Interesting article.

Listening to WQDR (and WQFS from Guilford College) when I was in high school is what taught me that there was more to pop music than theTop 40.

Contrary to popular belief, real AOR stations were nothing like the miserable “classic rock” format that they morphed into. Although they did play some hippie rock that was already past its “sell by” date, there was at least some variety to their interpretation of it–not just the same 17 Lynyrd Skynyrd and Led Zeppelin songs over and over again.

And they also looked to the present and future by playing artists like Elvis Costello, the Clash, and even Earth, Wind and Fire (which just didn’t happen on rock stations in 1979 when all music by African American acts was assumed to be “disco”). They gave their listeners credit for much more sophistication than commercial radio stations do now.

It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was better than most commercial radio before or since.

So that article about which I was so stressed went through peer review and was accepted with minimal revisions in four days. That’s a pretty enviable turnaround time for an academic journal, some of which take many months for a decision (a good example being the other article of mine that got accepted this summer). Even better, this one was accepted in time for me to add it to the tenure package, giving me two extra publications to include.

And I’m already done with the revisions.

Pretty good way to start a long weekend, methinks.

Thirty years ago, I was working part time as a DJ in a gay bar. I enjoyed it because I was very into music and I was especially happy about getting to play something other than the miserable disco schlock that is mandatory in 99.25% of all American gay bars.

One night, several heterosexual friends came by to hear me. Two of these friends were a couple (of the male-female variety, obviously). At some point during the evening, they kissed. And that finally pushed my boss over the edge. He was already offended by their very presence in the place and when they had the audacity to engage in a very tame public display of affection, he came up to the booth to tell me he thought they should leave.

I was appalled that a fairly sophisticated gay man would not ultimately realize the irony and hypocrisy involved in his actions. Ethically, I felt that I could no longer work for him.

So I quit.

That very night.

You see, that’s what you do when you face such moral outrage that you can no longer justify doing your job.

And that’s what Kim Davis needs to learn. She needs to do the job she swore an oath that she would do. Or she needs to quit. Right now.

For her to continue accepting her salary amounts to theft and misappropriation of public funds. For her to continue refusing to do her job amounts to criminal misconduct. Her beliefs don’t matter one infinitesimal damn. She’s free to believe whatever she likes. She is not, however, free to continue collecting her salary while not doing her job.

A lot has been written today about the hypocrisy of “sanctity of marriage” claims being made by a woman who has been married four times and divorced three, and who seems never to have cared very much whether or not her children were fathered by her husband at the time. It’s a fair criticism, but one that her supporters feel is a moot point since her sins happened before she was “washed in the blood” (or in the Holy Windex). Too many conservative Christians use the “not perfect, just forgiven” excuse as a way of refusing to take responsibility for any of their own actions, which is particularly ironic in that so many of these same conservatives very much stress the concept of personal responsibility in others.

But even being the biggest hypocrite on the face of the earth would not disqualify Kim Davis from keeping her job–although her double (triple? quadruple?) standard does make her a pretty wretched human being.

What disqualifies Kim Davis from keeping her job is the fact that she refuses to do it.

I finally submitted that article, approximately seven hours before it was due.

• It’s either going to be really good or really awful. I basically wrote the whole thing over the course of about a week and a half, due to all the drama in my universe this summer, and I didn’t even have a chance to let someone else read over it. Pressing “submit” felt kind of like having unprotected sex with a complete stranger.
• When your article is to some extent a case study about things you did at your own institution, which is named in the text, the concept of a blind peer review starts to sound a little bit ludicrous
• There are no journal content management systems that are not incredibly irritating for authors. None. Not one. That includes the one we use for the two open access journals where I’m the managing editor.
• Unless this article gets approved in the next two weeks, it will have no effect whatsoever on my tenure decision. I knew that going in. I still wrote it. Go figure.

I’m going to go have leftovers from last night’s delicious meal with no name now.