Why I Hate Salon Commenters

Jessica at Jezebel wrote about the rude, reactionary responses a Salon writer recently got to her article on being an educated woman who can barely make ends meet for her children, even while working her ass off:

Salon published a a thoughtful essay yesterday by Heather Ryan about being “working poor” as part of a series about the recession called “pinched.” Last summer, Ryan found herself, despite her Masters in writing and self-proclaimed bougie affections, unable to feed her three kids on her secretary’s salary. You see, she had recently gotten divorced, and the cost of daycare during the summer wiped her out.

Though it scared her and pained her to admit it, she couldn’t afford enough food, and so one night she took her kids to a food kitchen. I’ve written screeds against self-indulgent personal essays before, and I must say that this wasn’t one of them.

It explored a very real issue: that the gap between rich and poor in this country is now a chasm, and that many educated, hard working people are struggling, whether you see it or not. Salon’s commenters, however, felt otherwise, and said things like, “I have no sympathy for breeders, or for brie-eaters.”

Another commenter wrote:

“The fact that you make a good salary but whine that a certain job didn’t take proper account of your ( questionable ) intellect and talent only speaks to your solipsistic (sic) ennui, brought-on no doubt by your liberal sense of entitlement.”

Could anyone other than a whiner with a massive sense of entitlement write such an unsympathetic, ungenerous comment about an article in which a person admits to her sincere surprise that the wealth gap has removed even hard workers with educations from the pot?

Sadly, ugly threads like this are nothing new at Salon. So how is it commenters like this abound there? I mean, I know Salon publishes a lot of self-indulgent, bougie whining, but the writers usually display a fair amount of compassion for the privileged and the underprivileged. How is it a publication’s readers can be so different from the writers’?

And beyond that, what sort of false consciousness does it take for a person to read this Heather Ryan essay and instead of getting incredibly pissed off about how devalued labor has become in our society and how far the wealth gap has grown, finding it more important to bitch about how she had it coming for being pretentious? Really, it boggles my mind.

The politics of tourism and travel

Because summer time is the time of travel and all of its economic and national and identity contexts, I thought it was a great time to highlight a couple great posts that reflect on the complicated questions that attach themselves to these nuances.

First, check out this open thread on first-world traveling to third-world nations at Feministe, in which guest blogger Anna asks and attempts to answer the following questions:

What do you perceive are the ramifications of that type of tourism? (Broad question, I know.)

If you have participated in that kind of tourism, how did those potential ramifications affect the choices that you made as a tourist? What choices have you made to be a more “responsible” tourist?

Do believe there is such a thing as feminist tourism, and, if so, what does that look like?

And, finally, how do the politics of a country affect your desire/willingness to participate in that country’s tourism? What about their human rights record?

Then read Guest Contributor Margari Aziza Hill at Racialicious on traveling as a black woman and how foreign travel can change your perceptions and understandings of race and racism:

Further, Europeans and Americans can assume you are just part of the landscape. You’re that native that needs to move out their way as. One time I was traveling with my friend from Bahia. We look very similar and people often assumed we were Moroccan, maybe from somewhere in the South. On our way from Casa Blanca to Fes, we found some British people were sitting in our seats. So, we were looking at our tickets and them. Mariah said, “Umm, these are our seats.” I was trying to speak to them in my clear American diction. The young couple just looked at us blankly and the crusty old man blurted out, “Doo Youu Sbeakk Frrrench?!”

I said, “No, I speak English!”

What really pissed me off was that he didn’t hear us because we were brown. He assumed that our non-British accent meant that we weren’t fluent speakers. Our brown skin rendered our language incomprehensible, as well as our rights to the first class seats that we purchased with our hard earned money.

Michael Phelps: Man of Privilege

I’ve had as much fun as the next person watching Michael Phelps do the unthinkable in Beijing. But I think Saxon Baird at my other blog, Pushback, raises some really critical points when he reminds us that success and failure at the Olympics are not disconnected from economic or national privilege.

Michael Phelps just put on what was arguably the most spectacular exhibition of athleticism in Olympic history. Newspapers across the country have hailed him as possibly the greatest Olympian of all time. And while Phelps’ talent is undeniable, I can’t help but view his success as not just a demonstration of talent and hard work, but of resources and economic backing. Not to take away from Phelps’ historic Olympic success, but I have to ask: Would Phelps have done as well swimming for a country with fewer economic resources to support its athletes? I doubt it.

The top three medal winning countries as of today are China, the United States, and Russia. All of which are large, economically affluent countries. Australia, Germany, and France make up the fourth through six th spots. In the top 10 medal winners there are only three Asian countries, and none located in Africa or South America. The reason for this is clear: A country’s Olympic success directly correlates to the level of funding and the quality of training it can provide to its Olympic athletes.

I’ll add that Phelps’ success isn’t just about the economic resources of his country, but also about the resources of his family. Not everyone in the world could have the chance to train like he has, and neither could everyone in the United States. Phelps was lucky to be born to a family that could dedicate so much time and money to their son’s athletics.

This isn’t to take anything away from Michael Phelps’ success and athleticism, but I think it is important when we take part in these “if you believe in it, anything is possible” narratives that we also remember some things are more possible for certain people than they are for others.

Salt Lake City–Fightin’ the good fight for me

I just bought and listened to “Didn’t it Feel Kinder,” the new solo album from Amy Ray (also of Indigo Girls). It’s soooo great. The absolute highlight was a track I’d already heard about before the release, a song dedicated to my beloved Salt Lake City. Early this year Ray came to Salt Lake to help Utahns try to save a community-owned radio station, KRCL, which was being completely reformatted (aka, all volunteer DJs were replaced by “professionals), supposedly to attract a broader base of listeners. She was apparently impressed with all the passion of “the kids” in Salt Lake City. Here’s a sample of the lyrics:

Salt Lake City radio radio

fightin’ the good fight for me

All the songs, all the words,

don’t get played, don’t get heard

I’m pullin in to the LDS nation

Lookin’ for the community station

‘Cause we heard about the kids in Salt Lake City

and how they fight to be set free

and how they fight for you and me

and radio, radio community.”

Makes me proud about my kids in SLC, but it also makes me sad KRCL couldn’t be saved in its more than 30 year old format. Since the changes, Radio Free Utah is still pretty cool, but it definitely doesn’t feel like it used to, and it doesn’t have the really obscure, but interesting musical selections it used to have. Bah, I guess we’ll have to keep fighting the good fight against big media…

Critical Feminist Fashion Question:

Do you still get the indie cred if the feminist you’re wearing on your shirt is a second waver?

Systemic, economic explanations of human behavior? BORING!

Courtney Martin at Feministing has this really troubling post about being contacted by a morning news program about a story on a social networking site for women looking for sugar daddies (ick, reminds me of this post). After telling the producer what she’d say about some of the social and economic factors that often lead women to seek financial support in men, instead of simply calling these women trash, as the producer wanted, Courtney heard nothing back from them. That just wasn’t good TV. They wanted something a little more… “feisty.”

This is not entirely unexpected, but so bothersome when you hear about how calculated TV news is in a real instance. News media must make money. Sensationalism brings in the viewers and the money. Blaming individuals and framing a debate as a cat fight is sensational. Legitimate, boring explanations that have to do with money and social inequality…meh, we’ll pass. This really is so frustrating.

With stakes like these in the mainstream media, it’s hard to imagine real social change being instigated in these traditional forums…This is part of the reason I’m so grateful for alternative media (like Democracy Now! just as an example), and especially for the existence of blogs. I know we always question just what kind of impact or influence blogs have, but just think where we’d be without them. Though the audiences for blogs are self-selected and certainly more limited than the audience that would be watching the morning news show Courtney was asked to speak on, the very fact that we can turn to Feministing to hear about this instance and to hear the very arguments Courtney wanted to share on TV is a huge step forward. It’s progress, and I think an essential part of the path to positive social change.

Shameless self-promotion: Me at Skirt!

I have a piece in Skirt! Magazine this month on what it means to be a feminist daughter to your mother:

Growing up, I’d never heard my mother identify as a feminist, and her social and political beliefs had been different than my own in many ways. Usually I would try to bridge this gap by forcing my mother to read endless amounts of feminist literature, with the hope that she’d better understand my positions, and maybe, begin to share them. Luckily my mother, God love her, has actually met almost all of my literary demands thus far. But some mother-daughter feminist problems haven’t been simple enough to resolve with a visit to the library, mostly because sometimes being a child to someone conflicts with being a feminist supporter.

Check it out!

Looking for more hits to your blog?

Just write posts about kids’ movies that include the words “androgynous” and “queer.”

My Wall-E post has been read more than 12,000 times, which for my blog is about 11,998 times more than the average post.

Seriously though, where did you people come from?

No BIG vacation this year? Cry me a river

SmartLikeMe at the Feministing community blog has a great post about the classism of all the articles being written about the affect of gas prices on summer vacations. No, they aren’t making families so poor they can’t afford time off work. No, they aren’t making families so poor they have no entertainment budget. Apparently the big tragedy is that this summer families can’t drive or fly thousands of miles away, and they have to find entertainment closer to home, something cutely called, a “staycation.”

Why are middle and upper-middle class families and their precious Disney vacations the face of the rising cost of gasoline and not the working class families who lived month to month as it was before the exponential price increases…who maybe have to skimp on food or medical services, and for whom a Myrtle Beach trip isn’t even on their radar? Instead of moping about being stuck at home, maybe some of these families should spend part of their summer volunteering for charities who help those who will only ever hear about DisneyWorld in the stories told by other more fortunate kids.

Really, though, how did it get like this? No wonder right wing assholes certain people think Americans are babies about the economy — because they don’t stop to think about how these rising prices affect people already barely getting by, and few people in the mainstream media seem to care to show them.

Honestly, if I ever hear about the tragedy of the “staycation” again…no, no, make that, if I ever even hear the word “staycation” again, I may have to take a permanent vacation from reading travel and leisure newspaper sections.

Matt Zeitlin on class in our marriage debate

I threw my hat into the blogosphere’s recent marriage debate (see Martin, Singal, Matthews, and Marcotte, phew) last week with a post on how much gender plays a role in a person’s acceptance of critiques of marriage as weak or strong.

Matt Zeitlin at Pushback adds a critical component to the debate, when he zooms out and reminds us just how bourgeois our debate is:

We all know that when families far apart, children generally suffer. And with the college wage premium and financial returns to education both at all-time highs, any disruption to a working-class child’s life makes advancement much more difficult. Unstable family structures aren’t great for adults either, especially women. When parents split, it is usually the woman who is left to raise the child, meaning that she has to provide a loving, supportive home, all the while trying to make ends meet as the head of a single-paycheck family.

For those with high amounts of social capital and good jobs, this is a much simpler task, but for everyone else, it is incredibly difficult. This all gets worse when children are born out of wedlock; when parents don’t want to sanctify their bond and commitments to each other, it becomes all the easier for one parent to skip out.

I agree with Matt to a certain extent. It’s important to note what the context of considering marriage is for middle class bloggers. However, I’m always skeptical of arguments that suggest the crumbling of the traditional, two-parent family is contributing to economic deprivation for kids. Blaming “the family” for the larger economic and social factors hurting poor kids, especially kids of color, is often a right-wing talking point, in my opinion, and a cop-out for the failures of our government and society.

I have to disagree with Matt’s assessment that parents who don’t “sanctify their bonds,” are less likely to stick around and hold up their end of the parenting bargain. A dead-beat parent is a dead-beat parent in or out of a marriage. While abandoning one’s financial responsibility to his/her children may be more difficult to a certain legal extent within marriage, I’m highly skeptical that one who wants to abandon their children would only stick around because of the inconvenience of divorce. After all, I know a few dead-beat dads myself who just took off at some point but remain married to the mother of their children. If babies are being born to couples in which one or both partners are less than committed to emotionally or financially supporting the child, the obvious problem seems to be that parents who are going to bail are having kids. After all, poor parents, married or single, are poor parents.

I guess this is all a way of saying, I think the marriage disparity between high and low-income people is more a symptom of economic and social turmoil than a cause of it.

The much better explanation for the class-marriage disparity to me, is that wealthy people who are more often married long-term and having children in those relationships, have more of a financial interest in being married and staying married. They’ve got a lot to lose in a divorce. But when a woman gets pregnant with a guy who makes no money and is a dead-beat, why would she want to marry him? If anything, she wants to make sure the courts will be enforcing his child-support payments and to see little of him afterward. Even when completely committed working-class couples get married and have kids, their marriages face much higher levels of stress than the more successful marriages of the privileges, because of their financial struggles. This undoubtedly contributes to the higher rates of divorce.

Now I can see quite clearly that having two parents who are involved in your life, both financially and emotionally, is going to contribute to a more secure life, but then, the argument should be for planned, well prepared parenthood, rather than for marriage.

The myth that marriage is morally sound is part of a larger dialogue to convince people they shouldn’t expect to be able to support themselves and their kin with one, full-time income. I think they should be able to do so. Ideally, the fact that by the time I’m ready to have children, I likely will be able to do so, would be the usual situation for a woman, rather than the exception.

Now I recognize the reality is that in our current society, most people cannot expect to be able to support a family with one income and one committed parent, and this undoubtedly makes marriage or at least reliable, long-term parenting a desirable outcome for many working-class people, but I don’t think the statistics about marriage and class and race mean marriage itself is the answer to working-class problems.

If working-class people do manage to find a partner who will be committed to sharing the responsibilities of parenting, they too will have the opportunity to determine whether this commitment will be in or outside a marriage.