Glenn Greenwald has been having fun playing with the Orcosphere.
After his bizarre e-mail exchange with Col. Steve Boylan, the public affairs officer for Gen. David Petraeus, the right wing pounced on his story, claiming that Mr. Greenwald had edited the e-mails and left out key sentences. Ah ha!, they proclaimed, once again the lefties are at it again!
As is the usually the case, the wingers leaped before they looked.In the post, I wrote: "Anyone who would like to have forwarded to them a copy of the email I received originally can email me and I will send it." Several people emailed me to make that request, and I forwarded them the email, including -- apparently -- one right-wing blogger who calls himself "Dread Pundit."
At this point it gets ridiculous and you can only laugh at the poor wingers who have gone out on this limb and can't get back. Apologize? Recant? Offer an "oops?" Never. It would violate the code of the Orcosphere to ever admit to making a mistake, and they would rather appear to be incredibly stupid than wishy-washy. For them it's not just a matter of macho pride; admitting fallibility would undermine everything they do.
Now that he has cleverly obtained from me what he thinks is previously secret evidence (i.e., the full, unedited Boylan e-mail which I published myself yesterday), Dread Pundit has written a dramatic post accusing me of concealing parts of Col. Boylan's email. And that's not all. Also: "The parts that Greenwald chose not to publish tend to contradict his characterization of the email as 'bizarre' and 'unsolicited'." He has titled his post: "Full Text of Email Reveals Greenwald Mischaracterizations," and he re-prints the entire e-mail which I sent to him, bolding the parts he says I "chose to leave out." Very dramatic.
Of course, the whole post is based on his belief that I only published the excerpts, not the full and unedited email (even though the second sentence of my post says: "which I am publishing in full, unedited form here)." It is further based on the belief that I tried to pass off the excerpted passages as the full, unedited email (even though the excerpted passages are preceded by the explanation that what follows are "multiple passages from Boylan's email to me"). Put another way, the (serious) accusations he is making are precluded by the most basic skills of reading comprehension.
The fact that a right-wing blogger spews serious accusations based on complete idiocy is ordinarily not worthy of comment. That happens virtually every day. That is what the right-wing blogosphere is, more or less; it is why it exists.
[...]
The fact that I published the full-email was so painfully transparent that even right-wing bloggers like this one were able to figure that out -- and read his post to see how low that bar is. But in less than 90 minutes from the time "Dread Pundit" unveiled his brilliant discovery, the right-wing blogosphere has worked itself into one of its defining lynch mob fits of hysteria, all based on the inability to comprehend the most basic English, as in: "the full, unedited version is here" and "multiple passages from Boylan's email."
Another few hours and right-wing blogger Howard Kurtz will have a full Washington Post column on this. Add this to their always-expanding list. I'm honestly interested in knowing: what else besides abject stupidity can explain this? I mean that as a serious question.
Sometimes it's fun to poke at the fanatics and have them defend the indefensible. It's especially fun to do it with people who believe in the inerrancy of the bible and get them to explain the inconsistencies, such as where Cain's wife came from or other such things as why it's okay to cite Leviticus to condemn gays but skip over the parts of the book where it also condemns shaving, eating shellfish, and crop rotation. It must be nice to go dreamily through life without any doubts, your faith unshaken by the inconveniences of reality.
But it's also kind of sad to think that there are an awful lot of people who are going through their lives unwilling to own up to a mistake, to admit that they're wrong, and be open to the possibility of learning something new. It's as if their whole world would crumble if they ever had a doubt about anything. I actually had one fundamentalist Christian tell me that if you accept the fact that there is just one mistake in the bible -- that the sun doesn't orbit the earth, for example -- then you are calling into question the very existence of God because God is perfect, he doesn't make mistakes, and therefore anything that he puts into the bible must be right; celestial mechanics be damned. As the episode with Mr. Greenwald succinctly demonstrates, the same kind of fanaticism holds true with some of the more adamant members of the right-wing blogosphere. To be sure, there are fanatics on both sides, but the righties seem to have cornered the market on nutsery.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
Fun With Wingers
Worst Campaign Advert Evah
Via Matt Ortega, who notes this ad ought to be called "White People that are Terrible Actors for Ron Paul" and says: "If Mitt Romney wasn't such a flip-flopper and devoid of any real political principle, I would have said this was the worst acting in a presidential ad all season."
Wow. Truly awful.
Caption This Photo
"I thought for sure I could compete with a cartoon.
At least the couch still loves me."
Via CuteOverload
Quote of the Day
"I am going live with my theory, the only thing I can come up with for the rampant asshattery and thorough idiocy we have witnessed lately from the right-wing blogosphere: They are now working in concert to say as many stupid things as possible so that we are unable to document and mock them all. It is the only thing that makes sense."—John Cole, on the abject stupidity currently emanating from the nutosphere to haunt Glenn Greenwald.
From the You Can't Make This Shit Up Files
One Klan Group To Protest Another.
Why? "We are opposed to the ignorance and stupidity as displayed by the individuals that thumbed their nose at the area churches by continuing to use racial slurs, threats and avoided Christian deportment."
I had no idea the Klan had such enlightened franchises these days.
(Yes, sarcasm.)
G-Dub Announces Recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
And among the list is one of my favie Congresscritters of all time: Illinois' own Henry Hyde, he of the "youthful indiscretions" and virulent anti-choice bullshittery.
Kos, who once "helped deliver one of the district's best precinct performances for Henry Hyde," must be so thrilled to see his former candidate bestowed with such a lovely honor for having "served America with distinction" and having been "a powerful defender of life and a leading advocate for a strong national defense and for freedom around the world."
Blah blah blah. Congrats on being a fucknut tyrant, Hank!
Rummy To Lecture Only At Home
Former SoD Donald Rumsfeld just found out the hard way that traveling overseas and giving lectures to "replenish the ol' coffers" carries a new kind of risk: Criminal prosecution.
Today, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) along with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), and the French League for Human Rights filed a complaint with the Paris Prosecutor before the “Court of First Instance” (Tribunal de Grande Instance) charging former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with ordering and authorizing torture. Rumsfeld was in Paris for a talk sponsored by Foreign Policy magazine, and left through a door connecting to the U.S. embassy to avoid journalists and human rights attorneys outside.You like that sneaking out of a secret door shit? I sure do. I can't imagine that was on his list of expectations for this trip. International courts sure are a bitch, not caring about one's former status and all. Of course, I'm amazed that anyone outside of this country has any interest at all in hearing what Rummy has to say.
[...]
Rumsfeld’s presence on French territory gives French courts jurisdiction to prosecute him for having ordered and authorized torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
I guess he has no choice but to keep his sorry ass in the ol' USA, as if under house arrest, and milk the circuit for all it's worth until it dwindles out and no one gives a rat's ass about him anymore. We should take a pool on how long it will take for Rummy to realize that it sucks to be him.
[Via FDL]
Something in the Water
Over at Sully's place and at Feministe, there are links to a shop at which you can buy jewelry made out of dismembered Barbie and Ken parts:
Like I said in reference to the Jingle Jugs yesterday, what bothers me about this kind of thing is the connection, even if unintentional, with the real-life precedent of trophy-keeping.
The picture Sully chose to post reminds me specifically of a book I read as a teenager (the title of which I cannot recall, nor anything else about the book, including its author), which opens with the narrator talking about holding a woman's hand inside his jacket pocket—linked fingers, the intimacy of skin against skin inside fabric on a chilly day. And then the picture pulls back, as it were, to reveal that the hand has been detached from the body of a woman he has just raped and murdered, and he's holding her hand for comfort as he walks out of the woods where he's dumped her.
So I have kind of mixed feelings about this, as pulling apart the pieces of one's plastic dolls (Barbie or otherwise) is an unremarkable pastime of many girls' childhoods, often motivated by nothing more nefarious than that which prompts pulling apart a Matchbox car—just a simple curiosity at how it's stuck together or sheer boredom with a played-out toy. But then, ya know, there's the other stuff, in which grown-ups do terrible things. There's a not necessarily easily-discernible line about when this kind of thing moves from innocent to icky, becomes symbolic of something ugly. Like, a little girl with a doll head collection? Very Wednesday Addams. A grown man with a doll head collection? Move away slowly. That's a whole different ballgame.
And while I'm sure there's an argument to be made that this jewelry is nothing more than an homage to that girlhood tradition of doll dismemberment, it strikes me as ignoring the flipside of that coin in which some boys tear apart dolls to upset and hurt and threaten the girls to whom they belong. It's a classic girl-bullying tactic of boy bullies, little mini-misogynists terrorizing the playground with doll destruction and the de-pantsing of shy girls and the sissy boys who play with them. That's where the expression of violent misogyny and homophobia starts.
Even if this jewelry is just meant to be a silly, harmless thing, it nonetheless references something that isn't silly or harmless at all. So the question becomes: How important is it? How important is it to all of us to be able to buy and consider and sell jewelry made from torn-apart dolls right now? And how capable do we feel of fixing all the bad things it inadvertently references and unintentionally reinforces as long as it exists? Does it make our job harder? Is it worth it, if it does? Just how important is it for this stuff to be in our world?
[H/T to Oddjob for the Sully link.]
WTF?
Who replaced Obama with a total dipshit?
If Obama is hoping for an issue to gain traction with vis a vis Hillary, he's really muffed it picking Social Security. In itself the idea of removing or significantly restructuring the 'cap' on payroll taxes is a good one, at least one with a lot to recommend it. The current approach (though one with a long history and embraced by many strong Social Security advocates) makes the funding structure of Social Security highly regressive. But what Obama is doing is buying into the false idea that Social Security is in some sort of crisis.I'm just baffled. I'm not sure I understand whose support he is trying to garner anymore, between this move and gaily gospelling with ex-gay McClurkin.
If you're an outsider to this debate -- a Republican, someone who doesn't care much about the program or a privatizer -- that argument may not make sense to you on the merits. But it is what most Democrats who care most about this issue do think. So it puts him on the wrong side of the people whose support he's trying to garner. As I said, this is setting aside the substance of the issue, which I've written about in the past at some length. The politics of it is completely upside down.
New VA Center for Victims of Sexual Assault
To address a serious problem in the war zone, in recruitment centers, and in the military generally, the Department of Veterans Affairs has announced it will open a new treatment center in Bernards Township, New Jersey, the first of its kind anywhere in the country, "that will focus exclusively on women veterans who have been victims of sexual assaults." And it will have 10 beds.
Well, I guess you gotta start somewhere.
The move comes amid an increase in sexual assaults reported by the military. U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan mean that there are also now women veterans suffering combat-related stress, on top of sexual trauma.The possible problems inherent in that structure is evident in Ginmar's recent guest post, The Startle Reflex: "In group therapy, with the exception of a couple of Korean and Viet Nam vets, I was the sole woman—and none of them knew I'd fought off a sexual assault in Iraq. … It fell to me to call them on their sexism, and for my pains I got called a man hater, in a group where I was outnumbered. … I had been recommended to the program through the VA's women's center. Evidently it never occurred to anyone that putting a woman amongst a group of sexists was not the best way to mental health."
The VA already has a network of 15 sexual trauma programs, but those programs either care for both men and women, or for women who have mental issues not related to sexual assault.
…“There’s a lot of women who have residential needs who I think are less likely to come to the VA because it’s literally spending 24-7 with guys,” Miklos Losonczy, one of two VA psychiatrists behind the creation of the treatment center, told The Sunday Star-Ledger of Newark. Losonczy worried that women veterans who need treatment might not be seeking it because “they think the VA is all men and wonder, ‘Why would I get my military sexual trauma treatment surrounded by men?”’
So, yeah. This is a good first step, but boy—what a baby step! 2,947 sexual assaults were reported in the military in 2006, so providing a single 10-bed facility for the unknown number of victims, given our humongous defense budget, is pretty pathetic. But unsurprising, since W stands for
The Last Supper in Hi-Def
[Click picture to go to site.]
ZOMG! That DaVinci Code was, like, totally right!!!11!!! That's so totally a chick in that picture!!!eleventyone!!!! Oh. Muh. Guh.
(Btw, in all seriousness: It's very cool.)
[Via Metafilter.]
All Things Are Not Equal
Paul Krugman says that the biggest selling point for the GOP candidates so far has been scaring the crap out of the electorate and turning Franklin D. Roosevelt's "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" into "the only thing we have to run on is fear."Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president — including all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the Republican nomination — have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the centerpiece of their campaigns.
This raises another point: the Republicans and the right wing have not only used fear as their main rallying cry, they've also lost their sense of perspective. As Mr. Krugman notes, they're trying to convince us that terrorism, specifically that from the Islamic world, is the greatest threat America has ever faced. Not only is that laughable, it makes you wonder whether the people who come up with these comparisons have the judgment or the the intelligence to be elected to a position of power. Comparing the Axis Powers of World War II or the nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union to Al-Qaeda is like comparing a Hummer to a donkey cart; yes, they have similarities -- they have wheels, a place to carry things, and they are modes of transportation -- but that's it. Oh, they'll tell us, Al-Qaeda is much more dangerous because they're not a nation-state or organized like the Germans; they're guerrillas who can slip in and out of countries and recruit in the dark recesses of the mountains of Afghanistan or wherever. That what makes them a greater threat; you never know where they are.
Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible.”
Mr. Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a founding neoconservative, tells us that Iran is the “main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11.” The Islamofascists, he tells us, are well on their way toward creating a world “shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes.” Indeed, “Already, some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.”
Do I have to point out that none of this makes a bit of sense?
For one thing, there isn’t actually any such thing as Islamofascism — it’s not an ideology; it’s a figment of the neocon imagination. The term came into vogue only because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein, who didn’t. And Iran had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 — in fact, the Iranian regime was quite helpful to the United States when it went after Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan.
Beyond that, the claim that Iran is on the path to global domination is beyond ludicrous. Yes, the Iranian regime is a nasty piece of work in many ways, and it would be a bad thing if that regime acquired nuclear weapons. But let’s have some perspective, please: we’re talking about a country with roughly the G.D.P. of Connecticut, and a government whose military budget is roughly the same as Sweden’s.
Aside from the almost palpable paranoia that kind of mindset invokes -- I'm reminded of the cartoonish way the John Birch Society and Joe McCarthy used to tell us that commies were under our beds -- it also proves the point that if Al-Qaeda had any power beyond their ability to organize rag-tag lunatics, you would think they would have been able to get the support of at least one virulently anti-American Islamic country -- Iran or Syria -- to back them. So far, neither has even tacitly endorsed the ragings of Osama bin Laden, nor has anyone ever proven conclusively that any government has actually aided them in their quest. All they've done is denied any contact with them and tried not to provoke them into attacking them; they know how crazy they are. If history is any guide, dictators and revolutionaries have needed some form of organizational model to follow and an infrastructure on which to build their revolution, such as taking over a weaker state and basically starting their own country. Al-Qaeda can barely come up with the means to fill out a loan application much less set up a "caliphate." That they were able to pull off one tragic event such as the attacks of September 11, 2001, is testimony not to their enormous power but to their understanding that all they had to do was hit us once to terrorize us for a very long time. So far, everything we've done since then -- failing to complete the job in Afghanistan to run off to attack Iraq, turning our civil rights and freedoms into a sham in order to protect those rights, and giving Al-Qaeda credit for everything from whacky shoe bombers to the California wildfires -- has proven their point: scare us once, and we're scared forever. The biggest favor we have done to the terrorists is to make them think they're as big a threat to us and the world as they think they are.
Aside from failing to pass the laugh test, this hysteria of trying to make "Islamofascism" the new Communism has one sobering consequence; it's made it tough to generate legitimate concern about the real threats we face. Like it or not, there are countries out there that do not like us for whatever reason -- our evangelical missionaries, our bully-boy democracy, our exploitive capitalism, our culture of idolizing supercilious celebrities, and our condescending contempt for every other form of government -- and they would like nothing better than to take us down a peg, or surpass us in some fashion. Being on guard against those threats has taken a back seat to this Hallowe'en masquerade from Al-Qaeda. What worries me is that when the next threat comes along, whether it's another North Korea with a nuclear bomb and the means to deliver it or a religious faction in Africa performing ethnic cleansing, we'll still be freaking out about the nutjob whose most effective weapon in six years has been a video camera. With all our threats, paranoia, and the macho bluster generated solely for the purpose of winning an election, we will have squandered any legitimacy in being able to confront them other than through the bombsight of a B-1.
(Minor edit after posting to correct a grammatical error.)
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
Don't Be This Guy
So, Bill Maher is evidently incapable of getting through a single episode of Real Time now without going on a rant about women's bodies and/or making a joke about sexual assault.
Women being raped is, of course, one of his absolute favorite metaphors for Things He Doesn't Like, and he even ended his recent one-hour HBO stand-up special with a protracted rape metaphor to explain the ineptitude of the Bush administration. (And it invoked real people—a real woman really raped by her real husband. Just casual fodder for ol' Billy.)
This week, Maher couldn't resist going there yet again during his "New Rules" segment:
New Rule: Old Spice will never be hip. Old Spice has introduced OS fragrance for men. Yes, that same great scent from 1938, now in a spray bottle. Yeah, because that's what chicks dig—guys who smell like the uncle who molested them. OS: Like the men who wear it…a little too familiar.Seriously? I've said it before and I'll say it again: I will never understand why anyone wants to be the total douchebag who blindsides someone by evoking her (or his) memories of being raped, in the guise of "humor."
How is it worth it to Bill Maher to possibly trigger memories among his audience members of being sexually abused just to make that joke? Was that Old Spice joke so important to him that he was willing to ignore that potentially about 12% of his audience being triggered by it? What's so fucking important about being able to joke about rape?
I'm a huge fan of stand-up comedy, so I watch a fuckload of it, and it's getting increasingly difficult to find male comedians who don't include rape jokes as part of their act. Comedians who never used to do that kind of material suddenly are—like Jerry Seinfeld, who repeatedly made a casual joke about rape while promoting a children's movie. And in the past couple of months, I've watched Louis CK's "Shameless," Bill Maher's "The Decider," D.L. Hughley's "Unapologetic," and part of Jim Norton's "Monster Rain," all on HBO, and all of them included jokes and/or long bits about sexual assault. (Jim Norton's special was truly stomach-turning. Mr. Shakes got up and walked out of the room after a few minutes, because he couldn't bear to listen to the way Norton talked about women, and I eventually shut it off.)
This weekend, we rented the documentary The Comedians of Comedy, which features one comedian I adore—Maria Bamford—and three I quite like—Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, and Zach Galifianakis. Well, I liked Oswalt and Posehn, until I had to listen to the latter comparing the second Star Wars trilogy to getting raped and the former saying if the concept of "getting undeservedly anally raped daily" was run on a ticket against George Bush, he'd vote for the concept of "getting undeservedly anally raped daily."
As opposed to people who get deservedly anally raped, I guess.
And then there was the scene in which Oswalt is in his hotel room, speaking directly to the camera as if it's a woman in his room trying to escape, and keeps blocking the door, then pushes the cameraman w/ camera onto the bed, where he pretends to rape the woman cameraman and camera are pretending to be. He then stands up and announces he "creeped out" himself with that bit—but, amazingly, it nonetheless made it into the movie. See, even though it creeped him out, it's still "funny," still good enough to go into the movie, because, ya know, dudez love that shit.
Meanwhile, I added Patton Oswalt and Brian Posehn to my ever-growing list of comedians I don't watch, because—silly me—I don't like being slapped upside the head with rape jokes when I'm trying to have a good time.
Quite honestly, it's not even because I particularly find the jokes personally triggering anymore; I generally just find them pathetic and inexplicable. I'm more bothered by the fact that the jokes normalize and effectively minimize the severity of rape and thusly perpetuate the rape culture. And I'm bothered by the thought of a woman who's recently been raped, who's just experienced what may be the worst thing that will ever happen to her, and turns on the telly to watch her favorite comedian and have a much-needed laugh—only to hear him using that horrible, life-changing thing as the butt of a joke. About cologne. Or a bad movie. For fuck's sake.
I still don't understand—and I don't believe I ever will—why anyone wants to be the guy who sends that shiver down her spine, who makes her eyes burn hot with tears at an unwanted memory while everyone laughs and laughs.
Quote of the Day
"What is more troubling than [Stephen Colbert's] quest for a status his own mother won't grant him (favorite son) are his ties to the salty food industry. As the candidate of Doritos, his hands are stained by corporate corruption and nacho cheese. John Edwards has never taken a dime from taco chip lobbyists and America deserves a President who isn't in the pocket of the snack food special interests."—Edwards spokesperson Teresa Wells on Colbert's Dorito-sponsored presidential campaign.
Good one. I genuinely LOL-ed at "his hands are stained by corporate corruption and nacho cheese."
That's just how funny Stephen Colbert really is: He infects everyone else with Teh Funny, too.
Draft Katherine Harris!
Not happy with the current crop of GOP candidates? Looking for someone who really can deliver the goods on Election Day? There's only one person out there who can really do it...and look fabulous in the process.
Check out the disclaimer at the bottom of the home page. Who says Democrats don't have a sense of humor?It’s just been so hard to keep track of where the current Republican candidates stand on the issues that truly matter, like hating immigrants, ensuring campaign contributors get exorbitant government handouts, privatizing Social Security, and reducing the number of children with health insurance.
Even the bedrock social positions we’ve come to expect have gotten lost in a maze. One GOP candidate is pro-choice now; another was pro-choice in 2002 and pro-life now; and yet another even lobbied for a pro-choice group, though he says he is pro-life now.
The Republican candidates have even dabbled in the myth of global warming and the insanity of getting out of Iraq.
What’s so hard about keeping the Republican tradition of lining your pockets while keeping others down?
Real Republicans like us are afraid that the party has lost its way.
Rudy, Fred, John, Mitt, Mike and the rest just don’t seem to get it.
We need a change to keep things the same.
Katherine Harris for President ’08.
(HT to Bryan.)
Caption This Photo
I found this while going through some old pictures. It's from the Albuquerque Tribune a while back.
