this is not a journal title

This one's worth quoting nearly in entirety. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one whom it's been irritating.

Has anyone else noticed that newscasters and commentators seem to feel it is perfectly appropriate to refer to Hillary Clinton as "Hillary" while referring to every other presidential candidate by their last name, or first and last name? This has been bugging me for a couple of weeks, but the clincher was last night. I was watching MSNBC’s coverage of Super Tuesday and in the hour that I watched I heard Senator Clinton referred to as Hillary at least 30 times by a dozen different commentators ranging from conservative to liberal. Barack Obama was called "Barack" once and every other candidate was referred to by their last name or their full name. I find this troubling. Does anyone else see the problem here? To refer to a person by first name only strips away a layer of formality and respect. That’s why school children aren’t allowed to address (most) teachers by first name and (most) parents don’t allow their children to address them by first name. Addressing or referring to someone formally indicates to the listener that this is a person in authority, deserving of respectful treatment. I wonder why it is that the talking heads on television and radio don’t feel that Senator Clinton deserves the same level of respect that the other candidates do.

While pondering this mystery, I thought to myself "Why, they’re doing it so people won’t confuse her with her husband, Bill Clinton." But I realized that doesn’t work because all they need do to resolve the problem is add in her first name –- say it with me now, broadcasters –- "Hillary Clinton". When the current President Bush ran for office, there didn’t seem to be a problem distinguishing him from his father, George Sr. He was sometimes called Dubya, but that was a nickname, not the same as calling him simply George Junior or George W. I did sometimes hear him referred to as George Bush, Jr. or George W. Bush, but they were using his entire name, which is OK -– that’s still respectful.

The only reason I can come up with for the inappropriately familiar use of "Hillary" alone is that she’s a woman. I don’t want to think that’s the cause, but I can’t think of any other reason. Hillary Clinton is a woman with a real shot at being the Democratic candidate for President, and this is probably, at least subconsciously, disturbing to some people. Maybe it’s because we’ve never had a female candidate get this far, so it is simply an unfamiliar, and therefore unsettling, situation. Maybe it started as a conscious attempt by some broadcasters to refer to her in a diminutive way, thus trivializing her role in the election. I don’t know how it started and I’m not advocating a conspiracy –- the BA probably wouldn’t post this if I did! I did a couple of Google searches and I couldn’t find anyone else who’s blogged or commented about this. I may be more sensitive to it because I’m a woman, but I’m betting I’m not the only person, man or woman, who’s noticed it. This whole thing leads me to wonder: if Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is elected, will the talking heads refer to her as President Hillary?

Blame goes to sclerotic_rings for pointing out lolscience to me.

And if you haven't already gotten tired of postsecret, these might do the trick.



And LOLsecretz. yes, it's LOLcats but w/ PostSecret-style photos instead.

No I'm not going to lj-cut this.

The parrot_lovers community is really driving me nuts. The mods have a policy there that as long as something is not a direct attack it's okay, and indirect attacks are perfectly fine. So saying "that's a stupid thing to do" is perfectly acceptable, as is yelling at someone in ALL CAPS to "STOP BREEDING!"

For those on my friendslist (or not) who care, here's a few comments I put in threads there lately that help sum up my thoughts.

Seriously, this reminds me of grad school where I was told "your work isn't good enough" and "men need to be taken care of by a woman." Tell me how that's any less insulting or demoralizing than telling a grad student that she's stupid, or that she specifically should be taking care of her man instead of being a grad student. Try and tell me that's not a hostile atmosphere discouraging open communications.

I don't mean that critiques should be discouraged. I mean that *value judgments* should be discouraged. Saying something like "letting a child breed birds is stupid" is a value judgment of the person's actions, and is a subjective opinion statement that cannot be discussed with any real purpose. Saying something like "successfully breeding healthy well-adjusted birds takes a lot of time, energy, financial commitment, and research" is an objective statement that can be backed up with evidence, contains information allowing the person to make an informed decision, and is a debatable point. Value judgments, regardless of whether they're aimed at an individual, the person's actions, or the person's ideas, are not constructive critiques.
...
Of course I do know I'm welcome to go elsewhere. However, I like this community - and the majority of its members the majority of the time - enough that I think it's worth my working to improve it instead of giving up on it as a lost cause.

*sigh* It's frustrating, just like work drives me nuts at times, but really, it has to be WORTH something to be willing to put up with that frustration.

And in the end, in a comment to mod bloolark:

I personally feel that borderline comments by members of this community should be responded to by other members publicly in the comments, in a calm and rational way ..., while the policy as it now reads discourages that in favor of our tattle-tale-ing to the mods. Tattle-tale-ing leads to a climate of fear, where the mods are an ultimate authority. Self-policing leads to a stronger community where we can come to a consensus of what is acceptable. What I was hoping you would put in this post was encouraging members to be respectful of each other, and instead what I read was encouraging members to keep their mouths shut when they are insulted or notice other members insulting each other, unless they want to act as a whistle-blower.

BTW, I appreciate your efforts to make yourself clear, and to make this an open community where we can all speak our minds. I happen to disagree with how you're going about it, which leads me to continue to appreciate your efforts to hear me out and try to understand my point of view. As I mentioned in comments elsewhere, I value this community as a wonderful resource, and I feel it's worth my time and effort to work on improving it. I've been tempted to leave a couple times since I joined a year ago (hadn't mentioned it b/c I saw no need to do so), but I reminded myself that this is a good GREAT community with people who care immensely about birds and are very knowledgeable about them, and instead decided to channel the frustration into trying to get myself heard. Once again, thank you for your time and efforts, and for listening to me even when we don't agree.

My desire for self-moderation by community members is inspired by this saga.

czarina69 - no wait, it was amavia, she must've yoinked czarina69's fave icon from somewhere - tagged me to ...

List seven songs you are into right now, no matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your LiveJournal along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to. I don't perpetuate chain letters.

(In no particular order)

1. The Water is Wide - folk song (b/c I found sheet music for it in a pile of papers)


2. Sexy - Justin Timberlake (b/c it was the song to which the bridal party at Saturday's wedding entered the reception. I actually hate the song, but it's stuck in my head.)


3. Dance, Soterius Johnson, Dance - Jonathan Coulton (we were seated with a good conversationalist who was asking me about my musical tastes, and this one was on my CD on the drive home)


4. Hope (vol. 2) - Apocalyptica (I recently realized they weren't just a cover band anymore)


5. Finite Simple Group (of Order Two) - Klein Four (who can't go for some dork rock?)


6. Come On - Lifestyle (the lead singer is also in the good band Freezepop, but none of their stuff is currently stuck in my head)


7. The Miranda Lullabye - Paul and Storm (the remaining half of Da Vinci's Notebook; I knew Jonathan Coulton had "made it" when Paul and Storm opened for him and not the other way around, and it's confirmed every time I tell people I saw JoCo and P&S live and they say "JoCo's awesome, but who's P&S?")

Also not stuck in my head, but worth an honorable mention are the artists Steven Zelin and Dorks in Space b/c they're friends and are pretty amusing.

You're welcome to do this meme or not.

Do people usually write their music "Song - Artist", or "Artist - Song"? I usually do the former, I think b/c I feel the song title will tell you the artist, but I see the latter a lot.

Mingle² - Free Online Dating

Amusing.

Wikipedia vs. LJ!

And for more LOLz, check the history on that section, it seems to be changing every 5 min.

η: Heh, and even the name of the section changed, so I changed my link. :-P

To anyone who's LJ friends with meredithanne42 or unofischal, I got an email from the latter this afternoon saying that it's happening!

Meredith started having contractions at 3:30 this morning, and we checked her into the birthing center at FMC around noon. Her due date is April 22, so this was a little surprising, but she's not so early that there will be problems of any kind. Contractions are about four minutes apart! And we still need to decide on a name...

Updates will be forthcoming!

Listen to this song a couple times. Read the lyrics there too.

Then read the explanation.

Note to self: make a music icon. Grade for the next 48-60 hours without sleeping, THEN make a music icon.