the chutry experiment

I like the new pallette. It's easier to read, and less pensive seeming.

Thanks, weez. I had been told that readability was a problem, and I'm glad it's easier to read now. I may go with a slightly darker font for the entire blog and make the links a little darker, too.

Why do you read it as "less pensive," or why did the other seem "more pensive"?

I think it will take a while for the new look to settle in with me. Of course, it is an experiment!

Of the political situation, focus on what’s coming up: Georgia Legislative session, Social Security and numerous Bush gaffes. Forget about the election, unless you are drawing lessons from it for later use. Move on, Doc.

So, yeah, it is a rather drastic shift, but I'm still tweaking. The colors are more washed out than I would like, for sure.

In terms of politics, I'm not sure that I'm reflecting on the election itself as much as how popular culture is functioning in recent configurations of the political. Frank Rich's New York Times essay is the best recent example of what I'm talking about.

In the essay, he discusses the ways in which Christians have characterized themselves as "victims" of a small minority due to the way in which Christmas is being represented or discussed in public schools, on television, etc. It's not really about the election as much as about the intersections between the political, narrowly defined, and popular culture.

Did you say white background? It's showing up as charcoal on my computer (a Mac, running Firefox). Maybe I missed something?

Weird. I wonder if that's what Jonathan was talking about in his post. I don't have a Mac or Firefox (yes, I'm a bad cybercitizen), so I'll have to try to figure something out. What color is the font?

Update: Okay, apparently there is a bug that's causing my blog to show up differently in Firefox. I've been doing some digging, but these changes may take a while.

I have been hanging out at Hulaballo lately- I like itty bitty blogs better than big-uns, but usually have a favorite rotating between Hulaballo, Kos or Atrios and I read an entry about the Rich piece at Hulaballo.

I have trouble understanding the victim mentality among the high preacher Christians, seeing as how they hold enormous influence. A former friend of mine is among them. When we used to converse, he was always moaning to me about “persecution” until (towards the end of the friendship) I confronted him with the fact that his interest group was probably the most powerful in the country. He didn’t have an answer.

I know from experience that many of the fundamentalists I grew up with do have that fear of "persecution," and even someone like Falwell can turn a 10% minority (few of whom hold public office, although they might make a few movies) into persecutors.

I think my beef with the Rich piece is that he implies this claim of "victimization" is merely a part of a power grab on the part of fundamentalists, that it's not entirely sincere, but my suspicion is that it's perfectly sincere even when that "interest group" is one of the most powerful in the country (and even when someone like Falwell acknowledges that).