Okay, it's the obvious question: What was your favorite ever Halloween costume that you wore?
Cough Up, Phelps
Fred Phelps and his banshees lose in court.
A grieving father won a nearly $11 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals in the belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality.It'll probably be knocked down on appeal, but it's good that someone stood up and fought back.
A member of Westboro Baptist Church protests outside a veteran's hospital in Maywood, Illinois, in April 2006.
Albert Snyder of York, Pennsylvania., sued the Westboro Baptist Church for unspecified damages after members demonstrated at the March 2006 funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq.
The jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned later in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and $2 million for causing emotional distress.
He Has Been Assimilated by The Borg
Now someone hold him down while I brand the donkey into his ass.
Last Day of Cocktober
by Blogenfreude
It's the last day of Cocktober and, well, it's raining men:
~ Conservative lawmaker who had sex with guy says "I have not had sex with a guy."
~ Sex sting nabs 20 (including a Catholic priest) at highway rest area.
~ Wonkette has a Larry Craig sex encounter exclusive.
and finally:
~ Is Larry Flynt about to amuse us with another Republican sex scandal?
Wow - what do you suppose Blowvember will bring?
UPDATE: Curtis resigned. What kind of Republican is he? He should have stayed, like Larry Craig and Bob Allen!
What A Drag
It's Hallowe'en, so it's time to pull out the costumes and dress up, right? The South Florida Sun-Sentinel gets in the mood by presenting their list of great celebrity drag roles.
What a great idea! And just to show that the GOP is in a partying mood, State Representative Richard Curtis of Washington is already joining in the fun.We’ve been told that drag is out this Halloween season. Bo-ring. If Halloween is the one night that women feel comfortable flaunting their slutty side, why shouldn’t men be able to flirt with their female side? It’s just dress-up!
To help inspire those daring guys who might enjoy putting on a bra just once in their life, or girls who want to experiment with machismo, we’ve put together a list of famous performances from Hollywood actors in drag. Some of these costumes could be re-created easily; others would take a team of five makeup artists a minimum of four hours to pull off.
But if Cate Blanchett and John Travolta can do it, why can’t you?
Even without the make-up, he does bear a startling resemblance to Mrs. Doubtfire, don't you think? But wait... it gets better. A search warrant unsealed Tuesday morning disclosed that State Representative Richard Curtis (R - La Center) had sex in his room at the Davenport Tower with a man identified as Cody Castagna, 26, of Medical Lake, who he met at the Hollywood Erotic Boutique on October 26th.True to Republican form, Mr. Curtis explains that he's "not gay" and that he was only giving Mr. Castagna money for gas, not to buy his silence. Oh, come on! What's Hallowe'en without a little trick or treat... emphasis on the "trick" part?
Curtis, according to a search warrant unsealed Tuesday, went to the Hollywood Erotic Boutique on East Sprague on October 26th at approximately 12:45 a.m. The store clerk, who had talked with Curtis, referred to him as "The Cross-Dresser" and said that during their conversations he confirmed he was gay and was married with children at home.
During his visit to the video store Curtis was observed wearing women's lingerie while receiving oral sex from an unidentified man in one of the movie viewing booths inside the store.
Update: As blogenfreude noted above, Mr. Curtis has resigned, presumably to spend more time with his family. Or his couturier.
Beware the Batsnake Seahorse!
So Long, Asshole!
Remember that judge who filed (and lost) a law suit against a dry cleaning business for $54 million over a pair of pants? Well, guess who's not going to be a judge anymore:
Roy L. Pearson Jr., the administrative law judge who lost his $54 million lawsuit against a Northeast Washington dry cleaner, lost his job yesterday and was ordered to vacate his office, sources said.Payback's a bitch, Roy.
Pearson, 57, who had served as a judge for two years, was up for a 10-year term at the Office of Administrative Hearings, but a judicial committee last week voted against reappointing him.
"Ugly Teeth" Contain 100x Allowable Level of Lead; Recalled
The government has announced an 11th hour recall of $2 Chinese-made "ugly teeth" after a chemistry professor at Ohio's Ashland University tipped off CBS News to the exorbitant lead levels. CBS broadcast the story Monday; the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which knew about the danger last week, announced the recall this morning.
[The commission's acting head Nancy Nord] said the possible danger was not brought to the agency's attention until late last week. She said the commission then worked quickly to assess the problem and issue an announcement.Fucking honestly! Typical Bush administration bullshit. Grumble grumble.
…Amscan Inc. of Elmsford, N.Y., imported the fake teeth.
…Millions of Chinese-made toys have been recalled in recent months. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., this week urged the commission's head, Nancy Nord, to resign. Pelosi said Nord has failed to see the gravity of the situation and continues to oppose legislation that would double her agency's dollars and give it more authority.
Nord said Wednesday she has no intention of resigning.
In any case, make sure your kids aren't sucking on those fake choppers, Shakers.
A Constant Truth
Tim Russert suxxx.
And as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow morning, and set tomorrow night, Timmeh will still be sucking.
Five Good Samaritans Rescue Woman from Assault
In what was the complete opposite of the story from August in which neighbors ignored a rape occurring in their apartment hallway, five good Samaritans intervened in an alleged rape, the victim of which was a 22-year-old woman on crutches from a leg injury. The five—three men and two woman, all about 20 years old—tackled the alleged rapist, called 911, and detained him until police arrived on the scene to arrest him.
Katie Porter, 20, was among the five young adults traveling in a car that passed the crime scene outside an apartment complex. Both [37-year-old Paul Landingham]'s and the woman's pants were pulled down, Porter said. While she initially thought the two might just be "drunk lovers," the group became suspicious and collectively decided to turn around for a closer look.Landingham faces charges of first-degree rape charge, assault, and strangulation—which suggests the group of five may have saved a life because they were willing to get involved. Said Katie Porter: "I'm really glad that we went back." I can't even imagine how glad the woman they saved is.
As they approached the apartment complex for a second time, Porter said, Landingham began to get up and the woman screamed for help. At this point, Porter said, all five passengers knew something was wrong.
"He got off the girl and started running," Porter said. "The three guys ran out and went over and tackled him."
This reminds me of the story of the bartender and waitress—two women in their 20s—who saved a female patron of the bar in which they worked from her date, who made repeated attempts to drug her drink, as well as the story of the three young college women who rescued an unconscious 17-year-old girl from a gang-rape at a party. I find it more encouraging than I can possibly convey when young people, especially young women, so fiercely and bravely intervene in these situations, simply refusing to abide this shit.
[Thanks to Shaker Christine for passing that along.]
Q: Could I Be Less Surprised By This?
A: No.
The former girlfriend of television pundit Bill Maher spits fire at her ex in next month's Vibe. [Karrine Steffans] says, "Bill wants someone he can put down in an argument, tell you how ghetto you are, how big your butt is, and that you're an idiot."Yeah. His issues are so obvious I can't believe anyone dates him. It's the dating equivalent of accepting a ride from a guy covered in blood who asks if you'll sit in the back seat because he likes his chainsaw to ride shotgun.
What part of "unidentified" don't you understand?
Kucinich got off a good line in last night's debate, when Tim Russert asked him about having seen a UFO: "It was an unidentified flying object, OK? It's, like, it's unidentified. I saw something."
He then noted he would be moving his campaign office to Roswell, and asserted that more Americans have probably seen UFOs than approve of Bush's presidency. Ha.
Personally, I've never seen a UFO, although one of my aunts (whom I've mentioned before) had, in addition to being haunted by her dead husband's ghost, experienced a slew of other bizarre and/or supernatural events, including a near-death experience ("I was floatin' on a little white cloud!") and having seen what she swore was an alien spacecraft while milking the cows—"And them cows didn't even bat an eye!"
She was absolutely mad; naturally, I adored her and would beg to hear these stories repeatedly.
Happy Hallowe'en
This year, litbrit Glinda the Good Witch of the North, along with two Wicked Witches, read spooky stories to Son Three's classmates at the annual Hallowe'en Carnival. Nothing too spooky, though, since the Witches were also Mamas, and we didn't want to have our little goblins and Spidermen and Transformers plagued by nightmares (storybook women need our sleep too, you know).
I couldn't read this wonderful poem by Edgar Allan Poe, for example, to a roomful of six-year-olds, but I thought I'd post it here in honor of the day.Carpe diem!
The Conquerer Worm
Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly--
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!
That motley drama--oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!--it writhes!--with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out--out are the lights--out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
-- Edgar Allan Poe
The definition of Hallowe'en madness:
wearing a faux-fur skirt in Florida.
Also at litbrit.
I'm Wearing Red Today
[Click on picture for more info.]
I'm wearing red today in solidarity with my sisters of color. I'm wearing red today because I believe it is better to speak—and because the sound of every voice makes a difference.
The Sound of My Voice
I was a quiet child.
My shyness was for no good reason, really, other than that I was strange. I felt quite out of place in childhood; rambunctiousness didn't suit me. The ability of most children to inhabit their bodies without inhibitions—flailing arms and legs, tumbling somersaults, endless spinning to a dizziness that left them stumbling until they collapsed to the floor in a giggling heap—was as foreign to me as I must have seemed to other children, with my knitted brow studying them curiously, or my nose buried in a book. I was ever acutely conscious of my own physical presence, intimidating myself with my own awkward gestures, until I folded myself inward and tried to stay very still. I couldn't relate, and so I retreated.
Nothing brought me outside the safe space in my head more quickly than the sound of my own voice in a public space. I spoke so rarely that, when I did, my classmates would stare at me, which made me miserable. I never raised my hand in class, and when I was called on, hot tears would burn my eyes, and I would desperately will them away as I choked through giving my answer. Painfully shy only begins to describe it. I was 13 when I laughed out loud in a classroom full of my peers for the first time.
At 14, the shyness went away, disappearing one day so completely it was as if it had never existed at all. Suddenly, the eyes out of which I looked at the world seemed to belong to me; I no longer felt like an interloper in my own skin. I happily contributed to conversations in and outside class, and I discovered I was an unafraid (and hence skillful) public speaker. Accused of being weird for the books I read or the music I liked felt like a badge of honor, even if it wasn’t intended to be so. There only needed to be one other person in a high school of 3,000 who carried a copy of Camus' The Stranger under his arm and knew down to his bones what I am the son and the heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar really means to make the world perfect, and I found him (or he found me), and so it was.
And then I was raped. I'd barely ever kissed a boy, no less had sex with one; of course, rape isn't about sex, but about control. It's about controlling another person, both during the act and often, particularly in the cases of acquaintance rape, afterwards. Victims of acquaintance rape, especially young ones, as I was, are easily controlled (and silenced) using fear, threats of imminent danger to themselves or loved ones, and, for the most unfortunate among us, repeated abuse. After three years of such a cycle, my shyness had returned. I spent many of my days at university crumbling inside myself and hating the sound of my own voice. Only with my Camus-carrying friend could I find any peace—and even that was dependent on his compassion, and his infinite patience with me.
The shyness has never quite gone away again.
But I'm not called quiet anymore. Aloof, maybe; bitchy, definitely, in those moments when the shyness takes me, because even though I can sound terse, I won't be quiet, or still, and eventually people realize I was just being awkward. Better to be awkward, I've decided, than quiet; it's important to have a strong voice, and a loud laugh, and to use them both as often as you can, even when it feels futile...
I've started to appreciate the sound of my voice again. It's a (former) smoker's voice, low, infused sometimes with gravel and always with sibilant S's—a speech impediment that will never leave me. My voice has become familiar in a way it has not been before, and useful, too. When I think about the time I have spent stranded in my self-imposed quiet, I am scared of my own will taking me there again. I remind myself, then, firmly and as often as is needed, that whether it is I, or someone else, who demands my silence, it is simply not something that I can afford to offer. And all it takes to break the silence is the sound of my voice, which now, finally, makes me happy.
[Originally posted June 23, 2005.]
Wednesday Blogwhoring
Quoth the raven: "Ever blogwhore."
Recommended Reading:
Josh Marshall: NGRs = Not Gay Republicans
Avedon Carol: Nowhere to Hide
Matt Yglesias: Everything Sucks, I Blame Mexicans
Steve Benen: McCain Still Desperate to Tell the Right What it Wants to Hear
Max Blumenthal: Theocracy Now!
Zuzu: When is female genital mutilation just peachy?
Lauredhel: Bionic Hymens
Carl: Deserting a Sinking Ship
Jenn Burleton: I Lost a Friend Yesterday
Dem Debate
So, there was another debate among the Democratic candidates last night, and, uh, it was, uh, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…
Oh, sorry about that. I fell asleep just thinking about it.
Chris Cillizza has a nice, succinct wrap-up here, which I recommend, and the transcript is here. If that's just not enough debatey goodness for you, though, you can also try:
— The New York Times' A Pitched Debate: Clinton Hears It From Her Rivals
— The Washington Post's Clinton's Foes Go on the Attack
— The Boston Globe's Democrats focus attacks on Clinton at debate
— The LA Times's Clinton stumbles a bit in Democratic debate
— The AP's Clinton gets no love in Democrats debate
— The Swamp's Clinton's rivals tag her as 'status quo' or 'throwback'
— The Politico's Obama, Edwards attack; Clinton bombs debate
I don't know about you, but I get the feeling that the other candidates went after Clinton last night.
Not making headlines? The fact that the debate included not a single question about illegal wiretapping and retroactive immunity for telecoms—which is causing a major split among Democrats at the moment, led by one of the people on the stage last night. Yeesh.
UPDATE: In an email, my pal Bob Geiger says: "Was I just having a drug flashback to the 70s last night or, while not bothering to bring up FISA and illegal wiretapping, did the debate moderators actually ask presidential candidates about UFOs and what they're going to be for Halloween?" LOL! Totally.
Not Buying What She's Selling
At year end, Karen Hughes will resign from her post as undersecretary of state, acknowledging the inescapable fact that she can't turn a turd pile into gold.
Hughes said she plans to quit her job as undersecretary of state and return to Texas, although improving the world's view of the United States is a "long-term challenge" that will outlast her. "This will take a number of years," Hughes said in an interview to announce her departure.I love Bush's original thinking that hiring Hughes and some good PR will just turn everyone around into loving us again. Too bad the results are a little different from what Mr. History-Will-Prove-Me-Right expected:
Polls show no improvement in the world's view of the U.S. since Hughes took over. A Pew Research Center survey earlier said the unpopular Iraq war is a persistent drag on the U.S. image and has helped push favorable opinion of the United States in Muslim Indonesia, for instance, from 75 percent in 2000 to 30 percent last year.Obviously, those numbers will creep back up once Bush's ass is out the door, and I'm sure Karen Hughes knew this all along. Of course, that would've meant her trying to sell democracy over here instead of there.
WSJ: Murder of two female sailors proves media's anti-war bias
Read this account of the murder of two women in the Navy by a male serviceman in Bahrain, and see if you can guess how the Wall Street Journal decides to play it:"Mother blasts wall of silence"
THE mother of a sailor shot dead at the US naval base in Bahrain yesterday blasted the wall of silence surrounding her daughter's death.
Jovie Paulino revealed her heartache at being forced to bury her child without a proper explanation of how she died.
Anamarie Sannicolas Camacho, 20, and her colleague Genesia Mattril Gresham, 19, were shot dead at the Naval Support Activity Base, Juffair, at around 5am on October 22.
Their alleged killer, fellow serviceman Clarence Jackson, 20, is still clinging to life after apparently shooting himself in the head immediately after the murders.
He is now at the National Naval Medical Centre in Bethesda, Maryland, US, after being transferred to the US from a specialist hospital in Germany.
There has been no change in his condition and he has not regained consciousness.
"I have asked questions, but the only response (from navy officials) is 'we do not know'," Ms Paulino told the GDN from her home in Tinian, in the Northern Marinas islands, US.
"How much longer will it be before that changes?"
Ms Paulino said her daughter's body is due to return home next week and as soon as she is laid to rest on November 5, she plans to pursue the navy more vigorously for answers.
She says her daughter had no part in any relationship between Ms Gresham and Mr Jackson and on the day of her death she was merely caught in the wrong place.
"She did not have anything to do with their relationship and she was just in the wrong place," she said.
"I was assured that she had no involvement, except that she was her (Genesia's) roommate."
Ms Paulino, who served in the US Air Force for six years, is also angry at the way the navy have handled the shooting.
"I had entrusted my daughter to the navy when she joined and this is what has happened, I just don't understand," she said. "I was in the military and right now I feel so angry and disappointed. She put her life on the line for our freedom and the only thing they should do (in return) is protect her."
Her comments echo that of Ms Gresham's mother Anita, who earlier blamed officials for leaving her daughter exposed to danger from a man she said turned nasty when she tried to cool their "casual" relationship.
Ms Gresham revealed Jackson had a restraining order against him and had been on suicide watch, after he allegedly attacked Miss Gresham less than four months ago.
She was also angry that Jackson was allowed to carry a gun after his alleged attack on her daughter and that officials were not telling her what happened in the run-up to the killings.
According to Wall Street Journal Columnist James Taranto, this incident shows that:
1) The mainstream media is corrupt and anti-war by calling this "war-related death."
2) Gays don't belong in the military, and women only to a certain degree.
3) Relationships during war time will get you killed.The San Francisco Chronicle published news of Camacho's and Gresham's deaths under the headline "U.S. Toll in Iraq," and the text said they had died "in Iraq."
This is false, as the Chronicle's own Web site confirms. The paper has a database with details of all the deaths "in Iraq," and both Camacho's and Gresham's entries show that they "died Oct. 22 in Bahrain during a non-combat related incident.The incident does illustrate an uncomfortable truth: that romantic entanglements can be harmful to military discipline. This is why servicemen can be prosecuted for adultery, and it is one reason that the military excludes open homosexuals and restricts the roles in which women may serve. This was a horrific and senseless crime. Imagine how disruptive it would have been in a combat unit.
Ordinary humans would look at this as another example of unchecked violence against women in the U.S. military, the U.S. military's inability to protect its own troops from those who attacked them in the past, and the overall hell that is war.
Not the Wall Street Journal. And not Glenn Reynolds. Two women are murdered by someone they should have been protected from, and the military hides the details, and it shows that the U.S. media is anti-war. And that gays shouldn't be allowed to serve.
This is political discourse amongst the extremist right of the U.S. And it just gets consistently more horrific and inhumane.
--WKW
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
This was the "New World Zorro" series from the 1990s.
Looks like it was pretty splendid, lol!
Question of the Day
Is there any word you compulsively mispronounce, because you got it into your head it was pronounced one way, and even though you've found out it's totally not pronounced that way, the mispronunciation refuses to unstick?
I can't think of any of these I have myself, although Mr. Shakes is famous for them. He has one of the most prodigious vocabularies of any person to whom I've ever spoken—it's genuinely impressive. It was also gleaned almost entire from reading, so he's often never heard these words actually spoken by anyone but himself, and it turns out he's not the greatest pronunciation-deducer of all time. My favorite ever was you-BICK-too-us, which is how ubiquitous tumbled out of his mouth.
I should note, in case it isn't obvious, that I find this habit to be one of the most charming, utterly endearing things evah about Mr. Shakes.
What in the fuckity-fuck is wrong with people?!
Bomb Iran, majority of Americans says in new poll:
The Zogby International survey shows 52 percent of Americans would support a strike on Iran, while 53 percent expect President Bush to launch such an attack before the end of his second term. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is voters' No. 1 choice to deal with Iran, with 21 percent saying they would like to see her take on Tehran from the White House. Republican Rudy Giuliani was voters' second choice, with 15 percent.I am wordless. I am without words.
Just 29 percent of Americans think the US should not attack Iran, with one in five people unsure about military action. Of those who would support a strike, 28 percent believe military action should wait until the next president is in office, while 23 percent want to see Bush let lose US missiles against Iran.
I'm Sorry for the Lack of Mukasey Blogging
The thing is, mainly because I do not and cannot believe that anyone Bush nominates as Attorney General will reside in the same galaxy as what I'd consider an acceptable nominee, I just can't muster the energy to care.
You can find some people who do thanks to the lovely folks at Memeorandum, though.
Quote of the Day
"I seriously believe we have to start asking questions about [President Bush's] mental health. There's something wrong. He does not seem to understand his words have real impact. … There's a lot of people who need care. He might be one of them. If there isn't something wrong with him, then there's something wrong with us."—Democratic presidential candidate and Representative Dennis Kucinich, concerned about Bush's psychological stability (and/or ours) after the president's recent World War III comments.
On Costumes
Recently, Boing Boing featured a new product designed to help women disguise themselves as vending machines, so, according to its designer, they can elude pursuers.
Just lift a flap on your skirt, ladies, and out comes the nifty disguise—and rapists will walk right on by!
This concept is nutty for several reasons, starting with "Would anyone be fooled by this?"—and not least of which being that women are about three times more likely to be raped by someone they know than a stranger, and nine times more likely to be raped in their homes, the home of someone they know, or anywhere else than being raped on the street.
Nonetheless, clothing that turns, Transformer-like, into camoflage for its wearer is being seriously marketed to women to protect themselves against the threat of sexual assault.
Meanwhile, men can purchase this hysterical Halloween costume (possibly NSFW):
Last time I checked, flashing was still a crime. To be specific, it's still a minor sexual assault. But in the same world where women are being exhorted to chameleon themselves into their surroundings to shake rapists off their human scent, men are being hawked Halloween costumes that recreate a sex crime without the pesky problem of possibly getting arrested for it.
Here, then, is precisely how the rape culture works. Women are tasked with increasingly myriad ways of preventing sexual assault even as men are encouraged to view it as fun, a bit of playful silliness, No Big Deal. And the more inextricably its transmission is associated with humor, the easier it is to shoot down dissenters as humorless, hysterical, over-reactionary.
And 'round and 'round we go.
Of course there will be people who look at the "Frank the Flasher" costume and laugh. But that's not exactly evidence against the insidious ubiquity of the rape culture, is it? That we have become inured to the gravity of unsolicited sexual aggression, that we can "find humor" in things that by all rights should be regarded as indicative of a profoundly debased predatory sexuality that runs counter to every principle of sexual egalitarianism and consent, is the primary affirmation of how deeply entrenched the rape culture is. If you're laughing, that's the problem.
This idea probably deserves a post of its own, but I also want to quickly point out that this costume is sold mostly on sites who make people double-dog swear they're over 18 before they access them, and, in one case, bearing a warning that it's not appropriate for Halloween parties attended by children. (As if someone daft enough to need that warning will be clever enough to heed it.)
Of course, exposing one's genitalia unbidden is not just a crime only when done to children; it's a criminal act to expose oneself to adults, too. I'm reminded of Eugene Volokh's ridiculous argument that the reason we criminalize touching a woman's breast or genitals against her will, as opposed to her shoulder, is because it might sexually arouse her. I noted in my response:
I suspect nearly everyone is familiar with the method of conveying to children what is appropriate and inappropriate touching by using the example of a bathing suit. No one should ever touch you on the places covered by your bathing suit. For boys, that's a signal that a stranger who tries to touch their genitals or buttocks is doing something wrong. For girls, it's the genitals, buttocks, and breasts. Is Volokh seriously arguing that the reason we impart this information to children is because we're worried about the children becoming sexually aroused? Or even just because we're worried about the pedophile becoming sexually aroused? I suspect not. I suspect he would recognize that there are other issues at play here aside from just sexual arousal—issues about bodily autonomy, trust, safety, emotional health, appropriateness. Which means, then, he's attempting to make the argument that sometime after puberty, women lose their right to not have the same body parts invaded on those principles.Even though it's a crime to flash anyone of any age, by the time we're adults, we're expected to find this stuff funny; we're expected to resolve ourselves to the reality that we live in a rape culture and not be bothered by that which propagates it, like ubiquitous if minor sex crimes turned into cheeky costumes for giggles.
I mean, geez—can't you take a joke?
It's only when our risk of being raped starts to diminish that we start to regain our right to object to things like Frank the Flasher. Older women might be dismissed as fuddy-duddies, but there is generally some respect for an older woman's right to take issue with overt displays of sexuality and/or aggressive sex "jokes."
Children are (usually) regarded as deserving of protection, and older women are (usually) regarded as deserving of respect; it's young women who are most discouraged from objecting to the rape culture—and who receive the least amount of sympathy and about whom the most vicious narratives of victim-blaming become operative if they are sexually assaulted, ergo also making them most discouraged from reporting rape.
In other words, the most likely victims of sexual assault are also the people most expected to accommodate the rape culture and all its accoutrements.
What a coincidence, huh?
Caption This Photo
The Fearsome Tarantumunk
(I just sent this picture in an email to the arachnophobic Mr. Shakes, who replied: "Yagh!!!! I am stabbing my eyes out." LOL!)
Bush Will Send Congress to Bed Without Supper
Petulant grabbed video of Bush's presser this morning, in which he scolded Congress for "not getting its work done." This is just brilliant. Watch him bitch and moan about how Congress has had the UNMITIGATED TEMERITY to investigate shit and raise taxes to actually pay for things! And on top of that—they're spending money on things HE DOESN'T WANT THEM SPENDING MONEY ON! He wants them to spend money on WAR, and they keep trying to spend it on CHILDREN! He's truly unbelievable.
Full transcript grabbed from the White House website, below.
I just had a very constructive and important meeting with the leadership and the Republican members of the United States House of Representatives. And I want to thank you all for coming down, and thank you for your leadership.
Congress is not getting its work done. We're near the end of the year, and there really isn't much to show for it. The House of Representatives has wasted valuable time on a constant stream of investigations, and the Senate has wasted valuable time on an endless series of failed votes to pull our troops out of Iraq. And yet there's important work to be done on behalf of the American people.
They have not been able to send a single annual appropriations bill to my desk, and that's the worst record for a Congress in 20 years. One of the important responsibilities of the Congress is to pass appropriations bills. And yet the leadership that's on the Hill now cannot get that job done.
They've also passed an endless series of tax increases. You know, they proposed tax increases in the farm bill, the energy bill, the small business bill, and of course, the SCHIP bill. They haven't seen a bill they could not solve without shoving a tax hike into it. In other words, they believe in raising taxes, and we don't.
Spending is skyrocketing under their leadership -- at least proposed spending is skyrocketing under their leadership. After all, they're trying to spend an additional $205 billion over the next five years. Some have said, well, that doesn't matter much; it's not that much money. Well, $205 billion over the next five years in the real world amounts to this: $4.7 million per hour, every hour, for every day, for the next five years. That's a lot of money.
And that doesn't even include spending that would actually pay for 2 million people to move from private health insurance to an inefficient, lower-quality, government-run program. Despite knowing it does not have a chance of becoming law, the Senate will now take up the second SCHIP bill the House passed last week. I believe the Senate is wasting valuable time. This bill, remarkably, manages to spend more money over five years than the first bill did.
After going alone and going nowhere, Congress should instead work with the administration on a bill that puts poor children first; a bill that will take care of the poor children that the initial bill said we got to do; a bill that would stop diverting money to adults. You realize some major states in the United States spend more money on adults than they do on children? We want a bill that enrolls the more than 500,000 poor children currently eligible for the program who are not a part of the program.
We want to sit down in good faith and come up with a bill that is responsible, because Congress has been unable or unwilling to get its basic job done of passing spending bills. There are now reports that congressional leaders may be considering combining the Veterans and Department of Defense appropriations bills, and then add a bloated Labor, Health and Education spending bill to both of them.
It's hard to imagine a more cynical political strategy than trying to hold hostage funding for our troops in combat and our wounded warriors in order to extract $11 billion in additional social spending. I hope media reports about such a strategy are wrong, I really do. If they're not, if the reports of this strategy are true, I will veto such a three-bill pileup. Congress should pass each bill one at a time in a fiscally responsible manner that reflects agreement between the legislative branch and the executive branch.
I again ask Congress to send me a clean Veterans funding bill that we have already agreed to by Veterans Day, so we can keep America's promise to those who have defended our freedom and are recovering from injury. I again urge them to pass a clean Defense appropriations bill, and a war supplemental bill to fund our troops in combat.
I know some on the Democrat side didn't agree with my decision to send troops in, but it seems like we ought to be able to agree that we're going to support our troops who are in harm's way. I know the members feel that way, standing with me. I hope the leadership feels that way, and they ought to give me a bill that funds, among other things, bullets, and body armor, and protection against IEDs, and mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles. It would be irresponsible to not give our troops the resources they need to get their job done because Congress was unable to get its job done.
Again, I want to thank the members here. I appreciate us working together for the good of the United States of America. God bless.
Matt Taibbi is Hip and Hilarious; Proves It by Irreverently Evoking Child Rape in Gruesome Detail
Quixote just sent the link to the first installment of privileged wanker Matt Taibbi's new 2008 presidential campaign blog for Rolling Stone. It whiffs of the desperation of a boy trying to fill the big footprints left on this path by one Hunter S. Thompson, the pong of which would have been enough to drive me away, even without the unbearable crack upside my basic decency delivered by this rather stunning passage:
A youngish kid with long hair and a red t-shirt in this crowd started telling me his story, about how he’d been busted for possession of drug paraphernalia. "It was a couple of pipes…" he began.Rape just keeps getting more hilarious, the more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more jokes I hear about it.
I waved him off and explained that, as a member of the national campaign press, I was here to write about what I wanted him to say, not what he wanted himself to say. "Look," I said, holding up a bill. "I'm willing to pay twenty bucks to the first person who’ll say whatever I want him to say about Fred Thompson."
About ten sets of hands flew up, including the kid in front of me. I held up the twenty.
"Name," I barked.
"Gary Blakeman," he said.
"Age," I said.
"Seventeen."
I wrote that down. "Gary, does Fred Thompson look like a pedophile to you?"
He looked at me pleadingly. "Yes, right?"
"Right," I said.
"Yes, he does," he answered.
"So what you’re saying, Gary," I prompted, "is that you wouldn’t be at all surprised to walk into a room and see this candidate's penis in a four year-old child?"
"Of course not!" the kid said. "Because he looks like a fucking pedophile, dude!"
"Mmm-hmm," I said. "And what kind of face would you expect him to be making at that moment?"
The kid grit his teeth and strained his neck muscles. "He'd be like, unnnnhh!" he shouted.
"Thanks," I said, handing him the twenty. He took it and walked off with his hands over his head in triumph. I looked over at the wire-service girl, who was still humping an old couple about the Hillary thing. Amateur, I thought.
Unilever Gets a Kick in the Assvertising
So, by now, everyone is probably well aware of my issues with the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (and similar campaigns), which is to say nothing of the fact that Dove is owned by Unilever, which also owns the Axe brand—the commercials for which my virulent hatred is also undoubtedly familiar.
Turns out I have a problem with one Unilever brand making money criticizing images of women in popular advertising while another Unilever brand is one of the worst offenders ever of perpetrating negative stereotypes of women. (Go figure.)
Which makes this mash-up by filmmaker Rye Clifton—borrowing from the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty's recent "Onslaught" ad and various Axe adverts—just all kinds of brilliant.
[H/T Brandflakes for Breakfast.]
A pondering of inclusion…
This bitch is fascinated by the politics within social justice movements. How to move forward, when to move forward, who to move forward with…that shit is just beyond interesting! And the issue of who gets left behind is particularly fascinating to me since...well, ummm...history has a habit, if you know what I mean (wink).
I've made a study of how movements address inclusion and why more often than not they don't do it well. Oh, there are a lot of reasons…racism, classism…the flawed theory of gradualism. Year after year the calls for solidarity rise up and year after year that solidarity is rewarded by bullshit…by "maybe next year", "the timing just isn’t right" and "your issues aren’t really our issues anyway". Too many organizations fail the moral test by backing almost there legislation versus inclusive legislation and choosing half assed advancement rather than pushing for true victory.
Blink.
One of my favorite examples of this is the American Women's Suffrage Movement. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote was ratified without any reference to race. Suffragettes, fearing that a lack of Southern support would prevent passage, had kicked women of color to the curb despite our unique need for a protected vote. As it turned out, the amendment made it through without full Southern support...wince...and all that curb kicking may have been for naught.
Yet on the curb true suffrage remained…for some 45 additional years...until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 addressed the issue of race that the 19th Amendment failed to. History is littered with examples that demonstrate that half assed equality isn’t equality...it is always not quite a victory.
I hope that the LGBT equality movement I'm proud to be a part of will learn from history and see that to claim true victory full inclusion is the only option...but I guess the pain ain’t so bad when you’re not the one getting cut and the wait doesn't seem that long when you're not still standing in line.
Fascinating.
One Ticket Straight to Hell, Please
I was searching for a totally different news story when I happened upon this one, which just embodies so much happy pretty preciousness that I couldn't resist sharing it lest I explode with the selfishness of keeping it to myself.
It all started when pug-lover Donna Skoda and her husband were devastated by the death of one of their many pugs. When (this is the actual name, I swear) Bambita Pekita Meskita Chiquita Juanita the Salsa Dancer from San Antonio died, followed by another one of their pugs, Emma, Skoda said she "knew her animal-loving neighbors, Chris and Kirk Raymond, would empathize, but they went one better."
"Chris and Kirk made me a little card, a picture of Emma with a halo over her head," she said. It made her cry, and ultimately gave her a sense of relief, as if her precious pet was in a safe and lovely place.So true. I always find it comforting when photographs become real art through the magic of Photoshop.
Kirk Raymond created another card with Jesus holding Bambita in his arms.
"Kirk made it from a stock picture of Jesus in Photoshop," said Skoda, who was moved by his generosity of spirit. "It becomes art. It's very comforting."
Naturally, since there's lots of money to be made in commandeering Jesus to comfort people these days, "Photoshop enthusiast" Kirk ("who works at Diebold by day") opened a website to sell his services—and Donna joined the upstart business to help with the printing and framing. The team works "from whatever photos the pet owner happens to have," like the photo of a cat "climbing over the living room couch" that Kirk Photoshopped into a picture of Jesus, who had originally been holding a lamb. Kirk is "skilled enough" to make "the pose seem natural," says Donna—and, while I don't know if I would describe the pictures as natural, per se, I would absolutely describe them as stunning.
But the beauty of these moving Pet Tributes isn't all, bitchez.
The [sic] say their faith cured their cat, Ajax, of lymphoma. Two years ago, Ajax had hard nodules on his spleen and the vets wanted to do exploratory surgery for cancer. The Raymonds decided to take a different approach.All dogs really do go to heaven! Except the ones that are cats blessed by Jesus to live forever.
"I have a real strong personal relationship with God," Chris Raymond said. "We held hands and prayed to God to save him."
Ajax is the picture of health today and received no other intervention.
Amen.
Brazil gets 2014 World Cup; Also, I need to improve my Portuguese
It is now official, in just seven short years, I am going to have a really good time. Along with 200 million Brasileiros.
Brazil will host the 2014 World Cup of soccer. This is very good news and will be a great thing for the entire nation. And don't have any worries over Brazil being ready in time. They will be and it will be an amazing tournament. Brazilians can put together a party.
And they love fireworks. 2014 will be "National Firecracker Go Off Year" here. My Australian Shepherd Duchess will be older and hating it.
Now, excuse me for the next seven years as I try and improve my Portuguese. It's sort of muito fraco at the moment. Between learning a new language and my weakness at geography, it's not hard to tell I'm American. That and the U.S. flag belt buckles I so often wear.
--WKW
Dam Infrastucture Problems
Meanwhile, in Mosul, half a million people could drown at any moment:
The largest dam in Iraq is in serious danger of an imminent collapse that could unleash a trillion-gallon wave of water, possibly killing thousands of people and flooding two of the largest cities in the country, according to new assessments by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other U.S. officials.
Even in a country gripped by daily bloodshed, the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the Mosul Dam has alarmed American officials, who have concluded that it could lead to as many as 500,000 civilian deaths by drowning Mosul under 65 feet of water and parts of Baghdad under 15 feet, said Abdulkhalik Thanoon Ayoub, the dam manager. "The Mosul dam is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability," in the dry wording of an Army Corps of Engineers draft report.
Of course, the Bush administration is dealing with this the same way they deal with everything -- by hiding the evidence of failure:
The debate has taken place largely out of public view because both Iraqi and U.S. Embassy officials have refused to discuss the details of safety studies -- commissioned by the U.S. government for at least $6 million -- so as not to frighten Iraqi citizens.
Better call Mike Brown. He's not doing anything, and he's got a lot of experience with catastrophic floods.
Shaker Gourmet: Asian Pear Slaw
The email I received from The Portly Dyke about this recipe came with the subject line of: "ZOMG! Delicious!".
(recipe here) PD noted: "[W]e had this salad tonight and it was OMFG! -- outrageously amazing. Complex flavors, absolutely satisfying, and one of those salads that I kept saying "I'll just have one more taste of this", as we hung around the table and talked once the feastery had abated."asian pear slaw
2 celery ribs
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar
1 teaspoon finely grated peeled fresh ginger
2 firm Asian pears, cut into 1/4-inch-thick matchsticks
2 scallions, thinly sliced diagonally
1/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves
1/2 teaspoon finely chopped fresh hot red chile, or to taste
Peel strings from celery with a Y-shaped vegetable peeler and cut celery into 1/4-inch-thick matchsticks.
Whisk together juice, vinegar, and ginger and stir in celery and remaining ingredients with salt and pepper to taste. Let stand at room temperature 15 minutes before serving.
If you'd like to participate in Shaker Gourmet, email me at shakergourmet (at) gmail.com Include a link to your blog if you have one!
He's a Freudian Delight, He Crawls With Clues!
Rudy Giuliani is nuts. Absolutely, completley, out-of-his gourd nuts:
"This is the world we live in. It's not this happy, romantic-like world where we'll negotiate with this one, or we'll negotiate with that one and there will be no preconditions, and we'll invite (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad to the White House, we'll invite Osama (bin Laden) to the White House," Giuliani said.
"Hillary and Obama are kind of debating whether to invite them to the inauguration or the inaugural ball," he added.
Andrew Sullivan calls it "literally insane." But really, it's just par for the course with Rudy.
Giuliani's problem is that he really has no idea what he's talking about, and he's not a pro-life zealot, so he has to ratchet the rhetoric on the GWOT to eleven. And unfortunately, the GOP was already insane on that, so Rudy sounds almost messianic. Look at another quote from his rant:
"Suppose Hillary Clinton and John Edwards' new position was their position back then, that it was a mistake to take him out," Giuliani said, referring to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. "Wouldn't we be dealing with Saddam Hussein becoming nuclear right now? If Iran was becoming nuclear what would he be doing? Sitting there letting his arch enemy gain nuclear power over him? Or would we now be dealing with two countries seeking to become nuclear powers."
No. We wouldn't. SADDAM HUSSEIN DIDN'T HAVE A NUCLEAR PROGRAM. He hadn't had one since the mid-nineties. Heck, he couldn't even sustain a chemical weapons program, which is orders of magnitude easier to run. If we'd stayed out of Iraq, they wouldn't have WMDs, and it's entirely possible that Iran would be moving less provocatively because first, the limits of American power would not have been vividly illustrated for them, and second, because they would have a significant deterrent in their quest for regional hegemony, a country called Iraq.
It would be nice if Rudy's insane pronouncements would get the kind of coverage that, say, John Edwards' hair or Hillary Clinton's cleavage got. But I suppose that's asking a lot; after all, it's not like Rudy has a funny laugh. That would be a major story.
Dick and the Confederate Flag
So, Dick Cheney goes hunting, and, while he manages not to shoot anyone in the face this time, it turns out that the hunting lodge flies a confederate flag. Charming.
Cheney's people claim they knew nothing about it and he didn't see it blah blah blah. Everyone's waiting for him to repudiate the hanging of the flag, but come on—for a cyborg whose got diabolical plans to enslave the entire human race to megacorporation Halliburton, the confederacy is small potatoes. His beautiful robotic mind can't be wasted on such things.
Shakesville Makes a List
[Also: Jeff.]
A bunch of people have emailed me about this Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science study that ranked the Top 100 blogs based on the question: Which blogs should one read to be most up to date, i.e., to quickly know about important stories that propagate over the blogosphere?
We came in 37th out of the top 100.
How awesome you find this news to be is, I guess, dependent on how important you think it is for people to be up on what the blogosphere is talking about—which is, let's face it, often a lot a shit, but sometimes the most serious issues we collectively face.
It also really says nothing about the qualities of the content at any given blog (good info? bad info? good writing? bad writing? lots of writing? just a link?), and it's not particularly safe to presume that highly-linked blogs are so because they are the most factual and best written. Sometimes that's true (Atrios), but not always (Malkin).
So what's ultimately being measured here seems to be compulsive blogitude, combined with breadth of interest. In other words: Who's the biggest magpie?
To which I have only to say: Caw! and Ooh—something shiny!
The full list of the Top 100 is below.
1. Instapundit
2. Don Surber
3. Science & Politics
4. Watcher of Weasesls
5. Michelle Malkin
6. National Journal's Blogometer
7. The Modulator
8. BloggersBlog.com
9. Boing Boing
10. Atrios
11. A Blog for All
12. Gothamist
13. mparent777
14. TFS Magnum
15. Alliance of Free Blogs
16. anglican.tk
17. Micropersuasion
18. Pajamas Media
19. BlogHer
20. The Jawa Report
21. Reddit
22. Soccer Dad
23. Nose on Your Face
24. aHistorically
25. The Anchoress
26. AmericaBlog
27. SFist
28. TBogg
29. HorsePigCow
30. Why Homeschool
31. The Daou Report
32. Sisu
33. MetaFilter
34. Megite
35. LAist
36. Captain's Quarters
37. Shakesville
38. Guy Kawasaki
39. Lucy by Lucy
40. Blue Star Chronicle
41. Official Google Blog
42. The Glittering Eye
43. asterisco.paradigma.pt
44. Read/WriteWeb
45. Hullabaloo
46. The Conservative Cat
47. Phillyist
48. The Social Customer Manifesto
49. The Next Net
50. Gateway Pundit
51. Crooks and Liars
52. Right Wing News
53. 10,000 Birds
54. O'Reilly Radar
55. Cowboy Blog
56. Business Opportunities Weblog
57. DCist
58. Creating Passionate Users
59. Citizens For Legitimate Government
60. What About Clients?
61. Rough Type
62. The Unofficial Apple Weblog
63. Dans la cuisine d'Audinette
64. The London Fog
65. Bostonist
66. Seattlest
67. Austinist
68. Indian Writing
69. Power Line
70. Firedoglake
71. Blog d'Elisson
72. Rhymes With Right
73. Written World
74. The Jeff Pulver Blog
75. blog d'eMeRY
76. Hugh MacLeod's gapingvoid
77. Catymology
78. Hugh Hewitt
79. Lifehacker
80. jordoncooper.com
81. Econbrowser
82. A Socialite's Life
83. Gates of Vienna
84. NevilleHobson.com
85. Waxy.org
86. A Life Restarted
87. The Volokh Conspiracy
88. See Also...
89. Dr. Sanity
90. Mudville Gazette
91. www.saysuncle.com
92. Privacy Digest
93. Londonist
94. Shanghaiist
95. Catholic and Enjoying It
96. Single Serve Coffee
97. Jeremy Zawodny's blog
98. ScienceBlogs
99. Basic Thinking Blog
100. Scobleizer
Statement from William K. Wolfrum: "You've all been granted immunity"
"I'd like to again thank you all for standing by me during these troubled times. Your friendship and support truly means the world to me. That is why, after a brief review with some lawyers, I've decided to grant each and every one of you immunity. You are all immune. From anything and everything. Starting now.
This grant of immunity should help give you all a clean start in life, and put all those pesky, and often unfounded judicial issues to rest. And while I've learned that I have no power to grant any of you immunity from anything, the fact is, once you've given immunity, you can't take it away. So there.
Once again, I'd like to thank you all for your help. Thank you for doing the dirty work behind the scenes, even though you knew you were likely breaking laws and spitting on morality. You all stood tall and did what needed to be done.
So enjoy your immunity and don't screw it up this time (ha ha).
Thank you again and God Bless.
I have now retained counsel to examine this matter and I will make no further comment."
--WKW
Thirty-Seven?
Huzzah, and all that. Shakesville is officially the 37th most important blog on all the internets, according to a new Carnegie Mellon study. We're just behind Cap'n Ed and just ahead of Guy Kawasaki, who blogs about business or science or something, I can't really tell.
Fun With Wingers
Glenn Greenwald has been having fun playing with the Orcosphere.
After his bizarre e-mail exchange with Col. Steve Boylan, the public affairs officer for Gen. David Petraeus, the right wing pounced on his story, claiming that Mr. Greenwald had edited the e-mails and left out key sentences. Ah ha!, they proclaimed, once again the lefties are at it again!
As is the usually the case, the wingers leaped before they looked.In the post, I wrote: "Anyone who would like to have forwarded to them a copy of the email I received originally can email me and I will send it." Several people emailed me to make that request, and I forwarded them the email, including -- apparently -- one right-wing blogger who calls himself "Dread Pundit."
At this point it gets ridiculous and you can only laugh at the poor wingers who have gone out on this limb and can't get back. Apologize? Recant? Offer an "oops?" Never. It would violate the code of the Orcosphere to ever admit to making a mistake, and they would rather appear to be incredibly stupid than wishy-washy. For them it's not just a matter of macho pride; admitting fallibility would undermine everything they do.
Now that he has cleverly obtained from me what he thinks is previously secret evidence (i.e., the full, unedited Boylan e-mail which I published myself yesterday), Dread Pundit has written a dramatic post accusing me of concealing parts of Col. Boylan's email. And that's not all. Also: "The parts that Greenwald chose not to publish tend to contradict his characterization of the email as 'bizarre' and 'unsolicited'." He has titled his post: "Full Text of Email Reveals Greenwald Mischaracterizations," and he re-prints the entire e-mail which I sent to him, bolding the parts he says I "chose to leave out." Very dramatic.
Of course, the whole post is based on his belief that I only published the excerpts, not the full and unedited email (even though the second sentence of my post says: "which I am publishing in full, unedited form here)." It is further based on the belief that I tried to pass off the excerpted passages as the full, unedited email (even though the excerpted passages are preceded by the explanation that what follows are "multiple passages from Boylan's email to me"). Put another way, the (serious) accusations he is making are precluded by the most basic skills of reading comprehension.
The fact that a right-wing blogger spews serious accusations based on complete idiocy is ordinarily not worthy of comment. That happens virtually every day. That is what the right-wing blogosphere is, more or less; it is why it exists.
[...]
The fact that I published the full-email was so painfully transparent that even right-wing bloggers like this one were able to figure that out -- and read his post to see how low that bar is. But in less than 90 minutes from the time "Dread Pundit" unveiled his brilliant discovery, the right-wing blogosphere has worked itself into one of its defining lynch mob fits of hysteria, all based on the inability to comprehend the most basic English, as in: "the full, unedited version is here" and "multiple passages from Boylan's email."
Another few hours and right-wing blogger Howard Kurtz will have a full Washington Post column on this. Add this to their always-expanding list. I'm honestly interested in knowing: what else besides abject stupidity can explain this? I mean that as a serious question.
Sometimes it's fun to poke at the fanatics and have them defend the indefensible. It's especially fun to do it with people who believe in the inerrancy of the bible and get them to explain the inconsistencies, such as where Cain's wife came from or other such things as why it's okay to cite Leviticus to condemn gays but skip over the parts of the book where it also condemns shaving, eating shellfish, and crop rotation. It must be nice to go dreamily through life without any doubts, your faith unshaken by the inconveniences of reality.
But it's also kind of sad to think that there are an awful lot of people who are going through their lives unwilling to own up to a mistake, to admit that they're wrong, and be open to the possibility of learning something new. It's as if their whole world would crumble if they ever had a doubt about anything. I actually had one fundamentalist Christian tell me that if you accept the fact that there is just one mistake in the bible -- that the sun doesn't orbit the earth, for example -- then you are calling into question the very existence of God because God is perfect, he doesn't make mistakes, and therefore anything that he puts into the bible must be right; celestial mechanics be damned. As the episode with Mr. Greenwald succinctly demonstrates, the same kind of fanaticism holds true with some of the more adamant members of the right-wing blogosphere. To be sure, there are fanatics on both sides, but the righties seem to have cornered the market on nutsery.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
As the world turns and the cheese burns: a conversation between Tart and The Joy of Cooking
Tart: O weighty tome of kitchenry and information! Come forth from thy station of honour upon mine countertop, ope thyself, and reveal recipes of savory deliciousness.
The Joy of Cooking: God, I'm so full of words and awesomeness. Hmm...how about using that day-old bread to make croutons, and a salad of red leaf lettuce topped with crisped gruyere and parmesan cheese?
Tart: Ahoy-hoy!
The Joy of Cooking: Okay, so after you grate the cheese, sprinkle it into a non-stick skillet and heat on medium for 4 minutes, spooning off the fat.
Tart: So, by non-stick skillet you mean a regular skillet coated with canola spray?
The Joy of Cooking: No! Don't do that! You'll ruin everything! You don't know what you're doing, and that cheese is expensive...
Tart: What? Shut up.
...four minutes later...
Tart: Oh, fuck.
My Dinner With Roy
It was a big sacrifice, but this past Saturday, I skipped the awesome and exciting things I'd usually do in favor of going to the annual fundraiser for You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, a hyper-wacky religious group from the Twin Cities who loves them some Jesus -- especially when they can talk about Him in front of public school groups. I couldn't resist; the redoubtable Roy Moore was in town to support them, as was the clinically insane former Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer.
I was hoping for wackiness, and boy, did they deliver:
Moore, who was removed from his position after placing a granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama Supreme Court building and then defying a federal court order to remove it, said the stakes were clear.
"We need to learn our history and our heritage. We need to take a stand like Brad [Dean] did in taking God back into our public schools," he said.
"We're in a war today," Moore added, "and I don't care if you're white or black, whether you're young or old, whether you're male or female, every one of you children here remember this: We are fighting a spiritual war in America today. A war in which they're trying to take away our basic right to acknowledge the God who created us, and we have to take a stand."
[...]
Although Moore was the headliner, the evening's focal point was Dean, who gave a half-hour defense of his ministry. His speech compared the teaching of evolution to the ideology of Hitler, claimed that drugs to treat depression and ADD were "more potent than cocaine" and called the pope "a devil disguised as a minister of righteousness."
Officials in multiple school districts have criticized the organization for hiding its religious affiliation until actually in the school. But Dean made no apologies for going into public schools or for crossing a line between church and state that he refuses to acknowledge.
"You don't need to be locked down by saying what you're supposed to say, and you can say this but you can't say that," Dean said. "That's Communism, that's not America."
I'm going to be putting together a few stories on this in the upcoming days -- really, the group deserves plenty of publicity -- but I'll just close with two words I know you're all going to love: Virtue Class.
Question of the Day
True story: one of my best friends first bonded with his now-wife over their mutual disdain for the word moist. Now it turns out that they aren't alone: evidently there are all sorts of people, mostly women, who can't stand the sound of the word. Indeed, one professor reported being told by his class that moist is offensive to women.
Now, there's a wonderful sociology paper in this subject, but I'm not going to get into it right now. No, all of this is merely prologue to the question of the day: What word (or words) drive you crazy?
Worst Campaign Advert Evah
Via Matt Ortega, who notes this ad ought to be called "White People that are Terrible Actors for Ron Paul" and says: "If Mitt Romney wasn't such a flip-flopper and devoid of any real political principle, I would have said this was the worst acting in a presidential ad all season."
Wow. Truly awful.
Caption This Photo
"I thought for sure I could compete with a cartoon.
At least the couch still loves me."
Via CuteOverload
Quote of the Day
"I am going live with my theory, the only thing I can come up with for the rampant asshattery and thorough idiocy we have witnessed lately from the right-wing blogosphere: They are now working in concert to say as many stupid things as possible so that we are unable to document and mock them all. It is the only thing that makes sense."—John Cole, on the abject stupidity currently emanating from the nutosphere to haunt Glenn Greenwald.
From the You Can't Make This Shit Up Files
One Klan Group To Protest Another.
Why? "We are opposed to the ignorance and stupidity as displayed by the individuals that thumbed their nose at the area churches by continuing to use racial slurs, threats and avoided Christian deportment."
I had no idea the Klan had such enlightened franchises these days.
(Yes, sarcasm.)
G-Dub Announces Recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
And among the list is one of my favie Congresscritters of all time: Illinois' own Henry Hyde, he of the "youthful indiscretions" and virulent anti-choice bullshittery.
Kos, who once "helped deliver one of the district's best precinct performances for Henry Hyde," must be so thrilled to see his former candidate bestowed with such a lovely honor for having "served America with distinction" and having been "a powerful defender of life and a leading advocate for a strong national defense and for freedom around the world."
Blah blah blah. Congrats on being a fucknut tyrant, Hank!
Rummy To Lecture Only At Home
Former SoD Donald Rumsfeld just found out the hard way that traveling overseas and giving lectures to "replenish the ol' coffers" carries a new kind of risk: Criminal prosecution.
Today, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) along with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), and the French League for Human Rights filed a complaint with the Paris Prosecutor before the “Court of First Instance” (Tribunal de Grande Instance) charging former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with ordering and authorizing torture. Rumsfeld was in Paris for a talk sponsored by Foreign Policy magazine, and left through a door connecting to the U.S. embassy to avoid journalists and human rights attorneys outside.You like that sneaking out of a secret door shit? I sure do. I can't imagine that was on his list of expectations for this trip. International courts sure are a bitch, not caring about one's former status and all. Of course, I'm amazed that anyone outside of this country has any interest at all in hearing what Rummy has to say.
[...]
Rumsfeld’s presence on French territory gives French courts jurisdiction to prosecute him for having ordered and authorized torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
I guess he has no choice but to keep his sorry ass in the ol' USA, as if under house arrest, and milk the circuit for all it's worth until it dwindles out and no one gives a rat's ass about him anymore. We should take a pool on how long it will take for Rummy to realize that it sucks to be him.
[Via FDL]
Something in the Water
Over at Sully's place and at Feministe, there are links to a shop at which you can buy jewelry made out of dismembered Barbie and Ken parts:
Like I said in reference to the Jingle Jugs yesterday, what bothers me about this kind of thing is the connection, even if unintentional, with the real-life precedent of trophy-keeping.
The picture Sully chose to post reminds me specifically of a book I read as a teenager (the title of which I cannot recall, nor anything else about the book, including its author), which opens with the narrator talking about holding a woman's hand inside his jacket pocket—linked fingers, the intimacy of skin against skin inside fabric on a chilly day. And then the picture pulls back, as it were, to reveal that the hand has been detached from the body of a woman he has just raped and murdered, and he's holding her hand for comfort as he walks out of the woods where he's dumped her.
So I have kind of mixed feelings about this, as pulling apart the pieces of one's plastic dolls (Barbie or otherwise) is an unremarkable pastime of many girls' childhoods, often motivated by nothing more nefarious than that which prompts pulling apart a Matchbox car—just a simple curiosity at how it's stuck together or sheer boredom with a played-out toy. But then, ya know, there's the other stuff, in which grown-ups do terrible things. There's a not necessarily easily-discernible line about when this kind of thing moves from innocent to icky, becomes symbolic of something ugly. Like, a little girl with a doll head collection? Very Wednesday Addams. A grown man with a doll head collection? Move away slowly. That's a whole different ballgame.
And while I'm sure there's an argument to be made that this jewelry is nothing more than an homage to that girlhood tradition of doll dismemberment, it strikes me as ignoring the flipside of that coin in which some boys tear apart dolls to upset and hurt and threaten the girls to whom they belong. It's a classic girl-bullying tactic of boy bullies, little mini-misogynists terrorizing the playground with doll destruction and the de-pantsing of shy girls and the sissy boys who play with them. That's where the expression of violent misogyny and homophobia starts.
Even if this jewelry is just meant to be a silly, harmless thing, it nonetheless references something that isn't silly or harmless at all. So the question becomes: How important is it? How important is it to all of us to be able to buy and consider and sell jewelry made from torn-apart dolls right now? And how capable do we feel of fixing all the bad things it inadvertently references and unintentionally reinforces as long as it exists? Does it make our job harder? Is it worth it, if it does? Just how important is it for this stuff to be in our world?
[H/T to Oddjob for the Sully link.]
WTF?
Who replaced Obama with a total dipshit?
If Obama is hoping for an issue to gain traction with vis a vis Hillary, he's really muffed it picking Social Security. In itself the idea of removing or significantly restructuring the 'cap' on payroll taxes is a good one, at least one with a lot to recommend it. The current approach (though one with a long history and embraced by many strong Social Security advocates) makes the funding structure of Social Security highly regressive. But what Obama is doing is buying into the false idea that Social Security is in some sort of crisis.I'm just baffled. I'm not sure I understand whose support he is trying to garner anymore, between this move and gaily gospelling with ex-gay McClurkin.
If you're an outsider to this debate -- a Republican, someone who doesn't care much about the program or a privatizer -- that argument may not make sense to you on the merits. But it is what most Democrats who care most about this issue do think. So it puts him on the wrong side of the people whose support he's trying to garner. As I said, this is setting aside the substance of the issue, which I've written about in the past at some length. The politics of it is completely upside down.
New VA Center for Victims of Sexual Assault
To address a serious problem in the war zone, in recruitment centers, and in the military generally, the Department of Veterans Affairs has announced it will open a new treatment center in Bernards Township, New Jersey, the first of its kind anywhere in the country, "that will focus exclusively on women veterans who have been victims of sexual assaults." And it will have 10 beds.
Well, I guess you gotta start somewhere.
The move comes amid an increase in sexual assaults reported by the military. U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan mean that there are also now women veterans suffering combat-related stress, on top of sexual trauma.The possible problems inherent in that structure is evident in Ginmar's recent guest post, The Startle Reflex: "In group therapy, with the exception of a couple of Korean and Viet Nam vets, I was the sole woman—and none of them knew I'd fought off a sexual assault in Iraq. … It fell to me to call them on their sexism, and for my pains I got called a man hater, in a group where I was outnumbered. … I had been recommended to the program through the VA's women's center. Evidently it never occurred to anyone that putting a woman amongst a group of sexists was not the best way to mental health."
The VA already has a network of 15 sexual trauma programs, but those programs either care for both men and women, or for women who have mental issues not related to sexual assault.
…“There’s a lot of women who have residential needs who I think are less likely to come to the VA because it’s literally spending 24-7 with guys,” Miklos Losonczy, one of two VA psychiatrists behind the creation of the treatment center, told The Sunday Star-Ledger of Newark. Losonczy worried that women veterans who need treatment might not be seeking it because “they think the VA is all men and wonder, ‘Why would I get my military sexual trauma treatment surrounded by men?”’
So, yeah. This is a good first step, but boy—what a baby step! 2,947 sexual assaults were reported in the military in 2006, so providing a single 10-bed facility for the unknown number of victims, given our humongous defense budget, is pretty pathetic. But unsurprising, since W stands for
The Last Supper in Hi-Def
[Click picture to go to site.]
ZOMG! That DaVinci Code was, like, totally right!!!11!!! That's so totally a chick in that picture!!!eleventyone!!!! Oh. Muh. Guh.
(Btw, in all seriousness: It's very cool.)
[Via Metafilter.]
