On NPR’s Talk of the Nationthis week, they did a show on the public’s perception of single mothers. The show opened with this:

“The American family has changed. The nuclear family in the house across the street is still there, but different kinds of families live on the block, too: unmarried parents, gay parents, people who choose not to have children at all and, of course, single parents.

“A new Pew Research poll asked Americans about these trends and found almost 70 percent believe that single women raising children on their own is bad for society.

“Of course, there is a wide array of single mothers. Some women choose to raise children by themselves. Others find themselves without a partner through divorce or abandonment. But when seven in 10 believe this is bad for society, it makes you wonder.”

I was surprised that the anti-single mother numbers were still so high. As a single mother, I’ve encountered prejudice. However, few people where I live are willing to voice their single mother phobia. Or perhaps since most people who encounter me now meet me as a scholar before knowing that I’m a single mother, they don’t apply the stereotype of the single mother to me.

When my child was young, my friend Miranda said that people’s perception of me would be completely different if they heard her describe my college work before my motherhood. Some people who heard that I was a young mother first basically said Miranda must be lying about what I’d managed to accomplish and the fact that I was a decent/smart person.

As Talk of the Nation noted, not every single mother “chooses” to be one. I know two women who have chosen this as a path. All of the other single mothers I know are single because of abandonment, divorce coupled with social/financial disappearance, their partner’s death, or because the woman had to flee from abuse. Being a single mother isn’t how we expected our lives to turn out, but this is our life and we’re trying to make the best of it and to do the best for our kids, just like everyone else. Thanks for making it harder by demonizing us, America!

Would it be best to have more than one parent? Probably. I think more than two would be ideal–kids are amazingly exhausting. Of course, having one stable parent is better than having two sucky ones, though. The biggest issue for single mothers–the one that “causes” problems for children and society–is money. The children of financially well off single mothers end up doing just as well as their well off peers. Poor children tend to have a hard life no matter how many parents they have. It might be more productive to blame poverty–to blame a lack of access to healthcare and childcare–to blame the fact that single mothers will inevitably suffer from the sex wage gap we maintain in this country. Don’t fight single mothers; fight inequality.

If you still want to blame people, I can’t stop you. I can, however, suggest that you remember that it takes two people to have a child. Now, it’s not a man’s fault if he dies or if a baby is conceived in a way that leaves him out of social and financial responsibilities, but we all know that a majority of single mother are on their own and struggling financially because a man is not living up to his responsibility.

These men get to live without society’s stigma while the women they’ve abandoned take the brunt of it every day. They don’t have to explain to their bosses why they have to take off because a child is ill. They are free to date without having to find a babysitter. They will miss less work because their kids won’t be bringing home every little illness from daycare. They don’t have to worry about finding healthcare for anyone but themselves. They don’t have to worry about a new boyfriend or girlfriend being jealous or not even going for it because they don’t want to be a step-parent. They don’t get called sluts. If they’re up all night, it’s probably because they’re doing something fun, not because someone is throwing up on them or screaming from nightmares.

Some men are single fathers. I’ve known a few. Their ex-wives are absent for a variety of reasons–death, drugs, jail, etc. If the woman’s not dead, she is routinely dismissed by all the world as the most evil thing in the universe–much worse than a man who’s skipping out on his child. The single fathers are praised by all who know them. It is never assumed that they’re single fathers because of some moral failing. Many women find them admirable and attractive–what an obviously wonderful man!

The Pew poll didn’t even ask people about their attitudes towards single fathers. On the show, the pollster explained that it was because the vast majority of single parent households are indeed run by women. But we all know the other reason–single fathers are never seen as a “problem.”

My son’s father left me when I was seventeen, two weeks before I gave birth. We had been engaged, and I honestly didn’t think I’d have to do this by myself. My son is seventeen now. Those of you who know him know how amazing he is. Have I made mistakes? Yes, starting with not thinking I’d have to do this alone. Of course, we haven’t been completely isolated. My grandparents took us home with them for the first few months when we had no where else to go. Many men who have loved me have loved my son too. My friends have been amazing. They have forged my signature on school forms when I was at a conference. They have become his aunts and uncles. They have gone to music recitals with me both to make sure I wasn’t sitting by myself and because they honestly care about my child and want him to know it. Melissa even taught him to ride a bike when he needed it. No one ever raises a child completely alone.

Thus, I don’t deserve your praise, but I don’t deserve your scorn, either. The problem isn’t single mothers, it’s bad parents of either sex and of any marital status. Please be able to tell the difference.

Florida, I’ve known you since I was a kid. I grew up in your underfunded schools. I started working at age twelve, serving your sunburned tourists. I’ve let you try to blow me away in your hurricanes.

In 2000, I said we should start seeing other people, so I moved to California. You see, when I lived in you, I couldn’t have health insurance for two reasons. First, you abhor unions, so even though I had a job that was unionized in most every other state, you wouldn’t let me. Second, since I didn’t have job-related insurance, you allowed insurers to turn me away due to my pre-existing conditions.

(Also, you were covered in hicks, and they kept trying to touch me.)

Right after I left, there was an election, and I voted absentee. You decided that my vote shouldn’t be counted.

I’ve come back to see you, though–to have your glorious fish and to marvel at your inhabitants, who see absolutely crazy weather changes and somehow deduce that this is proof that there is no global climate change.

Now you’re trying to use the court system to veto something that the majority of Americans still support–the health care bill.

Don’t you want people to live long enough to retire to you? Well, I guess just the rich people–you don’t want any poor people moving there since you have so many of your own poor people already.

Florida, I think it’s time for us to truly part.

Send us your homeless children, so they can be adopted by gay couples, since you would rather they stay homeless.

Tell all those rednecks with confederate flags on their trucks that they’re right–the South will rise again–right now. (In fact, import more of those people from the surrounding states before you go.) And then let them have you.

I might even get a visa so I can visit my family in the “Republic of Republicans-Only Florida,” as long as you can guarantee my safety from political persecution.

Goodbye, Florida. (If you’re wondering, it’s not me, it’s you.)

Sarah Palin, in defending herself since the Arizona shooting, has done what people people do when defensive–gone on the attack. On Tuesday night, both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert discussed the hypocritical move of saying this event shouldn’t be politicized and then totally blaming liberals for everything, as Palin enacted the double standard of saying rhetoric shouldn’t be taken as an incitement to violence, but then claimed that liberals wouldn’t be happy until they destroyed the country (she said something about bringing America to her knees).

My favorite comment was that “if it weren’t for their [liberals’] double standards, they’d have no standards” on her Hannity appearance.

I didn’t think that woman could incite me to violence, but . . .

I’m not actually motivated to attack, just to start gathering weapons for when her minions eventually come for me. My master’s thesis (and something I’ve been interested in all my adult life) is about how you use words to turn your neighbors into something you can kill–how you can make them an enemy, a traitor, an animal. When you research how rhetoric has been used historically, you do start to see the signs of when the villagers are going to start building a bonfire for the witch.

And while Palin keeps saying everyone’s coming after her, we know that’s not true. She’s on tv all the time. She’s not the lone woman on the outskirts of the village; she’s the powerful woman in the village who keeps deciding who’s a witch and making sure that everyone knows it.

Her comment about liberals having no standards is a way of making them sound like they’re not you–they’re not American, they’re traitors, they can’t be trusted. For example, it can’t be that they want health care because they’re bleeding hearts or because they have pre-existing conditions, but because they hate America and love Stalin and somehow want you to have healthcare so they can join a panel that will send you to your death. And even if they don’t want to kill you, they want healthcare to kill your job!

I’ve seen the villagers who are most likely to attack. Yes, some are just unbalanced. Others, however, are being trained to attack. They are the children of the quiverfull movement; they are the children in Jesus Camp. They are the fringes of the Republican party that is now gaining dominion over the moderates.

They believe–and people like Palin don’t correct them–that this is a “Christian” nation. They believe, like Palin, that liberals have no morals. I know some personally who believe in witches (and I’m not talking about the wiccan next door, but the actual sacrificing your baby in her dark sabbath kind).

They keep being told what Americans are–people like them (that’s how you can say that “Americans” want the repeal of healthcare when all of the studies show this is a minority opinion). I am apparently un-American. I teach at a university. I don’t believe in their god, and  am dedicated to the separation of church and state. I want healthcare for all of my fellow Americans. I have more faith in science than in the Bible in terms of understanding history and things like germ theory.

Once upon a time, they would have called me a heretic and burned me. Or witch. Or accused me of being a Jew. Later, the terms became “radical,” “communist,” “traitor,” and “terrorist.”

We need to be careful when we make everything “us” and “them.”  “Them” never fairs well in that scenario. You shouldn’t have to make me a “them” to vote differently than I do.

I disagree with Palin and those like her, and I may think they’re stupid (or brilliantly mean), but I don’t think they’re un-American. America is my family; like any family, it contains people I don’t agree with, but they’re still family. And just because I disagree with them doesn’t mean I want the destruction of our family unit.

So I don’t like it when I see the fires getting stoked and the words being thrown around that indicate that Americans/people like me are so different/evil that we aren’t even Americans/people.

On Monday, my friend Sasha Abramsky was upbraided by Rush Limbaugh. (The clip of his show and a discussion of one of the problems with it is here: http://mediamatters.org/blog/201011150020)

What sent the internet ablaze was the fact that Rush kept calling Sasha a “stupid babe.” Sasha is a man.

Now, this is an understandable mistake, especially if you don’t do any research on someone. Sasha is short for Alexander–Americans often make it a girls’ name even though it traditionally isn’t. As a Karma, which in most of the world is a man’s name, I sympathize with this kind of mix-up.

Rush’s mistake, though, points to his rather sexist language. He dismisses this “stupid babe” as a bimbo. When I listened to the clip, I kept thinking he was going to say “bimbo” or “bitch” because sometimes there were pauses on the “b”s. Since one presumably wouldn’t call a man a stupid babe, one should be careful about doing that with a woman.

At least in public if one wants to be taken seriously.

But I will admit that I use “sexist” language sometimes, although I generally use that language for everyone. I call both men and women “babe.” If you cut me off in traffic, you’re a “dick,” whether you appear to have one or not.

I’m not all that interested in Rush’s “babe” slip. It’s no great revelation that he’s sexist, and he’s said sooooo much worse that this little tidbit is almost cute.

What bothers me is the lack of fact-checking. He has a staff. If he’d done even the most basic google search, he would have not only seen that he should pick a new word, but that Sasha knew much more than Rush gave him credit for.

You see, Sasha was writing in Salon about the kind of President Obama wanted to be. Rush dismissed the short section he shared with his audience, saying this dumb babe didn’t know anything. Sasha is the author of “Inside Obama’s Brain.” If anyone is qualified to talk about how Obama thinks, it would probably be the guy who spent the better part of a year researching it. Sasha just got back from interviewing Obama’s sister as well.

The passage Rush attacked was one in which Sasha talked about what Obama believed in. Rush then said Sasha was wrong because Obama didn’t believe in them.

An example: Obama wants good government. Rush said Obama obviously didn’t and then ranted about more invasive airline screening procedures (at least I think that’s what happened; I was confused by the non-sequitor, but I refuse to go back and listen to that again).

It is perfectly acceptable to say that someone is engaging in “bad” government, whatever they believe. It is asinine to say that someone doesn’t even want good government. Rush and I seem opposed in almost every way, but I believe that he and I both want “good” government. We just have different ideas about what that is. I don’t think I know anyone who wants “bad” government, even those people who essentially want to do away with it.

Rush could have claimed that Obama wasn’t living up to what he wanted, but he had to take it that ridiculous step to the right and imply that Obama’s inherently bad by claiming that he doesn’t want good government.

That’s stupid, babe.

A prominent critic of the “theory” of climate change wants Margaret Atwood to be removed from her position on PEN. (article here: http://www.torontolife.com/daily/informer/mediaocracy/2010/11/11/climate-skeptic-wants-margaret-atwood-off-pen-board/).

PEN is an organization Atwood has been at the forefront of for years–it fights for the free speech of authors around the world (it’s akin to Amnesty International, but has a specific focus).

The critic seems not to like Atwood because of their differing views on climate and the environment, but is using a petition Atwood signed as the main evidence that Atwood should be removed. You see, Atwood signed a petition against a FOX News-like channel coming to Canada.

(There are many reasons why someone might sign such a petition. Perhaps you think the channel won’t be clear about news versus entertainment–Bill O’Reilly was on Bill Maher last week and when Maher asked him about a fact that FOX had reported, O’Reilly’s response to the completely wrong fact was that FOX wasn’t “reporting” it because it was on one of the entertainment/opinion shows. If you’ve seen the show, you know that the distinction is not at all clear. Perhaps they should change their tag to “we give you the facts (well, on the following shows, which don’t air when most viewers are watching–on the popular shows, we’re saying whatever comes into someone’s head); you decide).”

Or perhaps you might object because FOX news breaks up families. All 24 hour news makes my head hurt and the crawl seems only to have been invented to make me want to cut myself, but FOX makes me especially wary about going home, because it is impossible to avoid there.)

To recap: Atwood signed a petition. This critic says her signing the petition means she’s anti-free speech & thus should lose her position.

Petitions are free speech, though. I believe in free speech. I believe that I have to fight for your free speech, even when I think you’re wrong (unless that speech is an incitement of violence). However, I get to say that you’re wrong. I get to say that you shouldn’t say x, because x is a lie or because x is irresponsible. (Shouldn’t is different from can’t–one is censure and one is censor.) Signing a petition is exercising free speech & this critic doesn’t have to like it & this critic can say Atwood shouldn’t have, etc., but you shouldn’t say someone hates free speech because they said something you didn’t agree with.

I know I haven’t posted in a long, long time. Fall quarters are always really hard and this may be the hardest. If I stopped to list all the reasons why, I’d be late to class. Let’s just say that I was hanging on by my fingernails & then I got the stomach flu and it broke my nails.

Diane Ravitch, former assistant secretary of education under George W. Bush, has come out with a new book explaining that the Bush education agenda was flawed.

Of course, this is one in a long line of such books. Cheney seems to be the only one who thinks everything went just fine.

I read an excerpt the book in a recent American Educator. I was shocked (shocked!) to discover that apparently, making tests the only test for whether education is working is a bad idea. It leads to people teaching only to the test, to cheating, and to students knowing how to fill in bubbles while their little minds are unfilled. It leads to an incomplete understanding of whether a teacher is successful or not.

And under George Bush’s plan, it leads to rich schools getting richer and poor schools getting poorer, as schools are punished for low scores. It leads to putting all of the blame on our low-paid and ill-respected educators when the scores don’t turn out right. It leads to a perpetuation of class stereotypes–rich people are just better and smarter and poor people deserve to be poor because they’re lazy and stupid–if they all take one test, surely we can see that (never mind that they are starting off on a teeter-totter rather than a level playing field due to the money coming from property taxes rather than fair allocation).

Wow. Who would have thought that No Child Left Behind would have left children behind? Well, any of us who opposed it from the beginning. Ravitch basically says that everyone in the administration was well meaning, that these were honest mistakes. I will buy that they were well meaning. And some of these mistakes might have been innocent. I mean, all of the consequences were totally forseeable, but not everyone is smart enough to actually think things through. I would guess that some people were fine with letting certain children fall behind–because it defended the class and power status quo, because it might have ultimately led to the dissolution of public education, etc.

Ravitch is good when talking about what went wrong; she is less effective in talking through what needs to be fixed.

Here’s what needs to happen. 1. The ideologues need to look at the reality and to see that this policy is flawed. People on both the right and the left need to make sure that Obama doesn’t keep this policy in place.

2. We need to level the damn playing field–all children have a right to equal education. We will all be stronger if we are all literate.

3. We need to think about the mental infrastructure of this nation. If I want a nation of smart, educated, critical thinkers, which I do, I need to be as supportive of mental infrastructure as I am of the other kinds. Our current economic crisis has meant that banks and car companies and airlines have gotten bailouts, even when those companies have been spending and making money willy-nilly. We have invested a lot of stimulus money in public works–even while the schools in my district (including the university for which I work) are struggling, we have tons of crews working on the roads downtown and the down the street.

Why don’t we consider our schools too big to fail? Wouldn’t giving stimulus money to educators to create smaller class sizes be a good idea that would pay off a thousand times? How many teachers could we hire for what one bank CEO makes? How many decent textbooks could we buy, so that each child has access to one (one of my friends knows a teacher who has 25 books total for six classes of 35 students)?

America is all about investment. Why aren’t we investing in our children? Why aren’t we investing in ourselves?

Let’s get the morbid ones out of the way–Alexander is now the age I was when I had him. I am now the age my father was when he died. Neither of us will be replicating those behaviors, but it’s on my mind.

Had a wonderful birthday–got to see many friends, the btp made me dinner, and even the boy said happy birthday (from a different room than the one I was in . . .). It was especially nice because I’d finished grading the day before and that means that I have a few weeks off now. I get to finish the very last of the unpacking, get that to-do list pared down, and get organized (my desk still has that “end of the quarter” look). Am also going to watch a lot of movies because I simply can.

I’m also going to try to get out and see some shows–I’ve already seen Paula Poundstone (who was very funny–I’ve always admired her ability to work a room and to do the audience engagement stuff that most comics can’t do); I’ve done my own stand-up set at Luna’s; I will see MACHOMER at CalShakes tomorrow; I saw Al on Sunday.

Al was amazing, by the way. He performed for two and a half hours. There were props and costume changes, and he did six songs that I’ve never seen him do live before. I got a starter pack of Al trading cards and now I want more (that’s the whole point, right?). I wish it hadn’t been at the fair, though, because I don’t like fairs (unless they’re Renaissance, cause I’m white & nerdy), and I wish the lady beside me hadn’t taken up half my seat in addition to hers–it meant I left with a neck crick.

In other news, Proposition 8 has been declared unconstitutional because it, um, is. The whole reason we have a bill of rights is so that a biased/prejudiced majority can’t deny rights to a minority. Jefferson wouldn’t sign without that bill because he knew what we were like–he knew what we would do. For example, I would like to deny bigots the right to procreate. They tend to raise children who are accepting of a “bigoted lifestyle.”

The hysterical right keeps bringing up the same old points. That these are special, not equal rights. That this is a threat to marriage. Well, I have to say that I managed to have two failed marriages before I was thirty. That’s because I made bad choices; it’s not because my homosexual friends were having more successful relationships than I’ve ever managed to. And my current desire to not marry nor to cohabitate has nothing to do with gay people, except for the knowledge that if I could turn gay (like the hysterical right thinks I can), I maybe could cohabitate successful with a woman, as Courtney’s presence seems to indicate that it’s the heterosexual roommate pairing that doesn’t work for me (unless the other person is my son, who theoretically has to do what I say).

It’s also nice that California is now once again keeping up with places like Iowa and Argentina–because it was embarrassing when we weren’t.

Many moons ago, I talked about getting to meet Raj Patel, the hot and brilliant, Eddie-Izzard-funny, Colbert-appearing economist (though he hadn’t been on Colbert then). I didn’t quite proclaim him my god, but I proclaimed him. (You can scroll down a bit to see what I said.)

According to this New York Times article, Raj has been declared a god: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/us/05sfmetro.html

I sort of called it first.

A few thoughts on the news:

The Supreme Court has just reversed precedent that limited how much corporations can spend on political campaigns. On a theoretical level, I’m torn. I believe in free speech, and the corporations are claiming that money IS free speech.

On a practical level, however, I’m not torn at all. I’m not convinced that money is free speech. If it is, then I don’t really have any access to free speech at all.

If money is free speech, we can’t call it “free” anymore.

The way corporations run everything is already frightening. This decision opens the door to America fully becoming a corpocracy. It’s already absurd that insurance companies get to be “consulted” on health care reform bills (um, they profit when you pay but then they get to deny you the coverage you paid for). Imagine what their “free speech” will be able to accomplish now.

In other news, hearings have shown that one of the major problems that caused the Christmas day Detroit flight near-bombing was a spelling error. That is, the person putting the terrorist’s name into the system spelled it wrong.

Congresspeople yesterday were assured that the government was now using a spell-checker program to prevent this from happening again.

Two things: 1. a spell checker program will not help, because names aren’t in the spell-checker’s dictionary. A spell-checker doesn’t know my last name to know if it’s spelled correctly; it’s not going to know likely bombers’ names, either.

2. To all those people who thought I was crazy for saying that proofreading could sometimes be the difference between life and death . . . I was right.

Finally, Conan’s last show will be on Friday. This is such bullshit. Conan is funnier than Jay has ever been. Jay Leno left The Tonight Show because he wanted more money in prime time. He bombed. And now he’s being rewarded by getting his old job back? Fuck him. If I left my job and my job was filled–with a talented person with a contract–I wouldn’t get my job back after I totally failed at the other job.

In fact, am now boycotting Jay Leno. Yes, he joins Domino’s, Six Flags, Coors, Continental Airlines, and Long John Silvers.