October 17, 2008 – 11:42 am
On Sunday, September 7th 2008, Canada’s 39th Parliament was dissolved, and on October 14th Canada held an election. Many Americans were ignorant of these developments, despite the fact that we are their largest trading partner and that we share the longest undefended border on the globe.
The Canadian system is quite different than the American one. Ours is a parliamentary system involving multiple parties.
The night that the party leaders debated was also the same night as the American vice presidential debate. One would believe that what our potential leaders had to say would be of great importance to Canadians, and yet the American debate garnered more viewership. What does this say about Canadian belief in our government?
We have many of the same issues facing the American populace, including and not limited to racism, the economy, homophobia, healthcare, abortion, sexism, etc., and yet this was one of the lowest voter turnouts ever recorded. According to Yahoo News, only 59.1% of eligible voters participated. Read More »
October 10, 2008 – 5:40 am
As the McCain campaign’s desperate attempts to paint Barack Obama as all but a “domestic terrorist” have elicited cries of “kill him!” from the lynch mo… *cough* the adoring crowd, McCain’s own running mate refuses to hold a press conference, leaving questions about her documented ties to a secessionist party and a witch-hunting wacko unanswered.
But who are we, the great unwashed, to ask anything of Her Majesty Sarah Palin? What, you think we’re in some kind of a democracy, pal? And anyway, whatcha bein’ mean to a nice white hockey mom for? Look over there instead! It’s a BLACK MAN who thinks he’s better than you!
John McCain, formerly a respectable politician, has sucker-punched the remains of his dignity, dragged them out back, blasted them with a shotgun, stomped them into the ground, and fed them to the wild hogs.
Buoyed up by the “young and plucky” governor from Alaska, “plucky” enough to hear death threats against her opponent and not bat her mascara, this campaign has entered into its most surreal phase yet. Read More »
September 29, 2008 – 8:44 am
Last week, CNN reporter Campbell Brown called on Republicans to stop being sexist and expose Sarah Palin to the media for open questioning. What Campbell is calling sexism is the benefit of protection that docile white women receive from white men for performing their gender. Unlike Hillary Clinton, who stood firmly for women’s rights and was clearly an autonomous being, Palin stands for regressive policies that remove agency from women, thus affirming patriarchy.
Prior to the introduction of black women to America, white women were openly despised. In the theocratic culture women were blamed for the sins of man. It was the black female slave that resulted in the elevation of white womanhood, by allowing for another level of hierarchy. As long as white women supported white men, their lot in life was improved.
With the suffragette movement white women were again attacked by white men. The desire to vote and have a say in how the country was run was deemed threatening to patriarchy. They were called harridans, their femininity was questioned, and they were socially maligned.
Each time white women seek to achieve social equality with white men they are subject to slut-shaming and social discipline. As long as they are willing to accept their place in the social hierarchy, which is solidly beneath white male headship they are “protected” beings. This fragile wilting flower exists to uphold white male hegemony.
It may seem that Palin is thwarting the delicate flower ideology because she is seeking a position of power; however what must be understood is that her power is clearly subject to male control, whereas Clinton was seeking control in her own right.
It’s obvious by now that Palin’s job is to say what McCain tells her to say. Read More »
September 13, 2008 – 12:30 pm
John McCain is white; conversely Barack Obama is African American. It is an obvious but important statement to make.
McCain’s whiteness is often ignored in the mainstream press. Conversations about race and the election centre on Obamas blackness as though the whiteness of McCain is an insignificant racial fact. The galvanizing power of whiteness is clearly obvious from watching the Republican National Convention where the delegates were mostly white. Even the protesters were white.
McCains whiteness is normalized and invisible because white hegemony thrives on invisibility. The fact that his body is just as problematic as Obama’s black body will not be acknowledged, because to do so would force a conversation about the ways in which white power is maintained.
Discursively there is the proposition that we live in a post racial world but this is an impossibility because we continue to fail to discuss whiteness. We react to statements like, “Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity.” which has been attributed to Rep. Westmoreland by The Hill as racist against blacks. But what does it say about whiteness? Read More »
September 2, 2008 – 2:46 am
By now, many of us are aware that Bristol Palin, Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter, is pregnant. You probably have listened to the media pundits trying to spin this in several different directions.
Some are gleefully rubbing their hands together, expressing overwhelming euphoria. Senator Obama issued a statement saying, “I think people’s families are off-limits, and people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor or her potential performance as a vice president.” He specifically denied that his campaign had anything to do with the information becoming public.
Most of the debate on Bristol’s pregnancy deals with whether or not her mother Sarah is responsible, because of her public insistence that abstinence education is what we need to be teaching our children. Some see this as proof that preaching abstinence to our children is a failure, as clearly this approach did not stop the Alaskan governor’s daughter from deciding on her own to engage in sex. Others feel that Sarah Palin is not responsible, because a parent can only control a child’s behaviour to a certain degree. Some claim that the whole debate is irrelevant because it is a family matter. Here you have three opinions on one pregnancy.
It astounds me that people believe that they have the right to even enter into discussion on what another does with their body. It seems that in our post-feminist world, women’s reproduction is still something that is open for social discipline. I find it interesting that no one considered for a moment, that pregnancy could have been an active choice for this young woman. Immediately we assume that birth control failed, that she lacked morals, or that her closed-minded harpy of a mother did not engage in conversations with her regarding sex and sexuality. We claim to acknowledge the autonomy of women and yet motherhood as a conscious decision never once entered the debate.
Yet motherhood cannot be considered an entirely active decision simply because the female body is policed. Though we claim to honour motherhood in this society the opposite is quite true. Read More »
August 31, 2008 – 9:22 am
On Friday, McCain announced his choice for a running mate. He chose Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
According to CNN’s John King, McCain met with Palin only one time before deciding that she was his pick, leading one to believe that he chose her because he believed that one vagina could substitute for another. Clearly his aim was to appeal to the disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters. Some women will embrace vagina solidarity, and support McCain because he chose a colluder as his running mate, and others will be enraged because Palins political positions are resoundingly anti-woman.
Palin is not a feminist, though she has benefited from feminist organizing. Were it not for generations of struggle, she would not have the ability to vote, much less run for political office. The Feminine Mystique was written with women like her in mind, and yet if she were elected her decisions would lead to a reduction of women’s rights. The irony of this has not been lost to me, nor I suspect on many women who today are asking how a pro-life woman could possibly represent women’s needs.
Palin is not only staunchly pro-life, she is pro-death penalty, and anti-gay marriage. No matter how many images we see of her shooting guns, or rocking her newborn, her record of conservatism is at odds with everything that feminism stands for. Sarah Palin is not only anti-feminist, she is, as I already mentioned, anti-woman.
Now, the sexist attacks have started against her already. Read More »
August 25, 2008 – 11:16 am
I must admit my first reaction to Joe Biden being chosen as Obama’s running mate was “meh.”
I’ve had running debates over Joe Biden with a friend for most of the primary season. She loves him, and, well, my feeling was as above. She never managed to convince me, mostly because her arguments were simply that “He’s so intelligent.” Compared to whom? Read More »
August 25, 2008 – 10:44 am
In the current American presidential election, race has become a pivotal issue. Obama is the first African American man to have a legitimate chance of becoming president of the United States. Blacks and whites vacillate between a celebratory end of the racial divide, and the further entrenchment of racial hostilities.
The post racial world debate has gone mainstream, giving rise to conversations that are long overdue.
While we are continually refining the discourse surrounding race, what has become patently obvious is that the term people of colour stands for black. The United States has a historical legacy of black disenfranchisement that clearly needs to be addressed. Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, and the rape and sterilization of black women have left a lasting legacy on the social psyche; however this should not erase other bodies of colour from our social conversations. Neither of the candidates, nor mainstream media has made an attempt to specifically address the needs of Muslims, Native Americans, Asians, or Latinos. The aforementioned are the bodies that have become erased. Colour cannot and should not be solely represented by blacks.
Though Muslims are not all of colour they constitute a group of people that have come under extreme social attack since 911. Read More »
August 20, 2008 – 8:22 am
“Kischan you Asian!” is the phrase most likely to be heard during a sixth form “Asians against Caucasians” football match at my fairly innocuous school located just outside of London. Far from being a racist attack on Kischan, a good friend of mine, the word “Asian” merely replaces the need for a swear word which would in all likelihood cause more offence.
“Out of the way white boy!” is the second phrase most likely heard. Likewise the use of skin colour in any Asian’s verbal abuse is of no consequence. Read More »
August 16, 2008 – 10:27 am
When challenged to use the word horticulture in a sentence the writer, poet, and critic Dorothy Parker retorted, “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.”
Parker, the acid-tongued queen of New York wrote in Vanity Fair and The New Yorker in the early turbulent part of the 20th century, commenting on everything from politics to literature, before eventually writing screenplays in Hollywood. In the early part of the 21st century beset by the war on terror, oil hitting $135 barrel, and global warming, New York has…Carrie Bradshaw.
Now, the “Sex and the City” series at least played like a well-written article: sharp, rude, forgettable and perfectly made to fit the 30-minute format. The movie is too long to be an episode and too short to reflect the achievements of a series.
Four years on from the series’ end Bradshaw is no longer writing for the New York Observer, but plying her trade with “maginatively” titled books like Menhattan. Get it? Because, in this film that’s as good as it gets. Read More »
