Question of the Day
With regard to the below post: Have you ever been bullied? Have you ever bullied anyone?
Indictment in Cyberbullying Case
Back in November, we discussed the absolutely heartbreaking story of Megan Meier, a 13-year-old girl with depression and body-image related low-self esteem who hanged herself after being tricked by an adult neighbor, mother of a classmate, who was masquerading on MySpace as a 16-year-old boy who liked (and then didn't like) Megan.
At the time, it was reported unlikely that criminal charges would be filed.
But today CNN reports that the neighbor has been indicted in the deadly hoax, charged with "conspiracy and fraudulently gaining access to someone else's computer."
Lori Drew, of suburban St. Louis, allegedly helped create a MySpace account in the name of someone who didn't exist to convince Megan Meier she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans.I only wish there were more charges to be brought against the soulless shit who told police she "felt this incident contributed to Megan's suicide, but she did not feel 'as guilty' because at the funeral she found out 'Megan had tried to commit suicide before'."
…Salvador Hernandez, assistant agent in charge of the Los Angeles FBI office, called the case heart-rending.
"The Internet is a world unto itself. People must know how far they can go before they must stop. They exploited a young girl's weaknesses," Hernandez said. "Whether the defendant could have foreseen the results, she's responsible for her actions."
Drew was charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on the girl.
[H/T to Angelos, via email.]
Clinton on California Marriage Decision
Bleh:
Hillary Clinton believes that gay and lesbian couples in committed relationships should have the same rights and responsibilities as all Americans and believes that civil unions are the best way to achieve this goal. As President, Hillary Clinton will work to ensure that same sex couples have access to these rights and responsibilities at the federal level. She has said and continues to believe that the issue of marriage should be left to the states.Precisely as craptacular as Obama's, for almost precisely the same reasons.
Both of them should be ashamed. There's absolutely no reason they couldn't at least have said, "Congratulations to California's same-sex couples, who took a step forward toward equality today," which wouldn't even have been inconsistent with their civil union wankery. It's just unkind to have issued such flat sentiments.
UPDATE: Actually, upon consideration, Clinton gets an extra thumbs-down for the wholly unnecessary "in committed relationships," which invokes by counterweight the stereotype of Teh Promiscuous Gayz. "Hillary Clinton believes that gay and lesbian couples should have the same..." would have sufficed, given that generally only committed couples want to get married, anyhow.
[Thanks to Astraea for the heads-up, in comments.]
Obama on California Marriage Decision
His is the first response of the two Dems:
Barack Obama has always believed that same-sex couples should enjoy equal rights under the law, and he will continue to fight for civil unions as President. He respects the decision of the California Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage.That's a weird-ass statement. And it's a weird-ass statement because instead of celebrating equality outright, he's using the occasion to pander to homophobes by implicitly reassuring them he's not happy about this whole marriage business—even though he "respects" the court's decision.
Which, by the way, he actually doesn't—because the court's decision is that domestic partnerships (even closer to marriage than most civil unions are) were yet, in fact, a poor imitation of marriage. So resolving to "fight for civil unions" is actually saying he'll shoot to undermine the court's finding.
Certainly that was not what he intends to convey to proponents of marriage equality, but that's the reality of what he's saying.
Clinton hasn't made a statement yet. When she does, I hope it's better—and fear it won't be. The Dems are scarily consistent in their willingness to punt on marriage equality.
(Btw, here are just a few reasons why the "leave marriage to the states" argument is complete horseshit on its face.)
[H/T to Shaker Jmonkey.]
Quote of the Day
"I think it's a very exciting year for our politics, that for the first time in a while we have a choice of who we like better instead of who we hate least."—Natalie Portman, on endorsing a candidate. Or, actually, not endorsing a candidate.
(Via TalkLeft)
Beetlemania
This photo released Wednesday, May 14, 2008, by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency shows one of the more than two dozen giant beetles seized from a package after workers at a Mohnton, Pa., postal facility heard the insects making scratching noises. The large bugs arrived last week from Taiwan in a box whose contents were labeled as toys, gifts and jellies. (AP Photo/U.S. Customs and Border Protection)I am not remotely freaked out by bugs, and I actually think that beetle is pretty cool, but if I opened a box marked "toys, gifts, and jellies" to find that fooking thing scrabbling about, I would probably shit my pants and pass out.
It's All Fun and Games 'Til Your Ass Gets Sued
Remember Mike Norman, the full-tilt douchehound from Marietta, Georgia who wishes Hillary Clinton had married OJ and is hawking Curious George t-shirts reading "Obama in '08"?
Well, his 15 minutes of delightfully bigoted fame has introduced his fookwit arse to the publishing company that owns the Curious George image, and I'm sure you'll be just positively flabbergasted to hear that they're decidedly unthrilled with his appropriation of their property.
Rick Blake, a spokesman for publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which owns Curious George, said Wednesday that the company didn't authorize the use of the character's image, but hasn't been in touch with anybody selling or manufacturing the shirts.Nice.
"We find it offensive and obviously utterly out of keeping with the value Curious George represents," Blake said. "We're monitoring the situation and weighing our options with respect to legal action."
Meanwhile, Norman says on the one hand that he's not doing anything offensive—
Norman acknowledged the imagery's Jim Crow roots but said he sees nothing wrong with depicting a prominent African-American as a monkey. "We're not living in the (19)40's," he said. "Look at him…the hairline, the ears -- he looks just like Curious George."—while on the other hand insists that he's being defiantly offensive:
The Tennessee native said he's providing a public service of sorts, reminding people they have a right to offend. "This is my marketing tool," he said.Look, there's nothing racist about this, and if you think there is, you're just a humorless, hypersensitive hysteric—and, also, fuck you! It's totally racist but I don't give a shit about your dumbass beliefs in equality, respect, and basic decency.
It's like, as someone pointed out in comments recently, when some fauxgressive prefaces some incredibly sexist comment with, "I'm not a sexist, but…" thereby tacitly acknowledging they know what they're expressing is, indeed, sexism. Norman doesn't think what's he doing is offensive, but selling this godawful t-shirt is his "marketing tool" to remind people "they have a right to offend." Okay. Well, that's either the worst marketing tool in the world, or Norman knows as well as I do that those shirts are wildly inappropriate.
You'll be happy to hear that Norman's "defenders are just as resolute" as the big meanies trying to squelch his right-to-offend crusade.
Mulligan's is a refuge, they say, in an otherwise hypersensitive world. Smoking isn't only allowed at the bar, it's expected.I guess even bigots need a safe space. Ahem.
"This place is a diamond in the rough," said Gene McKinley, a Woodstock engineer among the patrons Tuesday. "People here are genuine and honest. It's the one place I can go without having to worry if I'm offending someone."
By the way, I love seeing the idea yet again that it's the racists (and sexists, and homophobes, and…) who are "genuine and honest." They just tell it like it is; the rest of us are posturing hypocrites.
I almost feel sorry for someone who genuinely doesn't know the freedom of shedding internalized prejudice, who doesn't understand that there are some of us who really, really do want to be good toward our fellow humans not for plaudits, and not just for their benefit of those at whom our prejudices were directed, but for the good of our own goddamned souls. I almost pity someone who will never see that biases limit the people who hold them, too—and escaping those limits makes our lives richer. I almost have sympathy for someone so broken, who doesn't think they need fixing.
Almost.
[H/T to Shaker TA, by email.]
STFU
Bush suggests Obama wants 'appeasement' of terrorists:
President Bush launched a sharp but veiled attack Thursday on Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats, suggesting they favor "appeasement" of terrorists in the same way some Western leaders appeased Hitler in the run-up to World War II.First of all, that's just hilarious considering what President Mondo Fucko's own grandpappy was doing during back in the day.
The president did not name Obama or any other Democrat, but White House aides privately acknowledged the remarks were aimed at the presidential candidate and others in his party.
…"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem.
"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to Israel's parliament, the Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
Secondly, he really needs to just STFU just on principle. Bush is so over, he's more over than fucking Hardy Jenns after Vahlere crashes his pretty little party: "You want the truth? You want the plain truth? You're over."
(Yeah, that's right—a 21-year-old John Hughes movie reference cross-referenced with a nod to Say Anything. Eat it!)
California Court Overturns Gay Marriage Ban!
Blub, blub, and more blub (emphasis all mine):
The California Supreme Court has overturned a gay marriage ban in a ruling that would make the nation's largest state the second one to allow gay and lesbian weddings.And because California already offers domestic partnership which afford same-sex couples the same legal rights as opposite-sex married couples, it doesn't leave opponents of this decision much wiggle-room: If domestic partnerships already guaranteeing the same legal rights are not good enough, there's not a hell of a lot of space to provide yet another alternative to fully. equal. marriage.
The justices' 4-3 decision Thursday says domestic partnerships are not a good enough substitute for marriage. Chief Justice Ron George wrote the opinion.
…The case before the court involved a series of lawsuits seeking to overturn a voter-approved law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
With the ruling, California could become the second state after Massachusetts where gay and lesbian residents can marry.
Blub.
Of course there's a "coalition of religious and social conservative groups" that is already organizing to try to get a measure"on the November ballot that would enshrine California's current laws banning gay marriage in the state constitution," but fuck them and fuck their bigotry and fuck their retrofuck fuckery. I hear equality coming down the tracks—and they really just need to get the hell out of the way if they don't want to get crushed.
[H/T Catherine.]
Billy the Bully
Scott Swenson on my old friend Bill Donohue and the 43-page report released by Catholics for Choice on Monday, which "documents a pattern of media and political manipulation by Donohue, his organization, and his supporters":
Donohue claims to protect Catholics from anti-Catholic bigotry. In reality, he manufactures controversies, bullies political opponents, and insults people with a world view different from his. This "defender of religious and civil rights" routinely defames Jews, Muslims, gays, and women -- all in the name of Jesus, and believing that he is protecting American values.It's an interesting piece, if totally unsurprising to anyone with the misfortune of having a passing acquaintance with Donohue. It's more enlightening about how completely FUBAR-ed our national media is—how easily manipulated, how derelict in their duty, how keenly disinterested in reality when a not-even-particularly-reasonable facsimile thereof catches their fancy. Depressing stuff.
…Far from protecting Catholics from bigotry, Donohue plays the victim card to advance a narrow, socially conservative, hierarchical and patriarchal political view.
"Bill Donohue is a punk and a bully," says Jon O'Brien, President of Catholics for Choice. "His style is more suited to being in the ring of the World Wrestling Federation than a television studio. Donohue is hiding a political and social agenda that has nothing to do with anti-defamation, and nothing to do with Catholicism."
As a bemused aside, I wasn't interviewed for the piece, so I don't know from whence this came: "One Donohue devotee went so far as to pound violently on McEwan's front door for ten minutes." Someone did pound on my door, after blocking the driveway (I don't know if it was for ten minutes); in fact, we had a couple people come to the door, and someone dumped trash on the lawn, and someone smashed a phone outside my office window—other weird things. I've no evidence that any of them were Donohue devotees, though; all of that happened only after Bill O'Reilly picked up the story. Wev.
I Want to Commitment Ceremony You
From the Big Gay Sketch Show, passed on by Shaker InfamousQBert. (If anyone can find a transcript, please drop a link in comments.)
Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch, Part Forty-Four
And the GOP is the Party of Racists Watch, Part Six Gazillion.
Oops:
In a 20-page memo on GOP electoral woes, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) repeatedly misspells Barack Obama's name – it’s one R, congressman, not two -- and then manages to use the racially charged term "tar baby" in a paragraph about Obama and immigration.Cue the usual excuses about how Davis "didn't know" and "didn't intend" and blahbity-blahbity-blah. Except that Davis really, really, really should have known, given that almost exactly two years ago to the day, Tony Snow made his grand entrance as White House Press Hack by using the term tar baby not once, but twice, to a resulting shitstorm. Snow was followed soon thereafter by Mitt Romney using the term and being forced to apologize. And, if that weren't enough, the GOP nominee, John McCain, found himself apologizing for using the phrase just over a year ago.
"Remember," Davis writes, "Hispanic voters are a swing group in this election and future elections. John McCain, being from a border state, may be out of sync with many Republicans but he has standing among Hispanics. Barrack Obama has not made the sale to Hispanic voters. Thus, this issue is a tar baby for anyone who touches it, with land mines everywhere."
So, unless Davis is completely and utterly detached from what's going on with prominent members of his own party, he ought to have, at some point, gotten the memo that "tar baby" is not a turn of phrase that has any place in public discourse in modern America. (Or private discourse, quite frankly.)
As for his intent, well, we all know that just doesn't matter, now, does it? He transmitted the slur, and now he needs to apologize. Big time.
And possibly send out another internal memorandum to the rest of his party that informs them to strike "tar baby" from their collective lexicon once and for all. Yeesh.
Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six, Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Nine, Thirty, Thirty-One, Thirty-Two, Thirty-Three, Thirty-Four, Thirty-Five, Thirty-Six, Thirty-Seven, Thirty-Eight, Thirty-Nine, Forty, Forty-One, Forty-Two, Forty-Three.
Top Chef Open Thread
Chef Tom Colicchio will drink. your. milkshake!!!
He will also take your hand gently and lead you into his alarmingly alluring kitchen to give you a taste of his spicy sausage.
Tell Me He Did Not Really Say This
A reporter asks Obama a question, and he tells her to hold on a second there, sweetie. Charming.
(Transcript below the fold.)
Better still, it's not the first time.
While flirting with female factory workers in Allentown, he called one "sweetie," a paternalistic way to address a woman if there ever was one. It might have worked had he been trying to do his best imitation of Lily Tomlin's Ernestine, the telephone operator, but this was no spoof. This was Obama trying to relate to working-class women in a way that went directly south.Huh. It sure doesn't sound to me like it's the women he's trying to relate to in that video.
Edited to add transcript from Liss:
VO [female reporter]: …but he never spoke about the workers' biggest concern—their future.Edited again to add: Obama did apologize.
Reporter: Senator, how are you going to help the American auto worker?
Obama: Hold, hold on one second, sweetie—we're gonna do, we'll do a press availability…
VO: This sweetie never did get an answer to that question.
Reporter: But we're at the plant! How are you going to help workers?
Obama Staffer Offscreen: Okay guys, thank you for coming, guys.
VO: In Sterling Heights, Peggy Agar, Channel 7 Action News.
Edwards to Endorse Obama Tonight
That's what Chris Matthews is reporting on Hardballz as we speak, according to Petulant.
Well, quite honestly, I'm disappointed. Not that he endorsed Obama, but that he endorsed at all. I know there will be people who don't believe I'd say the same thing if he'd endorsed Clinton, but the truth is, I would.
I was actually hoping he would withhold an endorsement altogether, and then vociferously support the eventual nominee, which is a position, in my opinion, better suited to a party's elder statesman.
Then again, maybe he doesn't want to be an elder statesman.
More coverage here, including this interesting spin on the timing of his endorsement: "Officials announced the news shortly after Mr. Obama landed here late this afternoon. The campaign has timed the announcement to coincide with the start of the major evening newscasts, which would have otherwise focused on Senator Hillary Clinton's landslide victory in West Virginia, which raised new questions about Mr. Obama's strength with white working class voters."
Discuss.
On the Phone With Space Cowboy Tales
Part Wev in an ongoing series…
So…I really need to preface this by saying that we really are two of the silliest, most juvenile douchebrains on the planet—and also that we fell almost immediately upon meeting into a noogietiferous camaraderie that fills Space Cowboy's void of little sisters and my void of brothers, big or otherwise, making this a rather routine conversation, I'm afraid to admit.
SC: You're a big bowl of farts.
Liss: You're a jar of diarrhea.
SC: At least I'm not a bowl of farts.
Liss: At least I'm not a jar of diarrhea.
SC: You smell like a bowl of farts.
Liss: YOU SMELL LIKE A BOWL OF FARTS!
It was then I noticed the kindly old gentleman passing by outside my house, who was looking in the direction of my open office window and probably wondering why the crazy girl was yelling at him that he smells like a bowl of farts.
