EGAD
or, (de)mythologizing the fetish of placewherein our unlikely hero composes a series of
empirical geo-anthrospatial dispatches, aimed at establishing just where
he is, and perhaps even why it matters
Here's a very hopeful sign: after yesterday's special election, in which Democrat Travis Childers picked up a supposedly safe Republican House seat (it voted 62% for Bush in 2004), for the first time since 1995 there are now fewer than 200 Republicans in the House of Representatives. It's increasingly looking like Bush has run the Republican party and the Conservative brand so firmly into the ground, that we really are looking at a once-in-a-generation political realignment taking place.
Let the House-cleaning continue!
Not ScavHunt related, but I'm passing this along because it is just that funny:
There is now a whole blog devoted to things younger than John McCain.
Like Kate Sheppard, I've been pleased to notice that, on the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, there has been some attention given to his unfinished and deeply radical vision. Most of the time, it gets largely papered over in favor of a nice, safe vision of white and black children playing together. I recommend reading this from TAPPED:
America began perverting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s message in the spring of 1963. Truthfully, you could put the date just about anywhere along the earlier timeline of his brief public life, too. But I mark it at the Birmingham movement's climax, right about when Northern whites needed a more distant, less personally threatening change-maker to juxtapose with the black rabble rousers clambering into their own backyards. That's when Time politely dubbed him the "Negroes' inspirational leader," as Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff point out in their excellent book Race Beat.Up until then, King had been eyed as a hasty radical out to push Southern communities past their breaking point -- which was a far more accurate understanding of the man's mission. His "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is in fact a blunt rejection of letting the establishment set the terms of social change. "The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation," he wrote, later adding, "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
Overhead from another lab in passing: "If I'm going to vote for a 70-year-old dude, it'd better be Dr. Love."
Almost no matter where you are, if you're reading this there's a pretty good chance that your state's presidential primary or caucus is tomorrow. I urge you all to attend. Arrive early, record turnout is expected.