So I had this $25.00 gift certificate for Google AdWords, and — foolish me — thought that I might use it to advertise my site. After a few hours in the big leagues, however, I got this e-mail greeting in my mailbox:

Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 14:12:57 -0800

From: <adwords-support@google.com>

To: …

Subject: Your Google AdWords Approval Status

Hello Charles,

Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords. After reviewing your account, I have found that one or more of your ads or keywords does not meet our guidelines. The results are outlined in the report below.

…

SUGGESTIONS:

-> Content: At this time, Google policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain language that advocates against an individual, group, or organization. As noted in our advertising terms and conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site.

Well, that’s fine. Google has the right to determine what they will or won’t run ads for. But I’m a bit puzzled by the application of the standards being cited. My reply:

Dear Google AdWords Team:

Thank you for your recent e-mail concerning my account with Google AdWords. While I understand that you have every right to determine what will or will not be advertised through Google, I have to confess that I’m a bit mystified by the reasons you have given here for suspending the ad campaign for my weblog, http://radgeek.com

On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 14:12:57 -0800, you wrote:

SUGGESTIONS:

-> Content: At this time, Google policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain language that advocates against an individual, group, or organization. As noted in our advertising terms and conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site.

Again, you’re fully within your rights to choose what you will or won’t advertise. But I’m having trouble understanding what it is on my website that constitutes language that advocates against an individual, group, or organization. Of course, my website carries a great deal of political content; and since it carries political content it contains some entries that are critical of other people and organizations. For example, lately I have carried items criticizing Samuel Huntington’s and David Brooks’ writings on immigration, condemning Virgin Airways’ plans to install urinals in the shape of women’s lips in the JFK Airport clubhouse, criticizing President Bush and condemning the terrorist bombing in Madrid, and encouraging people to attend the pro-choice march in Washington DC in April. All of these items might be construed as advocating against some individual (such as the President or David Brooks), some organization (such as Virgin Airways or al-Qaeda), or some group (such as misogynists). But what is the line between merely disagreeing with someone or some group, and presenting views in opposition to theirs, and language advocating against that person or group? I would understand if AdWords simply did not accept political ads, or ads from sites trading in political criticism. But THAT is surely not the case. Consider the following typical AdWords results from a search for the keyword republican:

“The Passion of Clinton”
and other Democratic nonsense
New & Satire: We report You despair
www.affunnystan.com

Build a Stronger America
Support the RNC and the President’s
Compassionate Conservative agenda.
www.RNC.org

The Right Wing Conspiracy
Proudly become an official member.
T-shirt, free newsletter, and books
RightWingConspiracy.org

John Ashcroft Gets Sexy?
The Ashcroft Sex Film Contest
Celebrity Judges – Win $1,000!
nerve.com/promos/videocontest

All of these sites carry strongly-worded political content, and all of them criticize specific individuals and organizations. Or consider the following AdWords search result for the keyword feminism:

Feminist Fantasies
Essays on feminism in the media,
workplace, home, and the military.
www.eagleforum.org

(This is an ad that leads directly to a page containing a great deal of advocacy against feminists as a group, and advertising a book which is devoted to the same.)

I’m not writing to suggest that these sites should be suspended. Rather, I don’t understand what the salient differences are between the content at these pages and the content at http://radgeek.com/ such that the former is acceptable content for advertisement through Google AdWords and the latter is not. Could you explain to me further why this is so–or perhaps give some specific example of the nature of the problem? If so I would be much obliged. I really appreciate the service that Google makes available through AdWords, but I don’t understand the policies and if I don’t understand them, I fear that this will leave me unable to choose to advertise events or products through your service in the future. Since I would like to have as productive a relationship with you as possible, I hope that you could either make clear to me what the problems with my site are, or — if there are not such problems — reinstate the account.

Thank you very much.

Charles Johnson
Rad Geek People’s Daily

Of course, I am not an impartial observer of my own website. Is there something that I’m just not getting here? Is it because I called the President a dickhead? Is it because my recent slam on John Ashcroft wasn’t accompanied with a snarky porn video contest? What is it? If you know, help me out here–if I’m going to be too offensive to The Powers That Be to run on Google AdWords, I’d at least like to know what it is that I’m doing right….

(Typos fixed, revised for clarity.)

About a month ago, neoconservative creepy spendthrift fascist David Brooks wrote an article which he took to be in support of Latino immigrants. In this he took himself to arguing against Samuel Huntington’s anti-immigration essay in Foreign Policy, in which Huntington (famous for his contribution to contemporary fascist sociological thought, the so-called Clash of Civilizations thesis) offers the following bit of post-Enlightenment Volksgeschichte:

Most Americans see the creed as the crucial element of their national identity. The creed, however, was the product of the distinct Anglo-Protestant culture of the founding settlers. Key elements of that culture include the English language; Christianity; religious commitment; English concepts of the rule of law, including the responsibility of rulers and the rights of individuals; and dissenting Protestant values of individualism, the work ethic, and the belief that humans have the ability and the duty to try to create a heaven on earth, a city on a hill. Historically, millions of immigrants were attracted to the United States because of this culture and the economic opportunities and political liberties it made possible.

. . .

In this new era, the single most immediate and most serious challenge to America’s traditional identity comes from the immense and continuing immigration from Latin America, especially from Mexico, and the fertility rates of these immigrants compared to black and white American natives.

Brooks has a bone to pick with Huntington’s analysis. As he writes:

You’ll find that Huntington marshals a body of evidence to support his claims. But the most persuasive evidence is against him. Mexican-American assimilation is a complicated topic because Mexican-Americans are such a diverse group. The educated assimilate readily; those who come from peasant villages take longer. But they are assimilating.

It’s easy to find evidence that suggests this is so. In their book Remaking the American Mainstream, Richard Alba of SUNY-Albany and Victor Nee of Cornell point out that though there are some border neighborhoods where immigrants are slow to learn English, nationwide, Mexicans know they must learn it to get ahead. By the third generation, 60 percent of Mexican-American children speak only English at home.

Nor is it true that Mexican immigrants are scuttling along the bottom of the economic ladder. An analysis of 2000 census data by the USC urban planner Dowell Myers suggests that Latinos are quite adept at climbing out of poverty. Sixty-eight percent of those who have been in this country 30 years own their own homes.

Mexican immigrants are in fact dispersing around the nation. When they have children, they tend to lose touch with their Mexican villages and sink roots here. If you look at consumer data, you find that while they may spend more money on children’s clothes and less on electronics than native-born Americans, there are no significant differences between Mexican-American lifestyles and other American lifestyles. They serve in the military — and die for this nation — at comparable rates.

I have to confess that I simply don’t understand this argument between Huntington and Brooks. Don’t get me wrong — it’s not that they are using unfamiliar words, or that I don’t see the point of contention between Huntington and Brooks, or that I don’t get follow the way in which Brooks and Huntington draw divergent conclusions from the premises and empirical evidence that they cite. All of that seems fairly clear. The part that I don’t understand is this: why in the world does Brooks present himself as posing a serious objection to Huntington? And why in the world does Brooks, in presenting his disagreement, simply leave Huntington’s fundamental premise concerning immigration policy standing there unmentioned, like the proverbial elephant in the room?

This point is particularly imiportant, because Huntington’s (and Brooks’s) fndamental premise concerning immigration policy is completely ridiculous.

By way of illustration, let’s consider a bit of a story.

Say that you’re moving to a new city in order ‘re moving across to a new city to work, and you need a place to stay; fortunately, a friend of yours who lives in the city says you can stay at her house until you find a place of your own. As you turn onto the street where she lives, I ran out in front of your car and demand that you stop. When you roll down the window and ask what’s going on, I demand What’s your business here?

You blink a couple of times and finally say, Well, I’ve got this new job, and my friend Liza invited me to stay with her while I look for a place of my own.

Whoa whoa whoa! I shout, You mean you’re from out of town, and you intend to stay here?

Yes… you say, shifting a bit in your seat.

Sir, I’m afraid you need to fill out this form before I can let you enter the neighborhood, I say, as I hand you a form entitled Top Ten Albums of All Time.

Excuse me? you ask. What in the world is this?

Your top ten LPs of all time. I need you to fill it out before I can let you stay at Liza’s.

Just who are you, anyway? you ask, as you ponder whether you can just speed past to Liza’s house without running me down.

I’m the Neighborhood Patrol! The citizens of this neighborhood rely on me to ensure that only those who adhere to our traditional devotion to 1970s Southern Rock live here. I’m afraid I can’t let you go through to Liza’s house until you give me a list of your top ten albums of all time. We can’t have a bunch of people moving into this neighborhood undermining our neighborly devotion to Freebird!

Look, why don’t you just go knock on Liza’s door and ask her whether I can come through? She invited me here and she’s expecting me.

I get a little anxious and explain, Well, Liza didn’t exactly agree with our decision to implement the Top Ten List…

You stare at me. I’m going to Liza’s house. So what in the world are you blocking my way for?

At this I become visibly irritated. Sir, I’m an official Neighborhood Patrol officer. Liza didn’t agree to the Top Ten List, but more than 1/2 of her neighbors did. I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the car…

Isn’t this story absolutely absurd? And if it is, wouldn’t it be just as absurd for one of the neighbors to run out and argue with me to let you in — because he’s talked with Liza, and he can vouch for your massive collection of Skynyrd?

So how is Huntington’s and Brooks’s argument over whether or not Latino immigrants are assimilating to the surrounding WASP culture different in any salient respect? Why in the world should success or failure at adopting the language, dress, or other cultural trappings of one’s prospective neighbors be a criterion for deciding whether or not a peaceful individual is forced out of the country?

I suppose that somone is going to tell me about how I need to lighten up and have a good laugh at this.

Even though they allow for high-volume servicing and back-in-a-flash trips to the john, the point-and-shoot-a-stinky-deodorizer-cake oddity known as the men’s restroom urinal has been, for women, a constant enigma. But nothing will prepare you for the men’s room in the newly-designed Virgin Airways Clubhouse in New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, terminal 4: Urinals shaped like a woman’s mouth, dolled up with red lipstick, wide open and ready for business.

In anything that we do there has to be a smile, and that’s the smile in this Clubhouse, said John Riordan, Vice President of Customer Services for Virgin Airways.

The urinals, called Kisses, were designed by Netherlands based company Bathroom Mania.

Kisses — the sexy urinal, makes a daily event a blushing experience! This is one target men will never miss!, said the Bathroom Mania team via e-mail from the Netherlands.

— Unwired Travel: Virgin Potty Talk [Yahoo! News]

(via feministe)

Yes, that is how very wealthy men get a smile in these post-feminist days: by pissing in women’s mouths.

I really wish that I could say this surprises me more than it actually does. It’s audaciously disgusting, yes, and it’s not every day you see something like this out in the open. But wealthy men on business trips are, after all, the chief patrons of many segments of the commodity trade in women’s bodies, from casual decisions to hold business meetings at Hooter’s or at strip clubs, to hotel pornography, to such wonderful institutions as sex tourism (read: child prostitution) in Thailand. There’s a whole seamy, creepy, half-hidden, and ultimately quite desparate and pathetic culture of overgrown fratboys in American business travel, and this just looks to me like a particularly gaudy piece of that sort of systematic sexualized woman-hatred.

(Pre-emptive clarification: I know that this is not true either of all men on business trips or of all frat boys. Some of my best friends were in frats/are in business management and don’t act like this, &c. I do think, nevertheless, that this sort of creepy culture is pretty clearly widespread in both of these worlds.)

The good news is that NOW and feminist bloggers got the word out on this, and Virgin has dropped the plans and issued an apology (the apology was astoundingly blithe and clueless, but we’ll set that to one side).

To return to where we started out: feminists are often accused of being uptight and having no sense of humor. I don’t know how people can read about WITCH zaps or read Dykes to Watch Out For and still believe this, but that’s a topic for another day. For right now, the main question on my mind is this: really, what sort of a person do you have to be to find pissing in a dolled-up woman’s mouth really, really funny? And why in the world would anyone want to be that sort of a person?

Further reading:

• Analysis from feministe, Echidne of the Snakes, Ms. Magazine, and Bitch

• GT 11/25/2001: What the fucking hell was he thinking? (on other things that just aren’t funny)

With today’s narrow aversion of further defeat for the cause of gay marriage in Michigan, some conservative Christians are alarmed about the prospects for traditional marriage:

State Rep. Jerry Kooiman, R-Grand Rapids, said he was disappointed by the vote.

This was an opportunity for West Michigan to make clear our belief that marriage is between one man and one woman, he said.

. . .

The measure was supported by almost all GOP lawmakers, who said a state law limiting marriage to one man and one woman isn’t enough. … Today an aggressive assault is being waged, aided by activist judges who would attempt to redefine this institution that has stood the test of time for thousands of years, said Republican Rep. Jack Hoogendyk of Portage.

In troubled times like these, there’s nothing like solace from the Word of God:

¹ But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites: ² Of the nations concerning which the LORD said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love. ³ And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines… (1 Kings 11:1-3)

Now that’s some old time religion!

(Minor updates to fix typos)

David Brooks doesn’t want to be called a neo-conservative anymore. There was a great deal of hub-bub last month over his Op-Ed column in the New York Times, in which he opines that there is no coherent group of neo-conservatives, and that critics of the influence of neo-conservatism in the Bush administration are nothing more than full-mooner anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists:

In truth, the people labeled neocons (con is short for conservative and neo is short for Jewish) travel in widely different circles and don’t actually have much contact with one another. The ones outside government have almost no contact with President Bush. There have been hundreds of references, for example, to Richard Perle’s insidious power over administration policy, but I’ve been told by senior administration officials that he has had no significant meetings with Bush or Cheney since they assumed office. If he’s shaping their decisions, he must be microwaving his ideas into their fillings.

Now, this is a particularly silly bit of revisionism, well debunked by Michael Lind in his essay, A Tragedy of Errors (or, for that matter, by Irving Kristol, who explains at length what neoconservatism is, why he and others adopted the term for themselves in the 1970s in his Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea and more briefly in his recent essay for The Weekly Standard from August of last year, The Neoconservative Persuasion).

Nevertheless, it is possible for legitimate terms to become meaningless through uncritical overuse and misapplication, and there may be a case to be made that the uncritical uptake of the term by some anti-war activists to mean nothing more or less than pro-war Republican has at least made the use of the term a bit iffy. And in any case, it is kind of rude to call someone by a label that they would no longer like to be called by.

Therefore, in respect of David Brooks’ wishes, I will no longer use the word neo-conservative to describe him, or other conservatives advocating powerful, Executive-centric central government, traditionalist paternalism in domestic policy, economic command and control under the State-subsidized management of corporate leaders, belligerent military colonialism, a permanent wartime footing, and the revival of a sense of National Greatness. But then we need a new name to describe Brooks, Dick Cheney, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Kristol, et al. I suggest: creepy spendthrift fascists.

What do you think, Dave?