Inspiration Porn
There is a lovely TED talk in the weekly email. The title is “I’m not your inspiration, thank you very much.” The speaker, Stella Young, delivers the message while sitting in a wheelchair.
The concept here is that *disabled* people are people. They are not here to inspire you. They are not intended to show you how bad your life could be, so you should appreciate what you have.
Ms. Young has a talent for words. She says some things much better than this slack blogger. TED talks include a transcript, aka the lazy bloggers friend. Laziness is not considered a disability.
…these images, there are lots of them out there, they are what we call inspiration porn. And I use the term porn deliberately, because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. So in this case, we’re objectifying disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. … I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve been approached by strangers wanting to tell me that they think I’m brave or inspirational, and this was long before my work had any kind of public profile. They were just kind of congratulating me for managing to get up in the morning and remember my own name. And it is objectifying. These images, those images objectify disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. They are there so that you can look at them and think that things aren’t so bad for you, to put your worries into perspective. …
I really think that this lie that we’ve been sold about disability is the greatest injustice. It makes life hard for us. And that quote, “The only disability in life is a bad attitude,” the reason that that’s bullshit is because it’s just not true, because of the social model of disability. No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. Never. (Laughter) (Applause) Smiling at a television screen isn’t going to make closed captions appear for people who are deaf. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshop and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into braille. It’s just not going to happen.”
EMIT (Educate Motivate Inspire Tripe) is in your inbox everyday. Yesterday, this tweet sent PG down the rabbit hole. @chescaleigh “There’s a nasty rumor about racism, and it needs to die. Thankfully @the1janitor is here to help (via @Upworthy)” There was a link to Here’s What Morgan Freeman Had To Say About Racism, And Here’s A Guy Explaining What He Got Wrong.
The intro to the video said, among other things, “Every black person is going to have a different opinion/experience/perspective when it comes to racism.” This sentence got PG in a twitter exchange.
@chamblee54 @chescaleigh @the1janitor @Upworthy the intro said every black person has a different take on racism. so does every white person
@chescaleigh @chamblee54 didn’t deny that. but a white person’s perspective on racism lacks experiencing racism. so that’s a very different convo
@chamblee54 @chescaleigh i agree and disagree ~ white ppl experience prejudice ~ the semantics get in the way of understanding other people
@chescaleigh @chamblee54 white ppl experience prejudice not racism. They’re both shitty but not the same. Sounds like u need to read the link I posted
@chamblee54 @chescaleigh have glanced over article ~ re:#2, have been the only pwoc ~ i could go point by point, and might later on blog ~ thx 4 reply
PG saw the Upworthy video. A young man said that people need to talk about racism. He said nothing about listening. A poster for the University of Alabama football team was in the background. The exploitation of young black men, by college athletics, was not mentioned.
The article @chescaleigh linked to was 18 Things White People Should Know/Do Before Discussing Racism. It is poorly written, and full of logical fallacies. Here is item 3. “3. Oprah’s success does not mean the end of racism. The singular success of a Black man or woman (i.e. Oprah, or Tiger Woods, or President Obama) is never a valid argument against the existence of racism. By this logic, the success of Frederick Douglas or Amanda America Dickson during the 19th century would be grounds for disproving slavery.”
There was one last tweet. It was deleted a little while after being sent. Sometimes, it is best to use discretion. @chamblee54 @chescaleigh I read “18 things…” it was not very helpful.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. UPDATE: Here is the reply post, The Problem with 18 things. UPDATE: Stella Young died December 7, 2014.
Eagerness To Label
During the Booknotes chat with Howard Zinn, someone compares Mr. Zinn to Noah Chomsky and Michael Parenti. PG had never heard of Dr. Parenti. There was a Booknotes chat, to promote The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome.
There is a lot about Roman history that PG does not know. It seems as though the death of Julius Caesar marks the end of an ara. Arguably, it was downhill from then on. There were many people who were not happy with Mr. Caesar, and had reasons to kill him.
Mr. Parenti was critical of the American government being focused on communism during the cold war. This leads to the best quote of the show.
LAMB (Brian Lamb, host of Booknotes) : I was on a Web site … they defined you as a Marxist. Is that fair? PARENTI: Well, what I don`t like about the term is, I write about all sorts of things that Marx — you know, that`s what somebody said about “Inventing Reality.” Is this a Marxist analysis of the media? The eagerness to label something puts a closure on thought. And I said, Well, you know, I don`t know what Karl Marx had to say about U.S. corporate media in the 20th century. In fact, he didn`t have a word to say about it. He`s been dead for 100 years. So I came to these things on my own. So I don`t use — I don`t use labels of that sort.
There are two more dandy quotes. If you have an hour to spare, the entire show is worthwhile.
PARENTI: Could I read a quote by Joseph Schumpeter? LAMB: Sure. Who was? PARENTI: Joseph Schumpeter was a conservative economist who was read widely in the first half of the last century. … and he said, “Rome was governed by that policy which pretends to aspire to peace but unerringly generates war, the policy of continual preparation for war, the policy of meddlesome interventionism. There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome`s allies. And if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome`s duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs.” ….
LAMB: So where does that phrase, “as pure as Caesar`s wife,” come from PARENTI: It`s — it`s — that`s true. It`s only half the phrase. It really should be “One must be.” If you`re Caesar`s wife, you must be pure, in other words. And his statement was, I`m divorcing her. He maintained, No, no, she had no affair with Claudius. But Caesar`s wife must be above suspicion, so Caesar`s wife must be pure. Doesn`t mean Caesar`s wife was pure. You know, it`s a misphrasing, in a way.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
A Summer Memory
It is 3:15 am in a midtown office building. PG is spending his dinner break in an unused cubicle, almost out of speaker range for the break room tv. A flourescent light fixture is hard at work, playing an essential role in the drama to follow.
Thirty seven years ago, Truman Capote spoke in Athens GA. Before taking questions, he read “A Christmas Memory.” There was a line, with the words oh, and carnage, that got a big laugh.
Wednesday afternoon had been the first time to turn on the window AC unit. Outside, it was over ninety, with the Georgia humidity doubling the effect. The next two months will be miserable.
During this early morning dinner, after the first day of summer megaheat, PG is reading “A Christmas Memory”. An old lady, and the seven year old cousin she calls Buddy, are going to make fruitcakes. They need to buy supplies.
The previous summer, someone gave Buddy a penny for every 25 flies he killed. “Oh, the carnage of August: the flies that flew to heaven”. It is now 3:28. In two minutes, it will be time to go back to work. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The fruitcake lady was the aunt of Truman Capote. This is a repost.
Rebellion Against G-d
A popular blogger put up a post yesterday, We can’t end ‘rape culture’ if we don’t end hook-up culture. Now, RC/HUC are dodgy concepts. Just last week, PG saw a post about RC, that started “If you are a man, you are part of rape culture.”
On the other hand, the “blogger, writer, and professional sayer of truths” has a wide audience. Any trickle down to this slack blog would be appreciated. The BWPST also answers comments, using a psuedonym. He is easily provoked. If you don’t want trolls to start trouble, then you should not answer them. Some people are easily amused.
The fun started when BWPST said “Just like every other problem in the culture, it’s ALL about rebellion against God.” When a Jesus worshiper talks about G-d, he means something very different from PG. One of the few things that PG believes is G-d does not write books. PG made a comment, and the fun began. Entertainment is not what it used to be.
chamblee54 “Just like every other problem in the culture, it’s ALL about rebellion against God.” The first commandment says to hold no other G-d before you. This does not mean a book. When you declare a book, compiled by a Catholic committee, to be the word of G-d, then you are violating this common sense rule. Violating this rule causes problems. Mo, are you Matt?
Mo @ chamblee54 “The first commandment says to hold no other G-d before you. This does not mean a book.”What on EARTH are you talking about? “When you declare a book, compiled by a Catholic committee, to be the word of G-d, then you are violating this common sense rule.” I haven’t declared anything, especially anything regarding Catholicism, as I am not Catholic. Show me where I mentioned anything about Catholicism? Nor did Catholics compile the Word of God. Take your nonsense elsewhere. I have zero time or patience for it.
chamblee54 Mo, are you Matt?
Mo @ chamblee54 “Mo, are you Matt?” How about addressing the POINTS I made to you and the questions I asked? Another troll, capable of nothing but repeating the same nonsense over and over.
chamblee54 Ok, I don’t know where, or if, you said anything about the Roman Catholic Church. My point was about the Bible. The canon of the Christian church was compiled by a group of men. I might be mistaken on this point, but I believe they were Catholics. Whether of not the compilers of the bible were, or were not, Catholic is beside the point I want to make. That point is that the bible is not the word of G-d. G-d does not write books. When you confuse a book for G-d, you violate the first commandment. “How about addressing the POINTS I made to you and the questions I asked?” “Take your nonsense elsewhere. I have zero time or patience for it.” This is a contradiction.
Mo @ chamblee54 “Ok, I don’t know where, or if, you said anything about the Roman Catholic Church.” Okay, then your comment has no point since that’s what’s your crabbing about. Go troll someone else. Do not waste my time.
That is the end of the dialog. There is not much more to say. If you want to skip ahead, and look at the pictures (from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”,) you probably won’t miss much.
It is about the idea of “rebellion against G-d.” When you assume that a book contains the “word of G-d,” and use that assumption as a weapon to attack other people, that would seem to be “rebellion against G-d.” When you believe that a soveriegn deity is interested in your petty quarells, that might be “rebellion against G-d.” When you spend your time arguing with “trolls,” that might not be “rebellion against G-d,” but it looks foolish to those who don’t share your beliefs. Maybe it is time for both “Mo” and chamblee54 to find a better use of the talent that somebody gave them.
Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present, spent an hour talking on Booknotes. This is a C-SPAN show, with author interviews. The show aired March 12, 2000. Later that night was a show about the 2000 election, featuring Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. The role Mr. Nader would play in the November election was unimaginable in March. Life is bad fiction.
The first serious job Mr. Zinn had was World War II. He served in the Air Force. Towards the end of the war, “we bombed a little French town on the Atlantic coast called Royon… `We’re not going to use regular demolition bombs. We have something new. We w–you’re going–instead of dropping our usual 12 500-pound demolition bombs, you’re going to drop 30 100-pound canisters of jel—jellied gasoline.’ It was napalm–the first use of napalm in the European theater.”
Later, Mr. Zinn thought about it all. “And it didn’t s–the–the thing is you’d bomb from 30,000 feet. You don’t see what’s happening down there. You don’t see people suffering. You don’t see people burning. You don’t see limbs falling. You–you just see little flashes in the–in the d–in the dark, you know. And—and you go back, and you’re debriefed and you don’t think about it. And it’s horrifying.
Later–only later did I begin to think about it, and I was horrified by what I had done, and I’m still horrified by what I did. But I think that had an effect on my thinking about war, because here I was in the best of wars. And I believed it was the best of wars because I volunteered for it. A war against fascism? I mean, how could you find a more bestial enemy? And yet it’s a–it complicated the war for me. It complicated the morality of the war, and it made me begin to think that war itself is evil. Even when it starts with good cause, even when the enemy is horrible, that there’s something about war, especially in our time when war inevitably involves indiscriminate killing–and I came to the conclusion that war simply cannot be accepted morally as a solution for whatever problems are in the world.
Whatever tyranny, whatever borders are crossed, whatever problems there are, somehow human ingenuity has to find a way to deal with that without the indiscriminate killing that war involves.”
Brian Lamb is the host of Booknotes. He speaks non theatrically, often with questions that are very different from the narrative presented by the author. After this talk about war, the question was “LAMB: What would you have done had you been president and those bombs were dropped on Pearl Harbor? Mr. ZINN: That’s the toughest question I’ve ever faced. I … And–and I confess, I–I–I haven’t worked out an alternative scenario.
PHOTUS is known for taking a non-heroic view of our history. Regarding the US Constitution, “When they set up the new government, when they set up the new Constitution, I mean, they set up a strong, central government which will be able to legislate on behalf of bondholders and slaveholders and manufacturers and Western land speculators.”
Mr. Zinn does not discuss The War Between The States on this show. (PG has not read PHOTUS, and does not know how WBTS is treated.) This was a case where the central government was favoring the industrial interests, at the expense of the agricultural interests. How much of that conflict was economic, with abolition serving as a moral fig leaf?
After the war, Mr. Zinn went back to school. A job appeared at Spelman College, and he worked there seven years. After that, he taught at Boston University for 24 years. His next door neighbor was five year old Matt Damon, who later read the audiobook version of PHOTUS.
There is one more bit of amusement from the transcript. Mr. ZINN:`For the United States to step forward as a defender of helpless countries matched its image in American high school history books but not its record in world affairs. It had opposed the Haitian revolution for independence from France at the start of the 19th century. It had instituted a war with Mexico and taken half the country. It had pretended to help Cuba win freedom from Spain and then planted itself in Cuba with a military base, investments and rights of intervention. It had seized Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam and fought a brutal war to subjugate the Filipinos. It had opened Japan to its trade with gunboats and threats. It had declared an open-door policy in China as a means of assuring the United States would have opportunities equal to other imperial powers in exploiting China. It had sent troops to Peking with other nations to assert Western supremacy in China and kept them from–kept them for over 30 years.’ LAMB: There’s a lot more in here about Colombia and Haiti and Nicaragua. Is this country at–this sounds like I’m–I’m arguing here, but has this country done anything right?
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress
Uganda Be Kidding Me
Three weeks ago, PG found “Uganda Be Kidding Me” at the Chamblee library. It is due back today. The bookmark is on page 82. This book is not worth checking out a second time.
Last fall, a copy of My Horizontal Life appeared. It was a fun book. The comic boasting about alcoholic excess was fun to read. If you don’t think about the squalid reality behind the jokes, you enjoy it.
Apparently enough people enjoy the Handler schtick to make money. Some publisher gave her a contract, and needed product for the pipeline. Miss Handler went on a animal watching trip to Africa. Someone thought this would be a good excuse for a book. They were mistaken.
The routine is getting old. Maybe PG is just a retired drunk, lacking a sense of humor. At any rate, the book does not work. Alcoholic jokes are not funny to third parties.
Last fall, Miss Handler made an Atlanta stop on her book tour. One appearance was in a L5P bookstore. The facility was about the size of an SUV. There was a line of a hundred people waiting to get in. The book buyers probably need a shoehorn to get in that small a space with Miss Handler, her ego, and a cash register. Maybe Miss Handler lost some of the weight she gained in Africa.
During this year’s oscars, someone at Huffington Post let Miss Handler use their twitter account. The result was “Chelsea Handler slammed for Lupita Oscar tweet” Miss Handler lives the adage that there is no bad publicity. The two tweets that got the most attention: “Congratulations #lupita To pre order #ugandabekiddingme go to http://amzn.to/1pS4qpG #Oscars.” “Congratulations #12yearsaslave Go to Africa or buy #ugandabekiddingme http://amzn.to/1de1ka9 #aheadofthecurve #Oscars.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress
Mrs. Dora Stainers
Some pictures have longer captions than others. Shorpy published one with a mouthful.
Mrs. Dora Stainers, 562 1/2 Decatur St. 39 years old. Began spinning in an Atlanta mill at 7 years, and is in this mill work for 32 years. Only 4 days of schooling in her life. Began at 20 cents a day. The most she ever made was $1.75 a day & now she is earning $1 a day when she works. She is looking for a job. Her little girl Lilie is the same age she was when she started work, but the mother says, “I ain’t goin to put her to work if I can help it. I’m goin’ to give her as much education as I can so she can do better than I did.” Mrs. Stainers is a woman of exceptional ability considering her training. In contrast to her is another woman (this name was withheld) who has been working in Atlanta mills for 10 yrs. She began at 10 yrs. of age, married at 12, broke down, and may never be able to work again. Her mother went to work in the cotton mill very young. Location: Atlanta, Georgia.
The photographs of Mrs. Stainers were made in March, 1915. The photographer was Lewis Wickes Hine. “Working as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), Lewis Hine (1874-1940) documented working and living conditions of children in the United States between 1908 and 1924.” “In 1954 the Library received the records of the National Child Labor Committee, including approximately 5,000 photographs and 350 negatives by Lewis Hine. In giving the collection to the Library, the NCLC stipulated that “There will be no restrictions of any kind on your use of the Hine photographic material.”
The house that Mrs. Stainer lived in is long gone. 562 1/2 Decatur Street is across the railroad tracks from the Fulton Cotton Mill. With real estate agents demanding names for all neighborhoods, the area is known as the Old Fourth Ward. At 552 Decatur Street is A & R Welding.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Buying Water In Kenya
One part of life taken for granted in America is indoor running water. You turn on a faucet, and get what you need. There are concerns about the future, and fussing about water rights. In Kenya, a person walks to a water vendor to buy a 20 liter supply of water.
Kibera is euphemistically known as an informal settlement. It is located in Nairobi, Kenya. A land mass 75% the size of New York’s Central Park is home to a lot of people. “More accurately, Kibera turned into an unauthorized settlement after Kenya gained independence in 1963 and the new government made illegal certain forms of housing. Nonetheless, landlords rented out cheap properties to impoverished Kenyans who could not afford legal housing, and has since earned the reputation of being one of Africa’s largest urban slums. Importantly, the precise population of Kibera is hotly debated and remains uncertain. Some estimates are as high as one million and others as low as 170,000 (e.g, 2009 Kenya Census). Estimates are difficult because Kibera is made up of residents who are extremely mobile, and often prefer to remain in the shadow of the law.”
Very few of the residents have running water. Every day, people have to carry a 20 liter jerrycan to a water vendor. Often, there are shortages, and the price goes up. The water is often contaminated. There are water mafias, which create artificial shortages to boost the price.
“If the root of water problems in Kibera centered on price and supply it may be more manageable, but issues of water quality substantially complicate clean water delivery systems. Most water pipes in Kibera run above ground and are made of plastic (due to issues with theft of steel pipes), which are highly fragile and easily manipulated. These pipes will often crack or break (either accidentally due to traffic or intentionally by competitors), allowing sewage to seep into drinking water. Indeed, water sources that are generally clean can easily become contaminated without notice. This is reflected in public health data—infant mortality rates and bloody diarrheal infection rates in Kibera are more than three times the average of Nairobi as a whole (UNDP 2006).”
Stanford University is setting up a program to use mobile telephones to help people find water. Evidently, mobile phones are more common is the slums of Kenya than clean water. The program is called M-Maji, which is Swahili for mobile water. A database will have information about who has water for sale, the price, and the quality of the water. This information will be available to water users via mobile phones.
HT to Bloggingheads.tv. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The spell check suggestion for Kibera is Liberace. This is a repost.
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