2013-05-18T17:37:27-04:00 Cody Gault http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=cody-gault Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Cody Gault Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.842867 2011-03-31T18:55:15-04:00 2011-05-31T05:12:01-04:00

Cody Gault http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cody-gault/ Heart of Darkness to take issue with a black guy.

Then I listened earlier this week to President Barack Obama's speech on the Libyan intervention. My thoughts kept drifting to Joseph Conrad's unforgettable description of a late-nineteenth century colonialist warship shelling the African coastline.

"In the empty immensity of earth, sky and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent," Conrad wrote. "Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech -- and nothing happened. Nothing could happen."

Obama took office with unprecedented international goodwill. For his supporters, one of his most appealing qualities was that he considered himself "a fellow citizen of the world" and wanted to initiate "a new era of engagement" with said world.

For the first time in history, an American president could visit North Africa and talk about his African roots, his Arabic name and his childhood years spent in Indonesia, the biggest Muslim country on earth. The hope was that Obama's worldly perspective would enable him to mend America's long-strained relationship with the region.

But it's starting to look as if Obama has gone native, seemingly losing touch with the pulse of the world while becoming increasingly convinced of America's self-evident benevolence.

Obama's speech on Monday offered two distinct justifications for the military intervention: preventing a massacre and protecting America's interests.

Muammar Gaddafi is a bad mother, no question: He has oppressed his own people for more than four decades, during which time he has killed dissidents both at home and abroad.

But that doesn't make him unique. Libya is only one of 23 or so tyrannies around the globe, and accounts for only five million of the approximately 1.9 billion people living under dictatorship.

As we speak, autocratic states such as Yemen and Syria are similarly using violence to suppress uprisings. Why isn't America sending Tomahawk missiles their way?

Humanitarianism is by definition non-political. Yet when a country is providing you with oil, like the United Arab Emirates, or owns your debt, like China, the trend is to pay lip service to democratic values but otherwise turn a blind eye.

For example, Saudi Arabia is America's number-one Middle East chum -- a relationship currently less strained than the Obama administration's relationship with Israel, despite the fact that Israeli women can become prime minister while Saudi women can't drive.

And several members of the Arab League, whose support for America's Libya campaign Obama referenced in his speech, are among the absolute worst human rights violators on earth.

Call this realpolitik if you like, but much of the rest of the world sees it as self-interested imperialism.

So what then of Obama's claim that the Libyan move reflects American interests? And, more simply, what does Obama mean by "interests"?

It's hard to say. He doesn't mean economic interests, since the United States doesn't import much of its oil from Libya. Nor does he mean national security interests, since Libya hasn't posed a tangible threat to the United States in decades.

So we're just left with the American interest in seeing stability in the region.

Yet if promoting stability is the priority, why support a largely undefined opposition in a civil war?

Two things we can expect: The civil war will be bloodier and produce more refugees than what Gaddafi had in mind, and supporting a rebel insurgency that includes al Qaeda and Hezbollah isn't improving security for anybody.

America may see itself as the global leader and liberator, but Gaddafi and most of the Arab world see America's and the West's incessant meddling in African and Middle Eastern affairs within the context of imperialism.

They have a point. While Obama trumpeted the fact that the intervention in Libya has coalition support, it is important to remember that several of those NATO partners -- notably Italy, France and the United Kingdom -- have occupied and/or controlled most of North Africa during Gaddafi's own lifetime. As recently as the 1980s, the CIA sponsored anti-Gaddafi groups in hopes of staging a coup d'état and, in 1986, the United States bombed Gaddafi's palace in an attempt to kill him and his family.

Despite Obama's pledge not to dispose of Gaddafi by force, regime change is the goal. Before George W. Bush and Iraq, America rarely undertook the task of deposing despots but rather recruited, financed and armed opposing factions and let them do the dirty work. The Libyan intervention is a throwback to the old pre-Iraq ways.

Ultimately, it becomes clear that Obama's most credible justification for intervening in Libya is identical to Bush's tug-at-the-heart justification for the invasion of Iraq, which is: the leader is killing his own people!

At least we can be grateful that the air raids and missile strikes have produced only a hundred or so Libyan deaths thus far rather than hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq, and that Obama's refusal to commit ground troops should further limit casualties. But this is the same paternal Western reflex to sculpt the rest of the world.

Conrad at his greatest: "The conquest of the earth, which mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."

The hope was that things would finally change when the first black man was elected de facto leader of the West.

I can think of at least one thing that has changed since Heart of Darkness was written: Rather than shells from six-inch guns, the projectiles now cost $1.2 million apiece and fall from 15,000 feet in the air.

Still firing into a continent. Still incomprehensible.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.836927 2011-03-17T03:30:00-04:00 2011-05-25T18:40:24-04:00

Cody Gault http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cody-gault/
Since hearing the news, I've been rather blue about Christopher Hitchens' esophageal cancer -- in part because he's among the finest intellectuals we've got, and in part because the diagnosis is another thing keeping mortality in the foreground.

To cope, I've been watching copious amounts of Hitchens on YouTube, reading copious amounts of Hitchens online and taking comfort in the fact that ideas outlive us.

At one point I stumbled upon something Hitchens wrote for the London Review of Books back in 1990, where he talked about his feud with a former newspaper baron by the name of Conrad Black -- for whom, incidentally, I've copy-edited a column or two.

What struck me was not what Hitchens had to say about Black, but rather the civility of the comments that followed. All of the commenters were thoughtful and respectful, even when they disagreed -- a departure from the usual run of vitriol that has become the online norm. Furthermore, they all provided full names and locations.

It got me thinking: Anonymous online commenting is creating a culture of cowards. Many of us lead this bizarre double life where we're eager to document ourselves on Facebook, Twitter and blogs -- to share publicly stuff that would make our parents blush -- but then opt to mask our identities when we feel compelled to discuss things of real import.

And it's eroding the quality of public discourse.

It's no secret that Generation Me is a bit self-involved. More than any generation before us, we tend to consider ourselves important, our accomplishments extraordinary and our opinions golden.

But we're a sensitive lot, too. We tend to not like it when our opinions are challenged, because the prospect of being proven wrong is unpalatable when our self-esteem is all wrapped up in being right.

So a lot of us shroud our own identities while we tear down the identities of others.

It would be one thing if anonymity consistently facilitated richer and more diverse discourse. But, as The Miami Herald's Leonard Pitts Jr. said, anonymous message boards on newspapers' websites are overwhelmingly "havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnant of our propriety."

He continued: "For every person who offers some trenchant observation on the point at hand, there are a dozen who are so far off point they couldn't find their way back with a compass and a roadmap. For every person who brings up some telling fact, there are a dozen whose 'facts' are fantasies freshly made up to suit the exigencies of arguments they otherwise cannot win."

Now, some message boards make it work. It's not hard on sites like HuffingtonPost.com and NYTimes.com to find instances where the commentary is as informative and interesting as the story itself. And that's no accident: Aside from the quality of the readership, civility is maintained because comments are vetted prior to publication, commenters are required to register and users have the ability to flag the bad content and award the good.

And even then there's still a lot of trolling afoot.

Sites without such requirements -- where every comment is published unless it's an ad, threat or racial epithet -- are supposed to be wild gardens of democracy. But the weeds choke everything out and something substantive rarely blossoms.

The experiment is over: Too many people don't hold themselves accountable when they know nobody else can.

I'm not the only one who feels this way, either. According to an (albeit unscientific) online reader poll by The Washington Post, 40 percent of respondents think that commenters should be required to identify themselves.

Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington agrees that people often exploit anonymity to say hateful things, but noted that "the Internet is growing up [and] the trend is away from anonymity."

She's right. But most people won't choose to post under their own names unless it's required -- after all, why bother exposing yourself to personal attacks from cowards with keyboards?

So newspapers need to lead the way: they should hold their online content to the same standard of quality as their print editions. Commenters should be forced to attach their names to their opinions.

To be clear: I don't think the Internet should be policed or that your browsing history is anybody's business. And I can think of at least two occasions when anonymity is good: if you live in a country where free speech isn't a right, and if you're trying to diagnose an embarrassing rash.

But if you're worried that a Google search will reveal that you're sort of vile, or that your rants will hurt your job prospects, then keep your opinions to yourself. Most websites dump old comments, anyway.

And don't hide behind the First Amendment, either. Being allowed to say something and being guaranteed a platform to anonymously spew venom are two different things entirely.

This isn't about coddling the egos of opinionated journalists -- least of all mine. In fact, I get a kick out of being called "faggot" by anonymous detractors because, as Hitchens himself said, "I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem." Plus, as 50 Cent said, "I need you to hate so I can use you for your energy."

I mean, it's hard to take seriously the petty whines of spineless swamp people who feel compelled to say "edgy" things to compensate for their own dullness, and take refuge in anonymity because, truth be told, they aren't too sure who they are, anyway.

No, what this is about is protecting the everyday people who don't want to be featured in news stories if it means being slandered online; it's about all of the thoughtful people who choose not to participate in the discussion because they don't want to be personally attacked; and it's about a culture where fact plays second fiddle to visceral and a lot of young people don't differentiate between logical refutation and petty name-calling.

A lesson from the life of Christopher Hitchens: From the safety of anonymity, there is nothing impressive about calling Bill Clinton a sociopath, Mother Teresa a fraud, Henry Kissinger a war criminal and God a celestial Kim Jong-Il. Saying the same things under a byline is, as the kids online say, epic.

This generation has Hitchens hubris. What we need is Hitchens honor.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.830793 2011-03-03T11:13:08-05:00 2011-05-25T18:35:25-04:00

Cody Gault http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cody-gault/
And during Obama's first two years in office, their hopes were answered. The President cultivated something of a reputation for indifference regarding gay rights -- an image only partially rehabilitated when he oversaw the repeal of the military's homophobic and unpopular Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy this past December.

But now the White House has signaled that it is serious on civil rights. Last week, Obama determined that the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union exclusively between a man and a woman, is unconstitutional, and instructed the Justice Department to quit defending it in court.

In terms of social ills that undercut America's potential, homophobia ranks above racism and below sexism. And it has the notable distinction of being the only kind of bigotry still officially endorsed by the state.

Obama's policy shift doesn't change that: DOMA is still on the books and Obama has pledged to continue to enforce it for as long as it remains there. Now, striking it down is a matter for the courts, and repealing the law is up to Congress. And even if DOMA is struck down, the choice to legalize gay marriage will ultimately be a choice made by individual states.

In other words, gay couples haven't yet found their happily-ever-after.

Yet, more than ever before, gay marriage not only seems "inevitable," as Vice President Joe Biden has suggested, but actually is within grasp. And it looks as if the Republicans aren't going to try to stand in the way.

In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act passed with strong bipartisan support. Back then, gay marriage wasn't a viable option. According to a Gallup poll that year, 68 percent of Americans opposed it outright.

What a difference a decade and a half makes. Now five states and the District of Columbia have legalized gay marriage. And in 2010, according to a Pew poll, only 48 percent of the country opposes gay marriage.

This means that one in five Americans has changed their mind in less than 15 years.

The talking heads on television will tell you that young people have rejected the whole homophobia thing. However, according to the Pew's polling analysis, "The shift in opinion on same-sex marriage has been broad-based, occurring across many demographic, political and religious groups."

Certainly, young people are at the forefront of this shift.

And it's not just a trend among Democrats and independents. Meghan McCain -- whose father was the grumpiest proponent for Don't Ask, Don't Tell -- actively campaigns against California's Prop. 8 and on behalf of gay marriage. George W. Bush's daughter, Laura, is also an active voice in the fight for gay rights.

If the Log Cabin Republicans, GOProud and the seemingly endless number of married Republicans who find themselves in gay sex scandals prove anything, it is that sexuality is just a benign feature of a complex person. It is hardly a determinant of something as complex as political beliefs.

And the irony of trying to socially engineer sexuality while condemning the overreach of the federal government seems not to be lost on this generation of conservatives.

Even those who oppose gay marriage seem to be doing it in a pro forma sort of way -- paying lip service out of tradition rather than conviction.

As the right's intellectual fringe -- including David Brooks, George Will and David Frum -- have pointed out, opposing gay rights from here on out is not only at odds with the evolving conservative ideology, it's also bad for business.

That is probably why the announcement didn't warrant a tweet from Sarah Palin, a peep from Mitt Romney or much more than a desultory "I object" from most of the rest of the party. I'd venture to guess that they are quietly relieved Obama has paved a path to gay equality that doesn't force them to take a stand, risk being labeled bigots and seem helplessly out of touch with modernity.

The only notable Republicans who've come out vehemently against Obama's gay marriage shift are possible 2012 presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich.

To put the former's position in context: Huckabee believes that the absence of mandatory prayer in public schools has contributed to America's "moral decay" -- despite the fact that mandatory prayer in schools ended before segregation did. (For the record, he also blames American moral decline on welfare and television, taking the shotgun approach to diagnostics.) So it's no wonder he wouldn't budge on gay rights.

As for Gingrich, he's claiming that "the rule of law is being replaced by the rule of Obama." But he's the quintessential old guard of Republican old boys, helplessly out of touch with the direction of history. He claims Obama's shift to not defend DOMA is unconstitutional, despite the fact that he was minority whip when then-president George H. W. Bush used precisely the same maneuver for an affirmative action program.

His claim that Obama is out of touch with the American people is cute. If that were really true, the next election would yield a Republican leader who would re-legislate against gay marriage.

The problem, which Gingrich knows, is that this will never happen. No politician will campaign in the 2012 or 2016 presidential races on a platform of stripping rights away from anybody -- not only is that bad campaigning, but it's downright un-American.

Indeed, when gay marriage passes, it will be the first time that the American legal system wholly reflects this country's values of equality and fairness. It will be the true beginning of the realization of America's founding principles, of one of the more eloquent sentences ever written: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

A few weeks ago, an unreleased video-game version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby from 1990 made its way onto the Internet. It recalled for me another of the more beautifully poignant sentences ever written: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

A bit of unsolicited advice for young Republicans: Don't do the whole culture war thing. Trying to recreate the past didn't work for Jay Gatsby and it won't work for the G.O.P. either. Onward, then? ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.824392 2011-02-17T03:52:35-05:00 2011-05-25T18:35:25-04:00

Cody Gault http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cody-gault/
President Barack Obama agrees, stressing science's pivotal role in securing America's future, and so do the courts, which consistently find the teaching of Creationism in public schools unconstitutional.

But a recent poll found that only 28 percent of public school biology teachers present the theory of evolution as scientific fact -- the rest endorse Genesis or teach it alongside other "theories that frankly don't hold up," as the president once put it.

If Obama cannot prevent Evangelicals and abetting Republican leaders like Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin from tunneling under the wall of separation between church and state, then America is going to have bigger problems on its hands than outsmarting the Chinese. When enough people are ill-equipped to distinguish between a good idea and a bad one, democracy is compromised.

And if democracy is compromised, well, I think you get the point.

According to an international education test, American 15-year-olds rank 23rd in the world in science and 31st in math. According to a national assessment, less than half of students are proficient in science. It's no wonder then why so many people reject the theory of evolution: they just don't understand it.

Take Republican Congressman Jack Kingston on Real Time, for example: "I don't believe a creature crawled out of the sea and became a human being one day." Or Sarah Palin in Going Rogue: "I [don't] believe in the theory that human beings -- thinking, loving beings -- originate from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea." Even the flying spaghetti monster on Futurama: "You seriously believe I'm descended from some kind of flightless manicotti?"

Too many Americans have Darwin confused with Pokémon.

To be sure, the stunningly gullible and the helplessly indoctrinated are the victims of a plot. If you want proof of the insincerity of many Biblical literalists, look no further than the so-called Creation Museum in Kentucky, where there are exhibits of dinosaurs saddled like horses.

Evangelicals once denied the existence of dinosaurs, dismissing them as an atheist's lie or the devil's hoax, until they realized that little kids tend to like dinosaurs more than they like Jesus.

It's cool to deliberately mislead children when you're saving souls, right?

Evangelicals fear their children learning about evolution because they suspect that such knowledge would serve as the gateway drug to critical thinking and eventually -- gasp -- skepticism.

In a fundamental way, they're right: Even if science cannot prove negatives like the nonexistence of God, it does provide an alternative framework for understanding the universe that doesn't require divine inspiration.

That's not to say that advocates of science cannot also be religious, or that the two are entirely incompatible. Rather, as Obama told a Christian group back in 2006: "Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason."

He went on to say: "Now, I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons. But if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I can't simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will; I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all."

The inconvenient truth is that many Americans aren't as responsible about their faith as the president is: they can't distinguish between the logical and the fantastical. And they don't seem to mind much, either.

It is a troubling trend in America: a cultural aversion to thinking and a celebration of intellectual mediocrity. In many circles, going with your gut is better than using your brain, 'common sense' is code for 'the first thing that pops into your mind,' and Sarah Palin is a folk hero.

Which may explain why only 12 percent of Americans insist that evolution should be the only theory of life taught in biology class, even though it's the only theory accepted by reputable scientists, and even though religious education in public schools is unequivocally in conflict with the Constitution.

Of course, this has not stopped the eager-to-please pragmatists from suggesting: "Why not teach both? Or simply: 'teach the controversy' surrounding evolution? Surely there's no harm in presenting both sides."

Biologist Richard Dawkins has a good retort: "Why not teach the stork theory of reproduction, too?"

It's one thing to underfund public education, which America does. It's quite another to subvert education -- to mock and distrust it, as many Evangelicals and Republicans do -- when evolution is of the most essential tools for understanding, interpreting and interacting with the world. It underlies the scientific method that underlies our common reality.

No student should be coerced into accepting evolution -- people have the freedom to believe whatever they want. But everybody should at least have honest and open access to the theory, even if, in the end, they choose to reject it.

Access to education is America's only hope for salvation, so to speak.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.817915 2011-02-03T01:12:54-05:00 2011-05-25T18:30:24-04:00

Cody Gault http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cody-gault/ Elseworlds comics.

So it was no great surprise when Michele Bachmann told a crowd in Iowa last month that the founding fathers ended slavery, or when Sarah Palin told a Fox News reporter last week that the 1958 Sputnik satellite bankrupted the Soviet Union. When it comes to the GOP, facts tend to play second banana to the religion of American exceptionalism.

That's not to say that Democrats don't believe in America's innate superiority -- the idea that "America is great because America is good," as Alexis de Tocqueville and Glenn Beck have reasoned. But they tend to possess a degree of nuance about it.

Yet President Obama's State of the Union address last week was the equivalent of Sarah Palin's talking points in pretty prose; a pit bull with lipstick, so to speak.

He began by claiming that one of the things that sets America apart as a nation is: "We believe that in a country where every race and faith and point of view can be found, we are still bound together as one people." To anyone who has visited (or read about) any of the other thriving democracies, the absurdity of this claim is kind of self-evident.

The president went on to make various assertions about the American worker's unrivaled spirit, ingenuity and work ethic: "No workers are more productive than ours." According to whom? As Jay-Z would say: we don't believe you; you need more people.

Then there was a lot of gloom and doom about how other countries are better educating their children. The impetus for reforming America's education system should be that good education is a fundamental human right and an educated populous is fundamental to a healthy democracy, not that South Korean kids score better on standardized tests.

Even the sound bites felt flat. "Winning the future" sounds like a Palinism. "We do big things" is
quintessential "talkin' loud, ain't sayin nothin'" vacuity. "Our Sputnik moment" is a bankrupt metaphor: putting a satellite into orbit is a triumph of human imagination that should be universally celebrated.

"The most insulting thing that a politician can do," Christopher Hitchens memorably wrote, "is to compel you to ask yourself: 'What does he take me for?'" That's the question Americans should be asking themselves about Obama right now.

Yet the speech was a hit.

One reason that Obama had to resort to magical thinking is probably that, as a recent survey found, roughly six in 10 Americans agree with the statement: "God has granted America a special role in human history." Obama was stroking the American ego.

Another reason is probably that he felt he needed to fight back against the resounding Republican battle cry that this president doesn't really love America -- that he doesn't believe America is exceptional.

The accusations ostensibly stem from a remark Obama made during his first presidential visit to Europe. When a foreign journalist asked if he ascribed to the notion that America is morally endowed to lead the world, Obama said: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

Never mind that Obama went on to affirm his belief that America's morality is exceptional and has an unprecedented leadership role in global affairs. Saying Obama doesn't believe in American exceptionalism has become the politically correct way to imply that Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim, or at least not a "real" American, because that fires up voters.

The ugly truth: There is a faction of the Republican base for whom Obama isn't a good ol' boy. He's just a boy.

Certainly, Obama's view of America's place in the world diverges from that of his predecessors. He has expressed his belief that it should be America and the world, rather than America vs. the world.

But that was part of his appeal.

His decision to abandon some hard truths is dispiriting. Americans need to accept that their country won't be the only real global superpower forever, which is not necessarily a bad thing, either.

It's as if Obama has decided in some paternal way that America is better off with the fantasy.

That's not to say that there were no good ideas in the State of the Union address. He hit the major points: improving education, infrastructure and industry while regulating big business and eliminating wasteful government spending is the path for turning America around. But he's wrapping his vitamins in bacon and betraying his 'keep it real' mandate.

And this has become a running theme for Obama's presidency.

Another example was the marked difference between the White House's endorsement of the Tunisian uprisings and the Egyptian ones. Both were revolutions against corrupt dictators, but one had a dictator that the American government has supported for 30 years. That's pragmatism run amok.

In other words, you cannot pick your moral stands according to convenience. Not when you cast yourself as the leader of the free world. The rest of the world notices these sorts of things.

And to say, as the president did, that America is "the light to the world" is to say that the rest of the world is a bit dimmer. Not such a bright idea. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.811378 2011-01-20T13:00:40-05:00 2011-05-25T18:25:24-04:00

Cody Gault http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cody-gault/
Probably so. But some things need saying.

To the point, then?

Cornell's Greek system is a lump on the student body, and it's high time we hack it off.

Rush Week is once more upon us. This means a few things: frats are about to go from super-friendly to super-not, letter bags are about to make a comeback and it's time for another back-and-forth on the value of fraternal organizations on campus.

This is how it goes: One side, largely defectors like me, suggests with certain authority that Greek life is toxic to Cornell life. The other side insists we just don't get it. It never gets very far.

But like I said, some things need saying.

In many ways, my fraternity experience was typical. The only violence I was ever subjected to as a pledge was the kind designed purely to humiliate -- much like everything else about the pledging process. In other words, it could have been a lot worse. For example, nobody asked to see my father's tax return before offering me the bid, as is said about some of the other houses.

But that doesn't make it okay.

Now, I'm confident that some houses haze less than mine did. I'm even willing to entertain the possibility that some houses have dropped hazing altogether -- I'm told some of the sororities have.

But hazing isn't the real problem here, folks.

Nor is silly stuff like the infamous "Butt Chug" picture -- slightly less disgusting than it sounds, or perhaps more, depending on how vivid your imagination is to begin with -- that is making the rounds on gossip sites like IvyGate. (An aside: has anybody called it "5 Bros, No Cup" yet?)

The real problem with Greek life is Greek life.

Cornell made its bones as an enlightened institution; fraternities made their bones in the dark ages. And charming antiquity it is not: Greek life encourages a stunted worldview, a warped sense of priorities and leaves a lot of brothers morally ill-equipped for anything but Goldman Sachs.

It is Cornell's tattered baby blanket, and we ought to let go.

To those who'd rather we just reform Greek life: You can dress up a sexist pig, but it's still a sexist pig. And you'd crack atoms before you distilled the hate out.

Yes, I'm sure things have improved since the 1950s.

When I was pledging there was something about not leaving your car unlocked outside (the Black program house) Ujamaa, and, of course, the racially themed mixers, but I didn't get the impression that anybody was racist. The casual misogyny and homophobia -- especially when the Keystones piled up and the openly gay brother wasn't around -- was, however, certainly of a bygone era.

The brothers weren't all bad, though. Not by a long shot. Under different circumstances, I'd have strained to maintain the friendships. Many of them were my teammates, after all.

I suppose I should underline this point: The people in the Greek system are not inherently worse than the people outside it. (In fact, some of the most admirable people I've met at Cornell are in sororities -- but they distanced themselves from their houses early on, which says a lot.) The difference is that the Greek system -- by design, I stress -- compels good people to act amorally.

Can a feminist exist within the Greek system? I know a few. But it requires a rigorous compartmentalization of morality and a suspension of one's convictions in pivotal moments.

More bluntly: It's some soul-destroying shit, sister. I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

Maybe you're a freshman guy and you've woken up hung over after taking in the strippers at Tits and Turkey night. Or maybe you're a freshman girl and you've woken up sober to sore feet because wearing flats on Wednesday is so not top-tier material. There is probably a question gnawing at you. No, not: "Why no Wangs and Wings night?" But: "Do I really have to go through with this?"

Nah, bro.

Dropping out was, without reservation, the best decision I made at Cornell. Because it made every subsequent good decision possible.

Will you attend fewer parties? A better question: Do you really want your social life based on the play-date model? Do you actually think that's how socializing works in the real world?

Drifting from the beaten path is not easy. But as Cornell's most insightful alumnus, Thomas Pynchon '59, once said: "Why should things be easy?"

College is about stretching yourself. One semester isn't enough.

I saw the best minds of my generation switch on the autopilot.

It aches me to say it. Some things need saying. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.790205 2010-11-30T23:54:06-05:00 2011-05-25T18:15:22-04:00

Cody Gault http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cody-gault/
Yes, he inherited an economy driven to the brink by Republican irresponsibility and, yes, preventing a second Great Depression was priority one.

The problem is that President Obama too often values consensus over conscience, overestimates Republican decency and, as a result, sells his convictions short. And now that the Democrats have lost the House, the prospect of Obama passing any meaningful legislation during the remainder of his term is looking pretty grim.

If Obama wants to inspire again -- it's been a while -- he'd better make a grand gesture for justice. He should strike down Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act immediately -- without seeking Congress's approval.

It's not as if the President hasn't given the Congressional route the old college try. In fact, earlier this year the House approved a provision in the defense bill that would allow for the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

The problem is the Senate, where there exists an insipid campaign against reason. A large group of senators, overwhelmingly Republican, refused to consider the provision until an exhaustive survey was conducted about the opinion of the troops, so as to prevent potential encroachment on "unit cohesion" -- a euphemism if there ever was one.

The report -- officially released yesterday morning but previously available -- finds that 70 percent of active duty and reserve troops are alright with repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell -- a number more or less consistent with the rest of the country. The finding is a direct repudiation of the popular Republican condescension that soldiers -- the people we send to fight wars -- can't handle something as banal as sexuality.

The 370-page report concludes that the military can lift the ban with only minimal risk to the current war efforts.

Surprise, surprise: John McCain is still threatening a filibuster and next season's Republicans have signaled no interest in addressing the policy.

So much for Congress. What's up next?

According to Diane H. Mazur of the University of Florida College of Law, one way that Obama can strike down Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act is by simply calling off ongoing appeals.

In July, Judge Joseph L. Tauro of Massachusetts determined that the Defense of Marriage Act (the federal government's official refusal to recognize gay marriage) is unconstitutional. And in October, Judge Virginia Phillips of California reaffirmed her earlier ruling that Don't Ask Don't Tell is unconstitutional.

Traditionally, when a federal judge strikes down a federal law on constitutional grounds, it is White House protocol to appeal the ruling. However, as Mazur explains, Obama has the power to call off both appeals, which would uphold the lower-court judges' rulings and nullify both policies.

As it stands, the Obama administration is in the awkward position of defending the constitutionality of policies Obama believes are immoral. All Obama has to do is pick up the phone and tell Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department to abandon the appeal processes for both cases.

Of course, the whole thing would be quite the scandal. Republicans would cry fascist, secretly wishing they hadn't worn the sting out of the word during the health care debate.

But it may very well be the thing that saves Obama's presidency.

After all, a similar gamble served President Harry Truman very well in 1948.

Two years earlier, the 1946 midterms -- widely considered, like the 2010 midterms, a referendum on the president -- delivered both the House and the Senate to the Republicans by huge majorities.

Truman's popularity sank to 32 percent and he found himself at the mercy of what he called a "do-nothing" and "obstructionist" Congress. Sound familiar?

Rather than throw up his hands in despair, President Give 'Em Hell Harry, as he was known, denounced the proto-Party of No. And, rather than trying to reason with obstructionists on desegregating the Armed Forces, he went ahead and did it by Presidential Order on July 26, 1948.

Three months later, Truman's Democrats came roaring back with an even larger majority -- larger than last month's upset, even. Truman won the admiration of his public.

But Obama won't follow his lead. His official position is that he wants Don't Ask Don't Tell repealed but he won't explore extra-Congressional avenues.

In the civilized world -- I mean that more as a state of mind than a collection of states -- America is the only country where rational people like Obama continue to behave as if the jury might still be out on whether it is okay to treat gay people like second-class citizens.

One of Obama's greatest strengths is his keen eye for nuance. But human rights are not measured in degrees. Three-fifths of a human being, Obama is no doubt aware, is nonsense.

And it is shameful that a biracial president should require anyone to repress their identity to pass for what they are not. More shameful still that he should condone policies that deny lovers the right to marry when, at the time of his birth, 23 states still had miscegenation laws on the books.

I admire Obama a great deal. I maintain that he is the best thing global politics has going for it. But I am worried he may be operating on the mistaken assumption that he has eight years to fix America, so he may as well pace himself.

I'm reminded of a '90s sci-fi flick called Gattaca. The climax has Vincent Freeman beating Anton, his genetically enhanced brother, at chicken -- a childhood game where the boys competed to see who could swim further into the ocean before turning back. When pressed by his ostensibly superior brother about how this was possible, Vincent replies: "I never saved anything for the swim back."

If Obama keeps holding back on progress, hoping to keep afloat the wave of enthusiasm that swept him into office two years ago, he may very well find himself out to sea by 2012.

Let gay rights be your legacy. And give 'em hell, Barry.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.775217 2010-10-29T16:20:42-04:00 2011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00

Cody Gault http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cody-gault/
Last week, a conservative organization called Citizens Against Government Waste unveiled "Chinese Professor," a peculiar attack ad shot almost entirely in Mandarin with subtitles.

The commercial, set in "Beijing, China 2030 A.D.," depicts a futuristic American dystopia where, as a cocky economics professor explains, the United States has fallen victim to a brilliant Chinese plot to erode American sovereignty -- a fear all too familiar for the majority of Republicans who aren't convinced Obama didn't forge his birth certificate.

"Why do great nations fail?" the Mandarin-speaking professor asks. "The Ancient Greeks... the Roman Empire... the British Empire... and the United States of America." Spooky, right?

"America tried to spend and tax itself out of a great recession," the professor continues. "Of course, we owned most of their debt."

Then a sinister laugh, a smirk into the camera: "So now they work for us."

Dun, dun, dun! And the students go wild.

The anti-Obama coalition, no strangers to fear-mongering, have outdone themselves. For the sake of a Congressional majority, the conservative movement in America has exploited the anxieties of white people who cannot cope with the changing demographics of their country.

There is now, in the minds of many, an established correlation between the decline in prominence of (white) America and the rise in prominence of (yellow) China.

Hello, 21st-century Yellow Peril.

The facts: By 2012, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority for the first time in U.S. history. As early as 2030, China is projected to overtake the United States as the largest economy in the world. By 2042, according to a report by the U.S. Census Bureau, people of color will account for a majority of the U.S. population.

Indeed, the demographics are shifting everywhere but in the Republican Party. The political right -- particularly the Tea Party, where nine in 10 are white, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll -- is the last refuge of the much-romanticized white America of yore.

This misplaced nostalgia does little for the fearful white person but put him out of step with 21st-century America. If it had been up to white men, for example, Sarah Palin would be in the White House.

Just in this election cycle, another conservative group sent out robo-calls to Michigan residents warning about a vague but terrifying "homosexual agenda." Nevada Republican Senate hopeful Sharron Angle ran a highly controversial ad where scowling Hispanic-looking people take university spots from cheery white kids.

Nor is it the first appeal to Yellow Peril: at least half a dozen other ads have run, many featuring gong-hits and cheesy Chinese string music, accusing Democrats of giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs to China -- a practice that the Democratic President has fought with congress to end -- without support from Republicans.

But the "Chinese Professor" ad is still a watershed moment. It takes xenophobia from dirty backwater politics to front-and-center of the 2010 Republican ideological platform. If there is anything positive to come from the ad, it is the YouTube parody videos are already surfacing.

One begins with alternate subtitles: "So I was told I'd be speaking to Latinos, but you look Asian to me" -- borrowed near-verbatim from Senate hopeful Angle speaking to a classroom of Hispanic students earlier this month. Another: "Yo. I am the Evil Chinese Professor."

One hopes more moderate thinkers use their humor to combat conservative fear. For every Republican rallying to restore fear, let another thoughtful American join the Stephen Colbert March to Keep Fear Alive. It's better than empathy.

The Republicans of fear are engaging in a futile struggle against the tides of change. Statistically speaking, their disproportionate dominance of America is coming to a close. But until then, Republicans are afraid enough to go to the polls next Tuesday and vote against their own better interests -- unless they are among the richest few percent of the population who might actually benefit.

On the other hand, if predictions are correct, young people and people of color won't bother to vote on Tuesday, despite the fact that minimizing Republican wins is directly to their advantage. And that self-defeating apathy is something that's really worth being afraid of.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.764299 2010-10-15T15:08:03-04:00 2011-05-25T18:05:23-04:00

Cody Gault http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cody-gault/
For the past six months or so, there has been a peculiar narrative developing about the Nov. 2 congressional elections: Democrats are going to lose the House and Senate, and it's all Barack Obama's fault.

The president has failed to live up to his own hype, the story goes, and disillusioned voters -- particularly the youth and African American blocks that helped sweep him into office -- have lost interest or given up on the whole change thing, at least when it comes to voting.

"Where has the president's mojo gone?" many Democratic strategists are asking. Why isn't Obama's team as excited about the midterm elections as the Tea Party is?

This so-called "enthusiasm gap" -- a nod to Dr. Strangelove, I hope -- has inspired many Democratic candidates to distance themselves from the president. The logic is that unpopularity is contagious and that faux populist rage is in vogue. (From an incumbent Democrat's television ad: "People in this district are mad, and I'm mad, too!")

This is what a varsity coach might call a "tactical error" for the Democratic Party. Obama may be in a slump, but he is still the star player on a team that otherwise lacks depth and luster.

Check the stats: Obama has managed to keep his approval rating hovering around 45 percent in spite of everything he is up against. Congress' approval rating? Around 16 percent.

Obama may not walk on water, but he's still probably the most popular politician in the country.

So it's no great surprise that fundraising has picked up, the "enthusiasm gap" has narrowed and poll numbers have begun to improve for Democrats after the President began to campaign on behalf of his lackluster party.

That's not to say that Obama himself hasn't lost a certain glow since 2008. I have been highly critical of Obama in my own columns, despairing of his lethargy regarding gay rights, his ratcheting up of the war in Afghanistan and his fruitless campaign for bipartisan consensus.

These are genuine grievances. But they don't even begin to tell the whole story of Obama's first two years in the White House.

Obama may not have ended Don't Ask Don't Tell, but it's on his agenda. And he did, to his supreme credit, sign legislation last year making gay-bashing a hate crime -- a bill that George W. Bush threatened to veto.

Obama may be escalating the Afghan conflict, but he has ended the combat mission in Iraq as promised. And he is unambiguous about wanting to pull out as soon as an exit strategy is devised -- easing concerns about a possible Second Vietnam situation.

And Obama may have watered down some of his initiatives -- most notably health care reform -- without a shred of bipartisanship to show for it. But he managed to produce a body of work that many observers considered as impossible as his election.

Yet, somehow, it has become common wisdom that Obama was sent to the White House to change America, and that he failed to do it.

That's nonsense.

An analogy: It is tempting to explain away Hamlet's peculiarity as the product of his so-called tragic flaw -- an "inability to act" -- until you finally get around to reading the damn thing and discover that Hamlet has no such defect. On the contrary, he is actually busy doing stuff the entire time.

Similarly, the narrative of Obama short-changing change is compelling only until you consider the facts.

A selection of the President's accomplishments thus far: Obama lowered federal income taxes for the middle class to its lowest rate in 60 years; he ended tax benefits for companies that outsource jobs; he trimmed billions in bloated military spending; he closed illegal detention facilities and restored America's adherence to the Geneva conventions; he improved lending practices for small businesses and students; he gave public schools access to high-speed broadband Internet; he restarted nuclear nonproliferation talks; he established a new era of diplomacy and global optimism. The list goes on.

And Obama did it all as Republican obstructionism knew no bounds --Time magazine's Mark Halperin noted on Monday that Republican obstructionism even blocked "proposals based on policies supported by the G.O.P. in the past."

If the Republicans had something meaningful to offer beyond House Minority Leader John Boehner's "Hell no you can't!" answer to Obama's "Yes We Can" campaign, that stance might be excusable.

But they don't. If they did, it likely would have appeared in "A Pledge to America" -- their new substance-free manifesto.

The SparkNotes version of the pledge: Extend tax cuts to the richest 3 percent of Americans because, in some dubious way, that will enable America to resolve all of its economic woes.

It's no wonder Obama has opted to return to campaign mode on behalf of his party.

"Even though [the midterm elections] may not be as exciting as a presidential election," Obama told a group of college journalists last month, "it's going to make a huge difference in terms of whether we're going to be able to move our agenda forward over the next couple of years."

And, despite what the media keeps telling us, the fix is definitely not in. The predicted Republican wins are directly related to polls predicting voter apathy among Obama's young supporters.

This is something you can control. You don't have to coordinate marches, canvas neighborhoods or plan fundraisers. All you have to do is show up and vote.

And let's be clear: This election is not about choosing the lesser of two evils. If it were, apathy might be defensible. Instead, it is a choice between exceptional, albeit flawed, leadership and the political equivalent of the self-destruct button.

But if Americans cannot get excited about Obama's successes, they can always do the next-best thing: go out on Nov. 2 and give the Republicans two enthusiastic thumbs down.]]>