Blogcritics Author: piaSavage

Interview with Jancee Dunn

piaSavage — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 08:54:19 EDT

How a small town girl went from the shag carpet to the red carpet with Rolling Stone magazine.
I couldn't resist a memoir entitled: But Enough About Me: How A Small-Town Girl Went From The Shag Carpet To The Red Carpet. The title grabbed me; the book entranced me. Jancee Dunn (read the book and find out why her parents gave her that name) was a small town girl from the suburbs of New Jersey when she met somebody, handed her a copy of ...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

My Summer of Love

piaSavage — Sun, 8 Jul 2007 10:42:51 EDT

It was the summer of love, 1967. She was sixteen quickly turning seventeen, and in Mexico for the second summer. The summer before she spent two months in Oaxaca with thirteen other girls, learning the culture and much more.On her birthday a group of boys had a Mariachi band serenade her. It was her most perfect birthday.This summer she was traveling on a teen tour. She doesn't remember what she did on her birthday. It was the summer, that summer of love, she was introduced to drugs. Walk into any farmacia: "Tiene usted Dexedrine?" "Si, Senorita, para usted..."The "tu" form was never used in these transactions. They were formal, respectful transactions that almost made using amphetamines seem respectful and the responsible thing to do. She wrote brilliant letters home.She quickly became addicted. She would never have known about buying Dexedrine, or Dexamil, or Ritalin to come down with had it not been for other girls on the tour.One girl handed her a joint. She really didn't want to smoke it, and thought that you get high from second-hand smoke. The girls laughed at her and taught her.She was scared of the drugs at first. She knew that a rat was the lowest form of humanity, but she went to the tour leaders thinking that they were older and wiser.That's when she found out the tour leaders were paying for her roommate's trip. That's when she found out they planned to smuggle a key (kilo) of pot from an island near Isla de Mujeres, their last stop.She had a hippie look. The tour directors thought that she would get with the program. Really, she wanted her mommy.The tour leaders realized that she wouldn't help with the smuggling, basically because she was scared. She doesn't remember why they even told her so much.They did tell her what happens to rats. They left a very vivid picture in her head.She got over the addiction while still in Mexico. The feelings were too intense. It was scary to feel so capable of anything. It was even scarier to come down. Each time was progressively harder. Afterwards she couldn't believe that she let this happen. She needed to feel in control, and coming down from ups was like watching your mind whirl into unknown worlds.It probably wasn't a true addiction. The whole thing began and ended in two weeks. She had to keep her mind clear because she couldn't trust the tour leaders or the girls on the tour. She did know how the smuggling happened and who had what part. She knows this story sounds so unbelievable she wouldn't try to put it in any book, fiction or not. She has never tried to tell that story to any lover or friend because it has always felt like a not quite good but very watchable movie she saw.She became a great hippie. She lived on Long Island and the East Village was just a train ride and a few subway stops away. While her mother would call girls' mothers to see if it was alright for her to stay over, she had a friend with a mother who would lie for her.But that happened after the Summer of Love. She almost wished she could tell her mother not to listen to her friend's mother. She wished she could tell her parents about the summer, but they paid so much money and loved her so much.Later her mother would say to her:"You can tell me anything, can't you?""Sure, Ma, I can tell you anything."She could by then but she was an adult living a "respectable" life. It was easier just to agree with her mother, and not go into detail about the past. Past was past.She felt tremendous guilt over that summer. Though when she thought about it rationally, the tour leaders weren't quite rational, or living up to reputation and promise. They saw a way to make easy money and took it. They thought they were doing the girls a favor by getting them drugs and cutting them in on their deal. Or did they know they were using young girls?She was never sure about that. She was never sure about anything after that. In many ways she wanted to be the daughter her parents wanted. She just didn't know how to be anything but a good hippie chick. There had been no handbook for parents of hippie teenagers in the late '60s. Her parents had grown up during the Depression. They barely drank, never smoked, and managed to have a good time anyway. Her father couldn't take her love of rock music, and rock musicians. How could she confide in people who didn't love rock?

I am writing a memoir that begins in the Fall of 1967 and ends several years later. I was looking for sex in all the right places. Then I graduated high school, went to college and met my Prince Charming. I never wondered again what happened after the marriage. It's a lot more complicated than that. Some people say that I invented and defined the word "hippie" in my Long Island town. If I could have done anything as well, I would have, but I made such a great hippie. Then I grew up.

The Fall of Judith Regan

piaSavage — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 08:24:47 EST

In the past week I have read more than I cared to about O.J. Simpson, Rupert Murdoch and even Bill O'Reilly. I don't think people who know me would believe that I'd ever think Murdoch made the right decision - I did cry the day he first took over The New York Post in the late '70s. Now I'm not sure that he made the right decision for the right reasons. But this whole thing isn't about him or O.J.It's about Judith Regan. Last week when she made her statement about the reasons why Simpson's book and TV show are cathartic to abused women I wanted to go ten rounds with her.Judith Regan is arguably the most powerful woman in publishing. She's good at spotting what's hot, even if it tasteless. She even plays a part in the lives of bloggers who want book deals. Last summer she published a big deal book by a blogger, Stephanie Klein. She couldn't sell an interview with O.J. to Barbara Walters or anybody else she approached so she did the interview herself. Why not? She's broken every other rule, and probably invented "shameless self promotion."Regan had the nerve to say that it would be cathartic for abused women. In her four page statement she talked about being abused, and how O.J.'s hypothetical confession would help her and her son. That has to be the biggest bull I have ever heard. Don't play the violin strings but I was abused and then stalked for over a year by a man I had once thought I loved. I was good at confusing lust for love.I appeared to be recovered but I was filled with hate until 1999 when I found out that he had died ten years earlier. Then I went into full guilt mode and called my ex-husband who had played a part in introducing us."I'm the bitch who killed Zachary."I lost trust when I was stalked by Zachary. Trust in men, trust in the police (though having once been a hippie I never really had any), trust that life was fair or was going to be this incredible adventure I had thought it to be until I was 30.I did what women have done since the beginning of time. I went on with my life, with more hesitancy. I searched for answers.My search for answers would never entail listening to O.J.'s confession. He's a sociopath who once was revered. He was charming, and now is desperate for money. How could O.J.'s words possibly help me?They can't. It would serve to make me crazed, and to hate all people who believe that they are helping humanity by acting as arm chair therapists. I was lucky. I had strong familial support, always from my Mom. From my Dad too, once he realized that it wasn't me being the bitch again. I had many friends, and our bond was too strong for anybody to cut me off from them.I am a strong person with many resources yet something in me was damaged. Zachary used to call me every seven minutes. My solution? Get him a job at my company. We were together 24/7. Fortunately he didn't go to work often, and was allowed to get away with that because he was my boyfriend.Getting him a job wasn't rational, but the thing about abuse is that it's never rational. When I went to the police, I was told that I lacked witnesses, and that things like that didn't happen to Nice White Girls who lived in my zip code, 10021, then the city's richest.My parents' answer to everything was research or long walks, and my Mom began learning about "obsession." It was the first time we had heard about it in this context. Then, horribly, Dominick Dunne's daughter Dominique, an actress, was killed by her boyfriend, a chef at a very luxe restaurant. I have long felt in Dunne's debt for bringing much attention to the problem of "nice white girls being abused by nice young men."I was a bitch at times, and do take responsibility for egging him the one time it turned physical. That was fairly early in the relationship and I put it down to nerves and my bitchiness as we were getting ready to host a New Years Eve Party. I didn't think he was doing enough of the work. He had left our company and I was supporting us.Later, when I had found him an apartment to sublet and paid the first and last months rent, I let him into my apartment without thinking as I was in school and studying. He broke a window and overturned a table filled with plants I had been growing for years. I knew virtually nothing about abuse but I did know that if a man was capable of doing that to my things, he was more than capable of hurting me.My inner strength came out, and I needed it as he spent much of the next year stalking me. When I finished my paralegal course, I had the distinction of being the only person rejected from thirteen companies. I would go to interviews exhausted from being up all night as he stood outside my apartment and rang my bell constantly . If I called the police, he would hear the sirens and disappear into the night, as he did look normal. I stopped calling the police in case anything really horrible happened. I didn't want to be known as the girl who cried wolf.Fortunately, and there always is a fortunately attached to my name, people from my old company were starting a new one. They needed me as I had the certification and certain skills others were lacking. They waited as I hid out in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn (the last place anybody would think to look for me) and in Miami where my best college friend lived and Zachary couldn't afford to go to.I am not Hedda Nussbaum and have often wondered why I had the strength that I did, and why some women would allow themselves to be pulled in so deeply. Though domestic violence later became part of my professional expertise, I still don't know the answer. Oh, I know all the signs, I know all the standard answers, but there has to be something more. Then again, on the surface I was a very strong woman, but I allowed myself to get into a very sick relationship.One thing that I have thought about this past week is how many women become prison groupies. Even pedophile murderers can have "fan clubs." Therefore it is not just possible but very probable that many women would hang onto every word O.J. and Regan uttered. I believe that Regan was banking on that.Nobody has addressed that. Maybe most pundits think that it's too simplistic, that no woman would be swayed by O.J.'s words. Give me a break. Plenty of women would listen to O.J. and be affected. Though it's beyond me how a hypothetical murder confession could possibly soothe women's souls, we live in the world O.J., Regan, Murdoch and Fox helped create. We're a simplistic, celebrity worshiping, line-up-for-the-money country. I don't care why Murdoch canceled the show and the book. This isn't a First Amendment issue as has been suggested. Regan's free to find another publishing house, to self-publish, or to make the interview into a paid Internet event.Consolidation of the media? Oh god. The media's been consolidating forever. Like it or not this is a capitalist country. The people with the most gall usually win. Fox, the TV station, has been bombing. It picked even more stupid programs than the other stations and that's difficult.Murdoch and Fox let Regan act unchecked because she is a powerful woman who has made them a lot of money. When they found out what she was doing they should have pulled the plug, but greed won until there was a public outcry.I can't pretend to know if Regan really was abused or not. Her story is a bit too textbook for me, but that does happen. If she was abused I find it ironic that she was able to go on to such power, as abuse really is a crime of power.I know many women who have been abused. Usually, no matter how polished we are on the outside, there is a bit of hesitancy to some of our actions. People do notice. We who are overly articulate, tend to talk about our abuse, not often and not to everybody but enough. Talking brings back a measure of control, as does success. Regan's career success might have brought her a lot of control. She might have even believed that she controlled the interview with O.J. Her statement showed that she obviously didn't. I am being contradictory and hypothetical, because I only have hypotheticals to work with, and abuse is contradictory. As with grief there are known stages but the stages don't always come in order. Unlike grief there are more variables at play. Variables we simply don't know or understand yet.I just find it impossible to believe that a very bright woman would believe this to be a cathartic experience for anybody but the most vulnerable. While people are screaming about how sick she is and has been, as long as she didn't dance nude in the fountain outside the old Plaza Hotel, nobody cared. They probably would have excused that also as she made so much money. Had she just talked about the cathartic experience I believe that many people would have let it stand. I think the thought of OJ repenting for himself and for all abusers was what got most people. I don't understand the concept of "repentance," but believe that a person has to make up for doing something bad by doing good. A "hypothetical" confession isn't a true confession, but really what is any confession? A confession doesn't cut the doing good list. What does it prove? It doesn't show that the person has changed, or feels horrible about his actions. I found myself, too often this week, examining my own psyche. Why do I forget all the great men I was involved in with after Zachary and focus on him? Why do I divide my life into before and after?Why didn't I "live up to my potential,?" Yet spent so much time searching for answers instead? Even going to grad school to become a Licensed Social Worker was a direct result of my need to understand who and why I am the person I am.I was a political and issue blogger. True confession. I didn't enjoy it but did it because many people thought that I was good at it. I was eager to please as are most abused women. I finally reached a place where I only wanted to please me and to go on with my own goals. Abuse is one of the most heinous of crimes because abusers tend to be charming sociopaths who know how to go deep into their victims' souls and bring out everything the person feels is lacking in them. Sometimes they do this even when you think that they are helping you get the self-esteem that you previously lacked. I do identify with Hedda Nussbaum in that respect.O.J. Simpson was news eleven years ago. Nothing about him, barring a full confession to the police and the Brown and Goldman families, and a plea that double jeopardy be somehow waived would be newsworthy today.Murdoch and Fox played a part in this, but they are capitalists in a capitalist society. If somebody is going to hand them a hypothetical confession by O.J. Simpson, of course they are going to take it until there is outrage from the public. The book was still number 50 in pre-orders by Amazon, when they cut it and the interview. I know authors who consider their books to be successful if they crack the top five hundred. Murdoch did the only conscioable thing if for the wrong reasons.I don't wish a psychotic break on Regan. I do hope that her fall is a permanent one as I can't help but remember some of the more outrageous things that she has done including calling her then-lover (Bernard Kerik, then police commissioner, now convicted felon) when she thought that the employees of a media company had stolen her jewelry. In 2001, she accused members of the production team of stealing her cell phone and jewelry, and somehow strong-armed Kerik—or, if Kerik's version is correct, someone who worked for Kerik—into sending detectives to the houses of five of the crew and rousting them out of bed in the middle of the night to question them. That was the action of a woman who thought she was above the law or was the law by association. At the moment people should have questioned her power. Nobody did because she's a rainmaker.A part of me thinks that Regan will be hospitalized for a week or several months, be pronounced cured of her many disorders, and make her grand re-entrance into the publishing world, with Murdoch's arms around her. I am that cynical. The question is simple. Why do we let so many people get away with so much as long as they make money? When our society can answer that question, we might have a better one to ask.

What Hurricane Katrina Taught Me about 9/11

piaSavage — Sat, 3 Sep 2005 02:41:06 EDT

When people would talk about how much 9/11 affected them and/or changed them, I would smile and say something like "that's nice." As I was thinking, "it's not America's tragedy, you were 3,000 miles away. How could it have affected you?"I live on the Upper West Side, almost five miles due west from The Trade Center. My friends who live(d) downtown told me that I didn't suffer enough as I wasn't physically near the scene. I believed them.Smoke did come into my apartment; I was and still am inconvenienced by some of the after affects. It changed my life as it changed so many other lives. My mom died suddenly a month later. I became bitter, angry and a bit jealous of the families of the victims. Not only did they not have to pay estate taxes, they made money. It was irrational but so is grief. Because of anthrax scares, I would get late notices before the bills. My personal mourning meant nothing to most people.How can you mourn an old lady at a time like this?Gee, I don't know. Something to do with her raising me, being the last person to love me unconditionally, and my truest friend?I'm a third generation New Yorker; my parents were both born in Manhattan. Though they lived in Nassau County most of their adult lives, my dad always tried to vote for mayor. He also waited for the super, but that's another story. My dad thought that people who moved from New York were all crazy, unless it was London .My move to East 63rd Street just off Fifth Avenue when I was 25 was one of the happiest days of his life. I had left New York twice but came running back both times. I knew Manhattan was my fate; just thought that it would be The Upper West Side where everybody was my age.I grew to love being the prisoner of Fifth Avenue as I could easily walk to any neighborhood in Manhattan. On Sundays I usually walked down to The Trade Center and would decide where to go from there. One bright May Sunday, I detoured off my route to the club in The Village where everybody did know my name, and the soon-to-be-new-owner, my college friend, Lenny, and Lucinda Williams, when she was just Lucinda, introduced me to my boyfriend Zachary who had moved to New York two years earlier from New Orleans to become a folk/rock star.As I write about Zachary often, and never seem to be able to get away from the beginning, I have spent much time thinking about that walk. The year before I had worked across from St Paul's Church; met most of my adult friends there. Downtown, The Trade Center and St Paul's played many roles in my life at times. I remember when South Street was a pier people would sun bath on. During the week it was filled with workers, but on weekends it was deserted. I have never been a sun bather; love to walk on the beach, but I would sit at the edge with my legs in the polluted water. It was a Manhattan oasis. We don't have many of them anymore.I don't love New York as passionately as I did before. It had been losing its lustre for years before 9/11. My mom was old, and had macular degeneration to the utmost degree. By 1996, when I finished grad school, 20 years after I got my undergrad degree, I knew I had to to stay here. In 1997, I found the almost perfect co-op on The Upper West Side which is still way different than The Upper East Side, but has been gentrified. Most of the city is usually crowded. I spent $95 the other night to see a play that most people loved; I thought that it was trite and not a tenth as good as the book. I liked the film Hairspray a lot more than the play.I live the proverbial ten blocks from Lincoln Center and don't even watch performances on TV; I do appreciate all the free summer events, but have I made it to more than one event this summer? Of course not.My mother died; I'm free to leave. But do I? I talk about it often. New York's in my blood. I did think of moving to New Orleans about ten years ago. My mom said: "But you don't know the crime there." I looked at her rather strangely; she couldn't see my expression: "And?" "You know the crime in New York; you know how to walk so that nobody bothers you."I thought about it; she was right. But now I know Santa Monica and Venice Beach, CA. I could move; I will move. Hopefully I can be bi-coastal. But I have a few things to finish first. Maybe I will always have a few things to finish first. I'm comfortable here. I wondered how I could be in another city on 9/11. How could people understand?I found out this week that they can. I finally understand that you don't have to live in a city to love it or feel its misery (Gawd does that sound like bad '80's psycho babble.)I finally understand that everybody can truly feel the pain. As 9/11 was America's tragedy so is Hurricane Katrina. It's so much worse that it's beyond my comprehension.I am so sorry that it took a tragedy of this magnitude to make me understand this. ed: JH Of course, next month I'll probably think New York is the center of the earth again.

A year of blogging: from The First Amendment to Intelligent Design

piaSavage — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 12:10:33 EDT

Written by Pia SavageBlogging has been great for me. It's allowed me to meet people from parts of the country I didn't know well enough before, and realize that people throughout this incredible country are caring, compassionate, and intelligent with beliefs that are very similar but they don't exactly mirror them.That's the problem. We, who are called liberal, don't think exactly alike. Earlier this summer I wrote about subway searches. I was scared, angry, tired of answering comments from people who do usually think alike, and can't understand how people on Bring it on! can think differently from one another.I won't explain how The First Amendment really means that America is a Christian country; because as many times as it's been explained to me I still don't understand how this: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. -- The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution can possibly mean that as a non-Christian I have been living in a legally Christian country all these years. Yes the majority of the population is Christian. The variety of religious beliefs in the United States surpasses the nation's multitude of ethnicities, nationalities, and races, making religion another source of diversity rather than a unifying force. This is true even though the vast majority of Americans--83 percent--identify themselves as Christian. One-third of these self-identified Christians are unaffiliated with any church. Moreover, practicing Christians belong to a wide variety of churches that differ on theology, organization, programs, and policies. The largest number of Christians in the United States belong to one of the many Protestant denominations--groups that vary widely in their beliefs and practices. Roman Catholics constitute the next largest group of American Christians, followed by the Eastern Orthodox.That in no way means that Thomas Jefferson and the other founding fathers meant for this to be a Christian nation.The roots of the First Amendment can be traced to a bill written by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) in 1777 and proposed to the Virginia Legislature in 1779. It guaranteed freedom of (and from) religion. After an impassioned speech by James Madison, and after some amendments, it became law on 1786-JAN-16. Why when we at Bring it on! have been saying this since we began am I bringing this up now? Because many radical Christian Rightists still don't get it. It's simple; it's the Amendment that guarantees the most basic of rights, the right to practice or not practice a religion, and never have to worry that a state religion will be formed, and also and equal, guarantees freedom of speech.Because so many people feel validated and vindicated by the people occupying The White House, Intelligent Design, and The Discovery Institute have been getting much play recently. Here are a few quotes by William Safire who isn't exactly known as a liberal, but yikes, he's Jewish, so the Radical Christian right always knew that they couldn't trust him, really.Then along came the phrase intelligent design, and evolution had fresh linguistic competition. Though the phrase can be found in an 1847 issue of Scientific American, it was probably coined in its present sense in "Humanism," a 1903 book by Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller: "It will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of evolution may be guided by an intelligent design."At about that time, the traditional creationists took up the phrase. "We are a Christian organization and use the term to refer to the Christian God," says John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research in Santee, California. "The modern intelligent design movement looks at Dr. Phillip Johnson as its founder. ... His book, 'Darwin on Trial,' kind of started it all in the early '90s. We were using intelligent design as an intuitive term: a watch implies a watchmaker."The marketing genius within the phrase - and the reason it now drives many scientists and educators up the wall - is in its use of the adjective intelligent, which intrinsically refutes the longstanding accusation of anti-intellectualism. Although the intelligent agent referred to is Divine with a capital D, the word's meaning also rubs off on the proponent or believer. That's why intelligent design appeals to not only the DNA-driven Discovery Institute complexity theorists but also the traditional God's-handiwork faithful.To counter the "sophisticated branding experts" who flummoxed establishmentarian evolutionaries with intelligent design, opponents of classroom debate over Darwin's theory have come up with a catchily derisive neologism that lumps the modern advocates of intelligent design with religious fundamentalists: neo-creo. The rhyming label was coined on Aug. 17, 1999, by Philip Kitcher, professor of the philosophy of science at Columbia University, New York, in a lively and lengthy online debate in Slate magazine with the abovementioned Phillip Johnson, professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley.Intelligent design advocates like to point to Albert Einstein, who repeatedly rejected a statistical conception of physics with his famous aphorism, "I cannot believe that God plays dice with the world." However, his recent biographer, Dennis Overbye, a science reporter for The New York Times, says: "Einstein believed there was order in the universe but that it had not been designed for us." Overbye also notes that Einstein wrote the evenhanded "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind."Can't really trust Dennis Overbye, he's a reporter for The New York Times. Like many New Yorkers, I have spent my life in a love/hate relationship with The Times, but I'm very proud it's my hometown newspaper now. Anybody who wishes to point out that Einstein's brain was smaller than average, and that he couldn't learn to tie his shoes until he was six etc., will be ignored. Here's something about The Discovery Institute.After toiling in obscurity for nearly a decade, the institute's Center for Science and Culture has emerged in recent months as the ideological and strategic backbone behind the eruption of skirmishes over science in school districts and state capitals across the country. Pushing a "teach the controversy" approach to evolution, the institute has in many ways transformed the debate into an issue of academic freedom rather than a confrontation between biology and religion. Mainstream scientists reject the notion that any controversy over evolution even exists. But Mr. Bush embraced the institute's talking points by suggesting that alternative theories and criticism should be included in biology curriculums "so people can understand what the debate is about."Financed by some of the same Christian conservatives who helped Mr. Bush win the White House, the organization's intellectual core is a scattered group of scholars who for nearly a decade have explored the unorthodox explanation of life's origins known as intelligent design In any other political climate, these people would be known as crack pots who are pushing a pseudo-scientific answer to the theory of evolution. But in today's climate they are scientists posing an important alternative to a theory that has been postulated over and over again. Oh right, Intelligent Design can't be tested through regular tests; a designer acted. How can you test faith? Sorry,then it's not science, and can't be taught in public schools. Here's something by Carl Zimmer that refutes Intelligent DesignIt describes how the Institute has spent $3.6 million dollars to support fellowships that include scientific research in areas such as "laboratory or field research in biology, paleontology or biophysics."So what has that investment yielded, scientifically speaking? I'm not talking about the number of appearances on cable TV news or on the op-ed page, but about scientific achievement. I'm talking about how many papers have appeared in peer-reviewed biology journals, their quality, and their usefulness to other scientists. Peer review isn't perfect--some bad papers get through, and some good papers may get rejected--but every major idea in modern biology has met the challenge.It's pretty easy to get a sense of this by perusing two of the biggest publically available databases, PubMed (from the National Library of Medicine) and Science Direct (from the publishing giant Reed Elsevier)....Look for the topics that have won people Nobel Prizes--the structure of DNA, the genes that govern animal development, and the like--and you quickly come up with hundreds or thousands of papers.A search for "Intelligent Design" on PubMed yields 22 results--none of which were published by anyone from the Discovery Insittute. There are a few articles about the political controversy about teaching it in public schools, and some papers about constructing databases of proteins in a smart way. But nothing that actually uses intelligent design to reveal something new about nature. ScienceDirect offers the same picture. (I'm not clever enough with html to link to my search result lists, but try them yourself if you wish.)Here's another search: "Discovery Institute" and "Seattle" (where the institute is located). One result comes up: a paper by Jonathan Wells proposing that animal cells have turbine-like structures inside them. It describes no experiments, only a hypothesis.Zimmer's talking about peer review and the importance of papers agreeing with or refuting a hypothesis. Anybody who does any kind of meaningful research in any field will tell you that the first step is a lit review to see what is or isn't there. Don't tell me that Intelligent Design is too new to have been studied; it's been discussed enough these last several months, and has been studied for a longer time period. I have linked to an article from The Natural History Magazine that talks about it in 2002. They take it a little less seriously then New Yorkers take subway searches. They're an inconvenience that can't work. .Subway searches can't work though I would have loved for them to be an easy answer. Like any good Liberal I have flip-flopped on that one. I will discuss why they can't work in depth next time. But I will leave you with one last thing that I have learned this year; the ACLU is a Commie organization out to poison your water and kill your children. No, I added the part after "Commie organization."Of everything that has happened in the past year, and of all the things that I have learned the movement to stop the ACLU scares me almost as much as or the same as the movement to re-create The First Amendment.The 2006 elections will be here before we can blink our eyes; and then there will be 2008. Moderates will take back this country because more and more people are waking up to the reality that the Radical Christian Right has gained power way beyond its membership. When William Safire and I agree on an issue; it should be a wake-up call.We Jews don't all know each other; but we do tend to get a bit crazed when The First Amendment is under attack; and Intelligent Design is just another attack on it.Cross posted at Bring It On