Question of the Day
What's the best book you've read this year?
I've read a bunch of great books this year, but right now I'm working my way through Reza Aslan's No god but God, and that's looking like it might be the winner.
On Using Feminism for “Little Things” and Getting Over It
A couple of thoughts on the discussion still raging on here:
1) Feminism seeks to address all manner of issues, big and small. That Tart, or anyone else, could utilize the tenets of the movement in every aspect of her life does not undermine the history of the feminist movement, but instead does it a great honor. Feminism was never meant to be restricted to suffrage and equal pay, held in reserve like a finite quantity that could run out if it's used for "the little things." Feminism is a renewable resource.
2) Encouraging women to “get over it” because a single incident (or t-shirt, or slur) seems like “no big deal” in and of itself is predicated on the erroneous assumption that each of these things happens in a void. They don’t.
The other night, Mr. Shakes and I caught the last 5 minutes of Wheel of Fortune, and Vanna and Pat Sajak were doing this little riff:
Vanna: Do you think women have midlife crises?
Pat: How could you tell?
Vanna pretends to get all outraged, laughs, and punches Pat in the arm.
Pat mugs for the camera. “See?”
Ho fucking ho ho.
As I was sitting there glaring at the TV, Mr. Shakes turned to look at me for my reaction. I said to him, "You don't even understand what it's like to have to see and hear shit like that your entire fucking life."
He said, very solemnly and compassionately, "I'm starting to."
It’s never just “one thing.” You don’t think women should get annoyed about “one thing,” but how about ten zillion of them?
Unless you’re the target of institutionalized sexism, or homophobia, or racism, you will not understand, without a concerted effort, what it’s like to experience that kind of thing day after day after day, nor how it all accumulates and creates an inextricable context for every other damn irritation that follows thereafter. Not having to understand it is what privilege is all about—being ignorant of the patterns and continuity of sexism et. al. It’s why, for example, on the first day I reported George Allen’s “macaca” moment, there were Shakers who were giving him the benefit of the doubt, but as more and more reports of Allen’s race problems emerged, the reality that he is a racist became undeniable. Multiple incidents of a similar expression form a new picture.
In the same way, those who are not targets of sexism must recognize that they don’t have the same perspective on it via repetitive experience that targets of sexism do. It takes a conscious effort to understand the flipside of the coin, not to mention a willingness to challenge your own assumptions and occasionally look like you might not know everything. Bless Pam and Waveflux and innumerable friends of color over the years who have patiently suffered my questions that begin with “I’m sorry to do the whole ‘solicit-your-opinion-because-you're-[black]’ thing by asking you this, but…” My perspective is different than theirs; I only have access to their perspective by asking. It’s not that when Waveflux, for example, gives me his opinion, I take that as “This is how black people think about this issue,” but I am able to take the impressions of a person whose experience is different than mine into consideration. He graciously loans me his eyes to look at something from an angle I could never find on my own. I only see the world through my eyes, which is, in the end, exceptionally limiting given the breadth of human experience.
I wouldn’t presume to tell a gay man to “get over” something he found homophobic, or a Latina woman to “get over” something she found racist, if I didn’t see the “big deal.” And the reason I wouldn’t is because they are more knowledgeable than I, by virtue of who they are, about homophobia and racism. It’s the height of egocentrism to believe that you have a better understanding of any form of oppression than those who are oppressed by it. The view from inside is very different indeed.
Caption This Photo
who makes a cat and mouse joke.
Maverick, a 7-year-old American Shorthair Silver Classic Tabby, uses a mouse on a toy computer during a preview of the 2006 CFA-Iams Cat Championship at New York's Madison Square Garden, Wednesday Oct. 11, 2006.—AP Photo/Richard Drew.
What kind of crackerjack outfit is Bush running?!
Sometimes it’s the big things, but sometimes it’s the small things.
At least 135 federal employees, including a White House staff member and National Security Agency employees, bought bogus online college degrees from a diploma mill, a lawyer in the case against the mill operators said.Superb background-checking there, White House and NSA. Couldn’t even detect a fake fucking degree. (And before anyone starts accusing me of blaming unfairly for this, let’s remember that he was supposed to be the “CEO president,” and any CEO whose corporate divisions were promoting people with fake degrees that the most basic background check should uncover would be held accountable for such poor business practices, too—if for no other reason than hiring incompetent underlings.)
…Material provided to the defense by the Justice Department shows at least 135 government employees bought college or university degrees to use in seeking promotions or pay raises, Schweda said. The phony diplomas came from such places as St. Regis University, James Monroe University and Robertstown University
And it gets better. Of course you knew this had to tie into child pornography somehow, didn’t you?
On Tuesday, Kenneth Wade Pearson, 31, webmaster for the diploma mill operation, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and receipt of child pornography.In fairness, maybe his Republican clients were just paying him in trade.
…More than 10,000 sexually explicit images of children were found in four computers used by the Spokane-based operation, government lawyers said, but only Pearson was named in pornography charges.
(The hat tip goes to Think Progress, who files this under the amusing headline The Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good.)
“If you have ass all the time, then it’s not special.”
(not worksafe)
Mr. Shakes and I saw Margaret Cho at a tiny wee venue at the Edinburgh Festival a few years ago, and I actually thought I would die of laughter. She is totally, spectacularly outrageous. I love her.
Windbags in the Windy City
If you feel an extra breeze today, Chicagoland Shakers, it’s probably just the combination of Bush’s bloviations and Hastert’s mouth-breathing.
The president has been backing Hastert as he fends off calls for him to resign over his handling of the congressional page scandal. The president on Wednesday called Hastert "very credible" and last week, a "father, teacher and coach who cares about the children of this country."Bush is heading this way after what sounds like a superb event in St. Louis.
The political event in Chicago to benefit David McSweeney and Peter Roskam, two House candidates, marks the first time Bush has publicly appeared with Hastert since former Rep. Mark Foley resigned in disgrace over sexually explicit messages he sent to teenage male pages.
During Bush's speech, a woman in the crowd stood up and started chanting, "Out of Iraq now" and "Our troops are not renewable." Bush did not recognize her, but continued speaking as the crowd applauded him.Oy squared.
Event officials pulled her out of the audience by her jacket sleeve, and she shouted louder and louder with her fist in the air as she was escorted out of the room. "What are you doing? You're killing us!" she shouted at the president, as he continued with his speech.
Goregeous
Big Whoop
The MoJo Blog points us to this editorial, entitled "Time to Switch Teams," in which a Times Herald-Record business editor (Douglas Cunningham) gets all huffy about the current state of the Republican party, and scolds his fellow conservatives. Some excerpts (bolds mine):
I've had it. The Republican leadership in the House, beginning with Speaker Dennis Hastert, has got to go. As in now. I'm thinking we need to plow through four or five people right below Hastert, too. If the Republican members of the House had any guts, they'd have ousted these people last week. If the Republican leadership had any shame, they would have quit last week.Well, whoopty-god-damn-de-doo.
Apparently, not very many people these days have either, at least in Washington. Anyone who knew anything about the scandal, I want them gone. If the Republicans come to be known as the party that protects gay sexual predators, we're finished. I am not ready to abandon the party of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater to the likes of Mark Foley.
The Hastert storyline is one in which there's no percentage. The most degenerate gambler wouldn't place a bet on Hastert and the rest surviving. The Hastert line is this: I take responsibility, but I've done nothing wrong. This is no worse than Democratic sex scandals. We, personally, have done nothing wrong.
Well, to start with, you did nothing about Foley. Do we need to know more? The Republican sex scandals are suddenly pure and virginal? Foley, to the pier. Hastert, to the bench.
Some of you then trot out, Oh, sure, it's a sex scandal that gets you upset. Everything else was A-OK.
[...]
The reason Republicans are bent out of shape is that this Foley scandal is the proverbial last straw. We've had it. The out-of-control spending. The earmarks. The graft with the lobbyists. The arrogance. The abrogation of principles that Goldwater, Reagan and others worked decades to spread.
The Republicans will lose the House in November. Absent big changes, I have to say they deserve to. I will help them lose it, because in my own congressional district, Pennsylvania's 10th, I'm voting for Democrat Chris Carney. As the campaign literature for Carney slyly notes, he's been married for 18 years to his college sweetheart.
Why might he note that? Because his opponent, and the incumbent, Republican Don Sherwood, engaged in a five-year affair in Washington with a mistress some three decades his junior.
My father had choices. The Republicans offer me candidates who can't even keep their pants on. I've had it.
We're actually starting to hear a lot of this lately. Republicans/"real" Conservatives are fed up with the out-of-control Bush administration, and they're ready to vote for the Dems, just to get them out of office. Well gee and gosh guys, that's all honorable and cool of you, but I just have one question for you. Where the hell were you guys during the last election?
This editorial, in particular, takes the cake. His finger wagging and scolding is just so much hot air, for the simple fact that the Bush Administration has been completely out of control since day one. Granted, things were jacked up tenfold after 9/11, but it is absolutely unforgiveable that it would take this long to realize that the Bush Administration is bad for America.
Before the 2004 election, everything that Cunningham mentions was already going on. The out-of-control spending. The earmarks. The arrogance. Not to mention everything else negative that Bush brought to the table. The Bush Administration has been rolling around in an orgy of unchecked power for the last six years, and suddenly now, a sex scandal is the straw that broke the camel's back?
Waiting for this election was simply not necessary. You could have stopped everything you're complaining about if you had been responsible and held your elected leaders accountable in the first place.
So, hey, thanks for the votes... we appreciate you finally taking some responsibility for the fanatics that you put in office and supported for the last six years. It's just a fucking shame for the rest of us that you couldn't set aside party loyalty for the love of your country before the last election. I'm going to be arrogant here and say for the rest of the planet, "Too little, too late." If you had any "guts" or "shame," you all would have stood up with the Progressives that have been shouting warnings since Bush started getting cocky, and stopped his massive power grab before we lost everything that America stands for. Instead, you scoffed and labeled those that would speak out against the Bush Administration as traitors. Now, suddenly, we're supposed to accept your change of heart?
I'm finding it pretty damn difficult to suddenly get excited about this "trend."
You should have "had it" in 2004. It was bad enough then. Thanks to you and your fellow silent apologists, we've got decades of cleanup ahead of us.
You helped this happen. Hell, you made this happen. Don't act as if you're suddenly a pillar of honesty and virtue. If one of you were to apologize to the Democrats and Progressives, rather than grump about how you've "had it," I think I'd have about twelve heart attacks in a row.
Bed. Made. Lie.
(Tip 'o the Energy Dome to Crooks & Liars. Hey, where's the cross-post filling?)
My Feminism
After writing her piece on being a Fun Feminist, to which I was responding in my Confessions of a Cool Chick on Tuesday, Jill got some flak which then prompted her to write this defense which explains who she is and what her feminism is. And it just made me all kinds of irritated. Not what she wrote, but that she had to write it.
You know, I've always understood feminism to be about legitimizing a variety of choices for women, and I've never believed that only those choices that were deemed empowering or otherwise feminist-approved were deserving of our support. A woman who makes a conscious decision to wear make-up and high heels and remove body hair specifically to be attractive to men* is about as antithetical to my personal aesthetic as it gets, but I don't view my role as a feminist to impose my aesthetic, but to contribute to the creation of a society where both of us can coexist, and neither of us feel compelled to compromise, because we have access to equal opportunities irrespective of our individual philosophies. The problem is not that there are women who conform to a cultural expectation of "perfect womanhood" imposed on women, but that a cultural expectation of "perfect womanhood" exists in the first place, rendering other expressions of womanhood "less than."
There are those who will argue that as long as women conform to a traditional expectation, it will inevitably be perpetuated. I'm not so sure this is true. If women who consciously design themselves for men have to become extinct for women who don’t to be conferred legitimacy, the accomplishment is rooted not in changing dominant cultural paradigms, but in having simply removed the preferred option. That’s a success by default. Equality is achieved when variations are considered just as legitimate as the original norm, thereby leaving no norm at all. For my choice to remain deliberately childless to be considered viable, all other women didn’t need to stop having babies and being mothers; we simply needed to expand the definition of womanhood. Expanding a definition doesn't require the annihilation of the original, but instead making room for legitimate and respected alternatives.
In my view, it isn’t the job of feminism to dictate to women how they should live their lives, but first to create a culture that has room for legitimate and respected alternatives to traditional definitions of womanhood, and second to educate women conforming to traditional definitions that they don’t have to, because the culture no longer requires it nor gives it preference.
Creating such a culture will necessarily entail critiquing, and often criticizing, the venues through which the accoutrements of traditional definitions are marketed, but rightfully condemning a glamour magazine for purveying unrealistic beauty standards or giving women 101 Ways to Please Your Man doesn’t mean we must simultaneously condemn women who pursue a beauty standard or try to please men. It’s decidedly inconvenient, I admit, that there are women who steadfastly embrace traditional definitions of womanhood, but even among those who do, many of them don’t reject alternatives, viewing my childless, no make-up wearing, jeans-clad fat ass as just as perfect an expression of womanhood as is theirs. They make room for me; feminism ought to make room for them.
And it can. The measure of feminism’s tolerance should not be how well one conforms to any particular aesthetic, but how willing one is to embrace a myriad of aesthetics. A woman who wants nothing more than to be a beautiful bride with 2.5 kids and a suburban estate worthy of Better Homes & Gardens, but also totally digs my personal groove, isn’t my problem. A woman who thinks there’s only one definition of womanhood and one correct way to express it, whether she calls herself a Concerned Woman for America or a feminist, is.
All that said, there should always be room for other feminists to question why I or Jill or anyone else make the choices we do, to challenge our models and the trappings we employ and all the rest. Suggesting that we expand our definitions is not just a fancy way of saying every choice is equally good or wise. It is simply to say that the moment we flatly refuse to champion a space for women whose aesthetics differ from our own, we veer dangerously close to the inflexible dictates of the dominant culture we mean to change. I didn’t become a feminist to assume the very role I despise.
* I'm not saying at all this is how Jill was describing herself, or how I see her. I'm specifically talking about a woman who deliberately and without conflict uses these things in pursuit of a male partner.
Father of the Year
The home of Randall Warren Piercy, 41, was like a prison that had cameras in almost every room, with the father monitoring [his 9-year-old son] on television and computer screens, Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Lt. Annie Smith said.The mother hasn’t been charged, but may yet be. She told investigators that she “allowed her husband to make all the decisions regarding” their son, and that Crazy Dad only let her see the kid “at certain times and usually for an hour a day.” Yeah, that seems perfectly reasonable.
During the past three years, the boy has not attended school, received medical attention or had contact with people outside his family, Smith said. The police report said he was home schooled but could not read children's books.
Relatives told police that the boy was usually allowed to use the bathroom once a day because his father was teaching him to control his body.
Piercy was arrested Wednesday on charges of aggravated child abuse in the torture, malicious punishment and unlawful caging of the boy.
In Florida, where this nightmare happened, gay couples are allowed to foster kids, but are not allowed to adopt them. Florida is, in fact, one of only three states with a total ban on gay adoption. (Utah and Mississippi are the others.)
In January 2004, when four gay men who were long-time foster parents challenged the 1977 law and lost, Governor Jeb Bush was happy as a pig in shit with the ruling and said “it is in the best interest of adoptive children, many of whom come from troubled and unstable backgrounds, to be placed in a home anchored both by a father and a mother.” Made of stern moral fiber, that Jeb Bush, eh? Except here’s the thing—as the above-cited case shows, a home that is “anchored both by a father and a mother” is not guaranteed to be a good home. In fact, sometimes it’s a pretty crappy home.
People invoke the words “father” and “mother” as if the unspoken images that lay behind them—a stern but loving man who will toss around a football with junior on Sunday afternoons, and a doting and nurturing woman who keeps a clean house and cooks all her sauces from scratch—are always true. They can’t dissociate the picture-perfect images of Mom and Dad from the words “mother” and “father,” which are simply biological descriptors, and sometimes happen to describe people who are monstrous.
And their ideas, their images, of gay men and women are just as immutable. They are as insistent on not expanding their definitions of gays to include gay parents as they are to not expand their definitions of “mother” and “father” to include moms and dads who treat their kids like shit. Everything has to go into a nice little black-and-white box, and that means that homes with moms and dads are good and homes without both are bad for adoptive children.
Jeb Bush is not one of those people, though. He knows that gay people can parent—and not only that, but that they will parent children no one else will—which is why he hasn’t made any move to forbid gay couples from foster parenting. Two of the men involved in the case petitioning for adoption rights were foster parents to a 10-year-old, HIV+ black boy. He came to them at 9 weeks old, so has known no other parents besides them for his entire life. Only in the abstract world of political pandering could it be asserted that that child is better served by not letting his parents adopt him, just because they’re gay.
Jeb Bush, and all the other despicable, base-satiating knob-ends like him who go on about the best interests of children, aren’t crippled, like their ignorant supporters, with delusions about whether gays can make good parents. They know they can, which is why gay couples are allowed to foster indefinitely. They also know that their electorate is rife with people who like their fictional images of Apple Pie Mom and Baseball Dad, an American landscape filled with happy homes, and rosy-cheeked white children who have never been sexually abused, beaten, starved, abandoned, or caged by their biological parents, and are just looking for a good home with a mom and a dad.
Life’s a little messier than that. And no child was ever saved with platitudes.
Warner Not Running
Mark Warner, featured speaker at last year’s Yearly Kos and employer of MyDD’s Jerome Armstrong, isn’t running for president.
I’m no fan of Warner, so I can’t say I care.
Foley Was Blackmailed
Yesterday, a source close to Foley explained to THE NEW REPUBLIC that in early 2006 the congressman had all but decided to retire from the House and set up shop on K Street. "Mark's a friend of mine," says this source. "He told me, 'I'm thinking about getting out of it and becoming a lobbyist.'"Gotta love it. An administration scared of losing a Congressional majority and being investigated blackmails one of their own into running for re-election, and then that same bloke creates a massive shitstorm that might not only lose them their majority, but has warranted even more investigations. I just hope the Democrats, should they win, don’t lose sight of the fact that even if Mark Foley is the biggest scandal in the media and public’s collective mind, it isn’t the only thing that needs investigated.
But when Foley's friend saw the Congressman again this spring, something had changed. To the source's surprise, Foley told him he would indeed be standing for re-election. What happened? Karl Rove intervened.
According to the source, Foley said he was being pressured by "the White House and Rove gang," who insisted that Foley run. If he didn't, Foley was told, it might impact his lobbying career.
"He said, 'The White House made it very clear I have to run,'" explains Foley's friend, adding that Foley told him that the White House promised that if Foley served for two more years it would "enhance his success" as a lobbyist. "I said, 'I thought you wanted out of this?' And he said, 'I do, but they're scared of losing the House and the thought of two years of Congressional hearings, so I have two more years of duty.'"
Ouch
An ugly glimpse into the White House’s opinion of their conservative Christian base:
More than five years after President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, the former second-in-command of that office is going public with an insider’s tell-all account that portrays an office used almost exclusively to win political points with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities.And, worse than that, an allegation that the White House deliberately broke the law and then sought to conceal it:
…“Tempting Faith’s” author is David Kuo, who served as special assistant to the president from 2001 to 2003…
He says some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as “the nuts.”
“National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’” Kuo writes.
More seriously, Kuo alleges that then-White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly “nonpartisan” events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races.I’d have more respect for this guy if he hadn’t waited to make these charges in a book off of which he stands to make money. That said, it could be possible he tried to get members of Congress or the media interested in investigating, and no one paid him any mind. Certainly, his allegations ought to be properly investigated—and if the Christian right had any sense, they’d be the first ones calling for it.
According to Kuo, “Ken loved the idea and gave us our marching orders.”
Among those marching orders, Kuo says, was Mehlman’s mandate to conceal the true nature of the events.
Kuo quotes Mehlman as saying, “… (I)t can’t come from the campaigns. That would make it look too political. It needs to come from the congressional offices. We’ll take care of that by having our guys call the office [of faith-based initiatives] to request the visit.”
Anyway, Olbermann’s all over it; Crooks and Liars has the video.
Question of the Day
A new Associated Press-Pew poll has found that the interest of American voters in politics is at its highest level in more than a decade. Clearly, anyone hanging out here has an interest in politics, but, outside the blogosphere, do you express your interest in politics? I’m not talking so much about political activism in this case, but conveying an interest in political issues to others. Do you talk politics with friends? Family? Coworkers? Anyone who will listen?
Count me firmly as someone who talks politics with anyone who will listen. There are certain people with whom I know I can’t talk politics, because it will just erupt into a pointless argument (*cough*my dad*cough), but no one who knows me for more than about 10 seconds could possibly suffer from the misapprehension that I’m not an inveterate political junky, even if we never ending up talking about it.
British Blokes Boo Bogus Boobs
If that header doesn’t get me a job offer from the New York Post, the universe has gone completely askew.
Anyway…
According to a new survey, men in the UK prefer women not to go under the knife to improve their chest.To ask the obvious question, do men typically know that women have had plastic surgery, though? According to the survey, “15% claimed not to even notice women's cosmetic surgery.” Ergo, supposedly most men do know, and most men don’t like it. At least in Blighty.
A poll for More magazine found that 85% of men aged 18 to 34 said that they hated plastic surgery and found it a "complete turn-off" in women.
So, bonnie British lasses would be better off investing their hard-earned dosh in starting up their own businesses, going back to school, buying a nice little flat, or, as the spokeswoman for More suggests, “spending their money on new dress and shoes rather than fake breasts.” Helpful.
