“Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama said. “You know, `he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name,’ you know, `he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.’”

That last bit is the contentious part. What does it mean to suggest that Obama “doesn’t look like all those other presidents…”?

Speaking for Obama and his campaign, spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters “What Barack Obama was talking about was that he didn’t get here after spending decades in Washington.” Gibbs continued, “There is nothing more to this than the fact that he was describing that he was new to the political scene. He was referring to the fact that he didn’t come into the race with the history of others. It is not about race.”

Could it be that Obama was simply referring to his own political career in contrast with George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, et al? It’s true that look does have a semantic range which can include ideas other than sight, but these possibilities seem unlikely given previous statements by Obama.

In Missouri on the previous night Obama said, “It’s a leap, electing a 46-year-old black guy named Barack Obama.” In this comment, the issue of his name surfaces, which is indicative of some ethnic emphasis, and a clear reference to race is present when Obama calls himself a “black guy.”

If look is afforded its primary denotation as a reference to sight in the later comments, a reference to both ethnicity (‘he’s got a funny name’) and race (‘he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills’) is present in both statements made with 24 hours of one another, both in Missouri.

So, if Obama wasn’t referring to race on Wednesday, he was doing so on Tuesday. None of this suggests that Obama is an unfit presidential candidate, of course. It only suggests that perhaps for the average citizen, race is an issue. At the least, it is so for Barack Obama.

My friend came upon a particularly interesting passage in 2 Samuel 2.16 which reads “Each caught his opponent by the head and drove his sword into his side; and thus they all fell together. Hence the place was called the Field of Sides; it is at Gibeon” (The New Jerusalem Bible). His question centered around the proper translation of the phrase חלקת הצדים chelkath hatsadim Field of Sides.

This is a difficult phrase to translate because the two terms that make it up have a wide range of meaning, and there is a possible textual corruption to be dealt with. The first word you gave, חלקת chelkath, refers to a place and comes from the noun, חלקה chelkah, referring to an alloted piece of land. The second word, הצרים hatsarim, is the definite, plural form of the word צר tsar which has a wide grammatical range from noun to adjective and a wider semantic range from restraint, anxiety, enemy, flint, and sharp edge. It is also used as a proper place name. The problem here is that הצרים hatsarim may be a textual corruption of הצדים hatsadim, the ד dalet (sounding like the letter “d” in dad) being misconstrued as a ר resh (sounding like the letter “r” in rocky) because, as you can see, the two letters are very similar. הצדים hatsdim is the definite, plural form of the word צד tsd referring to the side of something or someone.

Most translations suggest that the naming of the place is a result of the event that transpired there. They do so by rendering the ו vav (sounding like the letter “v” in violet), which is the most basic and common conjunction in Hebrew and prefixed here to the word, יקרא yikrah, meaning it is or was being called, in a resultative way as “hence” or “therefore.” They do this because it is highly common in the biblical text for the author to explain that a certain place received its name as a result of the events that transpired there (think of Jacob’s naming of Bethel). I believe that translators are correct in rendering the ו vav as a resultative “hence” or “therefore” because it follows the trend explaining that the name of a place results from a significant event. Bearing in mind that הצרים hatsarim can refer to a sharp edge and is, therefore, still relevant to the event that transpired because swords are involved int he event, I believe that it is a textual corruption which should read הצדים hatsadim because this word more directly refers to the uniqueness of the event, that the men all died by plunging their swords into one another’s sides. As a result, the rendering for חלקת הצדים chelkath hatsadim should be “the place (or field) of sides.”

In concluding his post, my friend writes:

But that’s what I believe……what do you believe?

Do you believe its time for us boys to become men and grow a spine! And that the girls need to step up and become ladies and give the men a kick in the rear when they need it!

Or do you believe that men should still hide behind their wives and be cowards?!? Or that men should continue being like dogs, just doing their business and leaving the women to fend for themselves and raise the kids by them selves and work and pay bills and be the spiritual leader……

Do you believe its time for men and women to become so in touch with God that they lead their children in the right way? That maybe its time for parents to care about being a parent?

Or do you believe that parents should just be friends with their kids and not care what they do?? Let them run around and have sex and drink and encourage that????

What do you believe?

Boys become Men and be the leader you were supposed to be
Girls become Ladies and be the leader you were supposed to be

To which I reply:

I believe that gender is a social construct and an unnecessary dichotomy.

A third writer responds later:

Brandon… please explain how gender is a social construct – and use small words, as I am old & tire easily of looking up AcademicSpeak. It’s so much easier if we just talk to each other like people.

The following is my post in response. I hope you will find it an enjoyable use of discourse analysis to expose the latent aspiration to prestige and power struggle in the dialog.

Philosophy makes a distinction between sex, which is a biological reality, and gender, which is a social construct. The difference is easily illustrated in this.

Sex- Most women are capable of conceiving and bearing children during their life span.
Gender- Women are to conceive and bear children.

Because it is biologically true that many women are incapable of conceiving and bearing children, we can conclusively say that the maxim “Women are to conceive and bear children” is an element owing to culturally specific gender prescriptives and not biology.

So, truly biological distinctions fall into the category “sex.” Meanwhile, the distinctions we make in behaviors and dispositions appropriate for a certain sex (i.e. men don’t cry, women don’t wear pants, etc.) fall into the category “gender.” Only the former is a biological reality, while the latter is often touted as biological though being wholly social.

This is where I turn to analyzing his previous post.

On an unrelated note, I wasn’t aware that I was using AcademicSpeak. In truth, I simply said the first thing that came to mind. I suppose that I did so because this medium mimics spoken discourse and, therefore, favors features more closely related to that mode (in this case brevity). The way I phrased my statement was concise.

As an exercise of AcademicSpeak, I will now do a linguistic analysis of your reply.

“Brandon…” – A general turn-taking maneuver and highly common in group situations. It is, however, an indication of relative power in conversational settings since the speaker can assign directed conversation to another communicant.

“please explain how gender is a social construct” – A direct imperative speech act indicating that the speaker either senses a minimal face threat, seeing no need to mitigate it with indirectness, or that the speaker is unaware of or apathetic to the face threat. It should be noted that this direct act is hedged with the discourse marker “please,” indicating some degree of face threat awareness.

“and use small words” – This is another direct imperative speech act. Demands are an indication of relational power conversationally. The speaker here begins to demonstrate an awareness of register variation in the form of a demand to adjust the register. The demand coupled with the aim of shifting registers indicates an overt power play conversationally.

“as I am old & tire easily of looking up AcademicSpeak.” – This clause is humorous because it employs two archaisms (the archaic resultative use of “as” and the archaic use of “tire” without it’s semi-modal “to get” or “to be”). The humor in this lies in the fact that the speaker appeals to a refrain from a register perceived to be prestigious while appealing to archaisms, a move that when perpetrated is an indication of an attempt at prestige. The speaker argues against prestige forms while using them!

“It’s so much easier if we just talk to each other like people.” – Here again the speaker makes a distinction between registers. This distinction implicitly creates a distinction between those speaking AcademicSpeak and those not. We’re no longer in the realm of categorizing and analyzing ideas because we’ve entered the realm of categorizing and analyzing people. It’s now “us” vs. “them.”

do you see my fire ladies
where are they going
they’re going to hold up the world
the world is falling down

Eliminating punctuation and capitalization is characteristic of my personal poetic style, but I think it’s appropriate here because I didn’t fully understand some of the relationships here. After some thought, I decided I didn’t want to know. I like the mystery.

The recent, cinematic version of Beowulf is based upon some of the modern rewrites of the primary text. This is made obvious by the fact that there were far too many obvious Freudian ideas. I lost count of how many times the sword was used as a phallic symbol, though this does occur in the primary text also. Two come to mind, actually. 1) When Beowulf is naked, there’s a dramatized shot of a sword in the foreground with him in the background. The sword, of course, is placed perfectly to cover his genitals. 2) When he brings the family sword to confront Grendel’s mother, she touches it with her hand and it melts. This is obviously a symbol of castration and the point at which he does indeed lose all power to her. Added to these is the castration anxiety already present in the text with the dismemberment of Grendel. There are also the oedipal issues, Rothgar as Grendel’s father and Beowulf as the dragon’s. In order to escape them, of course, Beowulf must perform a sort of self-castration in the end.

A twist on Freud occurs with the explicit power endued to Grendel’s mother. She is somewhat powerless in the primary text, but in the movie she is ultimately sovereign. Where we’re left with a feeling of resolve in the primary text with all beasts slain and the heroes of the old order now perished to give way to the Christ hero, in the movie, we’re left wondering whether Christianity has triumphed at all. Wiglaf may indeed choose to go the way of Rothgar and Beowulf, which seems to suggest that there is an order that supersedes and even undermines Christianity, which claims to be supernatural. Because Grendel’s mother, though she remains unnamed in the primary text and the movie, survives in the cinematic version, we don’t know what to think about the twist on Freud or the departure from the primary text in terms of the conflict between paganism and Christianity. In this sense, the movie is modern.

The archaism that the movie maintains, however, is the ushering of female characters into the flat, traditional Madonna/ Whore dichotomy as in the primary text of Beowulf. As a comparison, consider also Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with Guinevere and the Virgin Mary the Madonna figures and Lady Bertilak and Morgan Le Fay the respective Whore figures. The cinematic version of Beowulf clearly had the opportunity to rewrite Grendel’s mother, which they did but only in a superficial sense. Without significantly changing the plot points, they could have easily rewritten Grendel, his mother, and the dragon simply by shifting the perspective to the three who were marginalized due to their ‘otherness’. As an example of this, think of ‘Wicked’ and its radical shift in perspective.

So, as fodder for discussion, the new, cinematic version of Beowulf is interesting. It is not, however, something I would like to see again.

two spoons half-under a mess
of blankets and sheets on your bed
by the window
with the crappy view
no frame no footboard/headboard
just springs and cushions on the carpet
surrounded by half-worn smelling of you laundry
and books also smelling of you
your thumbs across the long side of their perimeter
272 pages of your touch

that hidden place where
what we could do is
swallowing up
what we should do

that sworn comforter
transcends right and wrong
becomes a place where
friends turn to lovers

a place where time slows
not stops not skips
just slows

between two worlds
the earth resigned to its exhaustion
BREATHES breathes

the moon’s to its station
to watch its children the stars
play on the lawn of the universe

a breeze slips in and out front stoops
and the leaves of shrubs and trees
to find a cheek or the lower nape of neck

while giggles
some gentle some giant
join the night chorus

with smiles and pensive eyes
meeting in opportune encounters at
a place where time slows

This poem has several qualities that I find endearing and noteworthy, but I’ll only note a few here.

The first and most noticeable aspect of this poem is its unwillingness to subject itself to any rules of completeness. Did you notice that the poem avoids the description of an event by remaining incomplete? The focus is placed wholly upon the context with the diminishment of the event.

The second, more endearing aspect of the poem lies in its idealization of a scene that would typically be perceived as less than ideal. A bed with “no frame” or “footboard/headboard,” a window with a “crappy view,” and worn clothes intermingled with unworn clothes strewn about the floor along with books would warrant a stern reminder of general cleanliness from mother; but these makeup the ideal environment for these two lovers. The observer or participant could ask for nothing more from these two or their scene. This is perfection.

Added to these is the unwillingness to describe the lovers. There is anonymity in the verse in this respect which lends to its ability to include any lovers anywhere. There are no rosy-red lips, blonde locks, bronze skin, etc. The lovers slip into the background in order to foreground the moment. The two become greater in their ability to lift the moment.

Finally, the poem is not in love with its own language. Unlike Dickens or Shakespeare (see Matthew Arnold’s criticism of Shakespeare as an example), the language is not a primary concern. This is near blasphemy according to most poets and critics; but this poem is infatuated with the impression it is trying to capture. In this sense, it is an aesthetic piece acting as a counter-text to the anti-aesthetic poetry.