Sock it to me, Shakers!
Recommended Reading:
Bil: A1 Steak Sauce: Sexism Is That Important
Jehanzeb Dar: "Yes Man" Says Yes to Stereotypes
Steve: Rush and Burris and Reid—Oh My!
Kathy G: Unions: Good for Democrats (and democrats)
Kevin: There's This Literary Genre Called Fiction. Ever Hear of It?
Renee: I Am Sean Bell: A Mothers Lament
Leave your links in comments...
Monday Blogaround
Random YouTubery: Mysterious Ways Edition
[Via Chris.]
Sad, Really
During the election, I remember there were those that idly wondered what had happened to Ann Coulter. As the media just lurves to trot her out for "outrageous" and "hilarious" quotes when something's going on politically, it seemed a little odd that Coulter was conspicuously absent. Some people felt that the Right was keeping her under wraps so she wouldn't embarrass them during the buildup to election day, but let's face it, when has that ever stopped her before?
Well apparently, Coulter has been busy slopping out a new book. Oh, joy. Now we can now look forward to her making the rounds on the shows, hawking her latest, which will no doubt be written with as much attention to accuracy as her other, ahem, creations. (Update: As oddjob points out in comments, the fact-checking has already begun.)
Of course, we'll have the usual outrage when she inevitably says something incredibly offensive, lefty bloggers will protest (and their commenters will tell them to "just ignore her"), righty bloggers will cheer (and their commenters will take Coulter's statements to higher extremes), and then the book will be remaindered. And then we'll all have a few months of peace until the next "book."
As I looked over the excerpts of the "hilarity" in the Media Matters article, I wasn't too surprised by anything that I saw. Actually, they were all pretty easy to predict. I expected vicious misogyny (Coulter just loves to hate women), and I got it. "Who's the biggest pussy?" Obama or Clinton? That's hysterical! She swipes at "Republican turncoats;" oooh, how edgy! She calls Scott McClellan "retarded." Stop, my sides! Obama, Halle Berry and Alicia Kyes (way to keep your thumb on those current events, Ann... Berry won her Oscar in, what, 2002?) would never have gotten to where they are without playing "the race card." Hey, don't get offended, she's just being funny! Really, it's just the usual Coulter Cry For Attention(tm) that we've all come to expect.
Except for one bit. I've got to admit, this surprised me; I really didn't think Coulter's barrel had any bottom left.Coulter calls children whose parents divorce "future strippers" in a chapter titled "Victim of a Crime? Thank a Single Mother":
I don't think Coulter has made such a desperate attempt to deliberately offend such a large group of people since she gave 9/11 widows the finger. Apparently, she doesn't think any of her readers (or potential readers) have ever been through a divorce. Or, more likely, she simply doesn't give a fuck. "In any event, divorced mothers should be called "divorced mothers," not "single mothers." We also have a term for the youngsters involved: "the children of divorce," or as I call them, "future strippers." It is a mark of how attractive it is to be a phony victim that divorcées will often claim to belong to the more disreputable category of "single mothers." [Page 36]
Later in the chapter, Coulter writes: "Single motherhood is like a farm team for future criminals and social outcasts." [Page 38]
At this point, I don't know who's the more desperate, pathetic book shill: Coulter or Jonah Goldberg.
(I'd like to respectfully request that we refrain from "tranny" ahem, "jokes," and "jokes" of a similar tone at Coulter's expense in comments. We have a zero tolerance policy for that here. Energy dome tip to Digby.)
In Case You Haven't Heard Already...
...Richardson's out and Franken's in.
Which means that there are serious questions about the Obama team's vetting process (James is right when he notes that stonewalling about the investigation should have left the nomination dead in the water), and that "Senator from Minnesota" is potentially the greatest SNL spin-off of all time.
Dark Lord Logic
If you didn't get impeached for it, it must have been legal!
Tune in next week for Part Two of Cheney's interview with Bob Schieffer, in which the outgoing veep explains how closing his eyes makes him invisible.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Bonus: Ozzie explains women to Rick
Ahh, the "good old days."
Sunday YouTubery
I love this. I love Alan Rickman to bitty bits and this (slightly redone) classic skit is so funny. The best part is how they crack each other up during it.
For a "making of" this skit with bits and info of the original:
The Doctor
Smith will first appear on TV screens as the 11th Doctor in 2010.Article & interview here
He was cast over Christmas and will begin filming for the fifth series of Doctor Who in the summer. Tennant is filming four specials in 2009.
Smith was named as Tennant's replacement in Saturday's edition of Doctor Who Confidential on BBC One.
He said: "I feel proud and honoured to have been given this opportunity to join a team of people that has worked so tirelessly to make the show so thrilling.
"David Tennant has made the role his own, brilliantly, with grace, talent and persistent dedication. I hope to learn from the standards set by him.
"The challenge for me is to do justice to the show's illustrious past, my predecessors, and most importantly, to those who watch it. I really cannot wait."
Friday YouTubery
More Neil Patrick Harris! My favorite song from Dr. Horrible. I belt this out while I'm driving. People stare but, hey, what's new? LOL
Shaker Gourmet: Cinnamon Rolls
An old family recipe to start the new year! This recipe comes from Shaker Ledasmom who says:
"I don't know who my great-grandmother had it from. These are not huge poofy cinnamon rolls, but little ones a couple of inches across. Traditionally, meaning this is the way I do it, they are eaten by unrolling them a bit at a time and spreading butter on the unrolled part until you get to the center, which is not easily unwound. It is an all-day recipe, or two-day recipe, but most of that is in the rising; the recipe can be fit in around whatever else you may have to do. Here is the recipe as my mother sent it, with my additions in parentheses."
Ledasmom adds: "Freezes well (It does. Right in the pan after cooling, with a good tight cover of foil; then you can pop 'em right in the oven to reheat). Can use brown sugar either inside or out. I can't guarantee that these are as delicious to everyone as they are to me, but they are well worth trying. The tops, bottoms and any sides that were against the sides of the pan get wonderfully brown and tasty."
A) 2 cups milk
2 packages dry yeast dissolved in 1/2 cup warm water
4-5 cups flour for a soft dough/thick batter
Let this rise to double - first rise
B) Cream 1/2 cup butter with 1 1/4 cup sugar. Add to dough from (A) with 1 egg and 1 teaspoon salt.
Let rise - second rise
C) Add flour to make like a bread dough but not as stiff (dough should be quite pliable and workable; you are going to be rolling it out). Knead. Punch down once and let rise - third and fourth rises
D) Roll out thin (in batches, not all at once, unless you are very good with a rolling pin and have nothing on your table--I would say the piece of dough, after rolling out but before rolling up, is about 14 inches by, say, 16, giving the properly small rolls after they are cut) and cover liberally with melted butter; sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Roll up and let rise - fifth rise
E)You slice the rolled-up log of dough into pieces about one inch long, which are placed in your buttered pan on end, so they look like sugar-cinnamon pinwheels. They are placed so they are touching, but with little gaps between - when risen, the gaps fill in. We use glass pans a couple of inches deep, cake pans, etc. Let rise.
F)(when risen and puffy) Cover with butter and 1 teaspoon flour, sugar and cinnamon (Brush with melted butter, sprinkle with a bit of flour and a reasonable amount of sugar and cinnamon. This produced the characteristic deep-brown tops num num num). Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes.
If you'd like to participate in Shaker Gourmet, email me at: shakergourmet (at) gmail.com
Friday Blogaround
hey your gay blogaround
Recommended Reading:
Marcella: Carnival Against Sexual Violence 62
Mannion: Franklin Roosevelt, Barack Obama, and the American Okee-doke
Gwen: Proud Parents of an Adorable Racist
Blue Gal: Video for Alternative Invocation - No thanks, Rick Warren!
Pam: Kathy Griffin Drops the D-word on Live TV
Aunt B: Doing the Same Things Over and Over
Leave your links in comments...
Brand New Year
Officials ordered nine Muslim passengers, including three young children, off an AirTran flight headed to Orlando from Reagan National Airport yesterday afternoon after two other passengers overheard what they thought was a suspicious remark.Nice, eh? Pay for our fuckup! And in case you were wondering what the "suspicious remark" was:
Members of the party, all but one of them U.S.-born citizens who were headed to a religious retreat in Florida, were subsequently cleared for travel by FBI agents who characterized the incident as a misunderstanding, an airport official said. But the passengers said AirTran refused to rebook them, and they had to pay for seats on another carrier secured with help from the FBI.
Kashif Irfan, one of the removed passengers, said the incident began about 1 p.m. after his brother, Atif, and his brother's wife wondered aloud about the safest place to sit on an airplane.Okay, in all seriousness, who has flown in their lifetime that hasn't had this very conversation? I know I've joked with others that, after seeing Alive, there's no way I'm ever sitting in the back of the plane, and I've said that I hate window seats by the wing because I hate being able to see the engine; I've mentioned that sitting right by the wing makes me nervous for other reasons. Funny, I've never been booted or "detained" or refused entry on a flight. Wonder why that is?
"My brother and his wife were discussing some aspect of airport security," Irfan said. "The only thing my brother said was, 'Wow, the jets are right next to my window.' I think they were remarking about safety."
Anyway, here's the part that really made me angry: (emphasis mine)
"At the end of the day, people got on and made comments they shouldn't have made on the airplane, and other people heard them," Hutcheson said. "Other people heard them, misconstrued them. It just so happened these people were of Muslim faith and appearance. It escalated, it got out of hand and everyone took precautions."Why the hell would these comments be comments that "shouldn't have" been made? Why the hell is talking about the safest place to sit on an airplane "inappropriate?"
[...]
Ellen Howe, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, said the pilot acted appropriately.
"For us, it just highlights that security is everybody's responsibility," Howe said. "Someone heard something that was inappropriate, and then the airline decided to act on it. We certainly support [the pilot's] call to do that."
Oh, because they were made by scary brown people in even scarier clothing with shit-your-pants scary beards.
Good thing one of them didn't take their shoes off. They may have been shot.
Women Should Learn How to Defend Themselves
That's what we hear from both well-meaning people and rape apologists on a fairly regular basis during discussions of rape prevention. Women should learn how to defend themselves.
It's a dangerously simplistic exhortation I've taken on before, in "Five Reasons Why 'Teach Women Self-Defense' Isn't a Comprehensive Solution to Rape," reason #4 of which is "Women who deter assaults with violent means are often punished."
Unfortunately, Cara and Renee have written about yet another woman's experience which underlines that point: Charris Bowers, who bit her husband's penis after it was inserted into her mouth without her consent, has been charged with battery. Note that the police do not dispute her assertion that the act happened against her will, but "after the deputy saw Delou Bowers' injuries, he concluded charges were warranted."
In other words, even though she was being raped, she had no right to defend herself using any means necessary. As Cara notes, "a penis has more rights than a woman."
As I've said before, this is where the vastly different cultural standards by which men and women are judged begin to rear their ugly heads. Although MRAs would have us believe that women can kill a man in cold blood and use "he looked at me cross-eyed" as a defense to get off scot-free, reality is ever-so-slightly different, especially for women of color. Even in cases of self-defense against an abusive male partner/spouse—in which upwards of 80% of cases have previous calls to police—battered women who use violent means to defend themselves are being convicted or are accepting pleas at a rate of 75-83% nationwide.
Why do many women fare so poorly in what are clearly cases of self-defense? Well, it might have a little something to do with the cognitive dissonance between what we say we want women to do to take care of themselves, and what we actually want women to do to take care of themselves.
To wit: About a year ago, Jessica posted a picture of a German warning sign noting that men who harass and/or grope women risk a slap in the face—and that people who see men harassing women (along with disproportionately targeted "migrants, homeless people, transgender people, gays") should get involved to stop it. Go on and just guess what the comments were.
If you guessed "totally missing the point about men doing something to warrant getting slapped, in order to shame teh ladiez for celebrating violence against men," give yourself 1,000 points.
As Ginmar noted in regard to this post (emphasis mine):It's a common technique of whiny dipshits who are usually complaining about uppity women when they're not complaining about how women just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and fight rape: get a gun. To that, I offer this response: men whining about how you can't trust women because they'll actually defend themselves! With slaps! Oh, God, the horror! The sheer horror of it all!
Exactly right. Ginmar also pinpoints another problem with exhortations to women to utilize self-defense methods, and why we should be suspicious of them, noting that there are men who "make suggestions about women's self defense that they know are useless and hopeless, safe in the knowledge that women will always be resented for any act of self defense." Admonishing women to learn self-defense in a culture where a cheeky sign about women slapping harassers is greeted with outraged fury and charges of misandry is misguided at best and willfully disingenuous at worst.
Pay special attention, in the second link, to the guy who says: "Nice poster. Next time a woman annoys me, I'll smack her. Hard. Great message. I don't see what's to like."
Remember, this is giving men what they claim they think is a great idea: women defending themselves.
The whole idea that a woman can use self-defense to deter a man she presumes is intent on raping her is predicated on (as all rape scenarios are) a very specific set of circumstances—that she is capable of fighting back, that she successfully does fight back, and that she hurts the potential rapist only enough to get away, but not so much that he ends up in the hospital (or morgue), lest she face charges, and that all of this happens in front of witnesses who will corroborate her story, just in case. And even then, as the Jersey 4 case illustrates, that still doesn't mean she won't be convicted.
And again I note that self-defense doesn't seem like quite the cure-all it is repeatedly suggested to be.
Natural Allies: Part 1,365,842 in a Series
Shaker Iscah passes on this article from the BBC about the most ubiquitous insults currently used by schoolchildren. See if you notice anything the list has in common:
Gay (83%)
Bitch (59%)
Slag (45%)
Poof (29%)
Batty boy (29%)
Slut (26%)
Queer (26%)
Lezzie (24.8%)
Homo (22%)
Faggot (11%)
Sissy (5%)
I'm pleased to see The PatriarchyTM so successfully entrenching itself among the next generation. Otherwise, we feminazi bitchez and hysterical queers might genuinely have to start "looking for things to get mad about" in order to maintain the level of sustained outrage which confers upon Democratic presidents who ignore us that elusive and priceless currency with conservatives who want to destroy them.
And us.
----------------------------
As an aside, I want to note that the top epithets were compiled based on responses to a survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, the British teachers' union. The respondents were asked to report which slurs they overheard most frequently. Given that teaching in Britain is still a predominantly white and female occupation, privilege could certainly be playing a part in these results, specifically the lack of any racial epithets, which still flourish in Britain—that is, white women may have been more likely to hear/register insults demeaning women and gays than insults demeaning racial minorities. Or, the results merely reflect a lack of significant diversity. Quite possibly, it's a combination of both.
RIP Donald E. Westlake
Prolific mystery writer Donald E. Westlake has died.
I have to admit that I didn't know who Mr. Westlake was until I realized that I had read several books by Richard Stark and Tucker Coe and enjoyed them very much. And then when I saw that he had written the screenplay for The Grifters, I remembered a beautifully crafted story it was with characters that I liked, and I appreciate what a talent he was. He also had a great sense of humor bordering on the absurd in such novels as "Bank Shot," which became a movie starring George C. Scott.Mr. Westlake, considered one of the most successful and versatile mystery writers in the United States, received an Academy Award nomination for a screenplay, three Edgar Awards and the title of Grand Master from the Mystery Writers of America in 1993.
Since his first novel, “The Mercenaries,” was published by Random House in 1960, Mr. Westlake had written under his own name and several pseudonyms, including Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt and Edwin West. Despite the diversity of pen names, most of his books shared one feature: They were set in New York City, where he was born.
Mr. Westlake used different names in part to combat skepticism over his rapid rate of writing books, sometimes as many as four a year, his friends said.
What also endears him to me and probably a lot of other writers is that he never traded up from a manual typewriter to a computer. There's something about someone who is so confident in his writing that he is willing to commit ink to paper without the safety net of the delete key or the software that lets you do all sorts of rearranging -- and second-guessing -- before you print it out. That's the mark of a great writer. He will be missed.
Fair and Balanced, Bitchez
Just watch the scroll at the bottom of the screen, where Fox News was posting Happy New Year text messages from its viewers:
If you can't see the video, it reads: "HAPPY NEW YEAR AND LET'S HOPE THE MAGIC NEGRO DOES A GOOD JOB. LOVE JEN AND JOHN C."
Stay classy, Fox.
[Via Think Progress.]
Help Needed
Shaker Sarah in Chicago lost her dad very suddenly last night. A friend of hers is fronting the cost of the ticket home to New Zealand, but Sarah will need to pay back the loan, so if you've got a few bob to spare and/or the willingness to pass on a note on your own blog (if you've got one), she'd be hugely grateful.
(((SiC)))
Open Thread on Israel Strike on Hamas, Part II
As with Part One, I'm going to keep this short on commentary and long on recommended reading, then open up the discussion. Last time, we had a really interesting and almost totally civil thread, and I'd be ever so grateful if we could do the same thing again. (If you didn't read the first thread, it's worth a look.)
The Guardian: Israeli warplanes destroy Gaza houses and mosque as air strikes continue
WaPo: Senior Hamas Leader Killed: Israelis Stand Ready to Invade Gaza by Land
New York Times: Striking Deep Into Israel, Hamas Employs an Upgraded Arsenal
LA Times: Israel can't bomb its way to peace
Ezra: An Occupied Nation and a Threatened One
Glenn: More oddities in the U.S. "debate" over Israel/Gaza
For those interested in my position, this time I'll quote Hava: "This is an extremely complicated situation and both sides are at fault and both have legitimate arguments against the other. My main concern is to move past the crap and try to create conditions for peace. I'm not interested in condemning either side as the sole instigator of a very ugly situation."
And, for the record, I believe in the right of any nation or people to defend itself; I don't believe, however, that axiomatically means any and every method or scope of defense is justifiable.
