Via USA Today, a peek into the upcoming biopic Julie & Julia starring Ms. Bucketful of Awesome Meryl Streep as Ms. Queen of Cuisine (and no slouch in the awesome department herself), Julia Child:
The role is more of a stretch than usual for Streep, who is 59. Not only does her half of the plot begin with Child at age 37 in 1949 as a student at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, but the chef also was a strapping 6-foot-2.Height is one of the many characteristics of women that frequently get erased when the stories of real-life women are told, as portrayed by Hollywood actresses. Height, weight, hairiness, age, scars—all the usual things that make us human, but are considered somehow "unfeminine." It's unfortunate that it is remarkable Streep insists on being true to Child by acknowledging she was a tall woman, but that it is remarkable only underlines what a role model Streep really is, totally aside from her exquisite acting.
How did Streep, who is 5-foot-6 or so, manage to create such a towering presence? "Meryl believed that in order to capture the essence of the character, you had to believe Julia Child is 6-foot-2," [director/writer Nora Ephron] says. "Actually, our ambitions were more modest. We made her 6 feet. We used a whole bunch of fabulous tricks. Everything we could think of. Ann Roth did amazing things with costumes."
"I may run for president of Texas. That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state."—Chuck Norris, future president of Texistan, where choking a political opponent will not be considered a liability, but evidence of sufficient manliness to lead the nation.
Memeorandum has everything you ever wanted to know about the Rep. Jane Harmon-AIPAC-court approved wiretap story, though, if you want one-stop shopping, I recommend this post at Think Progress, and/or Josh Marshall's summary here.
It's tough to even know where to begin with this thing. My immediate response is that it's yet another indication of the profound corruption endemic to so much of our federal government; I suspect if it were all revealed to its ugly core at once, even the most cynical among us would be irrevocably appalled.
Have at it in comments.
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Deeky's Xanadouche: A rainbow from here to Uranus.
Recommended Reading:
Tell It WOC: The Third Instalment of WOC and Ally Blog Carnival
Jess: Angie Zapata
Nojojojo: A Chocolate Coating to Make the Bitter White Pill Go Down Easier
Historiann: Let's Play "What's Wrong with This Headline?"
Dave: Is the DHS watching returning veterans? Only when they join far-right hate groups.
Lisa: Divorce Cakes
Vanessa: First Trans Mayor May Have a Reality TV Show
Renee: Rubina: The Slumdog Millionaire Child Is up for Sale
Melissa: Fat Actors vs Skinny Actresses
Leave your links in comments...
Gee whiz golly, Marriage Equality sure is a difficult and hot-button topic. We're making great strides, but how will we ever reach true equality in this country? If only there were a simple solution!
Oh, wait! Here's the Smartest Man in the World (tm) to tell us all what to do! (And by "us," I mean those of us that aren't heterosexual doodz; we can't figure it out for ourselves, amirite?)
You know what would help with marriage equality? For gay couples who have committed themselves to each other to call each other "husband" and "wife". I still hear "my partner" way too much. The more people get used to men talking about their husbands, and women talking about their wives, the easier it'll be to change the culture and, ultimately, the law.Genius!
...to Cara at The Curvature, celebrating two years of awesome "feminism, ranting, and random Beatles stuff."
Addendum to Important Announcement #847-C: Doing your taxes is also not like getting tortured (second cartoon down).
If you can, without hesitation, seriously compare paying taxes to being raped, tortured, or physically assaulted in some other way, you have led a very privileged life—and those of us who do not share your privilege would appreciate it if you would STFU.
Thanks.
[H/T to Spudsy.]
266. The number of times CIA interrogators used waterboarding on two key al-Qaeda detainees.
The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative.But, yes, let's just move on and put all this ugliness behind us like it never happened.
A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.
by Shaker Miranda, a junior at a public high school in New York City whose dreams include world peace, school nurses providing free emergency contraception, and being done with high school. She blogs at Women's Glib, a blog by and for teenaged feminists.
Common Sense Media (a media watchdog group for and comprised of parents, from which I inexplicably receive emails about once a week) asks the title question in a recent newsletter, and THIS TEEN SAYS NO!
"Sexting"—a word which, by the way, I've never heard any real-life teenager use without a hefty dollop of irony—if you haven't heard about all this madness, is essentially "the act of sending sexually explicit messages or photos electronically, primarily between cell phones," which I've lifted from Wikipedia's brief primer. Supposedly, one in five teens is doing it, and the recent rise in high-profile cases has sparked fascinating legal and moral debates. In Pennsylvania, six high school students face child pornography charges for their involvement.
The female students at Greensburg Salem High School in Greensburg, Pa., all 14- or 15-years-old, face charges of manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography while the boys, who are 16 and 17, face charges of possession, according to WPXI-TV in Pittsburgh, which published the story on its Web site on Tuesday.So the girls are being punished for taking and passing on pictures of themselves, and the guys are being reprimanded for possessing photos purposefully shared with them within a consensual exchange?
a) If we don't have The Sex, we're prudes, geeks, goody-goodys. We're abnormal and utterly devoid of passion. We're the four-eyed nerd, not the bikini-sporting cheerleader. We're pathetic.
b) If we do but fail to use the right precautions—which is hardly surprising, given the ghastly prevalence of health curricula that 1) omit lessons on preventing pregnancy and STIs; 2) rely on blatantly sexist stereotypes and even flat-out lies about the purpose and efficacy of condoms and contraception; 3) fail to address the very real sexual health concerns of folks who are getting down with a partner of the same sex; and/or 4) skip right over the Sex chapter in the manual—we "should have known better."
c) If we do and use the right precautions WE GET SUSPENDED.
What the fuck?Hey Shakers! Scott Madin is hosting the Sunday Morning Shakers Brunch on Skype -- you can reach it at this link: Shakesville Sunday Brunch -- Smadin is graciously "hosting" today, as I'll be in and out of the office.
Come on in and chat -- hey! Since it's a text chat, you can listen to Deeky's podcast while you brunch!
See U there!
Radio Shakesville
Former McCain strategist Steve Schmidt (yesterday's Quoted of the Day) is warning the GOP that they "risk becoming a religious party" if they, uh, get too hung up on that whole religion thing.
"If you put public policy issues to a religious test, you risk becoming a religious party," he said. "And in a free country a political party cannot be viable in the long-term if it is seen as a sectarian party."If the GOP measures everything against a god-stick. If the GOP is not seen as a secular party. If the GOP is seen as homophobic.
"If the party is seen as anti-gay, then that is injurious to its candidates" in Democrat-leaning and competitive states, he said.
Scott at Powerline is incensed that the folks at CNN and MSNBC were all giggle-snorting over the Tea Party rallies unfortunate choice of the verb "teabagging."
The star hosts of CNN and MSNBC news shows have notoriously derided the tea party demonstrations around the country with reference to the practice of teabagging (which I had never heard of before they brought it up). As John noted, both networks' "journalists" used the rallies as an occasion for childish sexual innuendoes -- in the case of MSNBC, the same obscene teabag "joke" was repeated 51 times in a 13-minute segment.Well, of course you know why, Scott asserts. It's because Anderson Cooper is "widely reputed" to be gay, and -- gasp! -- Andrew Sullivan and Rachel Maddow are "of course public homosexuals." (Public homosexuals? I'm pretty sure they're homosexuals in private, too.) Scott doesn't say anything about David Shuster's sexual orientation, but he was just sitting in for Keith Olbermann, and you know how he is with that perfect hair, the trendy glasses, and those suits....
The Media Research Center detailed the teabagging references in an informative press release. The Huffington Post noted the references as well as more "jokes" in the same vein (including a video of Cooper's jape, over which David Gergen cluelessly chortles).
While sitting in for Keith Olbermann on April 15, MSNBC's David Shuster packed the teabagging puns into his report on the protests. Shuster is like a juvenile student who has commandeered the loudspeaker system at his high school to commit the prank of a lifetime. Maybe it was just a case of Olbermann's writers feeding Shuster the same good stuff they usually give to Olbermann.
Andrew Sullivan is giddy; he seems to think the phenomenon is a big ball of fun.
But the term was chosen intentionally - generally it became an in-joke among the protestors which caught on quite easily (because let's face it, it's not really a very in-joke as everyone knows what it means) but it did have the effect of finally getting coverage in the mainstream media, because the protests had been oddly ignored in favor of much smaller protests against things like AIG.Scott ends his tantrum by demanding that all those snotty queers apologize to the good citizens who are Google and Wikipedia-deprived, and he wants CNN and MSNBC to do something.
There is not only something funny going on here, there is a story here. These supposed journalists and their networks (or publisher, in Sullivan's case) have rather seriously insulted the citizens who colorfully took to the streets to air respectable views in a most civil fashion. If they had any decency, Cooper et al. would apologize for their vile reference to sexual practices in the context of ordinary citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.Oh, so Scott thinks the people took to the streets to "air respectable views in a most civil fashion," does he? Like the posters with the signs calling President Obama "Chairman Maobama" and labeling him as Hitler, or making pointed references to his race? If that's "respectable," then why are they getting all upset about sly references to teabagging? Oh.... because it's gay.
Today marks the 13th annual Day of Silence, which was launched by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, during which the discrimination and harassment—in effect, the silencing—of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students and their allies is protested with silence.
There are many different activities associated with the National Day of Silence now, but the primary action is silence. A perfect, still silence.
Today, in schools across the country, thousands and thousands of kids—gay kids, bisexual kids, transgender kids, questioning kids, straight kids—moved through the halls of their schools, surrounded by the bustle of lockers being opened and closed, the boisterousness of their peers, the laughter and shoving and passing of notes, and they remained silent.
They made eye contact with other participants, nodding, sharing solemn smiles, and they said nothing, in support of one another. They are silent on this day so that the LGBTQI community may not have to be.
The people who still make life hard for LGBTQI teens are dinosaurs, and one day they will be extinct—and we will collect their bones and put them in a museum and tell our grandchildren about the freaks who once thought that the LGBTQI community didn't deserve equality. Our grandchildren will laugh and shake their heads, and we will remember bitterly when there was a time people had to be silent to make some noise.
A moment of silence: __________________________________…
People are still linking to the original Fat Princess post, as evidence that "feminists" are hysterical fat bitchez or wev.
Lawdy. Let it go, dudez.
[If you made your way to Shakesville after the Fat Princess Debacle of 2008, here's the whole sordid pathetic affair, in seven parts: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven.]
So, there's this story today about Sarah Palin telling an antiabortion group in Evansville, Indiana how she momentarily considered aborting her last child when she learned she was pregnant at an oil and gas conference in another state:
"There, just for a fleeting moment, I thought, I knew, nobody knows me here. Nobody would ever know. I thought, wow, it is easy. It could be easy to think maybe of trying to change the circumstances. No one would know. No one would ever know."Bullshit.
Ultimately, Palin said she realized she had to stay true to what she'd been saying for years -- that "life is valuable because it is ordained."
"I had just enough faith to know that trying to change the circumstances wasn't any answer," Palin said.
But the governor said the experience gave her an appreciation for what women and girls facing unwanted pregnancies go through.
"I do understand what these women, what these girls go through in that thought process."
