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Roid Models

I solemnly swear that I have been trying my hardest not to comment on the last two scandals in the world of jingo-ified sportmanship: A-Rod (dubbed A-hole by the NY Post, keeping it classy as usual) and his A-Roids, and Michael Phelps tokking it up. What deterred me from commenting was that I first saw the Phelps story on News of the World, and being struck by the paradox of major news outlets such as News of the World, whose name deceives the West by implying that the shit news they turn out actually has social relevance, reporting that, well, some guy was tokking up with his friends. Blasphemy! The reporters were probably smoking their bongs while writing these articles. But, I've conceded that the actions of these athletes do have social relevance, and not because they're going "to influence little Jimmy to smoke pot," mostly because he will smoke pot regardless - so long as this misunderstanding and sensationalization of marijuana persists.
My point of contention with this tyrannical criticism being thrown at Rodriguez and Phelps is that it is committed with the pretense that these men are "supposed to be role models." But sorry there, I missed the point where treading through a large artificial water container and knocking a horsehide-stiched sphere with a piece of tree constituted emulation. Rodriguez and Phelps are not supposed to be role models, and if they are then we don't need to reassess them or their actions, we have to reassess a society that celebrates their talents. I mean, what are their talents anyway? Well, Phelps won like a bazillion gold medals at the Olympic games, which means that he's the best at reasserting American supremacy over all those other little nations we step on within a battlefield where no one actually dies. Yay patriotism!
I know nothing about A-Rod other than that he took steroids in order to maximize his ability on the field, which is really just a sneaky way of maximing America's love for him. Oh and that he is romantically/sexually involves with Madonna and that a lot of people have been up all night over the matter. I think its less pathetic that A-Rod took roids than it is that we actually care about a group of men throwing a ball around.
However, I think its MOST pathetic that we breed men, generally working class and minority, to battle each other so that we can live out our jingoistic desires for simulated war. If anything, sports players are not meant to be role models, but roid models - the idea of them, as warriors, perpetuates a black market of products that are really just used to keep America "sports lovers" assured that each game will be a "good one."

Misinformation and Education

The first meeting of my Intro to Women's Studies course commenced yesterday. Before I walked through the door I assumed, wrongly so, that I would learn no new concepts in this class (I always feel like my brain is at the brink of exploding with conceptual diarrhea), and I would instead soak up all the factual information that I possibly could - which woman did ____, how many women went through ___, how many women died from _____. A pre-conception if there ever was one.
I suppose that the first thing I felt I could take away from the class (the FIRST class, so dayyuuum) and use in my spare with Republican dinner guest is the effect of misinformation on the conceptual. 
The professor asked "Who was the first African-American to run for president of the U.S.?" Surprise! It wasn't Barack Obama. Surprise! It wasn't Jesse Jackson, although one woman sitting by me was pretty intent upon Jesse Jackson. Well, I knew it was Shirley Chisholm, 1972, on a few tickets across the US. I spend a lot of time on Wikipedia, k? You would assume this is the factual and not the conceptual? "Its another fact we can just pile on the fact-mobile." But it isn't just a fact that Shirley Chisholm was the first Black-American to run for president on a major-party ticket, nor is it only factual that she is a woman.
These are only facts:

Ants are social insects of the family Formicidae
Martha Washington was born on Chestnut Grove Plantation on June 2, 1731
The Walk Disney Concert Hall is located at 111 South Grand Avenue

These facts do little or nothing to the way(s) in which we conceptualize or re-conceptualize society. On the other hand, the fact that Shirley Chisholm was the first Black-American to run for president of the US on a major ticket and the fact that she is identified as a woman and the fact that she was a schoolteacher and the fact that she was the child of immigrant parents and the fact that she graduated from Brooklyn College- these are all facts that, when known, force us to vastly re-conceptualize what is generally accepted in society:  racism, sexism, classism, and anti-Immigrantism.They force us to re-conceptualize because they blatantly contradict pre-conceived notions of society which we received when we were very young by seemingly authoratative adults.
Unfortunately, as I learned, the vast majority of the class, many of whom were Black and female, didn't know who Shirley Chisholm even was let alone that she ran for president in 1972. When I came to think about it, I learned about the damn thing on the Internet. Come to think of it, I've learned most things of importance on the Internet. So what did I learn in primary school:

George Washington was the first president of the United States
George Washington cut down a damn cherry tree
George Washington was a white, straight, Christian, war hero

I think the question at hand is: who does it empower to have access to this information?  Further, how much did it empower the Black-American, Brooklyn College-educated, women with immigrant parents to learn this piece of information?
Does the phenomenon by which we are systematically denied information in primary school, which would otherwise help us contradict large racist, sexist, classist, and anti-Immigrantism structures, even have a name?
It does: Disinformation and Misinformation.
The Washington Post has an article:
"In experiments conducted by political scientist John Bullock at Yale University, volunteers were given various items of political misinformation from real life. One group of volunteers was shown a transcript of an ad created by NARAL Pro-Choice America that accused John G. Roberts Jr., President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court at the time, of "supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber."

A variety of psychological experiments have shown that political misinformation primarily works by feeding into people's preexisting views. People who did not like Roberts to begin with, then, ought to have been most receptive to the damaging allegation, and this is exactly what Bullock found.Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to disapprove of Roberts after hearing the allegation.Bullock then showed volunteers a refutation of the ad by abortion-rights supporters. He also told the volunteers that the advocacy group had withdrawn the ad. Although 56 percent of Democrats had originally disapproved of Roberts before hearing the misinformation, 80 percent of Democrats disapproved of the Supreme Court nominee afterward. Upon hearing the refutation, Democratic disapproval of Roberts dropped only to 72 percent."



For the 6 percent left with flexible thinking: Chisholm won three states, by the by.

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Re: Poverty and Intelligence

I just want to piggyback on Roy's post to emphasize that poverty, not failing schools, is what's hurting poor students.  I have professors and classmates who could articulate this much better than me, but it doesn't matter how many standards you impose on a school or how many amazing teachers you hire if the students are not coming to school prepared to learn.  Being prepared to learn means coming to school healthy, well-fed, well-rested, and going home to parents who are involved in their education.  Education doesn't happen in a vaccuum-- it's not possible to fix the schools and solve the problem without fixing everything else. 

poverty and intelligence: there is a correlation.

I am considering creating an "Um...duh" article category. A study by the University of Berkley found that there is a strong correlation between poverty and brain functioning, with the study demonstrating that the cognitive abilities of low-income 9 & 10 year olds pale in comparison to those of their wealthy counterparts. When their cognitive abilities were tested, the former demonstrated that they had drastically less attention for cognitive testing, lead researcher Mark Kishiyama of the University of California-Berkeley explains: "It suggests that in these kids, prefrontal function is reduced or disrupted in some way."
Now, correlation does not necessarily mean cause. That is, it isn't the fact of living in a family that has little wealth that leads to a narrowing ability to use one's brains. However, many social aspects accompanying poverty affect brain functioning: poor and discouraging education, unavailable parents or guardians, malnutrition, poor health insurance, exposure to lead, lack of mentally stimulating resources like museums and pretty libraries, and being told by society that poor people are uneducated, trashy, and that they arrived in their social situation because they are inherently destined to be so. Take a long walk through Brooklyn from East New York to Bed-stuy to Fort Green to Prospect Heights to Park Slope. You'll get the drift.
Primary education across the US, is supposed to be, at least on paper, the right of all citizens of the US. However, because taxes which go to public school education is not centralized but localized, young people who have the privilege of having parents who can pay higher taxes also have the privilege of attending schools with books and tutors and computers and ceilings without holes in them. Now, money doesn't guarantee success, and there are ideological factors. For example, because the wealthy are financially privileged and likely white no one is overtly surprised when they do well in school or overtly disappointed when they fail - unlike their impoverished and likely colored counterparts who find success to be coincidential and failure to be characteristic of "who they are."
Now, contrast all that with those wonderful banking families who are using the interest from your college loans to buy their kids ponies.