Manager Uses Urban Dictionary to Defend UFC Fighter’s Gay Twitter Slur — What would Oscar Wilde and George Orwell say?

Educational attainment, the schools we attend, the neighborhoods we grow up in, and the family that shapes us, all represent the context which gives our language meaning, its connotations.  But the dictionary and the official meanings in it is an important shared frame of reference; or is it?  In search of meaning, intentions and aggression, we often find ourselves in front of the proverbial mirror of shame.  There always seems to be plenty of blame to go around when people are mean to one another.  But to complain about UFC culture seems to go beyond reason to a place where words or meaning may no longer hold much substance.

Life in today’s diverse America is becoming quite interesting and the language to explain it increasingly seems to fall short.  Public behavior, especially public behavior tied to corporate profits and corporate values, has ramifications beyond colloquialisms and local vernacular.   Because the spoken word is usually magnified and made more powerful when it is repeated by those who have the means, people who speak to the wrong person (s) or in the wrong place, or at the wrong time, get crucified.  Someone is always ready to listen and to register a complain for all the good people to weigh in and render a collective judgement.  What passes for conversation, if inelegant or far from eloquent, in the confines of comrades and buddies in local corners or man caves, can be quite the consternation in a public setting–even when it is said in a spectacle of violence, and mostly indecency, displayed for the public palate.  Apparently it is ok to beat another human being nearly to death but it is not okay to call them names?  What ever happened to sticks and stones will break my bones, etc., etc. etc.  We have reached the day when the tongue is mightier than the sword and the public sense of decency is measured by what Oscar Wilde himself may have seen as ironic and inane.

Tell us here at The Policy ThinkShop what you THINK???

“UFC fighter Nate Diaz (above) was suspended by the mixed martial arts body on Thursday night for earlier in the week using a gay slur against another fighter. That’s typically where a manager or someone else would step in and get the athlete to apologize and …”

via Manager Uses Urban Dictionary to Defend UFC Fighter’s Gay Twitter Slur.

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Heritage Foundation Cuts Ties to Jason Richwine – from The Atlantic Wire

What do barbie dolls and the Heritage Foundation have in common?  Barbie dolls are to sexism as the heritage foundation is to racism —  they both used to be bastions of each ideology but today they appear increasingly useless and irrelevant.

The Atlantic Wire reports that the Heritage Foundation is running for cover as the facts come out about one Jason Richwine, a former Harvard student who wrote his Ph.D. thesis exploring the presumed intellectual inferiority of Hispanics in America.  The Heritage Foundation used the controversial Harvard former student to publish a recent report arguing about the so called costs of immigration for America.

The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank born in the aftermath of the Nixon era when America saw itself through the eyes of a popular media, government and academia largely of European ancestry and xenophobia towards all things not “White” or of European origin.  This world view was forged at a time when civil rights at home and Vietnam abroad crushed the former American dream which was forged in a 1950s America which was being torn asunder by hippie kids and non-White civil rights marchers.

Today the modern expression of these reactionary movements are anti immigration, states rights and anti affirmative action diatribes that fly in the face of the facts of an America that needs every once of talent and muscle from its growing “brown majority.”

Recent demographic reports show that Rodriguez is now the most numerous last name held by new born babies in our country.  Tomorrow is here and the Heritage Foundation seems to be trying to cover the overwhelming historical truth with an increasingly ineffective ideological argument about the size of a broken barbie doll umbrella.

 

“Jason Richwine, co-author of a controversial report from the Heritage Foundation that criticized the potential cost of immigration reform, has resigned from the organization. The resignation follows revelations that Richwine’s college dissertation argued that …”

via Heritage Foundation Cuts Ties to Jason Richwine – Philip Bump – The Atlantic Wire.

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Most Muslims in Region Reject Violence Against Civilians – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

The Pew Forum on Religion continues to bring us facts and figures to enlighten our view of the religious world which is often clouded by a sensationalist media and the rose colored lenses of young ambitious journalists trying to move up the career ladder or older ones stuck in yesterday’s phobias and mired in a short and myopic view of a changing modern world where the acts of the few motivate and move the masses through the loud megaphone that is our entertainment driven media establishment…. Read the Pew article and tell us what you think…

“A new Pew Research Center survey report finds high levels of concern about religious extremism among Muslims in the North Caucasus area of Russia and the neighboring Central Asian countries of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The survey also finds that few Muslims across the region support the use of violence against civilians in the name of Islam, though there is somewhat more support for suicide bombing and similar violence among Muslims in Kyrgyzstan than in Russia or Kazakhstan.”

via Most Muslims in Region Reject Violence Against Civilians – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

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Equating Islam with terrorism – chicagotribune.com

When the media feeds xenophobia, sensationalism, ethnocentrism and religious bigotry, the crazies and the extremists win.  The crazies and the extremists are such a minute minority but their acts are so big and their intentions are to cloud our judgement and make us crazy.  The media’s handling of these acts magnifies them and makes these pitiful bigots super heroes, if evil ones.  They become larger than life and feed our need to catch and conquer the proverbial boogyman.  Read the following article by a Chicago journalist for some clarity and what is happening to us every time we over state the role of religion in violent acts that are perpetrated by people who in the end are not very religious at all…

“Before we knew anything about the dead Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, we knew that he “recently became a devout Muslim who prayed five times a day.” This piece of information was placed in the lead of an Associated Press article published as the police were still on the hunt for Tsarnaev’s younger brother and alleged accomplice, Dzhokhar.

As the day went on with increasing panic and an intensifying sense of terror emanating from television and computer screens across America, and news outlets scrambled to release sound bites and tweetable articles with any information they could scrounge up on …”

More via Equating Islam with terrorism – chicagotribune.com.

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Malden woman attacked by man accusing Muslims of Marathon bombings – Metro – The Boston Globe

No one ever talks about it.  It is taboo.  Or perhaps, it is not important in our mostly Western European culture.

As we have developed a culture of fear, xenophobia, and antipathy towards foreigners, we have begun to kill our American Dream.  We dislike people who look poorly dressed, “dark,” or otherwise not like “us.”  We forget, or perhaps our history books don’t explain and our grandparents did not share, that most people who came through Elis Island came here with few  belongings, lived in very modest quarters and felt as isolated and alienated as today’s monolingual and “lost in America” recent immigrant population.

Mexicans, Haitians, Pakistanis, Egyptians, Puerto Ricans, many, many, groups are portrayed as “less than American” and continue to be seen as different from the mainstream ideal.  An ideal that may now be shattered after the savages who attacked innocent people in Boston.  The facts are developing at this time.  But the monsters in the two FBI photos are nothing like the “dark guy” ridiculously and irresponsibly described by CNN’s John King with Wolf Blitzer supporting.

“I want to be very careful about this, because people get very sensitive when you say these things,” King said Wednesday. “I was told by one of these sources who is a law enforcement official that this is a dark-skinned male.”

America is now more diverse than ever.  It’s mainstream leadership is woefully out of touch with the silent growing segment of the population that is destined to inherit our tomorrow.

The Boston Globe reported a story that confirms the damage mainstream media does to our fabric when they echo the fears and phobias suffered by less educated Americans…  By less educated we don’t mean did not go to College–we mean people who were raised and educated by parents and schools that failed.  Some of these people have high degrees and are millionaires who lead our nightly broadcasts…

“Every day, Heba Abolaban of Malden checks on her family in war-strafed Syria, where water, bread and electricity are in short supply. She was far more worried about them than about herself on Wednesday morning when she put her baby daughter in a stroller and headed into the sunshine to a play group with a friend.But as they strolled down Commercial Street, an angry-faced man charged toward the petite woman, his hand balled into a fist. He punched her hard in the shoulder and screamed curses inches from her face. Then he pointed at her and …”

More via Malden woman attacked by man accusing Muslims of Marathon bombings – Metro – The Boston Globe.

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There is a reason why we have a war on drugs and why we cannot win it… « HealthThinkShop

So the issue is twofold:

First, there is the problem of a powerful drug being re-marketed as Oxycontin and promoted in ways that lead to abuse.

Secondly, there is the demand for this drug that is created that in turn creates a tremendous market that seduces the greedy and the stupid (the marketers and the profiteers because thinking you can sale this stuff and not get caught is not brilliant) and the users who are often victims who innocently become dependent and spend the rest of their lives needing more of the drug to prevent from “getting sick” when they violently experience withdrawal from this highly addictive and dangerous drug–people get so sedated under this drug that they stop breathing and die…).

This is not most importantly a debate about weed or about politics, or even about criminality… It is a calculated business move by investors to promote a substance that is now running wild in our society and killing innocent people…

via There is a reason why we have a war on drugs and why we cannot win it… « HealthThinkShop.

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Suddenly, They’re All Gone – NYTimes.com

As the baby boom generation we have had all the benefits that come from the exercise craze and the health food awareness diet bonanza.  We have learned to drink skim milk, munch wholewheat bread, and eat our veggies…  Others have taken it further and have gone stock, lock and barrel into the Whole Foods, or “whole paycheck” abyss.

But it is not so much healthy living that is our biggest challenge… Perhaps it is facing mortality while seeing the previous generation die right before us… Since they were so much more likely to abuse salt, sugar and tobacco, their gerontological downfall is not pretty…  But the idea that life ends so absolutely, and that their life, perhaps, ends with relatively little meaning or impact, that kills us…  We are the baby-boomers and we learned to question everything, and we are perhaps the most spoiled generation….  If you think about black and white TV, how many toys kids got for the holidays prior to the 1960s and beyond,  you see a picture of how colorful our lives have been…. The end, however, may not have changed much for us … and when we see our loved ones leaving we have to face their mortality in a post modern world that is perhaps more complex, less spiritual and simply busy.

The Policy ThinkShop recommends the following read in the NYTs for those of us who are being forced to see and feel the inevitable end though our eyes and our nostrils…

“Caring for the old is just like parenting an infant, only on really bad acid. It’s all there: the head-spinning exhaustion, the fractured brain, the demands and smells. Only this time with the knowledge that it won’t …”

via Suddenly, They’re All Gone – NYTimes.com.

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Pew Hispanic Center – Chronicling Latinos Diverse Experiences in a Changing America

Some of the descendants of today’s native Americans are also the descendants of today’s Mexican Americans.  For thousands of years there has been a natural migration from well below the Rio Grande to cold northern parts of what is today’s “Upper Midwest.”  The region today that is loosely made up of the Dakotas, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois. Ironically, even the then pilgrims were considered “illegal aliens” by the then natives.  The same natives who “hosted them” and welcomed the pilgrims in what we now call “Thanks Giving.”  Certainly the then natives must have thought of the pilgrims as “illegal aliens” but gave them quarter and kindness nevertheless.

But “my oh my” how times have changed and how the Thanksgiving tables have been turned.  The immigration debate promises to change how we all define America and maybe even begin to tie together a North American Continent that continues to play a role for new comers.  We may yet get the facts straight and muster up some of that native hospitality that made that long cold winter of immigration survivable for the original pilgrims.  

We may yet repair the growing divisions in our country and continue to be a beacon of giving, welcoming and building for future generations.  Like the Statue of Liberty, a symbol with open arms, allowing our culture to continue to welcome and thank all of us who were here before the next comers, like the native Americans who taught us that Thanks Giving lesson.

Get the facts at Pew.  The Pew Hispanic Center continues to provide resources and leadership in this important area:

“The nation’s total immigrant population reached a record 40.4 million in 2011, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Center. Over the last decade, the number of immigrants in the U.S. has grown by more than 9 million. The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. grew in the early part of the decade before peaking at 12 million in 2007. It is now at 11.1 million as of 2011, the last year for which an estimate is available.”

Related:

New Data: Statistical Portrait of the Foreign Born, 2011

Report: Unauthorized Immigrants: 11.1 Million in 2011

Report: Net Migration from Mexico Falls to Zero

via Pew Hispanic Center – Chronicling Latinos Diverse Experiences in a Changing America.

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Islam and science: The road to renewal | The Economist

A Spiritual Paradigm Shift for Islam?

The secular world moves forward on its empiricist ethos….  but what about the spiritual world?  What about other cultures whose historical conditions have not benefitted in tandem with the protestant reformation, the protestant ethic and western education?  The London Economist raises the topic of the “Islamic Scientific Spring” we might say….

“THE sleep has been long and deep. In 2005 Harvard University produced more scientific papers than 17 Arabic-speaking countries combined. The world’s 1.6 billion Muslims have produced only two Nobel laureates in chemistry and physics. Both moved to the West: the only living one, the chemist Ahmed Hassan Zewail, is at the California Institute of Technology. By contrast Jews, outnumbered 100 to one by Muslims, have won 79. The 57 countries in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference spend a …”

MORE via Islam and science: The road to renewal | The Economist.

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Senators Agree on Blueprint for Immigration – NYTimes.com

There is no more important driver of American development and perhaps no more important force which forged her character than immigration.  Of course, the country has been shaped by two types of immigration: that forged by the pilgrims running away from European oppression and that forged today by individuals seeking the benefits of that more perfect union created by the former.  Save of course the folks that came here in chains and those whose opinion and labor were controlled, devalued and defines by patriarchy.

Today we stand at an important crossroads of political insecurity, economic paranoia and cultural differentiation that threatens the existence of one American no matter who is here now or who comes thereafter.  America stands divided and many of her children choose not to vote, find it increasingly difficult to vote or do not have a civic status that allows them to do so.

This is the scenario that exists now as we ponder closing the doors of immigration and focusing on processing perhaps a hundred years of so called “illegal immigration.”

The New York Times reports on an initial bipartisan proposal by the current intelligentsia on the hill.  The proposal seems to strike a curious compromise between close the doors and keep anymore of them out and deal with all these folks that “leaked in here.”

In any case, this now nascent debate on immigration seems to be taking shape.  Stay posted… as we at the Policy ThinkShop think this through with you…  Send us a note and tell us what you think?

“A bipartisan group of senators has agreed on a set of principles for a sweeping overhaul of the immigration system, including a pathway to American citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants that would hinge on …”

MORE via Senators Agree on Blueprint for Immigration – NYTimes.com.

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Election 2012 Post Mortem: White Evangelicals and Support for Romney – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

American demographics and the urban vs. rural, North vs. South, and “White vs. other” dichotomies continue to paralyze an American political system that must transform its ways of raising resources and allocating them in the interests of an increasingly “non-White” society.  What does the new America look like?  How will it lead?  What does the future of a diverse America look like?  Does this re-election of an African American president mean that America has turned the “Real Americans vs. the rest” stultifying dichotomous past?

Religiously, the American landscape continues to get decided and the so called “rightwing” media continues to cement the rightwing, mostly White, mostly suburban and rural coalition.   The Pew Foundation continues to shed light on these developments as it reports on religious demographics and trends…

“There was considerable speculation during the 2012 primaries about the strength of support for Mitt Romney among white evangelical Protestants. A Pew Research Center analysis of exit poll data finds that white evangelical Protestants voted for Romney with as much enthusiasm as his other supporters did. In addition, white evangelical Protestants voted as heavily for Romney as they did for the GOP candidates in 2008 and 2004, and they made up about the same share of the electorate as they did in the two previous elections.”

via Election 2012 Post Mortem: White Evangelicals and Support for Romney – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

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International: The lottery of life methodology | The Economist

The Economist Magazine provides a world view on how countries are doing for their citizens …  The report speaks to quality of life and satisfaction providing an index that measures each country’s status, like a report card, on its population.

The USA used to be number 1 in this index as early as 1988.  Today it has fallen to 16th.

This precipitous fall during the last quarter century (1988 to 2012) is a result of the American obsession with taxes, healthcare and education… Not an obsession to fix these things but an incapacity to do so ..

Read the Economist report, it may be an important wakeup call to the 1% who seek more and more while the country cracks and crumbles…

 

“The life satisfaction scores for 2006 on scale of 1 to 10 for 130 countries from the Gallup Poll are related in a multivariate regression to various factors. As many as 11 indicators are statistically significant. Together these indicators explain some 85% of the inter-country variation in life satisfaction scores. The values of the life satisfaction scores that are predicted by our indicators represent a countrys quality of life index. The coefficients in the estimated equation weight automatically the importance of the various factors. We can utilise the estimated equation for 2006 to calculate index values for year in the past and future, allowing for comparison over time as well across …”

via International: The lottery of life methodology | The Economist.

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