politics

Fascinating:

Bush’s comment is offensive (yes, all pro-choice women are ugly, angry, and undesirable). Clinton’s complicity is unfortunate.

In the comments, Sabriel asks what my “sociological angle” is.  Sabriel, I think Bush’s comment and Clinton’s complicity reveals that it’s still essentially fine to be hateful towards women, especially those who refuse to play by the rules of patriarchy (whether that be measured by attention to their attractiveness to men or accepting that their role of mother should take precedence over any and all other needs and desires). Regarding Clinton’s complicity: Imagine the flak he would have taken had he defended the woman that Bush castigates. By and large, at least in politics, it is easier to be sexist than it is to be feminist.

Via Feministe.

A Washington Post article reports that the company who is selling the dolls says: “the dolls are not made to be exact replicas of the first couple’s daughters and are not based on the Obama girls.”

Obama’s press secretary says: “We feel it is inappropriate to use young, private citizens for marketing purposes.”

What do you think?

UPDATE: The company has reportedly retired the Sasha and Malia dolls.

I am curious as to what you, Readers, think of the recent rash of advertising capitalizing on Obama’s “brand.” Here are some examples (found here, here, here, and here).

Budweiser American Ale:

A language school in Israel:

Ikea:

In other posts we’ve suggested that ads that appropriate feminism trivialize gender inequality and ultimatly undermine feminist efforts to attain social justice for women (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).  Like many of the “feminist” ads, these ads seem to be genuinely celebrating Obama’s election.  Do they?  Or do they trivialize everything he claim to stand for and the difficult road ahead for both him and the country? Something in between? Something else entirely?

What do you think?

NEW: Breck C. pointed out the Obama Chia Pet:

Amid a controversy that the Obama Chia pet was racist, Walgreens pulled the product.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The New York Times put together an interactive graphic showing, for each U.S. President’s in augural speech, a word cloud with the most used words, with larger words being used more frequently than smaller words.  Click here to see the whole thing and look at any specific speech.

Here is Obama’s speech.  The words in yellow (“generation,” “crisis,” “hard,” “job,” “women,” and “endure) were used more by Obama than in the average inaugural speech:

This is interesting because it helps us see what is being emphasized by different President’s at different times, and also how language changes. For example, for George Washington in 1789, the word “God” was not among his most used  He does, however, use the word “pecuniary” (of or relating to money) a lot.

Via infosthetics.

Political donations are by law public. With this information, someone has put up a website which shows, on google maps, which households (in the Bay Area, Salt Lake City, and Orange and L.A. Counties) donated money to Proposition 8 (California’s successful proposition to prohibit gay marriage). When you click on the arrow, it also tells you the name of the person in the household, that persons occupation and employer, and how much money they donated. Take a look.

Over at The Daily Dish, one person is quoted saying:

What could possibly be the use of this kind of information, presented in this way? It’s intended to intimidate people into not participating in politics by donating money. Do that, and you’ll end up on some activist group’s map, with hotheads being able to find your street address on their iPhones.

Andrew Sullivan weighs in:

I don’t get the fear. If Prop 8 supporters truly feel that barring equality for gay couples is vital for saving civilization, shouldn’t they be proud of their financial support? Why don’t they actually have posters advertizing their support for discriminating against gay people – as a matter of pride?

Elsewhere on the same website, a reader writes in:

I zoomed in on the cities and neighborhoods where my relatives live.  What do I find but that one of my own aunts, in San Diego, contributed $200 to the Prop 8 cause last summer.  This same aunt, a good person I honestly believe, has even invited me and my partner to stay with in her family’s home. Call me naive, but I’m kind of having trouble wrapping my brain around this seeming contradiction.

This back and forth raises some interesting questions:

Is the map violating some sort of privacy? If not technical, legal privacy, then some sort of cultural agreement about how far is “too far”?

Is the first commenter correct that this is essentially a nefarious act? Should political donations be public in this brave new world of google maps and internet access? Has “public” taken on a whole new meaning here?

Then again, the right to free speech protects a lot more aggressive and heinous things than this google map. Is the first commenter overreacting?

And what of Andrew Sullivan’s comment? Are those who donated proud to see themselves on the map? Or are they ashamed?  When political action is unpopular (not that I’m sure this one is), does that change the nature of participation? Should holders of unpopular political beliefs be protected, perhaps by allowing them to donate anonymously?  Or is shaming part of how cultural change happens and, thus, a perfectly legitimate strategy on behalf of gay rights?

Further, maybe people like the last commenter deserve to know if their friends or relatives are donating to political causes that discriminate against them?  Then again, does the Aunt have any right to be able to donate to the cause without disrupting her relationships with her family?

Thoughts?  Other questions you think this brings up?

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com has a new column, The Data, in Esquire. In his innaugural article, he revisits how Obama won the election, looking specifically at rural/suburban/urban voters.

Immigration and migration are a modern-reality of global social transformation. I don’t often see as much discussion of refugees however. A nice infographic via Good Magazine.

In STRATOS, “the premier in-flight magazine for corporate and private jets,” I found this two page article (text below):

Selected text:

High Dollar Highballs

STRATOS travels the globe in search of $1,000 cocktails in another installment of the world’s most exclusive cocktails.

…

Burj Al Arab, the dreamy, sail-like hotel on the water in Dubai, surely serves one of the most impressive… runs about $7,500. But when you factor in the cost of the ingredients, it almost seems reasonable. Start with a healthy pour of The Macallan 55 Year Old Single Malt Scotch… bottles… sell for $15,000 or more… The drink is stirred with a hand-carved piece of wood salvaged from a Macallan oak cask and presented in a Baccarat tumbler of 18-carat gold…

Hotel de Crillon, one of the loveliest hotels in Paris, has a beautiful lounge where barman Philippe Olivier offers perhaps the ultimate Sidecar for $1,600… this version opts for the creme de la creme of Cognac: Louis XIII Black Pearl, a special edition of Remy Martin’s long-aged signature bottle selling for about $30,000…

Master Mixologist Tony Abou-Ganim created Between the Sheets ($10,000) for Eyecandy Sound Lounge and Bar, the lounge at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. A slug of 200-year-old British Imperial Navy Rum gives this drink its kick, while a pour of Hardy’s Perfection, a rare and expensive long-aged Cognac, provides the subtle flavors… This drink is, naturally, made for two. The bartender assembles it in a sterling silver shaker and strains it into a pair of Baccarat crystal glasses… The lucky couple, once the last drop has been drained, takes home a cherry wood box, complete with engraved name plate, holding the shaker, the glasses and a crystal decanter.

An argument:  Because of the way we are segregated by class in the U.S., people rarely mix socially (pun intended) with others very far outside of their own social class.  For me, paging through magazines aimed at the super rich (see other posts from them here, here, and here), is kind of like flipping through Maxim.  There’s a whole world out there that is not aimed at me and of which I am largely unaware.  The segregation that nurtures this ignorance is part of what sustains our complacency.  Most of the time I can be completely naive to the entitlement to extremes of luxury that is marketed to the very rich, like I can remain blissfully unaware of what they are saying about women and men in Maxim magazine.  Political sociologists suggest that it is not deprivation that incites revolution, but relative deprivation.  That is, not having much doesn’t cause people to resist the system, it is the realization that others have so much more.  As long as we remain unaware, the system is likely to continue unchallenged. 

Maybe it doesn’t even make sense to say that we are segregated by class.  Class does separate people, but it also brings them together.  Working and middle class people are brought directly into interaction with people of other classes when they clean houses, are hired gardeners, and work as receptionists, administrative assistants, nurses, and nannies.  And it has often been this way throughout history (think slaves, indentured servants, etc).  So to say that we are segregated might be a stretch.

I also don’t know how I feel about this argument in light of the rash of reality shows that have emerged over the past 5-10 years that depict real, honest-to-goodness rich people basking in luxuries that most of the viewers could never afford.  Not that (I think as I write this) reality shos are all that different from the non-reality shows that have been on TV for a very long time that depict extreme wealth (e.g., Dynasty).  Do we not, on some level, recognize that those people, at least those in the reality shows, are real?  Or do we identify with them over and against people of our own class?  (I described how this might work in a previous post on McDonald’s coffee.)  Would actual physical integration (insofar as it doesn’t exist) have a different impact on us than the integration that occurs on between us and our television screens?  Or does our current social climate challenge the tenet of relative deprivation?

Asked another way, given that I am a sociologist AND watch TV, why do I still find the stupid article about expensive cocktails so surprising?