So, Media Matters has posted yet another belch 'o crazy from Michael Savage, and it's the usual frothing mix of baseless accusations and fearmongering that we've come to expect from this jabbering knucklehead. Savage has been labeling liberals, homosexuals, and anyone else he doesn't happen to like as Nazis waayyyy before Jonah Goldberg suddenly realized he could make a buck doing the same thing, and he's got it down to an art form, man.
Well, not really. More like a tired, redundant, so-old-it-farts-dust cliché form, but damn it, it's gotten him this far, and this dead horse isn't quite beaten into nonexistence.
What caught my interest wasn't the text that MM highlighted; it was the rambling afterwards that made my head ache. Here's the first part of the excerpt, with MM's emphasis:SAVAGE: It fell in my hands. I didn't choose this fight. I never liked CAIR, but I never figured they were going to be my enemy, but, like everyone else, it's not my problem. Well, then, they made themselves my problem. They attacked me. They went after all my advertisers. They learned good from their friends at Media Matters, that rat-bum -- it's a homosexual, fascist website. Let me explain who Media Matters is. It was founded by Hillary Clinton. It's run by a bunch of fascist homosexuals. They're the brownshirts of our time.
So, the usual, right? (Aside from the hilariously old-timey "rat-bum." I'm glad to see that Savage is fluent in Grizzled Prospector. "I told that no-good rat-bum, if he don't like the way I'm runnin' this general store, he can get his cornpone twenty miles away in Pottersville, by crackey!") Media Matters is full of homosexuals, homosexuals are facists, Media Matters are a bunch of facists, Liberals are facists, I'm a hero for fighting them, oh, and facist facist facist, brownshirts, they're all out to get you, facist facist facist, homosexual facists, facist homosexuals, and I'll throw a Clinton in there for good measure.
When are you gonna wake up to the fact that liberals are not liberal? When are you gonna wake up to the fact that the liberals are the new fascists. They are the brownshirts! And they're gonna take this country over the cliff if you don't stand up to them and stop them.
Yawn. I think I've figured out why Savage's listeners like him so much. He's like a soap opera. You can tune out for, like, months, and you'll still be hearing the same thing when you come back.
It's when he goes on from there that things get... interesting. (Emphasis mine this time)That's why I'm putting myself on the line. And if you think it's a joke, it's not a joke.
Wow.
I walk with my head swiveling. I look over my shoulder. I live as though I am the hunted one. And that's because you are not the hunted one. That's because you are a coward. And that's because your government doesn't protect its citizens.
Okay, I could get into my usual rant here and point out how dangerous this kind of speech can be. Encouraging fear and paranoia regarding "the other" creates a culture of violence, etc, etc. I don't like the "we should just be ignoring him" argument because he has a national media forum and a huge fan base, etc, etc. You've heard me go on ad nauseam about this kind of stuff before. But here's what went through my head after reading the above quote:
Nothing keeps 'em tuning in like insults dripping with contempt.
Well, actually, they do keep tuning in. What does that say about his listeners?
I'm beginning to think when Michael Savage finally shuffles off this mortal coil, his biggest regret will be that he was never physically attacked by a homosexual. Or a liberal. Or a Clinton. In Savage Never-neverland, they're one and the same. And they're all out to get him.
(If you don't get the title, watch this.)
Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball
Shut the Huck Up
Warning: This is guaranteed to piss you off.
Theocrat Mike Huckabee has thrown his cross into the ring, openly daring people to interfere with his plans of converting the Constitution into the next testament:
"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."You know, I'd like to say that with quotes like these, there's simply no way Huckabee would even survive the nomination. But I can't, not with the number of proven asshats we still have in this country who would actually go for this rhetoric.
Well, what I do know is that if he makes it in, we'll have to contact HGTV to run a few special shows on proper altar construction. That way, we'd all be prepared when the next amendment comes down to reinstate animal sacrifices. I'm hoping that they'll at least give us the flexibility to choose between wood, propane and natural gas.
If We're a Post-Feminist Society Now, How the Hell did I Miss the Feminist one?
I know, I know, we're supposed to be rising above it all now. And I am all for that. Furthermore, it's my goddamned birthday, so I wasn't going to let blogging raise my blood pressure today. I even considered not turning on the computer at all until tomorrow -- an idea that lasted approximately 15 seconds after I woke up, but you know... I considered it.
The universe, however, does not want to keep my blood pressure stable. Granted, it sent me Bob Herbert's column for my birthday. But that was only on the heels of the single most upsetting op-ed I've seen about what a female president would mean to this country: Lorrie Moore's from the Sunday NYT.
As a fiction writer, Lorrie Moore is one of my biggest heroes. I did my critical MFA thesis on her and based a good chunk of my graduating lecture on her work -- in both cases, focusing on the way she brilliantly balances humor and pathos, which I admire more than just about anything in a writer. When it comes to fiction, Lorrie Moore is the living end, as far as I'm concerned.
Problem is, when you write an op-ed for the Times, you're supposed to take off the fiction-writer hat and put on the non-fiction one. Moore doesn't seem to have done that, judging by lines like this:In my opinion, it is a little late in the day to become sentimental about a woman running for president. The political moment for feminine role models, arguably, has passed us by.
I'm sorry, WHAT? I... I read that wrong, right? You didn't mean what I think you meant. You couldn't have.
Okay, I'm breathing. I'm having faith. Let's just see where you go with the rest of the piece.Perfect historical timing has always been something of a magic trick — finite and swift. The train moves out of the station. The time to capture the imagination of middle-class white girls, the group Hillary Clinton represents, was long ago. Such girls have now managed on their own (given that in this economy only the rich are doing well). They have their teachers and many other professionals to admire, as well as a fierce 67-year-old babe as speaker of the House, several governors and a Supreme Court justice. The landscape is not bare.
WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK? How the hell did we get to a point where, as a commenter at The Carpetbagger Report put it, "somehow we [seem] to be 'over' having a woman President without ever actually having a woman President"?
I have admired loads of female teachers and professionals in my time -- including Lorrie Moore -- and I think Nancy Pelosi and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are just swell. But to this middle-class white girl, the landscape is still looking PRETTY FUCKING BARE. I, for one, am still waiting for that train you claim has left the station, Lorrie. I am still waiting to have my imagination captured by a woman who wields more power in this country than fucking Oprah. I am not over it.
I'm getting all sputtery trying to organize all the ways in which we are so completely, astoundingly not past the need for more female political role models, so I'll just let Shakesville's Heartthrob of the Day Bob Herbert sum it up for me:We’ve become so used to the disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous and even violent treatment of women that we hardly notice it. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed against women and girls every day. Fashionable ads in mainstream publications play off of that violence, exploiting themes of death and dismemberment, female submissiveness and child pornography.
Not to mention, as Liss recently put it,
If we’ve opened the door to the issue of sexism in the presidential campaign, then let’s have at it. It’s a big and important issue that deserves much more than lip service.There's a big goddamned difference between telling little girls they can grow up to be president someday when there's never been a female president, and telling them while holding up a picture of Madame President.
For as much as I want to see the racist and sexist campaign bullshit come to a swift end, I can't abide the new meme that now we all need to ignore race and sex and focus on "the issues." Race and sex are not separate from "the issues" in this contest; for as long as Clinton has a vagina and Obama has brown skin, they will be smack dab among the issues with enormous relevance to the upcoming elections and the future of this country. To interpret a race that includes the first viable African-American and female candidates in history any other way is ... well, fiction.
And on the one hand, that means that either a President Clinton or a President Obama will represent a gigantic leap forward for all of us who are other than white men here. Which is amazing and thrilling. Although I am, right this second, planning to vote for Clinton (yes, I KNOW all the Good Progressive Reasons not to vote for her, so please, for the love of Maude, just believe that I've given it some thought), if Obama gets the nomination, I will freakin' skip to my polling station to vote for him with a song in my heart. And, just as I would voting for the first woman president, I will almost certainly blub. It will be a historic moment. It will be an enormous symbolic change, if nothing else, and I happen to believe those are meaningful. It will feel terrific.
But it will fucking well not mean we have moved beyond all that whining about sexism and are ready for something a little more now, as Moore would have us believe.[I]nspiration is essential for living, and Mr. Obama holds the greater fascination for our children.
You're kidding me, right? I'm pretty sure she just managed to say Obama's her candidate of choice because he's simultaneously above all that pesky race crap and totes exotic! Just the way educated, liberal white Americans like our black men!
Mr. Obama came of age as a black man in America. He does not need (as he has done) to invoke his grandfather’s life in colonial Kenya to prove or authenticate his understanding of race. His sturdiness is equal to Mrs. Clinton’s, his plans as precise and humane. But unlike her, he is original and of the moment. He embodies, at the deepest levels, the bringing together of separate worlds. The sexes have always lived together, but the races have not. His candidacy is minted profoundly in that expropriated word “change.”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton’s scripted air of expectation might make one welcome any zeitgeisty parvenu.
Seriously, for as boneheaded and wildly inappropriate as that Clinton advisor's comment about some white people regarding Obama as their "imaginary hip black friend" was -- and it absolutely was -- it was also not entirely off the mark. It was a dumbassed, offensive thing for a Clinton staffer to say because it denigrates Obama's hard work and all the people who plan to vote for him because of his policies, his positions, his leadership skills, and a dozen other well-thought-out reasons. But I can totally see where it came from, because there are indeed a bunch of privileged white people out there -- Lorrie Moore is far from the first I've encountered -- who look at Obama and think, "Mmmm, zeitgeisty!" Which is every bit as offensive as someone overstating the impact of such condescending jackassery on Obama's popularity.
For fuck's sake, can we please stop asking people like Lorrie Moore, Gloria Steinem, and David Crary whether racism or sexism is more virulent in this society, and maybe try asking a woman of color? 'Cause I'm pretty sure you'll hear that we are not actually post-anything yet. We are in no way beyond the need for a woman president or a president of color -- a fact that's perhaps best illustrated by the ongoing insistence that it's an either/or proposition, as if women of color are some sort of mythical creatures.
If you're sick of Clintons, sick of anything that reminds you of the last 20 years in American politics, and/or sick when you think about Hillary's Iraq vote, triangulation, etc., then go vote for someone else with my unequivocal blessing. But do not EVEN fucking tell me the "political moment for feminine role models" is a thing of the past when I can still count all the female politicians with national prominence ON ONE GODDAMNED HAND.
Please stick to fiction, Lorrie Moore. This op-ed demonstrates that it's your forte on so many levels.
Five Reasons Why "Teach Women Self-Defense" Isn't a Comprehensive Solution to Rape
Before I start this post in earnest, I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting that women should not take self-defense courses, that women should not get involved in martial arts, or that there's no such thing as a woman who has successfully defended herself against assault, sexual or otherwise. What this post is intended to address is the exceedingly common recommendation in rape threads that women should "learn how to protect themselves" as the (one-and-only) solution to rape, and the equally frequent comment that people have enrolled their daughters in martial arts classes so they "will know how to take care of themselves."
Self-protection is, at best, one part of a comprehensive solution to rape—and it's not even as straightforward as it may seem. Looking at the complex and practical realities of what teaching women self-defense in regard to rape prevention really means is the focus of this post.
Its raison d'être is the progressively frequent references to rape's inevitability and women's need to learn self-defense as the only surefire way to prevent rape. (See An Angry Old Broad's comment here, in the Bob Herbert thread, as an example of how this meme is disseminated in the media.)
* * *
Reason #1 why self-defense isn't a comprehensive solution to rape: Self-defense instructors can be rapists, too.
Increasingly, martial arts classes are being marketed to young women and the parents of young girls as "self-defense," in which is implicit an unspoken narrative about the prevention of sexual assault. (They are also being sought after in the same way; see another comment from An Angry Old Broad, in the same thread.) The brutal irony is that, as ever, sexual predators endeavor to infiltrate programs where they will be given a trusted position and unsupervised contact with a steady stream of victims. And so we end up with stories like this (via Marcella):A self-defense instructor in Forest Lake, Minnesota has been charged with having sex with a 15-year-old female student.
And this (note that "having sex" is yet again used as a euphemism for rape):
Ladislao Enriquez, 48, faces one count each of first-degree and third-degree criminal sexual conduct.
According to the charges, the girl told police she took the class because she was sexually assaulted more than two years earlier.A Yakima karate instructor has been accused of having sex with two underage girls.
Those are just the stories I saw last week.
Yakima Police say 44-year-old Paul Daniel Barr was charged last week with four counts of third-degree child rape for molesting and raping a 13-year-old girl after he met her while teaching at the Yakima School of Karate.
On Friday, Yakima Police questioned Barr about his relationship with another girl, who says she had sex with him when she was 14-years old. Barr has been charged with second-degree rape and sexual exploitation of a minor in the second case.
I am not citing them to try to discourage parents from enrolling daughters in self-defense or martial arts classes, but because they expose the inevitable problem with treating self-defense as the end-all-be-all of rape prevention. There have been fathers in various rape threads at Shakes who have pointedly said that they're taking their daughters to learn a martial art "so they won't ever have to worry about rape," men who absolutely refused to engage the point of this post, which is that such classes are not a panacea for the rape culture, which is vast and varied and—yes—capable of saturating even martial arts classes.
These stories underline why challenging and undermining the rape culture within your own community—including by insisting that criminal background checks and multiple-adult supervision are required by any instructor of children's extracurriculars—is at least as important as self-defense training (and probably more so).
Reason #2 why self-defense isn't a comprehensive solution to rape: Unconscious women can't fight back.
Given the plethora of posts to be found at Shakesville on date rape, gray rape, quality of assent, and enthusiastic consent, certainly most readers are already well aware that rape isn't just something that happens to conscious women, but to women who are inebriated, incapacitated, in comas, and in every other varied state of unconsciousness.
And, lest this disintegrate into yet another round of victim-blaming by people who can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that tasking victims with being the gatekeepers of rape and sexual abuse, rather than the perpetrators, is predicated upon the fallacious assumption that any man is capable of such ugliness given the right circumstances—which is nasty, man-hating bullshit—there's absolutely no need whatsoever to point out that women need to be more responsible so they don't end up unconscious in the presence of a rapist.
For a start, it ignores the women who end up unconscious against their wills, by virtue of injury, disease, date rape drugs, or merely being inexperienced drinkers. Secondly, even if we're talking about the supposedly legions of women who deliberately choose to throw caution to the wind and purposefully drink themselves into oblivion in the presence of strangers, only in some parallel dimension where that equals consent does this discussion even matter.
The point is this: If a woman becomes incapacitated for any reason in the presence of a rapist, all the self-defense techniques in the world will not save her.
Reason #3 why self-defense isn't a comprehensive solution to rape: Women with self-defense training are still raped.
Even among women who are conscious, who do/can fight back, and have had self-defense training, its efficacy is not 100%. Depending on the source, anywhere from about 15 to >50% of women who are trained in self-defense techniques are still raped when in a situation where rape appears imminent. (Naturally, it's impossible to know whether a woman not trained in self-defense who managed to get off a swift kick to the googlies would have achieved the same result.)
The upside, however—and it's not a small one—is that women who are trained in self-defense and can/do fight back, but are still raped, are nonetheless more likely to feel less responsible, more angry, and more determined to pursue every legal avenue available.
Reason #4 why self-defense isn't a comprehensive solution to rape: Women who deter assaults with violent means are often punished.
This is where the vastly different cultural standards by which men and women are judged begin to rear their ugly heads. Although MRAs would have us believe that women can kill a man in cold blood and use "he looked at me cross-eyed" as a defense to get off scot-free, reality is ever-so-slightly different, especially for women of color. Even in cases of self-defense against an abusive male partner/spouse—in which upwards of 80% of cases have previous calls to police, and violence is usually a last resort (we'll come back to that, btw)—battered women who use violent means to defend themselves are being convicted or are accepting pleas at a rate of 75-83% nationwide.
When women use self-defense measures against strangers, their odds of getting the A-OK on that decision is not any better. Take, for example, the case of the Jersey 4:On June 14, four African-American women—Venice Brown (19), Terrain Dandridge (20), Patreese Johnson (20) and Renata Hill (24)—received sentences ranging from three-and-a-half to 11 years in prison. None of them had previous criminal records. Two of them are parents of small children.
Why did these women, like many others, fare so poorly in what was clearly a case of self-defense? Well, it might have a little something to do with the cognitive dissonance between what we say we want women to do to take care of themselves, and what we actually want women to do to take care of themselves.
Their crime? Defending themselves from a physical attack by a man who held them down and choked them, ripped hair from their scalps, spat on them, and threatened to sexually assault them
…As they passed the Independent Film Cinema, 29-year-old Dwayne Buckle, an African-American vendor selling DVDs, sexually propositioned one of the women. They rebuffed his advances and kept walking.
"I'll f— you straight, sweetheart!" Buckle shouted. A video camera from a nearby store shows the women walking away. He followed them, all the while hurling anti-lesbian slurs, grabbing his genitals and making explicitly obscene remarks. The women finally stopped and confronted him. A heated argument ensued. Buckle spat in the face of one of the women and threw his lit cigarette at them, escalating the verbal attack into a physical one.
Buckle is seen on the video grabbing and pulling out large patches of hair from one of the young women. When Buckle ended up on top of one of the women, choking her, Johnson pulled a small steak knife out of her purse. She aimed for his arm to stop him from killing her friend.
The video captures two men finally running over to help the women and beating Buckle. At some point he was stabbed in the abdomen. The women were already walking away across the street by the time the police arrived.
Buckle was hospitalized for five days after surgery for a lacerated liver and stomach. When asked at the hospital, he responded at least twice that men had attacked him.
There was no evidence that Johnson's kitchen knife was the weapon that penetrated his abdomen, nor was there any blood visible on it. In fact, there was never any forensics testing done on her knife. On the night they were arrested, the police told the women that there would be a search by the New York Police Department for the two men—which to date has not happened.
After almost a year of trial, four of the seven were convicted in April. Johnson was sentenced to 11 years on June 14.
To wit: About a year ago, Jessica posted a picture of a German warning sign noting that men who harass and/or grope women risk a slap in the face—and that people who see men harassing women (along with disproportionately targeted "migrants, homeless people, transgender people, gays") should get involved to stop it. Go on and just guess what the comments were.
If you guessed "totally missing the point about men doing something to warrant getting slapped, in order to shame teh ladiez for celebrating violence against men," give yourself 1,000 points.
As Ginmar noted in regard to this post (emphasis mine):It's a common technique of whiny dipshits who are usually complaining about uppity women when they're not complaining aout how women just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and fight rape: get a gun. To that, I offer this response: men whining about how you can't trust women because they'll actually defend themselves! With slaps! Oh, God, the horror! The sheer horror of it all!
Exactly right. Ginmar also pinpoints another problem with exhortations to women to utilize self-defense methods, and why we should be suspicious of them, noting that there are men who "make suggestions about womens' self defense that they know are useless and hopeless, safe in the knowledge that women will always be resented for any act of self defense." Admonishing women to learn self-defense in a culture where a cheeky sign about women slapping harassers is greeted with outraged fury and charges of misandry is misguided at best and willfully disingenuous at worst.
Pay special attention, in the second link, to the guy who says: "Nice poster. Next time a woman annoys me, I'll smack her. Hard. Great message. I don't see what's to like."
Remember, this is giving men what they claim they think is a great idea: women defending themselves.
The whole idea that a woman can use self-defense to deter a man she presumes is intent on raping her is predicated on (as all rape scenarios are) a very specific set of circumstances—that she is capable of fighting back, that she successfully does fight back, and that she hurts the potential rapist only enough to get away, but not so much that he ends up in the hospital (or morgue), lest she face charges, and that all of this happens in front of witnesses who will corroborate her story, just in case. And even then, as the Jersey 4 case illustrates, that still doesn't mean she won't be convicted.
Suddenly self-defense doesn't seem like quite the cure-all it is repeatedly suggested to be.
And that brings me to:
Reason #5 why self-defense isn't a comprehensive solution to rape: Lots of women know their rapists.
Remember when I mentioned we'd come back to that whole violence-as-a-last-resort thing? Okay, here we are. There are a couple of reasons that most victims of sustained abuse don't haul off and physically self-defend right from the get-go—including a general instinctual reluctance to hurt people we know (even if they're hurting us) and the very rational and reasonable calculation that retribution for self-defense may be intolerable, possibly life-threatening.
Remember, women are three times more likely to be raped by someone they know than a stranger, and nine times more likely to be raped in their home, the home of someone they know, or anywhere else than being raped on the street, making what we commonly refer to as "date rape" by far the most prevalent "type" of rape. It's one thing to talk about using self-defense when you're picturing the typically (if erroneously) conjured rape scenario—a psychopathic stranger jumping out of the bushes and trying to rape you. It's quite another proposition altogether to think about trying to incapacitate your date, your boyfriend, your husband, your boss, your friend—someone you trust.
I'm not saying there aren't women who can and would do it; there certainly are. But it's not as easy. The incidents of well-trained and even armed military women, policewomen, self-defense instructors, etc. being raped by someone they know speaks to that difficulty. Women (and men) who should be able to, and are able to, overcome their attackers don't/can't always do so. That's not meant to impugn women. It's a statement on the disposition of humans.
As I said above, the rape culture, with all its manifestations and narratives and accoutrements, is vast and varied, necessarily making rape prevention more complex than any one solution. There's no silver bullet.
By all means, support women learning self-defense. Just don't let your thoughts about rape prevention end there.
[UPDATE: Echidne has related and complementary thoughts here. It's an excellent post. Go read!]
Cage Match: Identity Politics
As Liss noted earlier, Bob Herbert gets it.
David Brooks does not.
Both Clinton and Obama have eagerly donned the mantle of identity politics. A Clinton victory wouldn’t just be a victory for one woman, it would be a victory for little girls everywhere. An Obama victory would be about completing the dream, keeping the dream alive, and so on.First, it's obvious that Mr. Brooks doesn't see the world the same way Mr. Herbert does, nor does he recognize the irony in his own dismissal of the "reactionary white male establishment" as the forces against which both Clinton and Obama are fighting because he is a card-carrying, banner-waving member of said establishment.
Fair enough. The problem is that both the feminist movement Clinton rides and the civil rights rhetoric Obama uses were constructed at a time when the enemy was the reactionary white male establishment. Today, they are not facing the white male establishment. They are facing each other.
Second, the idea that there's something wrong with a politician seeing the world and the causes they're working for in terms of their own identity is more than a little mind-boggling. Of course they're going to see it that way; what other way is there? Certainly running for office requires more than its fair share of ego, but it also requires that the people running for office use their own life experiences and talents to frame their case and provide a point of reference so that the voters can say, "this person gets it." Whether or not this connects with the electorate is often the difference between winning and losing an election. Where it goes off the rails is when the politician tries to convince the voters that they understand their concerns when it is clear, either through thought, word, or deed, that they do not. "I feel your pain" may have become a punch line, but is still the gut-check that a lot of voters use when they listen to someone trying to convince them to vote for them.
I do agree with Mr. Brooks on one point: the argument over race and gender has gotten to the silly stage, and to the credit of both the Clinton and Obama campaigns, they're seeking to put it to rest. But it does not mean that these are not issues that we shouldn't talk about, and expecting either candidate to do it without recognizing, even subliminally, that they represent uncharted waters in American politics is nonsense. Better to have it, even with the excess (and the sense to know when to stop) than not at all.
PS: Mr. Brooks notes that it will be the Latino vote that determines the election. Perhaps he needs to be reminded that the GOP and their nearly unanimous support of harsh immigration reform has pretty much taken care of that.
(Cross-posted.)
"Where has everybody been?"
How much do I love Bob Herbert? Let me count the ways:
1. "With Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's win in New Hampshire, gender issues are suddenly in the news. Where has everybody been? If there was ever a story that deserved more coverage by the news media, it’s the dark persistence of misogyny in America. Sexism in its myriad destructive forms permeates nearly every aspect of American life. For many men, it's the true national pastime, much bigger than baseball or football. Little attention is being paid to the toll that misogyny takes on society in general, and women and girls in particular."
2. "The cable news channels revel in stories about women (almost always young and attractive) who come to a gruesome end at the hands of violent men. The stories seldom, if ever, raise the issue of misogyny, which permeates not just the crimes themselves, but the coverage as well."
3. "It just so happens that the Democratic presidential candidates are campaigning this week in the misogyny capital of America: Nevada. It’s a perfect place to bring up the way women are viewed and treated in this society, but don't hold your breath. Presidential wannabes are hardly in the habit of insulting the locals."
4. "The sexual mistreatment of women in the military is widespread. The Defense Department financed a study in 2003 of female veterans seeking health assistance from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Nearly a third of those surveyed said they had been the victim of a rape or attempted rape during their service. … There continue to be widespread complaints from women about rape and other forms of sexual attacks in the military, and about a culture that tends to protect the attackers."
5. "We've become so used to the disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous and even violent treatment of women that we hardly notice it. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed against women and girls every day."
6. "If we've opened the door to the issue of sexism in the presidential campaign, then let's have at it. It's a big and important issue that deserves much more than lip service."
What's embarrassing (for the national media) is that such a simple, blunt assessment of institutional misogyny has the capacity to make me positively swoon.
What's crazy is that the ideas that Herbert elucidates are still considered controversial.
What's sad is that this column won't be the catalyst for a sincere and lasting conversation on this topic, as it should be.
Thanks nonetheless, Bob. It means something to us, if no one else. (And thanks to Kevin for passing that along.)
Happy Birthday, Kate!
I thought you'd enjoy your very own box of cereal for your birthday!
And, since you and The Heretik have the same birthday, you don't even have to share it with anyone! You can eat the whole box all by yourself!
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Maybe I Need a Vacation
Two night ago, I dreamt that Ron Paul was trying to kill me inside a video game. We were both real humans, but we were stuck inside a game. It was very Tron, except way more disturbing.
Last night, I dreamt that John McCain was trying to make out with me in my high school bedroom. Posters of Mozza on the walls and everything. I know for a fact it was influenced by this horrendo picture.
I swear to Maude, if I dream about Fred Thompson tonight, I'm not going to blog about anything but Ninja Warrior and The Office until 2009.
Kumbaya
Please, please, actually do this now. I'm begging you. I don't ask for much in this world. So please grant me this one thing, dear Maude.
Obama:
"Over the last couple of days, you've seen a tone on the Democratic side of the campaign that is unfortunate. And what I want to do is just to stipulate to a couple of things. I think that I may disagree with Senator Clinton or Senator Edwards on how to get there, but we share the same goals. We're all Democrats. We all believe in civil rights. We all believe in equal rights. We all believe that, regardless of race or gender, that people should have equal opportunities. I think that they are good people, they are patriots, and that they are running because they think that they can lead this country to a better place.
And I don’t want the campaign at this stage to degenerate into so much tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, that we lose sight of why all of us are doing this…
I want to try to send a strong signal, certainly to my own supporters, but I would also, you know, say to everybody who's involved in the campaign at this stage, that let's try to focus on the work that needs to get done. If I hear my own supporters engaging in talk that I think is ungenerous or misleading or in some way is unfair, then I will speak out forcefully against it, and I hope the other campaigns take the same approach. We've got too much at stake at this time in our history to be engaging in this kind of silliness."
Hillary:
"Over this past week, there has been a lot of discussion and back and forth—much of which I know does not reflect what is in our hearts.
And at this moment, I believe we must seek common ground.
Our party and our nation is bigger than this. Our party has been on the front line of every civil rights movement, women's rights movement, workers' rights movement, and other movements for justice in America.
We differ on a lot of things. And it is critical to have the right kind of discussion on where we stand. But when it comes to civil rights and our commitment to diversity, when it comes to our heroes—President John F. Kennedy and Dr. King—Senator Obama and I are on the same side.
And in that spirit, let's come together, because I want more than anything else to ensure that our family stays together on the front lines of the struggle to expand rights for all Americans."
Impossibly Beautiful
[Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven...]
Liss was kind enough to allow me to step in and contribute to her Impossibly Beautiful series after I wrote to her ranting about this cover shot of Reese Witherspoon I found on Go Fug Yourself. (Yes, I had a terribly productive afternoon.)
[Photo: Splash News](Note: what's after the cut is super image-heavy.)
So I made with the Google. Here's your first reality check:
Here's another:
The funny thing is, the first couple of things I looked for turned out not to be (necessarily) the result of Photoshop. Damn it all, she really does have an insanely long neck and well-defined jaw! (Even if they've tilted her head at a totally unnatural angle.)
But then the problems become obvious. First of all, WHOSE NOSE IS THAT? Witherspoon's normal nose -- which, go figure, fits her face -- isn't adorable enough? You had to turn it into a cartoonish ski jump? As Liss pointed out, it makes her look like a Strawberry Shortcake doll. Hawt. (Not to mention, there's some speculation on the internet that she's already had her nose bobbed, so making it even smaller would certainly be bound to wreck her face. I honestly can't tell if she did or did not -- you can judge for yourself from the photos here -- but I'll just say that if she did, it was a damn good job.)
But what disturbs me even more -- and the sad thing is, I had to look at like 10 photos to figure this out -- is the total absence of her laugh lines.
That they all but disappeared her undereye bags (which seem to be consistently substantial, even in photos of her as a teenager, much like my own) is to be expected. But even other magazine covers have left at least a hint of her laugh lines visible.
This is a woman who pretty much defines the term "megawatt smile," and her face damn well shows it. She is also, no matter how much older she gets and how much weight she loses, a naturally apple-cheeked person.
Put those things together, and the lines around her mouth become an enormous part of what makes her face hers, instead of one that's soulless and interchangeable with a thousand others, like on the Marie Claire cover.Something is seriously wrong when Photoshopping goes so far as to make a woman look not only less human and less unique but, for my money, less beautiful than she actually is, because a 31-year-old woman is not allowed to have a face that shows any evidence of a lifetime of compulsive grinning.
And on a related note, you know what else is seriously wrong? That, after having looked at a bazillion recent photos of her, when I saw that one of her and Alyssa Milano (presumably a promotion for Fear, which came out in '96), the first thing that popped into my head was, "Wow, I don't remember her being chubby."
This is ME we're talking about. A freakin' fat acceptance activist who spends half her life trying to talk sense into people about all things body image-related. And when I looked at her in that old photo, with a softer baby face, a body weight apparently higher than her current one but still significantly lower than the average woman's, and a somewhat unflattering sweater, the word "chubby" came to mind. CHUBBY. What is wrong with me?
Or maybe the question is, what the hell is wrong with this society, that actresses just keep getting thinner and thinner -- as they get older, no less, and after they've had two kids, in her case -- thus setting the bar for "chubby" lower and lower.
And then magazines slim them down even further for their covers. Because women can never, ever, ever be good enough just as they are.
I Write Letters
Dear AP,
Please, please, shut the fuck up.
Love,
Liss
cc. Shaker Emily, who gets the hat tip.
Praising with Faint Damns
The New York Times took a lot of flack for hiring William Kristol as an op-ed columnist, including a lot of harsh e-mail and blog postings. Yesterday, Clark Hoyt, the public editor (that is, ombudsman) for the Times, responded to the outcry, saying that the hiring of Mr. Kristol was greeted with shock and angry disbelief by a lot of the newspaper's staff, but, in his words, "he may be unwelcome, but we'll survive."Kristol would not have been my choice to join David Brooks as a second conservative voice in the mix of Times columnists, but the reaction is beyond reason. Hiring Kristol the worst idea ever? I can think of many worse. Hanging someone from a lamppost to be beaten by a mob because of his ideas? And that is from a liberal, defined by Webster as “one who is open-minded.” What have we come to?
That said -- the Grey Lady's version of "chill out, man" -- Mr. Hoyt went on to pretty much agree with the complaints about Mr. Kristol's record, including that of accusing the Times of treason and calling the paper "irredeemable."This is a decision I would not have made. But it is not the end of the world. Everyone should take a deep breath and calm down. [William] Safire was greeted with jeers and got off to a rocky start, calling Watergate “a tempest in a Teapot Dome” before eventually acknowledging that he had been “grandly, gloriously, egregiously wrong.” He went on to a distinguished, 32-year career at The Times and, agree or disagree with him, he was a compelling presence on the Op-Ed page. (He still writes a column on language in the Sunday magazine.)
In other words, Bill, don't get too cozy in your little cubicle.
Kristol was hired on a one-year contract for what amounts to a mutual tryout. He will continue as editor of The Weekly Standard and on Fox, but Rosenthal said Kristol would not advise candidates or take any other active part in the presidential campaign. If Kristol is another Safire, he has the chance to prove it. If not, he and the newspaper will move on, and the search will resume.
For the record, I didn't object to the hiring, operating on the premise that Mr. Kristol's own work would prove that he was a poor choice. In his very first column he miscalled the results of the New Hampshire primary and mis-attributed a quote, mistaking Michael Medved for Michelle Malkin. (For the record, Bill, Mr. Medved is the one with the mustache.)
Today he continues his winning streak by reassuring America that the surge in Iraq worked and that the Democrats got it all wrong, much to their chagrin. Actually, 2007 was the bloodiest year in Iraq for America, and while the violence may have decreased in Baghdad, it's up in other places. And one of the points of the surge was to give the Iraqi government a chance to get its act together and start to actually, y'know, govern. So far, that hasn't happened. (Oh, wait...they passed one law. Wow! Champagne and caviar all around!)
0 for 2, Mr. Kristol. Keep this up and you'll become the Miami Dolphins of punditry.
(Cross-posted.)
Happy Birthday, Mama Shakes!
just to wish you a happy birthday!
"Happy Birthday. Go fuck yourself."
I'm Going to Pretend That Clinton and Obama Don't Exist for the Next Three Hours, Minimum
The Whole World's Watching
A recent article in the WaPo describes how the upcoming elections have captured the world's attention, even this early on in the primaries. It's quite a hit with our friends across the pond:
"It's a great spectacle, and people are avidly devouring it," said Jeremy O'Grady, editor in chief of the Week, a British magazine. O'Grady said major British newspapers this week alone have devoted more than 87 pages to news of the U.S. primaries, including 22 front-page stories -- exceptionally intense coverage of a foreign news event. More than 700 correspondents from 50 countries covered the Iowa and New Hampshire events.To paraphrase a question normally heard during Passover, why is this election different from all other elections? Well, you could go with this ridiculous archetype analogy:
"The candidates have more iconic status than usual," O'Grady said. "They are almost like superhero cartoons: the Mormon, the woman, the black, the millionaire, the war hero. . . . We do love a good show over here.Or, better yet, you could go with what is most likely the one reason that everyone shares:
But much of the enthusiasm comes from anticipation of President Bush's departure, according to several analysts. U.S. prestige and popularity in much of the world have sunk to historic lows since Bush took office, over such issues as the Iraq war and climate change. Many analysts said the election has created high expectations that the new president will be more in tune with the rest of the world.And there is your reason for the current Bush World Tour - a man desperately grasping at relevance and legacy while the rest of the world is ready for the door to hit him in the ass on his way out.
"In many capitals people have been waiting for this change for some time," said Rosa Balfour, a senior analyst at the European Policy Center, a Brussels-based research group.
[H/T to ThinkProgress]
Six is the Evilest Number, You Know…
Bill's post below reminded me that I'd forgotten to mention that I am (along with Amanda, naturally) #6 on the Top Seven Acts of Christian Bashing in America of 2007!
6.) John Edwards's Campaign Bloggers who called Christian supporters of President Bush his "wing nut Christofascist base." One asked, 'What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit,' to which she replied, 'You'd have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.' They posed the thoughtful question of religious conservatives, "What don't you lousy %#*@!+# understand about keeping your noses out of our britches, our beds and our families?"The irony of citing my "thoughtful question," which I did not ask of religious conservatives, but of religious conservatives who try to legislate their beliefs, was, of course, lost on the list's compiler, the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, which purports to "advance religious liberty for Christians from defamation, discrimination, and bigotry from any and all sources by means of education and selected legal services including litigation, inside the United States and internationally."
So…you're telling me you want freedom of religion? Hey, whaddaya know! Me, too! That was, in fact, pretty much my exact point.
BTW: If I can make the Top Seven Acts of Christian Bashing, I'd say American Christianity is in pretty good shape.
Dueling Dems
Obama campaign releases memo detailing Hillary's and her surrogates' race-baiting.
Page Six reports that "As Obama and his wife, Michelle, strolled triumphantly into his victory party in Des Moines, Iowa, on Jan. 3, Jay-Z's '99 Problems' was blaring. In it, Jay raps, 'I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one'."
This bodes well for the general election. Sigh.
UPDATE: TPM Reader ML:
I think that the Clintons' anti-Obama strategy is more subtle than commentators are realizing. It is in the nature of a "provokatsiia", as the Russians say. Cuomo didn't utter the phrase "shuck and jive" without forethought; nor did Clinton bring up LBJ and MLK on the spur of the moment. Both are experienced street-fighting politicians who don't say that kind of thing to the press without thinking it through. Such comments are a provocation, waving a red cloak in front of the Obama people. When they respond angrily with charges of racism, suddenly they look like Jessie Jackson redux...just the kind of angry, militant black folks who scare white people (btw I think black anger and militancy are completely understandable...this is just a point about how much of the white public reads such charges of racism). Then the Clintons deny responsibility.More like, we all lose.
The whole point was to get the Obama people to respond angrily, which they did. Clintons win.
This also puts into perspective why Hillary Clinton didn't just give a full-throated, line-in-the-sand, "I'm sorry for all this crap and don't want any of my surrogates to engage in it, goddammit!" comment on MTP.
Hillary knows how this works better than anyone, after all. Every time she has to respond to thinly-veiled sexist attacks, she ends up filling the Hysterical, Hypersensitive Woman role.
Because, as ML points out, it's generally still considered more off-putting to react to being a target of racism/sexism than it is to be the person actually targeting someone with it.
UPDATE 2: Eli Sanders emails me to say that he and Ari Melber of The Nation were at the victory party at Hy-Vee Hall, and, although they aren't able to confirm exactly when Obama arrived at the party, they don't recall any Jay-Z being played.
RIP Vampira
Maila Nurmi, better known to horror and Plan 9 from Outer Space fans as Vampira, passed away early in the morning on January 10th, due to cardiac arrest.
Details of Vampira's life can be seen here; there is also a documentary, and a great page on Cult Sirens. Of course, for those of you interested in more on the Ed Wood years, there is Rudolph Grey's (out of print) Nightmare of Ecstasy.
My first exposure to Vampira was my first viewing of "Plan 9;" I had no idea how extensive her background was... TV horror host, inspiration to Elvira (see the links above for more on their feud), pin-up girl, friend to James Dean and Marylin Monroe... Vampira was Hollywood.
At B-Fest, the one feature film that plays every year is Plan 9 From Outer Space, the honored midnight show. The traditional Plan 9 showing has inspired many Rocky Horror-ish audience participation moments: every time the spaceships appear on screen, paper plates are thrown in the air (with sharpie-added wisenheimer comments). Appearances of Bela Lugosi on screen are met with cries of "Bela!", while his double is assaulted with "Not Bela!" Tor Johnson gets a hearty "Tor!" (Well, what else would you shout?) While Vampira is greeted with "Hot!" Oh, those B-Fest boys.
I'm not attending this year, but I hope that the B-Fest organizers will have some sort of tribute to Maila Nurmi, the influential woman that created so many laughs, cheers, and memories. Vampira has been the "mascot" of B-Fest for ages along with Bela and Tor, and is paid tribute by Mitch O'Connell in his fantastic poster and t-shirt artwork created for the fest. Now, with Nurmi's passing, the final member of the invading Plan 9 crew has left us. Rest in peace, Vampira.
