Shakesville

It's Game Time, Shakers!

Yes, it's time once again for your favorite quiz show, "Today's Biggest Racist Douchebag!"

*Applause, cheering*

Okay contestants! Listen carefully, because here's today's topic:

On Tuesday, the House passed a formal apology for slavery and racist segregation laws, recognizing that “African-Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow.”

About time, am I right? Okay, think hard now! This is for the win... could it be... Ron Paul?

RON PAUL: But when it comes to these apologies, you know, why should you and I make the apologies? Why should I apologize for you through a vote in the Congress? At the same time, you know, we personally weren’t responsible, you know, for that. […]

Wow, that's a three pointer! But don't cast your vote just yet... could it be... Glenn Beck?

BECK: Yes, I think it — honestly, it is a front — I’m a Christian. It’s a front [sic] to the principles of Christianity. Forgiveness. Forgiveness. This country, half of this country fought the other half and died to free and to say, enough. This is wrong. We were washed in blood. I know — I mean, good heavens. There’s nothing worse than slavery. Why are we doing this and concentrating on this now?

Big bucks big bucks no whammies no whammies......... STOP!

(I wonder if all of those people on my college campus that were wearing Ron Paul buttons and vandalizing property with his damn stickers feel ashamed of themselves these days? Feel the love, Paulbots!)

Suspect in the (Totally Not a Terrorist Act) Anthrax Mailings Reportedly Commits Suicide

[Well, Bill beat me to it—but I'm going to go ahead and post this anyway, because, despite not being a conspiracy theorist, I am nonetheless deeply suspicious.]

Under the subtly subversive headline "Apparent suicide in anthrax case," the LA Times reports that a "top government scientist who helped the FBI analyze samples from the 2001 anthrax attacks has died in Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him for the attacks," which "killed five people, crippled national mail service, shut down a Senate office building and spread fear of further terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks."

Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who for the last 18 years worked at the government's elite biodefense research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Md., had been informed of his impending prosecution, said people familiar with Ivins, his suspicious death and the FBI investigation.

Ivins, whose name had not been disclosed publicly as a suspect in the case, played a central role in research to improve anthrax vaccines by preparing anthrax formulations used in experiments on animals.

Regarded as a skilled microbiologist, Ivins also helped the FBI analyze the powdery material recovered from one of the anthrax-tainted envelopes sent to a U.S. senator's office in Washington.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital after ingesting a massive dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine, said a friend and colleague, who declined to be identified out of concern that he would be harassed by the FBI.

Well, I guess that's case closed then. What a tidy little ending to a case with a long-elusive conclusion.

In case I'm not laying on the sarcasm thickly enough, suffice it to say I'm unconvinced of the veracity of this story. The case against Ivins, as laid out in the Times, while certainly circumstantial, isn't exactly what I'd call convincing. But then again, I'm innately suspicious of sudden, neat solutions, especially to messy, desperate cases.

My Quote of the Day

"We are running ads that we think attract attention to the issues Americans care most about." - Rick Davis, McCain campaign manager, on MSNBC defending the Paris Hilton/Britney Spears "celebrity" ad.

To quote the immortal Sheridan Whiteside: "I may vomit."

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Life with Elizabeth

OMFG

I know I said that this was the Best. Email. Ever.—but I was wrong, Shakers. As my fan mail keeps pouring in from every corner of the globe, we have a new winner:

Sent, no doubt, without a trace of irony.

In case you happen to stop by again, Mr. Coolidge, here's why your email is so funny: See, you're asking me what happened to freedom of expression in an email you wrote in anger because I…wait for it…expressed my opinion. I didn't call for censorship, or a boycott, or suggest the game shouldn't be sold.

I merely expressed my opinion of it.

And you deemed that "the root cause of many problems in America" while also bemoaning the alleged death of freedom of expression.

And then you called me an idiot.

LOL.

[Previous Fat Princess: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six.]

Question of the Day

We did this one early last year, but I love this QotD, so I'm recycling it: What movie "theme" song do you totally love that you'd never admit to if it weren't for the safely anonymous nature of the internets?

In Spudsy's original post, he revealed that his favie is the "Howard the Duck" song from the movie of the same name—and he also noted: "Shakes admitted to me over the phone that she absolutely loves 'Playing With the Boys' from Top Gun by Kenny Loggins. She claims that it's because it's 'so bad' she absolutely loves it, but I know better. She thinks it's teh awesome. You just know she dances around to this in front of the bathroom mirror, singing into her hairbrush," which prompted one of my all-time favorite exchanges in comments:

Me: No, that I do to the heterocentric theme from Top Gun: "Danger Zone." To "Playing With the Boys," the homoerotic theme from Top Gun, I dress up like Tom Cruise and pretend to fuck my Val Kilmer doll up the ass.

Deeky: Yeah, who doesn't?

This Is What It Looks Like Inside My Brain

Shaker BGK emailed me the below gif of Conan the Barbarian raving with glowsticks under the subject line: "Sufficiently Goofy for Shakesville."

Sufficiently goofy? It's fucking brilliant. If it were words, it would be my mantra. If it were food, it would be manna from heaven.

All that is left is the utter destruction of the internetz with a Conan-Van Damme dance-off!

What say you, Dolph Lundgren?

I concur.

A Scene, in Five Parts

Part One: I see the headline "World's oldest joke traced back to 1900 BC."

Part Two: I think, I'll bet it's about women.

Part Three: I read—

It is a saying of the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq and goes: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."

…A 1600 BC gag about a pharaoh, said to be King Snofru, comes second -- "How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish."

The oldest British joke dates back to the 10th Century and reveals the bawdy face of the Anglo-Saxons -- "What hangs at a man's thigh and wants to poke the hole that it's often poked before? Answer: A key."

Part Four: I sigh.

Part Five: I write this post, publish it, and bookmark it—so I can refer to it the next time some misogybag tells me that his sexist joke is "edgy."

Fin.

Marriage Equality Now

Shaker rrp—who, in addition to gracing us with her brilliant and witty comments, has also been a guest blogger—has written a beautiful and thought-provoking piece for The Advocate, "The Avoidable Death of Thomas Disch," about the suicide of a gay science fiction writer whose death may have been precipitated, in part, by an incident from which he'd have been shielded had he been married to his partner of 35 years.

Writer Thomas Disch's life has been hard over the last few years. His partner of 35 years, the poet Charles Naylor, died in 2005 after a long struggle with cancer that used up their savings. His own health was not good: Disch, a big man, was diabetic and had difficulty walking. In October 2007, the landlord of his rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan's Union Square won a decision in appellate court against Disch -- because Charles Naylor's name was on the lease -- and was threatening to evict him.

…Thanks to the 1989 decision in Raviv v. Raviv, their Union Square apartment would have been considered part of their communal marital property in New York [if Disch and Naylor had been married] -- even though the lease was in only one spouse's name. Thomas Disch would at least have had the assurance that his home couldn't be taken away from him; his landlord would have had no legal standing to start proceedings against the grieving widower. But without marriage equality, same-sex couples have no protection against predatory landlords, hostile families, or unsympathetic courts.

Read the whole thing here.

And fuck you, Orson Scott Card.

LaVena post at Crooks & Liars

Crooks & Liars returns to the story of PFC LaVena Johnson with a post by Logan Murphy:

Nicole and I have both written posts about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of PFC LaVena Johnson, and Democracy Now! had a heartbreaking interview with her family last week. LaVena’s family has worked hard to find the truth about her death and have finally had a breakthrough in the case. Unfortunately, the new details they uncovered are so disturbing that they could potentially make the Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch stories pale in comparison. The above video from Cenk of The Young Turks captures my exact feelings about this horrific case. What you’re about to read will sicken and enrage you.

Murphy references a June 2008 article on LaVena from the St. Louis American (last link in the quote), and mentions today's Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs hearing on sexual assault in the military.

Woof

The new McCain advert we discussed yesterday, which conflates Obama's candidacy and person with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, continues to garner lots of attention, much of it choosing to avoid any serious cultural discussion and sticking to the usual inane drivel we've come to expect of what passes for grown-up political discourse in America.

Shaker Abby, however, emails a comment that's insightful and spot-on:

I've been thinking about the recent McCain ad - the one with Paris and Britney in it - and some of the conservative reactions to the ad and to Obama's reactions to the ad. It occurred to me that this could be a strategy to poke at Obama with "hidden" racism (the kind that doesn't fit the conservative framework on the topic, which believes that most racism is eliminated and that which remains is the fault of individual bad actors, not systems or institutions) and forcing him to call that racism out. At that point, the conservatives can then turn around and accuse Obama of being "too sensitive" and "hysterical" and "unable to take a joke" - accusations that we've heard leveled at feminists and disability rights advocates, etc. Of course, the underlying racist message will still get out, allowing McCain to have his racist cake and make fun of Obama for being too sensitive to racism at the same time.

…I do think McCain sees it as a bonus that the underlying racist message will be disseminated and may influence some people, but it seems like the main purpose of the ad could have been to force Obama to respond to its racism so that he could then be marginalized. (If he's so upset about a campaign ad, he's clearly too sensitive to deal with world issues! He can't take any criticism at all without complaining that it's racism!) See, for example, this post on The Corner: "If nothing else, the 'Celeb' ad forced Obama into a major error yesterday [by forcing him to disclaim it as racism]". And this one: "It's clear he's going to play the race card all the way to November, and maybe beyond. If you criticize him, you're a racist, to one degree or another. Obama is the uncriticizable, unopposable candidate: If you breathe a word against him, you must don the scarlet R (for you know what)."

While a clever technique, it seems to be a pretty morally bereft tactic.

Indeed. Useful, aren't they—those conservative dog whistles…?

The sad thing is that I'm quite certain many of the GOP operatives who will sing the "he sees racism everywhere he looks" and "any criticism will be called racism" songs don't even realize they're being played like fiddles. Their ignorance of how racist dog whistles function makes them useful tools, despite their undoubted certainty they're just callin' it like they see it. They don't even grasp how their own privilege turns them into the damn dogs.

It Beggars Belief, Truly

Or, it would—if this were any other administration, but, somehow, the revelation that "Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President's office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran" during which "an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them" actually isn't all that surprising.

Which pretty much says everything anyone needs to know about the Bush administration.

[H/T to Shaker Constant Comment.]

Quote of the Day

"The executive's current claim of absolute immunity from compelled Congressional process for senior presidential aides is without any support in the case law."—Judge John D. Bates, who ruled in US District Court in DC today that, failing an overturn on appeal, "former White House counsel, Harriet E. Miers, and the current White House chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, would be required to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee, which has been investigating the controversial dismissal of the federal prosecutors in 2006."

[More on the prosecutor purge, aka Attorneygate, here and here.]

Hmm. First Rove, now this. One foolishly dares to dream…

Oof.

The Color and Shape of Rugged Individualism

by Shaker Elle, of Elle, PhD

I'm no great fan of fast food. My personal tastes lie elsewhere. I’ve done the obligatory reading of Fast Food Nation. I think it's repulsive that so many food ads target kids. I also know the hell that McDonald's Chicken McNugget and subsequent "further processed" items have wrought for poultry processing workers—think I'm kidding? Read Steve Striffler's Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America's Favorite Food.

But something about this is not quite reassuring:

City officials are putting South Los Angeles on a diet. The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to place a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in an impoverished swath of the city with a proliferation of such eateries and above-average rates of obesity.

Maybe it's the reporters "cute" use of the word diet, when we all know how well those don't work.
My real complaint is that banning fast food restaurants seems just to skim the surface of this issue.

How will the city bring more healthful alternatives to poor communities? More importantly, how will people in South L.A. afford it? Closing fast food restaurants does nothing to address the underlying issue of poverty. Residents will still have limited resources for buying food, as one man attests:

South Los Angeles resident Curtis English acknowledged that fast food is loaded with calories and cholesterol. But since he's unemployed and does not have a car, it serves as a cheap, convenient staple for him.

On Monday, he ate breakfast and lunch -- a sausage burrito and double cheeseburger, respectively -- at a McDonald's a few blocks from home for just $2.39.

Emphasis mine. With less money to spend on food, people typically by cheaper foods. Inexpensive foods are packed with fat and sugar, the cheapest additives, Striffler argues, to give them taste.

Relatedly, how will declaring a moratorium on fast food restaurants help people who can't afford to eat out anywhere? Within this group, if we focus on the subset who receive food stamps—and I say subset because many, many people who qualify for food stamps don't receive any—and get most of their foods from local stores, a moratorium will not bring more grocery stores with better fresh food offerings to the area. Lack of access to such stores is a problem in South L.A.:

South Los Angeles lacks grocery stores, fresh produce markets and full-service restaurants with wait staff and food prepared to order.

South Los Angeles only has four major grocery stores, as compared to 13 in West Los Angeles.

The emphasis on fast food obscures at least one other detail, as well. Fast food restaurants, defined "as those that do not offer table service and provide a limited menu of pre-prepared or quickly heated food in disposable wrapping," aren't exactly unique in their less-than-healthful alternatives. The menus at so-called "casual dining" and upscale restaurants can be daunting.

In our e-mail discussion of the article, Liss noted that the moratorium brings up employment issues. Fast food restaurants offer entry-level jobs to unskilled workers. I do not claim they are pleasant or particularly fulfilling jobs, but they are often needed. My co-blogger, mrs. o, helped her mother care for a family of five by working at McDonald's. And for a few people, it offers some upward mobility through management jobs.

Finally, this sentence aggravated me:

The moratorium, which can be extended up to a year, only affects standalone restaurants, not eateries located in malls or strip shopping centers.

I'm assuming that it's not poor people who are spending lots of money shopping; I wonder why the city exempts malls. It gives me a whole, "Let's regulate the poor" feeling.

Or, more specifically, "Let's regulate the brown and black poor." Speaking in terms of substances that are legal, we have constructed the process of taking things into our body as highly personal, a matter of free choice. The limitations that the government places on our alcohol consumption or where we smoke, for example, are primarily to protect the safety and well-being of other people. Americans, as the myth goes, are individualists who would not take much more governmental interference with such intimate choices.

Yet, the symbol of that rugged American individual who gets to choose and to benefit from free will has, by default, been white and male. I think it is no coincidence that officials in South L.A., which is overwhelmingly Latin@ and black, decided to enact this moratorium. I think one very valid question is would it be suggested or implemented in poor area composed of primarily white residents? In a country that has typically held the choices and bodies of white men in highest regard? A healthy dose of skepticism is absolutely required when the government claims to act in the best interest of the health and welfare of people of color.

In the same vein, we need to examine other motivations behind the ban. As South L.A. is an impoverished area, many of the residents are probably eligible for Medicaid and Medicare programs. According to one 2005 article, these two programs paid for half of all health-care costs attributed to obesity[1] (quite the blanket category and one of which I am particularly wary given my own experiences with doctors who fault patients' weight for a wide range of problems). Is this moratorium, then, about a nanny state protecting people from themselves, as the link Petulant posted earlier suggests, or is it like other governmental limitations protecting the (economic) well-being of others?

Either way it is framed is problematic. Either people who are black and brown, poor and fat, cannot be entrusted to care for themselves—a framing that ignores the very real lack of choice mentioned earlier and other obstacles to quality health and health care. Or, their fat, black and brown bodies represent a threat to taxpayers' wallets—and "taxpayers," when we talk about funding of social programs like Medicaid and Medicare, are constructed as white and non-poor.

--------------------

¹Eric A. Finkelstein, Christopher J. Ruhm, Katherine M. Kosa, "Economic Causes and Consequences of Obesity," Annual Review of Public Health, 26, (April 2005): 239-257. Dr. Michelle Mello mentions the same statistic in an article available here (pdf).

SYTYCD: Adam's back judging! w00t!

Yay for Adam! I love him. And did you catch how normal Paula Abdul looked last night? She should so try that on Idol sometime. Anyway...

I bet you all know what routine is first up, right? Katee and Joshua's Tyce DiOrio routine and all its awesomeness:

I love these two. That leap & lift? Holy crow, it gave me chills. Their next routine, the paso doble, was also fabulous. They rock.

My vote for most interesting routine of the evening was Sonya's jazz routine for Mark and Courtney:

Mark and Courtney also had a viennese waltz, which was graceful. Mark did a pretty good job. The use of Idol music annoys me for some reason.

I liked Twitch and Chelsie's mambo:

Personally, I liked that much more than their Napoleon & Tabitha hip-hop routine--both the dancing and choreography.

So. Whatcha think? Who do you think will go and leave us with the final four?

(all videos thanks to "krunkyou" at Dailymotion.com)

Patriotic Image of the Day

Pussy: The Energy Drink

by Shaker Renee, of Womanist Musings

Pussy made its premiere as an energy drink on The F Word. Apparently Gordon Ramsey found it hilarious to teach sales by using a product whose very name is demeaning to women.

After catching the clip I assumed that this was just one of his ridiculous jokes until I investigated the web site and found that pussy is indeed for sale. Isn't it fucking thrilling that we can be reduced in this manner.

According to its creator Jonnie Shearer:

"Pussy is spontaneous, entertaining, optimistic and fun. It’s a starting point. A moment when something happens and when things begin – Pussy starts conversations. It believes in having a good time as often as possible."

Did you know that your genitalia contained all of those values? Did you ever even for a minute envision that it had a distinct personality from you? Most of all did you know that it was always available for a good time? How do we manage with these crazy vaginas between our legs that are always seeking a good time or to engage others?

Turning pussy into a consumable product only highlights the degree to which women's bodies are commodified for the sake of profit. Of course no one wants a drink named penis, cock, or dick—those are active body parts. No we want something bubbly and pleasing, exactly the way that women's bodies are constructed to be.

While the creator may see this as a unique sales ploy, to me it just another example of the way in which women are continually demeaned and disembodied of agency to uphold male hegemony.

(Crossposted.)

Why So Serious?

I just don't get it. What's up with you angry feminists? You're just always pissed off about something. I mean, can't you take a (mean) joke? It's not like things are as bad as they used to be. Can't you screeching harpies just understand that you already have "equality?"

Bush Threatens to Veto Equal Pay for Women

This week, the House is expected to bring the Paycheck Fairness Act to the floor for a vote, legislation that would help close the wage gap between working men and women and “close loopholes that have allowed employers to avoid responsibility” for discriminatory pay. In an official statement, the White House said it would veto the bill:
The bill would unjustifiably amend the Equal Pay Act (EPA) to allow for, among other things, unlimited compensatory and punitive damages, even when a disparity in pay was unintentional. It also would encourage discrimination claims to be made based on factors unrelated to actual pay discrimination by allowing pay comparisons between potentially different labor markets. In addition, it would require the Department of Labor (DOL) to replace its successful approach to detecting pay discrimination with a failed methodology that was abandoned because it had a 93 percent false positive rate. Thus, if H.R. 1338 were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.

You're always searching for stuff to get mad about. Hysterics.

UPDATE: Oh, get over it. It's a joke. They mean it as a compliment.

Ready For Change?

RKMK mentioned this in the blogaround yesterday, but I'm not sure how many saw it, so I thought I'd relay the story up here since it bears repeating.

Barack Obama recently referred to Ludacris as a "great talent" (yet another thing he's been dead wrong about) and it seems that the two have more than a passing acquaintance, and so, as maybe a thank you of sorts, Ludacris has written a new song in Obama's honor titled "Politics."

And the song's message? "The world is ready for change because Obama is here! The world is ready for change because Obama is here!" Oh, that's nice. What an inspiring message, right? Well, let's hold on a minute. As Rolling Stone blandly notes:

Ludacris … demands "Get off your ass, black people, it’s time to get out and vote" and "Paint the White House black." He then goes off on McCain ("He don’t belong in any chair unless he's paralyzed") and even calls George W. Bush "mentally-handicapped."

What Rolling Stone fails to mention, and it's one of the reasons I'm writing this, is that Ludacris also refers to Hillary Clinton as an "irrelevant bitch."

The world is ready for change, the world is ready for change. Except calling women bitches isn't really much of a change. In fact, it's the same old same old. And yet again, another major media outlet lies complicit, completely whitewashing the story. To RS, it's not even worth reporting. I am going to guess, as far as the editors at Rolling Stone are concerned Clinton is a bitch. They didn't endorse her, so why even mention her? Why even note that yet another Obama supporter called her a bitch?

The article barely even touches on Ludacris' attacks on McCain and Bush. Ready for change? Ready for progress? Making fun of the disabled is all about change. Yeah, I get it: the more things change, the more they stay exactly. fucking. the. same.

The Obama camp did, of course, condemn the song, calling it "outrageously offensive." Wevs. Sure, it's nice and all that his campaign can denounce these attacks. But it would have been nice to see more of that before he had the nomination locked up, back when he was benefitting from the smears.

(A complete transcription of the lyrics is here. (NSFW audio, by the way.) H/T to RKMK and everyone else in the universe who emailed this in to us.)

This Is Why I Don't Do Interviews

MSNBC's Games Editor Kristin Kalning emailed me to ask if I'd speak to her about the Fat Princess controversy. My exact reply by email, after reading some of her other columns, was: "I'd be happy to speak with you—as long as I'm not going to be playing the part of the 'feminist hysteric.' Based on your previous columns, that doesn't strike me as your style, but I just want to make sure there's no agenda going in." She assured me there wasn't.

This is the result. (Spot the hilarious fat joke/pun right in the headline.)

I'll just note that I spoke to Kalning for probably about an hour, about feminism, misogyny, fat acceptance, why this game wouldn't be acceptable if it were Anorexic Princess, being a gamer myself, safe spaces online, and, among other things, the pernicious lie that the entirety of the internet is populated by insufferably rude idiots looking for a flamewar.

I got a 25-word quote in the piece, despite being (mis)used as a spokeswoman for the entirety of the feminist community. ("Feminists argue…" and "Feminist bloggers say…")

An anonymous commenter from Kotaku got a 33-word quote, in which objectors to the game, such as myself, were called "foul-mouthed fatties."

Fair and balanced, bitchez.

For the record, it's not just a disservice to feminists; it's a disservice to gamers. Where are the quotes from gamers who share my opinion? (Or don't gamers in the threads at Shakesville count?) For that matter, where are the quotes from gamers who disagreed with me without sounding like total assholes? It's also just flatly inaccurate to treat feminists and gamers as mutually exclusive groups, because, clearly (refer to comments thread), they're not.

[Previous Fat Princess: One, Two, Three, Four, Five.]