Month: May 2012

The Evolution Man

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by Doctor Science

liberal japonicus got there first, but I’ll just add something about what I think are the political calculations involved in Obama’s “coming out” in favor of marriage equality. In particular, I suspect it’s a tactic designed to appeal to a subset of big donors, especially in the financial industry.

In the first place, no way were Biden’s remarks a “gaffe”, that was a trial balloon — which is part of Biden’s job, of course. I’m betting Obama’s announcement and its timing have been planned for weeks if not months.

The-balloon-Prendergast

The Balloon, by Maurice Prendergast. The setting is said to be Central Park in New York City.

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What the president said thread

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by liberal japonicus Well, the video is here at the Maddow blog. Some suggestions that Obama's hand was forced when Biden put made this gaffe. Some grafs CNN’s Jessica Yellin asked whether Obama was trying to “have it both ways before an election” and whether he should “stop dancing around the issue.” ABC’s Jake Tapper … Read more

Your what’s in a name Friday open thread

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by liberal japonicus While in the US, there is an apparent cultural taboo about naming sports teams after business concerns (though stadiums connected with the team seem to be fair game, as Network Associates Coliseum, home of the Oakland Raiders and Qualcomm Stadium, home of the San Diego Chargers suggests), in Japan, there is no … Read more

Why, bless their hearts

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by Doctor Science

Following links from The Warmth of Other Suns, I’m currently reading Caste and Class in a Southern Town by John Dollard (first published 1937). Dollard was a Yale sociologist with a strong interest in Freudian psychology who did “field work” in Indianola, Mississippi, in the mid-1930s. Dollard was mostly interested in a “study of the Negro mind” by interviewing a variety of black informants of all classes. He also talked to many white people who lived in town, but confessed that he knew very little about the lower-class whites who were mostly rural.

AVisitFromTheOldMistress-WinslowHomer700

A visit from the old mistress, by Winslow Homer. Note that one of the black women is still seated, which would have been a great mistake in the slavery days — and would be again, in the Jim Crow era.

Cut for multiple videos.

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