Joe.My.God sums up the attitude of GOP legislators in Kentucky:
Republicans in the Kentucky House Education Committee today squashed an anti-bullying bill because it would help prevent gay children from killing themselves.
It's about special rights, see. The way that you avoid that sort of problem, of some people- oddly, they always seem to be victims in a system that affords them no effective protection under existing law- being read out of the protection of law. The raft of "don't say gay" bills making their way through election-year southern statehouses reflect this view. Barring teachers from saying anything in their work day about the existence of gay kids among them- of even kids who aren't but the biggest, dumbest and most hateful kids think are, or even might be- means those kids won't be pressing ahead of other kids getting beaten up for more traditional school offenses like having acne or wearing glasses.
Or seeming too smart. Actually answering questions in class, doing homework, that kind of stuff.
South Carolina legislators are all in with this. A couple of years ago they passed a law about domestic violence between dating teens. If you teach about that in South Carolina schools you can only teach that it occurs between boys and girls. Same-sex couples enjoy fewer protections under SC law than opposite-sex couples if abuse occurs. But in practice, nothing says "open season" like writing a group out of existence: if no one can tell you it's wrong to beat a kid up, there's no penalty- like with those other kids you can be held accountable for whuppin' up on.
It's all part and parcel of political evangelicalism.
Documenting his year-long quest to be "the man I want to be", SC GOP political consultant Wesley Donehue sums up what passes for tolerance in his party -while patting himself on the back for being open-minded:
One of things we were talking about was bullying, and while it took more of a context in terms of assumed homosexuals being bullied, it exists on so many levels and people don’t truly understand the effects of bullying. It bothers me that it’s such an “LGBT” issue and that bullying is becoming something that is only seen in that context.
Bullying is everywhere. It happens at work, it happens in school, it happens in politics. Bullying is picking apart someone’s weakness as a way to make his or her lives miserable. And it doesn’t only extend to homosexuals these days, and never has. The effects are devastating because it kills a person’s ego. They feel worthless and incapable for chasing the new American dream. To them, success is far from an option.
Homosexuality in modern society asks for equality. That’s cool. But the community wants special bills. In particular, there is a bullying bill in a SC legislative committee right now. I think it’s dangerous because it puts bullying into a niche and ignores the other groups who are bullied, if not more than others. Bullying isn’t based on homosexuality; neither should “hate crimes”. Hate is hate. Ironically, discrimination doesn’t discriminate.
Christine Johnson brought up a point on the show about a teacher in Lexington reading the Bible to a Lesbian student. In front of everyone. Totally unprofessional.
But, is her condition any worse than the pudgy kid who will be picked last in gym class? The frizzy haired, awkward kid with the inch thick glasses? We remember these kids from Junior High, and there’s a good chance I fit into one of these similar groups sometime or another.
Bullying screws up kids, period. Special treatment toward any group is never good. It’s picking winners and losers in life.
Tolerance," he concludes, "is a good thing. While you don’t have to accept people’s life choices, you must tolerate them in order to achieve the greater good."
________
Still smarting from a heated debate on a political Internet show he runs- where someone had the temerity to challenge his views- Donehue put up another post:
Day 201 – Last night was the most intense debate we’ve had on Pub Politics. Christine Johnson, Executive Director of South Carolina Equality joined us to talk about equal rights for gay, lesbian and bi-gender[1] South Carolinians.
Let me say outright that I’m a very open-minded and accepting white southern male. I try to be friends with everyone, and I myself accept the decisions of my gay friends. Personal choice don’t bother me like they do some folks. While my religion says that homosexuality is a sin, and I believe it is, I myself am a sinner.
I find it bothersome that so many Christians put this sin on a pedestal while ignoring their own, and often more damaging sin. I’ve written repeatedly on this blog that jealousy and pride are sins that are far more damaging. After all, it wasn’t homosexuality that sent Lucifer to Hell and thus created all other sins. It was pride.
As CS Lewis wrote:
In today’s episode of Pub Politics I got railed for making the accusation that in today’s world, it is the white Christian males who are being discriminated against. And yes, it is because of our own faults.
In Politics, when I’m thinking of Christian values, it seems that they have been pigeon-holed into a “my way, or the highway” sort of mentality. I’m young, so I can’t talk about “the way it used to be”. But it seems as if it’s getting worse. We all look like hypocrites.
Opposition to tolerance is almost becoming a rallying cry for the right, and it’s toxic to the future of the Conservative movement. If we want to be seen as legitimate in our rally for Christian morals, we have to start being better ambassadors of those beliefs. It starts with white, conservative men. Hate seems to be associated with our kind, and it won’t withstand the next generation unless there’s a massive shift in focus and change in hypocrisy. We must first admit our own sins before attacking others for theirs.
Jesus Christ loved everyone. And he wanted people to accept their imperfections and help others work through, or cope with their own differences. You can’t do that while you’re screaming at them. You were created in the image of God and it’s not my position to discriminate against his own creation, especially given my own sins.
I’m not saying that you should accept sin. Just the opposite. I’m saying that you should look at the sin that’s closest to you, that’s within you, before attacking others for theirs. Think of yourself in the position as being an ambassador. You are trying to carry the ideals of a faith, and be the best representation of those ideals possible.
Maybe then we can beat the reverse discrimination so many of us have brought on ourselves. [2]
So get your own sins in order, he says, and then feel free to whale away on the ones you hate in others. He adopts the pained resignation of one whose "friends" [3] push their life "decisions" and "personal choices" on him; he suffers them enjoy his friendship nonetheless even as he reassures God he- good Wesley, documenting his march toward greater Godliness for the world to see on the Internet- he knows they are, at best, only tolerable, and will get what's coming to them in the end. He sighs as "Homosexuality in modern society asks for equality. That’s cool." But it neglects a fundamental truth conservatives often remind us of in other contexts:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...
In America, white men don't get to stand in the doorway and decide what minority gets a right thrown to it today. Rights conferred as a matter of grace and favor today can be taken away tomorrow, as we see in various referenda to undo marriage equality legislation and court rulings, Governor Christie's recent claim that southern blacks would have been thrilled to get a referendum on whether they were entitled to the same rights as white folk and void all that civil rights era trouble, and Senator Santorum's declaration that he wants to track down every legally married same-sex couple in the United States and un-marry them.
But that is how Donehue can make a living every day helping the state's Republicans maximize their hold on power, knowing that part and parcel of that campaign- which never ends, year in and year out- is demonizing others. Non-European foreigners. Non-existent Muslim groups trying to foist sharia law on South Carolina courts. Emasculated unions keeping Governor Haley awake at night thinking of new ways to restrict worker rights. African-Americans. Gays. Women.
Here's a little witch hunt Donehue's Process Story launched a few years ago. How dare someone not be known to Donehue and his elites, who can spot a gay man by his Tweets?
...[W]hat has led to a lot of talk in the Palmetto State are accounts launched by people who are creating fake accounts.
One of those fake accounts that has been getting a lot of attention is the one that goes by @SCLegislator. A quick look reveals someone who is a Democrat who likes to run smack on GOP members of the legislature. The question stands, however — who is the person behind the account?
We’ve taken time to ask a few people who they think are running it, and they give a common sense listing: Senate Democratic Caucus director Phil Bailey, or Reps. Bakari Sellers or Boyd Brown. But, we know better. It can’t be any of these guys.
First of all, it can’t be anyone who is a part of the usual journalistic or political circles. If the person was, they’d have been found out by now. We were told it is probably someone from the North or out West who relocated to South Carolina sometime between 2003 and 2005. But the impression of who it is goes even further than that.
The profile we began to develop was that it’s a man, perhaps a gay man, who has a degree in law, works in downtown Columbia, aged between 32 and 50 years old., white, a former journalist or writer who is definitely off the radar of the people who are part of the state politics echo chamber. He’s likely a low-level or mid-level attorney in a firm downtown whose partner is directly involved in state politics. If you were told his name, you would not know who he was.
The reason we think he’s from up North or from the Far West is that he evidently has a brand of liberalism that is foreign to the South. As in, a guy who might make an abortion joke, which even our most liberal pals would not do in public, or even in private. He may as well be a member of the Capital City Club, since a tweet involving said abortion joke included a picture of storm clouds over downtown Columbia that appeared to be taken from the top of the building that houses the club.
So, who is @SCLegislator? We don’t know. But whoever it is, they’re dang good at protecting their identity.
UPDATE: So, after writing this post I started thinking a little more about it. He responded to me that I’m half right and half wrong. So what am I right about? He didn’t say, but I’m going to guess a little more…
Gay? Yes
Law? No
32-50? Close
Usual journalistic or political circles? No
Off the radar? Yeah…sorta
And then there’s his last tweet: “Anti-business property owners complain about dump polluting well-H2O. Thankfully we have pro-business DHEC in SC. http://bit.ly/hUoKPe”
So who is it? I’m putting my money on Bruce Lawrence, staffer for the SC Conservation Voters.
Recently one of that same Process Story posted an op/ed on how the GOP needs to get with the program in terms of demographics: they're losing today's and, more important, tomorrow's voters. The party's obsession with gays was one example (One can only imagine a real test of Donehue's call for tolerance- a gay Republican political strategist applying for a job at Donehue Direct.)
I wondered then, and still do, why it served any purpose to run sound advice to a readership- and paying clientele- who will never pay it one lick of attention in a thousand years: except- maybe- because they've opened an office in San Francisco, where if you can only tolerate gays, you're going to pass on a lot of talent. Like, say, the CEO of Apple.
Or, alternately, it's all piffle: just 13 days before posting "GOP and The Millennials: Can The Connection Be Made?", arguing:
"A more interesting example is that our generation associates with everyone. We base our friends and relationships upon personal character, whereas race, orientation, background was a strong influence of prior generations. As a result, we’re more accepting with civil unions and gay marriage. This is because most of us have gay friends or family members as well, so it’s just not as much of an issue for us"-
the same Robert Sinners wrote- under the title, "Gun Rights Should Be Expanded For Those Who Deserve Protection":
Sometimes our socially conservative leanings are translated in a manner opposed to the Christian principles we cherish, and we tend to value tradition over pragmatism. To be more specific, we seem to ignore reality and forget that abortions, prostitution, gay relationships, drugs, perversion, and other perceived ills have been and will be a part of society for generations to come."
Harvard Professor and past McArthur Fellow Howard Gardner, whose book Five Minds for the Future (2006) posits the kind of educational skills America needs for a globalized future, and argues:
We do not think deeply enough about the human qualities that we want to cultivate at the workplace, so that individuals of diverse appearance and background can interact effectively with one another. Nor do we ponder how to nurture workers who will not simply pursue their self-interest but will realize the core mission of their calling, or how to cultivate citizens who care passionately about the society in which they live and the planet that they will pass on to their successors.
We need more than just thin-lipped tolerance, he argues (emphasis added): It's just a pseudoform, Gardner says: "Exhibiting mere tolerance, without any effort to understand or work smoothly with others; paying homage to those with more power and status while deprecating, dismissing, ridiculing or ignoring those with less power; behaving reflexively toward an entire group, without attending to the qualities of specific individual(s)."
Unless it's just a little exercise in getting one's own sins properly labeled and shelved away. Then we can get back to our regularly scheduled campaigning. Remember:
Bullying is everywhere. It happens at work, it happens in school, it happens in politics. Bullying is picking apart someone’s weakness as a way to make his or her lives miserable. And it doesn’t only extend to homosexuals these days, and never has. The effects are devastating because it kills a person’s ego. They feel worthless and incapable for chasing the new American dream. To them, success is far from an option.
Gore Vidal once commented, "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail." And thus a year ago tomorrow Process Story was promoting its owner's comments in Politico:
Process Story cites, but doesn't link, a Politico story about how most of the potential GOP presidential field are dopes when it comes to new media. Story co-author Ben Smith picked up a Donehue email on his blog, which PS then re-translated:
PS editor Wesley Donehue is quoted by Smith saying, “South Carolina has one of the most intense political blogospheres in the nation. These bloggers don’t just try to kill your campaign. They try to completely tear you down as a person.” Familiarity and closeness has a way of breeding viciousness. It’s just found a new medium."
Let Howard Gardner have the last word. We need more than just thin-lipped tolerance, he argues (emphasis added): "Individuals without respect will not be worthy of respect by others and will poison the workplace and the commons."
Indeed.
_________________________
[1] It's hard to tell whether this conflation of "bisexual/transgender"- two sharply different states of being- is the product of lazy proofreading, ignorance, or snark. In Silicon Valley everyone will just roll their eyes and think it's stupid.
[2] Is it reverse discrimination on you if you admit you brought it on yourself?
[3] Dan Savage: "What really interests me about the HuffPo interview, however, is Elizabeth's claim to have gay friends. Elizabeth Santorum—follow her on Twitter @esantorum2012—has gay friends. Just like her father. And Rick Warren and Joel Osteen and Donny Osmond and Sarah Palin. All the high-profile homophobes seem to have gay friends. Or at least they claim to have gay friends. No one has ever met—and no reporter has ever asked to verify the existence of—one of Rick Santorum or Elizabeth Santorum or Rick Warren or Joel Osteen's gay friends."
Even Sarah Palin claimed to have one.
One.
Republicans in the Kentucky House Education Committee today squashed an anti-bullying bill because it would help prevent gay children from killing themselves.
The vote came after parents and friends of teenagers who killed themselves to end incessant school bullying told lawmakers about the need for stronger protections for all students. Several lawmakers on the panel contended that existing anti-bullying laws are sufficient. Rep. Ben Waide, R-Madisonville, said House Bill 336 was an attempt "to achieve equality by making some people more equal than others." He said the measure was not about bullying, but "about gay rights in our schools."Not even sobbing pleas from the parents of dead children can move these monsters.
It's about special rights, see. The way that you avoid that sort of problem, of some people- oddly, they always seem to be victims in a system that affords them no effective protection under existing law- being read out of the protection of law. The raft of "don't say gay" bills making their way through election-year southern statehouses reflect this view. Barring teachers from saying anything in their work day about the existence of gay kids among them- of even kids who aren't but the biggest, dumbest and most hateful kids think are, or even might be- means those kids won't be pressing ahead of other kids getting beaten up for more traditional school offenses like having acne or wearing glasses.
Or seeming too smart. Actually answering questions in class, doing homework, that kind of stuff.
South Carolina legislators are all in with this. A couple of years ago they passed a law about domestic violence between dating teens. If you teach about that in South Carolina schools you can only teach that it occurs between boys and girls. Same-sex couples enjoy fewer protections under SC law than opposite-sex couples if abuse occurs. But in practice, nothing says "open season" like writing a group out of existence: if no one can tell you it's wrong to beat a kid up, there's no penalty- like with those other kids you can be held accountable for whuppin' up on.
It's all part and parcel of political evangelicalism.
Documenting his year-long quest to be "the man I want to be", SC GOP political consultant Wesley Donehue sums up what passes for tolerance in his party -while patting himself on the back for being open-minded:
One of things we were talking about was bullying, and while it took more of a context in terms of assumed homosexuals being bullied, it exists on so many levels and people don’t truly understand the effects of bullying. It bothers me that it’s such an “LGBT” issue and that bullying is becoming something that is only seen in that context.
Bullying is everywhere. It happens at work, it happens in school, it happens in politics. Bullying is picking apart someone’s weakness as a way to make his or her lives miserable. And it doesn’t only extend to homosexuals these days, and never has. The effects are devastating because it kills a person’s ego. They feel worthless and incapable for chasing the new American dream. To them, success is far from an option.
Homosexuality in modern society asks for equality. That’s cool. But the community wants special bills. In particular, there is a bullying bill in a SC legislative committee right now. I think it’s dangerous because it puts bullying into a niche and ignores the other groups who are bullied, if not more than others. Bullying isn’t based on homosexuality; neither should “hate crimes”. Hate is hate. Ironically, discrimination doesn’t discriminate.
Christine Johnson brought up a point on the show about a teacher in Lexington reading the Bible to a Lesbian student. In front of everyone. Totally unprofessional.
But, is her condition any worse than the pudgy kid who will be picked last in gym class? The frizzy haired, awkward kid with the inch thick glasses? We remember these kids from Junior High, and there’s a good chance I fit into one of these similar groups sometime or another.
Bullying screws up kids, period. Special treatment toward any group is never good. It’s picking winners and losers in life.
Tolerance," he concludes, "is a good thing. While you don’t have to accept people’s life choices, you must tolerate them in order to achieve the greater good."
________
Still smarting from a heated debate on a political Internet show he runs- where someone had the temerity to challenge his views- Donehue put up another post:
Day 201 – Last night was the most intense debate we’ve had on Pub Politics. Christine Johnson, Executive Director of South Carolina Equality joined us to talk about equal rights for gay, lesbian and bi-gender[1] South Carolinians.
Let me say outright that I’m a very open-minded and accepting white southern male. I try to be friends with everyone, and I myself accept the decisions of my gay friends. Personal choice don’t bother me like they do some folks. While my religion says that homosexuality is a sin, and I believe it is, I myself am a sinner.
I find it bothersome that so many Christians put this sin on a pedestal while ignoring their own, and often more damaging sin. I’ve written repeatedly on this blog that jealousy and pride are sins that are far more damaging. After all, it wasn’t homosexuality that sent Lucifer to Hell and thus created all other sins. It was pride.
As CS Lewis wrote:
“There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.That’s a lot to write to get to my point, but I as a southern white Christian male, I cannot talk about homosexuality without first laying down this preface. And that is my point exactly today.
The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility.”
In today’s episode of Pub Politics I got railed for making the accusation that in today’s world, it is the white Christian males who are being discriminated against. And yes, it is because of our own faults.
In Politics, when I’m thinking of Christian values, it seems that they have been pigeon-holed into a “my way, or the highway” sort of mentality. I’m young, so I can’t talk about “the way it used to be”. But it seems as if it’s getting worse. We all look like hypocrites.
Opposition to tolerance is almost becoming a rallying cry for the right, and it’s toxic to the future of the Conservative movement. If we want to be seen as legitimate in our rally for Christian morals, we have to start being better ambassadors of those beliefs. It starts with white, conservative men. Hate seems to be associated with our kind, and it won’t withstand the next generation unless there’s a massive shift in focus and change in hypocrisy. We must first admit our own sins before attacking others for theirs.
Jesus Christ loved everyone. And he wanted people to accept their imperfections and help others work through, or cope with their own differences. You can’t do that while you’re screaming at them. You were created in the image of God and it’s not my position to discriminate against his own creation, especially given my own sins.
I’m not saying that you should accept sin. Just the opposite. I’m saying that you should look at the sin that’s closest to you, that’s within you, before attacking others for theirs. Think of yourself in the position as being an ambassador. You are trying to carry the ideals of a faith, and be the best representation of those ideals possible.
Maybe then we can beat the reverse discrimination so many of us have brought on ourselves. [2]
So get your own sins in order, he says, and then feel free to whale away on the ones you hate in others. He adopts the pained resignation of one whose "friends" [3] push their life "decisions" and "personal choices" on him; he suffers them enjoy his friendship nonetheless even as he reassures God he- good Wesley, documenting his march toward greater Godliness for the world to see on the Internet- he knows they are, at best, only tolerable, and will get what's coming to them in the end. He sighs as "Homosexuality in modern society asks for equality. That’s cool." But it neglects a fundamental truth conservatives often remind us of in other contexts:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...
In America, white men don't get to stand in the doorway and decide what minority gets a right thrown to it today. Rights conferred as a matter of grace and favor today can be taken away tomorrow, as we see in various referenda to undo marriage equality legislation and court rulings, Governor Christie's recent claim that southern blacks would have been thrilled to get a referendum on whether they were entitled to the same rights as white folk and void all that civil rights era trouble, and Senator Santorum's declaration that he wants to track down every legally married same-sex couple in the United States and un-marry them.
But that is how Donehue can make a living every day helping the state's Republicans maximize their hold on power, knowing that part and parcel of that campaign- which never ends, year in and year out- is demonizing others. Non-European foreigners. Non-existent Muslim groups trying to foist sharia law on South Carolina courts. Emasculated unions keeping Governor Haley awake at night thinking of new ways to restrict worker rights. African-Americans. Gays. Women.
Here's a little witch hunt Donehue's Process Story launched a few years ago. How dare someone not be known to Donehue and his elites, who can spot a gay man by his Tweets?
...[W]hat has led to a lot of talk in the Palmetto State are accounts launched by people who are creating fake accounts.
One of those fake accounts that has been getting a lot of attention is the one that goes by @SCLegislator. A quick look reveals someone who is a Democrat who likes to run smack on GOP members of the legislature. The question stands, however — who is the person behind the account?
We’ve taken time to ask a few people who they think are running it, and they give a common sense listing: Senate Democratic Caucus director Phil Bailey, or Reps. Bakari Sellers or Boyd Brown. But, we know better. It can’t be any of these guys.
First of all, it can’t be anyone who is a part of the usual journalistic or political circles. If the person was, they’d have been found out by now. We were told it is probably someone from the North or out West who relocated to South Carolina sometime between 2003 and 2005. But the impression of who it is goes even further than that.
The profile we began to develop was that it’s a man, perhaps a gay man, who has a degree in law, works in downtown Columbia, aged between 32 and 50 years old., white, a former journalist or writer who is definitely off the radar of the people who are part of the state politics echo chamber. He’s likely a low-level or mid-level attorney in a firm downtown whose partner is directly involved in state politics. If you were told his name, you would not know who he was.
The reason we think he’s from up North or from the Far West is that he evidently has a brand of liberalism that is foreign to the South. As in, a guy who might make an abortion joke, which even our most liberal pals would not do in public, or even in private. He may as well be a member of the Capital City Club, since a tweet involving said abortion joke included a picture of storm clouds over downtown Columbia that appeared to be taken from the top of the building that houses the club.
So, who is @SCLegislator? We don’t know. But whoever it is, they’re dang good at protecting their identity.
UPDATE: So, after writing this post I started thinking a little more about it. He responded to me that I’m half right and half wrong. So what am I right about? He didn’t say, but I’m going to guess a little more…
Gay? Yes
Law? No
32-50? Close
Usual journalistic or political circles? No
Off the radar? Yeah…sorta
And then there’s his last tweet: “Anti-business property owners complain about dump polluting well-H2O. Thankfully we have pro-business DHEC in SC. http://bit.ly/hUoKPe”
So who is it? I’m putting my money on Bruce Lawrence, staffer for the SC Conservation Voters.
Recently one of that same Process Story posted an op/ed on how the GOP needs to get with the program in terms of demographics: they're losing today's and, more important, tomorrow's voters. The party's obsession with gays was one example (One can only imagine a real test of Donehue's call for tolerance- a gay Republican political strategist applying for a job at Donehue Direct.)
I wondered then, and still do, why it served any purpose to run sound advice to a readership- and paying clientele- who will never pay it one lick of attention in a thousand years: except- maybe- because they've opened an office in San Francisco, where if you can only tolerate gays, you're going to pass on a lot of talent. Like, say, the CEO of Apple.
Or, alternately, it's all piffle: just 13 days before posting "GOP and The Millennials: Can The Connection Be Made?", arguing:
"A more interesting example is that our generation associates with everyone. We base our friends and relationships upon personal character, whereas race, orientation, background was a strong influence of prior generations. As a result, we’re more accepting with civil unions and gay marriage. This is because most of us have gay friends or family members as well, so it’s just not as much of an issue for us"-
the same Robert Sinners wrote- under the title, "Gun Rights Should Be Expanded For Those Who Deserve Protection":
Sometimes our socially conservative leanings are translated in a manner opposed to the Christian principles we cherish, and we tend to value tradition over pragmatism. To be more specific, we seem to ignore reality and forget that abortions, prostitution, gay relationships, drugs, perversion, and other perceived ills have been and will be a part of society for generations to come."
Harvard Professor and past McArthur Fellow Howard Gardner, whose book Five Minds for the Future (2006) posits the kind of educational skills America needs for a globalized future, and argues:
We do not think deeply enough about the human qualities that we want to cultivate at the workplace, so that individuals of diverse appearance and background can interact effectively with one another. Nor do we ponder how to nurture workers who will not simply pursue their self-interest but will realize the core mission of their calling, or how to cultivate citizens who care passionately about the society in which they live and the planet that they will pass on to their successors.
We need more than just thin-lipped tolerance, he argues (emphasis added): It's just a pseudoform, Gardner says: "Exhibiting mere tolerance, without any effort to understand or work smoothly with others; paying homage to those with more power and status while deprecating, dismissing, ridiculing or ignoring those with less power; behaving reflexively toward an entire group, without attending to the qualities of specific individual(s)."
Unless it's just a little exercise in getting one's own sins properly labeled and shelved away. Then we can get back to our regularly scheduled campaigning. Remember:
Bullying is everywhere. It happens at work, it happens in school, it happens in politics. Bullying is picking apart someone’s weakness as a way to make his or her lives miserable. And it doesn’t only extend to homosexuals these days, and never has. The effects are devastating because it kills a person’s ego. They feel worthless and incapable for chasing the new American dream. To them, success is far from an option.
Gore Vidal once commented, "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail." And thus a year ago tomorrow Process Story was promoting its owner's comments in Politico:
Process Story cites, but doesn't link, a Politico story about how most of the potential GOP presidential field are dopes when it comes to new media. Story co-author Ben Smith picked up a Donehue email on his blog, which PS then re-translated:
PS editor Wesley Donehue is quoted by Smith saying, “South Carolina has one of the most intense political blogospheres in the nation. These bloggers don’t just try to kill your campaign. They try to completely tear you down as a person.” Familiarity and closeness has a way of breeding viciousness. It’s just found a new medium."
Let Howard Gardner have the last word. We need more than just thin-lipped tolerance, he argues (emphasis added): "Individuals without respect will not be worthy of respect by others and will poison the workplace and the commons."
Indeed.
_________________________
[1] It's hard to tell whether this conflation of "bisexual/transgender"- two sharply different states of being- is the product of lazy proofreading, ignorance, or snark. In Silicon Valley everyone will just roll their eyes and think it's stupid.
[2] Is it reverse discrimination on you if you admit you brought it on yourself?
[3] Dan Savage: "What really interests me about the HuffPo interview, however, is Elizabeth's claim to have gay friends. Elizabeth Santorum—follow her on Twitter @esantorum2012—has gay friends. Just like her father. And Rick Warren and Joel Osteen and Donny Osmond and Sarah Palin. All the high-profile homophobes seem to have gay friends. Or at least they claim to have gay friends. No one has ever met—and no reporter has ever asked to verify the existence of—one of Rick Santorum or Elizabeth Santorum or Rick Warren or Joel Osteen's gay friends."
Even Sarah Palin claimed to have one.
One.
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