Here is some stuff in the news today...
Good, now let's make some shit happen! "This weekend, on the 20th anniversary of the fourth world conference on women in Beijing, leaders from around the globe met in New York City to discuss concrete and measurable plans for eliminating discrimination against women. ...'The highest leaders in the land are taking personal responsibility for their commitment to gender equality and the empowerment of women,' UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said. 'Now the world looks up to them to lead the game-changing actions that secure and sustain implementation. Today we take the first firm steps towards 25 September, 2030.'"
[Content Note: War on agency] Good news—for now: "An El Paso clinic shuttered by Texas' tough 2013 abortion law reopened Tuesday, the first in the state to do so since the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked enforcement of some of the key restrictions three months ago. The Reproductive Services clinic, so close to the Texas-Mexico border that its windows offer views of Ciudad Juarez across the Rio Grande, is now taking appointments and should begin performing abortions next week. The reopening brings to 20 the number of abortion clinics in America's second most-populous state. But that's still down from 41 in 2012, and the facility could close again soon. A June 29 Supreme Court order only created a temporary block that will hold until the high court decides whether to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling refusing to suspend the Texas restrictions. It's not clear when that decision will come, but the summer ruling is a strong indication that the Supreme Court eventually will hear the full appeal—which could be the biggest abortion case in decades. 'We're so excited about the reopening, but the discouraging part is we could be closed down at any time,' said Marilyn Eldridge, president of Nova Health Systems, which operates Reproductive Services."
[CN: Moving GIFs at link; discussion of transphobia] Blub foreverrrr: "Erica Maison, a mother of five from Detroit, surprised her transgender daughter Corey with her first dose of hormones—something the 14-year-old had been waiting over two years to receive. She managed to capture the emotional moment on video." THE LOOK ON COREY'S FACE!!!
[CN: Rape culture; sex abuse] "Lawyers for Dennis Hastert are reportedly in negotiations about a possible guilty plea to charges the former House Speaker was paying to cover-up alleged sexual misconduct with a former male student." I'm sure he'll get a terrific deal, because of course he will. In the meantime: "Hastert remains free on his own recognizance."
Here's just a real story on CNN today: "The Chuck Norris-Mike Huckabee bromance is alive and well." For fuck's sake.
Rush Limbaugh, at maximum Limbaugh: "Okay so there's flowing water on Mars. Yip yip yip yahoo. You know me, I'm science 101, big time guy, tech advance it, you know it, I'm all in. But, NASA has been corrupted by the current regime. I want to find out what they're going to tell us. OK, flowing water on Mars. If we're even to believe that, what are they going to tell us that means? That's what I'm going to wait for. Because I guarantee, let's just wait and see, this is September 28, let's just wait and see. Don't know how long it's going to take, but this news that there is flowing water on Mars is somehow going to find its way into a technique to advance the leftist agenda." Blink.
RIP Catherine Coulson, who most famously played the Log Lady on Twin Peaks. Said David Lynch: "Today I lost one of my dearest friends, Catherine Coulson. Catherine was solid gold. She was always there for her friends—she was filled with love for all people—for her family—for her work. She was a tireless worker. She had a great sense of humor—she loved to laugh and make people laugh. She was a spiritual person—a longtime TM meditator. She was the Log Lady." She was the Log Lady.
Awwwwwww: "The newly discovered Angustopila dominikae is a really tiny snail. With a shell height of just .86 millimeters, nearly 10 of the creatures could fit into the head of a sewing needle."
And finally! "The Happiest Cats Who Show the Best Smiles." I can't be arsed setting up an account to submit a picture, but, if I could, this picture of Olivia is definitely the one I'd submit!
In the News
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Reporting of birth name at link] The US military has "approved hormone therapy for Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst convicted of leaking national security secrets to WikiLeaks, to make the transition to a woman, a media report said Thursday. The decision is said to mark the first time the military has agreed on providing such treatment to any of its personnel. ...'After carefully considering the recommendation that (hormone treatment) is medically appropriate and necessary, and weighing all associated safety and security risks presented, I approve adding (hormone treatment) to Inmate Manning's treatment plan,' [Col. Erica Nelson, the commandant of the Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks] wrote in a memo, obtained by USA Today." One suspects that Nelson also carefully considered that Chelsea Manning was also just announced as a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian. Still: Good news, and good precedent for other trans* servicemembers without Manning's platform.
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Congratulations to $564M Powerball Jackpot winner Marie Holmes, 26, a mother of four, including one child with cerebral palsy, who was recently "forced to quit her jobs at Wal-Mart and McDonald's to care for her four children." She said: "I thought I was going to have a heart attack when I saw the ticket and checked it." Winning the lottery can be a blessing and a curse, for a whole lot of reasons, so I wish her the absolute best and hope that it is, on balance, a great thing for her family.
Ashton B. Carter has been confirmed as Secretary of defense, replacing Chuck Hagel, who resigned late last year. I literally cannot read that guy's name without seeing "Ashton Kutcher." Dude, where's my Pentagon?
[CN: War; terrorism] Cameroon is deploying more troops to its border with Nigeria "after Boko Haram militants kidnapped another 11 people. Scores more have been taken or killed in the last three weeks." Meanwhile: "Boko Haram fighters attacked a village in Chad on Friday, the first known lethal attack in that country by the Nigerian militant group, which killed several people including a local chief according to residents and security forces. Dozens of militants arrived by motorised canoe at the fishing village on the shores of Lake Chad early in the morning, setting houses ablaze and attacking a police station. 'They came on board three pirogues and succeeded in killing about ten people before being pushed back by the army,' said a resident of the village of Ngouboua." It is scandalous how little media coverage this is getting in the United States.
[CN: Racism; police brutality] Yesterday, FBI Director James B. Comey gave a speech to students at Georgetown University in which he "addressed 'hard truths' about policing, acknowledging racial bias among law enforcement officers and lamenting a 'disconnect' between police agencies and communities of color." Well, good. Give him a cookie. Now what are you going to do about it, sir?
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is delightful: "We now know why it appears that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg appeared to fall asleep during President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last month... In a lighthearted moment before an audience at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Thursday night, the 81-year-old Ginsburg cracked up telling the story that she 'wasn't 100 percent sober' before going to the State of the Union. 'The audience—for the most part—is awake because they're bobbing up and down all the time and we sit there stone-faced, sober judges,' Ginsburg said. 'At least I wasn't 100 percent sober because before we went to the State of the Union we had dinner.'"
[CN: Rape culture] Normally, I wouldn't even bother sharing anything that Rush Limbaugh disgorges from his repulsive mouth-hole, but his latest is advising Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to say he dropped out of college to avoid rape charges: "They're trying to create this rape culture on the campus—well, (he should say,) 'I quit because I don’t want to be accused of rape down the road.' ...It seems like any man that goes to college could randomly be accused of committing rape. ...So (Walker should say,) 'I wanted to remove myself from this culture that might have turned me into this very mean guy,' and just see what they say. Cram what they believe right down their throats." It doesn't matter that it's not true. At all. That Walker didn't leave for those reasons. Not only do rapists lie; rape apologists lie, too.
And finally: THIS KITTY IS SO NAUGHTY! And it is hilarious!
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Police brutality; death; racism] An important update on the John Crawford case: Not only is the police account falling apart, but the primary witness account is falling apart, too.
[CN: Police brutality; death; racism] And in Utah, authorities "have altered their account of how a 22-year-old black man was killed by police, after an attorney for the man's family alleged that he was shot repeatedly from behind by officers while running away. The authorities also said that the two police officers involved in the shooting of Darrien Hunt last Wednesday had not yet been interviewed about the incident. The attorney for Hunt's family described this delay as 'almost incomprehensible.'"
[CN: Illness] The US will send 3,000 troops to Africa, at a cost of possibly $750 million over the next six months, in order to lead and facilitate Operation United Assistance. "The general will head a regional command based in Liberia that will help oversee and coordinate U.S. and international relief efforts while a new, separate regional staging base will help accelerate transportation of urgently needed equipment, supplies and personnel."
The FBI has announced "the completion of its new facial recognition system, making operational a program that civil rights groups have warned risks turning millions of citizens with no criminal record into suspects. ...Mug shots will be combined with non-criminal facial images taken from employment records and background check databases, technology news website The Verge reported Monday. That means someone with no criminal history could be implicated as a suspect in a crime if an image of his or her face happens to be in the database, [civil liberties watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation] warned. Compounding that risk is the apparent ineffectiveness of the system, with some in the industry saying the image matching system has a low rate of success, according to The Verge report. The FBI [says the system] is meant to provide a list of candidates—saying that if the true candidate exists in the system, it will appear in the top 50 candidates returned by the system 85 percent of the time, according to documents obtained by the EFF. 'This means that many people will be presented as suspects for crimes they didn't commit,' EFF said."
[CN: Domestic violence] Give him all the cookies: "NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sent a letter Monday to teams and staff announcing the appointment of four women to shape the league's policies on intimate partner violence. Following the release of a video showing Ray Rice's attack on his now wife, and the revelation that law enforcement had sent the video to NFL during their investigation earlier this year, advocacy organizations as well as some politicians have called for Goodell's resignation. ...Despite calls for his resignation, Goodell has said he's not going anywhere, and on Monday announced the creation of several new positions to improve the league's handling of domestic violence." Listen, I am glad that four women who are legit experts have been hired to "advise the league on how to create policies that effectively address sexual assault and domestic violence," but I find it really obnoxious that Goodell is using those women as human shields against meaningful accountability for his catastrophic failures.
[CN: War on agency] Fuck: Missouri Legislators Pass 72-Hour Abortion Waiting Period Law. "Missouri legislators voted late last night to triple the state's current 24-hour waiting period to 72 hours, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Governor Jay Nixon previously vetoed the bill in July, calling it 'extreme and disrespectful.' Missouri's House voted 117-44 to override the veto, and then the Senate used a procedural move to stop a Democratic filibuster of the bill and vote 23-7 to complete the veto override Wednesday."
[CN: Rape culture] Rush Limbaugh continues to be a reprehensible dirtbag: "'How many of you guys in your own experience with women have learned that 'no' means 'yes' if you know how to spot it?' he asked on 'The Rush Limbaugh Show' Monday. ...Limbaugh then read off Ohio State University's definition of consent, which outlines how two people should behave once they have decided to engage in a sexual relationship. It states that you and your partner must agree to engage in the activity every step of the way, including agreeing on 'why' you are doing so. But that just sucks all the fun out of it, Limbaugh said. 'Agreeing on the 'why' takes all the romance out of everything!' he said." If sexytalk during sexytimes "sucks all the fun out of it" for you, I'm pretty sure you're doing it wrong.
Are you so excited about the possibility of Mike Huckabee running for president yet again? I bet you are. He's terrific.
If you are a fan of the Bourne movie series, then you are in luck, because "Universal Pictures has begun making deals with Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass to reunite for their third film in The Bourne Identity series." (The first film in the franchise was directed by Doug Liman.)
Here are some fun pictures of a large-spotted genet riding around on the backs of buffalo and a white rhinoceros. Adorbz!
And finally: Here is video of a giant manta ray approaching divers off Costa Rica, seeking help to disentangle it from part of a fishing net. Extraordinary.
STFU, Limbaugh
[Content Note: Racism; violence; terrorism.]
So, Rush Limbaugh, professional dirtbag, is complaining that there is "a media conspiracy to 'define deviancy down' by portraying Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as an adorable kid through teenage anecdotes and photos that make him look handsome." That would be objectionable enough, but then he went on to compare admitted terrorist Tsarnaev to murdered teenager Trayvon Martin:
"You notice also that the news media are doing to Dzhokhar what they did to Trayvon Martin," Limbaugh said on his radio show Tuesday. "They're regularly showing a photo of Dzhokhar that was taken when he was about 14. Soft, angelic, nice little boy, harmless, cute, big lovable eyes."I'm so fucking angry about that comparison, even and especially in service to one of Limbaugh's entirely typical bullshit media conspiracy stories, that I'm struggling to craft a coherent response.
Trayvon Martin was not a terrorist. He was not terrorizing George Zimmerman's community. He wasn't doing anything wrong at all. He was a kid walking down a street with a bag of Skittles in his hand, who was stalked and harassed and eventually murdered by someone who believed he was up to no good because he was a black kid in a hoodie in his neighborhood.
(And I utterly refuse to indulge any debate here about whether Martin "went after" Zimmerman. If he "went after" him, that was an eminently reasonable self-defense response to an unknown adult who was stalking him in a vehicle and then on foot, something Zimmerman admits doing, though he wouldn't call it "stalking" because he fancies himself some kind of goddamn vigilante hero.)
Limbaugh's attempt to equate Trayvon Martin with a terrorist, for any reason, is a heinous personal attack on Martin, and a profoundly contemptible and harmful narrative that entrenches racist tropes about the violent nature of black men, but the thing that's making me seethe beyond measure is the breathtaking audacity and unfathomable cruelty of comparing one of the most well-known black victims of gun violence to a terrorist, while the country determinedly ignores that young black USians are being terrorized by gun violence.
[T]here exists a clear and unfortunate connection between race and gun violence in this country, and if you are African American, you are far more likely to be a victim of gun violence in America, whether the shooter is Black or White.Which is to say nothing of the murder of young black people by police, as in the case of Oscar Grant.
...[T]he Children's Defense Fund's Protect Children, Not Guns 2012 reports that in 2008 and 2009, Black children and teens accounted for 45 percent of all child and teen gun deaths, but were only 15 percent of the total child population. Moreover, gun homicide was the leading cause of death among Black teens between the ages of 15 and 19.
For too many Black families, these staggering statistics are not just numbers but ingrained into their everyday lives. For instance, Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old honor student, was fatally shot in Hyde Park just days after she returned from participating in President Obama's inaugural parade.
In Prince George's County, Maryland, six high schools students have died of gun violence this academic school year' five of these students were African American and the sixth was Hispanic.
A shooting in Chicago last month took the lives of seven people and injured six others. Ronnie Chambers was among those killed on January 26, 2013; he was the youngest son of Shirley Chambers, who had already lost three other children in three separate shootings. In 2000, Ms. Chambers presciently told the Chicago Tribune after she lost her third child, "I only have one child left, and I'm afraid that [the killings] won't stop until he's gone, too."
In another case, seventeen-year old Jordan Russell Davis was killed on November 23, 2012 by 45-year old Michael David Dunn for playing loud music in Jacksonville, Florida. Dunn pulled up next to Davis and his three friends outside a convenience store. While Dunn's girlfriend went inside to get food, Dunn, agitated by the loud music coming from the SUV, demanded the African American teens to turn down their music.
The teens refused. Dunn shot at least eight times at the SUV while the teens frantically tried to reverse; two of these bullets fatally hit Davis.
This was a letter to the editor in our local paper earlier this month:
While there are many troublesome aspects of gun violence in America, perhaps the most disturbing is the statistical disparity of death by gun violence of black Americans. This disparity is across the board, regardless if shootings are accidental, homicidal or suicidal.This isn't an abstract issue to me. This is happening in my community. Like Shirley Chambers in Chicago, Lenore Johnson of Gary has lost all four of her children to gun violence. Do you understand? There are multiple black mothers who have lost four children to gun violence just in this area. Now multiply that across the entire country. And then think about Rush Limbaugh equating someone who was probably not so dissimilar to their dead children to a confessed terrorist.
The National Institute of Justice reports that young black males from 15 to 19 are five times more likely to be killed by gun violence than their white counterparts. Black teens are dying at an alarming rate of 11.3 per 100,000 compared to white teens dying at the rate of 2.3 per 100,000.
Chicago further illustrates the incidence of gun-related deaths, as it is reported that in 2012 the 515 individuals killed in Chicago's streets outnumbered the 301 soldiers killed in that same year in Afghanistan.
Investigation into the causes of these racial disparities of gun violence in America can shed light on the larger question of how to reduce gun violence in our population as a whole.
- Sheila R, Taylor, Gary
Trayvon Martin was not a terrorist. He was terrorized. Being five times more likely to be killed by gun violence because of your race, and the dread of living under a heightened threat of violence, and the devaluation of your life by your country's indifference to this ongoing threat, is terrorism, if the word is to have any meaning at all that doesn't center exclusively around scared white people.
I don't have a well-tied bow to conclude this piece. Rush Limbaugh can fuck off.
[Note: Do not tell me that responding to Limbaugh is only giving him oxygen and my outrage is what he wants and blah blah. I don't want to hear it. Just don't. I am not raising my voice for Limbaugh; I am refusing to remain silent for the people he victimizes.]
Headline of the Day
Perfect. That is obviously just a perfect headline that really encapsulates an important truth. Good job, Team Limbaugh!
In case you're wondering what, exactly, it was that caused Rush Limbaugh to proclaim that the President of the United States hates the United States, it was his saying this during a campaign appearance in Virginia last week:
If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own! I'm always struck by people who think, "Well, it must be 'cause I was just so smart!" There are a lot of smart people out there! "It must be because I worked harder than everybody else." Let me tell you something: There are a whole bunch of hardworkin' people out there! If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help!How dare he. This is why Mitt Romney is going to pick a pair of bootstraps as his running mate, to remind REAL AMERICA that nobody who's anybody ever got any help from somebody! Or something!
GOOD MORNING!
LOL!!!
If scientists could figure out how to convert rightwing hyperbole into an energy source, we would never need worry about gas prices ever again.
Westboro Baptist Church Preparing Ad for Limbaugh Show
[Content note for: misogyny]
Never missing an opportunity to ride on someone else's hateful, bigotted coattails, Westboro Baptist Church announced yesterday they would throw their hat (a pus-filled, hate-infested hat, no doubt) into Rush Limbaugh's ring and begin filling the void left by the show's lack of advertisers by prepping some jingles and whatnot of their own.
Whoops!
"The ad's message will be that America is doomed because Americans have cast aside the standards of God, and won't quit their proud sinning."
I guess that's pretty much on-message for the WBC. So, good for them, I guess? Seems a little nice, though. By WBC standards.
"That lady [Sandra Fluke] basically believes she wants the government to pay to kill her babies. That implies a certain level of promiscuity. She wants to fornicate her brains out, but she doesn't want a child. Sounds like a slut to me, and God hates sluts."
Oh, okay. I stand corrected.
Premiere Networks has said any ads from WBC would be rejected. Whoops again. Is that censorship? Sounds like censorship to me. (It doesn't.) Censorship! (It isn't.)
Anyway, you know, the internet is a weird place, isn't it? A few (bazillion) people tweet Limbaugh's advertisers and next thing you know he's broadcasting dead air.
Also weird: I posted about this story yesterday on Twitter, and it was retweed by Margie Phelps, Rebekah Phelps-Roper, Fred Phelps Jr, Rebekah Phelps-Davis, and Abigail Phelps. Phelps-Roper even noted "It's going to be Biblical."
To which I could only reply:
In honor of the WBC members that RTed me, I'll spend the wkend taking it up the ass.@MargieJPhelps @WBCVideo @WBCFredJr @WBCBecky @AbiWBC
— Deeky (Official) (@DeekyMD) March 16, 2012
Number of the Day
140: The number of advertisers Rush Limbaugh has now lost. Whooooooooooops! It looks like the market has spoken, Rush Limbaugh, and it says, "Hey, I just noticed Rush Limbaugh is kind of a vile garbage monster! Geez, it sure TOOK ME A LONG TIME, huh?!"
Anyway, in addition to/because of losing like 300% of its advertisers, the show is also having syndication issues:
Radio-Info.com reports that Premiere Networks, which syndicates the Rush Limbaugh show, told its affiliate radio stations that they are suspending national advertising for two weeks. Rush Limbaugh is normally provided to affiliates in exchange for running several minutes of national advertisements provided by Premiere each hour. These ads are called "barter spots." These spots are how Premiere makes its money off of Rush Limbaugh and other shows it syndicates.I can't wait for Limbaugh's shameful slink from the airwaves in disgrace and his eventual triumphant return.
But without explanation, Premiere has suspended these national advertisements for two weeks. Radio-Info.com calls the move "unusual." The development suggests that Rush Limbaugh's incessant sexist attacks on Sandra Fluke have caused severe damage to the show.
"The millions of dollars make it less humiliating than you'd think!"—Don Imus.
Number of the Day
89.5%: The percentage of ads during Rush Limbaugh's show yesterday that were public service announcements donated free of charge by the Ad Council.
Media Matters reports:
AS OF [THURS]DAY, 50 ADVERTISERS HAVE CANCELED THEIR ADS RUNNING DURING THE RUSH LIMBAUGH SHOW.Whoooooooooooops!
According to our coverage:
— A total of 86 ads aired during WABC's broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show [yesterday].
— 77 of those ads were public service announcements donated free of charge by the Ad Council.
— Of the nine paid spots that ran, seven were from companies that have said they have taken steps to ensure their ads no longer air during the program.
— WABC's online feed included about 5:33 of dead air when ads would normally have run.
Number of the Day
45 (and counting...): The number of advertisers Rush Limbaugh has lost.
Couldn't happen to a more deserving fella.
Don't worry about him. He'll be fine. He's got bootstraps, don'tcha know.
Rush Limbaugh and the Thought Police
Half a dozen friends to whom I've spoken this week, and many more Shakers in comments here and/or in my inbox, have expressed through grinding teeth their churning consternation with the accusations of "oversensitivity" and "fascism" and "censorship" and "thought policing" in response to criticizing Rush Limbaugh's latest disgorgence of vile misogyny.
No, this is not a First Amendment issue. No, this is not a censorship issue. No, the women who are the actual targets of the bigotry being expressed (and our allies) are not "oversensitive"—we are merely sensitive to the patterns of sexism and to its practical effects, and those who ignore or apologize for misogyny are in actual fact not sensitive enough.
And no: The people who object to misogyny are not the thought police.
The people who, for many years, have objected to Rush Limbaugh's naked bigotry in all its grotesque manifestations—his misogyny, his homophobia, his racism, his trans*phobia, his ableism, his classism, his xenophobia, his Christian Supremacy, his very selective vice- and body-policing—are challenging his supporters and apologists to think about things in a way in which they may never have thought about them before; are exhorting his supporters and apologists to compassion, to empathy.
We are not the thought police.
To those who mistakenly believe that we are, I offer this alternative perspective: The entire rest of the world, with its privileging of men, and heterosexual and cisgender people, and thin (but not too thin!) and tall (but not too tall!) and able white bodies with neurotypical minds, and religious people and people who have sex (but only in certain ways!) and people who can and want to be parents and the wealthy and the educated and the employed and the powerful and residents of the Western and Northern hemispheres, and all the ways in which most of the rest of the world facilitates and upholds that privilege, and all the ways in which the rest of the world marginalizes and demeans and treats as less than all the people who deviate from those privileged "norms," and all the ways the rest of the world has indoctrinated you into that system of privilege, and socialized you to believe it's the natural and right and immutable state of the world, and all the shills for the kyriarchy who fill the ether with self-reinforcing rubbish on a constant loop so you swim in a sea so thick with the detritus of Othering that you don't even notice it on a conscious level anymore, and all the jack-booted bullies who swarm out of the woodwork to kick you back in line if you do notice and dare to protest, if you have the temerity to question the message, and all the other bits and bobs of the brainwashing to which we are all subjected since the day we're born as part of the scheme, nearly incomprehensible in scope, to ensure that challengers to these traditions are never made, and, if they're born, are squashed with the weight of mountainous tidal waves of blowback in the other direction…? The purveyors of that shit are the goddamn thought police.
And you know what one of the biggest lies they tell you is?
That it's the other way around.
Number of the Day
11: The number of companies who have withdrawn their advertising dollars from Rush Limbaugh's show so far.
Hey, maybe the market really DOES solve everything!
Just kidding!
Primarily Gross
The Four Horsemen of the Crapocalypse continued their horrible, heinous, horseshit-reeking ride to the 2012 Republican Convention, at which one of them, in a secret ritual only known to the Devil and Orrin Hatch, will be anointed The One Who Will Lose to Obama. Or as it's known by its common name: McCain II.
WHO WILL IT BE?! (Spoiler Alert: It will be Romney.) Well, I don't fucking know. (Full Disclosure: Yes I do.) THE MYSTERY is what makes this endless primary so goddamn exciting! (True Fact: This primary is not exciting.)
The big headline from the WHO CARES NEWS this weekend is that allllllllll of the horsemen weighed in on the RUSH LIMBAUGH CONTROVERSY, by which I mean the latest bit of evidence that Rush Limbaugh is a nonstop, full-tilt, Grade A, world-class garbage monster of diarrheic misogyny.
Mitt Romney said: "I'll just say this which is it's not the language I would have used. I'm focusing on the issues I think are significant in the country today and that's why I'm here talking about jobs and Ohio." WOWEE WOW! Just when you think Mitt Romney couldn't possibly be an EVEN BIGGER CRAVEN SHIT-SACK, he goes and proves ya wrong! So, basically, he definitely agrees with the sentiment behind demeaning as a slut a woman who wants control over her reproduction; it's just that he would have finessed the delivery. OKAY THEN! Also: He doesn't believe vicious misogyny is a "significant issue." NOTED!
Rick Santorum said: "He's being absurd, but that's you know, an entertainer can be absurd. He's in a very different business than I am." Ha ha well I think that statement was pretty fucking ABSURD, Santorum! Don't sell yourself short! You're a TOTAL BOZO. And your willingness to condone and apologize for the public slut-shaming of feminist women has also been NOTED!
Newt Gingrich said: "I think he was right to apologize," before immediately launching into a complaint about the media focusing on this "unimportant issue," then lobbing an attack at President Obama for apologizing for the burning of Qu'rans at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. So, put Gingrich down for "No Big Whoop" on the issue of using misogynistic slurs in public discourse.
Ron Paul said: "I don't think he's very apologetic. He's doing it because some people were taking their advertisements off his program. It was his bottom line that he was concerned about." Wait—what? Is one of the Four Horsemen actually going to condemn Rush Limbaugh's wanton misogyny? Ha ha NOPE! "Yes, I think he should have apologized. I had said he used very crude language." One more for the "By All Means Slut-Shame But Have the Decency to Use Dog Whistles" column!
What a collection of courageous and decent gentlemen!
In election news, Romney won Washington state's nonbinding caucuses on Saturday! Congratulations to Mitt Romney once again for being named least barfiest by a bunch of horrible people! He's also starting to pull further ahead in Ohio, presumably after voters listened to any of the words coming out of Rick Santorum's face.
The two of them are all tied up in Tennessee, but Gingrich is leading in Georgia. Super Tomorrow will be SO FUN! I can't wait to see which totes privileged white dude wins in each state!
Those states, by the way, are: Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia. Alaska also starts some sort of weird fortnight caucus that I can't be arsed to research enough to competently discuss. I only have SO MUCH ENERGY for this shit, and I used up most of it seven paragraphs ago! SORRRRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
In other AWESOME NEWS about these TERRIFIC CANDIDATES, Newt Gingrich says that Iran "should expect to get hit" if he is president. In case you needed one more reason not to vote for him, ever.
And finally: Rick Santorum wasn't always the radical Catholic extremist that he is today, but his wife's dad convinced him that he should definitely hate women more. And gays, obviously.
Speaking of which: Get a load of this show of respect for the sanctity of marriage: "There are 18,000 married gay and lesbian couples in California and at least 131,000 nationwide according to the 2010 census, conducted before New York state legalized same-sex marriage in July. Rick Santorum says he'll try to unmarry all of them if he's elected president."
Who is it that's trying to undermine marriages again...?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Being Progressive: You're Doing it Wrong
(Content note: Misogynist Slurs.)
So. Rush Limbaugh grumbled and rolled his eyes and offered a non-apology apology to Sandra Fluke.
Progressive hero Michael Moore thought this was worth noting on Twitter.
If you can't see the image, the tweet reads: "Rush- As soon as u started losing the big $$ from your hate speech, you caved & obeyed the men who pay u. Who's the prostitute now, bitch?"
Progressive hero Keith Olbermann thought this was so hilarious, it was worth retweeting.
I know I'm just a humorless feminist scold asshole and all, but I question the wisdom and "progressive" ideals of responding to misogyny with more misogyny.
Nope!
I am aware that Rush Limbaugh is:
1. A human being in the world.
2. A garbage monster.
3. A nonstop, full-tilt, Grade A, world-class font of barfinating bile and vomitous bigotry, who is currently engaging in a revolting campaign of slut-shaming against a woman who had the unmitigated temerity to assert her right to participate in the public sphere.
4. Wrong. Gross. Contemptible.
And that is all I'm going to say about that, because anything more is an undeserved misdirection of my energy in his favor.
Uppity
[Trigger warning for racism; misogyny.]
As you may have heard, over the weekend, First Lady Michelle Obama and Second Lady Jill Biden made an appearance at a NASCAR event at Homestead-Miami Speedway, where they were serving as grand marshals to promote their Joining Forces initiative on behalf of veterans and military families—and during the event, they were booed.
The booing incident itself was bad enough, reflective of an unusual lack of the respect typically afforded the holders of the First- and Second Lady offices, irrespective of their individual politics. But yesterday, the odious Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves to defend the booing and justify it by explaining that NASCAR fans, i.e. Real AmericansTM, understand that First Lady Michelle Obama is "uppity."
Citing the 2008 incident where then-Sen. Obama was secretly recorded at a fundraiser describing small town Pennsylvanians in hard economic times as getting "bitter" and "cling(ing) to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," Limbaugh said "people that go to NASCAR races are the very people her husband called bitter clingers."Emphasis mine.
Limbaugh also said "we don't like being told what to eat; we don't like being told how much to exercise; we don't like being told what we've got to drive; we don't like wasting money; we don't like our economy being bankrupted. We don't like 14% unemployment. The question is, what the hell is there to cheer for when Miss Obama and Ms. Biden show up?"
The host then took it one step further. "I'll tell you something else," he said. "We don't like paying millions of dollars for Mrs. Obama's vacations. The NASCAR crowd doesn't quite understand why when the husband and the wife are going to the same place, the first lady has to take her own Boeing 757 with family and kids and hangers-on four hours earlier than her husband, who will be on his 747. NASCAR people understand that's a little bit of a waste. They understand it's a little bit of uppity-ism."
It was promptly, and rightly, noted by a number of people that "uppity" is a racially loaded term, used by white people to describe people of color, especially black people, who don't "know their place."
Conservative pundits/bloggers/apologists of various vocation are, as per usual, attempting to rip the word from its evident roots in order to claim it's not a racist sentiment. Suffice it to say, we're not going to debate that in this space. It is unequivocally a racially loaded term with a racist history, and only white privilege and/or a bullshit agenda could allow anyone to argue otherwise.
I want to note that, in addition to being a racially loaded term, "uppity" is also a misogynist dog whistle, used against women of all colors to indicate that we don't "know our place." Limbaugh, progenitor of the charming portmanteau "feminazis," was certainly playing not just to his listeners' nasty opinions about the Obamas as "uppity blacks," but their prejudices against "uppity women" who think they've got business at a manly event like NASCAR.
It isn't just that First Lady Obama was being demeaned as a black person; it's that she was being demeaned as a black woman.
Is that important? Of course it is. Just as it's important to understand that women of color cannot wrench pieces of their intersectional identity apart, tearing their race from their womanhood, it's important to understand the way that marginalizing narratives also work on multiple levels against women with intersectional identities.
Still Talking, This Guy
[Trigger warning for misogyny, Islamophobia, and reference to self-harm.]
Rush Limbaugh says so many stupid things on such a regular basis that it's hardly worth the time to single one out as if it's a rare event, but occasionally he says something so absurd that it warrants a quick comment. This is one of those times…
Now before you people go getting all offended on me, you gotta understand something: The customs in Islam and the Muslim world are quite different from the feminized culture of the United States. Here's a guy with three wives living in a pigsty; one oughtta be enough to keep it clean. No—don't do that to me! Do not look at me that way! We're talking about—we're talking about the Muslim religion; we're not talking about feminized America. I told ya—even, even warning you, I got the reaction I was warning you not to bother me with. It's suicide to tell a joke today about how a dirty place is 'cuz a woman won't clean it. I'm not stupid enough to do that! But over there, what else do they do? You know, that and run around in a kitchen! I mean, that's exactly—you got three of 'em over there, and the place is still a pigsty. Well, that's what I say—babies and clean!First of all, I love the idea that it's dangerous to say something misogynist in the US. Let's ask Imus about that one.
But the real kicker in this one, for me, is the utter absurdity of Limbaugh simultaneously sneering at the "feminization" of the US (which he evidently regards as a terrible thing) and at the subjugation of women in some Islamic traditions (which he also naturally regards as a terrible thing). Leaving aside his false premise of an imagined monolithic Muslim culture and his hilarious implication that the US is a misogyny-free zone, I wonder what role it is that Limbaugh imagines women should play in the world, since Muslim women shouldn't be oppressed, but US women shouldn't be influential.
The calculation with which I'm left is that Limbaugh believes all women should be dominated, but in the right way—that is, by white American men.
Sounds about right.
Breaking News: Rush Limbaugh Is a Sarcastic Apologist for Racism
You're shocked. I know. As was I.
[Transcript below. Btw, I hate transcribing almost no one
else as much as I hate transcribing Rush fuckin' Limbaugh.]
Amanda at Think Progress has the goods on the alleged racial motivations of the fight to which Limbaugh's referring.
As to his contentions re: white racism, I'll just go ahead and repeat what I said in comments earlier today: If "a racist" is defined as someone who has internalized racism, I'd really love to meet the person born and raised on this planet who isn't a racist. Because I've been bombarded with racist messaging since freaking birth, everywhere I've been in the world, and it would have to be some kind of extraordinary bit of magic if I, a human being designed to be a sponge, had absorbed none of the racism constantly present in my environment.
Without rigorous self-examination, we're all racists (and sexists and homophobes and transphobes and disablists and fat-haters and…) by default, by virtue of our socialization in a culture steeped with negative stereotypes; we internalize those messages so profoundly that even those bigotries that target us get turned in on ourselves. The question is not whether we have biases; we all do. The question is whether we leave them unexamined.
And Rush Limbaugh's an asshole. Fin.
Greetings, my friends. Well, it's Obama's America, is it not? Obama's America—white kids gettin' beat up on, uh, on school buses now. I mean, if you put your kids on a school bus, you expect, you expect safety, but in Obama's America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering [puts on "black dialect"], "Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on," and, of course, everybody says the white kid deserved it, he was born a racist, he's white. Newsweek magazine told us this. Uh, we know that white students are destroying civility on buses, white students destroying civility in classrooms all over America, white congressmen destroying civility in the House of Representatives.
And we can redistribute students, uh, while we redistri— uh, redistribute their parents' wealth. I mean, we could just redistri— uh, redistribute everything. Uh, just return the white students to their rightful place—their own bus, with bars on the windows and armed guards. They're racists! They get what they deserve! Newsweek magazine told us this. Post-racial America.
I mean, I wonder if Obama is going to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard. I mean, the assailants are presumed innocent due to the white racism we all know runs rampant in America. I mean, the drive-by media is, uh, is ginning up all this criticism of Obama again today—it's all based in racism, the criticism of Obama's healthcare plan or whatever, it's all based in racism!
And so, uh, uh, you know, if he's gonna apologize for America, Obama needs to apologize for the right reasons. White Americans are racists who have created what they call free markets that really just enslave the rest of America and, uh, and her trading partners. I mean, it was white Americans that ran off Van Jones, um, ahh— Well, look, let's just follow Eric Holder's advice and not be cowards about all this; let's have an open conversation, honest conversation, about all of our typical white grandmothers, you had one, I had one, uh, Obama had one, uh, they're racists, just like our students are.
Hey Your Racist
According to Rush Limbaugh you are a racist if:
1) You're a member of the news media.
2) You voted for Obama.
3) You support Obama in any way, shape, or form.
4) If you watched any of the inauguration coverage this week.
Why, you ask? Because Obama's father was black. "Because his father was black, because this is the first black president." Well, just allow me to post the whole quote:
You know racism in this country is the exclusive province of the left. We're witnessing racism all this week that led up to the inauguration. We're being told that we have to hope he succeeds. That we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend forward, backward, whichever. Because his father was black, because this is the first black president. We've got to accept this. The racism that everybody thinks exists on our side of the aisle has been on full display throughout their primary campaign.Okay. I am going to admit that I really don't understand Limbaugh's point. Is he saying that is you're a fan of President Obama you must hate white people? (And would the inverse there be that if you liked Bush you must therefore hate people of color?) I don't know. Maybe he's saying racism is no big deal. All except that directed at white people like Limbaugh or his cohort Hannity. Because airing inauguration coverage of America's first African American president is racist against white people. Or something. Fuck, I don't know.
What I do know is that Rush Limbaugh "needs to sit down and drink a big ol' cuppa Hush Up Now."
