by Shaker Sady, who can be found when not subjecting herself to Man-Child Cinema blogging various important ladybusiness at Tiger Beatdown.
So, here is a situation that may, one day, occur in your own personal life: You may have the opportunity to interact with one of your own personal Heroes of Lady Business Blogging, and she may be like, "Oh, if you would like to bask for a little while longer in my radiance, perhaps I shall allow you to produce a guest post, for I am awesome." When this happens, you may be like, "Thank you! I would like to do that! Perhaps about the many films of producer Judd Apatow, and the problematic gender politics therein!" Then you will be like, "But WAIT, this is SERIOUS WORK, constructing a Unified Apatow Field Theory: What I should do—nay, must do—is to subject myself to a Judd Apatow Marathon* in the name of research and responsible blogging."
Here is my advice for you: NEVER DO THIS. IT WILL DEVOUR YOUR SOUL.
Judd Apatow is, of course, cinema's most acclaimed poet of the Man-Child. The Man-Child is a male individual who is (a) white, (b) heterosexual, (c) middle-class, in cultural positioning if not in actual income, because he is typically (d) unemployed or under-employed, due to the fact that he is (e) possessed of the soul of a tiny infant baby, trapped in the body of a full-grown man. The body he is trapped in is typically that of Will Ferrell, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd and/or Jason Segel, although there are some exceptions.
The Man-Child's interests include smoking pot, drinking beer, watching porn and/or TV re-runs, pretending to be Gandalf and/or Darth Vader and/or other notable characters of sci-fi and fantasy film, playing video games, engaging in semi-dangerous XTreme sports such as smashing lightbulbs or setting things on fire, and generally just acting like a thirteen-year-old boy would if he had no curfews and no parents and no-one to stop him from being such an enormous loser all the time, my God.
The Man-Child also, coincidentally, hates and fears women! This is why he exists in an all-male bromosocial cocoon, where he can be safe from their pernicious influence. The varieties of lady-hate in Apatow movies vary, from the emosogynist longing of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" to the full-on vaginaphobia of "Superbad," but the fact remains that the Man-Child, in all his many incarnations, clings tenaciously to a world wherein the only people he interacts with, in a friendly and mutually fulfilling way, are other men, and where he only sees or deals with women insofar as they are pre-filmed images on his TV screen—preferably semi-nude, nude, or nude and in the act of getting fucked—except on those occasions when he ventures out to find a real live vagina to sex with and hence prove his heterosexual masculinity. In between those episodes, there is, of course, plenty of humorous discussion of "pussy" and "sluts" and the curious fact that every man has a "code" written in his DNA which instructs him to "tackle drunk bitches." Ah, levity!
Now: It is a fact that, throughout the illustrious history of the Apatovian canon, Mr. Apatow has produced all of the movies, but only written and directed two. (Those two are "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," the one in which we learn that True Love Waits and sexual women are gross skanks, but also that you have to fuck women in order to be a real man, and "Knocked Up," in which we learn that abortion is evil and you have to Stay Together for the Kids, but also that heterosexual monogamy and fatherhood are a terrifying nightmare because wives are irrational killjoy bitches.) Some have argued that this means one cannot blame all of their failings on Judd Apatow himself! To them, I say: Does Mr. McDonald personally prepare and cook every one of his Big Macs? This is a formula—a very well-established, very successful, VERY EXTREMELY OBNOXIOUS formula—and, if I seem a bit casual about imputing the sins of the creation to the creator, keep in mind that I have seen more of his movies than anyone should have to and am now full of rage.
Because, here is the plot of every Judd Apatow movie in five minutes or less: Man-Child resides in the beautiful, carefree, recess-all-day-long, ice-cream-for-dinner world of Man-Childsvania. Man-Child nevertheless feels the nagging lack of the social status and power that comes from being a Successful, Important Grown Man in patriarchy. Man-Child finds some lady to drag him, kicking and screaming, from Man-Childsvania into the real world. Man-Child makes the bittersweet sacrifice of his freedom, unless he doesn't have to, because a really, truly nice lady will make do with a few superficial changes (like, say, getting a job, or spending only 80% of your time with your bros instead of the more desirable 99.987%) and let you stay a Man-Child forever. Blah blah offensively blatant Republican-family-values conclusion, The End.
Because, when you figure men as innately childlike and irresponsible and incapable of participating equally in a relationship with another person (and this is everywhere: Sitcoms, relationship advice books, Tucker Max story anthologies, but Apatow seems to be the one who's promulgating it most blatantly and with the most success), guess which gender gets to do all the heavy lifting and emotional work and act as a hated/feared/resented/unfortunately necessary Civilizing Influence upon the dudefolks? HINT: Not men!
Judd Apatow films contain some of the most thankless roles for women I have ever seen. Most of them are Crazy Drunk Sluts who appear only in bit parts, which is offensive enough, but hey—at least they don't have to stick around for very long. Pity the girlfriend of the Apatovian Man-Child, friends, for it is certain her boyfriend never will. She's either an endlessly permissive, tolerant, compassionate mommy-lady who is willing to re-arrange her entire life around caring for some dude and enabling his magnificent Journey of Self-Actualization (see: Mila Kunis in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," Catherine Keener in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin"), or a harsh, nagging, demanding shrew who not only fails to tolerate or take care of or empower her Man-Childish partner, but actually passes judgment on him and expects him to grow up all on his own (see: Kristen Bell in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," Leslie Mann in "Knocked Up"). She has emotional needs, this woman! And priorities which do not center on her boyfriend! She is a MONSTER!
The thing is, if you are a lady, and you have dated a dude like this—and there are dudes like this, sadly, dudes who have succumbed to the constant cultural messaging that being this way is natural and fun and OK and cool, which is why Judd Apatow has been so successful, and why he continues to be such a bad influence on gender politics at large—you know that you can go from being one to the other in a nanosecond. All it takes is one wrong move. Women are supposed to do the emotional work of maintaining heterosexual relationships, and they are supposed to do it with a smile: Let that smile drop for a second, and you're the bitch who wants to take his toys away.
The woman who takes care of herself and expects her partner to do likewise, who expects compassion for her vulnerabilities and immaturities and extends it to her partner in turn, who can address the problems which inevitably arise between two people without throwing a temper tantrum and has the full and reasonable expectation that she won't be met with a full-on childish shit fit for doing so, the woman who can, yes, HAVE FUN, either on her own or with friends or even with a date—a woman that you, ladies who are in happy relationships, may recognize!—does not exist, either in these movies or in the minds of actual Man-Children. Nor do the men whom such ladies, if inclined toward the dudefolks, might be able to love.
Basically, there is a reason that the "happy" conservative heterosexual-monogamist endings of Judd Apatow movies are so unconvincing, and a reason that they take so long to arrive, and that reason is that the filmmakers themselves don't really believe in them. The paradise of the Man-Child is the only paradise men are allowed. Here, from a 2007 New York Times Magazine article entitled "Judd Apatow's Family Values" (it's funny 'cause it's true, ha ha!) is the bit that seems to encapsulate his eternal theme: Up on the monitor was a shot of Alison driving her two nieces, played by Apatow's daughters, to school. While filming, Maude accidentally hit her sister, Iris, in the face with her doll. Iris screamed to high heaven. "Let that run past the point of the audience being comfortable," Apatow said. "That way when you cut to Ben and his friends smoking pot and hanging out, you get a sense of what he's giving up."
Dude. Uncool.
* "Man-a-thon?" Ha ha ha, no.
Man-Child Rising: What I Learned From My Judd Apatow Movie Marathon
More Fat-Hatin'—and Assvertising
Has taking a shower become a pain? Are you bending and twisting yourself just to get clean? Tired of scrubbers and brushes that just don't work? Well, no more—introducing Body Snake! Finally, a way to clean and scrub those hard-to-reach areas of your body effortlessly. Watch: Simply bend, and it holds its shape! Throw it over your shoulders and easily reach it with your other hand. No more fumbling and stumbling in the shower. … But wait! You also receive our foot scrubber! This amazing foot scrubber cleans and scrubs your entire foot without ever having to bend over—guaranteed! Suction soles hold it in place while you scrub, exfoliate, revitalize your feet like never before! …So, first of all, I hate this commercial for employing the loathsome "There's an easier way!" premise. But mostly I hate it because, while a long body loofah with footie loofah might actually be a useful product for someone who is injured, disabled, and/or has age-related limited mobility, it's being sold on the implicit message that it's for people TOO FAT TO BATHE PROPERLY. I've seen this discussed several times now on telly or online, and it's always just a bunch of lulz at teh fat fatty fatfats who can't reach their butts HAR!
The thing that really pisses me off about it is that they're showing people smaller than I am and implying someone of that size cannot reach their feet to clean them just because of their weight. Now, I'm big and I've got a bad back and I've got no problem reaching my goddamn feet just because of my fat. (On the other hand, Iain, who is thinner and way more athletic than I am struggles to reach his feet because he's super inflexible.)
Which is not to say it's inconceivable, because every body type is different and everyone's capabilities are different, that someone of my size exists whose fat does prohibit them from reaching their feet, or other parts of their body. But it's not typical—and I am deeply contemptuous of the implication that is it, because it feeds into a ubiquitous prejudice against fat people that they aren't clean.
Years ago, I saw an episode of Oprah on which she had as a guest a woman who refused to use a toilet or sit on any seat after a fat person, because she was convinced that fat people couldn't reach their asses to wipe—and no matter how much (then-fat) Oprah and her fat guests assured this woman they had clean asses, she wouldn't believe them. Fat and dirty were inextricably linked in her mind, and that prejudice wasn't about to get dislodged with any amount of reasoned discourse.
That's the kind of bigotry that fat people face every day.
In fact, I would argue that a lot of the fat hatred underlying stuff like airline regulations for fatties is really about the endemic presumption that fat people are gross, smelly, dirty. Untouchable.
Ruby Gettinger, the woman at the center of the eponymous show on the Style network, who has weighed as much as 715 pounds, spent part of one episode talking about how she's faced discrimination because thin people assume she doesn't/can't clean herself. She allowed the cameras to watch her as she cleaned herself, her nearly 500-pound body, in a meticulous ritual designed in no small part because she's keenly aware of the stigma against fat people, rooted in the assumption they can't keep themselves clean.
So when I see commercials tacitly reinforcing that erroneous narrative, I just want to scream. No less a commercial that treats it as some kind of goddamned hilarity—because, of course, there are some fat people who can't reach parts of their body just because of their weight, and what the fuck is funny about that?
[Assvertising: 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, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six, Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Nine, Thirty, Thirty-One, Thirty-Two, Thirty-Three, Thirty-Four, Thirty-Five, Thirty-Six, Thirty-Seven, Thirty-Eight, Thirty-Nine, Forty, Forty-One, Forty-Two, Forty-Three, Forty-Four, Forty-Five, Forty-Six, Forty-Seven, Forty-Eight, Forty-Nine, Fifty, Fifty-One, Fifty-Two, Fifty-Three, Fifty-Four, Fifty-Five, Fifty-Six, Fifty-Seven, Fifty-Eight, Fifty Nine.]
Thanks a Shitload, GOP! Again.
As you've heard, there's a zomg swine flu pandemic! coming to kill all of us—or, as Kenny Blogginz calls it, the Hampocalypse, or, as I call it, Porky's 4: Makin' Deadly Bacon—and like every other clusterfucktastrophe in the making (or in the imagination) over the last decade that has been/is certain to kill us, the Republicans did everything they could to make it worse:
When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year's emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine led the charge against the pandemic preparedness funding, which was eventually stripped from the Senate version of the stimulus plan, and even brags about the coup on her website. Huzzah. The Senate-House reconciled version of the plan provides only $50 million "for improving information systems at the Department of Health and Human Services," but "state and local governments, and the emergency services that would necessarily be on the frontlines in any effort to contain a pandemic, got nothing."
…[Karl Rove] specifically complained that Obey's proposal included "$462 million for the Centers for Disease Control, and $900 million for pandemic flu preparations." … Rove's argument was picked up by House and Senate Republicans, who made it an essential message in their attacks on the legislation. Even as Rove and his compatriots argued that a stimulus bill should include initiatives designed to shore-up and maintain any recovery, they consistently, and loudly, objected to spending money to address the potentially devastating economic impact of a major public health emergency.
The attack on pandemic preparation became so central to the GOP strategies that AP reported in February: "Republicans, meanwhile, plan to push for broader and deeper tax cuts, to trim major spending provisions that support Democrats' longer-term policy goals, and to try to knock out what they consider questionable spending items, such as $870 million to combat the flu and $400 million to slow the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases."
I think everybody in the room is concerned about a pandemic flu. But does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill? No, we should not.This little piggy says, "A-choo!"
From the Wayback Machine: Donald Rumsfeld is a major stockholder in Tamiflu.
[Via Memeorandum.]
Scandalous
Trigger Warning
I'll begin the post with the assumption that we know that within the world of hip-hop,
Much of the music and many videos specifically transmit, promote, and perpetuate negative images of black women. All women, but mostly black women in particular are seen in popular hip-hop culture as sex objects.Discussions of misogyny and sexism in hip hop began at least two decades ago and continue until now. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brooklyne Gipson had recent discussions and Feminist Review just reviewed Ewuare X. Osayande's Misogyny and the Emcee: Sex, Race, and Hip-Hop. You can also find Byron Hurt's Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes on Google Video.
I list those sources because what I want to do, rather than rehash the arguments, is point you to what is a rather disturbing song and video by Mike Jones called Scandalous Hoes. And while you might think the name of the song alone was enough, I'd like to point out that since the days of Bitches Ain't Shit, hip-hop song titles have done much to inure us "shocking" titles.
Mike Jones begins as many of these songs do--by invoking the hybrid Jezebel/Gold-digger* image. He scowls as he looks at the men in the video, being duped by women who are all sex and smiles, trying to lure the men into a (largely financial) relationship. Jones describes:
They see you living twelve cars, all blackT-Pain, who guests on the song, adds his own warning:
American Express, not green, all black
They'll try to set you up
If you let 'em set the trap
I ain't finna fall for that
I don't love 'emAs the video proceeds, we see that one poor guy has bought one of the women a car and committed to her. Then, Mike Jones channels Kanye West and raps about the tired cliche of women "tricking" men into getting them pregnant, the result being
Still don't trust 'em
Get paranoid
Every time that I fuck 'em
Now she got yo ass up in courtAnd like Kanye, Jones reminds us that because these women are "scandalous hoes," they transgress in serious ways--first, they sleep with other men, despite the fact that a man has made a down payment on her sexuality with his money and his gifts. And then, they continue manipulating a man's feelings, first, by making him love her, then by erroneously telling him he's her child's father. After all, Jones says of the father-child bond in such cases,
Facing child support
For a kid he found out
Wasn't his
You're glued to his soulBut here's where the video becomes like nothing I've seen. We see the "not-the-father" on the couch reading papers--ostensibly, the DNA results--and crying. He's seeing the light about his girlfriend (who had already morphed from a somewhat sweet and smiling Jezebel into a frowning, fussing Sapphire) and once she has been revealed as a scandalous ho, she must be dealt with.
Your heart say
You can't leave that kid
Scandalous bitch
How?
Well, in his righteous anger, the boyfriend understandably kills her:
Some shit is just so so wrongSo enraged man kills woman because he finds out his property (her vagina and child) has been trespassed upon.
Some shit I know I can't put up in the zone
Some shit'll get you hurt if it go on too long
Cuz once the nigga gets pissed,
the gun goes click
[snip]
You shoulda told him, bitch
Before it came time for this
Now the ho getting carried by six
And it all makes perfect sense.
___________________________
*Description begins on page 15
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, publishers of Smells Like Balls: The Collected Works of Butch Pornstache.
Recommended Reading:
Cara: Seattle Weekly Furthers the Myth of Common False Rape Allegations
Amanda: (Il)legal Drugs and Me
Andy: Westboro Baptist Church Planning Suicidal Exodus?
Kathy: All Class All the Time
Eloriane: The Little Brown Dress Project, and a Desire to Re-Think My Life
Pizza Diavola: Consent & Sex
Leave your links in comments...
Fat-Hatin'
Shaker Laura forwards this POS that's lighting up Twitter and argues the precise opposite of fat acceptance and health at every size concepts (emphasis original):
Fundamentally, we need to depreciate the perceived social value for this kind of habit. … [A] little peer pressure goes a long way, and this is important: People will change when their culture expects them to do so. What's being seen today as "normal" is just plain wrong. We need a major perception change, if we're to do anything about this problem, and it's a problem that's affecting our very planet. It's not just a problem with people who are overweight. It's a problem with everyone who thinks it's OK to be obese.Wow, how revolutionary! It's totally the component that's been missing all my life—someone to make me feel bad for being fat!
Meanwhile, Shaker Carrie sends me a picture of an advert she saw from the Ad Council in Chicago's Greektown neighborhood.
[Click to embiggen.]
In case you can't see the images, it's the profile of the disembodied torso of a white woman's body in a bathing suit, with three dotted "cut lines" running along her body. The first reads: "Started going for short walks during lunch hour." The second reads: "Stops ordering take-out and starts cooking healthy meals." The third, and innermost, reads: "Just bought bikini that challenges some obscenity laws."
The point of this ad, with its tense-challenged copy, is that the woman is shaving off parts of her fat caboose by making lifestyle changes—so she can reach her goal weight, at which point she can finally do what all women should be getting in shape to do: Show off her sexy body for public consumption.
Aside from the fat-shaming and exhortation to find one's purpose in sexual objectification, the cut lines create a whole other problem, as Carrie notes: "I guess the 'cut here' line is supposed to be clever, but I find it disturbing, because of course I am imagining actual scissors cutting this woman." A woman whose head and most of the rest of her body have already helpfully been amputated by the ad makers.
Open Thread
We recently discussed second wave feminism in my U.S. survey and one of the topics that we covered was Roe v. Wade. After my introduction, one of my students raised her hand to share an anecdote with me. Her grandmother told her that the reason so many people were opposed to Roe was because in its aftermath, women had abortions "just to prove they could."
I was struck silent for a few seconds, and then I told her that was a common argument put forth by anti-abortion rights forces, the idea that women "casually" have abortions--pencil them in between breakfast and lunch, for example. I also pointed out that it grows from the belief that women don't think deeply, so they can't be trusted with such serious matters.
But, as I told Liss, my answer fell short because the one thing I didn't say was, even if her grandmother's scenario was true, being pro-choice means that you don't just support abortion for pregnancies that arise from "tragic" circumstances--you respect a woman's right to choose, even if you don't agree with it--not that it's any of your business.
I don't doubt that this sentiment will come up over and over again--I'm in Texas, after all, and I'm about to start teaching more women's history courses.
This is an open thread to ask: how would you counter such stories? Out of curiosity, how do you think you'd teach about reproductive rights or the larger issue of teaching students that women's decisions are valid and worthy of respect? Finally, do you hear of stories like this being taught to young people you know?
Rank (and File) Bigotry
The Politico published a piece yesterday about the tension between Republican leadership, who are starting to veer away from an emphasis on social issues and recast themselves "as a constructive, respectful opposition to a popular president," and the Republican base, who "have no desire to moderate their views."
GOP activists and operatives say they hear intense anger at the White House and at the party's own leaders on familiar issues – taxes, homosexuality, and immigration. Within the party, conservative groups have grown stronger absent the emergence of any organized moderate faction.That the conservative Republican base is apoplectic about taxes—despite the reality that Americans pay shockingly low taxes, by comparison to other industrialized nations and by the standards of our own recent history, no less the eventuality of Obama lowering taxes for most Americans—is the consummate evidence of their two defining characteristics: Greed and stupidity.
There is little appetite for compromise on what many see as core issues, and the road to the presidential nomination lies – as always – through a series of states where the conservative base holds sway, and where the anger appears to be, if anything, particularly intense.
…."I've never seen the grass-roots quite as motivated, concerned and angry," said Steve Scheffler, the head of the Iowa Christian Alliance and the state's RNC committeeman.
That they're wild-eyed about "homosexuality and immigration"—and their other perennial bailiwick, abortion—is the consummate evidence of their greatest fear: Queers, darkies, and uppity bitches overrunning the perfect, lily-white, patriarchal Christian nation that only exists in their fever-dreams and infecting it with our horrible progress-cooties.
The Republican leadership, the people sophisticated enough to not personally be offended by gays and people of color and feminists, but unethical enough to exploit their ignorant base's bigotry nonetheless, are losing control of their base. After three decades of fear-mongering, scapegoating, and wedge issue politicking, they're left with a seething conglomeration of intolerant bullies whose stubborn refusal to evolve ideologically is matched in astonishing obduracy only by their unjustifiable hatred.
For three decades, the Republican Party deliberately, cynically, and unapologetically fanned the flames of that hatred, which served as the fuel for the base's single-minded crusade to protect their privilege and thus the rationale for voting Republican—the party who promised to "protect tradition."
"Tradition" is the kind of word that appeals to people for whom the world is changing more rapidly than they can comfortably adjust, who are too busy to or socially discouraged from reading or thinking about things too much, who have heard some things about how feminism is responsible for the breakdown in the family and gays want to redefine marriage and immigrants are taking all the good jobs. "Tradition" is a word that plays well with people who can't be bothered to examine anything too closely, or were never taught how to properly think, how to analyze and assess information in a way that teases out the truth.
And it's an even better word for speaking to the unabashed bigots of the base, obliquely reassuring them that they're right to hate women and gays and brown people, those three separate monolithic groups of faceless enemies, and implicitly promising them they'll be protected from the onslaught of the radical hordes. America's great tradition of conferring undeserved privilege on you won't fail. Not on our watch.
That has been the sacred covenant between the Republican Party and its straight, white, patriarchal, Christian supremacist base for a generation: Vote for us, and we'll protect you.
And so they voted. And, in the process, they gave away their standard of living, their children's education, their jobs, their civil liberties, their national security, their environment, and their economy—all in exchange for the gossamer promise of a return to a time that never happened in a country that never really existed.
The Republican Party has traded again and again on the conjured idea of an American golden era, circa 1945 to 1960, after boys who were ripped from the arms of their virginal sweethearts and sent to another continent to fight a great war against tyranny and despair, had returned home as men, as heroes, and set to work, every last one of them, making babies with doting wives and grabbing the American Dream with both hands in the dawn of suburbia. Scientists in white lab coats and square, black-framed glasses toiled away to make American astronauts the first on the moon, and to fill all the pretty new homes behind perfect white picket fences with fancy, new-fangled household gadgets to make life easier and more fun. Teenagers hung out at sock hops and neon-lit diners, girls longing for lavaliers and boys wondering how to get laid. Elvis' pelvis was considered a scandal, and Marilyn Monroe a bombshell. Dad had a pension and the promise of a gold watch at the end of a long career with a single firm, and Mom had a Frigidaire. And everyone was happy.
Vote for us—and we'll give you that.
It's an empty promise built on an illusion, carefully constructed to conceal that America's so-called golden age was imperfect like any other, and perhaps even more so than most. Half a million of those boys who went off to war never came home—and some of them weren't boys at all, but men, who left wives and children with desperate struggles in the place where their husbands and fathers had been. Some who had come home were never the same, their bodies or minds damaged beyond real repair. Women who had been called to duty in factories were forcibly driven back into domesticity, segregation was a legal fact, every gay had a closet of hir very own, mental illness was treated with lobotomies, McCarthy was on his Communist witch hunt, and we fought an all-but-forgotten war in Korea for three years and lost over 35,000 soldiers. There were back-alley abortions, and the KKK, and Elvis and Marilyn both died of drugs.
The Republican promise has always had the very same flaw as their policies: It is contingent on pretending that the complexity and complications of human existence, and the flaws of humankind, don't exist.
The Republicans have held out this chimera to their base—this Leave It to Beaver bullshit—as if the typical family once was, and should be again, a model of white Christian perfection that never fought, never struggled, never suffered. And never had to be subjected to interactions with people of color, or gays, or any women besides Mom and maybe a nice lady to help sons take out books on the Boy Scouts from the local library. They have held it out as if it has actually been, and as if it could be again.
And they did so even knowing that the fantasy of this nonexistent perfect America is the very thing that created the beloved "traditions" of racism, sexism, and homophobia in the first place. It has been the dangling enticement of a happy family, supported by a single secure and well-paid job, in which no one is wracked with disillusionment, dispossession, or a lack of opportunity—an invitation to join for which most Americans are never given the chance to RSVP—which created the resentment and scapegoating that are the foundations of social conservative traditionalism.
Now the Republicans are stuck with the result—their revolting (in every sense of the word) base, who still believe, and must, lest they face their complicity in having been left with naught but their biases, that the responsible party for their struggles, their disaffection, their undefined but keenly-felt fury, is those people, not the Grand Old Party who promised them something better in exchange for their votes.
The political leadership taught their base too well whom to blame for what ails them, and thus cannot now move them from their fixed gaze and finger-pointing, even as it isn't helping the party anymore—and stands likely to hurt the party for the foreseeable future. They sowed the seeds of prejudice for decades, and now they reap nothing but the only crop such seeds can yield.
It would be amusing, if only the rest of us weren't stuck with the result, too.
We'll Still Secede... Just Not Right Now, kay?
In a rather blatantly obvious demonstration of how unprepared Texas is to really exist as its own sovereign entity, Governor Rick Perry requested a boatload of meds from the CDC to help contain and treat the swine flu:
Gov. Rick Perry today in a precautionary measure requested the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide 37,430 courses of antiviral medications from the Strategic National Stockpile to Texas to prevent the spread of swine flu. Currently, three cases of swine flu have been confirmed in Texas.Be careful what you wish for, Perry.
The Canadian F-Word Blog Award Winners!
Thanks so much to everyone who voted to make Shakesville the Best International Feminist Blog for the second year in a row—woot!
Congratulations to all the other winners, especially our frequent guest-posters Renee of Womanist Musings, who won both Best Political Blog and Best Canadian Feminist Blog (English), and Matttbastard of Bastard.Logic, who won Best Support Bro!
Many thanks to A Creative Revolution for organizing and hosting the awards.
Easy Sunday Sewing Project
As we know, complaints have been filed regarding the sudden arrival of hot weather. I realized that I had better oil up my sewing machine and get to work on summer clothes before it's time to make fall wardrobe basics (I'm sure some highly organized sewists are already hard at work on structured tweed jackets, harumpfh).
I decided to warm up with an easy project, based on this terrific tutorial from open-source sewing site BurdaStyle. The tutorial gives clear instructions for converting trousers into a skirt. I used a nice pair of khakis (Ralph Lauren "classic chinos") that I got very slightly used on eBay for $7. The pants didn't fit properly, so I never wore them. I think I will now:
This project is best for pants that are wide-legged and/or too big; otherwise there will not be enough walking ease in your skirt. My pants were slightly too large all over, and had clearly too much room around the upper thighs and seat. The resulting skirt is slim-fitting; I'd say I had barely enough material to work with, and I started with pants a size too large.
The picture above reveals a problem with skirts made from pants: there is a horizontal crotch-wrinkle and tiny dimple below the fly. The skirt in the Burda tutorial looks the same. Diligent pressing goes a long way to correcting this flaw, but there is only so much that can be done. Due to the way that pants are cut and sewn, the grainline (PDF link) of the fabric will be slightly distorted around the crotch area, especially after some wear.
More notes:
1. You learn a lot about how garments are put together by taking them apart, so this project is a great exercise. When you rip out the inseams and open up a pair of pants, they will be shaped more or less like these pants pattern pieces (these two pieces represent half the garment. Of course your pants will be a double layer, and the outside leg seam will be sewn):
2. The BurdaStyle tutorial says that you can lay a basic straight or A-line skirt pattern over the pants after you have cut the inseams and laid the garment out with the crotch seams and inseams to the sides (step 3 of 7 in the tutorial). I did not bother with a pattern; I just cut off the peaks of the crotch curve and blended to the hemline as they show in the pictorial.
3. When the tutorial says "add the pleats" in step 6, I assume they mean a kick-pleat or back vent for ease of movement. I added a 15 cm basic vent at the center back seam by leaving 15 cm of the seam unsewn at the bottom, clipping about 1 cm on each side, and then folding under and hemming that 1 cm of fabric. I then reinforced the top of the vent with stitches just across the point.
4. Since the pants were too large to begin with, I took in the waistband at its center back seam, more or less like this.
Shakesville Sunday Brunch (Skype Chat)
Hey Shakers -- Scott Madin has once again graciously offered to tend the brunch-chat -- you can reach the chat at this link.
Leave a note in comments to this thread if you have any trouble getting in. (Note: You may want to adjust your Skype profile settings prior to entering the chat if you have anonymity concerns -- your Skype profile may be set to show your real name.)
Hope to see you there! I'm making virtual quiche. Because I can.
Truly Trivial
Shaker Mikey emails:
So, I'm playing Trivial Pursuit on my iPhone, and I get the question: "What blog describes itself as the directory of wonderful things?" A. Boing Boing. B. Shakesville. I don't remember what C was.*nerdgasms*
So, yeah, you're famous enough to be [a possible] answer to a question on the iPhone edition of Trivial Pursuit. How cool is that?
RIP Bea Arthur
Beatrice Arthur, the tall, deep-voiced actress whose razor-sharp delivery of comedy lines made her a TV star in the hit shows "Maude" and "The Golden Girls" and who won a Tony Award for the musical "Mame," died Saturday. She was 86.I'm actually blubbing as if I'd just learned that someone I know died. Completely silly, really, but I loved Bea Arthur. I respected and admired her; she made me laugh, and her work taught me a lot about womanhood, about the kind of woman I wanted to be. She was awesome. Totally awesome.
Arthur died peacefully at her Los Angeles home with her family at her side, family spokesman Dan Watt said. She had cancer, Watt said, declining to give further details.
"She was a brilliant and witty woman," said Watt, who was Arthur's personal assistant for six years. "Bea will always have a special place in my heart."
Arthur first appeared in the landmark comedy series "All in the Family" as Edith Bunker's loudly outspoken, liberal cousin, Maude Finley. She proved a perfect foil for blue-collar bigot Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor), and their blistering exchanges were so entertaining that producer Norman Lear fashioned Arthur's own series.
..."Maude" scored with television viewers immediately on its CBS debut in September 1972, and Arthur won an Emmy Award for the role in 1977.
The comedy flowed from Maude's efforts to cast off the traditional restraints that women faced, but the series often had a serious base. Her husband Walter (Bill Macy) became an alcoholic, and she underwent an abortion, which drew a torrent of viewer protests. Maude became a standard bearer for the growing feminist movement in America.
..."Golden Girls" (1985-1992) was another groundbreaking comedy, finding surprising success in a television market increasingly skewed toward a younger, product-buying audience.
The series concerned three retirees — Arthur, Betty White and Rue McClanahan — and the mother of Arthur's character, Estelle Getty, who lived together in a Miami apartment. In contrast to the violent "Miami Vice," the comedy was nicknamed "Miami Nice."
As Dorothy Zbornak, Arthur seemed as caustic and domineering as Maude. She was unconcerned about the similarity of the two roles. "Look — I'm 5-feet-9, I have a deep voice and I have a way with a line," she told an interviewer.
Good innings. Thank you, Bea.
And thanks to Elle for the heads-up.
UPDATE: And just when I managed to stop crying for two seconds, I get this email from Misty (which I am posting with her permission, because it's so sweet I can barely stand it):
I *just* mailed a letter to Bea Arthur asking her to send you an autographed picture for your birthday next month. As in I mailed it yesterday.Blubbity-blub-blub.
