Tag Archives: Montana

March 8, 2012, 10:19 am

It’s Funny ‘Cause It’s Racist

We live in a postracial America. NOT! But alas, this is what a large number of white Americans believe. In fact, polls consistently show that blacks and Latinos see discrimination in their daily lives even as whites deny such discrimination. For instance, in the U.S. over 80% of blacks experience “day to day discrimination.” Meanwhile 56% of whites say there is “too much attention paid to racial issues” and whites were 235 times more likely to rate blacks as “lazy” than they were whites.

Given the fact that white people don’t acknowledge continued discrimination against black and Latino Americans and instead hang lack of economic success on “laziness,” it is not too much to say that whites now live in a fantasy world. Part of the white fantasy is to actually believe that making racist jokes shows how NOT racist they are.

All we have to do is watch Family Guy or South Park, which …

August 31, 2011, 1:01 pm

Idaho Idiocy

By David Barash

Yesterday, in an act of consummate stupidity and scientific ignorance worthy of Republicans generally (see recent posts by my esteemed colleague, Laurie Fendrich), the state of Idaho initiated a wolf-hunting season, with Montana—not to be long outdone in the idiocy sweepstakes—set to follow suit on September 3. All this despite the undisputed finding by biologists that the wolf population in the northern Rockies still hasn’t recovered since the species was first reintroduced 16 years ago.

Current population levels are too small to permit effective gene exchange between packs, a situation that can only be exacerbated by the forthcoming state-sponsored carnage. Moreover, it is well known that wolf hunts disrupt social cohesion, leading to the disbanding of packs and starvation of dependent young, even without the actual slaughter of adults. It is also noteworthy that these hunts…