Shakesville

Well, There You Go

That wasn't so hard, was it?

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's name will be placed into nomination at the Democratic National Convention, a symbolic move approved by the Obama campaign in an effort to soothe a lingering rift with Clinton supporters.

"I am convinced that honoring Senator Clinton's historic campaign in this way will help us celebrate this defining moment in our history and bring the party together in a strong united fashion," Senator Barack Obama said in a statement.

The decision was announced on Thursday afternoon in a joint statement from the senators.
…"With every voice heard and the Party strongly united, we will elect Senator Obama President of the United States and put our nation on the path to peace and prosperity once again," Mrs. Clinton said in a statement.

In her further quest to totally destroy the Democratic Party, Clinton—who is herself a superdelegate—will reportedly cast her vote for Obama and ask her supporters to follow suit, and, after the state-by-state roll is tallied, "Mrs. Clinton is expected to turn over her cache of delegates to Senator Barack Obama." What a horrible, horrible woman.

Btw, I love this bit from the linked article: "To see if it unfolds as the Obama campaign hopes – free of acrimony – tune in on Wednesday, Aug. 27." Just gotta get that last dig in. It's only the Obama campaign who wants things "free of acrimony." Clinton, well, she just loves the acrimony—which she has demonstrated repeatedly by trying to negotiate a solution that honors both the nominee and her supporters. Cheesus.

Gee, I'm Shocked

Hair Samples in Anthrax Case Don't Match: "Federal investigators probing the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks recovered samples of human hair from a mailbox in Princeton, N.J., but the strands did not match the lead suspect in the case, according to sources briefed on the probe."

As you'll no doubt recall, the lead suspect in the case, Bruce E. Ivins, an 18-year veteran of the US government's elite biodefense research laboratories, died in what was reported as a suicide recently.

Dday's got more on this clusterfucktastrophal farce of an investigation.

Attention, MSM

New rule. If you bring Michelle Malkin on your shows for any reason other than to point out that she is a seriously twisted, dangerous person, or to dump buckets of green slime on her when she says "I don't know," you will all be fired and your network will be replaced with endless repeats of something more informative. I'm thinking Boohbah. I give to you Sadly, No's latest Shorter Michelle Malkin post:

Somebody sent me an email blaming my so-called ‘hate’ for this horrible act of violence against a Democrat Party liberal. Here is that person’s full name and unredacted email address.

And yes, that's exactly what she does. In case you don't remember, this is the same woman that stalked the Frost family, not to mention her readers. This is the same woman who, to put it mildly, has a sticky history with personal information posted on the internet. This is the same woman who wrote a dishonest book cherry-picking comments at liberal blogs as examples of liberals being "unhinged" and dangerous, that has the fucking gall to say (I won't link to her; you can get there from S,N if you must):

I am also guilty of last month’s shooting at a Knoxville church, for which a nutroots blogger similarly says I need to be held “accountable.”

For what? For blogging, writing columns, and authoring books with which they disagree.

Such stalwart, principled champions of free speech they are.

While she posts the full name and email address of someone that "disagrees" on her fucking blog. Without a trace of irony.

Go on, try to tell me she doesn't know exactly what she's doing.

Michelle Malkin is a hateful, vindictive, and yes, "unhinged" human being that has no business being invited on major media outlets. She obviously doesn't give the slightest thought to the safety of people with which she "disagrees," and she contributes to the eliminationist rhetoric that has taken over rational discourse on the right.

People are dying, and it's time to stop pretending that people like Michelle Malkin are doing anything but throwing more coal in the fire.

Update: In case you didn't hear about the shooting, C&L has more.

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Benji

Opening sequence from the series of "Benji" films that started in 1974.

Project Runway Open Thread

[I'm putting this up early because I'm so excited; it's the first week I'll be in the liveblogging thread this season, now that SYTYCD has ended! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!]

DON'T BORE NINA!!!

Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker Redlady50, who finds fascinating the vast and varied handles used by the Shakers: "Some are very straightforward...a name, a location, or a hobby. But with other handles that are not so straightforward, I find myself wondering, does this mean something? Is there a story behind oddjob, stonebiscuit, Phoenician in a time of Romans, SunlessNick, or CBrachyrhynchos? There's certainly a story behind my choice, and I'll bet others would have stories to tell as well. So my suggestion for a Question of the Day is: Is there a story behind your screen name? With so many available words or combinations of letters, why did you choose your particular handle?"

My handle now is just my name, of course, but I chose Shakespeare's Sister (which used to be my pseudonym as well as the blog's name) because it's the name of a great Smiths' song containing the bleeding-heart blog-perfect line: "I thought that if you had an acoustic guitar, it meant that you were a protest singer. I can smile about it now, but at the time it was terrible." (You can't get too self-important with that line on your mind.)

And there was the added layer of profound import that Mozza had nicked the term from Virginia Woolf's essay A Room of One's Own about female writers and their need for their own spaces. It was, after all, in part because I longed for a blog without rampant misogyny in the comments threads, but couldn't find one, that I started this blog in the first place and do my best to maintain it as a safe space. So, even as Melissa McEwan, I am (still) Shakespeare's Sister.

RIP Bill Gwatney

The chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party has died after being shot earlier today by a gunman who forced his way into the party's headquarters.

The suspected gunman was shot during a police chase and died, the Associated Press news agency reports.

…The authorities have not yet named the suspected gunman, said to be a 51-year-old man, and the motive for the shooting remains unclear.

I'll post an update with more information if and when it becomes available.

[H/T to a bunch of Shakers, in comments and by email.]

Nobody Likes a Funeral

I've got a new piece up at The Guardian's Comment is free America, "The Republican death knell," about the "enthusiasm gap" Republicans are experiencing regarding their own convention:

There's a lot of expositional excuse-making about St Paul's lack of proximity to the Beltway and its comparatively sedate reputation. The last GOP convention was held in New York City, which not only provided loads of wholesome entertainment for the "Family Values" crowd, but also had the added benefit of providing the perfect backdrop for the ritualistic exploitation of the 2001 attack on NYC's World Trade Centre, led by 9/11 überghoul Rudy Giuliani. St Paul's got none of that sparkle, so goes the argument.

But it is the unidentified press secretary for an unnamed Republican senator who is, from behind her or his cloak of anonymity, willing to be the most honest about the "enthusiasm gap" plaguing the GOP convention: "Nobody likes a funeral."

Well, nobody who cared about the deceased, anyway.

But I sincerely doubt I'm the only person wishing that Bush Brand Conservatism were given a proper burial with an actual grave, just so I could piss on it.

Read the whole thing here.

Kristol Ball

Bill Kristol, total dipshit and editor of the conservative rag The Weekly Standard, claimed on Fox News today that former Secretary of State Colin Powell will endorse Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention.

"He may well give a speech at the Democratic convention explaining his endorsement of Obama," Kristol said, citing inside sources.

"This is not an absolute done deal, but these people are very confident that Powell will endorse Obama," Kristol said.

Given his track record on everything else (*cough* Iraq War *cough*), I'm sure this info is solid and you can take this prediction to the bank!

Powell's spokeswoman Peggy Cifrino says Kristol is full of shit.

Patriotic Image of the Day

Annual Hog Calling Contest at Illinois State Fair Won by a Woman for the First Time

Go on with your bad self, Doris Probst!

You can see a longer video of Doris' hog-calling technique at the BBC.

I love this woman. Love. Her. Participating in a hog-calling contest requires rejecting just about everything that women are told they're supposed to be. You've got to be loud and zany and willing to contort your face and body into positions that might fairly be described as unattractive; you've got to be completely uninhibited, shameless, and out of control.

When a woman throws herself headlong into that sort of unselfconscious brazenness on a stage, I can't help but cheer.

And when it's a fat woman? Who knows damn well she'll weather eight gazillion "hog" jokes just for participating?

LOVE.

That Clunking Sound You Hear?

It's me hitting my head against my desk after reading this POS article at LiveScience, headlined: "The Pill Makes Women Pick Bad Mates."

Follow me on the awesome train of logic used to come to that conclusion:

1. Body odor can be one of several critical factors in determining a mate, "because beneath a woman's flowery fragrance or a guy's musk the body sends out aromatic molecules that indicate genetic compatibility."

2. Despite how it's written which suggests otherwise, "genetic compatibility" doesn't mean that a couple's DNA can indicate a successful relationship; "genetic compatibility" refers to major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes, a wider variation in which among couples means healthier kids: "When individuals with different MHC genes mate, their offspring's immune systems can recognize a broader range of foreign cells, making them more fit."

3. Women on the pill tend to choose mates with the same MHC smells as themselves instead of the opposite: "[T]he best mates are those that have different MHC smells than you. The new study reveals, however, that when women are on the pill they prefer guys with matching MHC odors."

Ergo, "The Pill Makes Women Pick Bad Mates" is true because women on the pill pick men with whom they would produce kids with slightly less robust immune systems—and everyone knows that all women value their primary relationship exclusively on whether it will allow them to biologically produce the healthiest children possible with their partner. Especially lesbians. And women contentedly married to men with inherited genetic disorders.

And women who want to remain deliberately childless.

Please join me in a Moment of Irony Appreciation as we consider that the latter group includes lots and lots of happily married women on the pill.

[H/T to Shakers Kathy and BGK.]

Wednesday Blogaround

What's the frequency, Shakers?

Recommended Reading:

Echidne: What Women Have Mouths For

Sean: Great Moments in Framing

Pizza Diavola: Unintentional Hilarity

Resistance: On Privilege

Melissa: Even the Young Guys Get It

Andy: Transgender Woman in the Running to be America's Next Top Model

Astraea: A Teaspoon Victory

Leave your links in comments...

Geez, When Will Women Stop Getting Themselves Raped Already?

[Trigger warning.]

This article is driving me to absolute distraction this morning: Because Britain, which already has one of the lowest rape conviction rates in the industrialized world, just doesn't engage in enough victim-blaming already, some geniuses at the Officials at the Criminal Injury Compensation Authority decided to cut state compensation to rape victims by as much as a quarter if "their drinking was a 'contributing factor' in their ordeal" (or if they were in any other way "partly to blame—such as by provoking an attacker," presumably by doing something rapetastic like wearing a revealing blouse or short skirt).

The issue came to light after one rape victim, referred to only as Helen, received a letter from the CICA saying her compensation was being cut from £11,000 to £8,250.

It said: 'The evidence that we have shows that your excessive consumption of alcohol was a contributing factor in the incident'.

She said the letter 'felt like a slap in the face', adding: 'It felt like I was being punished for having the audacity to step up and say "I don't think this should have happened to me". It was like going back to the 1970s, saying "she was asking for it".

'How else could you read the letter but as saying it's my fault I was raped?'

In good news, justice ministers have ordered an official inquiry and demanded that the practice stop immediately and amends made to rape victims who were denied full compensation.

But Maude forbid we have a story about sexual assault, no less a story in which people who assert that incapacitated victims are "partially to blame" for their victimization are formally told in no uncertain terms that they are wrong, without immediately undermining that conclusion with implications women really are to blame.

Because it's the Daily Mail, of course the article is accompanied by ridiculous images—but these are particularly egregious, even for the stinking Mail. First up is a picture of pretty (because rape is a compliment, of course) women drinking and having fun:

—followed by the image of a woman breaking down while sat on a hospital gurney, with rape kits in the foreground:

They might as well have labeled them "Cause" and "Effect" and been done with it, for fuck's sake.

And if that isn't bad enough, there's a link in the sidebar to an article which is bloody headlined: "Don't blind-drunk women who cry rape bear any responsibility for what happens to them?" (which is just brilliant in its ability to victim-blame and imply that women are liars: "cry rape"), followed by this image:

The piece itself is just unrelentingly infuriating, as its male author offers up gems like: "Many women insist they have the right to wear and do whatever they like," as if it's the height of absurdity, despite the fact that most men not only insist the same but take that right for granted.

And, forgive me for being Ms. Fucking Obvious 2008 here, but when two people leave a pub or a party or some other venue where there's been alcohol, and one rapes the other, what are the odds that the rapist is alcohol-free? When in blue hell do you think any of the assholes who go on about how women shouldn't drink because they might get raped might notice the gobsmacking inconsistency of routinely failing to acknowledge that alcohol might be lowering the inhibitions of the men who rape? Oh, right—that will never happen, because that would require suggesting that men not drink, and it's only reasonable to request that of women.

I don't think there's anything new under the sun left for me to say about drinking and sexual assault that I (or others) haven't already said:

• Get It Together, Britain
• Acquittal in Illinois Rape Case
• Good God
• The Horror!
• Dear Ladies: Please Stop Getting Yourselves Raped
• Take My Cunt, Please
• Just Say No…No…No…
• Because "Go Fuck Yourself" Isn't Particularly Enlightening
• Know What's Hilarious?
• Rape Is Not a Crime? Who Knew?
• How to Get Away with Rape in Canada: Just Make Sure Your Victim Is Drunk.

—so I'm just going to repeat, for the nonillionth time, what is certainly the most concise, if not the best, thing I've ever written on the patent farce that is presuming alcohol is more a problem for rape victims than rapists and the disgusting compulsion to blame rape victims, in part or in whole, for being raped:

I guess we're meant to believe that it is just the victims who have been drinking and none of the rapists in [all the] alcohol-related date rapes every year—and that if only those victims had all been sober instead, none of those rapes would have happened. My rape, during which I was stone cold sober and my rapist's breath tasted of gin, was obviously the only one of its kind. I deserve a trophy or some shit.

"I'd like to thank my rapist, without
whom this never would have happened…"
Ah, the truth in jokes, yes? Left to my own devices, I never would have been raped. The rapist was really the key component to the whole thing. I was sober; hardly scantily clad, I was wearing sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt; I was at home; my sexual history was, literally, nonexistent—I was a virgin; I struggled; I said no. There have been times since when I have been walking home, alone, after a few drinks, wearing something that might have shown a bit of leg or cleavage, and I wasn't raped. The difference was not in what I was doing. The difference was the presence of a rapist.

Enough blaming the victim. Enough.

[H/T to Shaker Brave Sir Robin.]

Female Trailblazer Inducted into Motorsports Hall of Fame

Great article about 82-year-old Betty Skelton Erde, a retired stunt pilot and auto racer, who was once the fastest woman in the world and is being inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in suburban Detroit today—only the fifth female inductee.

Erde will attend the ceremony in which Champ Car driver Michael Andretti and five other racing legends also are being inducted.

Dozens of firsts are attached to her name: the auto industry's first female test driver, in 1954; the first woman to set a world land speed record in 1956 (145 mph at Daytona Beach); and then the world land speed record for women in 1965, hitting 315.72 mph at Bonneville.

She was also the first woman to undergo the physical and psychological tests NASA required of the seven original male astronauts after she "complained that NASA wasn't giving more thought to women pilots." The article is peppered with revealing asides like that—Skelton Erde "wanted very much to fly in the Navy, but all they would do is laugh when I asked"—but my favorite little tidbit is this:

In the 50s, she raced across the South American Andes, down Mexico's Baja Peninsula and set records at the Chrysler proving grounds in Michigan.

"I would venture to say there is no other woman in the world with all the attributes of this woman," [Bill France, who began the NASCAR circuit] once remarked. "The most impressive of them all is her surprising and outstanding ever-present femininity, even when tackling a man's job."

Talk about a back-handed compliment!

The irony about that observation is that if Skelton Erde's most impressive attribute had really been remaining feminine "even when tackling a man's job," she wouldn't be being inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame today. The truth of it is that if she hadn't nonetheless remained feminine while blazing her record-setting trail, she wouldn't be being inducted today, either ('cuz no one wants to fuck ugly groundbreaking girls).

Congratulations, Ms. Skelton Erde—and thanks for leaving a little bit of the patriarchy in your dust!

[H/T to Shaker Stakkalee.]

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Fat Albert

The Pink House! Haw, Haw

Apparently, it's open season on Paris Hilton. Hacktackular.

Hillary Clinton, watch out: there might be a woman in the White House after all. Paris Hilton is now running for president of the United States of America. OK, not really. But after John McCain released an ad that compared Barack Obama to celebrities like Britney Spears and Ms. Hilton, Paris threw her hat into the ring, too. She put out her own political ad—it went viral so quickly that it's been watched by more than 5 million people. "I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead," the heiress says. That got us thinking: what would a Paris Hilton administration actually look like?

That last sentence is so Shitty Comedian that it's already heading to your local open mic night at The Chuckle Hut. "I have weird ideas... like, what if Jack Nicholson played Mike Brady? Ithinkitmightgoalittlesomethinglikethis!"

Anyway, I'm sure you can see where this is going.

Adam McKay, founder of the site FunnyOrDie.com, which put together the Paris video and is working on a followup, shared some of his ideas with NEWSWEEK's Ramin Setoodeh:

1. The White House would become the Pink House. "I think she'd do everything pink," McKay says. "It would be pink on the outside, pink carpets, pink furniture, pink jammies. The men on her staff would be cool with it—they'd be shirtless Chippendale types, with names like Leon."

2. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would become more Parisian in other ways. "Instead of a bowling alley in the basement of the White House, Paris would have a Pilates studio. And, oh, yeah, she'd have foam parties in the Oval Office for the White House staff and old girlfriends from boarding school."

And so on, and so on, and so on. My sides, they are splitting. I'm sure Paris Hilton is so happy that John McCain dragged her into this shit. I also love how they just had to get a dig in on Hillary Clinton at the beginning; after all, all women are interchangeable. This is definitely going to be the most excruciating Presidential race I've ever lived through.

I'm telling you Shakers, it's Stupid Rays from Outer Space.

(Tip of the Energy Dome to Shaker DorothyC.)

Caption This Photo

"This here's my Gold Medal kiss, sugartits."
U.S. President George W. Bush greets members of the 2008 U.S. Summer Olympic Team at Fencing Hall at the 2008 Olympic Games complex in Beijing August 8, 2008. REUTERS/Larry Downing (CHINA)

Bloggers Hand Fox News Its Ass

I'm exceedingly reluctant to give the political blogosphere more credit than it's due, and I'm generally disposed toward questioning its supposed influence, but Boehlert makes a damn strong case here for one example where the progressive blogosphere blazed a very important trail:

[B]loggers and the entire netroots movement have damaged the Fox News brand and sent a clear signal to Beltway institutions such as the Commission on Presidential Debates that any attempt to bring Fox News into the mainstream, to bestow it with unearned legitimacy, will be met with active protests.

…Bloggers deserve the credit because the pushback they initiated was something that members of the Democratic Party had, for years, refused to do. Instead, they adopted a go-along/get-along strategy with Fox News, hoping that if they were nice (and cooperative) with Fox News, then Fox News would be nice (and cooperative) in response.

Indeed, without the online campaign, do you think the head of the Democratic National Committee would have appeared on Fox News and publicly denounced its coverage as being "shockingly biased" the way Howard Dean did in May? I doubt it, since for years Democrats, and particularly the inside-the- Beltway party leaders, acquiesced.

…For online activists, the idea of the Democratic Party itself anointing Fox News as some sort of standard-bearer for election coverage was too much.

Read the whole thing.

Impossibly Beautiful

Part Nineteen in an ongoing series…

Most of the previous entries in this series have focused on body size/shape and age, with women (and the occasional man) subjected to Photoshopping making them appear thinner and/or younger, but this is the first entry we've had on digital colorism, in which the skin of a WOC is lightened as a so-called "enhancement."

Beyoncé Knowles candid shot (L) and in L'Oréal Paris advert (R)
Snarks Cosmo at Photoshop Disasters: "The great thing about L'Oréal's caucasianizing and plasticizing of Beyonce is the way that they will probably proudly point to it as an example of their inclusiveness and general political correctness." Too true to be funny.

Preferencing whiteness is as inherently arbitrary, and just as aggressively offensive, as preferencing thinness and youth; it's also just as insidious and no less pervasive (except insofar as white women are already preferenced for advertising in the first place, which is a whole other issue).

Advertisers routinely mess with white women's skin coloring—making them tanner, making them paler—depending on what they're modeling to sell, but there's not remotely the same cultural context for differing tones of "white" skin that there is for differing hues of "non-white" skin, nor are white women who want to be darker- or lighter-skinned generally regarded as trying to distance themselves from their ethnicity.

The complexity of race and color and beauty in this diverse but biased culture means that white models and models of color simply can't be treated (in all senses of the word) in the same way.

And, aside from all that, I'm not at all sure why on earth L'Oréal would hire a beautiful black woman only to undermine her blackness. Beyoncé didn't get to be one of the most famous women in the world because she was ashamed of her appearance, and it's just every shade (pun intended) of wrong that L'Oréal would behave as if she should be—or as if they are.

[Thanks to Shaker Renee for the original heads-up on this item, and to Shaker Ruth of All Evil for the link to Photoshop Disasters. Impossibly Beautiful: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen.]