Shakesville

Impossibly Beautiful

Part Twenty-Three in an ongoing series…

Jenna Fischer, aka Pam from The Office, does not look like this:

In fact, if the cover of Self magazine hadn't identified her, I don't guess I would have recognized her. Because Jenna Fischer looks like this:

When she smiles, she is all teeth. It's one of the most notable (and, dare I say, cutest) things about her appearance—and there is no gap around her teeth as there is in the Photoshopped grin on the Self cover.

The nose and chin are ever so slightly off, too—"perfected," natch. So that Jenna Fischer looks nothing like her self on the cover of Self magazine. Paging Mr. Orwell…

[H/T to Shaker InfamousQBert. Impossibly Beautiful: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two.]

Blog for Choice Day 2009

Today is Blog for Choice Day, and the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. This year's topic is: What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?

My top pro-choice hope for our President and Congress is the same as my top pro-choice hope always is—that they would recognize that legal and accessible abortion is a fundamental component of respecting women's autonomy and equality, and thus defend and protect the right wholly, ardently, and unapologetically.

As for me, I support choice for a very simple reason: I want it. I want choice—for myself, and for other women. And I trust women to make the best choices for themselves. That's about the long and the short of it.

All the rest—the hand-wringing, the shaming, the religion, the science, the assertions of certitude about when life begins—is just so much noise, is just so many different ways of qualifying why, exactly, women aren't fit to make decisions for themselves about their reproduction.

I trust women, and the only question I have for someone who rejects choice is: Why don't you?

As we move forward in our fight to protect choice, I hope every last member of the anti-choice misogynistic crusade against women's personal autonomy is forced to account for their answer to that question.

And believe me, the fight isn't even close to over.

I'm 34 years old. My whole life, abortion has been legal, but its legality has never been totally secure, predicated on the composition of the Supreme Court, on our political and cultural leaders' resolve to support and protect it, on pro-choice women's and men's determination to defend it.

Nevertheless, there are an incredible number of women and men in my generation (and its youngers) who subscribe to the understandably appealing but erroneous belief that Roe will never be overturned, who fail to realize it matters not whether Roe is overturned, if anti-choicers are successful in rendering it an empty statute. Such widespread complacency and ignorance has created a void in which anti-choicers have been frighteningly successful at chipping away abortion rights and access on the state level, leaving many women across the nation with the legal right to get an abortion, but no means to do so.

So on we march, from one battle to the next, fighting for the right to choose, to make up our own minds about our bodies and our futures. And in each place, of each new face who believes s/he knows better what's best for us, I hope we ask: I trust women; why don't you?

Frozen

President Barack Obama has frozen the salaries of all White House staff making $100K or more a year. As he said, we "deserve a government that truly is of, and by, the American people."

Cool. I get that this is largely symbolic, but still, it's a pretty nice gesture. Like I was just saying to Liss, Obama is the anti-Bush in so many ways. It's not just that he's a Democrat (and African-American and young and erudite and well-spoken, etc., etc.) but it's like everything he does is the complete antithesis of his predecessor. (See below.) Even his symbolic gestures are a complete repudiation of the last administration's every policy.

(Via.)

Suck It, Bush

lol your executive privilege:

Obama to Bush: I Can Release Your Records. Don't Like It? Sue.

On his first day in office, President Obama put former president Bush on notice. His administration just released an executive order that will make it difficult for Bush to shield his White House records--and those of former Vice President Dick Cheney--from public scrutiny by invoking the doctrine of executive privilege.

..."[Obama]'s putting former presidents on notice that if you want to continue a claim of executive privilege that [Obama] doesn't think is well-placed, you're going to have to go to court," says Anne Weismann, the chief counsel for Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW).

Obama's executive order not only revokes "Bush's infamous Executive Order 13233, which gave current and former presidents and vice presidents, along with their heirs, unprecedented authority to block the disclosure of White House records," but also redefines executive privilege with a much more rigorous standard:

This order ends the practice of having others besides the President assert executive privilege for records after an administration ends. Now, only the President will have that power, limiting its potential for abuse. And the order also requires the Attorney General and the White House Counsel to review claims of executive privilege about covered records to make sure those claims are fully warranted by the Constitution.

Effectively, that gives Obama the right to tell Bush to shove it if the new administration doesn't agree with the Bush administration's assessment that something should be protected by executive privilege, leaving the erstwhile White House crooks with the singular option of suing to prevent the release of the archives.

Heh.

Now that is some change I can believe in.

[H/T to Shaker Vicster.]

Quote of the Day

"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari."—Obama spokesperson Bill Burton, on the technological retrofuckery the new administration found in the White House.

Difference being, that Atari is still awesome. Unlike the Bush's antiquated tech mess.

Oscar Noms

The list is here.

Best picture nominees are The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, and Slumdog Millionaire—not a single one of which centers primarily on a female character,* and only one of which centers primarily on a gay character (Milk) and only one of which centers primarily on people of color (Slumdog Millionaire).

There were no female producers on any of the five best picture nominees, and no women were nominated for Best Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Score, Best Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Makeup, or Best Visual Effects. Only one woman was nominated in each screenplay category: Robin Swicord (with a male partner) in Best Adapted Screenplay for Benjamin Button and Courtney Hunt in Best Original Screenplay for Frozen River.

There is not a single woman of color nominated in the Best Actress category. Viola Davis and Taraji P. Henson, both African-American actresses, were nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

There is not a single man of color nominated in either the Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor categories—though Robert Downey, Jr. was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Tropic Thunder in which he plays a white actor appearing in blackface.

There is not a single openly gay woman or man in any acting category, though the straight Sean Penn was nominated for playing an iconic gay man, Harvey Milk.

There are no men of color nominated for Best Director.

For being the Most Liberal Place on Earth^TM, Hollywood sure is conservative.

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

* Though Kate Winslet is nominated for Best Actress in The Reader, it should be noted that she was nominated for—and won—a Golden Globe in the supporting actress category for that film, and there's a reason for that: She plays a key character in the life of the leading male character; even in its own promotional materials, the film suggests Winslet's character is Someone Who Was Important in the Life of the Male Protagonist.

Lost Open Thread

Last night's episode will be discussed in infinitesimal detail, so if you haven't seen it, and don't want any spoilers, move along...

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

V

Top Chef Open Thread

Chef Tom Colicchio will drink. your. milkshake!!!
He will also, should you require it, totally give you the Heimlich Maneuver to save your life and then be charmingly humble about it.

[Thanks very much to everyone who sent me that link!]

Question of the Day

What's the greatest American band?

I imagine this might be a pretty controversial answer, but I'm going to go with R.E.M. And anyone who's ever been at a party anywhere in America after midnight when "Radio Song" comes on would have a pretty damn difficult time disagreeing with me. It doesn't matter a person's age, color, sex, sexuality...when "Radio Song" comes on, everyone digs it, yo.

Ditto "Stand." And about two dozen other tracks.

Why, Hello There

Madame Secretary

The U.S. Senate confirmed Hillary Clinton to be President Obama's secretary of state in a 94 to 2 vote.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was instrumental in urging Republicans to support Clinton. Only Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) voted against her nomination. (Link)

Daily Kitteh

Matilda's paws are also Chinese throwing stars.

OMGOMGOMG

[Shakesville rewind.]

"For the Childrenz!" Porn Law Strikes Out

SCOTUS declines to revisit favorite porn law of the culture vultures, the Child Online Protection Act, which then-President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1998 but never took effect due to ongoing legal challenges.

[T]he law would have made it illegal for the operator of a commercial Web site to make sexually explicit material deemed harmful to minors available to those under 17. Violators would have faced fines of up to $50,000 per offense and six months in jail. A site that carried such material but gated it off from children through credit cards or other age-verifying measures would have had a defense under the statute.

Backers of the law contended that it was aimed primarily at "teaser" ads, or free samples offered by Web pornography sites. But opponents of the law complained that it was too broad and could have covered non-pornographic sexual material, like those dealing with gynecological issues.

There's no "could have" about it, really. Censorship of "pornographic" images has been a recurring problem for me, as many of the images I need hosted to talk about feminist issues (like disembodied women's parts as novelty items) are censored on the basis of being "pornographic."

Years ago, there was legitimate concern that even marginally sexualized imagery of same-sex couples would be censored, too, limiting the freedoms of same-sex dating sites who wanted, like their hetero counterparts, to be able to show images of couples canoodling.

Just a total coincidence, of course, that a law designed to "protect the children" from pornographers necessarily impinged on the freedom of expression of feminists/queers engaged merely in the promotion of their radical ideas about equality. What are the odds?!

I quite genuinely sympathize with parents' struggles to shelter their children from online pornography, which is infuriatingly ubiquitous even in spaces one wouldn't necessarily expect, but this law was never the right way to do it.

Lily Allen: The Fear

I want to be rich, and I want lots of money
I don't care about clever; I don't care about funny
I want loads of clothes and fuckkloads of diamonds
I heard people die while they're trying to find them

And I'll take my clothes off, and it will be shameless
'Cuz everyone knows that's how you get famous
I'll look at the sun, and I'll look in the mirror
I'm on the right track, yeah, I'm onto a winner

I don't know what's right and what's real anymore
And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore
When d'ye think it will all become clear?
'Cuz I'm being taken over by The Fear

Life's about film stars and less about mothers
It's all about fast cars and cursing each other
But it doesn't matter, 'cuz I'm packing plastic
And that's what makes my life so fucking fantastic

And I am a weapon of massive consumption
And it's not my fault; it's how I'm programmed to function
I'll look at the sun, and I'll look in the mirror
I'm on the right track, yeah, I'm onto a winner

I don't know what's right and what's real anymore
And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore
When d'ye think it will all become clear?
'Cuz I'm being taken over by The Fear

Forget about guns, and forget ammunition
'Cuz I'm killing them all on my own little mission
Now I'm not a saint, but I'm not a sinner
Now everything's cool as long as I'm getting thinner

I don't know what's right and what's real anymore
And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore
When d'ye think it will all become clear?
'Cuz I'm being taken over by fear

Love Fest Officially Over

Boehlert: The media myth about the cost of Obama's inauguration.

I'm shocked—shocked, I tell you—that the mainstream media have gone right back to the same old double-standards they had before Obama sent a shiver up Chris Matthews' leg straight to his Hardballz.

Once upon a time, in a primary far, far away, there were people telling me that I was an asshole for arguing that the media's hostile disposition toward Hillary Clinton was not a legitimate reason to withhold support from her, because, one day, they would be just as stupidly unfair to Barack Obama.

I am an asshole. And there were legitimate reasons to withhold support from Hillary Clinton.

But the ludicrous notion that the media were ever going to maintain their love affair with Obama was never one of them.

A Single Footprint on the Moon

Yesterday, I went back and forth between working and catching what I could of the inauguration coverage.

I managed to be there for live coverage of the swearing in, and President Obama's Inaugural Address.

I was awed by the sheer mass of humanity on the Mall.

I was moved by the music, and even more by the cutaways to people in the audience -- their faces streaked with tears of joy, their eyes searching hungrily for external signs that the hope they hold inside is justified, and their faces relaxing -- brows smoothing out -- as they seemed to have found the signs that they were looking for.

I watched what I could of the parade, in between meeting with clients (because I'm a sucker for a marching band -- plus, I wanted to see the queers tooting their horns -- no pun intended).

As I watched, I had the same sense that I had on Election Day 2008 -- a strange mixture of solemnity and giddiness as I witnessed something historic -- something being logged into a history that I would want to claim.

This feeling is not entirely unfamiliar, although it seems like a long time since I last experienced it.

I felt something like it as I stared into my television set to see the first moon walk, and President Nixon announcing the end of the Vietnam War, and Nelson Mandela walking out of prison, and the Berlin Wall being knocked down.

Still -- yesterday felt different, somehow.

I should note that this giddy/solemn sensation has a nasty cousin, too -- a feeling of similar solemnity, but devoid of all giddiness -- a response that's all sinking stomach and aching heart.

I felt that the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and again, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, and yet again, when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, and after the massacres at Kent State and Tienanmen Square, and when the first Bush authorized "Operation Desert Storm", and on 9/11/01, and when the second Bush authorized "Operation Iraqi Freedom", and as I watched thousands of people abandoned in the aftermath of Katrina.

On those days, too, staring into my television, I realized that I was watching something "historic" -- but that it was part of a history that I emphatically did not want.

Yet yesterday seemed something more than a simple antithesis of that "nasty cousin"-ish feeling.

I kept reaching, all day, for a clear understanding of what I was feeling -- I tried to pin it down it in the amorphous sensations that flirted around the edges of my heart and mind as I watched the inaugural festivities.

I searched for it in the expressions that lingered on the faces of joyous, tearful, boisterous crowds, and in my own confused and tender caution as I watched Michelle and Barack Obama step out of the presidential limousine during the parade. ("No! Be careful!" my inner mother-hen whispered -- and then, a moment later, my inner activist cried: "Yes! Be Unafraid!")

I kept crawling around in my own brain and heart and body all day, trying to put my finger on the exact "difference" that I felt, until I saw this clip in the online coverage I was watching (forgive any commercials, please -- I'm not in control of that, but I wanted you to see the vid):

That's when I knew what seemed so different for me.

Barack Obama's presidency does not erase the agony of Myrlie Evers-Williams' loss of her husband Medgar, or the tragedy of our collective loss of her husband as a powerful, committed voice against racism and discrimination of all types.

Barack Obama's presidency does not remove the grueling pain of daily discrimination that Medgar, Myrlie, their children, grandchildren, and countless other people of color have faced in the 45 years since Medgar's murder -- much less mitigate the suffering that centuries of abuse, oppression, and discrimination have perpetrated upon people of color during the history of this nation.

Barack Obama's presidency does not end the ongoing reality of racism today, or neutralize the toxicity of its impact on our nation.

It does erase, remove, and end this:

The notion that the agony, pain, and toxicity that is Racism is inevitable in our country.

Racism does not have to exist. It is not "natural" to human beings, nor is it necessary to society. When people of all colors share power and responsibility, nations not only do not crumble -- they rise, and celebrate, and grow stronger.

Myrlie and Medgar Evers knew this. I knew this. Mostly likely, if you're reading this blog, you knew this.

But yesterday, in the United States of America, Barack Obama demonstrated this.

Barak Obama's presidency is not the end of racism in the United States, by any means, but I honestly believe that it is the beginning of a new era in the process of eradicating racism in the United States, because upon his inauguration, a template is set and a precedent created -- it is now possible, beyond any argument, for a person whose skin is not "white" to hold the most powerful office in our land.

That is what was different for me yesterday.

When I think back on the other times I had that "giddy-solemn-historic" feeling, only the moon-walk begins to parallel it -- many wars have been ended in the course of human history, and many walls knocked down -- but to walk on the Moon . . . . ?

A single footprint on the Moon means that anything is possible.

(Full Disclosure: Yes, I still have complaints with Barack Obama and his campaign/transition teams. Yes, I'm not satisfied with Obama's dealings with queers and their issues. And finally -- Yes, I am an incredibly complicated being who is capable of simultaneously experiencing deep disappointment about discrimination that is peculiar to my situation while experiencing profound joy as I watch my brothers and sisters who are discriminated against for a different, equally fucked-up, reason rejoice in a breakthrough in the particular area of oppression that has kept them down, and capable of understanding that "their" victory is "my" victory, because -- you know -- they are my sisters, and my brothers -- they are ME.)

LOLOLOLOLOLOst

[Spoiler warnings through Season 4.]

No one will appreciate this more than Space Cowboy and Space Cowgirl, who have watched all four seasons of Lost since November, when Iain and I got them totally, hopelessly hooked.

We have had conference calls in the interim. All four of us. On speakerphone.

Ring.

Liss: Hello?

Space Cowboy: ZOMGZOMGWTFZOMG I can't even deal with Sayid breaking a dude's neck with his FUCKING FEET! I. Can't. Deal.

Space Cowgirl: McEwans! We can't deal over here!

Liss: Hang on. I'm getting Iain. And liquids. We're going to be here awhile.

[Via Rachel, naturally.]

Love These Pictures

[H/Ts to Latoya and Kevin, respectively.]

Wednesday Blogaround

hey your gay blogaround is full of delicious gummi liquid!

Recommended Reading:

BAC: Tonight We Party

Echidne: Read It If You Dare

Pam: Headline of the Day - Vatican: 'Homosexual behavior' in Decline

Lauredhel: Blokes Calling Out Blokes: Tommy on Celebrity Big Brother UK

Renee: Amnesty International: Barack Obama First 100 Days

And Phil has moved!

Leave your links in comments...