Those seem to be the emerging themes of the Democratic Party for ’o6 and ’08. Not horrible, but not exactly awe-inspiring, either. Wev.
I Love Edinburgh
Edinburgh, which is Mr. Shakes’ hometown, is just nuts at the holidays. Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve) is a celebration of just outrageous proportions, with no fewer than 100,000 people (and sometimes many more) pouring into the town from all over the world to join in the madness. And it’s not just partying and drinking and fireworks—it’s also sports, concerts, carnivals, and an art festival, among many other strange and sundry events.
Christmas isn’t nearly as spectacular an event, but they have their own brand of quirky celebration for that, too—including the running of the Santas, which was organized in support of the charitable foundation Wish Upon a Star.
More than 1,500 running Father Christmases took part in the Great Scottish Santa Run in Edinburgh…The Santa Run jumped from 400 participants to over 1,500 this year. Something tells me Edinburgh will kick Bralanda’s red veloured butt in no time.
[Event organiser Margaret Rowarth said:] "The atmosphere has just been electric and everyone has had an amazing time. We've managed to triple the size of the event this year, so who knows what we might manage to do next year."
But Edinburgh still has some ground to make up if it wants to set the record for the most Santas in one place at one time.
The current record is held by the city of Bralanda, Sweden, when 2,685 Santas paraded through the streets.
Edinburgh is what the phrase “Happy Holidays” is all about. It’s not about a war on Christmas, or “taking the Christ out of Christmas,” or any of that ridiculous nonsense. It’s about acknowledging the entire season, which is for many people—religious and not, Christian and not—a time of joy and celebration and fun. It’s extremely unlikely that every participant in Edinburgh’s 1,500-strong running of the Santas is a Christian, or even religious at all, but they all did it for a charity that grants wishes to dying children. Sure, for lots of people Jesus is “the reason for the season,” but for others, maybe it’s just a time to do something good for someone else—and that’s worth celebrating, too.
Santa blows. In a good way.
C&L in the LA Times
The LA Times interviews Crooks & Liars’ John Amato. Check it out. I particularly liked this:
Where do you stand on "objectivity" in media?Absolutely. Nice one, John.
I'm partisan. My goal is to be a media watchdog and also expose what I believe is a bad administration. I think it's perfectly fine to be partisan as long as you're honest and have integrity.
Black and White
A couple days ago, I read about a new reality show called Black.White that will debut on FX in March, the premise of which is two families—one black, one white—will trade places through the miracle of make-up and experience what it’s like to live in each other’s skins.
AlterNet’s Laura Barcella has a good piece about it here, and elucidates many of the same thoughts I had:
"Black.White" has the potential to be a TV must-see -- even a milestone, if it's done with sensitivity, grace, and authenticity. But if it's done wrong (c'mon, Ice Cube, baby -- don't let me down), this sort of smoke-and-mirrors pseudo-reality could do little more beyond exploiting and exacerbating the trials of people of color… and further alienating all of us from each other.It clearly has the potential to be just as rife with eye-rolling awfulness as the recent spate of TV hosts who bravely explore the world in fat suits. I’m also reminded of the truly dire ’80s flick Soul Man, in which C. Thomas “Ponyboy Curtis” Howell poses as a black man to get a college scholarship. What I remember about that movie is its incognito protagonist being told one can’t genuinely understand another’s experience, when one has the choice to opt out of it at any time. I think there’s some truth in that.
I wonder if the two families in “Black.White” won’t learn more from simply living together than from masquerading as one another.
Clinton Train
Writing in Congressional Quarterly, Craig Crawford takes a look at the issues for Dems with having a presumed nominee in Hillary Clinton. There’s not a ton of new stuff here—Clinton is a controversial and divisive figure; she has serious fundraising ability; her stature intimidates those who might criticize her—but I found his suggestion of a litmus test for sorting out serious contenders rather interesting.
None of her challengers show any inclination to explicitly make the charge that she can’t win against the Republican nominee. For starters, doing so would probably end any possibility of becoming Clinton’s running mate.Crawford thinks John Edwards, who “has no interest in playing second banana a second time” and “recently showed a penchant for plain talk, announcing unequivocally that he made a mistake in voting for the Iraq war resolution,” is the most likely credible candidate to go negative on Hillary. If an aversion to second fiddle is the best indicator of a probability of going negative, I would suggest John Kerry, who shows no signs of a reluctance to run again, is just as likely to be first out of this particular gate.
That’s my test for separating serious rivals from those who are just auditioning to join a Clinton ticket. Those who can’t find a way to publicly speak to party concerns about Clinton’s general-election appeal will not be serious presidential contenders in my book.
What do you think? Do you agree with Crawford’s test? Do you think someone other than the last two names on the ticket will go negative on Hillary? Will going negative on her backfire and make her more sympathetic? Thoughts on any tactics to derail the Clinton train?
(Hat tip Political Wire. Crossposted at Ezra’s place.)
More on Pryor
I just wanted to say this man could make me laugh. Mr. Shakes and I watched Live on the Sunset Strip not two months ago; it was the first time Mr. S. had ever seen Richard Pryor do stand-up, though he’d seen some of his movies. It’s one of those shows that you spend vacillating between side-splitting laughter and silent, rapt attention, because when he isn’t being unbelievably funny, he’s being incredibly interesting.
Pryor had been suffering from MS for quite some time. When he received the first ever Mark Twain Prize for humor from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts back in 1998, he was too weak to speak, no less perform. There were never going to be any more new shows. I knew that rationally, and yet somewhere inside me a completely unreasonable hope must have still lingered that he’d be onstage again someday, because I only now feel a sense of recognition that he’ll really never perform again. It stinks. Damn, he’s made me laugh a lot.
And no one, no one, could use the word motherfucker better than he could.
RIP: Richard Pryor and Eugene J. McCarthy
Former Senator and progressive presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy has died, as has comedian Richard Pryor.
It’s a strange combination, as the two might seem, at first glance, to be such vastly different men. McCarthy was a small-town white kid, who was a professor, a year-long resident of a monastery, a Congressman, a Senator, and a five-time presidential candidate, whose 1968 challenge of sitting president Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War led to Johnson’s withdrawal from the race. Pryor was a small-town black kid, who grew up in a brothel and served in the military before launching a long-term career in the entertainment business as a writer, actor, and hugely influential comedian.
But both of these midwesterners were controversial. Both of them challenged institutionalized ideas at a very tumultuous time in American history. Both of them were prolific writers and found solace in the process. Both of them even made famously bad mistakes in 1980—McCarthy endorsed Reagan; Pryor caught himself on fire while freebasing.
And both of them inspired those that followed to do things they may never have before considered—sometimes to amazing results, and sometimes not—but neither progressive politicians nor subversive comedians can avoid the inevitable comparisons to their respective forebears. Both of these men will be remembered for changing, forevermore, the paths that stretched behind them.
I had some great things and I had some bad things. The best and the worst. In other words, I had a life. — Richard Pryor
Bigotry as an Illness
The Washington Post has an article today about some psych professionals arguing that extreme bias should be categorized as a mental illness, citing several examples which include a homophobic man who has turned down a job because he thought a co-worker might be gay, avoids 12-step programs to deal with his alcoholism because he someone there might be gay, and blames most of his sundry personal problems on the gay rights movement, and an anti-Semitic woman who believes Jews are diseased and will “infect” her, leading to compulsive cleaning and an avoidance of treatment because she fears her therapist would be Jewish.
AMERICAblog’s John Aravosis endorses the idea, suggesting “this would set the tone for an entire change in the culture, where prejudice of any kind of is considered the work of sick people. That would influence every debate the religious right tries to weigh in to.” I’m not so sure. Most people would consider the extreme case studies noted above “sick people” as it is. Those who suffer from less pathological prejudices are generally thought of, by reasonable people, to be wrong, the impetus for their wrongness correctly identified as ignorance and/or fear—something over which they have control. Identifying such behaviors as a mental illness seems, more than anything, to suggest a future in which defendants on trial for murdering someone they don’t like can claim their innocence by reason of mental defect. Bigotry isn’t a mental defect; it’s a learned behavior, and it doesn’t warrant a get-out-of-jail free card.
Marriage Protection
On Thursday, a New York state appeals court overturned a ruling made in February which would have granted the right of same-sex couples to marry in New York City.
In a dissent, Justice David Saxe said that he saw no important public interest in barring same-sex marriage and that laws that prohibit it perpetuate discrimination.Clearly, the reasoning is absurd. As Ezra noted yesterday, “marriage isn’t limited to the fertile, the potent, nor the child-friendly…[L]et’s not pretend that the same certificate offered to newlywed 95-year-olds is somehow an exclusive privilege of childbearing couples.” Let’s also not pretend that families headed by gay couples don’t exist, or that straight, unmarried people don’t have kids—or sex, for that matter.
But the rest of the court said: "The legislative policy rationale is that society and government have a strong interest in fostering heterosexual marriage as the social institution that best forges a linkage between sex, procreation and child rearing."
Once again, the implied rationale, though never overtly stated, is more of the same that we hear in defense of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which has had a makeover and is now called the Marriage Protection Act. Heterosexual marriage is to be protected, say opponents of gay marriage, despite a dearth of evidence that ending the disparity in marriage equality would actually have any discernible negative affect on straights or their marriages.
There are, however, couples whose marriages are at increased risk.
Army researchers saw alcohol misuse rise from 13 percent among soldiers to 21 percent one year after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, underscoring the continuing stress of deployment for some troops.A 6% increase in divorce is not insignificant. And yet, marriage proponents have been curiously silent about the effect that the war has had on marriages. Indeed, many of the anti-gay marriage activists also whole-heartedly and unquestioningly support the war and the administration’s management of it, including its provisions for returning soldiers. And many of the same Congress members who champion marriage protection—and supporting the troops—also simultaneously deny much-needed funding to the Department of Veterans Affairs, who seek to combat issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which contributes to the breakdown of military marriages—and families—upon servicemembers’ return home.
In post-deployment reassessment data completed in July, researchers also saw soldiers with anger and aggression issues increase from 11 percent to 22 percent after deployment. Those planning to divorce their spouse rose from 9 percent to 15 percent after time spent in the combat zone.
The data and other testimony about the effects of deployment stress came at a briefing called by House Democrats on Thursday to look at the issue of mental health care and resources for servicemembers…So how about it, marriage protection advocates? All I’m suggesting is that a modicum of the effort and concern you devote toward making sure gays can’t get married be redirected toward making sure soldiers have the best chance to stay married.
Rep. Lane Evans, D-Ill., said he organized the briefing because he believes the military health care system still isn’t fully prepared to deal with troops with post-traumatic stress disorder. Defense Department officials estimate about 18 percent of troops in Iraq and 11 percent in Afghanistan will develop PTSD.
“We commit a serious disservice to veterans and their families if we only focus on the veteran with PTSD,” he said. “Congress must act to improve the Defense Department’s and (Department of) Veterans Affairs’ capacity to have a family-centered approach to treating it.”
Dr. Charles Figley, director of Florida State University’s Traumatology Institute, said those types of stress problems, if left untreated, can become more serious health issues like PTSD. He said more needs to be done to fund mental health care programs for the returning troops.
He also predicted thousands of veterans in dire need of mental health services — “another Katrina-type disaster as these people leave the service and flood the VA” — if more resources aren’t made available to servicemembers and their families.
Charles Flora, associate director of the office of readjustment counseling with the Department of Veterans Affairs, said he believes the department is providing adequate services to recently separated troops with stress disorders. But when pressed by Democrats about funding for the future, he noted that the VA’s mental health experts are “running at close to capacity.”
Conversely, you could also just admit that you don’t care nearly as much about the lives of individual soldiers as you do an abstract concept known as “the troops,” nor about protecting marriage as much as punishing gays.
Question of the Day
Brutally and remorselessly stolen from Mannion…
What’s the last great romantic pair you saw onscreen? Mannion mentions Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love and Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in Spider-Man 2.
I have a special affinity for the Love Actually storyline between Colin Firth and Lúcia Moniz (as was mentioned by Blue Girl in Mannion’s comments), and I really love Zach Braff and Natalie Portman in Garden State.
My favorite recent romantic pairing onscreen, however, is Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who reprised their characters Jesse and Celine in last year’s Before Sunset. I adored Before Sunrise, which was released in 1995, for so many reasons, not the least of which was how perfectly it captured the quality of conversation that happens between two people falling in love, as each introduces important ideas and thoughts, laying out closely-held opinions for consideration and carefully scrutinizing those laid out for the same. When they met again, ten years hence, and carefully and tentatively began to weave that pattern once more, I loved the characters, and rooted for them, all over again, as they strolled toward their mysterious fate. It was a lovely idea that Richard Linklater had for these films; they don’t appeal to everyone, but they feel very intimate and familiar to me.
Friday Cat Blogging
MANIACS: A ONE-ACT PLAY
Characters:
Shakespeare’s Sister, human—played by Melissa McEwan
Maniac #1, cat—played by Matilda
Maniac #2, cat—played by Olivia
SCENE: Shakespeare’s Sister sits at her desk, writing quietly. A cigarette burns in the ashtray, even though she’s supposed to be quitting. Maniac #2 sits on the desk, in the way, as usual.
Shakespeare’s Sister: La dee da. I’m a happy blogger type person.
Maniac #1 leaps up on the desk—or tries to, but, being a flailing, ungraceful sort, slides on some papers and goes careening backwards onto the floor.
Maniac #1: Rrrroowww!
Maniac #2 freaks out and jumps on Shakes’ chest and digs in claws like she’s an ice climber.
Maniac #2: Rrrrroowww!
Maniac #2 climbs up Shakes’ front and down her back in an instant, leaving bloody scratches in her wake.
Shakespeare’s Sister: Fucking hell!
Blood begins to seep through Shakes’ white sweater. She glares at the Maniacs. They look back cutely.
Shakespeare’s Sister: You’re lucky you don’t match, or I’d make you into a hat.
Speaking of Open Letters…
Larisa’s got one addressed to Mr. Bill O’Reilly. It’s much more reasonable and well thought-out than mine, which is:
Dear Bill,
Eat it.
Love,
Shakespeare’s Sister
Ignorance is Cash
I hate the Blue Collar Comedy guys—Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, and the two other generic dickheads who compose their barbershop quartet of good, ol’-fashioned American humor. It’s not just that they’re unfunny (although they are); it’s that they play to the lowest common denominator, exploiting xenophobia, sexism, racism, homophobia, isolationism, and ignorance for laughs and turning it into huge mounds of cash, while pretending they’re “average Joes.”
So it was with no small amount of glee that I read David Cross’ open letter to Larry the Cable Guy, in response to said cable guy’s slamming Cross in his recent book. (Note to self: Write post on how American publishing is headed down the pipes faster than a greased turd on an oil slick.) It’s truly a thing of beauty, and it reconfirms my opinion that the modern equivalent of the protest singer is the subversive comedian. I don’t turn on my radio for a dose of counterculture—I tune into The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Real Time, The Chappelle Show, SNL’s Weekend Update; I listen to Chris Rock and Margaret Cho singing my anthems.
An excerpt from Mr. Cross:
Since I was a kid I've always been a little over sensitive to the glorification and rewarding of dumb. The "salt of the earth, regular, every day folk" (or lowest common denominator) who see the world, and the people like me in it, as on some sort of secular mission to take away their flag lapels and plaster-of-paris jesus television adornments strike me as childishly paranoid…Seriously, go read the whole thing. You’ll be glad you did.
But at least you're passionate about what you see as inhumane injustice (not on a global level of course, but on a national level) and the simple black and white of what's right and what's wrong. It's kinda like you're this guy who speaks for all these poor, unfortunate souls out there who wear shirts with blue collars on them, work hard all day to put food on the table for their family (unlike people who wear shirts with white collars or wear scrubs or t-shirts or dresses or costumes that consist of flannel shirts with the sleeves cut-off and old trucker hats) and pray to the American Flag of Jesus to protect them from the evils of muslims, queers, illegal immigrants, and the liberal jews who run Hollywood and the media. I guess one could say that you're "telling it like it is". And considering the vast amount of over-simplification you employ to describe with sweeping generalizations, all of America and the World that "don't make no sense to you", as well as your lack of sensitivity, and second grade grammar, one might be led to think that you are somewhat proud of not appearing (or being) too intellectual. Combine that with your sucker appeal to the knee-jerk white Christian patriot in us all who would much rather hear 87 fart jokes than hear a joke in which the President (the current one, not the last one) or the Pope, or Born-Again Christians, or Lee Greenwood get called on their shit for being the hypocrites that they are, and I think we've got a winner!
And by the way, Mr. Show was one of the funniest shows ever, and I will never get the tune "Ya'll Are Brutalizin' Me" out of my head.
(Multiple hat tips go to Matt at After School Snack, Pepper at Daily Pepper, and Jedmunds at Pandagon.)
A Goddamned Piece of Paper
Oddjob points to this article in Capitol Hill Blue, which includes more possible evidence of Bush’s instability, not to mention his ego, and further his disdain for anything but his vision of America:
GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the [Patriot Act] could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.Toast notes in comments:
“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”
“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”
“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”
I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”
Ah, Capitol Hill Blue. I wish I could trust what I read there, but they've got a reputation for just making shit up. Too bad, because they invariably confirm my feelings about what sort of man Bush is.I don’t have any real knowledge of Capitol Hill Blue’s reputation, but I do know that much of what Doug Thompson suggested about the president’s behavior in June of 2004 has since been either overtly confirmed or subtly implied in other publications. The man’s an unpleasant crackpot; I don’t put this past him at all.
The Heretik has more.
Police Gone Wild
So this cop and his partner are riding around, and he decides he wants something to drink. He tells his partner to stop at a store, and, for whatever reason, she doesn’t. He proceeds to wrestle for control of the steering wheel, then hits her in the leg with his fucking taser!
Luckily, she wasn’t seriously hurt, and her nutwit of a partner has been fired. Wednesday, he was charged with assault and faces up to three months in jail.
WTF?!
Wife Swap
A Turkish villager who ran away with his friend's wife has offered his own wife in exchange, newspapers said on Thursday.I suspect if Mr. Shakes offered me up as so much chattel in such an exchange, I’d have a comment to make about the situation. I also suspect, however, it would be similarly reported that I had declined to comment, once the printability of its contents were considered.
Farm laborer Cengiz Esme said Gulhan, his wife of 18 years, disappeared a month ago after leaving their village to go shopping in the southern Turkish town of Tarsus.
The 36-year-old said his village friend Mehmet Yaksi had telephoned him the next day and said: "I've run off with your wife .... You take my wife," the Radikal daily reported.
Esme pleaded for Gulhan to return and said he was ready to forgive her and make a fresh start elsewhere. The reports said Yaksi's wife, a mother of three, declined to comment on the situation.
More Ire for Slick Willy
The only thing I really love about Bill Clinton is his unrivaled ability to piss off the wingers, and he’s done it again:
Bill Clinton, who as president championed the Kyoto Protocol clamping controls on "greenhouse gases," was scheduled to speak at the conference Friday afternoon -- in an unofficial capacity but potentially at a critical point in backroom talks involving the U.S. delegation.Oh yeah—I also love his ability to remind the rest of the world that there was a time when America used to elect presidents with functioning brains.
The U.S. envoys, representing a Bush administration that renounced the Kyoto pact, were said to be displeased by the 11th-hour surprise.
"They haven't protested formally, but they're annoyed," a source in the Canadian government, conference host, said of the U.S. delegates. "They're not infuriated, but they're not thrilled."
[…]
Clinton, who was invited here by the City of Montreal, will speak in the main conference hall between the official morning and afternoon plenary sessions, said U.N. conference spokesman John Hay.
Despite its unofficial nature, the speech was sure to attract hundreds of delegates from the more than 180 countries represented.
Smackdown
In a battle of wits between superfabulous bloggrrl Pam and the Illinois Family Institute’s Peter LaBarbera, who do you think would win?
Yeah. I wasn’t surprised to find out she mopped the floor with the skeezy little homobigot dirtbag, either.
By the way, Mr. LaBarbera, if your compulsive, one-handed Googling of your own name brings you by way of this site, I’d like to recommend this post, which provides some pertinent reading material on projection, including which side of the aisle is more prone to that tactic. It also contains some useful information about the proclivities of homobigots. Enjoy.
Pick Your Favorite Passage
Earlier, I wrote about Dalton Conley’s newest column dreadful collection of stupefyingly daft apologia, noting that my favorite passage is:
Think of men’s inability to conceive as a disability that needs to be overcome by law where science is not able: nowhere is this brought into sharper focus than in the differences between female and male same sex couples. Someday there may be an artificial womb that will allow (gay) men to have kids by rushing off to the ova bank…It’s near-perfect in its exemplification of his entire argument, really. For someone who’s whining so loudly about not having an equal say over the fate of a pregnancy, one would assume Conley would be the first in line for such a miraculous contraption as an artificial womb. But no—he’ll stay “disabled.” He doesn’t want control over child-bearing; he just wants control over women, because he’s annoyed that women have more control over something than he does.
LeMew, on the other hand, has another favorite:
Between its ev-pysch wankery and woe-is-men posturing his apologia is so catastrophically bad it's almost impossible to choose, but my favorite line is his argument that a fetus isn't really part of a woman's body: "This gets us back to the notion that a fetus is part of her body -- an argument that was more sustainable, I would say, before the advent of ultrasound and other technologies that let us 'see' into the womb." Indeed. Similarly, the argument that a woman's bones were part of her body was more sustainable before X-Ray technology allowed us to "see" beneath the skin. And for that matter, you can see a woman's nose and breasts without even an ultrasound, so they must really not be part of a woman's body! I think men should be able to go to court and order women to get nose jobs and silicone implants, because while it would be nice if partners could work things out it's tragically unfair that women alone are allowed to make choices about a woman's body, which is really collective property.It occurred to me, reading LeMew’s piece, that the entirety of Conley’s argument is so terrible, so thoroughly lame-brained, not to mention cataclysmically insulting, that I could write a War and Peace-length response and still not have covered everything wrong with it, but perhaps together, we can make some headway. So how about it, Shakers? Which is your favorite part of Why My "Man’s Right to Choose" Abortion Argument is Made from a Feminist Perspective?
Fitz Update
The latest on the slowly (but, with any luck, surely) untangling mess that is the Plame investigation:
Sources tell the Washington Post that Novak and Luskin have offered differing stories as to when they spoke about Karl Rove's involvement in leaking Valerie Plame's identity. The original, pro-Rove spin on the conversations was that Novak told Luskin sometime in early 2004 that Rove may have leaked Plame's identity to Time's Matthew Cooper; that Novak's warning prompted Luskin to ask the White House to search for e-mail messages that might reflect such a conversation; that, when the White House found just such a message, it refreshed Rove's recollection of a phone call with Cooper that he had forgotten to mention when he first testified before the grand jury in February 2004; and that, soon thereafter, Rove and Luskin told Fitzgerald about Rove's conversation with Cooper.Good luck, Fitzy. With the near-perfect machinery that is the GOP spin-lie-and-obfuscate apparatus, you’re going to need it.
The Post says that one source "familiar with Novak's account" suggests that it did, in fact, play out that way -- that the conversation between Novak and Luskin took place in March or May 2004, definitely after Rove first testified before the grand jury in February. But another source "close to the case" tells the Post that Novak told Luskin about Rove's conversation with Cooper before Rove first testified before the grand jury, and that the Novak-Luskin exchange wasn't the reason Rove changed his story.
What was? That's for Rove to know -- and for Fitzgerald to find out.
