Could Carnival over take the Mummers?

 Serious question since the Philadelphia Mummer tradition owes a lot to Carnival. Carnival being:

Carnival is a Western Christian festive season that occurs before the liturgical season of Lent. The main events typically occur during February or early March, during the period historically known as Shrovetide (or Pre-Lent). Carnival typically involves public celebrations, including events such as parades, public street parties and other entertainments, combining some elements of a circus. Elaborate costumes and masks allow people to set aside their everyday individuality and experience a heightened sense of social unity. Participants often indulge in excessive consumption of alcohol, meat, and other foods that will be forgone during upcoming Lent.

This question is something I've been asking myself for a while since I heard the Mummer's Parade in Philadelphia was having economic problems.  Carnival It's a big thing in the Caribbean and is called Mardi Gras in the US:

Carnival celebrations, usually referred to as Mardi Gras ("Fat Tuesday" in French), were first celebrated in the Gulf Coast area, but now occur in many states. Customs originated in the onetime French colonial capitals of Mobile (now in Alabama), New Orleans (Louisiana), and Biloxi (Mississippi), all of which have celebrated for many years with street parades and masked balls.

 So, the two traditions. Carnival and Mummers, have a lot in common. I found this article in Al Dia about another tradition, the San Mateo Carnavalero, linking up with the Mummers

 Up until recently the suggestion that masqueraders of "San Mateo Carnavalero" should  join the long standing and massive parade of the "Mummers" had been nothing more than our suggestion. However recently there was a real rapprochement between multiple local cultural carnivals, all of which had, until then, remained mostly disconnected.

 My opinion, here's a tradition which exists that could join up with other ethnic groups. The Al Dia Article pretty much sums up how I think the Mummers Parade should evolve to become more inclusive. The issue is whether blacks are willing to join their tradition with that from other cultures.

What you miss by being monolingual.

 The US really doesn't have much in the way of a balanced media.

So, it was really refreshing to see this interview with John McWhorter in L'Express: https://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/idees-et-debats/john-mcwhorter-avec-sa-croyance-inebranlable-et-son-peche-originel-le-wokisme-est-une-religion_2165058.html

You can find English versions, but the French one is much more cutting about this movement.

You touch on a crucial point. There is certainly a form of theatricality in the way some blacks claim a place, and that can be traced back to simplistic attitudes already in the early 1960s. But I really think that the black American leadership doesn't think about black people as elected officials: it's not part of the black tradition. I think that Black America thinks of itself through a very troubled history, still in the present, and that this idea that Black people should have a certain place is not an egocentric idea, but rather a fear. It comes from the fact that it can be difficult, as a black person, why you exist in the world. The relationship with Africa, it goes back centuries, it doesn't make sense anymore. We are not Africans. What do we have? It is very difficult to think collectively in such a situation. For me, it's very important that we understand this because indeed, this aspect of black activism can be very irritating. But it comes from a deep insecurity. 

I find it interesting that Prof. McWhorter is a professor of Creole Studies and isn't offering the Western Alternative to Africa: Creole culture. The slaves made their own traditions in the Western Hemisphere.

While the narrative is that blacks "were stolen from Africa", the reality is that they were sold into bondage by other Africans (e.g., Mali Empire and Benin). Slavery has been part of African culture from Ancient times. Blaming white people won't change that.

US black culture is also not monolithic as is seen by examples like Prof. McWhorter.

The Woke prove me correct (or the Bizarreness of the Woke Part 3)

I made a comment about gender and pronouns way back when I was in Law School (over 30 odd years ago) that said something along the lines of "let's stop using pronouns and maybe people will go away". Now, the ACLU removes women from the pro-choice equation.

Title IX Collides with the Lies of the Radical Right

 

The following should be important to everyone who has a mother, sister, wife, daughter or granddaughter.

It is my reliable litmus test for conservatives that they believe things which are wrong, erroneous, false, and factually deficient.  Even when they have the correct information provided, it is my experience that conservatives choose to continue with the false information; it is part of their identity that they become deeply attached to the false information and reject the true and accurate new information, to such an extent that it is a defining quality.

It also seems to be a reliable marker or indicator that their focus will be against some minority group or group that is not in power that they desire to disadvantage, and to see as victimizing them, as well as their intense antipathy to the government which tells them they may not act on that desire.

That was true of the recent effort on the part of the right wing media to gin up outrage against both girls, public education, and the federal government - a three-fer.

This includes massive hatred for Title IX, which gives girls and women parity in playing sports within the authority of academic institutions, ranging from K-12 to higher education.  The value of Title IX is that there is a strong causal connection between women succeeding in the business world, particularly at the "C-class" level (CEO, etc.) as well as being a factor in women who run for - and are elected to - public office.  Key appears to be the experience of playing at a highly competitive level, and the experience of winning and losing, and then continuing to play.

The number of girls who have entered into playing sports in school has gone from around 250,000 in the early 70's when Title IX became law, and more than 3 million now.  The number of women in public office, while lower in the U.S. than in some other countries, (and so far, not the top spot) has also grown significantly since the mid-20th century when feminism had its big explosion pushing towards gender equality.

I came across a story that tracked back to extremist propaganda fountain Glenn Boo-hoo Beck and the Blaze, and a Fox not-news station. Typically, it followed the right-wing memes that boys are somehow being disadvantaged (a variant on being feminized and/or any pretext for anti-feminism) by the evil federal government and the evil public school system, and of course, evil feminism. Then there is that other tell-tale sign of conservatism - the notion that they are somehow victimized by being forced to co-exist in the 21st century, instead of the 19th.  In the eyes of true conservatives, any time good ol' white boys are not given both preference and dominance over brown people and female humans, their world is out of joint, god is crying, and society is coming unglued at the seams.  And always, the conservatives look to bash the federal government, even if they have to lie to do so.
Here is what Kate Dietrich, spokesperson from the school district had to say about a story totally distorted and misrepresented by the right wing media regarding Title IX compliance that enforces equal treatment of girls and boys playing sports under the authority of the Civil Rights branch of the Dept. of Education, via Bob Cook at Forbes :

We completely understand the concern over this act of compliance, as the baseball seating was donated and built by well-intentioned parent boosters and not the school district.  Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to many supporters and parents, the boys baseball scoreboard and seating updates were constructed and managed outside of the appropriate district protocol and oversight several years ago [my note: 2001, according to this article].  Upon closer investigation, the District also learned that the seating addition didn’t meet existing laws and zoning ordinances, and was not physically safe. Our goal is to work together with boosters in the future to ensure any facility improvements made on school property are safe, equitable and meet existing zoning ordinances.
Though we cannot change what has happened in the past, we recognize that there are some systematic issues that need to be addressed at the district level and are making every effort to ensure that our teams, boosters and district do not have to face similar situations in the future. To that end, we have begun building better leadership structures and increased accountability across the board within our interscholastic athletic program; this includes steps to improve leadership, communication, and inadequate facilities, along with improving hiring practices and creating a standard code of conduct for all coaches.

Here is a snippet of the Faux News/ Blaze bally-hoo, followed by more of the factual contradiction.  "Fisking" the Blaze piece, let's start with the fact seating was stadium-style /chair type seating, not bleachers.  And the High School was not ordered to take down that seating, least of all by any federal agency.  And the reason for the take-down of the seating - yes, that did occur - was far more complex and nuanced, including being improperly located so as to be dangerous to spectators, and that it was not handicapped accessible.

Why a High School Was Ordered to Tear Down Its Brand-New Baseball Bleachers Will Likely Have Small-Gov’t Advocates Shaking Their Heads
The U.S Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has forced a school in Michigan to tear down a brand-new set of bleachers for its boys’ varsity baseball team because the new seating is nicer than the girls’ softball bleachers.
This next part is true; parent DID raise money for new seating and a new scoreboard.  The adjoining girls softball field is also going to be getting a new scoreboard.
The raised seating deck for the boys’ baseball team, which was paid for with money raised by parents, was put in place because fans who’d come to watch games at Plymouth High School in Canton, Mich., were having a hard time seeing the game through the chain-link fence WJBK-TV reported.
The parents installed the new bleachers themselves and even added a new scoreboard to the field, the station reported.

The seating is some six years old; it is not clear who authorized it to be built, without conforming to rules and regs for handicapped access, or who authorized that location, nor is it clear who ordered the stadium seats to be removed either. No one is talking about who actually made that decision.
The Blaze goes on to misreport and gin up outrage at the EEEEEVIL Feds:

But after an investigation by government officials, which was prompted by an anonymous complaint, the school was told it had to remove the new seating because it was “no longer equal” to the adjacent girls’ softball bleachers, which have yet to get a makeover of their own.
Further, government officials said, the new boys’ bleachers were not sufficiently handicap-accessible.
The school agreed to tear down the new bleachers after government officials issued a citation.
Plymouth High School superintendent Michael Meissen said the school will hold onto the new bleachers until they can come up with a plan that adheres to strict government rules and is “fair to everyone,” WJBK-TV reported.

Here is where the story hits the rhubarb of factual deficiency again.  Yes, there was an anonymous complaint - presumably the Dept. of Education's Civil Rights department knows who complained, but aren't talking.  And there were other problems to address besides spectator seating, including field time for the girls La Crosse team and other issues.  The school was advised about their problems with compliance under Title IX, and solutions were negotiated.  The school was NOT ordered to remove the seating; that solution came from the school district, along with some other problems being addressed.  There did not seem to be any pressure from the U.S. Dept. of Education to make the changes immediately, only a request that they comply with treating their female students fairly, as the law requires, within a reasonable time framework.

A writer on sports topics at Forbes did a better job of fact checking than 'the Blaze' (no surprise).

The Government Did Not Force A High School To Tear Out Its Baseball Seats
I may already be too late to quell the outrage — or at least funnel it in the right direction — regarding the baseball boosters of Plymouth High School in suburban Detroit having to tear out seats it bought and installed on their own dime and time. But I want to correct one big whopper of a mistake that is bouncing its way across the rage-o-sphere: the federal government did NOT order the seats torn out as a remedy for a Title IX gender equity violation.
It’s just like how the federal government doesn’t tell a college violating Title IX that it has to cut the men’s wrestling program – under Title IX, it ensures that men and women have equal athletic opportunities. However, cuts in men’s sports have happened during the 42 years of Title IX, so there is a subset of people who believe it’s been responsible for a war on males. That subset is ready to pounce on any “evidence” that another shot in this War on Men’s Sports has been fired (while ignoring football’s role in squeezing out opportunities for males in other sports).
On March 28, the local Fox television station in Detroit provided some fuel for outrage. It reported that after boosters installed a seating deck and a scoreboard at the Plymouth High baseball field, a complaint came into the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights that there might be a Title IX violation because similar work wasn’t done at school’s softball field. At one point, the report notes Plymouth-Canton Community Schools “agreed to take the seats down” to be in Title IX compliance.
Except that according to the investigative report on the complaint, which wasn’t quoted in the Fox Detroit story (and was about equality of facilities in general, not just about the seats and scoreboard), the district wasn’t asked to tear anything down — it was asked to build up. From the Department of Education’s report dated Oct. 31, 2013, which took a complete look at the district’s athletics programs and facilities for boys and girls:
If booster clubs provide benefits and services to athletes of one sex that are greater than what the district is capable of providing to athletes of the other sex, then the district must take action to ensure that benefits and services are equivalent for both sexes. …
The District has signed the enclosed resolution agreement, which, once implemented, will fully address the information obtained during the investigation in accordance with Title IX. The agreement requires the District to: renovate the School’s varsity softball field to include a scoreboard and seating equivalent to what is provided at the School’s varsity baseball field; and provide the School’s girls’ lacrosse team with access to an on-campus practice facility equivalent to that provided to the boys’ lacrosse team.
However, because it’s a lot more fun to say the big, bad ol’ government is oppressing people, the Narrative (there’s always a Narrative) quicklyestablished that the feds told the boosters to tear out the seats (or as often misreported, bleachers).

I don't fully understand why it is that conservatives are so willing to deliberately ignore facts and truth, or why they seem driven by such angry hatred towards groups of people they (incorrectly) perceive as both 'other' and 'enemy', but it has come to define the political partisanship of the right wing to a degree which, so far as my reading of history has progressed, is virtually unprecedented in our national history.  It is destructive, it is toxic, and it must be actively resisted by the center and left to the extreme of our energy resources, especially by vigorous fact checking and sharing of the truth and objective reality in which we live.  We also need frequently and routinely to underline the benefits of those actions taken by the more liberal among us, like the benefits of Title IX, which the radical right chooses to ignore or deny, or lie.

GOP Whining over Paying Women Fairly

from the WAGE project:


Employers pay women less than they pay men for the same reason male dogs lick their balls - because they can.  And like male dogs, employers won't stop willingly.

THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR NOT PROVIDING EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK. PERIOD.  FULL STOP.

It is a systemic problem in need of a system-wide legal solution; it has been ongoing for more than 40 years without the 'free market' providing anything resembling a solution to the problem.

There is absolutely NO factual basis to claim that women don't want to earn equal pay - as was made by a Wisconsin conservative law maker who took as his factual authority his understanding of something claimed by the blond idiot Ann Coulter.

There is absolutely NO factual basis for a claim made by a Texas woman in that state's Republican party that men are better negotiators.  And there is absolutely no rational assertion that demanding to be paid fairly and equitably will result in being perceived as inferior in any way, or as whining.  These right wing women just make stuff up; it has no validity or substance. Those are all radical right wing excuses -- BAD excuses - for cheating women.

It is a systemic problem, part of the larger problem of suppressed compensation for large sectors of the labor market, and is reflected (for example) in the failure to adequately raise the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation.  It is reflected as well in the disproportionate number of women in so-called 'C-class' positions (CEO, COO, CFO, etc.) and in the smaller percentage of women in the more important positions of authority in government than the percentage of women in the population (governors, members of Congress and the Senate, and of course NO woman president EVER).

Conservatives hate women, they hate minorities, and they are the servile puppets of bad economic policies and corporate entities whom they serve instead of their human constituents.

Recently we had two examples of failed Republican thinking:
from MSNBC, quoting MN Rep Andrea Kieffer:

“We heard several bills last week about women’s issues, and I kept  thinking to myself: ‘These bills are putting us backwards in time. We  are losing the respect that we so dearly want in the workplace by  bringing up all these special bills for women, and almost making us look  like whiners,‘ “ Kieffer said last Wednesday.

In some Minnesota counties, women make considerably LESS than the average of $0.77 to every $1.00 earned by men for equal work.  In Minnesota, where the minimum wage is below the federal level, in some counties the average is considerably lower.

Kieffer is playing the front-person for the Republican line which is trying out the stratagem of using their token women to make misogynistic statements for a change, after the epic failure of their male-dominated "legitimate rape" and other public relations fiascos.  The right wing women are not any more successful; the problem is the message and the policies, not just the messenger.  We've seen other radical right conservative women fail, from Michele Bachmann on pretty much everything, to the offensive claims of women like Phyllis Schlaffy that "good" women are never sexually harassed in the workplace:

"Sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for virtuous women."
- Phyllis Schlafly

Of course, we KNOW that is a false assumption, and blaming victims for bad conduct by employers and those in management positions in authority over them is wrong, just like denying equal pay for equal work. NO woman 'deserves' to be harassed, just like no woman - or man, or child - deserves to be raped or otherwise sexually coerced, or abused in the workplace in any way.

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/phyllissch383405.html#o4LlVbJxGCugL5CG.99

Sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for virtuous women.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/phyllissch383405.html#o4LlVbJxGCugL5CG.99

And the same criticisms of factual deficiency can, of course, be said of any policy or legislation from the right relating to women's reproductive health, privacy, or freedom of choice.

Kieffer, a good little empty-headed plastic dolly reciting pre-recorded lines like an old "Chatty Cathy" doll, is just following like a good little soldier where she is directed to go by the big old white men in charge of the MN GOP.  There is not an original thought in the mix, or an independent idea.:

continuing from MSNBC:

“I wasn’t completely shocked or surprised. This seems to be a pattern  of really sort of ignorant remarks by Republican lawmakers in this  state as well as around the country. I think what we’re seeing is these  legislators and other Republican elected officials really, truly showing  their stripes,” Ken Martin, party chair of the Minnesota  Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, told msnbc.

Equal pay pits women against women in Texas 

The battle for equal pay continues to be a dividing issue in  states around the country, including Texas. Cari Christman, executive  director of a political action committee for Texas Republican women,  last weekend struggled to explain the GOP’s opposition to fair-pay laws.  Women don’t need measures like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, she  argued in a television interview, mostly because “women are extremely  busy.” In an attempt to clarify her counterpart’s comments, Beth  Cubriel, executive director of the Texas Republican Party, this week  explained that men are better negotiators than women.

Republicans continue to demonstrate they do not value women, or view us as equal, ranging from comments like Rush Limbaugh's comment that
"we already have museums for women, they're called malls", but excused that comment by noting “Hey, I could have said brothel.”   to the Texas governor Republican candidate, Greg Abbott, who would undo the Lily Ledbetter Act -- and did, regarding women college professors in the Texas state education system (as well as in his own office, ditto minorities, who are paid less than white men).

Conservatives believe thing that are demonstrably NOT TRUE, things which are usually hateful, hurtful and demeaning. Facts are not the friends of conservatives; they appear to be totally unacquainted with them.

If we leave it to the radical right, women will lose the vote, be kept at home mostly barefoot and pregnant, less educated, dependent for financial support, and probably stuck in corsets and long dresses with high collars and long sleeves, and no freedom or equality.  The GOP and worse, the tea party  are oppressors and do not believe in or value women, the family, genuine equality or freedom.  Their evil actions give the lie to their words, and to add insult to the injury, they don't even make the effort to produce credible lies.  The radical right deserves to lose badly in the 2014 election cycle, and this is an issue that will hurt them more than most.

Conservatives must go.