How about you?
Open Thread & News Round-Up: Debt Negotiations
Reportedly, a deal is being struck and may be announced as soon as this afternoon...
ABC—Congressional Sources: Republicans and Democrats Reach Tentative Debt Deal:
Democratic and Republican Congressional sources involved in the negotiations tell ABC News that a tentative agreement has been reached on the framework of a deal that would give the President a debt ceiling increase of up to $2.4 trillion and guarantee an equal amount of deficit reduction over the next 10 years.So, no new revenue (OMFG).
...Here, according to Democratic and Republican sources, are the key elements:
* A debt ceiling increase of up to $2.1 to $2.4 trillion (depending on the size of the spending cuts agreed to in the final deal).
* They have now agreed to spending cuts of roughly $1.2 trillion over 10 years.
* The formation of a special Congressional committee to recommend further deficit reduction of up to $1.6 trillion (whatever it takes to add up to the total of the debt ceiling increase). This deficit reduction could take the form of spending cuts, tax increases or both.
* The special committee must make recommendations by late November (before Congress' Thanksgiving recess).
* If Congress does not approve those cuts by December 23, automatic across-the-board cuts go into effect, including cuts to Defense and Medicare. This "trigger" is designed to force action on the deficit reduction committee's recommendations by making the alternative painful to both Democrats and Republicans.
* A vote, in both the House and Senate, on a balanced budget amendment.
And never mind, of course, that cuts to Medicare, which is underfunded, and cuts to Defense, which has the most wildly bloated budget of any government program in the nation, are not remotely equal. This is an absolutely fucking absurd "compromise." But we're supposed to feel okay about potential cuts to Medicare because they "are designed to be taken from Medicare providers, not beneficiaries." Oh, that's fine then, because not paying providers will definitely have no effect on beneficiaries when they can't find any providers willing to accept them as patients!
Again, I feel obliged to point out that this entire framework, tying budget cuts to raising the debt ceiling, is bullshit, because we raise the debt ceiling to accommodate spending we've already done. Future spending should be based on what we need, not on what we've already spent.
President Obama and Congressional Democrats never should have conceded that the debt ceiling talks be contingent on anything else. They never, ever, should have budged from the position of a clean raise. Twelve-dimensional chess my big fat ass.
And let me stress again: No new revenue. This is unfathomably stupid.
McClatchy—Economists: Now is wrong time for Congress to cut spending:
Some House Republicans backed by tea party groups demand even deeper front-end cuts, perhaps as much as $100 billion, arguing that politicians can't be trusted to keep their promises further out.Additionally, Suzy Khimm rightly points out that the deal will squeeze state governments, which will ultimately lead to decreased spending and layoffs in the public sector, deepening the economic crisis.
That'd be dangerous, warned Mark Zandi, chief economist for forecaster Moody's Analytics.
"I think the idea is a very serious policy error," he said. "This would be the fodder for another recession. The economy may be able to digest $25-30 billion more (in federal spending cuts) ... but $100 billion, I don't think it could digest that."
Zandi, who's frequently cited by Republicans and Democrats alike, favors spending cuts "when the economy is off and running," but he cautions that "to add more fiscal restraint in the latter part of 2011 and 2012 would be a mistake."
There isn't enough UGH in the world for this mess.
ThereIsNoSpoon [TW for violent imagery]:
It's hard to imagine how it gets much worse than this. If this deal goes through, it would represent nothing less than a capitulation on the part of the President and the Democratic Senate to economic terrorism on the part of the Republican caucus, and would set a major precedent for more accountability-free hostage taking in the future. Grover Norquist seems pretty happy about it, and why not? The gameplan for drowning the government in the bathtub is obvious from here. It's clear that the Democrats won't do a thing to get in the way, because there's no hostage the Democrats will be willing to shoot--or even threaten to shoot--when the GOP takes one, nor will the media abandon its postmodern "both sides are just as bad" shtick no matter how asinine the GOP becomes.I just don't know what to say anymore. We are simply not being governed by responsible and decent people who are keen to represent the interests of and be accountable to the US citizenry. Our democracy is lost.
None of which even touches the fact that the discretionary spending cuts and bipartisan commission to recommend entitlement cuts are right in line with what President Obama has repeatedly said he wanted, anyway. We're certainly not going to get any help to stand up to this atrocious "compromise" from the President: he actively wants most of what is in it.
UPDATE: Additional recommended reading...
Digby: The New Deal vs. The Bad Deal
Reuters: Britain, Japan warn of disaster if no U.S. debt deal.
Open Thread
This week's open threads have been brought to you by awesome cameras.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Debtpocalypse Open Thread
The House is garbaging around with Boehner's revised plan. There will be voting! And then the Senate will drink Boehner's milkshake. Or something.
This is an exercise in futility, because even if the legislation on the table passes the House, it won't pass the Senate, and, even if it inexplicably passed the Senate, Obama would veto it. It's a huge waste of time, orchestrated by people with balled-up paper towels where their sense of decency should be.
Anyway, here's an open thread for discussion, if anyone still has the energy to talk about this nightmare.
Number of the Day
40%: President Obama's current approval rating, and his lowest to date, in the new Gallup poll.
Here's another number, which might have something to do with that approval rating: 0.1%. That's the rate of US consumer spending in the second quarter.
Congress is faring even worse. Democratic leaders have a 30% approval rating, and Republican leaders, who had a 36% approval rating a few months ago, now get a meager 25% approval.
There are a lot of unhappy people in this country, most of whom feel powerless to effect change, and rightly so, as their votes are exponentially diluted by corporate cash, thanks to the Supreme Court.
Rob Ford: Toronto's Own Garbage Nightmare
[Trigger warning for misogynist language.]
I don't think I can put it better than Shaker Shira*, who sent this in:
It has been an interesting day or so here in Toronto. We've just finished the longest City Hall meeting on record, with citizens waiting up to 20 hours to speak against proposed service cuts that would affect the most vulnerable members of our city.You can watch the video here.
At around 4:30am today our Mayor, Rob Ford, listened to a local children's book author passionately defend our public library system. Upon learning that the author's recent book is called Words That Start with "B", Ford said "I can think of another word for her." This is the Mayor of one of North America's largest and most diverse cities.
Everywhere we look, garbage nightmares. The corporatist mayor of Canada's largest (and among the world's most diverse) city, who thinks it's alright to call a citizen a bitch in a council meeting. Because she spoke up about the importance of libraries.
Update: Transcript below the jump, thanks to Shaker Princess R.
[Sounds of clapping.]
Female speaker: "Uh. Thank you so much. Could you tell us the name of your book?"
Author: "Most certainly. Uh, the name of my book is called 'Words That Start With B'."
[Noises from the crowd.]
Female speaker: "Words that start with "B"? B? Like..."
[Laughter here from the crowd, female speaker, and author. During the laughter, Mayor Ford comments.]
Mayor Ford: "I can think of another word for her."
[Female speaker turns to, presumably Mayor Ford, and replies.]
Female Speaker: "Do you think that's the word?"
[Laughter settles.]
Female Speaker: "Um. So do you think Toronto should aspire..."
[clip ends.]
* To whom, as ever, the tip of the CaitieCap. Which is silly, as I don't even wear caps, but there it is.
Random YouTubery: Dramatic Dog Is Dramatic
Video Description: An 8-year-old male English setter and his new 9-month-old little sister play in their front yard in Illinois. The younger puppeh zooms around wildly, then runs up to her brother, and when he gives her a playful nip on the neck, she dramatically falls over and plays dead, then hops back up and commences to continue zooming around wildly. On the video, the owners can be heard laughing at their antics.
[Details about the dogs via this news report.]
Obviously
What—did you think Professor James Franco wasn't going to be a guest lecturer at New York City's MOMA PS1, proctoring classes with director Gus Van Sant? You're so weird.
The multi-multihyphenated liberal-arts geek will juggle his big-screen career (he's appearing in next week's Rise of the Planet of the Apes and just started filming a Wizard of Oz prequel), a recently announced return to the cast of General Hospital and the thousand other activities he's got going on with a turn at New York City's MOMA PS1 as a guest lecturer leading master classes with his Milk director, Gus Van Sant.Of course he will. What is he supposed to do between getting his PhD in polymathology and filming Rise of the Planet of the Apes 2: Monkey Business—take a nap? Get real.
Per the museum's website, Franco will lead "lectures and discussions that bring students together to take part in a new conversation around contemporary practice with artists, authors, musicians, curators, theorists and scholars."
Just the perfect fit for Hollywood's favorite Renaissance Man. And he'll even be doling out homework—and holding film screenings!
[P.S. "Multi-multihyphenated?" Looks like someone's reading Shakesville!]
An Observation
I feel like I have spent an enormous amount of energy paying attention to debt ceiling and spending negotiations the resolution of which will make me even more tired.
I may need to sleep for 100 years to recover.
And the stupid thing is, I already know the outcome: Austerity and garbage.
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelda
Dudley
Sophie
Olivia
Matilda
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by red paint!
Recommended Reading:
Richard: Obama Calls for Compromise But Republicans Aren't Listening
The Rejectionist: [TW for reference to self-harm and sexual violence] An Open Letter to the Editors of the Wall Street Journal
Susie: We Could Have Told Them
Resistance: [TW for racism] Once Upon a Time Right Now
Jennifer: [TW for rape culture and descriptions of sexual violence] On Rejecting Men and Rape Culture
Andy: Astronomers Discover Trojan Asteroid in Earth's Orbit
Renee: Belly Dancing Fat and Proud
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Smells Like Progress in Here
Although I intensely loathe national polling after a state enacts legislation legalizing same-sex marriage or civil unions, because who the fuck cares what some dipfuck in Bigotville thinks of same-sex marriage in another state, and even the asking tacitly suggests that their irrelevant opinion should matter, I was nonetheless pleased to see the results of the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll inquiring "whether [New York] state's law legalizing such unions is a positive or negative outcome."
Even a quarter of conservative Republicans and white evangelical protestants find the legalization of same-sex marriage in New York a "positive development."
Twenty years ago, I was just about to start my senior year of high school. Back then, if the topic of same-sex marriage even came up at all, I was always the only straight person of any political stripe to challenge the inevitable contention, "Gay marriage will undermine the sanctity of marriage." Now, it's just a punchline, in all but the places reeking insistently of dinosaur scat.
Debtpocalypse Update
The latest version of the Boehner bill, which "reflects changes made after GOP leaders failed to assemble the necessary votes to pass it Thursday."
Spoiler Alert: It's garbage!
New NC Restrictions Will Become Law
A month ago, NC gov Beverly Perdue got our quote of the day when she said this in regards to vetoing the proposed legislation that created new hurdles to women seeking a legal health service:
"Physicians must be free to advise and treat their patients based on their medical knowledge and expertise and not have their advice overridden by elected officials seeking to impose their own ideological agenda on others."Well, yesterday the NC legislature has overridden her veto. The law requires women to have an ultrasound, a 24-hour waiting period, and state-written counseling delivered as a speech by her doctor. Women will be required to hear about the health risks of abortion and also "abortion alternatives". Apparently women who are seeking abortions in NC have no awareness of any other option and haven't thought them out, amirite?
Oh and it gets even better because anyone who does not follow these new regulations can now be sued by a woman who had an abortion--or one who nearly did and changed her mind. Or her spouse/partner. Or her parent(s)/guardian(s). OR her sibling(s).
The new law will take effect in 90 days.
Obama on Debt Talks
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning for sexual violence.]
"I was ready to die but give my consent never. Never, never."—Rosa Parks, from an essay about "nearly being raped by a white neighbor who employed her as a housekeeper in 1931." The six-page handwritten document was found among her papers "currently residing in the Manhattan warehouse and cramped offices of Guernsey's Auctioneers, which has been selected by a Michigan court to find an institution to buy and preserve the complete archive."
Civil rights historian Danielle McGuire said she had never before heard of the attempted rape of Parks and called the find among Parks' papers astounding.That was a woman with a teaspoon the size of Texas.
It helps explain what triggered Parks' lifelong campaign against the ritualistic rape of black women by white men, said McGuire, whose recent book "At the Dark End of the Street" examines how economic intimidation and sexual violence were used to derail the freedom movement and how it went unpunished during the Jim Crow era.
"I thought it was because of the stories that she had heard. But this gives a much more personal context to that," said McGuire, an assistant professor of history at Wayne State University in Detroit.
...McGuire wondered why Parks omitted the attempted rape incident from her memoirs but included the story about the little boy who threatened her.
"It shows some kind of conscious effort in shaping her own legacy but also, I think, speaks to the issue of respectability. She doesn't necessarily feel comfortable telling the world about what happened," she said. "But she's contemplating telling people about it because she's written it down."
Open Thread & News Round-Up: Debt Negotiations
Here's the latest...
Peter Daou sums up where we are: "So, two parties are bickering over opposing plans to sink the country into recession and if they can't pick one, they'll torpedo the economy." Pretty much.
As I mentioned last night, "House Republican leaders have postponed indefinitely a vote on Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) debt limit bill after they could not persuade enough Republicans to support the measure."
You know we're really in trouble when Joe Klein is a voice of reason: "Let us not put too fine a point on it: [Any] House vote on Speaker John Boehner's debt ceiling proposal is a joke. If it passes the House, Harry Reid has said it is dead on arrival in the Senate. If it somehow passes the Senate, which it won't, President Obama will veto it. It is, therefore, a symbolic act that is wasting precious time. It follows last week's Republican theatrics, the passage of the Cut and Demolish Act (or whatever they called it), which also was a waste of time. These are the actions of a party that has completely lost track of reality–and of a leader, John Boehner, who has lost the support of his party."
By the way, that lack of support is owing, in part, to the fact that there are members of the Republican caucus who "are angry that it includes $17 billion in supplemental spending for Pell Grants, which some compare to welfare."
In the sense that Pell Grants are money provided by the government to people who need it, they are like welfare, which I don't consider a dirty word. Of course, that is not an opinion members of the Republican caucus share with me. Which is basically why we're in the situation we're in—a fundamental disagreement about the role of government and "entitlements," which Republicans spit out like a curse. Personally, I don't find anything controversial about the idea that old, ill, injured, disabled, widowed, orphaned, poor, unemployed, or otherwise needful people are entitled to assistance from the rest of their society.
Anyway, speaking of the Republicans being jackasses...
James Fallows in The Atlantic: Five Reasons the House GOP Is to Blame. (And he doesn't let the Democrats off the hook, either.)
Over at the New York Times, Paul Krugman takes a further look at the disaster that is centrism:
The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster. ... Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. As you may know, President Obama initially tried to strike a "Grand Bargain" with Republicans over taxes and spending. To do so, he not only chose not to make an issue of G.O.P. extortion, he offered extraordinary concessions on Democratic priorities: an increase in the age of Medicare eligibility, sharp spending cuts and only small revenue increases. As The Times's Nate Silver pointed out, Mr. Obama effectively staked out a position that was not only far to the right of the average voter's preferences, it was if anything a bit to the right of the average Republican voter's preferences.For further general reading, there's a lot of good stuff in the Guardian's Economics section.
But Republicans rejected the deal. So what was the headline on an Associated Press analysis of that breakdown in negotiations? "Obama, Republicans Trapped by Inflexible Rhetoric." A Democratic president who bends over backward to accommodate the other side — or, if you prefer, who leans so far to the right that he's in danger of falling over — is treated as being just the same as his utterly intransigent opponents. Balance!
...Many pundits view taking a position in the middle of the political spectrum as a virtue in itself. I don't. Wisdom doesn't necessarily reside in the middle of the road, and I want leaders who do the right thing, not the centrist thing.
Question of the Day
What was the last gift you gave someone?
"Someone" doesn't have to be limited to someone else; if the last gift you gave was to yourself, that counts, too.
Debtpocalypse Update
Reportedly, there will not be a House vote on Boehner's plan today after all. The vote is being postponed for Maude only knows what reason (probably because Boehner didn't have the votes), but I'm sure it can only make things worse!
I'll just go ahead and second D-Day: "The Boehner austerity plan is postponed, raising hopes that the Reid austerity plan has a path to passage. How exciting!"
lolsob.
Quote of the Day
"Obviously gay marriage is not fine with me."—Texas Governor Rick Perry.
OBVIOUSLY. Because, in addition to being garbage governor of the great state of Texas, he is also a Semi-Professional, Full-Tilt, World-Class, Grade-A, Award-Winning, Multi-Multihyphenate Dipfuck of Epic Proportions.
To provide some superfun context for this quote, Perry was "clarifying" previous remarks about same-sex marriage being legalized in New York, which sounded like he might whooooooooops actually support it. Heavens to Mergatroyd!
Texas Gov. Rick Perry wants you to know he isn't fine with gay marriage.So, make no mistake, people: Rick Perry is STILL A BIGOT!
In an interview with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins he hedged controversial comments made at a dinner in Aspen last week when he said, "Our friends in New York six weeks ago passed a statute that said marriage can be between two people of the same sex. You know what? That's New York, and that's their business, and that's fine with me."
"I probably needed to add a few words after that 'it's fine with me,'" Perry admitted to Perkins Thursday.
And he repeated his commitment to the 10th amendment as well as his conviction that marriage should be between a man and a woman. "It's fine with me that a state is using their sovereign rights to decide an issue. Obviously gay marriage is not fine with me. My stance hasn't changed."
Recommended Reading
Julianne Hing: Raquel Nelson and the Aggressive Prosecutions of Black Mothers. I'm not even going to excerpt it; it really just needs to be read in full.
[H/T to @GarlandGrey.]
Number of the Day
$117,437: The amount of money Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ealpieceofwork), "who has spent months lecturing President Obama and Democrats on fiscal responsibility," owes in back child support.
When the Tea Party totesfuck was asked about his deadbeatery by CNN, Walsh replied: "I know that story just broke, and it's interesting that it just broke right now as I'm out there trying my best to fight this President and fight the Democrats and solve this debt crisis. But look, I'm the most openly vetted candidate in the world. I have had financial troubles and I talked about them throughout the campaign. This is where real America is."
Yup. He understands the plight of "Real Americans" because he's stiffing his kids, despite having the resources to loan his own campaign $35,000.
Daily Dose of Cute
All day, Dudley and Zelda are quiet as little church-mice while I work, and then, all evening, it's WRASSLIN' TIME!!! They looooooove playing tug-of-war, and would literally play all night if we let them. It isn't a dominance game (at least it's not so far, and we only let them play it if we're watching, so we can keep an eye on it): If one of them manages to actually "win," they flop the toy immediately back at the other one, to keep the game going. If I take away Pinkie, they play with a plush ice cream cone, and if I take away Coney, they just roll around together on the floor, play-biting each other's faces. If I make them "sit" to calm it down for a bit, they give me these pitiful looks as if to say, "Whyyyyyyy?! Why do you haaaaaaaaate us?! You're the WORST!" Then immediately set to running around snapping at flies as soon as I release them.
Dudley and Zelda run in a circle in the living room, each of them holding onto an end of a long thin squeaky toy known as Pinkie, playing tug-of-war with it. Zelda growls playfully. Both of their tails wag wildly. Offscreen, Iain walks into the room and can be heard sighing with mock exasperation: "Oh, dear. Come on, you two. Knock it off!" I laugh, and say, "Noooo! They're playing!" Iain sighs dramatically, as he pet s Dudley, who stands for the petting for about half a second before running back to play with Zelda.
Still holding onto Pinkie, Zelda jumps up onto the couch, then off the couch, then onto the loveseat, then off the loveseat. I laugh. "They're so funny!" Squeak squeak squak as they wrestle. Zelda's jaws are a lot stronger than Dudley's, and when she gets it away from him, she flops the loose end back at him, so he can grab it again. She snarls playfully. "Ohhh," I say, as if she's ferocious, and then laugh.
On Harassment and the Marking of Visible Womanhood
[Trigger warning for misogyny, rape culture.]
So, yesterday we had this great thread about how telling people to "smile" is not merely impolite, but a gross disrespect of agency. As frequently happens in such threads, there was also discussion of other types of street harassment and getting hit on.
Often, we contributors/mods have our own private conversations about topics being discussed on the blog, especially when we want to chat about something tangential that would be a derail to the main point. Yesterday, in tandem with the aforementioned thread, we were talking about the truly fucked-up scenario in which women who deviate from traditional definitions of womanhood, or whose appearance is nonconforming to beauty standards, are excluded from such discussions by virtue of having rarely or never harassed in that way.
It's an important conversation, and it deserves its own thread.
It is a conversation I've had before with trans women, with fat cis women, women with noticeable physical disabilities, and with a women who has severe craniofacial deformities—the "I don't want to be treated like a piece of meat or an object or a possession, but because Visible Women are treated like pieces of meat and objects and possessions, the fact that I'm not makes me feel like I'm not even a woman" conversation.
The conversation about feeling excluded from the sisterhood, because you haven't been harassed in the way most women talk about being harassed.
None of the women with whom I've ever had this conversation want to be harassed, nor do they want other women to be harassed, either—and yet there is something akin to envy they feel, sheerly by virtue of being on the outside looking in.
Simultaneously, they feel guilty for feeling that way, because, to a harassed woman, there is nothing enviable about being harassed.
Except, of course, for how there is—because being harassed is a routine part of the Visible Woman's experience. And as long as women's value is determined by objectification, to not be objectified is to feel unvalued, even if to not be objectified is what you want.
This, of course, is not a commentary on women—objectified or not, feminist or not. This is a commentary on the Patriarchy, and how unfathomably fucked-up it is that a failure to be treated poorly—not in exchange for being treated well, but as an alternative to not being acknowledged at all—has the capacity to make women feel worthless.
What a choice: Acknowledged but harassed, or ignored and denied recognition of one's womanhood.
It's a terrible predicament, this place of horrible and shameful "envy," that most women (especially feminist women) probably experience at one time or another during their lives. An older woman finally free of being hit on and cat-called and told to smile may suddenly "miss" the harassment the despised, because its void is not born of a long-sought respect, but of a silent commentary on her diminished worth as a sex object per the Patriarchy's horseshit standards. Two female friends of different races might alternately "envy" each other for the unique forms of objectification by which they're respectively targeted: She gets harassed by people who ignore me because she looks like the Girl Next Door. She gets harassed by people who ignore me because she looks Exotic. Etc.
Knowing how fucked-up it is doesn't change that visceral feeling of alienation: We are all too keenly aware of the narratives used to marginalize us.
And this "envy" is not just about being recognized as a woman; it's also about getting access to the tables at which women sit.
I have had friends who have never been raped confess to me with wracking guilt that they "envy" my history, because to have survived rape is to have earned admission into what can be a very tight-knit group of survivors, not unlike a group of veterans who emerged from the trauma of war as "brothers," having experienced something outsiders cannot understand and sharing a bond outsiders cannot penetrate.
They needn't feel guilty: I understand what they are saying. They don't want me to have been raped. They are not minimizing it. They don't want to be raped themselves. They are simply acknowledging a feeling born of the reality that so many women are victimized by sexual violence that it can feel, to women who have not been, that a key part of what defines womanhood is missing from their histories.
We all view, if not consciously, sexual violence and harassment as a sort of rite of passage, a fire through which we must pass on our way to womanhood. To be denied that trial, even though we don't want it, is to be denied as Woman.
I can think of few things that more poignantly underline how truly and comprehensively woman-hating the Patriarchy is than its creation of an "envy" to be hurt, just to feel like a complete woman.
[Commenting Guidelines: Please note that if your immediate response to this is to assert that you've never experienced this "envy," that may well be a function of privilege. Visible Womanhood is an indicator of privilege—cis women tend to be more visible than trans women, straight women more visible than lesbians, white women more than women of color, able-bodied women more than women with disabilities, etc. I strongly encourage you, rather than reflexively challenging the concept, to listen to the experiences of less privileged women which will certainly be shared here.]
If We Really Lived in a Post-Feminist World...
...banning advertisements that are explicitly designed to fool, manipulate, and body-shame women into buying expensive products that cannot possibly deliver what is promised via the sneakery of Photoshop would be the rule, rather than the exception.
Well done, MP Jo Swinson.
Today in Totally Not Terrorism
[Trigger warning for anti-choice terrorism.]
There are a lot of things that don't get called terrorism in this country, but chief among them is the anti-choice movement, which is the most brazen, unapologetic terrorist campaign in the US, its co-ordination and orchestration done right out in the open, where no one in the media or politics will call it what it is. It is an inherently violent ideology, backed by a decades-long campaign of intimidation, harassment and violence directed at abortion providers and abortion seekers, that is ignored by one party and mainstreamed as a central plank of its party platform by the other.
Tuesday night, in McKinney, Texas, another Planned Parenthood clinic was the target of another incident of Totally Not Terrorism, during which, fortunately, no one was physically injured:
A heavy glass door is all that stood between damaging flames threatening a family planning clinic in McKinney and an arsonist's sights.This shit doesn't happen in a void. Now even clinics that are providing exclusively preventative care to women are being targeted by terrorists because of the incendiary rhetoric of Republicans across the nation who demonize abortion, demonize abortion providers and abortion seekers, and mendaciously frame Planned Parenthood as an abortion mill.
McKinney police and fire crews responded to a small fire that broke out around 10:05 p.m. Tuesday at the front door of the Planned Parenthood clinic, located in a block of stories in the 1700 block of Eldorado Parkway, clinic, police and fire officials confirmed on Wednesday.
...Holly Morgan, director of communications for Planned Parenthood of North Texas in Dallas, said the person or persons involved in the attack threw a Molotov cocktail, consisting of diesel fuel in a glass bottle with a lit rag, at the clinic's front door.
...The incident is also unique because the McKinney location does not provide surgical procedures or abortions for their approximately 4,000 clients, Morgan said.
"It's an all-preventive care location: well-woman visits, breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control," she said. "They don't provide legal safe abortions, only preventive care."
As an interesting side note, the original URL at which this story appears to have been located now takes you to a story about a local town winning an award for online financial transparency. That story also appears in their Most Popular, Most Emailed, and Most Commented sections, which seems wildly unlikely given the content.
The mysterious switcheroo happened after Ben Armbruster linked to it from Think Progress. (I mentioned it to him this morning, and now his piece has been updated with the correct link, which he also helpfully provided to me.) Naturally, I can certainly imagine how and why such a mysterious switcheroo might have happened, although I'm quite certain such expressions of cynicism would be resoundingly dismissed as the fantastic hysteria typical of people who write about Lady Business.
Open Thread & News Round-Up: Debt Negotiations
Here's the latest...
TPMDC—Hope for Boehner? Some House Conservatives Closing Ranks on Debt Limit Bill: "On Tuesday, conservative Republican Study Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) predicted defeat for House Speaker John Boehner's (R-OH) plan to raise the debt limit. ... He was counting on the opposition of dozens of House conservatives who have in the past pledged not to raise the debt limit on terms that compromising with Democrats would require. Twenty-four hours later, after taking a beating from the GOP establishment and party leadership, and after watching Democrats grow more and more confident in their ability to split the Republican coalition, those conservatives are reconsidering their rebellion."
But outside Congress...
The Hill—Tea Party leader: Boehner must go: "Tea Party Nation leader Judson Phillips called on House Speaker John Boehner 'to go' and be replaced by a 'Tea Party Speaker of the House' in a blog post Wednesday morning, the same day that Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, said that her group was looking into the same idea. 'Now Boehner is in the process of surrendering again. He is surrendering not to [President] Obama, but to the status quo in Washington,' Phillips wrote."
Back in the Speaker's office...
Think Progress—Boehner: 'A Lot' of Republicans Want to Force Default, Create 'Enough Chaos' to Pass Balanced Budget Amendment: "House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said today that some members of his own caucus who are refusing to agree to a compromise debt ceiling deal are hoping to unleash 'chaos' and thus force the White House and Senate Democrats to make bigger concessions than they're already offering."
Oh, look who's talking...
The Note—McCain Blasts Tea Party for 'Foolish' Demands in Debt Debate:
"To hold out and say we won't agree to raising the debt limit until we pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the constitution. It's unfair, it's bizarre," McCain railed on the Senate floor, "And maybe some people have only been in this body for six or seven months or so really believe that. Others know better."When John McCain is your voice of reason, Republicans, you have DERAILED.
Many of the most conservative members of the House have said they will not vote for any debt ceiling increase that does not include a Balanced Budget Amendment and deeper spending cuts. Similarly, some conservatives Republicans in the Senate have said the same.
McCain called this "amazing," "foolish" and "deceiving" that some members believe that this can happen, now with only 6 days left until the nation defaults on its debts with the August 2 deadline for action looming.
"To somehow think or tell our citizens that if we have enough debate and amendment here in the Senate in the short term in the next six days that we will pass a balanced budget amendment to the constitution is unfair to our constituents," McCain said.
McCain is a supporter of a Balanced Budget Amendment but does not believe that the station now, just six days away from the August 2 deadline for action, is the correct time to be pushing for this when it does not stand a chance when connected to the debt ceiling increase.
The Caucus—Senate Democrats Promise to Reject Boehner Plan: "Fifty-three Democratic senators have signed a letter to House Speaker John A. Boehner saying they intend to vote against his plan for an increase in the debt ceiling, virtually assuring its defeat in the Senate even as the speaker lines up Republican votes to pass it in the House on Thursday. Votes are not final until they are cast. But if the Democrats hold to their promise in the letter, Mr. Boehner's plan for a six-month increase in borrowing authority will not make it to President Obama's desk."
D-Day at FireDogLake: "Both parties have insistently harped on the desirability of cutting the deficit for the past six months [at the expense of progressive economic options]. The public may not be tuned in, but they pick up on these broad themes, and since there has been no debate on public investment in job creation, they naturally gravitated toward the fantasy of expansionary contraction. To those who want to say that the President is making the best of a bad situation, THIS is the problem. It changes the entire dynamic of the realm of possible economic solutions for the next decade or more. And when the economy suffers from austerity, since a Democrat basically called for it, that's who will be blamed."
David at Hullabaloo: "As if the White House couldn't get any more dense, members of President Obama's text message feed received the following today: 'Join President Obama in calling on Congress for a balanced approach to reducing the deficit. Contact your House representative at [number].' You've got to be kidding. Since the Grand Bargain is pretty much dead, there are only two plans on the table, and they're pretty similar: Harry Reid's right-wing austerity approach that counts savings from reductions in spending on the wars overseas while shifting the need to take up this argument again until after the 2012 election, and John Boehner's even farther right-wing austerity measure that doesn't count those savings, while forcing everyone to go through this fight again early next year."
Question of the Day
What do you say to dogs and/or cats when you meet them for the first time?
Me-
Dogs: "Hey you! What are you doin'?"
Cats: "Get a job!"
If you tend to talk to other animals, by all means, include them. And yes, I know about the xkcd cartoon.
HOORAY! (Sarcasm.)
You have all been emailing me NONSTOP about how much you love Horrible Bosses, so you will be delighted to hear that it made lots of money at the box office and thus is there already talk of a sequel!
I can't wait until the sequel gets made, and comes out in theaters, and makes lots of money, and then comes out on Streaming Laser Robot-Disc or however we watch movies IN THE FUTURE, and then all of you can come over to my house and we can make popcorn and watch a double-feature of The Hangover 2 and Horrible Bosses 2: Shit Is About to Get Horribler! and WE WILL ALL BE SO HAPPY!
Pillow fiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!
Why, Tim Gunn, Why?
[Trigger warning for transmisogyny, gender policing, body policing.]
Fucking hell:
Apparently, it never gets old to mock Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's "cankles" and pantsuits, at least if you're Tim Gunn and George Lopez, who took the sexist trash-talking to the next level on Lopez's show last night.1. That is not in the job description of the Secretary of State. 2. This is the exact reason why it's bullshit when ostensibly progressive publications lay into female candidates for spending money on their appearance: The expectations on women in the public sphere are outrageous.
...After paying lip service to Clinton's actual accomplishments, Gunn demanded, "Why must she dress that way? I think she's confused about her gender!" He added, "No, I'm really serious, she wears pantsuits that are unflattering." Then it went on to "cankles."
Gunn finished, "I have great respect for her intellect and her tenacity and for what she does for our country in her governmental role. I just wish she could send a stronger message about American fashion."
(Yes, expecting Hillary Clinton to give a fuck about "sending a message about American fashion" while meeting with foreign dignitaries is outrageous, or the word has lost all meaning.)
I could spend the rest of the day debunking the heaping shitloads of garbage embedded within Gunn's and Lopez's exchange (of which there is video at the link, if you're inclined to protract the agony), but I wouldn't say anything I haven't said a thousand times before. Fuck it.
I will instead just note that when a woman stands up and says, "If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights once and for all," and then says, fifteen years later, "Human rights are gay rights and gay rights are human rights," thus allying herself with a ginormous swath of the fashion industry in a fight for recognition of our basic personhood, anyone who gives a flying flunderton if she wears a goddamn potato sack for the rest of her days, no less sneers at her cankles in a fit of misogynistic and objectifying and dehumanizing pique, is an asshole of epic proportions.
And, seriously, if you look at this AP photo of Clinton with other foreign ministers and officials at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Bali last Saturday—
—and its most important aspect to you is how her suit fits, you have lost the plot.
TV Corner!
Below, care of Deeky, is the trailer for a fall series coming to ABC, entitled Pan Am. Conceived as a "period drama about the pilots and flight attendants who once made Pan Am the most glamorous way to fly," it looks like a cross between Mad Men and Catch Me If You Can, with all the stylized backlash goodness of implying that America's Golden Age of pre-feminism was funsexytimes to be a lady while simultaneously recreating for entertainment purposes enough rank misogyny endemic to the era to insidiously scold modern women for not realizing how good they've got it. YAY!
The other awesome (where awesome = totes horrendo) thing about setting a show in the past is how you can make it all about straight white people, and respond to criticism about a lack of diversity with: THAT'S JUST HOW IT WAS BACK THEN!
People of color and queer people and women who weren't caricatures of a stereotype of a straw-woman stitched together with myths and hooey didn't even EXIST until they started complaining about stuff.
It's called history. Look it up.
In the opening scenes, a young, white, conventionally attractive women ditches her own wedding and goes to live with her friend Monica in an apartment above Central Perk. No. Wrong show. She ditches her own wedding and runs away to become a Pan Am stewardess. Her maid of honor and getaway driver also (or instead of her?) becomes a Pan Am stewardess. Pilots. Kissing. "Welcome to the jet age." Thanks, get me an airsick bag, Pilot Handsome.
Montagery. Stewardesses have to have the requisite level of beauty and grace. And they get weighed. And get their girdles snapped by mean marms to make sure eveything's being properly tucked in. These humiliations are set to a fun Frank Sinatra track no doy.
But also! They're on the cover of Life magazine and will totes get husbands. WORTH IT!
I am admittedly not paying a whole lot of attention to this trailer, because OMFG I am using all my energy to hold down my lunch, but I think one of them becomes a mule? Who cares. The trailer sure doesn't, because we're off to more montagery of shiny new airplanes and handsome pilots and pretty stewardesses, and jokes from handsome pilots about how flying a new plane is better than sex "and she's a virgin!"
Pilots are basically rock stars who send helicopters to collect stewardesses who are basically whores for layover sex romps. "And sweetheart, wear the girdle."
Whooooooooooops I barfed on your trailer. I'm sorry! It was all the turbulence IN MY BRAIN.
See, on the one hand, we're supposed to be all, "Hey, there's a chick in this show who isn't looking for a husband; she's loves the FREEDOM," but, the thing is, apart from the fact that she will almost DEFINITELY be the character who falls in love and/or gets raped, there is scene after scene of women being subjected to oppressive and degrading work regulations and being demeaned by objectifying men, most of which are played for laughs, to an audience still steeped in misogyny.
The most obnoxious aspect of "retro chic" entertainment like this is the aggressively insistent pretense that institutional misogyny is a thing of the past, so it's okay to laugh at the ABSURDITY of flight attendants getting weighed, except whoops that still happens.
Anyway, there is more of this trailer—O HAI CHRISTINA RICCI SORRY ABOUT YOUR CAREER—with wedding proposals on windy runways and scenes of the Pan Am stewardesses walking in lockstep in their matching uniforms, while some dude talks about their being a "new breed of woman" in voiceover, and fucky times and giggling and a BIG PAN AM LOGO THE END.
Between this shit and the trailer for NBC's fall "period drama" The Playboy Club (which ALSO features a Frank Sinatra song lulz of course it does), it's gonna be a great new television season in Backlash Broadcasting.
Sob.
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning for violence.]
"Yesterday, in an apparent attempt to rally their caucus, the Republicans played a clip from a cops-and-robbers movie called The Town. In the scene they chose to inspire their House freshmen, one of the crooks gives a pep talk to the other, right before they both put on hockey masks, bludgeon two men with sticks, and shoot a man in the leg. Literally, in the movie, the protagonists say people are going to get hurt, but they go ahead and do it anyway. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your House Republican majority."—Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), criticizing House Republican leadership for using violent rhetoric (AGAIN) to inspire Republican representatives to legislative action.
That would be the same House of Representatives from which Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is still on medical leave after being shot by a violent asshole who did not grow up in a void.
Nope
Telling people to "smile" and/or "laugh" is not, in fact, nice.
Telling people how to behave is an assertion of ownership; it is disdainful of individual agency, a failure to acknowledge boundaries and autonomy.
That auditing other people's emotions could be considered "nice" is absurd. But par for the course in a culture that is contemptuous of consent.
[H/T to Shaker Sophiefair.]
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by friendship.
Recommended Reading:
Congratulations to Fannie and Hammerpants! Much love and happiness to you!
Amy: A Victory in the War Against Profiteering
Aunt B: Help Me Understand This
Mary: Where have all the startups gone?
Andy: Italy's Parliament Rejects Anti-Homophobia Bill
Copyranter: Florida Paper Names Its Women's Section "Skirt!"
Melissa: Toronto Film Festival Lineup Roll Out: The Women
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Rep. Bobby Franklin Dies
Shaker ElphieLives emails, which I am sharing with her permission:
GA State Rep Bobby Franklin has passed away from natural causes. Since he was featured a couple of times earlier this year, I thought that I would pass this on. I do not celebrate his passing, and feel great sympathy his wife and children. I am, however, relieved that I will no longer have to hear about the horrible anti woman legislation that he was constantly introducing. I also understand the wish to not speak ill of the dead, but it is sickening to hear him described as kind, gentle, and principled. I would avoid the comments on these articles, ajc.com comment sections are frequently cesspools of nastiness.I can't really add much to that. My condolences to those who loved him.
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Trigger warning for misogyny, racism, body policing, heterocentrism, gender essentialism, rape culture.]
Holy Shit: 10 Things Men Find Unattractive.
Don't let the genericism of the title fool you: This is no standard-issue entry in the Worst Thing series, which has featured a number of "Listen Up, Ladies"-type pieces. This piece is uniquely awful in its extraordinarily detailed criticism of women who fail to conform with the author's ("men's") expectations.
The author, nativenotes, a Black man ostensibly directing his "advice" primarily at Black women (but finding the most receptive audience, I imagine, among other men), polices women literally from our heads ("Can we talk about that funky smelling weave with the tracks showing because that's not a good look. Or my natural sisters—who think dry and flaky is the new it do. We ain't feeling you neither.") to our toes ("Chipped nail polish and ashy feet will not be flying either. Talk to the little Asian women and tip them well so you no longer scratch my legs in bed. Thanks.")
The little Asian woman?! Yiiiiiiiiiiikes.
Naturally, everything in between is policed, too, from clothing choices to directions on how to trim our pubic hair.
I was particularly fond of #4: Angry for No Damn Reason. "Some of y'all are taking this feminism thing too far—you're lashing out at men every chance you get and we're tired of it."
You know, I would suggest that if Mr. Nativenotes has found himself on the receiving end of a lot of female anger, he might consider that there may, in fact, be a reason—like, say, writing horseshit articles in which he proudly puts on full display his unrepentant misogyny.
Meanwhile, I imagine there are quite a few men who are none too pleased with his assertion to be speaking for all men, not merely for the heterocentrism and the implication that men are, by nature, misogynist bullies, but also for opening the piece with a disturbing sop to narratives of male sexual aggression and lack of self-control:
Let the record reflect that just because men find said issues unattractive that does not mean we will not attempt to sleep with you. The two are not mutually exclusive; this is a very real disclaimer.Whoa.
My favorite part by a country mile, however, is his friendly closing to all the ladies who have just been given the gift of his sage advice:
Peace and love ladies, I think you're beautiful. I hope you enjoy your weekend and in no way was I trying to offend but a dose of keeping it real is always healthy.Just LOL. I'm not offended; I'm contemptuous.
[H/T to Shaker Amy.]
The Global Echo of Violent Misogyny
by David Futrelle
[Trigger warning for violence, terrorism, eliminationism, misogyny, racism, Islamophobia.]
We all know that Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who killed dozens of people in attacks last Friday, was motivated by a toxic mélange of far-right ideology largely revolving around his intense hatred of Islam. The 1500-page "manifesto" he posted to the internet – a grab-bag of his own writing and material cut and pasted from assorted right-wing sites and even the Unabomber's manifesto – crackles with denunciations of Muslims, "Marxists" and the assorted other bogeymen that haunt right-wing dreams.
But what has yet to be fully appreciated is the degree to which he was also motivated by a deep hatred of women.
I've spent much of the past year seeking out and exposing (and often simply mocking) online misogyny for my blog Man Boobz. I find much of it in what some have taken to calling the "manosphere" – a loose collection of interlinked sites devoted to Men's Rights Activism, pickup artistry, and a strange separatist movement of sorts called Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW). The overwhelming majority of these sites – the most popular of which include The Spearhead, A Voice for Men, In Mala Fide and MGTOWforums.com (to which I won't be providing direct links, but they're easy enough to find, if you're so inclined)– are steeped in misogyny (and in some cases racism). I've become very familiar with their standard misogynist "arguments" and rhetorical tropes.
After a blog reader alerted me to the misogyny in Breivik's manifesto, I read through those sections of the sprawling work that dealt specifically with feminism. I was struck again and again by how utterly familiar it all sounded. Much of it could have been taken word-for-word from the manosphere blogs I read every day. (Not to mention from some of the misogynist trolls who regularly comment on my site.) The ideology is the same, the language is the same, even the specific obsessions are the same – from no-fault divorce to the evils of "Sex and the City."
Here's one typical passage, which appears to have been written by Breivik himself:
It's the destructive and suicidal "Sex and the City" lifestyle (modern feminism, sexual revolution) which we are taught to revere as the truth. In that setting, men are not men anymore, but metro sexual and emotional beings that are there to serve the purpose as a never-criticising soul mate to the new age feminist woman goddess. The perfect matriarchy has now been fulfilled …
Breivik goes on to rant about STDs and no-fault divorce, before moving on to another favorite obsession of manosphere misogynists, the supposed sexual "capital" of manipulative women:
Isolated, "sex and the city lifestyle" is relatively harmless, but if you glorify it and ram it down the throat of mainstream society like we see today it becomes a lethal and destructive societal force as we are witnessing which eventually leads to a complete breakdown of moral/ethics, the nuclear family model and a sustainable fertility rate which again is leading us to the extinction of Europeans.
Females have a significantly higher proportion of erotic capital than males due to biological differences (men have significantly more prevalent sexual urges than females and are thus easily manipulated). The female manipulation of males has been institutionalised during the last decades and is a partial cause of the feminisation of men in Europe. This highly underestimated factor has contributed to the creation and rise of the matriarchal systems which are now dominating Western European countries.
Obsessed with the purported danger that Islam will outbreed the West, Breivik offers an assortment of creepy solutions to increase the fertility of Western whites. (It's not altogether clear to me if these are all his own views, but they certainly are consistent with what he says elsewhere in the manifesto.) After suggesting limiting contraception and banning abortion, Breivik offers this idea:
Discourage women in general to strive for full time careers. This will involve certain sexist and discriminating policies but should increase the fertility rate by up to 0,1-0,2 points.
That last "side effect" does not seem to be much of a problem for Breivik.
Women should not be encouraged by society/media to take anything above a bachelor's degree but should not be prevented from taking a master or PhD. Males on the other hand should obviously continue to be encouraged to take higher education – bachelor, master and PhD. …
Womens "new role" should be actively illustrated and glorified through series, movies and commercials. …
The end result for implementing the above reforms would be an increase in the fertility rate up from 1,5 to approximately 2,1-2,4 which would be sustainable.
However, this will also involve significant restrictions in women's rights and media rights.
Large chunks of the manifesto consist of cut-and-pasted blog posts from an anonymous far-right Norwegian blogger known as Fjordman. (See my post here for an extensive number of quotes from Fjordman that Breivik included in his manifesto.) Like Breivik's own writings, many of Fjordman's writings could be lifted virtually word for word from "manosphere" blogs.
One internet prankster conducted a little experiment that proved pretty clearly just how unexceptional this sort of rhetoric is in the manosphere, posting an assortment of misogynist quotes from Breivik's manifesto (all of them taken originally from Fjordman) to Reddit's Men's Rights forum – without identifying them as being from Breivik.
Despite – or perhaps because of – the blatant misogyny, the post initially received numerous upvotes and some positive comments ("Nice post man") from the regulars. Once it was revealed that the quotes had come from Breivik's manifesto, the downvotes and critical comments began to stack up. (I wrote about the incident here.)
But Reddit's Men's Rights subreddit is actually one of the most moderate and least misogynistic Men's Rights hangout online. Others in the manosphere have stepped up to defend Breivik's manifesto (if not his actions) plainly and explicitly, in full knowledge of just whose ideas they are endorsing.
On In Mala Fide, blogger Ferdinand Bardamu praises Breivik's "lucidity," and blames his murderous actions on the evils of a too-liberal society:
[A]nother madman with a sensible manifesto. Another completely rational, intelligent man driven to murderous insanity. And once again, society has zero introspection in regards to its profound ability to turn thoughtful men into lunatic butchers.
He's not being sarcastic here. He continues:
That makes HOW many rage killers in the past five years alone? And not just transparent headcases like Jared Loughner or George Sodini, but ordinary men like Pekka-Eric Auvinen or Joe Stack who simply weren't going to take it anymore. No one bothers to ask WHY all these men suddenly decide to pick up a gun and start shooting people – they're all written off as crazies. Or the rage killings are blamed on overly permissive gun laws …
That final reference to "ethnic self-hatred" seems to be Bardamu's euphemistic way of complaining that not enough white people are white supremacists.
Here's an idea – sick societies produce sick individuals who do sick things. Anders Breivin [sic] murdered nearly a hundred teens (not children, TEENS – they were at a summer camp for young adults) and must pay the price, but the blood of those teens is ultimately on the hands of the society that spat him forth. He is the bastard son of a masochistic, degenerate, rootless world that pisses on its traditions and heritage to elevate perversity, mindless consumerism and ethnic self-hatred to the highest of virtues.
Meanwhile, Chuck of Gucci Little Piggy offers what appears to be a somewhat more restrained, if ultimately more puzzling, defense of Breivik's manifesto – or at least that portion of the manifesto that Breivik borrowed from the writings of far-right blogger Fjordman.
After first complaining, incorrectly, that feminists are "try[ing] to blame Breivik on MRAs" (he cites me and Hugo Schwyzer as examples), Chuck goes on to endorse Breivik's (and Fjordman's) notion that feminism "grease[s]the wheels to allow Islam into his country," as Chuck summarizes the argument. The rest of Chuck's post elaborates on, and endorses, Breivik's/Fjordman's theories, arguing that feminism's "emasculation of Western men has taken the organic policing mechanism out of the hands of men in society" and thus rendered Western society helpless before the Islamic cultural invaders. (More on Bardamu and Gucci Little Piggy's arguments here.)
But the strangest response I've seen so far to the massacre in Norway comes from Sofiastry, an antifeminist blog that seems to be broadly sympathetic to the "alt" (that is, the "intellectually" racist) right. Apparently taking her cue from Bardamu, Sofia offers an appreciation of sorts for Breivik's repellant manifesto:
[A]lthough his actions were cruel beyond belief, and committed by a delusional, psychopath driven by his delusions of political grandeur, there is lucidity and sense in much of what he writes. He never seemed to explicitly advocated [sic] for a genocide of Muslims within Europe, but superficially claimed that he just wanted to sustain European culture.
So, let's weigh Breivik's pros and cons here. CON: He murdered dozens of people in cold blood, motivated by a hateful ideology. PRO: He didn't explicitly call for actual genocide?
And then it just gets, well, weird:
I feel that Breivik is being tried for more than his cruelty within the feminist community. The fact that he belongs to the privileged group of the white male makes him hate-worthy along with every other privileged white male who might sympathize with his ideology, even if they don't happen to be psychotic. Breivik exemplifies White Men, even though Osama Bin Laden to the very same liberal ideologues did not represent Every Muslim.
Yep, that's right. She thinks we hate Breivik … because he's a white dude.
It's another symptom of our culture that feels it is OK to hold white men to higher standards of political correctness, self-flagellation and martyrdom whilst simultaneously relentlessly berating and mocking them on a cultural level.
I can't speak for every feminist, but for me, it's more the murdering, and the misogyny, and the racism. But mostly the murdering. (For more on Sofia, see here.)
Despite the many undeniable similarities between Breivik's repellent misogyny and misogynist beliefs that are widespread in the "manosphere," some MRAs profess to be shocked –shocked! – that anyone would connect the dots. MRA bloviator Bernard Chapin, for example, responded to my first piece on Breivik with an angry, incoherent ten minute YouTube diatribe expressing his outrage that I would possibly suggest any connection between MRA thought and a "psychopath" like Breivik. It's a classic case of someone protesting too much. The connections are clear to anyone willing to see them.
No, Breivik is not an MRA. No, he didn't take his marching orders from The Spearhead or In Mala Fide. But he is steeped in the same kind of hatred that is prevalent on those sites, and many of his repugnant beliefs about feminism and women in general are virtually identical to beliefs widespread in the misogynistic manosphere – a fact that a few in the manosphere are already willing to acknowledge out loud, as we saw above.
No, not every misogynist is going to pick up a gun. But ideas do have consequences. Vile, hateful ideas have vile, hateful consequences.
PS: For more on Breivik's misogyny, see Michelle Goldberg's Norway Killer's Hatred of Women in TheDailyBeast.
Open Thread & News Round-Up: Debt Negotiations
Here's the latest...
Politico—CBO: John Boehner's debt bill comes up short: "New cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office could pose a problem for Speaker John Boehner as he tries to rally conservative support for his two-step plan to raise the federal debt ceiling and avert default next week. ... The first installment of $900 billion is contingent on enacting 10 year caps on annual appropriations which the leadership had hoped would save well over $1 trillion. But CBO late Tuesday came back with a report showing the legislation would reduce deficits by $850 billion when measured against the agency’s most current projections for spending."
AP—House GOP to rework budget plan after new estimate: "A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner says House Republican leaders are working to rewrite their deficit-reduction plan after receiving an estimate that it won't cut spending as much as advertised."
CNN—Conservative groups come out against Boehner proposal: "As House Speaker John Boehner and the House Republican leadership continues to build support for its proposal to raise the debt ceiling, several influential tea party and conservative groups Tuesday voiced opposition to it. ... Many of these conservative groups and members only would support increasing the ceiling if it is accompanied by larger spending cuts as well as enactment of a balanced budget amendment while some others flatly oppose any hike."
The Hill—Cantor tells House to 'stop whining' about Boehner debt-ceiling plan: "Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on Tuesday bluntly told House Republicans to stop 'grumbling and whining' about Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) new proposal for a limited debt-limit increase."
Greg Sargent in the WaPo—Dems plot the endgame in debt limit fight: "Here's the game plan, as seen by Senate Dem aides: The next move is to sit tight and wait for the House to vote on Boehner's proposal. The idea is that with mounting conservative opposition, it could very well be defeated. If the Boehner plan goes down in the House, that would represent a serious blow to Boehner's leadership, weakening his hand in negotiations."
So that's where the debt negotiations, such as they are, stand. Meanwhile, Paul Krugman observes that this entire debacle exposes the "true moral failure" of "the cult of balance, of centrism."
We have a crisis in which the right is making [unreasonable] demands, while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending over backward to be accommodating — offering plans that are all spending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right of public opinion.At TPM, Josh Marshall makes a similar observation: "It's been said many times. But it's never enough: the conventions of journalistic 'objectivity', as currently defined, frequently make journalists violate their biggest duty, which is honesty with readers. The top headline running now on CNN reads: 'They're all talking, but no one is compromising, at least publicly. Democratic and GOP leaders appear unwilling to bend on proposals to raise the debt ceiling.' By any reasonable measure, this is simply false, even painfully so."
So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship.
The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president — actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform — his only major change to government — was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else — including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment — is according to the conservative playbook.
...You have to ask, what would it take for these news organizations and pundits to actually break with the convention that both sides are equally at fault? ... And yes, I think this is a moral issue. The "both sides are at fault" people have to know better; if they refuse to say it, it's out of some combination of fear and ego, of being unwilling to sacrifice their treasured pose of being above the fray.
It's a terrible thing to watch, and our nation will pay the price.
Question of the Day
How have you lifted a teaspoon recently in a way that makes you proud?
Doesn't have to be a Big Thing, just an important teaspoon to you.
Photo of the Day
US Speaker of the House of Representative John Boehner speaks with a television crew at the Capitol in Washington on July 25, 2011 after delivering his response to President Barack Obama's address to the nation on the debt ceiling crisis. [Getty Images]Just the look on his face. Oy. Honestly.
[Commenting Guidelines: No, it is not all right to talk about Boehner's tan, or the fact that he's wearing make-up (having just given a televised address), or in any other way make fun of his appearance.]
Fun New Game: Guess the Breed!
So, I've gotten a bunch of emails from people who think Zelda might be something other than a mix of Rottie and Shar Pei. She's a Pittie mix! No, she's a Mini-Pin and a Mastiff! No, she's definitely a Chow mix!
Well, here's your big chance to weigh in, dog genealogists! What breed(s) do YOU think Zelda is?
Occasionally, she reminds me quite a bit of a Shiba Inu, especially when she's alert. When she's running, she has a sort of foxy quality that reminds of the Shiba Inus at the dog park, too. They do come in black-and-tan, so that could explain her markings, as well as her smaller size (38 pounds).
(For the record, there isn't a dog breed that I don't like as a rule, and I'm not remotely invested in what breeds she is, lol. I heart my mutt.)
Number of the Day
37%: The percentage of House votes Rep. Michele Bachmann has missed since launching her presidential bid, which is "significantly higher than the two other House members running for president."
For the record, that is the sort of issue worth raising about a candidate. As opposed to how much she's spent on hair and make-up.
OFFS
Michele Bachmann's $4,700 Hair and Makeup Bill: "Considering Rep. Michele Bachmann's crusade against government spending and her demand that America live within its means, you wouldn't figure her for a conspicuous spender. But after launching her bid for the White House, Bachmann has broken with her usual frugality and shelled out some serious cash on a stylist in what could be seen as her own John-Edwards'-$400-haircut moment. According to Bachmann's latest campaign finance filings, her campaign spent nearly $4,700 on hair and makeup in the weeks after she entered the presidential race on June 13."
Seriously, Mother Jones?
Do we really have to do this EVERY FUCKING ELECTION? Or just the elections in which women are candidates?
Ahem.
$5,000 is an eminently reasonable amount of money for a woman running for national office to spend on a professional makeover. That's the same amount of money spent on just the clothes on an episode of What Not to Wear.
Do I think it's bullshit that Michele Bachmann, or any female candidate, should have to spend five grand in order to be considered presentable by the unfathomably rigid standards of our youth-, fashion-, and appearance-obsessed culture? Yes. Is that a commentary on Michele Bachmann? No.
That's a commentary on what a profoundly misogynist and body-policing garbage culture it is in which we live.
Holding an individual woman responsible for her conformance to standards created by a systemic oppression is bullshit. And that is not how feminism works.
STOP MAKING ME DEFEND MICHELE BACHMANN.
The Return of Fred Thompson
You know you totally missed him. (Especially if your name is Deeky W. Gashlycrumb.) So you are obviously very happy to hear that our dear Fred Thompson, star of screen and senate, has returned (by which I mean I just happened to notice something that he wrote today).
Behold: An Open Letter to the House GOP, a missive about the ongoing debt negotiations which has the actual subhead "Accept the victory and move on," starts out with, "You won, and so did the country," and is signed:
Sincerely,Niiiiiiice.
Your friend,
Fred Thompson
Double closing, single signature. The hallmark of a fancy man who really knows what he's talking about.
Daily Dose of Cute
Above: Last night while we watched Man vs. Wild, Zelda snuggled up on one side of me with her head on my left side, and Matilda snuggled up on the other side of me with her head on my right leg. Piles of cuteness!
Dog Park TONGUES!!!!!!!eleventy!!!1! are below the fold (on most browsers).
Film Corner!
Below, the trailer for the new Justin Timberlake vehicle, In Time, which, as you will soon discover, is a very clever pun. (No it's not. Clever, I mean. It is definitely a pun.) The writer and director of this movie is Andrew Niccol, who wrote and directed some films I liked very much (Gattaca; The Truman Show) but also came up with the story for The Terminal, that garbage film in which Tom Hanks plays a Latka Gravas who lives at the airport, so it could really go either way.
Anyhoo, IMDb informs me that In Time is about a future in which "people stop aging at 25 and must work to buy themselves more time, but when a young man finds himself with more time than he can imagine he must run from the corrupt police force to save his life." Meanwhile, the trailer informs me it is also about a future in which women retain the timeless choice between dude prop or dude trophy.
Once again, I will observe the bitter hilarity of a mind that can conceive of a concept in which a digital life clock counts down on every person's arm, but can't conceive of a concept in which women, and men of color, aren't marginalized supporting cast for a graduate of the Mickey Mouse Club.
To the trailer!
Text Onscreen: "In the late 21st Century, time has replaced money as the unit of currency." ("Time is money!"—My Dad, telling me to get busy dusting the living room if I want my $2 allowance, 1984.) More Text Onscreen: "At 25 years old, aging stops, and each person is given one more year to live." ("What is this shit?"—My Dad, if and when he sees this trailer, 2011.) More Text Onscreen: "Unless you replenish your clock, you die." I originally read this as "Unless you replenish your COCK," which I'm pretty sure is a concept developed by S. Freud.
Cue the action thriller music. Justin Timberlake's clock is ticking down. He wants more time. He is OUTRAGED that it costs four minutes for a cup of coffee when yesterday it cost three. He doesn't get paid as much time at work as he expected; he met the quota but OH SHIT the quota has gone up since last week.
He and his friend Roseanne Conner's Son-in-Law meet a dude at a bar who has a CENTURY in his clock. Everyone oohs and ahhs at the guy with the huge clock. Some other asshole wants the guy's clock. Justin Timberlake helps the white dude with the huge clock escape the white dude with the smaller clock through the bathroom window. No, I am not making this up.
They go back to the dude with the huge clock's apartment, where he tells Justin Timberlake that he is 105 years old, but he's had enough. He exposits some stuff about how there wouldn't be room for everyone if everyone had a clock as big as his: "How else could there be men with a million years, while most live day-to-day?"
I realize the clock is supposed to be a metaphor for money/power/influence, but the absence of women in this trailer, combined with the fact that the acquisition and exhibition of wealth in a patriarchal system is itself often a metaphorical dick-measuring contest, is severely undermining my appreciation of the profound existential and justice commentary to which I'm supposed to be paying attention, because all I can think is that this film should not have been called In Time but In My Pants.
Anyway!
Justin Timberlake tells the dude with the huge clock that he "sure as hell wouldn't waste it" if he had a huge clock, so, after Justin Timberlake falls asleep, the dude gives his huge clock to him. Justin Timberlake wakes up to find himself with a huge clock, and a message scrawled in the grime on the window of the loft: "Don't waste my time." MORE PUNS PLEASE!
Blah blah blah now people, namely Cillian Murphy, are after Justin Timberlake's huge clock. JT is meanwhile using his new huge clock to get access to fancy limos and dress-up parties in "New Greenwich." I think he sleeps with a call girl, but only realizes it when he sees that there's less time on his huge clock…? He gets introduced to some very clock-rich white dude's mother-in-law, wife, and daughter, who all look the same age and very much alike.
Eww.
Cillian Murphy shows up to nab JT. It's not clear why, exactly, Cillian Murphy wants to get him, except, I guess, for how we're supposed to infer that the government (or WHOEVER) always wants to crush any threat to their power, but if there are truly white dudes running around with million-year clocks, is a hundred-year clock really that threatening? I'm sure all will become clear IN TIME!
Justin Timberlake punches people and gets his huge clock the heck out of there by taking lookalike daughter played by Amanda Seyfried hostage. She wants to go home, but he won't let her, because she's his insurance policy blah blah blah. This kidnapping is obviously justified because he has a feeling they'll find him guilty whether they can prove it or not. Not only am I convinced, so is she! Cue the running while holding hands and the making out!
Montagery. A collection of random but suuuuuuuuuuuper trite quotes: "If you can buy loyalty, you can buy their trail." "For you to be immortal, many must die." "No one should be immortal, if even one person has to die." "How can you live with yourself watching people die right next to you?" "You don't watch; you close your eyes." "I'm going to make them pay; I'm going to take them for everything they've got."
Ah, okay. This is a treatise on privilege and is, in fact, just a retelling of Robin Hood. JT breaks into a time-bank (lulz) and steals a bunch of time, which he and Amanda Seyfried then hand out to people. "Take the time! It's free!"
More montagery. Evil white dudes with huge clocks say things about time getting into the wrong hands and upsetting the system. To underline that point, we get a scene of a poor black mother turning time over in her hands. Oof your racist symbolism.
THANK HEAVENS THAT NICE WHITE BOY WITH THE HUGE CLOCK IS GONNA SAVE EVERYONE.
"His crime," says someone who cares in voiceover, "wasn't taking time; it was giving it away."
Okay, player.
