There was an article in the New York Times yesterday about the on-line romance between Ann Althouse, a well-known blogger, and one of her commenters named Meade.
The blogger is boss, a salon host with wit and whip. Certainly a blogger thrives on commenters — who wants to declaim to an empty e-room? But let’s be clear: blogger, sovereign; commenters, courtiers.
That’s why the bloggerati pounced gleefully last week on the news that one of their own had fallen in love with a commoner, er, commenter.
Reader, she is going to marry him.
Ann Althouse, 58, is a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison who blogs about politics, law and cultural whatnots in a sharp, occasionally ribald tone. She admires Rush Limbaugh, voted for George Bush in ’04 and Barack Obama in ’08. She attracts derision and applause from 500,000 monthly visitors.
The jeers spiked ever since the March 22 announcement on her blog that this divorced mother of two adult sons, stalwartly single for more than 20 years, is engaged to a commenter known simply as “Meade.” Except for her closest readers, the blogosphere was taken by surprise.
“Does she know the guy?” sniggered Mickey Kaus, the Slate blogger, in a bloggingheads.tv interview.
In a phone interview, Ms. Althouse shot back, “If a male blogger found women to consort with by going into his comments, I think he’d be congratulated.”
The tale of Meade and Ms. Althouse is a cross between the studiedness of a Victorian epistolary courtship —a modern-day Robert Browning googling his dear Elizabeth Barrett — and the wackiness of 21st-century life online. The Althouse commentariat would log into the virtual local pub of the blog, gossiping and fantasizing about their queen’s offline love life, and even egging the couple on. When the announcement finally came, the commentariat cheered, bursting with hometown pride that a humble, anonymous son of the Internet could win the hand of the blogger.
With all the snark going around, I suspect there's a bit of envy on the part of the critics. But love is where you find it, on-line wacky or not, and I've heard of some stranger connections that worked out very well.
Best wishes to the happy couple.
Cross-posted -- with love -- from
Bark Bark Woof Woof.
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(This is Kathy from Birmingham Blues. Thanks for the opportunity to post, Liss!)
On Saturday, a Washington state man apparently murdered his five children and then killed himself. It's a horrific story, and of course the press are all over it, trying to figure out why it happened. And what have they found? You guessed it -- there's a woman to blame. Or at least that's what you'd think if you read the headlines:
- Yahoo News - "Police: Dad Killed 5 Kids Because Wife Was Leaving"
- Kansas City Star - "Man Who Apparently Killed His 5 Children 'Devestated' [sic] over Wife Leaving"
- AFP - "Spurned by Wife, Man Kills His Five Children, Self" (note they're his children rather than their children)
- CNN - "Husband Saw Wife with Another Man before Killing Kids"
- My local paper (no link available)- "Police: Kids Killed Because Mom Left"
Yep -- mom did it.
The text in the AP story is disturbing as well:
Authorities and relatives portrayed a father believed to have killed his five children and then himself as a strict parent who had been reprimanded by the state and a jealous husband driven to rage by another man.
Strict? Sorry, no. A strict parent holds kids to their curfew and makes them finish their chores before they go out with friends.
Buried toward the end of the story is this:Harrison was put on a parenting plan by state child welfare officials in 2007 after what Troyer describes as a "minor assault" on one of the children. He agreed to the plan and the case was closed, [Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Ed] Troyer said.
This guy wasn't strict. He was a controlling, abusive asshole who used one of their children to stalk and spy on his wife. And when she didn't follow his order to return home, he took his revenge.The night before, the father and his eldest daughter went in search of the wife, Angela Harrison. The daughter used a GPS feature in her mother's cell phone to find her with another man at a convenience store in Auburn, said Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff.
The woman told her husband she was not coming home, and was leaving him for the man with her at the store. The father and the daughter left, distraught, Troyer said. Sometime after the children went to sleep, he shot them each multiple times. Four died in their beds. The fifth was found in the mobile home's bathroom, surrounded by signs of violent struggle.
"He wanted the kids dead," Troyer said. "It wasn't like he shot a few rounds. He shot several rounds."
Investigators believe he then returned to the area near the convenience store looking for his wife. His body was found near the store, Troyer said.
"A working theory is that he probably went back up there looking for her, wasn't able to find her, realized the gravity of what he'd done and shot himself," Troyer said.
This guy murdered five children and may very well have intended to murder his wife as well. I don't care how "devestated" he was or how spurned he felt. He made the choice; he pulled the trigger.
How about we put the blame where it belongs this time.
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The 2009 Canadian F-Word Blog Awards, for which Shakesville
won Best International Feminist Blog last year, to our blushing pride and extreme gratitude, is now accepting this year's nominations, so head on over to
A Creative Revolution and submit your nominees!
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Well, after the first part of conservative philosophy—starving the beast and letting the free market rule—was put into action, it's time to check in with the second part of that philosophy and see how it's going for people. The economy should be strong (oopsy!) and anyone falling off the edge should be getting plenty of assistance from private enterprise, because people help people better than government helps people, right?
Uh-oh! Looks like more massive fail:
Cities and counties are reporting a sharp increase in homeless families as the economic crisis leads to job loss and makes housing unaffordable.
[...]
• In Chicago, calls to a homelessness prevention hotline were 59% higher in February than a year earlier, says Nancy Radner, head of the Chicago Alliance to End Homelessness. "We're getting requests from people earning more than $30,000 a year, even $65,000. That's unprecedented."
• In Los Angeles, 620 families used the winter shelter program this winter, compared with 330 families a year earlier, manager David Martel says.
• In the Phoenix area, 230 people in families were living on the street in January; there were 49 a year ago. There were 139 children younger than 18 living on the street on their own, according to the Maricopa Association of Governments.
• In Miami-Dade County, the number of people calling for help after getting an eviction notice jumped from 1,000 in 2007 to 4,000 last year, David Raymond of the county's Homeless Trust says. "We've beefed up our prevention efforts," he says, so fewer people become homeless.
• In the Seattle area, street homelessness increased 2% overall but 40% in the suburbs, where the number living in cars rose from 229 last year to 339, homelessness project director Bill Block says.
The good news is that back in the reality-based community, $1.5 billion in federal funding has been slated "to help struggling people pay their rent, utilities or security deposits so they don't end up homeless."
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[Trigger warning.]
So, I'm reading this article about the arrest of one of the choreographers from "So You Think You Can Dance," Alex Da Silva, who's accused of sexually assaulting four of his dance students, and this is the part where I feel the bile start to rise:
Da Silva had been accused in 2003, 2004 and 2005 of sexually assaulting three women, but for unknown reasons prosecutors declined to file charges, [Det. John Eum] said.
Then on March 28, a fourth woman accused Da Silva of luring her to his home, using a ruse to get her into his bedroom and raping her. Detectives went back to interview the previous accusers, found similar accusations of being lured to Da Silva's bedroom and sexually assaulted by him, and reopened their cases.
"These four women don't know each other at all, yet their reports read basically the same," the detective said. He noted that one of the accusers was a minor at the time of the alleged assault.
So even though this guy has been accused
three times of sexual assault, including by a minor, he was not only
not prosecuted for years, despite consistent stories from multiple accusers, but he was somehow able to parlay his unaffected career into a position on a popular television show which regularly brought him into intimate physical contact with young women, including minors.
I don't believe for one bloody second that Fox's vetting didn't turn up these accusations, but, even in the astonishing event it didn't, I also don't believe for one bloody second that
none of the other choreographers had heard about them. One of the things they always say on that show is how small the dancing community is; it's like how all the girls at any high school know who the male teachers are who "play grab-ass" with their female students. Word gets around.
Warnings get around.
It's inconceivable none of the other choreographers knew of Da Silva's reputation if he'd been officially accused three times (which means he's probably attacked a lot more women, since most rapes aren't reported). I am extremely curious whether the likelihood he's a serial rapist was made known to producers, or whether the other choreographers just closed ranks, somehow convincing themselves that all the accusations were false.
Meanwhile, the theme to Fox's popular show still plays when visiting
Da Silva's website.
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More tragic news.
A gunman wearing a bulletproof vest and "lying in wait" opened fire on officers responding to a domestic disturbance call Saturday, killing three of them and turning a quiet Pittsburgh street into a battlefield, police said.
If you
recall, just yesterday we were told that "gun control laws kill innocent people." Except they don't. In this case said laws would have presumably kept an assault rifle out of the hands of a very dangerous person. Note as well that the three who died were not only armed, but highly trained in the use of firearms.
Police Chief Nate Harper said the motive for the shooting isn't clear, but friends said the gunman recently had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.
I don't even know what to say anymore.
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For those who haven't heard, a gunman went on a shooting rampage in an immigration center in Binghamton, NY.
When I saw this story at Memeorandum I noticed that Atlas Shrugs had something to say. So I looked, and I wasn't disappointed. Money quote:
If NY didn't have such draconian, anti-second amendment gun laws and one of those hostages was carrying - this nightmare would be over. Gun control laws kill innocent people.
The lack of gun control laws would not guarantee that a) any of the hostages would own guns, b) any of the hostages would know how to use a gun with perfect precision without panicking, or c) a gun-wielding hostage wouldn't shoot any of the other hostages accidentally, creating a whole gun-toting clusterfuck.
Seriously, learn to logic.
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Telegraph: Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy in palace encounter.
Guardian: Michelle Obama's fashion face-off with Carla Bruni-Sarko.
The Swamp: Michelle Obama, Carla Bruni 'smackdown'.
"Encounter." "Face-off." "Smackdown." (Smackdown, for fuck's sake!) Why is it, when any two powerful women—especially beautiful powerful women—are in the same place at the same time, the media has to treat it like a grudge match?!
Like Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni, who have no reason to have the slightest bit of animosity toward one another, are going to throw down in the middle of the G-fucking-20, while Angela Merkel yells, "Catfight!"
Honest to fuck. [/disgusted]
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8.5%. The national jobless rate, as the American economy "shed another 663,000 jobs in March, the government reported Friday, bringing the toll of job losses during the recession to 5.1 million" and marking "the 15th consecutive month of job losses."
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"She came out of her house with another guy who was not her husband, so we must punish her. There are boundaries you cannot cross."—Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan, taking credit for the flogging, captured on video (trigger warning; video does not play automatically), of a young woman in Pakistan's Swat Valley, "offering a shocking glimpse of militant brutality in the once-peaceful district, and a sign of Taliban influence spreading deeper into the country." Khan also "defended the Taliban's right to thrash women shoppers who were inappropriately dressed, saying it was permitted under Islamic law."
[Samar Minallah, a Pashtun documentary maker and anthropologist who provided the video to the Guardian] said the punishment had been inflicted within the last 10 days, following the signing of a controversial peace deal under which the provincial government ceded control of the valley's judicial system to the militants.
"This video is being widely circulated because the Taliban want people to see it. They want to give the message that this is taking place after the peace deal because this is something they ideologically believe in," she said.
...The woman in the video, named as Chaand and believed to be aged 17, was punished in Matta, a district further up the Swat Valley.
Minallah and other sources said the girl was punished on suspicion of having had an illicit relationship with a married man. She did not receive a trial. "The whole case is based on the suspicions of one neighbour," said Minallah.
The woman's brother is among the men pinning her down, she added. "It's symbolic that he does it with his own hands. It gives him honour in local society, that he has done it for the sake of religion."
The Swat Valley is controlled by Maulana Fazlullah, a charismatic preacher who initially gained popularity through radio broadcasts, then seized control through gun battles, suicide attacks and intimidation of the local population.
Great. The Rush Limbaugh of Swat Valley.
Contact the US State Department.
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Shaker Caitiecat emails to let me know that today is National Cleavage Day:
I shit you not.
A quote from the sponsor's spokesperson (Wonderbra's Samantha Peterson): "It gives women a chance to be beautiful and glow in the furtive, yet appreciative, glances their cleavage evokes from men," she said.
Male gaze ruled crucial! Film at eleven!
Sigh.
As per usual, the only cleavage of which you are likely to get a glimpse around here is that left by the vicious streak of cunty bombast which cleaves twain my otherwise flawless ladylike diffidence.
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CDC: Rocket fuel chemical found in baby formula. As you know, I'm not a parent, so take this with a grain of salt, but I'm pretty sure that's not good.
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Let's hope Obama knows what the fuck he's doing, because OMFG $3.5 trillion dollars:
Congressional Democrats overwhelmingly embraced President Obama's ambitious and expensive agenda for the nation yesterday, endorsing a $3.5 trillion spending plan that sets the stage for the president to pursue his most far-reaching priorities.
Voting along party lines, the House and Senate approved budget blueprints that would trim Obama's spending proposals for the fiscal year that begins in October and curtail his plans to cut taxes. The blueprints, however, would permit work to begin on the central goals of Obama's presidency: an expansion of health-care coverage for the uninsured, more money for college loans and a cap-and-trade system to reduce gases that contribute to global warming.
The measures now move to a conference committee where negotiators must resolve differences between the two chambers, a prelude to the more difficult choices that will be required to implement Obama's initiatives. While Democrats back the president's vision for transforming huge sectors of the economy, they remain fiercely divided over the details.
My greatest fear, especially given the administration's silly emphasis on bipartisanship so far, is that any decent plan that has its details hammered out via two-party negotiations will also have any chance at efficacy hammered out, too. I don't know how many unassailably great ideas for spending this money the Dems actually have, to be perfectly frank, but, if they've got any, they'd better be prepared to fiercely defend them against being bipartisanized into complete rubbish.
The Republicans have been pretty clear they want Obama's initiatives (if not his entire presidency) to fail, which ought to be, if the administration and the Congressional Democrats had spines, as good as saying, "We are not operating in good faith and you should not negotiate with us."
The GOP should be cut out of the process as much as possible, not because of spite, not because that's the way they've been doing business for the past 8 years, but because their party line is defeating Obama's policies, despite the fact that he (and a Democratic majority) were voted into office largely on the basis that more Americans than not are sick to fuck of Republicanism.
In fact, the Dems would do well to remember that they were voted in to clean up a Republican mess, and that handing them a broom is less likely to result in a clean floor than a sharpened handle to the gut.
Republicans blasted the Democratic budget as a reckless manifesto that would greatly expand the size of government and double the national debt within five years. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he feared the consequences of a budget that "calls for a dramatic and potentially irreversible shift of our nation to the left in the areas of health care, education and private enterprise."
Um, yeah. That's kind of the whole point, because the "dramatic and potentially irreversible shift of our nation" to the right is what got us into the ginormous clusterfucktastrophe from which we've now got to attempt to extricate ourselves before we go right off the fucking cliff.
That's exactly the kind of bullshit about which I'm talking: Fuck Mitch McConnell and fuck his despicable, unethical, ignorant, self-interested, voraciously avaricious party and the elephant they rode in on. We tried their ideas and they didn't work, and even in the face of insurmountable, undeniable evidence that their crackpot, trickle-down, voodoo, social Darwinist, Gilded Age Reloaded policies are abject, catastrophic failures, they still won't get the fuck on board with trying it someone else's way.
Not only is wanting to do the same thing over and over but expecting a different result the very definition of insanity, it's also fucking stupid, and, when the country's future is on the line, it's borderline traitorous at that.
So lock 'em out. And if they want to whine, let 'em whine. They should consider themselves lucky they're not being lined up and shot alongside the treasonous bastards who are holding us hostage over their goddamned bonuses while 10% of the nation is now on food stamps.
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