Conservative Amazons

In a move sure to lack profound implications for the College of Charleston community, our Student Government Association voted 20 to 10 to impeach Vice President Seaton Brown.

Every non-joiner college student knows that SGA exists solely to build the egos and resumes of a select few students. It’s like a fraternity for kids who like to feel important. But surely they realize that their organization is not important enough to warrant impeaching a vice president. At first I thought that SGA had obligingly decided to create a controversy in order to give the journalists of the George Street Observer something more important to cover than the latest goings-on of MTV reality shows. But the more I read, the more I realized that they’re actually serious.

The full coverage is here and here, with a video of the proceedings on the homepage here. Frankly, the whole thing is a little boring, so feel free to read up on the minutiae from those sources. I only have a few observations.

First, I feel sorry for Brown. He seems like the kind of bow-tie wearing SGA enthusiast who would wear on me quickly because he takes the organization so seriously, but from what I’ve read, it doesn’t sound like he deserves to be impeached.

Second, to illustrate the inanity of SGA, I’d like to note that there was another VP a few years ago who faced the impeachment process:

According to Hinds (SGA President), in the 2003-2004 academic year, the SGA Vice President did not place a bill on the docket due to his personal feelings. The bill proposed that C of C acknowledge the Boston Red Sox as it’s official team.

Talk about your important issues. One of the charges against Brown:

[Secretary Peter] Neiger wrote that Brown interrupted and belittled senators that supported the bill during debate, and, after its passage, Brown spoke to the Senate in what [Freshman Senator William] Porter described in his letter as a tirade.

“Vice-President [sic] Brown abrasively addressed the Senate to such an extreme that he made many people feel uncomfortable,” wrote Porter.

My heart weeps for you.

The best part of the whole spectacle, though, was during the proceedings when Chief of Staff Jamie Shafer, one of the students who initiated the impeachment proceedings, actually started getting weepy on the floor of the Senate. She even did that little hand-wave thing that beauty pageant contestant winners do when they tear up while getting crowned Miss America.

Finally, a description of Brown’s misdeeds:

“His violations fall under two categories: failure to exercise the powers and duties of his office and failure to refrain from activities which may bring shame and/or disgrace to his office,” Neiger said.

Here’s a question. Would breaking the law be considered an activity that brings shame or disgrace to the office? And if that’s the case, I’d hypothesize that at least half of SGA could be impeached on violations of the drinking age alone.

Let’s check the bylaws:

SGA By-laws, Section 1500.000:

1500.000 Impeachment of Executive and Legislative Officers

1500.001 Impeachment charges may only be brought against an official
if he/she is found to violate an article in the Constitution and/or
any rules of conduct in the Student Handbook, College of Charleston
Honor Code, or the oath of office.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the College of Charleston frown on illegal alcohol consumption?

Or I would have adopted this dog in a moment of sad-eye-induced weakness.

He’s a German Shepherd named Romeo. Doesn’t he look like the kind of dog who would obligingly lie on top of your feet when they’re cold? And act really tough when he barks at strangers but secretly be afraid of rabbits?

Click on the link to his page, and there are some really cute pictures of him snuggling with his foster mom’s kids. He was apparently abused by his owners, and shot at one point. Which makes me want to take him home even more. Also, my parents adopted a formerly abused German Shepherd and this boy’s face reminds me of hers.

I’m addicted to petfinder.com. When I’m procrastinating, I browse through the listings and promise myself that as soon as my life is stable (i.e. I have a job and an apartment that allows dogs) I’ll take a pound puppy home with me. I also have a fantasy life where I live on a farm-sized plot of land, write political books and am surrounded by adopted pets.

Of course, in my fantasy life Mark Sanford is the president (he brought pigs to the State Assembly! Pigs! Cheap political theater says you; awesome says I), and all of my children go to private schools because we’ve finally gotten over the idea that a government monopoly on education is a good thing and instituted the most expansive school choice program ever.

But until then, I’ll just take one Romeo puppy.

Turns out the universe doesn’t want me to have a Capitalist Pig dress.

The first company I ordered the pig fabric from sent me an email on Monday saying they actually didn’t have any in stock.  If I still wanted it, I would have to wait until late March.  Fanciful ideas like conservative humor-themed dresses can’t be put off for a month.  You have to start them soon after coming up with them, or they will seems stale by the time you finally get around to it.

I canceled my order and went on eBay.  I found a seller who had several yards listed in stock, and ordered what I needed.  Well, I got an email tonight that said they didn’t have the fabric in continuous yards, so I could either cancel my order, take the multiple pieces (in increments of 55″, 32″ and 25″) or wait until late march when he would be getting another bolt.

Driven by impatience, I took the multiple pieces.  Now I’m crossing my fingers that my pattern pieces actually fit on the fabric I’m getting.  If not, I’ll be forced to abandon the dress and make a Capitalist Pig blouse and matching accessories, which really doesn’t have the same appeal as the dress concept.

Look, guys, I get it.  Whether you support Obama or hate his hopeful guts, the temptation to include in your op-ed or blog a reference or play on words based on his famous phrase “the Audacity of Hope” is just too strong.

But you need to stop.  It was clever the first time you did it.  Maybe even the second.  But now that we’re on the 1,472nd reference, the whole thing is so predictable and mundane that I want to reach through the screen of my computer and box your ears for even thinking about it.

I’m looking at you, Frank Rich, or whichever lemming of an editor titled your op-ed “The Audacity of Hopelessness.”

/rant

I didn’t see any of the nominees for nearly anything, except for Enchanted, which got three original song nominations but still lost to some dumb song from Once (which I also saw, and I assure you that the title aptly captures how many times the movie is worth watching). I wanted to see No Country for Old Men, but I think I’ll be waiting for the DVD. I briefly considered watching Juno, but lost my taste for it when feminist blogs the world o’er started sighing over how wonderful the lead character was. Blegh.

I don’t have a lot to say about the awards themselves (my favorite movies never get nominated. Seriously, did no one appreciate 27 Dresses like I did?). But I would like to point out my picks for Best- and Worst-Dressed Women . Take a moment if you will, to drink in Helen Mirren’s beautiful dress. The color, the artful way the fabric is draped across the bodice, those perfect sleeves - I guess when you’re 63, you’ve had a lot of time to work on picking great dresses.

Compare her class and style, if you will, to the winner for best original screenplay, former middle-class-Catholic-schoolgirl-turned-stripper-and-blogger Diablo Cody:

Are those leopard print feathers? Edged with sparkles? What is it about this dress that makes it so easy to believe that she wrote a blog called “Pussy Ranch”?

I used to doubt, but I’ve seen the light and am now a true believer.  Barack Obama is so much more a presidential candidate.  He’s so much more than a one-term Senator with a flimsy record.  He’s a font of wisdom desperately needed in this desperate times, bringing - dare I say it? - real hope back to the nation.

In between jabs at McCain’s ties with lobbyists, this reincarnation of JFK/Abraham Lincoln actually discovered a way to prevent illness in children:

“If we just cut out soda pop,” it would make a difference, he said.

Asked at a later news conference about the issue, he said he hopes schools will “re-examine how easily they make soda available.”

Citing an increase in childhood obesity and diabetes, he said if children “are consuming vast amounts of soft drinks chock full of corn syrup, then we should, you know, consider whether we want to maybe have at least some zones like schools where they have to drink water once in a while.”

You can relax now, America.  Obama is a man with a plan.  I mean, if we can stop kids from consuming vast amounts of soft drinks, what can’t we do?  This is the change we’ve been waiting for.

I bought the fabric for the Capitalist Pig dress.  Once I make it, I’ll have counter-protest  at a socialist rally  just so that I have a chance to wear it.  Unfortunately, the Charleston area isn’t home to a great deal of socialist activity, unless you count the College of Charleston.  So maybe I’ll just wear it to class.

On an entirely different, apolitical note, I also went to the local Hancock Fabrics for their Warehouse sale, and spent an obscene (for me) amount of money on fabric, patterns  and assorted notions.  I used to be dismayed when I realized how much fabric I had lying around from projects planned but never started.  Then I found out that every seamstress, including my new heroine, has large fabric stashes squirreled away for those days when you realize that you don’t need more fabric (or a nightmare future in which there is no new fabric to be had.  You just never know).

I know you don’t want a Hillary Clinton presidency.  Neither do I.  But don’t you think that claiming that it’s unconstitutional for a woman to be president is taking things a bit too far?  I quote:

Most people believe not only that the 19th Amendment permitted women the right to vote but that since women serve in Congress, the courts and other offices of government, the office of president of the United States has been de-genderized.

Not true. This important legal question exists now and has not been constitutionally addressed. The language and syntax of the 19th Amendment merely removed the barriers that prevented women from voting. It did not identify women to be qualified to become elected president.

Except that the relevant clause in the Constitution, which lays out the requirements for becoming president, is gender neutral:

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

Now, if you could point me to where it says “no person except one with a penis shall be eligible to the Office of President,” I’ll concede the point.

The New York Times had two stories today with some interesting material.

The first looked at the inclusion debate in Muslim student groups:

The intense debate over whether organizations for Muslim students should be inclusive or strict is playing out on college campuses across the United States, where there are now more than 200 Muslim Students Association chapters.

Gender issues, specifically the extent to which men and women should mingle, are the most fraught topic as Muslim students wrestle with the yawning gap between American college traditions and those of Islam.

I can sympathize with wanting to be strict about your religious traditions, and wanting to create a community that encourages those traditions, especially with regards to the rampant drunkenness and promiscuity of the American college campus.  To some extent, Christian groups try to do the same thing, creating a safe haven for values that may not be celebrated on the rest of the campus.  But what I find so profoundly disturbing about Islam (aside from the propensity to be terrorists) is the insistence on segregating men and women:

Some members push against the rigidity. Fatima Hassan, 22, a senior at the Davis campus, organized a coed road trip to Reno, Nev., two hours away, to play the slot machines last Halloween. In Islam, Ms. Hassan concedes, gambling is “really bad,” but it was men and women sharing the same car that shocked some fellow association members.

This rigidity is a manifestation of the belief that men and women cannot be trusted to be sexually pure while in close quarters.  More specifically, that men can not and should not be expected to control themselves sexually in the presence of women.  And from this belief, we get a blunt form of rape apologetics, which says that it’s OK to sexually assault a woman if she steps outside the very narrow boundaries of the strict interpretation of Islamic law.

On the bright side, this interpretation of Islam is in conflict with prevailing American assumption that men and women have equal rights:

“As American Islam gets its own identity, it is going to have to shed some of these notions that are distant from American culture,” said Rafia Zakaria, a student at Indiana University. “The tension is between what forms of tradition are essential and what forms are open to innovation.”

American law says men and women are equal, whereas Muslim religious texts say they “complement” each other, Ms. Zakaria said. “If the law says they are equal, it’s hard to see how in their spiritual lives they will accept a whole different identity.”

On a different note, a Columbia University professor is under investigation for plagiarism.  Her response?  Play the race and sex card:

Dr. Constantine, in an e-mail message to faculty and students on Wednesday, called the investigation “biased and flawed,” and said it was part of a “conspiracy and witch hunt by certain current and former members of the Teachers College community.”

“I am left to wonder whether a white faculty member would have been treated in such a publicly disrespectful and disparaging manner,” she wrote.

She added, “I believe that nothing that has happened to me this year is coincidental, particularly when I reflect upon the hate crime I experienced last semester involving a noose on my office door. As one of only two tenured black women full professors at Teachers College, it pains me to conclude that I have been specifically and systematically targeted.”

I wish I could use my race and gender to avoid accusations of plagiarism.  Her claim starts sounding stupid by the end of the article:

Dr. Luthar [chair of Constantine's department] said that any suggestion that the inquiry was about race was “misguided and wrongheaded at best,” noting that she herself is “a woman of color,” as is Dr. Yeh [A junior colleague whose work Constantine may have plagiarized].

So, the Department Chair who is responsible for the “witch-hunt” and the woman whose work she may have stolen are both women of color, belonging to the same double-victimhood category that she says is responsible for the allegations in the first place?  Have either of them been systematically targeted?  No?  It’s just Dr. Constantine?  Sounds like someone is getting a little paranoid.

George Will on Hillary Clinton:

Nothing, however, will assuage Clinton supporters’ sense of injustice if the upstart Obama supplants her. Their, and her, sense of entitlement is encapsulated in her constant invocations of her “35 years” of “experience.” Well.

She is 60. She left Yale Law School at age 25. Evidently she considers everything she has done since school, from her years at Little Rock’s Rose law firm to her good fortune with cattle futures, as presidentially relevant experience.

Based on the Clinton definition of experience, my Dad is qualified to run for President simply by virtue of being in his late 50’s and a lawyer.  It seems that Clinton’s invocation of experience is a thinly veiled appeal to age: I’m older, therefore, I would be a better president than this relatively young whippersnapper.