During his speech the other day in the UAE, Bush let this gem slip from his gob when trying to reach out to the Iranian people:
"You're rich in culture and talent. You have the right to live under a government that listens to your wishes, respects your talents and allows you to build better lives for your families."Ain't that a peach. I'm glad The DeciderTM has great visions for the Iranian people while the same idea doesn't seem to be working out too well in these parts.
I think we've all earned this scolding, don't you?
Oh, what's that I hear? The weather's all screwy? You got a global warming problem? Boo-fucking-hoo! I was telling you morons to turn off your lights and unplug all your shit at night to conserve energy in 19-fuckin'-75, for chrissake. Gee, I wonder what woulda happened if we'd all switched to solar power like I fucking did back when we had a fucking chance to do something about it. Think we'd still be sucking Saudi Arabia's dick like a five-dollar whore? I sure as fuck didn't get no fancy Oscar for that little spiel, though, did I? No. But Al Gore, that cum-sucking pig, steals the shit from me and now he's the greatest thing since Jesus Christ made a fucking sandwich.
Well, he can lick my asshole right after George W. Bush, that fuck.
The Onion's still got it.
In case anyone hasn't heard, I just thought you all should know that I'm a plagiarist and a dishonest, paranoid douchebag.
For the curious, there are responses/explanations here, here, and here. But mostly, I just want to reiterate this in as many places as possible, since I've now seen the "plagiarism" charge in more than one place:
I am a fucking writer and former publishing professional, people. Intellectual property fucking matters to me. Call me a deluded fat cunt all you want, but the shit about me cribbing from Violent Acres’s post and pretending it was a comment is where I draw the line. I would not in a million years knowingly represent one person’s work as another’s for any reason, much less no reason, which is what there would have been for my doing it here. I made a mistake, which is described in both the post and the comments section here.
If everything seems credible then nothing seems credible. You know, TV puts everybody in those boxes, side-by-side. On one side, there's this certifiable lunatic who says the Holocaust never happened. And next to him is this noted, honored historian who knows all about the Holocaust. And now, there they sit, side-by-side, they look like equals! Everything they say seems to be credible. And so, as it goes on, nothing seems credible anymore! We just stopped listening!- Eddie Langston, played by Lewis Black, in Man of the Year.
Women vs. Oprah. Did you catch the problem?
If not, let me give you a hint: Oprah is a woman.
Okay, that wasn't really so much a hint as the answer.
There's this idiotic game the media constantly plays, which first of all presumes that any demographic is a monolithic group with the same wants, needs, and interests, as they try to figure out what, for example, "women" voters want. As if I'm going to want the same thing as Ann Coulter in a presidential candidate. (All indicators point to "Um, no," given that the candidate for whom I chose to chose to work is, as it happens, the same candidate she famously called a faggot.)
As if anyone should even presume that Kate Harding and I are certainly going to go for the same candidate, despite being essentially of the same race, age, class, sexual orientation, political persuasion, religious bent, and general cultural philosophy, living within a half hour of one another, and frequently finding the same shit infuriating, inspiring, and hilarious (especially after a few drinks). Funny thing, though—we're still two different people with separate, independent minds and ergo might come to disparate conclusions. Zany!
It's not just that the presumption that two women will vote the same way just because they're women is insulting (although it is); it's that the presumption is also totally inaccurate—and, of course, predicated on the refusal to acknowledge that there are people who fall into more than one demographic group, which is why you end up with the media talking about "blacks, gays, and women" (for example), as if there is no cross-over among those three groups. (Media, may I please introduce you to an Angry Black Bitch?) But the "you can only be in one box" bullshit is a necessary narrative in order to be able to talk about "women" (or "blacks" or "gays") as a monolithic group.
And yet, when it's convenient, the media will talk about a specific woman as if she is not a woman at all—as in "Women vs. Oprah."
Women are All the Same, except when This One is Different.
A couple of times recently, the question has come up in comments whether former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was subjected to sexist attacks akin to that which Hillary Clinton has been, so I figured I'd do a post about it. The short answer is yes. The long answer follows.
There were a plethora of incidents that had the distinct whiff of misogyny while Thatcher was in office, things that were dismissed as attributable to her divisive politics, but should leave any rational person sincerely questioning if the same would have been done to a Mr. Thatcher. Perhaps the most notable of these extreme protests was the decapitation of a stone statue of Mrs. Thatcher, attacked and beheaded while on public exhibition. The violence of it is jarring. Less obvious are examples like a challenge to her leadership mounted from within her own party receiving 60 votes—a relatively small percentage of nearly 400 Conservative MPs, but a shockingly large number of votes against a sitting Prime Minister. That she was the first female Prime Minister is meant to be incidental; isn't it always?
There's more indisputable evidence to be found in the preponderance of sexist rhetoric routinely used against her.
Often her moniker "the Iron Lady" is cited as evidence of sexist rhetoric, although that's probably the least appropriate example. It was Soviet Russia's Defense Ministry newspaper that christened her the Iron Lady, after she gave a typically belligerent speech about how the USSR were "bent on world dominance" and "put guns before butter." Thatcher herself liked the nickname, and it was adopted in Britain to—both favorably and unfavorably—describe her unwavering will. But it was not really sexist.
Her other oft-used nickname, however, was. Thatcher was dubbed "Attila the Hen" by a male peer, and it stuck. (No wonder she embraced Iron Lady, eh?) The moniker was frequently invoked beside the usual parade of "woman-only" (or emasculating) indicators—strident, shrill, hectoring, shrewish, etc. The British Members of Parliament often launched the nastiest, substance-less sexist attacks, as MP Austin Mitchell: "It's been a touching spectacle: the brave little woman getting on with the woman's work of trying to dominate the world." Yowza.
One of the ugliest displays was during Thatcher's fall from grace, beginning in '89, when her political vulnerability opened her up to a shocking level of misogynist vitriol—including from members of her own party, angling to be her replacement. This 1989 Guardian article, republished as part of a special edition marking the 50-year anniversary of the Guardian's women's page, captures the tone at the time:Tory MP Emma Nicholson is convinced that a bitter, anti-woman undercurrent is flaring up in Parliament and not just on the Labour benches. 'They will use anything to attack the Prime Minister and I think they are sacrificing their acceptance of women as equals to get at her.' Inside and outside Westminster, there's talk of political challengers being 'hand-bagged', of curtains being bought for the retirement home in Dulwich, of babyminding the new grandson, while Downing Street is countering with propaganda about a 'caring' ethos and teamwork.
As the article makes clear ("She has tremendous appeal as a role model for modern women, while paradoxically emphasising their traditional roles as homemakers and mothers, and remaining indifferent, if not downright hostile, to the needs of working women."), Thatcher was herself hostile to women in many ways, especially women who pursued untraditional paths, separating herself from such women by affecting a "beyond womanhood" pose as it suited her—though, of course, vacillating between being "the only real man in the cabinet" for the purposes of warring and being "governess and grandmother" for the purposes of imposing conservative ideals of traditional womanhood left her more open to gender-based attacks, not less.
The Prime Minister is suddenly a woman again as the men in her party circle for the succession and the men on the opposite benches get their first whiff of power for over a decade. Her personality and leadership style are making a lot of the political running. It's almost inevitable that her gender will be implicated - it has always been a political challenge for both her allies and her opponents.
It also created an atmosphere in which even compliments of Thatcher were deeply sexist. Former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's famous assessment of Margaret Thatcher was: "In her presence you pretty quickly forget that she's a woman." In November, Peggy Noonan wrote a piece waxing nostalgic for the Iron Lady, in which she rhapsodized:Margaret Thatcher would no more have identified herself as a woman, or claimed special pleading that she was a mere frail girl, or asked you to sympathize with her because of her sex, than she would have called up the Kremlin and asked how quickly she could surrender.
The cognitive dissonance in praising someone as not "so much a woman as a lady" just after claiming Thatcher would have not have "identified herself as a woman" and just after anointing her "tough" for managing to withstand an entire plane journey in heels is enough to give a feminist whiplash. And it is spectacularly wrong: Thatcher indeed did identify herself as a woman, when it suited her—as when admonishing women who had less lofty employment goals than heading a movement, like silly old self-fulfillment.
She represented a movement. She was its head. She was great figure, a person in history, and she was a woman. She was in it for serious reasons, not to advance the claims of a gender but to reclaim for England its economic freedom, and return its political culture to common sense. Her rise wasn't symbolic but actual.
In fact, she wasn't so much a woman as a lady. I remember a gentleman who worked with her speaking of her allure, how she'd relax after a late-night meeting and you'd walk by and catch just the faintest whiff of perfume, smoke and scotch. She worked hard and was tough. One always imagined her lightly smacking some incompetent on the head with her purse, for she carried a purse, as a lady would. She is still tough. A Reagan aide told me that after she was incapacitated by a stroke she flew to Reagan's funeral in Washington, went through the ceremony, flew with Mrs. Reagan to California for the burial, and never once on the plane removed her heels. That is tough.
Like modern incarnations of the professional political woman who disdains women's equality movements in spite of having benefited from (see: Coulter, Ann), Thatcher presented a conundrum for feminists, as well—and some of them were more than willing to take the bait.Pauline Melville, a feminist comic at the time, said, 'She was a reactionary old cow, so fair game absolutely.'
And, even now, Thatcher can't escape the sexism that has always plagued her. In aNew Statesman review of a book on Thatcher, titled "The Mummy Returns"(as in a British mum, not an interred Egyptian), reviewer Suzanne Moore notes, "She is the unhinged, vengeful madwoman in the attic, the unlaid ghost."
…For Melville, it was entirely the politics that motivated her; she had no intention of making a career out of being a comedian.
Racist and sexist jokes were outlawed, though clearly they made an exception for Margaret Thatcher, about whom anything could be said. Clearly, some women didn't count.
The truth is that hatred of Thatcher has also driven even men I otherwise admire to shocking lengths. The closing track on Morrissey's first solo album, Viva Hate, is called "Margaret on the Guillotine."The kind people / Have a wonderful dream / Margaret on the guillotine
It ends with the sound of a falling guillotine.
Cause people like you / Make me feel so tired / When will you die ?
…And people like you / Make me feel so old inside / Please die
Do not shelter this dream / Make it real / Make the dream real
And when I saw Eddie Izzard, like his countryman Morrissey a resolute feminist ally, live at the Royal George several years ago, he had a long, uncharacteristically mean bit that would charitably be described as his calling Margaret Thatcher a cunt for 5 minutes.
There is truly an endless well of legitimate reasons on which to object to Margaret Thatcher as both a politician and a person, but always, always, the first line of offense is that she's a woman—and it always has been.
The more the world changes, the more it stays the same…
George F. Will and Jonah Goldberg represent two generations of the Republican Party: the staid patrician, secure in his bow tie pedantry like a tenured college professor; and the sloppily-dressed frat boy with Cheeto crumbs trailing down his "No Fat Chicks" t-shirt and a trust fund to pay for the Bimmer. Mr. Will's idea of a good time is cocktails and canapes from Dean and Deluca discussing supply-side economics and the merits of anti-trust legislation as it effects baseball, all to the tune of a Haydn string quartet; Jonah's dream party is a kegger where the jocks actually think he's cool, the chicks dig him, and Radiohead is on the CD player. Today both of them look at what's happening to the GOP in the presidential campaign, what it means for their prospects in November, and the future of the party beyond the election.
First up is Mr. Will, who crunches the numbers like a hard-core accountant.The first year of the 2008 campaign -- think about that -- has clearly established that the Republican Party's prospects are cloudy. In the first two major contests, Mike Huckabee has finished first and third, John McCain fourth and first, Mitt Romney second twice. Rudy Giuliani has been treading water, waiting for Florida, which on Jan. 29 will allocate more convention delegates (114) than Iowa, Wyoming and New Hampshire combined (92). So, clinging to clichés as to a lifeline, Republicans congratulate themselves on how evenly the party's strengths, such as they are, are spread among their candidates.
He has a lot more numbers and statistics to prove his point, but the bottom line -- to coin a phrase -- is that the Republicans are in deep trouble because they cannot make up their mind as to what the party represents any more. Their campaign slogan might as well be "Grab a Paddle," because they know what creek they're up.
But although only one-third of 1 percent of the national electorate -- those who have participated in the Iowa, Wyoming and New Hampshire nominating events -- have spoken, the Democrats have even more reason than they did three weeks ago to look forward to a rollicking November. Realistic Republicans are looking for shelter.
Nov. 4 could be their most disagreeable day since Nov. 3, 1964. Actually, this November could be even worse, because in 1964 Barry Goldwater's loss of 44 states served a purpose, the ideological reorientation and revitalization of the party. Which Republican candidate this year could produce a similarly constructive loss?
Today, all the usual indicators are dismal for Republicans. If that broad assertion seems counterintuitive, produce a counterexample. The adverse indicators include: shifts in voters' identifications with the two parties (Democrats now 50 percent, Republicans 36 percent); the tendency of independents (they favored Democratic candidates by 18 points in 2006); the fact that Democrats hold a majority of congressional seats in states with 303 electoral votes; the Democrats' strength and the Republicans' relative weakness in fundraising; the percentage of Americans who think the country is on the "wrong track"; the Republicans' enthusiasm deficit relative to Democrats' embrace of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, one of whom will be nominated.
[...]
Republicans should try to choose the next president. They cannot avoid choosing how their party will define itself, even if by a loss beneath a worthy banner.
Mr. Will spoke of "clinging to clichés as to a lifeline." To prove that point, welcome to the Jonah Goldberg Cliché Festival:Well, this wasn't the plan.
What Mr. Goldberg doesn't seem to realize (and Mr. Will, to his credit, does) is that arguing about what kind of conservatism the GOP should advocate is a lot like the guys at Ford in 1959 fighting over which models of the Edsel to promote in 1960. The voters are turning away from the Republicans in record numbers. A lot of it has to do with the current administration and the never-ending list of errors, both tragic and comic, and their practice of politics trumping government. And, as Mr. Goldberg notes, the GOP is discovering that voters actually want competent government services like FEMA and Medicare and don't think that illegal immigrants should be rounded up and deported as a matter of course. In other words, the Democrats might be on to something with all that talk about getting health care to everyone, funding education, and minding their own business when it comes to gay marriage and a woman's right to control the functions of her own body.
As pretty much everyone has noticed, the Republican race hasn't exactly followed any of the scripts laid out for it. Mitt Romney has been hacked apart like the Black Knight in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." John McCain's fortunes - which had been bouncing up and down like a printout of Dick Cheney's EKG - have suddenly spiked northward after his victory in New Hampshire. Fred Thompson ran a brilliant "testing the waters" campaign from his front porch, but when he tried to walk on the water, he sank like a basset hound trying to swim. Pushing the poor beast under the waves was Mike Huckabee, whose down-home folksiness makes Thompson look like David Niven.
Huckabee's surprise surge in Iowa has made him this season's pitchfork populist, albeit a much nicer one - sort of a Disneyland Pat Buchanan. Then there's Ron Paul. He started out as the designated wack job, then became so successful that the Des Moines Register had to cast Alan Keyes in the role of hopeless firebrand wingnut for a brief campaign cameo. And it's a sign of how poorly Rudy Giuliani - once the indisputable front-runner - has done that I'm now mentioning him only after Paul.
Of course, this could all change with the next contest.
Much of this chaos is attributable to the fact that this is a very flawed field, or at least one ill-suited for the times we're in. If a camel is a horse designed by committee, then this year's Republican field looks downright dromedarian. This slate of candidates has everything a conservative designer could want - foreign policy oomph, business acumen, Southern charm, Big Apple chutzpah, religious conviction, outsider zeal, even libertarian ardor - but all so poorly distributed. As National Review put it in its editorial endorsement of Romney (I am undecided, for the record): "Each of the men running for the Republican nomination has strengths, and none has everything - all the traits, all the positions - we are looking for."
But conservatives should contemplate the possibility that the fault lies less in the stars - or the candidates - than in ourselves. Conservatism, quite simply, is a mess these days. Conservative attitudes are changing. Or, more accurately, the attitudes of people who call themselves conservatives are changing.
[...]
There are important differences - on national security, the role of government, religion - among the different brands of conservatism bubbling up. But none of them necessarily reflects the views of the pro-government and social conservative rank and file. The center of the right does not hold, and so we see an army with many flags and many generals and nobody knows who goes with which.
In other words, there's a huge crowd of self-described conservatives standing around the Republican elephant shouting "Do something!" But what they want the poor beast to do is very unclear. And it doesn't take an expert in pachyderm psychology to know that if a big enough mob shouts at an elephant long enough, the most likely result will be a mindless stampede ¿ in this case, either to general election defeat or to disastrously unconservative policies, or both.
The traditional conservative believes that if you don't have a good idea for what an elephant should be doing, the best course is to encourage it to do nothing at all. Alas, the chorus shouting, "Don't just do something, stand there!" shrinks by the day.
What is surprising is that both Mr. Will and Mr. Goldberg lay the fault for this impending doom for the party squarely at the feet of the Republicans themselves. There are no claims of Democratic perfidy or conspiracy theories about the witchcraft* of Hillary Clinton and the middle name of Barack Obama. Rest assured that such dispassionate introspection on the part of the right wing will not be tolerated much longer.
*The use of the term "witchcraft" is not an accident. I've been getting spam e-mails claiming that Hillary Clinton has been casting spells over her opponents since her years in Arkansas.
Cross-posted.
Ha ha! Just kidding!
Bush to push democracy with Arab allies:
Bush was in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday where he was to deliver a speech, gently prodding the slowly liberalizing Arab states. His address, reprising his call for democracy in the Middle East and other places where it is scarce, was planned at an opulent, gold-trimmed hotel here where a suite goes for $2,450 a night.Bush's Freedom Agenda, bitchez:
...[I]n the UAE, the State Department report found what it called significant human rights problems including: no citizens' right to change the government and no popularly elected representatives of any kind; flogging as judicially sanctioned punishment; arbitrary detention and incommunicado detention, restrictions on freedom of speech and the press.
Even though Fillyjonk posted about it here and I got involved in comments, I deliberately did not post about the last asshole thing Dan Savage said about fat people, because dude is obviously way too invested in defending his right to hate teh fattiez, and at this point, far be it from me to try to take that away from him. For some reason, he really, really seems to need it. I guess maybe that's the compulsive self-comforting behavior he found to replace eating (see below). Poor bunny.
But tonight I look at my referral logs, and OH YAY, I'm getting traffic from the Slog. Hmm, what could it be?
Turns out Dan's discovered the "obesity is a lifestyle choice" thing. And linked to our discussion of it. And yeah, take a wild guess what he thinks about it.
No, wait, don't guess. Here you go:No, you certainly can’t say that you’ll lose weight if you stop eating fast food, get more exercise, and eat more vegetables. It’s true, of course, but you’re not allowed to say it.
I'm not even gonna bother with that. Obviously, I'm lying through my teeth about my eating and exercise habits, as are the majority of Shapelings. It's all donuts, all the time. In fact, I've rigged a system of ropes and pulleys between the couch and the kitchen, so I don't ever have to expend any calories getting up to get more donuts. Periodically, Al flips me so I don't get couch sores, but I hate that part, 'cause then I can't see the TV until he flips me again.
Now that we've cleared that up, here's where it gets interesting. A commenter named Big Sven describes his low-carb diet -- modified South Beach. (Amusingly, Sven recommends Gary Taubes's book. I wonder if Savage's head will asplode if he picks that up and reads Taubes's findings about obesity studies and exercise.)
Dan comments:Big Sven, we're on the same diet. Congrats on your success. Eggs rock.
And Big Sven responds:Dan-
Sweet! But aren't you... skinny?
Dan again:Yes, but I have to watch and think about every piece of food that I put into my mouth. Always have. I am not effortlessly skinny, which most folks in the FA movement assume. I know diet and exercise can work... because they work for me. The reason most diets don't work is that people think they can go off them. You can't. It's about lifestyle change and habit change and, yes, finding new comfort foods and activities that can replicate the kind of emotional satisfaction that food, or certain foods, once provided.
Bacon and eggs for breakfast, not a box of cereal. Wow. It works.
To which I responded:I am not effortlessly skinny, which most folks in the FA movement assume.
Actually, few of us assume that since, as others have said, you've made all the same points a thousand fucking times now.
It's about lifestyle change and habit change and, yes, finding new comfort foods and activities that can replicate the kind of emotional satisfaction that food, or certain foods, once provided.
That sounds a whole lot like recovery from Binge Eating Disorder, not a "lifestyle change" for a fat person with typical eating habits. If you used to overeat to find emotional satisfaction, and you've overcome that, that's terrific -- I mean that sincerely. Eating disorders are miserable. But if that's the case, your relationship with food was not typical of most fat people. That's what you really, really don't seem to get. I mean, the tiniest bit of research would clear that up, but hey -- why confuse yourself or your readers with facts?
When it comes to fat and nutrition as those things apply to human beings OTHER than you? You're plain ignorant, and you're a complete asshole about it. And I never cease to be baffled by how proud you are of both those facts.
To be honest, that response was somewhat disingenuous, since what I really think from that description is that he's swapped one form of disordered eating for another. "I have to watch and think about every piece of food that I put into my mouth" is not actually a normal, healthy relationship with food -- and yet, this is what Savage would have all of us fatties do. Watch every bite. Think about every bite. Obsess about food. Obsess about how much we hate fat and don't ever want to go back there. Because... why again? Oh, right. Because that's way better than eating well, exercising, not obsessing, and remaining fat. Because, you know, IT'S FAT. COME ON, PEOPLE!
Also, I find it rather curious that in the post, he says losing weight is as easy as knocking off fast food, exercising more, and eating more vegetables, but then he admits he's actually on a perma-diet -- and it's the kind that involves loading up on bacon and eggs. Last time I checked, bacon and eggs were a lot closer to fast food than they are to vegetables, no? And don't a lot of fruits and vegetables have those dreaded CARBS BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA?
But hey, what do I know about nutrition? I'm fat. Of course, I have never in my life considered eating a box of cereal for breakfast, seeing as how I don't have an eating disorder, but I'm still fat -- which means I obviously eat exactly like Dan Savage used to and am morally obligated to eat exactly like he does now. Duh.
Sweet Jesus, I hate Dan Savage.
(Cross-posted.)
Maha gives me a heads-up on her excellent piece A Tale of Two Prisoners.
Oddjob recommends this piece by Dahlia Lithwick at Slate "in which we are again reminded that it matters like hell who is president."
Angelos points to this post, asking, "How do you like your war now?"
And Lizard points to this journalistic tragedy in the LA Times (which appears to be angling to fast become the most notable purveyor of misogynist trash peddled as Actual Journamalism in the MSM), in which the author, as Lizard notes, "has decided that what Hillary really needs is a copy of 'The Rules'—and that those of us who feel ambivalent toward her are reacting not to her policies, but to her failure to conduct a properly demure campaign for prom queen."
In the comments section of BooMan's great, if depressing, post on The Clintons' Racial Strategy, commenter Bob in Pacifica says: "I've decided that all the Republicans need to win in November is to pass out razor blades and guns to the Dems. If they don't shoot each other they'll shoot themselves in the foot. If they don't slit each others' throats they'll cut their own wrists."
Sob.
I can't stop looking at Darren Garnick's slideshow over at Slate of his infant daughter, Dahlia, in the arms of all the presidential candidates he could get close enough to take a picture with. Sure, photos of candidates with babies are a dime a dozen, and I'm sure that if I looked at 20 photos of the same candidate with 20 different babies, I'd have 20 different impressions. But there's something about this series of all of them with the same baby that I find totally captivating.
And, okay, even after I've made the case for some measure of vagina voting, this might be the girliest thing you'll ever hear me say: looking at how the candidates hold a baby (something I've never really done, precisely because these photos ARE a dime a dozen) does indeed influence the way I think about them.
It's not the kind of influence that will affect my vote, mind you, because I happen to think most of the Republican candidates -- and hell, even Chuck Norris, in a bonus photo -- look uncharacteristically human and rather adorable with her. And if I were basing my vote strictly on Dahlia-holding photos, I'd be a Kucinich supporter, hands-down; he looks like he's truly enjoying the moment, and it's incredibly charming. (Really, really, incredibly charming, apparently. Garnick himself says about Kucinich, "Even though I'm politically right-of-center, consider me a reluctant fan.")
I can't help snorting a little at the fact that Dahlia screamed bloody murder in the arms of both Giuliani and McCain, but damn if they aren't cute pictures anyway. Rudy coos soothingly at her, and McCain just looks like, "Hey, what are you gonna do?" (Also, like "I'm a cuckoo dum-dum ha ha ha!" but that was to be expected.) Neither one looks flipped out in the least.
I mean, I suppose if you're a politician, one of the first things you learn is never to look flipped out in a picture of you holding a baby; it looks bad enough already just that the kid is screaming bloody murder. But, like, take a look at Richardson. Garnick notes that Dahlia was totally at ease in his arms, but Richardson himself doesn't look all that comfortable. In fact, I didn't know until I read the text accompanying the slideshow that he's the only candidate without kids, but it doesn't surprise me a bit from the photo. He's probably amassed more baby-holding experience in his political career than I have in my entire life, and yet, you can still see it -- the stiffness in his arms, the "Please don't let me drop this thing" look in his eye.
I've gotten familiar with those characteristics in recent years, as my friends have started having babies, and I've realized that other friends my age (not to mention some of the new parents, though they get over it quickly) have no experience whatsoever with holding them. I don't have kids of my own, but I've been a nanny, a day care worker, and for the last 14 years, an aunt; I've long since grown perfectly comfortable with the fact that babies usually don't fall out of your arms -- and if they do, what the hell, they're mostly made of cartilage.* So it always surprises me to see people in their late twenties and older holding babies as if tilting them 10 degrees in one direction might set off the detonator.
Which brings me to the thing that captivates me most about this slideshow: all of the candidates -- with the exception of Clinton and Richardson, for their respective obvious reasons -- look like dads. Perhaps that shouldn't be surprising, given that they all are, but I'm just old enough not to automatically think it's totally normal for dads to be comfortable with babies. Right after my brother's oldest kid was born, my family and my sister-in-law's family visited all at the same time. My dad, who's crazy about babies, made a beeline for my niece, to the shock of my sister-in-law's mother. She turned to my mother and said, "Did you see that? He just walked in and picked that baby right up, like it was nothing!" Mom shrugged and said, "Yeah, he had four of his own." Like, what was the big deal?
The big deal was, my sister-in-law's dad, despite having had 3 of his own and at that point, 6 other grandchildren, was still not one to just pick up a baby like it was nothing. Picking up babies was for women. He'd get around to touching them when they were older and less fragile.
He and my dad are both around McCain's age, less than 10 years older than Kucinich and Giuliani (and Chuck Norris). And sadly, in that age group, I don't think my sister-in-law's dad was necessarily the weird one.
So I have to admit I'm utterly charmed to see all these men handle a baby with such aplomb, even if I know it's part of their jobs. (Granted, Obama's younger than two of my siblings, and Edwards and Huckabee are much closer to their ages than my dad's. But still.) Clinton, despite all her ladyness, actually looks like the least happy of the bunch to be holding the little nipper -- though in fairness, Garnick does admit Dahlia's diaper was wet at the time of that photo.
And Clinton still does something that only three other candidates (Obama, Kucinich, and Giuliani) do: looks at Dahlia's face, instead of at the camera. You might expect it of Obama, who has the most recent experience with a baby of his own -- but then, Edwards is a very close second, and he simply tucks the kid into one arm, like the old pro he is, and offers a big, shiny grin for the photographer. (Of course, Edwards has been at it a hell of a lot longer. As the youngest of four with a big gap in the middle very much like his family's, I can tell you that no matter how much my dad still loves babies, the novelty had bloody well worn off by the time I came along.) I have to say, those pictures in particular impress me. Edwards, Huckabee, McCain, Romney (who, despite his ample dad and granddad experience, kinda looks like he might accidentally strangle the kid), and even Richardson -- oh yeah, and Norris -- all look cheerful enough about it, but the ones who actually look at the baby? Seem like they're having a real, human moment, not just a standard-issue photo op. Even Giuliani, sort of.
Obama, who in the first picture holds Dahlia at just 7 weeks (and greeted her with "Ooooh, a new one!") looks gentle and curious; Giuliani looks like he probably can't wait to hand her back to her dad, but in the meantime, he'll at least engage; Clinton looks irritated that her arm is getting pee-stained, but like she's interested in Dahlia, even if she wants to kill Garnick for handing over a wet baby. (And Dahlia looks totally fascinated by her, so one can assume Clinton was probably looking friendlier a moment before this was taken.) Finally, Kucinich looks like he's having an absolute blast and would play with her all day if he could.
Why do those reactions impress me so much? Well, because I freakin' love babies. In spite or because of the day care, nannying, and aunting experience, I'm not a huge fan of small children, and I'm still undecided about whether I want any of my own. But babies? Are awesome. If they didn't become kids, I'd have a dozen of 'em.
And that's because hanging out with young, pre-verbal, pre-crawling babies is about the purest human connection you can get. Not "pure" in the sense of innocent and unspoiled and all that other kids-are-teh-awesum propaganda that's somehow supposed to make my biological clock tick louder when I hear a rugrat screaming, "I WANT THE GREEN ONE! THE GREEEEEEEEEN ONE!" in Starbucks -- but "pure" in the sense of being seriously stripped down to the core. 'Cause really, the only thing an unrelated adult and baby have in common is that they're human. We can't totally understand each other's languages, much as we try; we don't have any shared experiences of the world (or at least, the adult can't remember the similar experiences s/he's had); we certainly don't have political views in common. And yet, we find ourselves equally compelled to snuggle and stare at each other and try to comprehend what's going on in this strange other person's head.
So it's extremely cool to see politicians in the middle of campaigning -- of spinning and calculating and backstabbing and backpedaling and never saying a word that won't be scrutinized to death -- have that kind of pure, unaffected moment of connection. It's almost as if they're real people or something. Even Giuliani, sort of.
Or, you know, I might just be a big, fat, girly sap. (Hils, call me!)
*Yes, I am KIDDING.
"You know, women are now very active in the Kuwaiti parliament."—Your Know-Nothing President, still on his Prove What An Ignorant Ass I Am tour of the Middle East.
No woman has ever been elected to the Kuwaiti parliament. Kuwaiti women were finally granted the right to vote in 2005.
Two years ago, I wrote a post called What Lurks Below about eliminationist rhetoric, with which I concluded:
This kind of rhetoric is incredibly alarming, and its intensity is escalating as conservatives see themselves losing their stranglehold on unilateral control. Consider for a moment that I have only scraped the surface of the eliminationist rhetoric spewed for public consumption—and that this is what's being said while they're in power. Any thought that things will "get better" if Democrats regain control of the House, the Senate, or the Presidency is foolish at best. We've only seen the tip of the iceberg. I dread what lurks below the surface.And so here we are on the precipice of not only a Democratic presidency after 8 years of exile from the Executive Branch, and not only a Democratic presidency with a potential Democratic Congressional majority, but a Democratic presidency with a potential Democratic Congressional majority in which the president is a black man or a woman.
Hillary Clinton offers young men on social-networking sites a ripe target for their aggression.The unadulterated contempt for a powerful women implicit in ordering her to iron shirts and make sandwiches and do the dishes is horrifying. (And I wonder just how many of the proprietors of these sites had mothers who made them sandwiches or "ran" the dishes?) And I quite genuinely recommend not looking at these Facebook communities (or their MySpace counterparts) if you don't want to be rendered excruciatingly sick by the unchecked misogyny being expressed, including, in some cases, threats of sexual violence being levied against Clinton.
…Facebook, popular with high-school and college students, has dozens of anti-Hillary groups, many of which take great delight in heaping abuse on Clinton as a woman, imagining her reduced to a subservient role, and visiting violence upon her.
One is "Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich," with more than 23,000 members and 2,200 "wall posts."
Another Facebook group, more temperate in tone and with about 13,000 members, is "Life's a bitch, why vote for one? Anti-Hillary '08."
Is this merely some adolescent "guys gone wild" (most but by no means all Hillary haters are male)? The rank rituals of the rec room revealed for the whole world to see?
The proprietors of the Facebook group "Hillary Clinton Shouldn't Run for President, She Should Just Run the Dishes," with 2,159 members, offer a pre-emptive disclaimer to offended visitors.
Tristero at Hullabaloo wants to know:
Why did Huckabee work to release Wayne Dumond, a convicted rapist? The rape that landed him in the Arkansas slammer wasn't his first. He had been implicated in others, but in at least one case, the victim was too afraid to testify. No wonder, Dumond had already been involved in a brutal murder. In that case, Dumond, turning state's evidence, denied killing the man; he only bashed the guy on the head several times with a hammer. So, again, the question:And, as tristero documents, it's because the hatred of Bill Clinton by the right wing outweighs everything else, including the criminal justice system.
Why did Huckabee work to release Wayne Dumond, a convicted rapist?
Answer: Because Wayne Dumond was the darling of the extreme right. And Huckabee was trying to curry their favor.
LOL: "GEORGE BUSH and wife Laura are headed for divorce - again - after she left claw marks on his face during a furious fight over his boozing, White House sources reveal. The president was left with a bloody three-inch gash along with a smaller cut. Our world exclusive reveals the shocking details of their explosive showdown - and what their future holds."
If I had to guess, it holds a few more years of terse grins and think-of-England fucks as they inevitably careen toward destiny in the long-running race to see if Laura will go completely haywire and end it all with a poisoned pretzel before Barbara Bush dies and takes to her grave whatever godforsaken piece of blackmail she's got on Laura.
Via Atrios.
Well what a relief! It seems I don't need my vagina to vote after all.
I just need to let my giggly, girlie emotions take over my puny, pathetic intellect -- and claim Hillary as my BFF!
"Searing political questions resided behind what Young called her “simple, honest, genuine” query. Could she “relate” to Clinton? Was she likely to find a “friend” in a woman with a camera-ready helmet of hair? Could she learn from Hillary? Could they share beauty tips? Would her gesture toward female bonding be well-received and perhaps met with the kind of positive mirroring of which Best Friendships Forever are made?"The heaping helpings of sexist tripe that I've consumed this week in the aftermath of New Hampshire have been grueling, and it's doubly discouraging to see this kind of crap coming from a woman.
"Feeling – not thinking – becomes all-important when you have a field of candidates who aren’t really all that different from one another politically."Oh really? The candidates aren't all that different politically? Hmmm. Cuz I thought -- you know -- that they were -- but what do I know? I'm a woman.
"I don’t for a moment begrudge Hillary her victory on Tuesday. But if victory came for the reasons we’ve been led to believe – because women voters ultimately saw in her, exhausted and near defeat, a countenance that mirrored their own – then I hate what that victory says about the state of their lives and the nature of the emotions they carry forward into this race. I hate the thought that women feel beaten down, backed into a corner, overwhelmed and near to breaking point, as Hillary appeared to be in the debate Saturday night.I mean, there's almost a moment where she looks into the real results of misogyny in women's lives there -- almost -- and just as I'm thinking "Yes, Judith! Write about that! Get to the core of it!", she picks up her own sexist cudgel, and sours me forever with this closing line:
"And I hate even more that they’ve got to see a strong, smart and savvy woman cut down to size before they can embrace her as one of their own."Because you know how we are -- so petty and bitchy and back-biting and jealous and self-sabotaging and pitiful and stupid. Oh, and emotional. (How could I forget that, this week of all weeks? -- Ooops! Must be my hormones!)
