{ Monthly Archives }

February 2007

I Love a Parade

Source: Orcinus
Sara Robinson tosses out what I think is a great idea: a Liberal Pride Parade, on the model of the Gay Pride Parades that are now held around the world and have become, in many cities, civic events that cut across gender divides, or even, in some cases, significant tourist attractions. She points out the small scale and diffuse sense of purpose with which those parades started, and the much more important purposes they’ve come to serve.

It was a street party; but it also put the community’s growing institutional strength on display each year, established a forum for the sharing of energy and ideas, and educated millions of straight people (who, in turn, educated others). Doing this year after year gave local gay communities a reason to get organized, and stay organized — so when trouble came calling, they could organize to fight it without a moment of confusion or hesitation.

Sara asks whether it’s time to adopt the idea and start holding Liberal Pride celebrations nationally. And she lists a number of benefits—the chance to assert our strength in the marketplace of ideas; the fact that such an event will build a widespread sense of community, even in places where liberals are a minority or have been driven underground by the chest-thumping bullies on the other side; the chance to take back a noble name that our enemies have tried to demean by using it as a pejorative; the opportunity to challenge companies widely supported by liberals, e.g. Whole Foods and REI, to return the favor with event sponsorships; and, most importantly, increasing our security at a time when the right wing is ratcheting its eliminationist rhetoric way past any responsible level. But the benefit that I spark to most is the one that Sara labels “Joy and Hope”.

These events should be massively, wildly, unapologetically fun; and fabulous PR for the cause. Without the Seriousness of Purpose required by a demonstration, a Liberal Pride festival can just loosen up and relax. It’s a celebration of all things progressive — and we do it right, the Biggest Asshole Rule kicks in when everyone in town realizes that compared to us, the conservatives are bunch of uptight, self-righteous stuffed shirts who couldn’t throw a decent party if Reagan’s resurrection depended on it.

And where there’s fun, there’s hope. People, we have gotten pretty dismal over the past 30 years. And I hate to break it to you — but, as desperate as this nation is, nobody follows pessimists. We are not going to get our political mojo back for good until we remember how to find joy in this work again. Pride celebrations could be a place to start rediscovering the lost art of raising hell and having fun.

And she points out that such celebrations, divested of any action agenda, can help restore the balance between work and play.

Having an annual just-for-fun day would enable us to offload this social function from demonstrations and protests. It seems like a lot of people turn out for demonstrations because they enjoy the street party, and the sense of connection with the larger left community. Unfortunately, … this diverse and celebratory atmosphere usually works against the intent of the protest, too often diluting the focus and message into utter incoherence and making any kind of real paradigm-busting direct action damned near impossible.

If we have annual events specifically dedicated [to] diversity and celebration and scratching that street party itch, it might liberate our protests to evolve into other more creative, focused, and effective forms. Like King Bertram, when we work, we’ll really work. And when we play, we’ll really play. Both will be vastly better when we stop trying to conflate the two into the same events.

The comments on Sara’s post are generally supportive. Several comments ask when such an event might be held, and the general sentiment seems to focus on Labor Day. My choice for a Liberal Pride parade would be Sunday, the day before Labor Day. That would associate the celebration with the international labor movement, but it would be on a day that typically has no major civic celebrations associated with it. If you like the idea, hustle on over to the Orcinus post and add your two cents worth.

2007 02 25

clip
observe the passing scene
take part
vote Democratic

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Once Upon a Time (and again, and again, and again…)

An incredibly powerful post by Arthur Silber weaves together a bunch of narratives - about Iraq, about Tim Hardaway, about liberals and conservatives, about freaks and normals, and delivers an emotionally wrenching and totally convincing revelation about who I am, who he is, and who those others are whom I observe and work so dutifully to understand. It’s impossible to abstract or pull a suitably revealing quote; read it, follow the links. Then look into a mirror.

2007 02 17

browse the web

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Intelligent and Smart

David ShenkOur friend David Shenk has a new blog which will feed into the book he’s writing on genius. The blog is good; I think David has found a subject that engages his own genius with more immediacy than the subjects of his previous books, on chess, and Alzheimer’s Disease, and information overload. Those were good, but they were workmanlike good; I think this one is likely to turn out a little quirkier and more personal.

David’s current post is on IQ; he does a cogent and well-deserved smackdown of Charles Murray’s skanky recent WSJ op-ed, in which Murray basically suggests that we might as well write off stupid kids.

IQ is weird. There’s a lot of data, but I have the uncomfortable feeling that it may not have been collected on the right populations, and that the Intelligence Quotient, despite its obvious success at correlating whatever it is that its instruments measure with various metrics of success in life, may not, in fact, measure anything particularly significant or maybe even real.

My IQ was measured when I was a kid in grammar school; my parents were probably interested in figuring out what to do about my underachievement in school (or perhaps, as Joan points out, determining whether I was, in fact, an underachiever or just a stupid kid.) I don’t know what it was, except that it was high enough to place me solidly in the underachiever category. Joan doesn’t think her IQ was ever measured. If Alex and Kate had their IQs measured somewhere along the way, nobody told us, or we didn’t think it important enough to note or remember.

I have two problems with IQ. First, I think that most people are a lot smarter than their IQ scores would indicate; my experience with people at the Brew House, for example, convinces me that most of them are smarter than they would appear to be on an IQ test, and that they’re smarter than their teachers and parents told them they are, and they’re smarter than they think they are. I’m not sure what I mean by smart, but it has a lot to do with being articulate, imaginative, original, and more than a little clever.

My second problem with IQ is that I believe that the data on how IQ can change with time is probably a lot more suspect than other data describing the IQ story. I know that I’m a lot smarter now than I was back when I was determined to be something other than a stupid kid, and if my IQ score failed to measure that increase in smartness, then it couldn’t be measuring anything very important. And it’s not just increases in smarts. A lot of the kids I went to high school with had IQs as high or higher than mine; that’s the kind of school it was. But a striking number of them, on the evidence of our 50th reunion, have become pretty stupid in the years since then. Again, that’s based on their lack of imagination, curiosity, original thinking, and ability to penetrate the kind of vapid rhetoric they get from their political leaders.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that IQ, whatever it is, is different from smart, whatever that is. And smart is more important.

2007 02 01

make room for my friends
respect rationality

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