In comments, Ken dropped the link to this article, which reports that the debate over the human papillomavirus vaccine is raging again now that various states legislatures are considering bills to make the vaccine mandatory.
Human papillomavirus, or HPV, is "the most common sexually transmitted infection in the country and the cause of nearly all cervical cancers," and a vaccine for it known as Gardasil was approved by the FDA in June of last year, but not before a protracted struggle with conservatives, who argued that inoculating girls against HPV would encourage promiscuity:
"I personally object to vaccinating children when they don't need vaccinations, particularly against a disease that is one hundred per cent preventable with proper sexual behavior. Premarital sex is dangerous, even deadly. Let's not encourage it by vaccinating ten-year-olds so they think they're safe."—Leslee J. Unruh, founder and president of the Abstinence Clearinghouse.
"Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex."—Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council.
Other groups, like Daddy Dobson's Focus on the Family, evidently not wanting to be rightfully accused of taking as its official position that dirty sluts deserve cancer, issued statements that they did not object to the vaccine being made available, but did oppose making it mandatory alongside other childhood immunizations against measles etc. So now they're back in the game, whining about how mandatory vaccines "take away parents' rights, send the wrong message to impressionable young girls and cost more than many parents can afford."
Sending the wrong message like, "We care about women's health." Because naturally women's health isn't nearly as important as their chastity. And never mind that this vaccine could also protect girls and women who are raped; those filthy little hussies don't even exist in this equation. Parents, of course, do have a right to raise their daughters in a cloister of ignorance, where Dates with Daddy are considered a viable substitute for a romantic relationship and a Jesus ring is meant to magically counteract the naturally increasing libido of puberty. But when the state mandates it, they don't have a right to leave their public-schooled children exposed to disease. There may actually be no better defense of judicious nanny-statism than protecting children from idiot parents.
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[The affordability question is a serious one; advocates of mandatory vaccines say that "a federal vaccine-for-children program is expected to provide the shots for low-income families for free or nearly free," and that insurance providers will soon begin covering the cost. If that's right, fair enough. If not, the state needs to subsidize the cost of the vaccines, to ensure that no family has to pay more than 15-20% of the approximately $150 shot.]
If Only There Were a Vaccine for Stupidity
Koufax Noms
I neglected to mention before that you can submit noms here as well as here.
Also, there's a moratorium on last year's winners, within the category in which they won, to spread the love around, so Shakes isn't eligible for Best Group Blog this year. (We are, however, still eligible for all the other categories, including the two new ones—Best Consonant Level Blog and Best Human Equality Blog.)
Last year, it was requested that we link to some of our own favorite posts in regard to the Best Post category, but last year we didn't have the Greatest Hits lists. I just updated them in late November, so all the best posts from most of the year are there for your perusal, should you be so inclined.
As ever, other bloggers should not feel shy about tooting their own horns at Shakes. Use this thread to remind people about your great blog, link to your best post, beg, plead, or otherwise make your case. Have fun!
ABC- Absolute Bullocks Co.
Suppose you're a left-wing blogger, and you post about right-wing hate speech. What happens to you if your posts regarding such delightful quotes as:
- Rodgers on a repeat offender in Lincoln, Nebraska: "Some SOB like this -- you know, lock him up, throw away the key. Better yet, put a bullet between his eyes and get it over, because he's never gonna be worth a damn, never gonna be anything but a criminal anyway. ... Now, you start with the Sears DieHard -- the battery cables connected to his testicles and you entertain him with that for a while, and then you blow his bleeping head off." (8/16/06)...manages to get sponsors to actually pull their advertising from ABC, the network allowing this garbage to spew over the airwaves?
- Sussman asking a caller to prove that he is not a Muslim: "Say Allah is a whore. ... Say that you love eating pig." (October 2005)
- Morgan on Pelosi: "We've got a bull's-eye painted on her big, wide laughing eyes." (11/14/06)
- Morgan on New York Times executive editor Bill Keller and other Times editors: "Hang 'em." (6/27/06)
You get shut down, of course.
Now, suppose you're a Right-Wing talk show host, famous for such statements as:
- during a November 14, 2006, interview with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who recently became the first Muslim ever elected to Congress, Beck said: "I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.' "And my personal favorite:
- He has declared that "Muslims who have sat on your frickin' hands the whole time" rather than "lining up to shoot the bad Muslims in the head" will face dire consequences.
- Beck warned that if "Muslims and Arabs" don't "act now" by "step[ping] to the plate" to condemn terrorism, they "will be looking through a razor wire fence at the West."
- Beck aired a segment mocking the names of several missing Egyptian students in which the announcer said that one "may or may not be accompanied by his camel." The segment showed pictures of crowds and pointed to random, unidentifiable people as the missing Egyptians. It ended with a reading of the students' names in quick succession followed by the announcer pretending to gag as he struggled to pronounce them.
- After airing a clip from the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth in which former Vice President Al Gore states that global warming could cause many highly populated coastal areas to be submerged by seawater -- including the entire city of Shanghai -- Beck responded: "This is what would happen to Shanghai. Does anybody really care? I mean, come on. Shanghai is under water. Oh, no! Who's gonna make those little umbrellas for those tropical drinks?"
Beck referred to "those who were left in New Orleans [during Hurricane Katrina], or who decided to stay" as "scumbags."What happens to you?
Why, you get hired by ABC as a regular commentator, of course.
Enough is fucking enough.
It's time for this myth of the "liberal media" to be shot and buried. The MSM isn't interested in progressive voices or progressive thought.
When contacting the media, please be polite and professional. Express your specific concerns regarding that particular news report or commentary, and be sure to indicate exactly what you would like the media outlet to do differently in the future.
You'll note that Spocko was able to get major advertisers to pull their dollars from ABC for broadcasting eliminationist, racist rhetoric. Perhaps it's time to pull even more advertising dollars for thuggery, and for hiring yet another racist, eliminationist liar. Anyone up to write a few letters?
Snap!
"Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam." — Senator Ted Kennedy, who introduced legislation yesterday requiring congressional approval of Bush's planned troop surge in Iraq and calls his 2002 vote against the war "the best vote I've cast in my 44 years in the United States Senate."
Question of the Day
Finally! I can post! Take that, Blogger!
In Shakes' post bitching about blogger, with the faaaabulous picture of my hero Divine, I mentioned that her single, "Born to be Cheap," was the first Wax Trax single I ever purchased.
Yes, I am a total fag.
Anyway, that got me to thinking of "first" albums. The first album I ever purchased, and yes it was an LP, was what I thought was the Star Wars soundtrack.
It turned out to be Star Wars, as played by the Electric Moog Orchestra.
I was pretty ticked at the time, but these days, I think it's rather cool. "Aw right, moog!"
So, Shakers... what was the first album you ever purchased with your own money?
Fuck
Remember the piece of shit soldier who allegedly led a group of troops in raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and then setting her on fire, killing her, and murdering her family, then grilling a few chicken wings? Well, guess the fuck what? Turns out he was diagnosed as "a homicidal threat by a military mental health team three months before the attack."
Pfc. Steven D. Green was found to have "homicidal ideations" after seeking help from an Army Combat Stress Team in Iraq on Dec. 21, 2005. Green said he was angry about the war, desperate to avenge the death of comrades and driven to kill Iraqi citizens, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.And three months later, he killed an entire Iraqi family. Allegedly.
The treatment was several small doses of Seroquel — a drug to regulate his mood — and a directive to get some sleep, according to medical records obtained by the AP. The next day, he returned to duty in the particularly violent stretch of desert in the southern Baghdad suburbs known as the "Triangle of Death."
I honestly don't even know what to say about this fucking debacle anymore.
What the hell is going on in Louisiana?
Last week, the first-ever black mayor-elect of predominantly white Westlake, Louisiana, Gerald Washington, was found shot in the chest (and his death was ruled a suicide, in spite of there being no note and it being days before he was due to take office), and now the first-ever black mayor of predominantly white Greenwood, Louisiana, Ernest Lampkins, has had two shotgun blasts fired into his home (and luckily no one was injured). The two towns are 150 miles apart.
Could be just terrible coincidence. One may have nothing to do with the other. But, then again, there's been a 33% increase in hate groups since 2000, during which time our country has been led by a president and a political party who have exploited hatred of brown-skinned people consistently and egregiously, alternatingly telling their primarily white base that they'll be killed by Arabs or have their jobs stolen by Mexicans. So maybe this shit isn't happening in a motherfucking void.
Good Catches
Cool.
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Mr. Shakes: "What is wrong with this picture?"
In case you couldn't pick it out, let me highlight it for you.
The wild life of a free-wheelin' gambler for him!
Pretending to live a life of professional servitude for her!
Blurgh.
Call for Submissions to Carnival of the Liberals
Shakespeare's Sister is going to be hosting the Carnival of the Liberals on January 17, so I'm calling for submissions. The guidelines are here. Submit your post using the handy form here or send the link via e-mail to cotl DASH submissions AT carnivaloftheliberals DOT com before 11:59PM EST next Monday.
The Carnival of the Liberals also needs hosts for future carnivals, so if you're willing to be a host, please sign up!
Effing Blogger
…finally seems to be back up again—after being down, then up, then back down—which is good, because drinking myself into a stupor to stop myself going berserk was increasingly sounding like a good idea, and also because I can now direct you here and then here, so that you can vicariously experience what an absolute wankstain Tucker Carlson is outside the confines of a television studio, as if you'd ever expected any different. (H/T Angelos and Shayera.)
Couple of new posts below, and I'll get some more crap posted ASAP.
Contingent on Blogger's cooperation, of course.
You might think I would spend the time while Blogger's down being productive and writing a blog masterpiece, but you'd be wrong. I can't write when I'm externally irritated, as opposed to irritated by that about which I'm writing, so I was just fucking around, doing shit like watching a video of the 1990 Men's Aerobic Championships (gayest. video. evah.) and desperately wishing there were a peppy, gay, potential men's aerobic champion inside me waiting to get out, instead of Divine.
My Beloved Inner Gay.
Hmm
I have only one question for Eric Boehlert (or whomever wrote the headline for his excellent piece). When, exactly, did Michelle Malkin have any credibility? That's not to say she hasn't been a highly successful shill, professional racist, and conservative It Girl, but she's never had any credibility with, uh, people who themselves have credibility.
Perhaps this seems like a pointless exercise in pedantry, but I quite loathe conferring on people like Malkin the presumption of a lost credibility when we should be pointing out she never had any in the first place. John McCain has lost his credibility. Malkin never earned the reputation she lost, but was handed disproportionate attention by conservatives because she's a useful tool—and has since done nothing but increasingly underline her own manifest unfitness as a public intellectual. That's not a loss of genuine credibility. That's just pulling back the curtain.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Though the faces may have changed, the hassles are just the same.
Question of the Day
Shaker Mom of E's is a physician who is soon moving into a new office. She's a general internist who wants to make her office feel inclusive of and friendly toward everybody, and wants to reach out particularly to the LGBT community to let them know there's a supportive doctor in the area. So…she emailed me and asked if I'd ask the Shakers what advice they have for a doctor to make her office feel welcoming. What makes you feel comfortable in a doctor's office?
And LGBT Shakers, is there anything you can recommend, based on good or bad experiences?
(Has anyone ever used a local Pink Pages directory to choose a healthcare provider? I used the Pink Pages all the time in Chicago, just to make sure I was giving my money to LGBT-friendly businesses.)
Seriously. McCain Should Not Be President.
Because saying "I'm not sure what the point would be" in response to an inquiry about raising taxes on the wealthy to help pay for the war is demonstrative of either an obdurate personal avarice disguised as aw-shucks ignorance (likely) or unmitigated abject stupidity (more fun to illustrate).
Either way, the contemptible old duffer needs to shuffle his pathetic ass off to a much-needed retirement in Arizona, where he can sit on the patio of his semi-detached independent senior living cottage all day writing Memoirs of Bush's Geisha, and where a sun-baked brain can serve as an excuse for any further such wanton idiocy.
Expertoriffic!
Recently sanctum-snubbed Harriet Miers is to be replaced by "widely respected Republican lawyer Fred F. Fielding as White House counsel this week." F-Cubed is "widely respected" for having served as Counsel to Reagan from 1981-1986 *cough* Iran-Contra *cough* and as Associate or Deputy Counsel to Nixon from 1970 to 1974 *cough* Watergate *cough*.
Sounds dreamy.
Oh, Wingnuts!
Your kooky outrage never fails to amuse me! Your delightful delirium, charming churlishness, and insolent ignorance blend and swirl to create a potent cocktail upon whose merest fumes I can get sublimely drunk, tumbling helplessly over my own trail of bubbling giggles.
"To actually put the rainbow colors on such a sacred symbol for the Christian is an affront to the faith of not only the early church believers, but those of us who know that homosexuality and its colors have no place representing historical Christianity that upholds holiness and morality, very highly." — Phil Magnan, the Director of Biblical Family Advocates, miffed at the outreach by the diocese to the gay community
Doodz, we totally need to start a band. Homosexuality and Its Colorettes. Who's game?
...with Shakes on Big Gay Piano!
Another Pitcher, Please
I see that the current Lieberman burps will be pleasantly cherry flavored. Not only is Joe practically jumping up and down on the couch in his enthusiasm to be hand-in-hand with McCain and Bush, he's also taking a cue from Tony Snow and saying unbelievably callous crap:
In words that should trouble any Democrats counting Lieberman in their camp, Lieberman was praising Bush as a “great leader” for bucking American opinion, as expressed in the 2006 election, in his determination to double down in Iraq. Lieberman then said something incredible:Well, thank goodness. I thought each and every one of these new soldiers in the "surge" coming home dead was the "worst that could happen." What a load off my mind.
Even those opposed to the surge, he said, “ought to at least let us try it.”
“The worst that could happen,” he continued, is that this policy could become another partisan flashpoint in Washington.
"Partisan Politics"- Worse than dead Americans. Worse than dead Iraqis, too.
(Energy Dome tip to Atrios.)
Fierce
I was standing in front of a full-length mirror with my leg stretched out, modeling at its end for my own consumption the left half of a pair of kelly green steel-toed Doc Martens knee-highs I had just bought, in spite of their outrageous price tag. "Girl, those boots are hot!" came the voice from beside me. This was St. Nate of the Perfectly Shaped Eyebrows, my coworker and friend, who would, one day, find himself at my parents' house in the suburbs racing through their kitchen as I screeched, "Get the baking soda!" to help put out a fire I'd started on their deck with the grill. But today he was admiring my boots. And admiring me.
"God damn, look at you!" He pulled my shirt from the back so it clung to my form. This was not a look I felt was particularly good for me, even in those thinner days, and I pushed his hands away, squirming and frowning at myself in the mirror. He raised an eyebrow and frowned back, then turned me around by the shoulders, away from the mirror.
"Bitch, be fierce…"
Nate was one of many people who fall under the "T" in LGBT who have been important to me in one way or another, many of whom have played vital roles in helping me understand and appreciate my queer-brained self, and sort out what it means for me to be a woman. This is, quite obviously, no coincidence. Being myself a person who is, like many non-trans feminists and queers, uncomfortable with, and thusly constantly challenging, the expectations imposed on my sex and gender, I have found it valuable (and, in my personal experience, inevitable) to engage with Ts as part of divining my own self-definition. Which is to say nothing of simple and precious friendships.
The thing about getting together with a group of friends which includes straight, gay, bi, asexual, and trans men and women is that you're almost guaranteed to have every gender variation in the room and thusly no easily divided gender groups. The group may split into smaller clusters that talk about kids, or sports, or politics, or film, but the divisions aren't drawn by sex; the ladies-in-the-kitchen, gents-watching-the-game sort of thing is totally, completely, hilariously inoperable. And when you have a group of friends like that, you tend to forget that there are people who don't believe a man can learn something about being a man from a woman, or a woman can learn something about being a woman from a man—a man who loves men same as you, or a man who used to be a biological woman, or just a man in a dress, like St. Nate.
It was with deep dismay and sadness that I read on various blogs (Piny has a good round-up) that a comments thread at I Blame the Patriarchy had disintegrated into a rather nasty referendum on transgenderism.
"You want to know how men can hurt women? **chuckle** You’re joking, right? Oh wait. I’m supposed to believe men in drag are women. And if you put on a werewolf mask, will you also expect me to believe you’re a werewolf?"Et cetera. Ugh and ick and blech. I would pity such ignorant twits if they weren't also so disgracefully hateful. (Twisty responds here and here.)
"This is about what all this nonsense amounts to. In short, trans are nutjobs. The bathroom is about the last place I want to be alone with a male nutjob. These unfortunate, but seriously disturbed individuals belong on the 5th floor in a straight jacket. Not in a women’s bathroom."
"I’d like to take a piss in a public can knowing for a fact there are no boys in there whining 'I was born in the wrong body' for fucksake, insisting I refer to him as 'she.' Phobic? Hardly. Resentful that women lose yet another space of their own? You betcha big time."
Amp has an excellent post Responding To The Feminist Anti-Transsexual Arguments, to which I have nothing theoretical to add, though I will reiterate my estimation that rejection of pluralism veers dangerously close to the inflexible dictates of the dominant culture feminism means to change, and express my personal regret that there are feminists who have yet to see transgendered women and men as the natural allies they quite rightly ought to be.
Realistically, the breadth of allies in a comprehensive challenge to the patriarchy is vast and varied. Though all of us, sans rigorous philosophical exertion, are hapless conduits for every limiting and oppressive archetype upon which the patriarchy depends, conveying the bars of our own cages, very few of us are its unconstrained beneficiaries. Even the average straight, white, middle class American man exchanges privilege for severe limitations on his personal expression and emotional life—and he is encouraged never to examine that devastating trade-off too closely, lest the veneer on the alleged bargain prove thin enough through which to see. We all serve the same callous master, and there's little to celebrate in being the favored slave—especially compared to a life of freedom.
It is foolish to believe that there is more feminist non-trans women and the Ts don't have in common than that which we do. The universalism of experience as a woman just falls all to pieces when I think of, say, Barbara "Mother O'Pearls" Bush—like me, a straight white married woman, but with whom I have approximately nothing else in common—and then, say, Brynn Craffey, who is both FTM tranny and friend. Babs and Brynn are also both mothers, but I daresay Brynn won't contradict me if I presume to guess that doesn't make him feel a particular kinship with Babs. The world is just a crazy place like that. And in my small corner of it, I will never understand by what measure, truly, I or any feminist woman interested in expanding the scope of Who We Are Allowed To Be should not be an ally to Ts. There is none that I can conjure.
…Nate stood back and looked at me. "The hair, the fucking indigo eyes—I'd kill for those eyes!—the cheekbones, the tits—my god, those tits!—the ass, the 'tude…no one brings the 'tude like you do. Honey, you've got it."
So I did. I had a lot of other stuff, too, that Nate left out—things known as "flaws." But fuck it, I thought, as I turned back to the mirror. Since when has darkness meant there's no such thing as light? I looked at myself again not through a prism of external expectation, but with my eyes alone. The crushing weight of Everyone Else's Opinion was gone. I felt beautiful—not in a slamming-dress-and-perfectly-executed-hair-and-make-up way, which is itself a distinct kind of allure to which I am particularly ill-suited, being unfit in both manner and form for couture, but in a je ne sais quoi way, compared to no standard or expectation, and offering as its only alternative an absence of the beauty specific to me.
I had what I had, whatever it was, and that was that. Anyone who wanted me to measure up to a measuring stick I hadn't given them was going to be shit out of luck and sorely disappointed.
And so they are still.
