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The Gamer’s Stigma
Posted in February 26th, 2009
by Syndicate in Uncategorized
by Phil Kehres
My last column generated quite a bit of vitriol towards what some call “the gamer lifestyle,” leading to unfounded accusations that I am not only obese but also an anti-social mom’s-basement-dweller. After my initial anger, I let these thoughts marinate in my head for a while. I realized that the negative comments I attracted — while partially in response to my ambiguous sarcasm — were not simply one person’s opinion, but rather indicative of a subtle but pervasive anti-gamer bias that has persisted throughout society since the days of Super Mario Brothers.
I bring this up only because it’s still all-too-common to illicit an upturned nose or an eyeroll in response to telling an acquaintance that you play video games and, even worse, play them online. My friends get it, but that’s because I’ve chosen my friends based on their rationality and tolerance — and not surprisingly, many of them are gamers.
There’s nothing that makes gamers inherently anti-social. A gamer is no more anti-social than someone who runs on a treadmill with their iPod on, or someone who curls up on a couch to read a book or watch a TV show alone. Those people don’t get labels, because all of those things are perceived — rightfully — as valid and enjoyable activities in their own right. They’re individual pieces of people’s complex lives. Gaming is no different. Just as an avid reader wouldn’t spend his or her free time exclusively reading, a gamer wouldn’t spend all of his or her free time gaming. I, for example, also enjoy playing sports and music, photography and, obviously, writing.
Being a gamer doesn’t mean you’re holed up in a dimly lit room 24/7 eating pizza and growing steadily fatter. It’s a hobby, like anything else. In fact, the most avid gamer I know is also one of the healthiest and fittest people I know. Gaming online is arguably more social than watching TV — I’ve been able to keep up with friends from across the country through Xbox Live online gaming. Like other forms of entertainment, gaming has its roots in pure escapism. And while every game can’t be as deep and enriching as a good novel, the best games keep your mind sharp and tell stories far more compelling than anything you’ll find on network TV.
Now, I’m not trying to make myself out to be a martyr here. Clearly, no one is committing hate crimes against gamers. It’s not that serious. But the sentiment exists nonetheless, and ridding society of prejudices, no matter how small, is always a worthy cause. Somewhere along the line, gamers got stereotyped as anti-social, insular, lazy nerds lacking creatively and with no better outlet for their childish minds. Speaking for myself and my friends, at the very least, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
(Phil Kehres also is the co-author of Excuse Me, Is This Your Blog?)
(The photo is by MNgilen of Des Moines, IA via Flickr, using a Creative Commons license.)
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Prejudice, Hope & the American Way
Posted in November 30th, 2008
by Syndicate in Uncategorized
The woman was looking into the eyes, sad and old, of a bright young man, when she was reminded of an even older scene that absorbed her focus, and her stare turned blank.
In the moment long gone, the woman was loving her six-year-old daughter, returned from a day of finding her place in her first-grade world. The child nestled into her mother’s lap and declared it a good day — because she’d made friends with Chrissy, the really nice girl with wispy blond hair and eyes as blue as the marbles in the marble jar, and they’d both gotten smiley faces on their writing worksheets. They had matching pencils and they were going to be best friends and do the monkey bars together during recess and they were not going to be friends with the stupid Spanish kids on the playground.
The mother’s heart crashed to her womb as she searched through tumbling brown curls, into the deep black eyes of her child, her child of the blended histories of old Puerto Ricans and Southern slave owners, of Spanish fishing villagers and Western pioneers.
Her beautiful child with ugly new distinctions.
Then it was another more recent day, and all the parents waited at the schoolyard gate to embrace their children and return them to the safety of home. But one father, wild with intoxication, his eyes aflame, frightened the others. They ran to the office; they begged the principal not to allow him to take his child home, a home that could not possibly be safe. The principal reassured them with her concern. She asked which one he was, which parent, she asked, the Mexican?
She was wrong.
Then it was yet another day, the dawning of a president of color. And the couple who had supported him drove into the resort town center to stock their vacation shelves, to continue their celebration, not yet ready to remove his bumper sticker from their car. They walked past two men, leaning against a pickup, who did not offer reciprocal nods as the couple walked past, but, instead, invoked an invigorated Klan. “Nigger lovers,” the men said, kicking dirt and hate.
This, in our state, the couple mourned.
And then the woman was back in the here and now, looking into the sad, old eyes of a bright young man. He was telling her about the day when he was walking home from school, and someone yelled racist slurs at him and he cried. He cried because he was no longer safe. And he will cry again, because many white people believe his people cause all the problems in their town.
But still he is a student of hope. He believes in peace for his community, for the next generation of children walking home from school, for his whole town, his whole town.
We’re all just people, with the same needs, the same aspirations. Right?
So he said maybe things will be better now, now as the country learns from its mixed-race president.
She said her daughter has survived and thrived without the hate school once taught her.
He said the forty percent increase in hate crimes against Latinos is not a forecast, trends change.
She said those who blame immigrant gang members for all a community’s crimes — when so few of its crimes are gang-related — will surely be enlightened by truth.
He said the forty-eight percent rise in the number of hate groups will reverse as George Bush’s fear fades, as the economy recovers, when leaders no longer incite discrimination.
And so they shared their prejudice for hope.
©2008 Kit-Bacon Gressitt
(Editor’s Note: This piece is cross-posted from Kit-Bacon Gressitt’s personal blog, Excuse Me, I’m Writing.)
(The photo is from an anti-racism demonstration in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 2007; the photo is by thivierr of Calgary via Flickr, using a Creative Commons license.)
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Obama, McCain & the Economic Crisis
Posted in September 28th, 2008
by Syndicate in Uncategorized
by Rick Rockwell
Voters in the tony suburbs that circle the beltway of what would be the capital of the world are worried. They are worried now that their chosen candidate Barack Obama won’t be able to deliver on his promise of change, because the Republicans have saddled the country with perhaps the worst financial crisis in almost 80 years.
Worse. They have a second nightmare creeping into their psyches: after a week of maneuvering by John McCain, their candidate Sen. Obama (D-IL) won’t win because the rest of the country will decide to move to a candidate with more experience and more connections.
The polls after the first debate should have staunched those fears, as many believe Obama bested McCain. But perhaps they are concerned because for whatever reasons the political polls have been entirely unreliable during this election cycle. The chatter in the suburbs after the debate was filled with those fears.
Fear, as we know, comes from what we don’t know. And in these perilous economic times, fear abounds, because even the so-called experts either haven’t been shooting straight with the rest of us or they also have gaps in their knowledge but won’t admit it. What this crisis has revealed is the Wall Street shell game is over, at least for a little while. Until the rules are reset.
That’s what has the Obamaniacs worried. Right now, their candidate doesn’t seem to be the one who is having much of an impact on the $700 billion bailout. And they are reading daily in The Washington Post about how Sen. McCain (R-AZ) threw his considerable weight around the capital last week and stopped what many voters saw as a deal that rewarded the corrupt bankers. Unbelievably, it took Obama until the eve of the debate to figure out what populist language to adopt and to blast the bailout fashioned by the banking industry’s protectors in the administration of George W. Bush.
But McCain had to be prodded into action too. His aides also read The Post, and believe polls or not, the headlines at mid-week were all about how Obama was erasing the Republican convention bounce because of his image on the economy. (How Obama has any image on the economy as a Senator and legislator who has little to no record in the economic arena is amazing, but more on that later.)
So McCain threw himself into a week doing what he does best politically: throwing the long bomb. Cynical, self-serving or not, McCain’s so-called “suspension” of his campaign (which didn’t amount to anything because the financial crisis wasn’t solved and there he was debating Obama) focused media attention on his actions. Obama may have been on the phone to Sen. Chris Dodd, one of the Democrats walking point on this issue (and now isn’t Dodd, who was once a presidential candidate looking more like the better vice presidential pick) long before McCain’s grandstanding. Obama may have been at that economic summit meeting at the White House. But McCain was the one stealing the headlines. By carrying the views of disaffected Republicans in Congress to his party’s caucus that was coalescing behind Bush’s plan, McCain stopped a bad bailout in its tracks.
Granted, neither candidate wanted to discuss much of the details of how to deal with the financial mess during the debate. After much pressing by moderator Jim Lehrer, McCain finally suggested a freeze on all government spending except for defense, veterans affairs, and entitlement programs (such as Medicaid and social security). McCain also suggested “scrubbing” government accounts looking to eliminate waste, including taking a strong look at Pentagon spending. Although bereft of an overall plan, Obama belittled those ideas as using “a hatchet when you need a scalpel.” However, that comment may reveal how much Obama does not know about the monumental task ahead.
The truth is neither of these candidates is the right one for the dire economic straits the country faces. McCain may have a record of fiscal discipline, but he has not been a leader on budget issues beyond his desire to eliminate Congressional pork-barrel spending. No, McCain and Obama are the candidates who the country picked to discuss the Iraq War. Or to discuss generational change. Or reform in Washington. They are not the right candidates to handle the huge financial mess. This is the problem with the current election system in the U.S. that forces candidates to start running two years before they will hold office. We have the candidates perfect for two years ago. Not for now.
So hunker down. It won’t matter which of the major candidates wins. The next four years are going to be very painful. But few are willing to say that, when the watchword for this election is “hope.”
For more background on the 2008 campaign, please see these archival posts:
- “New Hampshire: Barack Obama’s Latest Hope;”
- “John McCain and the Republican Right;”
- “Joe Biden: More of the Same from the Democrats;”
- “Sarah Palin, Sex & the Republicans;”
- “2008 Election Manifesto: Voting Your Conscience Isn’t Wasting Your Vote;” and
- “Campaign 2008: Mainstream Media, Take a Deep Breath.”
(Political graphic by AZRainman. To see more of AZRainman’s work, please check out his blog.)
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Presidential Debate Highlights, Round One
Posted in September 27th, 2008
(Editor’s Note: As the usual public service after major debates during the presidential campaign, this blog is providing video highlights of the salient moments from the first one-on-one debate between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. This debate was held at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi.)
by Rick Rockwell
After Sen. McCain (R-AZ) gave up on his position that there should be no debate before Congress dealt with the current economic crisis, both presidential campaigns came to Mississippi ready to discuss the issues. In a 97-minute discussion, moderated by Jim Lehrer of PBS, both sides scored on various issues. The main themes of the debate included the economic crisis, the Iraq War, the Afghan War and international relations with Pakistan, Iran, and Russia. Other topics of national security and budget issues also crept into the debate. Immediately, some commentators latched on to the difference of style: Sen. Obama (D-IL) often addressed the cameras directly or McCain. McCain rarely looked directly at Obama or the cameras, instead directing his gaze to Lehrer or the audience in the hall. So the differences in the candidates were apparent, even beginning with body language. And now the video highlights after the jump….
Although the debate began like many of these affairs with the candidates repeating sections of their current campaign speeches, Lehrer managed to get both to stop using that tactic after the first 20 minutes or so, at least until the final moments. This opened the way to verbal sparring from both sides with a variety of jabs, some revealing Obama’s inexperience in the Senate and others about McCain’s shoot-from-the-hip temperment (including his song about bombing Iran).
The debate format allowed candidates to directly question and respond to each other without intervention from the moderator, and one of the first feisty exchanges came over which candidate had actually helped the oil companies more. Watch also as both candidates duck specifics about how the economic crisis will affect their promises and plans, although McCain did offer a broad outline of how to align the federal budget during the crisis.
Another heated discussion revolved around the thorny issues of relations with Pakistan and the conduct of the war in Afghanistan.
The vice presidential candidates will debate next Thursday, Oct. 2 at Washington University in St. Louis, MO.
For more background on the 2008 campaign, please see these archival posts:
- “New Hampshire: Barack Obama’s Latest Hope;”
- “John McCain and the Republican Right;”
- “Joe Biden: More of the Same from the Democrats;”
- “Sarah Palin, Sex & the Republicans;”
- “2008 Election Manifesto: Voting Your Conscience Isn’t Wasting Your Vote;” and
- “Campaign 2008: Mainstream Media, Take a Deep Breath.”
(The photo of Sen. Barack Obama campaigning in Philadelphia, PA in July is by Llima via Flickr, using a Creative Commons License.)
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Bank Bailout: Enough is Enough
Posted in September 25th, 2008
by Syndicate in Uncategorized
by Jeff Siegel
They invaded Iraq, and we said, “Well, OK, because Saddam is such a bad guy.”
They let New Orleans die, and we said, “Well, OK, because I don’t live there.”
And now they’re going to bail out the banks, and they expect us to say, “Well, OK, because finance is so confusing.”
Well, it’s not OK, and it’s not confusing, and it’s about time the American people said so.
Enough is enough. In the past eight years, the Bush administration has run the government for the benefit of rich people, and they’ve run the country into the ground in the process. Tried to get a mortgage lately? Tried to buy gas? But what do they care? Does Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have a mortgage to pay off? Does Dick Cheney sit at the kitchen table and write checks, trying to figure out how he is going to stretch this month’s paycheck to cover all the bills? Does George Bush even know how much a head of lettuce costs?
The bank bailout is more than bad policy. It is morally reprehensible: rewarding rich people people who fail for no other reason than they are rich. And I don’t exaggerate. The 2005 bankruptcy bill, which made it more difficult for consumers to declare bankruptcy, was praised by the Bush administration (and its Democratic allies in Congress) because the law made it harder to “abuse” the bankruptcy laws. So working people get the shaft, while the rich get a welfare check.
And, because the Bush administration’s arrogance knows no bounds, they tell us that we don’t understand why it’s needed, that we must do it immediately, and that they know better than we do.
Which is, to use a French expression, a bunch of merde. The only thing they are better at is covering for their friends. The Financial Times, hardly a wellspring of Bolshevik thought, understands exactly what is going on. These companies are getting bailed out not because they are too big to fail, it wrote during the AIG fiasco, but because they are too connected.
And we’re not, so we get screwed. Which is why it is time to say we will not let them do this to us any more. It’s still our government, despite their best efforts at taking it away from us — unsanctioned wiretaps, tax cuts for the super rich, and all the rest. So now we need to do something about it. And that’s as easy as walking into a voting booth in November and throwing the bums out.
(Political graphic by AZRainman. To see more of AZRainman’s work, please check out his blog.)
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