CatherineRhodes.com

Most white people don’t think they’re racist because they don’t actively discriminate. However, they simply take for granted the privilege that comes with their race without acknowledging that such privilege even exists. The author of this video refers to the work of Peggy McIntosh. Here are a few from her list of 50.

4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
7. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.
24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the “person in charge”, I will be facing a person of my race.
25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.
26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children’s magazines featuring people of my race.
27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.
41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.

I have long thought that the base of the modern GOP made for strange bedfellows. On one hand, you have the money people, the Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street types, the “makers” who finance elections in order to fill the roster with officials who are sympathetic to their interests. These people tend to be rich, white, urban or suburban, straight, but mostly identify as rich.

Then there is what Sarah Palin called the “Real America” — people who tend to be less educated, rural and poor. They’re white, most likely Southern or Midwestern, and identify Republican because they’re “values voters” — anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, pro-gun. Economic issues are secondary.

During “W”s reign, I felt that the party leaders led by Karl Rove were manipulating the poor end of the base into voting against their own interests. As E.J. Dionne said on Rachel Maddow’s show, the money guys knew that they needed the values voters to drive them to the country club, but when they got there, they had no intention of letting them inside. The Tea Party changed all that. That part of the base got fed up with their chaffeur role in the party and demanded to be heard.

Karl Rove is now fighting back in order to prevent Republicans from fielding a team of loons in the primary who can’t win in the general. What Rove doesn’t understand is that there are a lot more Tea Partiers than there are Park Place Republications, and they each have one vote. They have become the mouse that roared, and the mighty elephant has reared in fright.

It was a big surprise when she won the Oscar—she deserved it

When Ricky was younger, he and I watched “The Simpsons” together. Our favorites were Seasons 3 through 10, when Matt Groening was still involved. I’d start laughing at the clever deployment of a cultural reference, Ricky would would ask why, and after an explanation, we’d end up accessing the source material by renting the original movie or reading the book. For example, “Deep Space Homer” was a take-off on 2001: A Space Odyssey which we rented. He was about 14 at the time, and thought the movie was pretty weird, but then went on to become a huge Kubrick fan.

I’ve done the same with the girls, introducing them to modern classics. We went through the Merchant Ivory/Jane Austen phase: Sense and Sensibility, Room With a View, Emma, and so on, anything with Emma Thompson.

Lately, we’ve rented a few of the classics from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Some hold up and some don’t. Thelma and Louise is surprisingly boring — I remembered it as a fast-paced thriller. Terms of Endearment is so plodding in its direction and so dull visually, that we lost Elizabeth halfway through. It’s also way, way too emotional in a way that today would be manipulative. Last night, Hannah and I watched The English Patient, which is still a masterpiece. It’s a beautiful film, well acted, well told. We were riveted during its entire three-hour running time. We thought it was funny that the two female leads were Catherine and Hannah.

It also has the best line: The doomed “English” patient: “Why are you so determined to keep me alive?” Hannah: “Because I am a nurse.”

Black Rebels

Black Keys

Black Crowes

Black Mass

My lovely and amazing daughter Hannah turns 18 in March. Her goal is to do the L.A. Marathon and she asked me to do it with her. So here I am, lying in bed after a 16-mile workout, with bags of frozen peas icing my legs.

I ran 16 miles today in 3:12, which puts me at a 12-min mile pace. I did the Marathon 10 years ago and clocked in at 4:30, which is an impressive 10-min pace — but in the past 10 years, this body has seen a whole lotta mileage.

Good stuff: Ankles and knees aren’t sore, no post-run headache, I feel tired but not dead, I was motivated to get up this morning and hit the road.

Tough stuff: I need to improve baseline muscle strength. Need to ramp up the mid-week training runs.

Music had a black theme: Black Crowes, Black Keys, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Then I threw in Mozart’s Requiem for thematic consistency and hit shuffle. It was bliss. Who else would like to be in there? Frank Black, most definitely. Maybe some tracks off “Black and Blue” by the Stones.

A recent NBC poll showed that the one thing Americans appreciate most about Obama’s first term is that he ended the war in Iraq. In 2009, there were 144,000 troops there; in 2003, 200. One wonders what that number would be if John McCain had been elected. In that case, we might now have troops in Iran and Syria as well.

Of course, if Al Gore had been elected president in 2000, we never would have invaded Iraq in the first place.

I wonder how Mitt Romney would handle the Newtown shooting — certainly not as a call to ban assault rifles and take on the gun lobby.

It was Ronald Reagan who famously quipped to a reporter who challenged the newly-elected president’s mandate: “That’s why we had the election.” Indeed.

Saw “Django” last night, which left me with mixed feelings.There’s something brilliant and amazing here and the film works, kind of, but needed to be tightened down. Tarantino is obviously at the point in his career where no one can edit his work. Nobody can say, “delete that scene: it’s boring.” If QT loves the boring, irrelevant or over-the-top scene, it stays — and there were plenty of those in this movie.

The controversy from the black community is somewhat justified. QT takes blaxploitation to another level as he layers the hilarious and silly with long scenes of such graphic depravity that I had to cover my eyes and ears. The use of the N-word is always foul, but is historically appropriate to the antebellum South. Not using it would be to whitewash the past. There was no PC in 1858 Mississippi.

One thing that was completely wrong, though, was the mandingo fighting, which according to the slavery historians Slate interviewed, never happened. At least there is no record of it. Mandingo fighting is two slaves bare-knuckle fighting to the death, gladiator style. In a film with so much gratuitous violence, why add more?

Maybe best line of the year: “The D is silent, hillbilly.”

Beware of interrogators bearing sharp knives

Unless the writers are going to throw in a completely unsubstantiated left-field twist in the third season (think “The Killing”), it has to be Brody. Think of the insanely tight security for the vice-president’s funeral at the CIA… how would Nazir have possibly snuck in an operative? The big deal with Nazir needing Brody was because as a congressman, he would have access. Brody was the one who was signalling to Carrie that they should leave the funeral. Brody also came up with an oddly quick answer to Carrie afterwards (“Nazir was setting us up all along…blah blah”). She has lost her ability to be objective.

Here are my predictions for next season:

• Saul and Carrie assume high leadership positions in the reconstituted CIA, bringing back Peter Quinn, Galvez, Virgil, his weird little brother, whoever is left in the gang
• Mike is asked to join the CIA since he’s in military intelligence, and now they’re very short-staffed at the Agency (this keeps Brody’s wife and horrible daughter in the story)
• The CIA finds out through surveillance tapes that Brody did move his car. Guilty! Carrie goes mental over being betrayed again
• Brody becomes a rogue terrorist, setting up sleeper cells around the country
• Carrie and Peter Quinn strike up a romance (I thought they had nice chemistry), and make it their life’s work to find Brody.

Thoughts?