Palin [video]: And I do look forward to Thursday night and debating Senator Joe Biden. [cheers and applause] We're gonna talk about those new ideas, new energy for America. I'm looking forward to meeting him, too; I've never met him before—but I've been hearing about his senate speeches since I was in, like, second grade. [laughter]
Couric: You made a funny comment—you said you've been listening to Joe Biden's speeches since you were in second grade, something like that.
Palin: It's been since like '72, yeah.
Couric: When you have a 72-year-old running mate, is that a kind of a risky thing to say, insinuating that Joe Biden's been around awhile?
Palin: Oh no, it's nothing negative at all. He's got a lot of experience and, just stating the fact there, that we've been hearing his speeches for all these years, so— He's got a tremendous amount of experience and, you know, I'm the new energy, the new face, the new ideas, and he's got the experience based on many, many years in the senate and voters are gonna have a choice there and what it is that they want in these next four years.
So, first she makes a joke that reflects badly on her running mate if he's judged by the same standards, and then she makes a clarification that reflects badly on herself, given that her relative inexperience is her biggest liability. Fooking hell. Steve Benen asks, amusingly, "She is aware of the dynamic surrounding the two presidential candidates, isn't she?" Seriously.
Btw, I went to the official McCain-Palin website, and I'll be damned if I can find any of these new ideas she's allegedly bringing to the table. I'm not saying she's not bringing any, but, if she is, her campaign isn't promoting them very effectively.
Please note, effectively immediately, that the phrase "women's privacy" should be used as the umbrella term to incorporate all of the babykilling objectives on the recently disseminated 2008 Radical Feminist Agenda, including but not limited to:
• Contraception • Emergency contraception • Abortion • Infanticide • Grinding up babies for pathetic anger bread
This is the new mantra: Women's privacy. Notice that. Very interesting new description. Reproductive health—that could be anything, anything at all. Migraine headache. Panic attack. But "women's privacy" is the key here. So, if you want to have an abortion or even commit infanticide, it's privacy.
It has been brought to my attention that some of you find this position too prosaic and timid for the Cult of the Feminazi Cooter, and that we really need to think outside the box and maybe branch into sacrificial slaughter of innocents and wanton castration, but our budgetary constraints require a limited program this year. Keep up the fundraising at the Gates of Hell, various red light districts, K Street, and wherever else you find concentrated populations of soulless demons, and maybe next year will provide some growth opportunities for the organization.
Thank you for your continued dedication to The Cause.
Best regards, M. McEwan QCoFM
Addendum: Please make sure this memo does not fall into the hands of Bill O'Reilly.
Olivia and Sophie have been fighting over who is rightful owner of The Best Box Evah for about nine gazillion hours now.
Meanwhile, Matilda—who knows she is the rightful owner, despite letting Livs & Sophs have their fun—wants to know if you can touch your tongue to your nose?
Professional Asshole Glenn Beck: I can't look at Barney Frank any more. I can't take it.
Professional Pantload Jonah Goldberg: I almost think he should be in jail! I almost think the guy should be in jail!
Beck: Oh I do too! I absolutely do. I think — honestly, I think we should have at least, bare minimum, we should have stockades in front of the Capitol building. Some of these people are out and out criminal on what they have done. […]
Goldberg: It is an incredibly poisonous situation. You know in the Middle Ages, Harry Reid would have his stomach cut open and a half-starved weasel thrown in, for the kinds of things he's doing. It's outrageous!
Tell us, oh mighty arbiter of morality, what would they have done in the Middle Ages to people who used Mr. Gutenberg's fine invention as an enormous wank machine?
Well, hello there again—haven't seen you in awhile:
Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey on Monday appointed a federal prosecutor to continue an investigation into the dismissals of nine federal prosecutors in 2006 as an internal Justice Department inquiry concluded that political pressure drove the action against at least three of them.
The internal investigators said that the White House’s refusal to cooperate in the high-profile investigation produced significant "gaps" in the understanding of who was to blame and that they did not have enough evidence to justify recommending criminal charges in the affair. Now the task of determining if anyone should be prosecuted will fall to Nora Dannehy, the federal prosecutor in Connecticut.
Those "gaps" may, just possibly, perhaps, maybe, have something to do with the fact that former Bush administration svengali Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers, former Justice Department-White House liaison Monica Goodling, and current White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, all refused to testify. Just a guess.
A federal judge ruled in July that "the executive's current claim of absolute immunity from compelled Congressional process for senior presidential aides is without any support in the case law," with respect to the House Judiciary Committee's investigation of Attorneygate; one hopes that bodes well for Ms. Dannehy as she dives into the morass.
[More on the prosecutor purge, aka Attorneygate, here and here.]
I just had to laugh when I read this bit in Adam Nagourney's Times' piece today about lowering expectations so thoroughly that Palin will look awesome in the debate if she even attains mediocre GOP concerns about Palin's performance in the upcoming debate:
"I think she has pretty thoroughly—and probably irretrievably—proven that she is not up to the job of being president of the United States," David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush who is now a conservative columnist, said in an interview. "If she doesn't perform well, then people see it.
"And this is a moment of real high anxiety, a little bit like 9/11, when people look to Washington for comfort and leadership and want to know that people in charge know what they are doing."
I love conservatives' capacity for rewriting history. When people "looked to Washington" on 9/11, they didn't get comfort and leadership—they got seven minutes of Bush sitting in a classroom like a frozen git and then flying around the country in Airforce One while Cheney took to an undisclosed location. Bush had no clue what the hell he was doing.
Which makes Frum's analogy accurate in a way he did not intend: Palin may well live up to Bush's performance after 9/11, but that would not be the good thing he suggests by rewriting what the president's performance actually was.
And, by the way, I also love how conservatives screech like rabid banshees as the merest hint of a liberal not treating 9/11 with sacred gravity, but minimizing it to suggest that Republican anxiety about the upcoming vice-presidential debate is "a little bit like 9/11" is just fine and dandy.
lol your relative morality
[Note: Shaker Daughter points out in comments Frum may have been drawing the comparison between how "Americans are feeling now about the economic crisis" and 9/11. In which case, my point still stands—although he's not minimizing it as much, there would be howls of outrage if a Democratic strategist made the same comparison.]
"Madness. I'm not holding my breath, but I would like to see the self-proclaimed conservative, small government, anti-regulation, free-market zealots step up and take responsibility for wrecking the American economy and bringing about the worst financial crisis since the Depression."—Bob Herbert, from his column today, "When Madmen Reign."
I'm not holding my breath, either—but, yeah, that would be nice.
The Republican National Committee is out with an ad that blasts the bailout package that failed yesterday and ties it to Barack Obama. No surprise there; the RNC is doing what they're best at.
The Republican president supported the bill. The Republican Senate leadership supported the bill. The Republican House leadership supported the bill. The Republican presidential nominee supported the bill. And the Republican National Committee runs an ad insisting that Obama's bailout package "will make the problem worse."
Indeed, the RNC unveiled its breathtaking ad literally within minutes of John McCain telling Fox News that in order to get increased support for the bill, "We're going to have to change enough Republican and Democrats' minds.""
So, simultaneously, the Republican Party is campaigning against the bill, and Republican presidential candidate is campaigning in support of the bill. Brilliant.
Does the right hand know what the far-right hand is doing?
One of the things that continually surprises Iain, as he becomes more aware of the nuances, patterns, and narratives of sexism, having taken the red pill, is the sheer abundance and constant presence of sexism, how it is seemingly infused into everything, shoved into places where it makes no obvious sense even by The PatriarchyTM's logic, into spaces where it undermines messages of equality, into every nook and cranny in the goddamned multiverse.
"I don't know how you can stand it," he says, in moments when this realization really hits him in his gut.
"Yeah, well, remember that next time I'm crabby for seemingly no reason," I say.
It's often the "throwaway" lines, in the middle of what's not meant to be sexist commentary, that he's really started to notice—the misogyny in news stories, for instance, jarring in its presence. Shaker Franka sent me a perfect example of this today, in which the last paragraph of a news story about the Couric-Palin interview begins thusly:
The former NBC "Today" show host, in a short skirt, was flashing her famous gams in the interview while former beauty queen Palin wore a conservative pantsuit.
It has no relevance to the paragraph before, or the sentence after. It's just stuck in there—and hangs, awkwardly and lonesome. Says Franka: "Uh. Why is this in the article? Why is McCain's erotic appeal not touched upon through sartorial choices?"
Like I said, these things make no obvious sense—except, of course, that the sheer ubiquity of misogyny is what inures us to it.
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(For those too young to get the title reference, it comes from a series of adverts (example here) that ran from probably the late '60s to at least the mid '80s, in which "Madge the Manicurist" would tell ladies that Palmolive dishwashing liquid was so mild it would actually soften their hands while they did the dishes—then surprise them with the news: "You're soaking in it!" For some reason, that line has always stuck in my head as the perfect description for how sexism is so ubiquitous that we can't even see it. We're soaking in it!)
A: If you said, "An adult can't 'have sex with' a child, because a child can't consent," give yourself 1,000 points.
Despite the AP noting right in the article that Kelsey Peterson has been charged with sexual assault, and has already pleaded guilty to other related charges, they nonetheless say that she kidnapped her 13-year-old former student to "have sex with" him, or some variation thereof, four times—and CNN adds two more bulletpoints at the top of the page, as well as the headline: "Ex-teacher gets 6 years for sex with boy, 13."
The photo caption on Peterson's mugshot is even more euphemistic: "Kelsey Peterson was sentenced to six years in federal prison for running off to Mexico with a student."
Running off to Mexico?! Like it was a romantic weekend getaway, instead of a kidnapping and rape.
Now, part of the problem with this report is just the usual aversion to using language that more appropriately describes nonconsensual sexual contact, which is certainly a combination of a general cultural squeamishness about sexual assault and a wariness about using words that have a specific legal meaning (like "rape" and "sexual assault") as well as a lay meaning. So there's that going on, as ever.
But here we also have a gender-reversal, in which the perpetrator is female and the victim is male—so we've also got cultural gender biases at work, too, starting with the double-standard that prescribes 13-year-old girls who are raped by their male teachers to have been victimized* but 13-year-old boys who are raped by their female teachers to have had their wildest fantasies fulfilled.
Despite every other narrative we have contrarily suggesting that girls at that age are more mature and better decision-makers than boys, when it comes to sex, we inexplicably make a huge and unjustified exception: Boys are emotionally and psychologically sophisticated enough at 13 to consent to sex with an adult, despite having not even reached sexual maturity themselves. This alarming incongruence is itself predicated on the stereotype that male sexuality is separate from thought and emotion, but purely a physical act without enduring personal ramifications; thus, if a boy can say he desires sex, he is ready to consent to it.
With girls, we recognize that being desirous of sex does not translate to an a priori intellectual readiness. We acknowledge that the body often becomes capable of things for which the mind is not yet prepared, which is whence the idea of statutory rape comes. And yet boys whose female teachers kidnap them to engage in an activity for which children are not able to fully consent, by nature of their still-developing minds, are said to have been whisked away to Mexico, like it's no big deal.
And if we really want to expose this shocking hypocrisy for what it really is, let us imagine if Kelsey Peterson had been a man. We would not be so cavalier about a male teacher carting off a boy to "have sex with" him, even if the boy quite forcefully asserted he was gay. It's not just about regarding boys as having sexual agency; it's about regarding women's sexuality as so passive that women are not properly regarded as sexual predators even when they are. A man who "has sex with" a 13-year-old girl (or boy) is dangerous; a woman who "has sex with" a 13-year-old boy is sad. Or a minx who's just giving the lads what they want.
Neither characterization does their victims any favors.
[H/T to Shaker Megankay.]
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* Except, of course, for the few misogynist dirtbags who always crawl out of the woodwork in such cases to cast the female child as a seductress.
Some libraries in Broward County (Florida) are taking a novel approach to Banned Books Week. They are helping their readers find the books that are challenged or banned and encouraging them to read them.
Here's the list of the ten most challenged books in 2007 compiled by the American Library Association and the reasons.
1) “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group
2) “The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence
3) “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes Reasons: Sexually Explicit and Offensive Language
4) “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman Reasons: Religious Viewpoint
5) “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain Reasons: Racism
6) “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language,
7) “TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
8) “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou Reasons: Sexually Explicit
9) “It’s Perfectly Normal,” by Robie Harris Reasons: Sex Education, Sexually Explicit
10) "The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
As an adult, I've developed some sort of summertime allergies (hay fever? pollen? mold?) that are mild enough I've never felt compelled to see a doctor for them, and I've become lactose intolerant. (Yay, Silk!) Other than that, I've got three very weird allergies that I've had since I was a kid:
1. I'm allergic to some ingredient that's used in lots of shampoos (and if you've ever looked at a shampoo label, you know it's pretty much good luck isolating which of the bazillion chemical compounds it is). So when I find a shampoo that doesn't irritate my scalp, I stick with it like a madwoman.
2. I'm also allergic to a component in some types of concrete. You know that sparkly kind of concrete? Whatever is in that stuff causes any bit of my skin that touches it to go red and swell, but the worst part is the ITCHING! It makes me itch for hours and hours after I've touched it, especially the palms of my hands. I remember telling Mama Shakes about this when I was younger, and she thought I was completely crazy. For years, I think she was (understandably) convinced it was all in my head…until my first husband and his mother (a nurse) turned out to have the same allergy! They're the only other people I've known to have it.
3. And finally, what I think is the weirdest one…I'm allergic to the strep infection. When I get strep throat, I get a weird rash all over my body, and then my skin dries up and flakes off. Grodius maximus.
Democrat Barack Obama said Republican John McCain's long advocacy of deregulation contributed to the current financial crisis and letting his GOP rival continue those policies as president would be a gamble "we can't afford."
After the House defeated a bill Monday to bail out the financial industry but also impose new federal controls on it, the Democratic presidential candidate said that McCain has "fought against commonsense regulations for decades, he's called for less regulation 20 times just this year, and he said in a recent interview that he thought deregulation has actually helped grow our economy."
"Senator, what economy are you talking about?" Obama asked.
As you may recall, a couple of weeks ago we lost Richard Wright, one of the founding members of Pink Floyd.
Last week, David Gilmour was scheduled to appear on Later... with Jools Holland to promote his new live recording from the last show of his tour in Gdansk. Due to the recent sad events, the set list and focus changed. As a musical tribute, David performed "Remember A Day", a song written by Rick for the Saucerful of Secrets album that has never been performed live.
Below is an interview early in the show, followed by the performance. The second clip is a more in-depth interview, which gets rather heartbreaking about two minutes in when David stops himself from going down a rather depressing road.
President Mondo Fucko mourns his legacy; wonders if the pain hurts more than homelessness and starvation.
President Bush makes remarks on the failed bailout during his meeting with Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko, not shown, Monday, Sept. 29, 2008, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Welcome to Shakesville, a progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, social justice, cute things, and all that is in between. Please note that the commenting policy and the Feminism 101 section, conveniently linked at the top of the page, are required reading before commenting.
