Taxpayer-funded sex discrimination

PostWatch is exposing institutions that discriminate on the basis of sex, yet receive Federal funds.

I'm shocked, shocked!



Blackface, the new anti-establishment protest?
According to Erin O’Connor, there appears to be a sort of mini-epidemic of blackface-related incidents on campus:

…I want to stress the highly stylized pattern that surrounds the wearing of blackface on college campuses. It's almost always fraternity brothers who do it; they almost always do it at Halloween; they always incur the righteous wrath of the campus; that wrath doesn't distinguish between dressing as tennis stars and dressing as Sambo; there is always some kind of discipline; often, in the process of doling out the discipline, administrators violate the offenders' constitutional rights; there is also always talk of institutionalized racism--the history of minstrelsy is always invoked, as are the less-than-optimal numbers of black students on the campus in question. To say that blackface episodes signify the presence of unreconstructed racism on campus is to miss the wider picture, which is that the donning of blackface is one scene in a complex campus-wide dramatization of the racial tension built into the multicultural agenda that presides over an increasing number of college campuses.

Fraternity members wear blackface not because they don't know that it will be seen as racist, but because they know it will. They are deliberately flouting campus convention with their costumes; I would argue that blackface says less about the racial awareness of its wearer than it does about his rejection of politically correct codes of conduct. The white male fraternity brother is the emblematic oppressor on campus today--he symbolizes all that the many speech codes, harassment policies, sensitivity workshops, and diversity requirements cluttering up his campus most revile. To use the phraseology of oppression theory, blackface as it is worn on campuses today might more rightly be understood as a form of resistance than a sign of neanderthalism. That doesn't make it right. But it might help explain it.





Study Finds Sex, Pregnancy Link
If you want to read some funny material, go to Bob Levy’s column in today's The Washington Post.

via Media Minded



Life repeats Woody Allen, only without the laughs
In his campy comedy Bananas, Woody Allen goes to the fictional country of San Marcos where there's a revolution. The country's new president soon becomes drunk with power and decrees that the official language of San Marcos is Swedish, that everyone must change their underwear every half-hour, and that they must wear it on the outside of their clothes so the government will be able to check. Eventually San Marcos is invaded by everyone from Americans troops to the Jewish Defense League.

If Joel Soler, director of the documentary Uncle Saddam, is to be believed, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein is a real-life version of the leader in Bananas. While the people of Iraq are not required to wear their underwear on the outside (yet), Saddam instructs his subjects on how often to bathe (once a day for men, twice for women) and how to brush their teeth. His sycophants greet him by kissing him on the shoulder in a spot about halfway between his armpit and his nipple. He maintains an elaborate art museum containing only portraits of himself. His office must be maintained at a specified temperature determined by his doctors and he is deathly afraid of germs. And this only scratches the surface.

It would be funny if Saddam’s rule weren’t so tragic for his people, and if his military adventures and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction didn’t make him a threat to the rest of the world. He may not be clinically psychotic, but he’s definitely nuts.