Question of the Day
In the comments of my earlier post about "baby bumps," Phil noted that was his "most hated phrase from the past year." What is your most hated new, or recent, phrase?
This one isn't actually that new anymore, but I cannot wait until "thinking outside the box" dies a preferably quick and painful death.
Also: Using female as a noun meaning human woman. Gah.
Shakers' Favie
Shaker Joe, who missed the Top Chef thread last night where we were wondering whether Stephanie Izard was still a chef in Chicago (or would be after the show ends), sent me the link to an article about Stephanie that he thought might be of interest.
And of course she comes across as just as delightful and humble and gracious and cool as she appears to be on the show.
C: How did you manage to negotiate the politics between her and Dale? You were probably the only one to get those two to cooperate and work together.I really love and admire people who are generous about their colleagues' work, especially people with whom they're competitive.
SI: Someone had to step up there and get the three of us on the same page, working together. I'm a firm believer that you treat people as you wish to be treated. At Scylla, I treated everyone fairly. We were all good friends there with a lot of respect and love for each other.
C: Of the three other finalists, who would you say was your main competition?
SI: Probably Richard. He has a unique way of cooking and approaching food that I find neat to be around and watch. I'd love to pick his brain.
C: Which chefs do you think should have been in the top four?
SI: Dale or Jen. My predictions for the final four were me, Richard, Antonia and Dale. Unfortunately, Dale let his issues with Lisa get the better of him. It was tough to watch because I've known him for a long time and he's a great chef. I just had the opportunity to visit San Francisco and eat at Jen's restaurant. The food was amazing; she's such a talented cook.
I dig Richard just a huge fuckload, but I really hope Stephanie wins.
Caption This Photo
"Whatcha lookin' at, Photography Guy? You lookin' at me?"
U.S. President George W. Bush arrives at a church service held by St. John's Episcopal Church at the Chamber of Commerce headquarters building in Washington June 1, 2008. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas (UNITED STATES)
I Would Like to File an Official Complaint
About the new trend of "baby bump spotting"—speculating on female celebrities' alleged pregnancies based on anything from a strangely-hung blouse to being photographed in a tight dress immediately after a big meal. Every day, it's another pregnancy denial (or, occasionally, confirmation) after weeks of scrutinizing still photographs of young, presumably sexually active women from every angle, and putting forth supergenius theories like, "That's not a baby bump; that's Frapp bloat."
Once upon a time, this shit only existed on newsstands in weekly tabloids and gossip columns, where it was more about so-and-so was seen not drinking champagne at some hoity-toity party immediately after dropping out of Mr. Big Director's latest project…could this mean a baby on the way?—as opposed to endless pictures of Cameron Diaz or Beyoncé Knowles or whomever caught in hi-res from every angle being made available for physical scrutiny, like you can find now on any gossip blog.
And if it were only the gossip blogs, that would be one thing. But it's not. This crap can now be found on the front page of MSNBC, CNN, etc.—sure, part of their "entertainment" sections, but that stuff's still supposed to be entertainment news. How "Paris Hilton may or may not be pregnant but looks like might be according to these pictures" qualifies as news is beyond me.
My definitional pedantry is not, however, my primary objection. As if female celebrities didn't have enough pressure on them to be thin already, now they've got the added consideration of making sure they don't ever look, by virtue of eating dinner or stumbling into a weird light, like they've got a "baby bump."
And of course girls growing up in a culture obsessed with this shit will be worried about making sure they don't look like they've got a "baby bump" either—and the thinner a girl is, the more likely a visible pooch is to appear after a full meal or even a bottle of freaking water, making the already-thinnest girls more at risk for deliberately starving or dehydrating themselves to avoid perfectly normal and natural full-belliedness.
Beyond that, there's a whole other layer of reinforcing the idea that women's ultimate value is as babymaking machines, and yet another layer of reinforcing the notion that women's bodies are community property, and yet another layer of reinforcing the straight male gaze as the norm by disproportionately objectifying women's bodies, and yet another layer of concepts regarding treating pregnancy as a tacit approval for invasion of privacy, and a whole lot of other basic feminist alarms that are all just blinking in my head at once.
Which I'll leave you to discuss in comments.
Yes (the band): Tour Cancellation
For all of the prog-rockers out there (like me), some bad news came down the wire late yesterday with regards to the North American leg of their 40th anniversary tour:
The classic rock band Yes has canceled its 40th anniversary tour following frontman Jon Anderson's severe asthma attack last month.I was certainly looking forward to seeing them again, especially with Oliver Wakeman following in his father's footsteps (or fingers, as the case may be). In the meantime, it's warm wishes to Jon for a full respiratory recovery.
The 63-year-old singer, who's since been diagnosed with acute respiratory failure, was ordered by doctors last weekend to rest for at least six months "or suffer further health complications," it was announced Wednesday in a statement released by representatives for the band and Live Nation, which was presenting the tour.
Heart of the Sunrise, from the Union tour in '91
What's your philosophy?
I just took the "What philosophy do you follow?" quiz, which told me I'm an existentialist:
Anyone surprised by that? Yeah, me neither.
Found at Vesper's Place, home of a fellow existentialist.
What's your philosophy?
The Snake Eats Its Own Tail, Creating a Perfect Circle
Shaker Constant Comment passed along this article from The Independent—ominously subtitled "Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors"—which details a "secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad" that "would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November." Fucking hell. I guess Bush finally figured out what to do about that whole lawless contractors business, eh?
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.And if, in fact, Bush is successful in ramming this deal through by next month, "so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated," it won't just cause political turmoil in Iraq, as it would effectively take Iraq off the table as an issue in the US election and "boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq."
…The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. "It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty," said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.
…Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called "strategic alliance" without modifications, by the end of next month.
If he were inadvertently boosted by a legitimate end to the war, that would be one thing. No decent person wants an extended war just to have a useful political football. But this asinine horseshit, which, like every other foreign policy decision made by the Bush administation, would make America less safe, by virtue of solidifying across the Middle East the idea that we are intent on a permanent occupation, is not a legitimate end to the war.
Bush has been chanting the "they hate us for our freedom" mantra for so long now that he's evidently obliterated every trace of memory among his entire administration that one of the major reasons cited for 9/11 was the US permanent bases in Saudi Arabia. Or they just don't give a fuck. Probably both.
So here we are, almost seven years, two wars, thousands of lives, and billions of dollars later, and Bush is angling to create in a second country the exact thing that served as the impetus for the incident that launched this clusterfucktastroship into orbit in the first place.
It would almost be poetic, if it weren't so mind-bendingly, cataclysmically, revoltingly, tragically stupid.
"An Essential Quality"
Okay, so this is a couple of days late, and we've all been inundated with quite a bit of misogyny over the past several days (Weeks? Months? Years? Decades?), but this needs to be looked at:
When French Justice Minister Rachida Dati on Monday ordered an appeal to a court decision annulling a Muslim couple's marriage on the grounds that the wife had lied about being a virgin before the wedding, the acclaim was almost universal. The ruling's logic — essentially creating the legal concept of chastity fraud — was widely seen as an attack on women's rights that undermined decades of progress on sexual attitudes. The lower court's ruling seemed as well to have put Muslim religious concerns above France's strictly secular laws. But for the woman whose public repudiation sparked the controversy, Dati's decision means something else: the prolongation of a humiliating process to get her out of an unwanted marriage.
"Despite everything, my client was quite pleased with the [original] ruling because it allowed her reclaim her liberty," the woman's lawyer, Charles-Edouard Mauger, told the daily Le Figaro when asked why he hadn't appealed a verdict that France's secretary of state for urban affairs, Fadela Amara, reviled as "a fatwa against the emancipation of women." While Mauger was unable to speak to TIME on Tuesday, his colleagues following the case acknowledged their client was "traumatized to learn the Justice Ministry had ordered an appeal, because all she wants is this marriage over, this terrible attention and pressure off her, and to get on with her life as a free, single woman."But, of course, that couldn't be allowed. She had to be humiliated and made a public spectacle of and dragged through the dirt first. What, no stones?
Until the state's challenge is heard, however, the woman — identified only as a 25-year-old nursing student from northern France — is condemned to play the role of symbol for the many forces that have seized her case as a major cause. The storm broke out last Thursday, when France's national media picked up on the unpublicized April 1 verdict annulling the couple's 10-month marriage on the husband's complaint that his wife's prenuptial assurances of virginity were false. The judge had reasoned that the wife's claimed virginity constituted "an essential quality decisive for the consent of her husband to wed."So, it looks to me as if this might have just ended quietly if it weren't for national media attention. I wonder if that had anything to do with the judge's decision? Now, I don't claim to be knowledgeable about the Muslim faith, so I'm not going to be delving into that discussion. (The article does note that fears over the spread of Islam in France is probably fueling the intense scrutiny) But i will say that the judges "essential quality decisive for the consent of her husband to wed" quote reduces women are the equivalent of livestock.
That, protestors argued, reduced the woman — and by extension all women — to the status of goods whose acquisition could be renounced by husbands claiming to have discovered hidden impurities or defects in them.Making it, once again, all about the satisfaction of the men involved. Thank Maude they at least recognized that legal decisions like this affect all women.
(Tip of the energy dome to Shaker Reb)
Teaspoons
Shaker Betsy was recently looking through her copy of Sisterhood is Powerful, a collection originally published in 1970, and re-read Florynce Kennedy's essay, "Institutionalized Oppression vs. the Female," in which, as Betsy says, "She's trying to make the point that institutionalized oppression doesn't require active oppression by individual men (or whites); the system ensures that women and other groups stay subjugated," where she found this passage:
Just by nobody doing nothing the old bullshit mountain just grows and grows. Chocolate-covered, of course. We must take our little teaspoons and get to work. We can't wait for shovels."That was written before I was even born. I've never read Kennedy's essay—but you can bet I'm going to now.
Here's a little bit about Kennedy from her obituary, with just an awesome picture of her (which I found separately).
Florynce Kennedy, a lawyer and political activist whose flamboyant attire and sometimes outrageous comments drew attention to her fierce struggle for civil rights and feminism, died on Thursday in her Manhattan apartment. She was 84.Right on.
…People magazine in 1974 called her "the biggest, loudest and, indisputably, the rudest mouth on the battleground where feminist activists and radical politics join in mostly common cause."
…In her autobiography [Color Me Flo: My Hard Life and Good Times (1976)], she wrote: "I'm just a loud-mouthed, middle-aged colored lady with a fused spine and three feet of intestines missing, and a lot of people think I'm crazy. Maybe you do too, but I never stopped to wonder why I'm not like other people. The mystery to me is why more people aren't like me."
That Morning
Forty years ago today -- June 5, 1968 -- I woke up early in my dorm room in Auchincloss Hall at St. George's School in Newport, Rhode Island. It was the last week of my freshman -- and only -- year at the school, and we were in the middle of final exams. I had gone to sleep the night before, after cramming for my Old Testament exam, listening to WBZ Radio out of Boston which had been reporting the early results of that day's primary election in California. Bobby Kennedy was favored to win, but the final results hadn't come in by the time I had to obey the prefect's order for Lights Out and turn off the radio.
I was only fifteen but I was already getting interested in politics, especially since President Johnson had announced in March that he would not seek and would not accept the nomination of his party for another term as president. Eugene McCarthy, the anti-Vietnam War candidate, had showed surprising strength in the New Hampshire primary, and with the entrance of Bobby Kennedy into the race in March, it looked like the Democrats were poised to take the party in a whole new direction and put forward a charismatic and dynamic candidate who could beat the Republicans, even if they nominated that old war horse, Richard Nixon.
Bobby Kennedy was drawing huge crowds everywhere he went; crowds of all ages, including high school and college kids who were still too young to vote (the voting age wasn't lowered to 18 until 1971). And I was caught up in it; I read everything I could about him, including the cover story entitled "The Politics of Restoration" in the May 24, 1968 edition of Time, and I put the cover of that issue on my wall like it was a rock concert poster. I saw in Bobby the continuation of the hope and optimism that I remembered from his older brother Jack, the first president I remembered not as some vague and distant old man, but as a person and someone I cared about. I looked forward to Bobby Kennedy sweeping into Chicago in August and capturing the nomination, picking up the torch, and sprinting to victory in November against the dour and scary Republicans. Camelot was going to make a comeback, and the White House would be crawling with Kennedy children once again.
And then I turned on the radio.
At first I wasn't sure what I was hearing. Instead of the normal news, weather and sports from Boston, I tuned in to hear the morning news announcer stumbling through a wire service report that "the doctors would be holding a press conference on Senator Kennedy's condition in a few moments," and then he said, "To recap, Senator Robert Kennedy was shot last night in Los Angeles after winning the California primary against Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy. He's in critical condition at Good Samaritan Hospital...." I listened for a few more minutes, then knocked on the door of the kid next door, a guy named Jeff. He was still asleep -- it was a little before seven and we didn't have to be to our final until 8:30 -- but soon the entire floor was buzzing with the news. When we gathered in the cavernous second-floor study hall to sit for our exam, the chaplain led us in prayer for Bobby, and then we methodically took the exam. Afterwards, we waited for any news, but we all had the sick feeling that we knew what was coming. We had heard it before with John F. Kennedy less than four years before and with Martin Luther King in April.
Three days later, June 8, 1968, was graduation day -- they call it Prize Day at St. George's. That was also the day of Bobby Kennedy's funeral at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, but I missed it on TV since I was sitting in the stuffy gym watching the senior class pick up their diplomas. After lunch I got on a charter bus to Boston to catch a plane back to Toledo, knowing I would not be returning to St. George's in the fall, and arriving at home in the dusk of a June night in time to see once again the grainy black-and-white images of yet another Kennedy funeral procession up the hill of Arlington National Cemetery. Night had fallen -- the funeral train trip from New York had taken longer than expected -- and the procession, including the teenage sons of Bobby and Ethel bearing their father's coffin, made its way to the grave site under the glare of floodlights. He was buried under a simple white cross near the eternal flame of his brother.
That was the summer that cities burned, the police rioted at the convention in Chicago, the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia, and Hubert Humphrey and Edmund Muskie began their campaign to keep the White House in the hands of the Democrats while trying desperately to distance themselves from the Johnson administration; not an easy task since Humphrey was LBJ's vice president. The Republicans nominated Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew in Miami, and George Wallace, the governor of Alabama who stood in school house door and swore to uphold segregation now and forever, launched a third-party run to draw off disaffected conservative blue-collar Democrats, a lesson not lost on Richard Nixon and the GOP when Wallace carried five southern states with ten million votes. I volunteered for the local Democratic campaign office and spent many weekends after I got my driver's license in September handing out literature to inner city neighborhoods in Toledo. Vote Humphrey-Muskie said the little red, white, and blue stickers, and I tried hard to be as enthusiastic as possible, but I sorely wished they said Vote Kennedy.
We watched the election returns in November, the race too close to call until the next morning. My history teacher wheeled in the big TV on the VTR cart and we watched Walter Cronkite pronounce Richard Nixon as the next President of the United States. Vice President Humphrey conceded gracefully, and I spent the evening scraping the last of the Humphrey-Muskie stickers off the bumper of my mom's 1967 Ford Country Squire.*It's been forty years since I felt the same way about a presidential candidate as I did about Bobby Kennedy. Perhaps, like your first love, you can never recapture the intensity, the newness, the thrill of hearing someone express the feelings you feel and you experience a passion that goes beyond yourself; you start to see the world in the third person, and you take it so personally that it becomes a part of you. And when the shock of the loss hits you, it numbs you. The grieving process is excruciating, and you feel as if nothing could ever be the same again. And the next time you know that no matter what the next person says, be they a candidate for president or a lover, you will never forget the first one and you will subconsciously compare them, and the new one will be found lacking. It's not their fault that I can't fall for them the same way I fell for the first one. In a way, I wish I could. I admire the passion of the people I see taking up the cause of their candidate, no matter their party, and I am envious of their devotion to the cause. I hope they never lose it, but I also hope they realize that sometimes it can be taken away with a terrible force and brutal reality that leaves a scar that is never truly healed.
In one small way, the spirit and youthful passion of my admiration and support of Bobby Kennedy has never left me. When I first envisioned the character of Bobby Cramer in 1994, I knew where his name came from; he was born in 1961 and his mother adored Bobby Kennedy. I think the same sense of hope that I saw in Bobby Kennedy comes through in the boy in the novel and the play, even if he does believe that hope is his greatest weakness. But I wish that I -- and the country -- can find that hope again; that we all find that same sense of wonder and purpose to do what we can to make this country and world a better place that I had on that June morning forty years ago, the moment before I turned on the radio.
Bobby Kennedy
November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968
"Some men see things as they are and say 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say, 'Why not?'"
(Cross-posted.)
Top Chef Open Thread
Chef Tom Colicchio will drink. your. milkshake!!!
He will also sidle up beside you with the stealth of a jungle cat and nuzzle you urgently while suggesting you cook him up a nice juicy piece of meat.
Question of the Day
What's your favorite film with a female lead?
I'm a broken record, I know, I know, but mine is probably Harold and Maude. There are those who would argue that Harold is the lead, but they would be wrong. Heh.
A close runner up is Swimming With Sharks. No, Kevin Spacey and Frank Whaley are not the leads. Michelle Forbes is. That movie is secretly the best feminist film ever made, and one day I will write a post explaining exactly why.
Clinton to Suspend Campaign and Endorse Obama
Her decision came after Democratic members of Congress urged her Wednesday to leave the race and allow the party to coalesce around Mr. Obama.I still don't understand why the Democratic Party is so keen on making this decision for her, given she has legitimate and heretofore respected reasons to stay in (elucidated quite eloquently by DBK here and here), but there it is.
...Her decision came after a day of telephone conversations with supporters on Capitol Hill about what she should do now that Mr. Obama had claimed enough delegates to be able to clinch the nomination. Mrs. Clinton had initially said she wanted to wait before making any decision, but her aides said that in conversations, some of her closest supporters said it was urgent that she step aside.
At the same time, some of Mrs. Clinton’s most prominent supporters – including Democrats who had held back their endorsements until the primaries were over – announced they were now backing Mr. Obama.
Clinton will reportedly host "an event in Washington on Friday to thank her supporters and to express support for Mr. Obama and party unity." Cool.
Cyber Primary
I've got a new piece up at The Guardian's Comment is Free (which has a snazzy new layout!):
Not just at Daily Kos and MyDD, but in many prominent blogs across the 'sphere, the precise willingness to indulge or deny decidedly illiberal rhetoric, "jokes" and imagery has exposed just how much overt or thinly veiled racism or sexism is allowed to demean one or the other or both candidates. In some cases, there's been an alarming amount of give, turning comment threads into hostile places for one candidate's supporters, for women, for people of colour and/or all of the above. In others, safe spaces have emerged, where a premium is placed on providing room for debate free of harassment and silencing tactics.Read the whole thing here.
Assvertising
Entry #3 on this now-25 part series was about commercials that exhort men to be manly by eating shit, at which time I wrote: "It's manly to eat meat—but not just any old meat; specifically the heart-stopping, artery-clogging beef served up by fast food and chain restaurants. It's girly to eat vegetables and be healthy. Trying to save men from heart disease is just another part of the radical feminist agenda to 'feminize' society."
I know it's counterintuitive, since shoving men full of shitty food ostensibly fits more neatly with feminism's "we hate men and wish they were dead" charter, but what can I say? We also enjoy humiliating men by terrorizing them with broccoli and implying with the cunning deployment of juice smoothies that they're big fags.
Ergo you dudez need to shove your faces full of processed man-glop just to spite us.
So sayeth Hungry-Man:
See? You imbibe something healthy and suddenly you're going to the bathroom in groups like women. Too much healthy food and next thing you know, you'll be voluntarily discussing your feelings and shit. Watch out, men.
And I hope you know that if you eat asparagus, your penis will fall off.
This is all true.
[H/T Jessica. Assvertising Series: 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.]
My Former Landlord
I'm watching the men from the moving company pack up my worldly goods as my forced relocation goes forward. There's not much I can do other than answer their occasional questions in my New Mexico Spanglish and admire their abilities to take the contents of a 1,200 square foot house and garage and get them into boxes. Tomorrow they will come back and load up the furniture, boxes, and then we're off to the new place.
There's still no word from the bank's attorneys as to the location of my former landlord. But I think Bryan at Why Now? has a lead.
As I noted in my comments at Bryan's place, "I think I actually met my landlord once, when he came by to look at the place before buying it. He bore a startling resemblance to the species indicated (Procyon lotor), but lacked its morals. After he bought the place, we made all the lease arrangements via his secretary and I sent the checks to an address that was a Mailboxes Etc. office. I should have known."
(Cross-posted.)
KMOV revisits LaVena Johnson story
St. Louis CBS affiliate KMOV-TV ran a brief story last night on the case of PFC LaVena Johnson. Reported by Matt Sczesny, the story features new comments by LaVena's father, Dr. John Johnson, as he spoke at a press conference yesterday. Also mentioned is a response from a staffer for the House Armed Services Committee.
This is a good time to mention once more (for St. Louis area folks) that the Gateway Greens Alliance and the Universal African Peoples Organization are sponsoring a panel discussion on LaVena Johnson tonight at 7 pm at Legacy Books & Cafe, 5249 Delmar (near Union) in St. Louis. Those panelists:
- Lionel Nixon, African Newsworld newspaper [moderator]
- Dr. John Johnson, father of LaVena Johnson
- Redditt Hudson, American Civil Liberties Union
- Michael McPhearson, Veterans For Peace
Also: The aforementioned press conference was reported in a story by Elizabethe Holland for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
More Totally True Things About Melissa McEwan (as Found on Teh Internetz)
Melissa is 10 feet tall and bullet proof! Also, she is madly in love with me and bakes me yummy apple pies and delivers them to my house on Tuesdays. Woe, today is Wednesday, and I have to wait another week till my next apple pie. This time more cinnamon please!
Liss creates hundreds of papier mache trolls, sells them as piñatas, and donates the cash to her favorite org!
Melissa moonlights as a crime-fighting vigilante using a hubcap from a flying saucer as a shield.
Melissa has published more than 40 best sellers, and pays struggling actors to pose as the real authors. One of them is Stephen King.
Melissa knows kung fu. And not just in the matrix.
Melissa McEwan is the latest of many pseudonyms taken by Catherine Parr, Queen of England, who was made immortal by a magical confluence.
Melissa gets around in a pink scooter that has two cat pouches on the sides. She makes the best coffee in the Continental U.S. On weekends, she studies squirrels, convinced that they have much to teach us.
There is no spoon? Melissa is the spoon.
Melissa's Pistol Boob Move, referred to some time ago, has the power to turn Republican men blind. Instantly. And her cape and tights are breakaway, so that the various disasters that befell caped superheroes in 'the Incredibles' cannot end her reign of superherodom.
Melissa wrote several hit songs, including "Rock Me Amadeus."
Melissa has a 4 8 15 16 23 42 tattoo!
Melissa is the 12th cylon model.
Melissa is Jacob!
Melissa has the death penalty on twelve systems, and can do the Kessel Run in 3 parsecs in her Aluminum Falcon.
There is no chin behind Melissa's beard. There is only another fist.
Oh, wait. That's Chuck Norris.
* * *
Enter your own Totally True Things About Melissa McEwan in comments.
