Via Sully, by way of Oddjob. Sully calls it “strangely moving.” It really is.
Judith Miller: Concern Troll
Judith Miller is worried about bloggers:
"I'm worried about bloggers," says former New York Times reporter Judith Miller. "(A post) starts as a rumor and within 24 hours it's repeated as fact." Miller said blogs "don’t post corrections when they learn that what they have posted is wrong," but added that she was "glad to welcome them as long as they agree to the standards." When not helping blogs improve their correction standards, Miller peddled false intelligence from the White House and Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi that helped convince Americans that Iraq had WMD.Let's put Judy's theory to the test, shall we? Judith Miller has a brain the size of a pecan, and it's filled with nothing but hotdog innards. I don't know this to be true; it's just a rumor. (That I'm starting.) Let's give it 24 hours and see if it gets repeated as fact on the front page of the freaking New York Times.
(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)
Phat Chat Update
All right, Shakers. The Chat Corridor has been closed. Instead, we now have a new and improved Chat Pop-Up, which can be accessed from the righthand sidebar. (Right, Kona. Right.) Many thanks to Pam, She of the Eternal House Blend, from whom I snagged the code.
Enjoy!
Question of the Day
So, now that the midterms are over and everyone is already looking ahead to the next big contest, we might as well revisit an ever-popular QotD, with all the requisite caveats about how it’s too soon and the lay of the land could change, yadda yadda yadda: Who’s your dream ticket in 2008?
Even though it’s a “dream” ticket, let’s restrict it to people who could actually run; in other words, no Bill Clinton, no Abraham Lincoln, no Borat, and no one under 35. And bear in mind that Warner and Feingold definitely aren’t running.
If you’re feeling frisky, try to come up with a GOP ticket that doesn’t make you puke, too.
Giuliani Makes His Move
No-Chance McGee is launching an exploratory committee:
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, a moderate Republican best known for his stewardship of the city after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has taken the first step in a 2008 presidential bid, GOP officials said Monday.Really, Rudy—save your money. I’ll explore your chances for you right now for a buck and a pack of smokes:
The former mayor filed papers to create the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Exploratory Committee, Inc., establishing a panel that would allow him to raise money for a White House run and travel the country.
Pro gun-control: No chance.
LGBT friendly: No chance.
Pro-choice: No chance.
I smoke Marlboro Lights. Thanks.
Once again, I will assert that the position No-Chance McGee is really running for is the bottom of the ticket. Some loopy wingnut will be the presidential nominee, and if, in the intervening year and a half, No-Chance can convince the GOP he can play in the south, he’ll get the veep slot. Of course, to play in the south, he’s got to give up the things that moderates like about him, so I don’t see where this can really go.
Also, I’ve always thought he sucked on TV. McCain’s no power personality, either, so the two of them together would be a nightmare of Nixonian proportions (ref. Kennedy debate). Then again, I still can’t believe there are people who think Bush is eloquent, so what the hell do I know?
MLK Memorial
The ground was broken today on a memorial to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., to be completed in 2008:
Martin Luther King Jr. belongs among American icons like Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, national leaders said Monday at the ceremonial groundbreaking for a King memorial.It sounds like it will be beautiful. It’s about time.
…Clinton, who signed legislation in 1996 authorizing the memorial, received a standing ovation from the largely black crowd. He told the crowd of King's commitment to nonviolence and social justice causes such as ending poverty, saying those goals still have not yet been achieved.
"If he were here, he would remind us that the time to do right remains," Clinton said.
The memorial will occupy a four-acre plot on the banks of the Tidal Basin, near the Potomac River. The Jefferson Memorial is across the Tidal Basin, while the Lincoln Memorial lies to the northwest, near the river.
The design is based in part on King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. Before repeating the "Let freedom ring" refrain, King told the crowd, "We will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope."
Visitors will pass through an entryway cut through a massive stone symbolizing the mountain of despair and once inside, will come upon the missing section marking the stone of hope, bearing a carved profile of King. It will be ringed with walls chiseled with King's words that may eventually be the base for a waterfall.
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., overcome with emotion, center, with Yolanda King, second from left, and Rev. Al Sharpton, left, take part in the ground breaking ceremony for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington Monday, Nov. 13, 2006. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson)
Noe Guilty
The weird and wacky Ohio coin scandal has garnered coin dealer and Republican fundraiser Tom Noe a verdict of guilty for money-laundering, forgery and tampering. He stole “at least $2 million from a controversial state investment…to pay off business loans and live a lavish lifestyle.” Adios, Tommy. (Hat tip Holly.)
Martinez to Head RNC
Sen. Mel Martinez, the first-term lawmaker who previously served in President Bush's Cabinet, will assume the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, GOP officials said Monday.Joe Solmonese, President of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, had these kind words for the senator in a just-issued press release: “Senator Martinez was elected in 2004 by taking page one out of Karl Rove’s gay baiting playbook. His campaign was one of the most anti-gay, bigoted and divisive campaigns in the nation’s history. … For him to be tapped as the head of the Republican Party sends yet another message to our community and the country that the Republican leadership is continuing their old ways of rewarding slash and burn politics instead of being interested in uniting the country.”
Martinez, 60, will replace current chairman Ken Mehlman, who will leave the post in January at the end of his two-year term, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting a formal announcement.
Martinez will remain in the Senate. Mike Duncan, the RNC's current general counsel and a former party treasurer, will run the day-to-day operations at the party's Capitol Hill headquarters.
In other words, Situation Normal: All Fucked Up, baby.
You know, as far as I’m concerned, if the GOP continues to play to their dim-witted base of bigots while they’re out of power in both houses of Congress, so much the better for our chances of taking back the White House, too. So, congratulations, Mel! You’re a delightful choice.
J is for Just Shoot Me
But P is for popcorn:
Sometimes when my friends come over to watch a DVD, I'll make popcorn in a pan.Following is a recipe for how to make your own popcorn on the stove—like, wow! I can’t wait until Kelly introduces her friends to the cool new discovery she calls fire.
They're stunned. They say things like, "You can make popcorn that's not from the microwave?"
After they get over the initial shock, they're thrilled. They start telling others, "I love Kelly's popcorn. She makes it on the stove."
Reading the swill (of which this is a classic example) produced for the under-30 set, which is evidently presumed to be comprised mainly of mental midgets who had no idea the world existed before 1980, is unbearably painful. Useless pieces like this one, in which hipsters are meant to discover fire backwards from microwaves, are clogging the internets, and I want to know who the hell is reading them with even the most infinitesimal level of appreciation. For crying out loud, stovetop popcorn cookers are still being sold! Does anyone enjoy being imagined so resolutely daft it’s a wonder they can function?
Waaah? Popcorn on the stove? Dude, what’s next—cars you can drive to the moon?!
Yeesh. I know stuff like this has always existed in various forms, but I swear the Series of Tubes has made it multiply like an evil, fast-replicating creature from a 1960's horror movie that's trying to suck out my very soul.
In any case, your very own recipe for popcorn will come in really useful after you’ve read M is for Movie, which offers the fantabulous idea of—wait for it—watching a movie at home! It also provides a handy list of 10 random films, in case your brain is so addled from the consumption of mass advertising and bong fumes that you don’t know how to make a decision anymore.
In which I help out TIME Magazine
Dear TIME,
You seem to be having some trouble coming up with an appropriate cover to usher in the new era of the donkey. Please feel free to use my mock-up for your next issue.
Best regards,
Shakespeare’s Sister
Sign of the Times
Vanessa at Feministing:
A small Spanish town council has decided to fight machismo through altering half of all road signs and traffic signals to “feminine attributes.”I’m all for it, too. One of the most pernicious attributes of sexism is regard for “male” as the norm, which manifests in usage of terms like mankind, as opposed to humankind, preference for “him” or “his” as the default pronoun, and people generically being represented on everything from street signs to “How to Perform the Heimlich Maneuver” pamphlets with exclusively male forms. Over my lifetime, I’ve seen improvements in this area, from safety cards on airplanes featuring women to language usage. I’m not a total language fiend, but I certainly prefer terms like “firefighters” to “firemen,” for example, when referring to a mixed-sex group (and the profession generally).
While all of the street signs in Fuenlabrada have always consisted of boxy male figures, the council is requiring the town to change half of the signs to show female silhouettes with ponytails or a skirt.
While I’m not too keen on using a ribbon, ponytail and/or skirt to define what a woman looks like, sometimes something as simple as identifying women as pedestrians can stick it to (even in a small way) a sexist system. And I’m all for it.
These “little” things tend to be of the sort that make people who aren’t big on the equality tip (including and especially those who are of the mind that we’ve “pretty much got that sexism thing sorted, and now I’m tired of hearing about it”) roll their eyes, but it’s not quite as pointless as all that. I remember being very young (6 or 7) when I first heard a woman referred to as a “policeman.” I asked my teacher, “Shouldn’t she be called a policewoman?” She kind of laughed, and looked a bit startled by the question, and then said, “Well, yeah—I guess she should!” It wasn’t just that I was a pedantic little twerp (which I was), but I felt a weird pang of unfairness upon hearing the dissonant moniker.
Particularly growing up in an era when women could be readily seen doing “-man” jobs—policeman, fireman, mailman, repairman, businessman, congressman, councilman, spokesman, chairman, fisherman, tradesman—before I had the words to describe what I felt or why I felt it, I had the sense that something wasn’t right. In a very real way, the use of the sex-specific terms to describe something I saw women doing too was itself transmitting sexism to me, because even though the jobs were now open to women, their titles were reflecting that they were still regarded as the province of men. To hear the inharmonious “She’s a mailman” conjured a sense of a woman doing a man’s job, as opposed to “She’s a mail carrier,” which does not.
That’s why it’s still important to address these “little” things. Telling a girl since birth that she is equal matters little if she travels within a culture that consistently sends signals contrary to that message, which is why it’s imperative to subvert the presumption that male is the default, the norm, the unique representative of humankind.
I’ve been told before that sounds like so much hyperbole to some men, but the world is a very different place when you never see yourself reflected back in so many little and big ways. Thusly, eliminating exclusively male-form street signs gets the Shakespeare’s Sister Stamp of Approval!
Sorry, Can't Hear You Over All These Crickets Chirping
Well, as I'm sure you've heard by now, the FBI caught the bozo that sent an envelope of white powder to Keith Olbermann, not to mention Nancy Pelosi, John Stewart, and others. (The story that the New York Post mocked; you remember!) Well, guess what? The offender is a far-right conservative, Free Republic-loving nut.
And not only that, check out his Free Republic bio:
I am a lifelong Conservative Republican .Gee, he "worships" Michelle Malkin (and yet still manages to spell her name wrong)? I wonder if Michelle "The Right Polices It's Own" Malkin will be posting today to condemn this extremist, and let's not forget, illegal behavior?
I have an Associates Degree in the Science of Electronics .
Ann Coulter is a Goddess and I worship Laura Ingraham and Michele Malkin .
English is the langauge of the United States of America- - our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution are written in the langauge that expresses our civilized freedoms .
Spanish is the language of Banana Republics, beyond that it belongs in a European country.
Let's see now...
A post tut-tutting the San Francisco Public School system cracking down on ROTC...
A smug post making fun of Gore...
More mocking of Dean in a pathetic "Hot Air" segment that reiterates the "John Kerry called the troops stupid" lie...
A "Liberal talk radio is dying" post....
A "The Simpsons is an evil, military bashing show!" post...
And gee, not much else!
But I'm sure she'll get right on it, once she finishes crowing about the "thumping" the Republicans took last week actually being a "conservative victory."
Just watch me hold my breath.
Update: David Niewert has more.
Haters like the people Castagana claims as his heroes -- Coulter, Malkin, Ingraham, just for starters -- are constantly engaging in the worst kind of eliminationist rhetoric directed primarily at liberals. It is simply an inevitability that, when this kind of hate is broadcast to millions of people daily, some of them are eventually going to start acting it out in fashions precisely like this. And worse.Amen, brother.
All these figures, of course, have the right to speak as they wish. But the media-industry figures -- the producers and executives who put them on the air, thereby giving them a bullhorn to broadcast it nationally and spew it across our television sets and radios -- are simply being irresponsible.
It's past time, really, to start holding them responsible.
("Free Republic Crazy Person Bio" courtesy of Sadly, No! They've got more in their post. The sounds... of cross-posts...)
Soft Bigotry, Meet Low Expectations
President Bush, during Saturday’s radio address: “[A]ll Americans can take pride in the example our democracy sets for the world by holding elections even in a time of war.”
Are you fucking kidding me? I mean, the war we’re fighting isn’t even on our shores (you know, because we’re fighting the terrorists there). There was no chance that the war would make elections practically undoable—no bombs going off in the streets, no lack of electricity on which to run those awesome machines most of us are using these days. At its very essence, what Bush is referencing is his own dictatorial largesse. “I didn’t suspend elections on the wholly anti-American premise that the war imbues with me with the power to do anything I want.” Gee, thanks a heap, bucko.
Meanwhile, here’s a quote back atcha: “All Americans can be ashamed of the woeful economic model our administration has set for the world by giving tax cuts even in a time of war, thereby transferring the cost of the war to future generations.” Chomp on that one, Mr. President.
Radical Hijra Agenda
Also to be filed under Bigotry Can Bite You In the Ass, because, you see, if people weren’t filled with fear and hatred of India’s hijras, this wouldn’t work:
Dancing and singing eunuchs are knocking on doors in the Indian city of Patna in a bid to embarrass shopkeepers into paying their taxes.
The new shock strategy, in which sari-clad and heavily made up eunuchs accompany officials on their rounds of crowded shopping areas in a country notorious for tax evasion and non-payment, has been declared a success.
The hijras are comprised of eunuchs, transsexuals, transvestites, and hermaphrodites “who have been ostracized by their families” and create close-knit families-by-design, in which they live on the margins on society. Atul Prasad, a top official in Bihar noted that "People may be afraid of them, but they are very much part of society and are useful,” and paid the hijras a commission on every tax collected.
It’s notable that government officials are willing to align themselves with the hijras, who were only granted the right to vote in the mid-90s, and managed to elect the first hijra MP by 1999—a political force with a lot of momentum, even as hijras continue to suffer violent discrimination, serious health concerns, and poverty by virtue of reduced opportunities. They are generally prostitutes and beggars, relegated to the margins. It’s a sad state of affairs that there is still fear and hatred to be exploited, but compare this to what the GOP has been doing in America. Instead of exploiting fear of the hijras to further marginalize them, the local government embraced the hijras and shamed people who don’t feel they’re “very much a part of society,” who are so dissociated from the hijras and their lives that they suspect them of having occult powers, and give them money for fear of mystical retribution. Would that every locality in India engage this “shock strategy” until there was no one left to be shocked at all.
On an amusing note, have the officials in Bahir been watching Eddie Izzard?
“I didn’t join the army, as you might have noticed… And um, and uh, yeah, cause there’s not much makeup in the army, is there? No? They only have that nighttime look, and that’s a bit slapdash, isn’t it? That’s a bit… And they look a mess. And so you can’t join, even though the American armed forces have a distinct policy of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ towards the alternative sexualities. If you’re a bloke wearing a lot of makeup, you know, uh, I don’t think they need to ask, really. And so you can’t join. They go, ‘No, no, you can’t. It’s—wrong shade of lipstick for the army, I’m afraid…’ And they’re missing a huge opportunity here cause we all know one of the main elements of attack is the element of surprise. So what could be more surprising than the 1st Battalion Transvestite Brigade? Airborne wing—the airborne wing parachuting into dangerous areas with fantastic makeup! And a fantastic gun. And the opposing forces going, ‘Fucking hell, look at these guys. Hey… Suckaaas. They’ve got guns! They’ve got guns! Jesus, wha—they’ve got guns!’ Ahhh, bugger. I was so surprised. Were you surprised? I was surprised’.”
The hat tip goes to Shaker Kristin, who says, “This is what we need in America: a SWAT team of transpeople, drag queens, and Dykes on Bikes, going around and harassing wingnuts into doing the right thing.” The Sod Squad! I would so pull a Count Victor Grezhinski to join that squadron, bitchez.
Murtha for Majority Leader
House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) endorsed Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) yesterday as the next House majority leader, thereby stepping into a contentious intraparty fight between Murtha and her current deputy, Maryland's Steny H. Hoyer.At first blush, this seems like a good move to me. Hoyer’s probably got the votes to win, so I imagine this is more of a public comment to show the Dems aren’t shying away from the Iraq issue and to give a shout-out to the grassroots who largely support Murtha. It seems like a pretty smart play.
…Pelosi had been outspoken about her frustration with Murtha's declaration that he would challenge Hoyer, currently the House minority whip, for the majority leader post long before Democrats had secured the majority. Many believed she would remain on the sidelines, just as Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) did earlier this year when three Republicans vied for the post of House majority leader.
But in her first real decision as the incoming speaker, Pelosi said she was swayed by Murtha's early stance for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Her letter of endorsement yesterday made clear that she sees Iraq as the central issue of the next Congress and that she believes a decorated Marine combat veteran at the helm of the House caucus would provide Democrats ammunition in their fight against congressional Republicans and President Bush on the issue.
Plus, if her endorsement really does upset Hoyer, I wouldn’t shed any tears for the man who scolded Stephen Colbert for being disrespectful to the president.
The Believers in Nothing
Excellent post by Greenwald, in which he dissects “why the Beltway class can't comprehend the Russ Feingolds of the world.”
[W]hen Feingold stood up and advocated censure -- based on the truly radical and crazy, far leftist premise that when the President is caught red-handed breaking the law, the Congress should actually do something about that -- the soul-less, oh-so-sophisticated Beltway geniuses could not even contemplate the possibility that he was doing that because he believed what he was saying. Beltway pundits and the leaders of the Beltway political and consulting classes all, in unison, immediately began casting aspersions on Feingold's motives and laughed away -- really never considered -- the idea that he was motivated by actual belief, let alone the merits of his proposal.Spot-on. It’s all part of the “Get a Life” phenomenon I’ve written about before, the hosility toward political activists that’s even worse than apathy, combined with the notion that politics is just a game.
That's because they believe in nothing. They have no passion about anything. And they thus assume that everyone else suffers from the same emptiness of character and ossified cynicism that plagues them. And all of their punditry and analysis and political strategizing flows from this corrupt root.
Not only do they believe in nothing, they think that a Belief in Nothing is a mark of sophistication and wisdom. Those who believe in things too much -- who display political passion or who take their convictions and ideals seriously (Feingold, Howard Dean) -- are either naive or, worse, are the crazy, irrational, loudmouth masses and radicals who disrupt the elevated, measured world of the high-level, dispassionate Beltway sophisticates (James Carville, David Broder, Fred Hiatt). They are interested in, even obsessed with, every aspect of the political process except for deeply held political beliefs -- the only part that really matters or that has any real worth.
It’s bad enough when you see this sort of lackadaisical contempt coming from someone who’s primary role in the political process is voting, but when it emanates from the people who are paid hefty sums to direct the nation’s political conversation in the media and/or recommend a course of action for our elected officials, it’s enormously frustrating—and dangerous, to boot.
There’s a movie coming out soon about the day Robert Kennedy was assassinated, called Bobby, and today I saw an interview with one of its stars, Martin Sheen, whose son, Emilio Estevez, wrote and directed the film. Sheen was saying that Estevez was profoundly affected by Kennedy’s assassination, and that he made the movie for the generation who doesn’t have their own Bobby Kennedy, a man who “saw wrong and tried to right it…saw suffering and tried to heal it…saw war and tried to stop it.” The truth is, if there were a Bobby Kennedy on the political scene today, the Beltway Believers in Nothing would not celebrate his authenticity, but ridicule him as a lightweight, a crackpot, a cynical politico whose decency was just another clever shtick. Not only do they not comprehend people who believe in something real and thusly avoid ever acknowledging their existence; if the legitimate integrity of a person of genuine passion ever managed to penetrate their thick skulls, they would simply hate him or her.
Well, that there motherfucker is giving us a bad name!
No shit. As well you deserve.
