From yesterday’s Talking Points Memo:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/12/fish_stories_more_risky_via_email.php?more?ref=fpblg

If you don’t feel like reading the whole story, the short version is this.  A man claims to have thwarted a terrorist attack on a plane getting ready to depart from Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta.  He tells a detailed story, in an e-mail to friends, about discovering/uncovering the plot, confronting its mastermind, getting 12 “Arabs” thrown off the plane, and then getting put on a different flight when the “terrorists” were allowed back on the plane.  The whole story has been debunked, beginning with proof positive that the writer was never on the plane (sorry, a George Carlin moment…  “IN the plane”) in the first place.

I haven’t had the stomach to read them, but a Facebook friend who responded when I posted this link there tells me that the right-wing blogosphere is going haywire about this.  They thought they had a new Flight 93 hero, and flatly refuse to believe that the guy made the story up out of whole cloth.  It just didn’t happen.  Nothing even like it happened.

I suppose up against the current roster of conservative heroes, this shouldn’t be a surprise–

Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who’ve made careers out of exaggerating stories and sometimes simply inventing them, then hiding behind claims not to be actual journalists when they get caught.

Joe the Plumber (remember him?), who rendered himself (or was rendered unto us, at least) as Mr. Small Business Main Street America, who was guilty of practicing his trade without a license and of tax-evasion.

Sarah Palin, whose transgressions are too lengthy and well documented to need repetition/reinforcement here

Senator Jim DeMint (SC), who in front of the entire Senate yesterday, actually said (and this is nearly an exact quote): “I’m proud of Republicans who are standing up to this government takeover of heath care.  And I’m proud of Republicans who are standing up to protect Medicare.”  And didn’t seem to understand why dozens of Senators thought that was kind of funny.

Anyway, the wingnuts are howling that the “liberal media” is covering up what their new hero really did in the plane in Atlanta.  They’re accusing Air Tran of covering up; they’re accusing TSA of covering up.  In other words, anybody who doesn’t believe their hero must be lying.  It’s unfathomable to them that their hero simply invented a story out of thin air. It couldn’t possibly be right that a racist idiot made up a story in which he confesses to his racist idiocy.

If Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin can publish books, then this guy should too.  I only hope he markets it as the fiction it is.

In this morning’s (Sunday) NYT, the following article runs–

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/us/29foodstamps.html?_r=1&hp

Full of pathos appeals, coupled with some interesting statistics, the article tracks increasing use of food stamps across the country.  In and of itself, that’s not terribly surprising.  In a difficult economy, people need help buying food.

What I found surprising and worth mulling over are a couple of facts–

1.  Growth in food stamp use is about the same in the 600 counties where it’s historically been highest, and the 600 counties where it’s historically been lowest.  That is, use of foodstamps is increasing rapidly in places where it hasn’t before.  The article isn’t terribly precise about this next point, but suggests a couple of times that the second batch of counties tend to more conservative than the first, which means that reliance on government support is (again) penetrating into places where conservative dogma says it shouldn’t.

2.  It’s not just poor people who are using food stamps.  The article makes very clear that working people and families at many levels of the economic hierarchy need support–job losses, housing bust, medical expenses, etc, are all contributing to hunger.  At the very least, the data challenges the conservative wisdom that only lazy people rely on government support.  Of course, anybody who’s paid a lick of attention for the last 30 years has known that’s crap, a fabrication of the Reagan campaign in order to fan poor white people’s indignation, while at the same time keeping them from doing much to help themselves.

3.  Notable are a couple of interviews with self-identified conservatives who are accepting government support for (what sounds like) the first time, although depending on how you define “government support,” you could argue that they’ve been accepting it their entire lives.  It’s good to see at least one of the interviewees acknowledge that food stamps aren’t just for poor, lazy people.  One of them says something like, “These are people I could be having lunch with.”  The classism of that aside, at least she recognizes something of value.  Somebody makes the point that poor people are often just as resistant to government aid as others, which was helpful to see.  But the one that really gets me is the guy who, with one hand reaches out to grab the money, and with the other slaps people who take it.  Hypocrite.  And the guy from the Heritage Foundation who (shockingly) pulls out the example of the person who lives in an expensive home and drives a Mercedez, and generalizes from her to the entire world.

If one person abusing a system were enough to call for the destruction of the system, then the Bush administration would be responsible for having smoked the Constitution; Blackwater’s rapes and murders in Iraq would be enough to destroy the US military.  And on and on.  The double-standard here is so Orwellian that it’s hard to address (thank you, John Birch, for legitimizing this kind of political discourse).

At the end of the day, what this article demonstrates is that everything conservatives say about government aid is wrong.  The system isn’t fraught with people abusing it–that’s nothing but a lie.  The system doesn’t enable laziness–it feeds working people who can’t feed themselves because our pro-corporate, anti-worker economic policies have utterly failed them.  Self-righteousness shouldn’t dictate accepting hunger as a condition of living in the wealthiest nation in the world. And conservatives who scream bloody murder about government support at the same time they accept it need to think a little harder about what they’re screaming.  I won’t argue, as some others do, that they should refuse to accept help.  It’s not the government’s job to decide who’s worthy of care based on how they exercise their First Amendment rights.  It is, however, deeply troubling that some of these folks really seem not to understand the problem here–that if they win their arguments at Tea Parties, the very support they rely on for survival will go away.

OK.  Thanksgiving morning, sipping coffee, playing around on the web, waiting for Ann to wake up so we can do whatever we’re doing to do today.  No plans, will probably just eat too much, watch some football and some movies, same as we’d do just about any other weekend day (except for the feasting part).

And yes, I’m thankful for many things: my wife, my family, my friends, my job, my dog, hints that democracy might be making a comeback in the US, growing grassroots outrage at the evils of corporate capitalism, etc.

But every year, as I wake up on Thanksgiving morning, I can’t help but wonder why we (whoever the “we” is that makes these decisions) feel like we need one day each year to take time out, to offer our thanks and good wishes, and to begin planning our Christmas-season shopping assault.  Why, that is, aren’t we more thankful (in public, out loud) every day?  How much different would the world look if we were as friendly and polite and grateful to each other *all* the time as we are on specific days that are earmarked for doing so?  It’s hard to imagine, actually, but I’m having some fun trying.

Imagine what the “pro-troops”/”anti-war” vigils in West Chester would look like if instead of waving signs and shouting invective across the street at each other, we stopped to say, “Thanks for being an example of how democracy is supposed to work.”  Or, “Although we disagree with you, thanks for taking a stand you really believe in.”  Or if everybody waved the sign I suspect both sides could accept (at least most of us), “Thanks to the brave men and women who risk their lives, and thanks to the caring citizens who want them to live out their lives.” Or, “Thanks to the people who protect democracy from outside attack and from inside erosion.”

No, those aren’t great slogans to put on signs, but you get the idea.

Wouldn’t that be fun?  And what to make of people who refused to acknowledge them?  That would be fun too.  As I’ve written here before, the world sure would look different if people had to live according to the principles they say they believe.  This would be another good way of finding out who does and doesn’t, or at least of forcing people to articulate what they actually do believe.

Now THAT’s something I’d set aside a special day to be thankful for.

Enjoy your t(of)urkey and pumpkin pie.  And be nice.

[Other than a slight error--APSCUF isn't affiliated with NEA--I'm happy to see this announcement out.  Our Legislative Assembly made this endorsement in late September.  For more info, go to <www.unionsforsinglepayerHR676.org>.]

Pennsylvania and Illinois Faculty Unions Endorse HR 676

Two faculty unions affiliated with the National Education Association
(NEA) have endorsed HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced
by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).

In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the Legislative Assembly of the Association
of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF) voted
overwhelmingly to endorse HR 676.  ASPCUF represents 6,000 faculty members
at the fourteen public university campuses across Pennsylvania.  Seth
Kahn, Grievance Chair at West Chester University, said:  “APSCUF
recognizes the importance of single-payer healthcare for unions
everywhere.  We are pleased to offer our strong endorsement.”

In Chicago, Illinois, the Executive Board of the Roosevelt University
Adjunct Faculty Organization (RAFO) also voted to endorse HR 676 reports
LuAnn Swartzlander, RAFO President.  RAFO is affiliated with the Illinois
Education Association (IEA) and the NEA.    #30#

HR 676 would institute a single payer health care system by expanding a
greatly improved Medicare system to everyone residing in the U. S.

HR 676 would cover every person for all necessary medical care including
prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and
preventive care, emergency services, dental, mental health, home health,
physical therapy, rehabilitation (including for substance abuse), vision
care, hearing services including hearing aids, chiropractic, durable
medical equipment, palliative care, and long term care.

HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments.  HR 676 would save hundreds of
billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the
private health insurance industry and HMOs.

In the current Congress, HR 676 has 86 co-sponsors in addition to Conyers.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced SB 703, a single payer bill
in the Senate.

HR 676 has been endorsed by 568 union organizations in 49 states including
134 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 39 state
AFL-CIO’s (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO,
MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA, AK, MI,
MT, NE, NY, NV & MA).

For further information, a list of union endorsers, or a sample
endorsement resolution, contact:

Kay Tillow
All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care–HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551
Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayerHR676.org
11/24/09

As I put it on my Facebook page when I posted this there a few minutes ago…  Today’s most egregious entry into the who-give-a-shit-o-sphere…

In case you missed it (because you weren’t watching CNN or Fox), President Obama took a deep bow while meeting the Emperor of Japan.  Wow.  Apparently he’s violated some rule of imperial machoness by doing so.  Gee.

To see how inflamed people are getting, start here:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/11/obama-emperor-akihito-japan.html

Then Google “Obama bow Japanese Emperor” and watch the flames spread like wildfire.

C’mon people.  This is as, if not more, ridiculous than anything I’ve heard out of you wingnuts since the election.

So I finally figured out this morning why my blog has gotten hundreds of hits in the last couple of days, when a typical day’s hits is more like twenty.  Apparently, a student at FIT, who happened to have the same name as mine, died the other day when he was hit by a bus.

If you’re one of the people looking for news about him but finding this instead, sorry I can’t help.  And if you’re somebody who knew him, although I wouldn’t expect my condolences to mean much, I’ll offer them anyway.

It’s unusual to find other Seths, and it’s especially unusual to find other Seth Kahns.  I know there are a couple of others on Facebook (because I get occasional friend requests and e-mails that are clearly not for me), and I know the person who was awarded the patent for the aerosol spray paint can shared the name.  I also know somebody used to publish under this name as a byline in the Weekly World News when I was in high school.  The only article I remember was one about a kid getting thrown out of a roller-coaster car at an amusement park in Dallas, one of the few verifiably true stories I ever saw in that esteeemed (!) publication.

I’ve been grinding the axe for a while now, in the hallways at conferences, at parties and what have you…

Yesterday (Sat) morning, I was on a panel at the APSCUF Labor in Higher Education Conference.  By the way, public kudos to APSCUF VP Amy Walters and all the office folks who organized the conference; it was a blast.

Anyway, one of the presentations in our session focused on adjunct labor issues (hard to have an academic labor conference that doesn’t, and rightly so).  The presenter, Amy, contended that in addition to fighting for better working conditions for adjunct faculty, we need to recognize that experts in our fields often wind up administering programs rather than teaching in them.  This claim, which is extremely incisive and correct, led to a conversation in which members of the audience wanted to talk about “release time” for administrative work.

I couldn’t help myself, after hearing the phrase two or three times, and made the same pitch to the audience that I’m about to make now.

We need to stop referring to non-teaching-work-time as “release time.”  Why?  Because asking to be “released” from teaching reinforces the devaluation of teaching.  It says that teaching is something to be let out of in favor of other (more important) matters.  It evokes teaching as a trap, or a prison, or some other place that somebody else has to let you out of.  I could keep stretching the metaphor, but I hope the notion is clear enough.  Especially if you work in a teaching-intensive institution, reinforcing the idea that you want to “escape” from teaching is bad–not just for you, but also for anybody who teaches.

I’m not saying that management shouldn’t allocate paid time for non-teaching work.  Of course those who administer programs should get paid time and support for their work, which I’ve recently stopped doing and couldn’t be happier (see recent post, “Back to teaching 4/4″).  The problem isn’t the time; it’s the name we give to it, and how that name constructs a system of (de)valuation.  Call it “reassign time,” or “alternate work assignment” (which is what our system calls it) or whatever.

But don’t call it “release time” unless you want administration and everybody else to think that we agree with the idea that teaching isn’t as important as other work we do; that teaching is something to be let out of; that it’s OK to hire and exploit part-time faculty without expertise in our fields because the experts have been “released” to do other things.

October starts tomorrow.  As it stands already, not including anything new, this promises to be the busiest month of my entire career (at least to date). Along with the usual load of teaching and committee work…

1.  I have to finish an overdue assessment report for our writing program’s research-writing courses.  I’ve gathered the data and just have to write the thing, but still.

2.  Grievance Committee meets this weekend, and we have the largest stack of cases I’ve seen since I’ve been on the committee.  I also just filed some new ones, which are going to take some meetings to work out.

3.  The APSCUF Labor Conference is Oct 15-17.  My paper is ready, but it’s too long for the presentation slot I have, so I’ll need some time to cut (and practice) it.  If you’re an academic labor activist (or just interested in it), the conference promises to be a blast.

4.  I’m going to TCU in late October to give a talk about activism and rhetoric, and to visit a friend’s research methods course.

5.  The Rhetorical Activists manuscript is due to Routledge by the end of the month.  Most of the chapters are in fine shape, so that won’t be hard to manage, but I have to assemble the manuscript into one document (which is the kind of tedious work I’m really bad at), make sure I can print it (they ask for one complete hard copy), and collect contact info for all the contributors, make sure they sign their own contributor agreements, etc.  It’s all this kind of management work that makes me nuts, but we’re too close to the finish line not to get it done.

See you in November!

9:30 am.  At some point today, a group of people (editors/managers) at a major publishing house will decide whether to publish Rhetorical Activists and Activist Rhetoricians, an edited collection my comrade Jonghwa and I have been working on for 5 years.

Another publisher has offered us a contract already, so it WILL be published at some point soon.  We are hoping for this particular contract today or tomorrow, though, because the publisher has a strong presence on both of the fields represented in the text (English and Communication). 

All the way through graduate school, my friend Tobi tried to coach me to deal with moments like these; she’s much better than I am at dealing with the times when a decision is no longer in her hands, when there’s nothing else she can do or say.  I’m not a control freak, but neither am I comfortable with situations that are entirely out of my hands. 

In the meantime, I still have two more classes to teach.  The first went well this morning, so I’m obviously not too distracted to concentrate.  I’d be really upset if I couldn’t concentrate on my teaching because of my scholarship; that would make me exactly the person I claimed not to be in my “Back to teaching 4/4″ post from a few weeks ago. 

But it’s a nervous time nonetheless.  Hope to have an answer soon. 

pant pant pant…

Saturday afternoon at the Gryphon Cafe in Wayne.  Ann and I came out for our typical worky Saturday, and to see “In the Loop” at the theater next door.  I figured it would take hours to get ready for Monday and Tuesday’s classes, even though both courses I’m teaching (Comp and Conventions of Reading and Writing) are courses I’ve taught many times before.  Instead, I’m about as prepped as I’m going to get.  So I’m going to think about what to expect this semester, partially an exercise in speculation like I’m asking my comp students to do.

As I wrote in my last post, I’m really excited about teaching 4 classes again.  While my non-teaching commitments have certainly grown, I no longer face the daily dread of directing the comp program.  I don’t have to wig out every time the phone rings or an e-mail pops up, thinking that every contact is a demand for something.  One of the things I’ve learned in the last two years is that my leadership skills, such as they are, are really specific.  I’m at my best when I work among a group, working on projects with a bunch of people.  I’m not strong with administrative details.  I knew that already, of course, but to say that’s been reaffirmed would be an understatement of the first order.

One of the things I’m most excited about this semester is getting back to doing nothing but ethnographic writing in my comp classes.  For the last several years, I’ve experimented with putting ethnographic writing into a variety of contexts, that is, putting in service to other curricular or pedagogical goals.  A worthy experiment, I think, but maybe the most important outcome is that I’ve reclaimed my commitment to ethnography.  The essay for Writing Spaces certainly helped; it made me reflect on 12 years of teaching, what I’ve learned about it, and how to talk about ethnography to students.  I’ve also thought about the other kinds of writing I asked students to do, and none of it has been as satisfying.  In revising the course for this semester, I’ve put back together some pieces that needed taking apart and examining individually.  Now we’re ready to go.

The Conventions course should be better.  I’ll be teaching for (I think) the fifth time.  Over the few years I’ve been working on it, I’ve generally been satisfied with the results, but it’s never felt like it really made sense.  One reason for that, of course, is that the description is still too big.  At some point, I imagine we’ll be able to sort that out–the assessment I’m so not interested in working on will probably show us where we’re not getting and where we probably shouldn’t go.  But I think I’ve figured out how to frame the course, from the beginning, so that the disparate threads we explore (yeah, I know, mixed metaphor) make at least some sense together.  I’ve managed, especially the last two semesters, to pull together some coherent description of what we’ve learned.  The students shouldn’t have to wait ’til the last week of class, though, before they hear that description.  As I’ve gotten a little less resistant to lecturing in recent years, I’ve realized I can tell them in the first two days of class most of what they need to know in order to establish a reasonable context for our pursuits.  We’ll see how well it works this time.

Heading into a second year as Grievance chair, my big hope is that I can begin to assemble a working knowledge of all the policies and procedures that people ask me about.  I’ve joked with several people that our last 4 Grievance chairs (two of whom have also been Chapter presidents and one vp) can cite the CBA chapter and verse, and I can see why they need to.  There’s a part of me that would like to stop being involved in Meet and Discuss; it’s easy to want to defer complicated grievance issues to M&D and vice versa.  But I don’t really think that’s a good idea; maybe it’s just an urge to go to fewer meetings.

The big new service project this year is participating in a Work Group for our accreditation self-study.  I know a little about accreditation processes, but not much.  I also know that several units around our system manage to use accreditation standards to argue for all sorts of pro-faculty policies.  The Dean of our College of Business and Public Affairs, for example, uses his field’s accreditation standards to argue that his faculty all need one–course reassignments in order to produce scholarship worthy of accreditation.  From an outsider’s point of view, it’s outrageous (and worthy of some jealousy) that he pulled this off (even though I personally want to teach 4, I know most people don’t).  So I’m hoping I can learn enough from being involved in this process to be able to advocate for faculty from a position of something other than empathy.

And if all goes well, JongHwa and I will be finished with the Rhetorical Activists manuscript; we can sign a contract, let the editors have their way with it, and be finished with a project that has taken waaaaaaaay too long to complete.

A good hopeful note to end on!