are usually at the whim of the job market when it comes to deciding where to live in the U.S. (or even earlier when they are at the whim of which university admits them to graduate school).

Because universities, particularly those in small towns, are often segregated from communities of color, becoming a professor frequently involves leaving the community where one grows up. Moreover, one’s audience in the academic world is most often composed of a white majority.

As I mentioned previously, humanities departments tend to use minority-research positions as the only means to build diversity. It is not at all unusual, therefore, that a Latino/a Studies scholar will also be the only Latino/a in the department (likewise for Afro-Am). In some small liberal arts colleges, that might even be the only one in the whole college division – or even the only person of color. An implicit (and sometimes explicit) expectation of these scholars is that they will work to make the few minority students on these campuses feel less isolated by becoming a universal mentor.

It is small wonder that so many minority scholars often report feeling exhausted and over-extended. I don’t think that it is an exaggeration to say that I did quadruple the number of campus talks that my colleagues did at my former Texas institution. It was almost always Latino or queer student groups that asked me to be part of their programming. Part of the reason that I got roped into this was because I have hard time saying “no” to anybody (Just ask my last few dates). Another major part, though, was that I felt a personal and political commitment to work with students who were trying to change the atmosphere on the campus. In a non-white majority state, it was shocking that minority students represented less than ten percent of that Texas institution’s student body.

Being the “only” (or at least the only willing to work with students (more on that in another post)) puts faculty in difficult spots. They are doing a solid amount of work by being engaged with students, but it is work that will not be valued for tenure and promotion at most research universities. It also makes fuzzy the line between an individual’s identity and their scholarly research.

Yet, faculty of color are frequently expected to become the central reference for every issue facing people of their same identity. Most people, who are secure in their own sense of identity and politics, try to take advantage of that powerful position to create change or support others pursuing change. If one isn’t careful, though, it can also really twist you psychologically.

I have seen some Latino/a colleagues become warped as they try meet other people’s expectations about Latinos. In their efforts to conform to the identity that is projected onto them, they contort themselves into a “Super Latino.” They lose sight of their research and simply become the "campus Latino," a ready-made spokesperson who exists only to give "the Latino point of view" to anybody who asks. One problem with this is that they often lose track of the fact that no individual could ever fulfill that role. There has never been a singular "Latino point of view." The Latino/a community is filled with contradictions and wide ranging experiences. These "Super Latinos," however, discount their own experiences that shows this to be true and become a self-proclaimed embodiment of the community.

In many ways, they are the academic version of the singing mariachis in the Taco Bell commercial (God, why? Why?? Please, no more.). They serve Anglos what they expect to see and are rewarded by being to asked to perform for them (Though they haven't yet mastered the talent of making the sound of a cracking whip with their wink). One can always find these individuals at conferences, roaming about in their size-six huaraches, with beans almost literally falling out of their pockets. They are rarely presenting their research, but are ready to critique everybody else's.



These same individuals attempt to enforce those standards of “Latinoness” onto their colleagues and (especially) their grad students. Because their career has devolved to merely being a projection of Latinoness, it is in their best interest to ensure that their version of Latinoness is validated. Some time ago, one Latino grad student shared a story with me about meeting a Latina professor at another university. When he demurred from claiming to be a modern “Aztec warrior” (Who knew people were still pushing that?), she questioned whether he was really committed to social justice or even Latino scholarship.

In my own case, I have certainly encountered a few Latino/a scholars who expected me to be apologetic or embarrassed for not having been raised in a bilingual household. Since my mother was Irish American, there was no Spanish language for her to pass on to us. My father’s parents succumbed to institutional pressures in New Mexico that demanded that they not pass on Spanish to their children. The U.S. then, as now, wrongly imagined being bilingual as a hindrance. Indeed, Latino/a children of my father’s generation were punished in New Mexico’s public schools for speaking Spanish (N.B. to America: being monolingual does not keep the U.S. unified as a nation. It’s just leaving us isolated and backward). My father, as a result, had only marginal Spanish skills to pass along to his own children.

When faced with this critique about childhood, I am not sure what people expecting me to do. Am I supposed to build a time machine, travel back to the time before World War II, and convince my grandparents to make another decision in my father’s upbringing? If I had that power, why not simply stop the United States’ 1846 invasion of New Mexico in the first place?

Obviously, knowledge of Spanish is critically important for my research on Latino/as in the U.S. I have had to learn it, though, in the same ways that non-Latinos have to learn it. It is also a struggle at times as I seem to have no natural aptitude for languages (We won’t even discuss my disastrous flirtation with Russian). I think of not being raised bilingual in much the same way as I think about having been circumcised. It wasn't really my choice or preference, but you've got work with what you got. No use in crying over things that are impossible to undo.

I am not apologetic about things that were beyond my control. Nor am I willing to concede that it somehow lessens my own sense of Latino/a identity. Indeed, the loss of Spanish fluency has been part of many Latino/as’ experiences in this nation. To paraphrase an old joke from Cheech Marin (who grew up speaking mostly English himself), Chicanos are Mexicans who get “B’s” in Spanish class.



My grandparents, like many Latino families, were promised that if they adopted English-only their children would not face discrimination in the U.S. It turns out that was a lie. My father faced numerous incidents of racism and, alas, he had only one language with which to curse about it. My grandfather frequently expressed his regret about and mourned his children's lack of Spanish skills. All of that was a "Latino" experience (but not the only Latino experience).

Latino/a and other scholars are frequently forced to conform to the expectations of their white colleagues about their identity. It is therefore disheartening when we see Latino/as imposing their own definitions of their identity onto one another. This only serves to contain and reduce Latino/a experiences and ignores the greater diversity of own community. It lessens our ability to understand the complexity of Latino/a responses and strategies for finding a place in the U.S.