by Shaker laguiri
Two events related to swine flu cases have caused great alarm in Spain in the last two months, and they're worth a comparison. First of all, you need to understand some basic facts. The public health system is fundamentally universal and free. The national government is Socialist, but the government of the Madrid Community is Conservative. Only one hospital in Spain can confirm cases of swine flu and it takes them 24 to 48 hours to confirm a case from samples.
Now, the first case. In the middle of the electoral campaign for the European Parliament, several cases of swine flu appeared in a military base in a small town near Madrid, Hoyo de Manzanares. The problem was that this was officially announced on a Thursday, May 23rd, the soldiers had been ill for a few days already, and on Wednesday, a school had visited parts of the base. There was an understandable concern, to the extent that many children didn't go to school even though classes were not officially cancelled.
On Monday, Conservative leaders asked for the resignation of the Defence Minister (yes, this defence minister) and said that her attitude of secrecy the previous week was intolerable. Minister Chacón made a series of appearances in Congress and with the press, in order to tell her version of events. In short: the first cases broke out the two days before the school visit, but they were so mild that they were indistinguishable from a cold. Such outbreaks are frequent on military camps where soldiers live close together, but the first swine flu suspicions started because it was more contagious than any normal cold would be. The school children were always at least 500 metres away from the area where soldiers were quarantined. And there had been no "secrecy"—in fact everything had been revealed to Congress and to the press even faster than usual.
The flu was not transmitted to children, the electoral campaign went on, and everyone forgot the insinuations that Minister Chacón had plotted to kill all the children in Hoyo de Manzanares.
Let's fast forward a few weeks. Dalila Mimouni is a Moroccan immigrant in Spain. She's very young, only 19, and she's married to another young Moroccan. She's pregnant. And this is what happened to her (translated and condensed from here):
• June 11th: Dalila goes to the Gregorio Marañón Hospital. She has a high temperature, joint pain, lower back pain, a headache, and a sore throat. She is diagnosed with a throat infection. The lower back pain is blamed on her pregnancy. She's given treatment for the infection and she's sent home.
• June 13th: She's not getting better. She goes with a 39.5º C / 103ºF temperature to the emergency services to Fuenlabrada Hospital. They confirm the previous diagnosis and send her home.
• June 15th, 5:00 a.m.: She goes again to Gregorio Marañón. Same symptoms, same fever. She's diagnosed with an infection and asthma. She's given paracetamol and amoxicilin, and she's sent home.
• June 15th, 19:50: She goes back to hospital. She has difficulty breathing. Her new treatment includes more antibiotics, bronchodilators, and antipyretics.
• June 15th, 21:00: She gets worse and is sent to intensive care. She's diagnosed with pneumonia. More antibiotics.
• June 16th, 9:00: She's put on artificial ventilation. The swine flu diagnosis is confirmed.
• June 29th, Dalila's 20th' birthday: Her baby is born via cesarean section, at 28 weeks.
• June 30th: Dalila dies.
By the way: Dalila's family denies she was asthmatic, and the Madrid Health authorities say that this detail had always been on her medical records. Apparently, she was a healthy woman who liked to run the 1,500 meters.
Let's pretend that there aren't political interests in the two cases. What can anyone, especially any woman in Spain, infer if we compare the two incidents? First of all, that if you are the Defence Minister you are supposed to have magical powers to know the state of health of any of the tens of thousands of people under your responsibility. It is an intolerable breach that you are not informed on a Tuesday that some soldiers had been diagnosed a cold on Monday. If you're informed on Wednesday night that they suspect swine flu, and the new diagnosis is officially declared on Thursday afternoon, there was negligence in allowing some schoolchildren to visit the same building complex where those soldiers were quarantined.
But now, if you are a doctor in a hospital it is perfectly understandable that you send a woman home with antibiotics if she has most of the symptoms of a flu, "swine" or common. You can do this for four times in the course of five days, until the woman stops breathing. Respiratory infections don't give you joint or back pain? Not a problem! It's the pregnancy, stupid! That is why the emergency doctors sent her to gynecology on her first hospital visit. Because of course, when a woman is pregnant, she's simply a warm, walking cradle for the itty-bitty-cutie-baby inside her. No more, no less.
Right now, the health authorities in Madrid are defending the doctors that neglected Dalila, saying that they believed they were doing the correct thing, and that they behaved "according to the protocols" (source). The tragedy is that these politicians are probably right. The doctors only did what they are supposed to do, which, in my experience in this country, is to follow to the letter all the principles of Bikini Medicine. That's the protocol they were using.
The Gregorio Marañón is a university hospital. All I can hope for the future is that right now, a student who doesn't plan to specialize in gynecology is shocked enough by this case to realize that there is not enough medical investigation of the way that 51% of the population receives medical treatment as if they were a deviation from the norm.
A Tale of Two Stories
The Best July 4th in Human History
I love World Net Daily. Where else can I read important articles on the important conservative issues of the day, like: "Did Michael Jackson repent, accept Christ?" or "eBay warns buyers off $1 mil Kenyan birth certificate"?
And there's nowhere else on the internetz—nowhere! (and how often can you say that?!)—where I can find content like: "A REVOLUTIONARY IDEA: He's back! Guess who's coming to tea parties? Find out which popular patriot is helping take America back this Independence Day."
Who is it?! Who is it?! Who is it?!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy! It's Joe the Plumber!
I should've guessed. He's totes the most "popular patriot" of them all! I bet if Patrick Henry were alive today, Joe the Plumber would KICK. HIS. ASS! Booyah!
I'm exited beyond my wildest dreams to read that "Joe the Plumber is hitting the streets to speak at tea parties and help citizens take America back this Independence Day weekend." It's like Joe the Plumber took Christmas and Presidents' Day and my birthday and rolled them into one big holiday with the best present evah!
And as if that's not enough, J-Plumb is going to be joined by "doctors who will offer insight about the reality of government health care." Sweeeeeet!
I know some of you are unconvinced that the "nonpartisan" J-Plumb is teh awesome, but check out these words of wisdom:Joe the Plumber said the best advice he can give to citizens who are frustrated with intrusive government is to stop voting along party lines and begin electing leaders who will abide by the nation's founding document.
Learn the Constitution. Words to live by, bitchez.
"Learn the Constitution," he said. "Then when someone wants to be elected, hold their feet to the fire and make them follow it because that's what we need to get back to. It works so well when we follow it. Forget party politics. Learn the Constitution and vote the best American in, not the best Democrat or Republican."
And you don't even know how inclusive the Tea Party movement is! I bet you're all: "Ooh, that's just a bunch of dumb Republicans actin' all stupid and shit," but J-Plumb challenges your asses to attend a Tea Party and see for yourselves that it's a grassroots movement that spans the political spectrum."I'm cynical by nature, but I am also very hopeful because I see people from the Left and the Right showing up to these tea parties," he said. "You have people, bikers, union members and guys in three-piece suits showing up to these things."
Holy Toledo! Are you telling me that not only are there bikers, union members, and guys in three-piece suits (they're the Republicans, right?), but also people?! Cripes, now that is the true power of a grassroots patriot movement with a totally misappropriated idea involving tea—pulling together bikers and people in the same place. That's America, people. That's America.
There's only one thing that casts a bit of a shadow over what's shaping up to be the best Fourth of July in the whole of human history:Asked if he has plans to run for public office, he replied, "I hope not. You know, I talked to God about that and he was like, 'No.'"
Somebody hold me.But Wurzelbacher said he will keep that door open if God ever calls him to be that leader.
Rock! Pass me the sparklers, baby!
Quote of the Day
"The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it's going to take a grass-roots, bottom-up pressure. Because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It's an absurd situation again. Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary."—Michael Scheuer on Glenn Beck's show apparently rooting for an all out celebrity deathmatch, because nothing gives you a real spring in your step like a good war.
Anti-Cruelty Überfail
[Strong trigger warning.]
And you thought the Animal Rights Group That Shall Not Be Named was bad. Well, they are—but this advert for the Dutch non-profit "Animals Awake" pulled a page from their playbook then significantly upped the ante when they created a viral campaign featuring "international fetish model" and the Netherlands' "Sexiest Vegetarian" Ancilla Tilia, which was promoted across the internet with the promise that Tilia would get naked for a good cause on June 22.
And thus begins the video, which shows Tilia doing a striptease to classic burlesque music—until a fisherman runs onstage and knocks her in the head with a club, then whips out a knife and guts her while she screams. Onscreen text tells us: "Stripping alive is not okay! But every day thousands of fish are stripped of their internal organs. Alive and conscious. Wake up!"
Christ. Where to begin?
The ad is utterly nauseating; I can't even watch it without feeling like I'm going to be sick. And then there's the marketing that drew viewers on the promise of seeing a hot naked girl (gross in itself) only to then show her being brutally assaulted (mega-gross), as if dudez who turn in to get a gander at a fetish model are really going to give a fuck about the anti-cruelty message. As if an anti-cruelty message is even being successfully conveyed when it's done via the ostensible torture and murder of a human woman! And why, oh why, are women always substituted for animals in these pieces of shit?
My head hurts. My heart hurts. Have at it in comments.
[Commenting guidelines: Comments along the lines of "This just makes me want to go fishing/eat fish/etc." are not appropriate, even jokingly. Please be considerate of your fellow Shakers who are bothered by such comments.]
To Observe and Affect
Over at Jezebel, Dodai writes about a reported "dispute heating up between photographers and the Obama White House when it comes to pictures of Sasha and Malia" (emphasis mine):
One the one hand, you have children whose parents would like them to lead a somewhat normal life.That seems like precisely the wrong question to me. I wonder instead: Where does Sasha's and Malia's inviolate right to privacy end, and why should public curiosity about them justify its contravention?
On the other hand, you have the government telling photojournalists — not paparazzi but news organizations — what they can and cannot publish.
According to Politico's Michael Calderone, the AP wouldn't put pre-approved White House photos of the girls' first day of school on the wire — the same way a newspaper wouldn't print a White House press release, verbatim. That's not journalism.
…It's tough to figure out what feels right in this situation. Of course there's a curiosity about the Obama daughters and how they live. Kids! In the White House! It's exciting. Then again, they shouldn't be followed by paparazzi or thrust into an unwanted spotlight.
But isn't it troubling how the President is trying to control the media? Because there's a responsibility to your children, and there's spin control and censorship. And we're lucky to live in a country with a free press, where the government doesn't control the media. Where do the President's rights end and the photojournalist's rights begin?
I take the point about the troubling nature of a president trying to control the press, but it seems to me he shouldn't be put in that position in the first place via the insistence the public has a "right" of access to his children. The elemental issue here is not censorship, but how much ownership we think we have of the Obama girls.
There's a cultural narrative about female ownership that leads us to treat any female body as community property in a way we don't do to male bodies, which is certainly at play here on some level, but, more importantly, there is the unholy marriage between our narratives about celebrity and consumption, which manifests as a collective belief that we own, to one degree or another, anyone in the public eye.
We deserve pictures! We have a right to comment on them! What they're doing! What they're wearing! Whether they're pretty! Whether they're fat! They belong to us! They are ours! Gimme gimme gimme! We demand more! CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP KACHING More more more more more moremoremoremoremore! Mine all mine! The preciousssssssssss!
That's the going price for having a public life—even if, like Sasha and Malia, the life was not requested or sought.
President and First Lady Obama have tried to strike a compromise between the fucked-up cultural sickness of consumption and belief in a right of ownership of public figures; they acknowledge the curiosity about their daughters and try to satiate it with regular photo-ops—such as the one from which the image at the top of this post was taken, one picture of, literally, thousands taken that day.
That should be good enough.
Even if it is not: To what end, to what purpose, exacting more?
Those whose voracious appetite for material that grants the opportunity for self-soothing judgment or vicarious adventure leaves them always clamoring for more, want something they can never have. They want unfiltered access; they want an intimate knowledge of the Obama girls and their lives without the falsity created by a staged photo-op—but the very process of observation itself creates falsity, unreal versions of little girls whose desperately-sought authentic nature is altered by any attempt to detect it. Call it the Double Obama Experiment.
Perhaps, unconsciously, buried deep behind the assertions to want access to the "real" Sasha and Malia, there is a recognition that observation affects that which is observed. And maybe attached to that recognition is a desire, a longing to influence just by looking. Maybe we all have some sense of the power in our gaze.
All the more reason to respect the wishes of anyone who might wish to stay out of it.
What The Hell?
Shaker ClumsyKisses
What the hell is with that blue hair? What the hell is with that lipstick?? What the hell are you trying to do, out-Goth Deeky??? What the hell????
[See also: Liss, evilsciencechick, and katecontinued.]
Question of the Day
What's your favorite online game?
Right now I'm adoring "Crush the Castle." Not only is it ripping fun, but the controls are extremely simple (just a click of the mouse!), and I can sit and play it at work while I'm waiting on hold to speak to someone at Public Aid, or at Social Security, or wev.
I spend a lot of time on hold.
It's a great little game. However, if cartoonish video game violence isn't your cup of tea, you might want to avoid this one. The blood really flies.
Breaking News
Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera are terrible, terrible people.
Wait, did I say breaking news? Sorry. I meant not news. Not at all.
Don't cross the streams!
I'm sure I heard that advice somewhere. Don't cross the streams, right?
Well, Governor Sanford is admitting that, yes, he in fact crossed a stream or two (I know, I know, not the same kind of stream, poetic licence has been applied for and is awaiting bureaucratic approval, ok?), with some women.
As usual, when the rock gets turned over off these guys, you just never know what's going to crawl out. In this case:
He said that during the encounters with other women he "let his guard down" with some physical contact but "didn't cross the sex line." He wouldn't go into detail.Chapur would be Maria Belen Chapur, the Argentinean woman with whom he spent a five-day "lost weekend" in Buenos Aires last week.
Sanford said the casual encounters happened outside the U.S. while he was married but before he met Chapur, on trips to "blow off steam" with male friends.
So let me get this (ahem*) straight: last week, his infidelity was supposed to be sort of excusable because it was with his soulmate. In fact, the word is used in this very article. But to be clear, he's also had a number of casual encounters while (ahem again) "blowing off steam" with male friends outside the US.
Cue all sorts of giddy speculation in various media about what, exactly, it means to have crossed lines, but not crossed the sex line. I trust we can be above that here? On the principle that the activities of a person in their love life should be None Of Our Damned Business.
See...it's all kinds of gleeful for us, that Governor Sanford was so shrill about former President Clinton's sexual behaviours, and is now measuring his own Procrustean bed. But if we're to remain true to our principles, which say that a person's sex life should have no bearing on their fitness for office, then I'd contend it remains none of our business, even though he was a hypocrite about it.
I think it's reasonable to say it's bad for him to be hypocritical, in declaring himself politically in favour of certain values, while betraying them privately. It's reasonable - in fact, I'd say mandatory - that he be held to account for using state funds for his personal ends, and that he be held to account for abdicating his responsibility as Governor of South Carolina by disappearing and remaining incommunicado for five days.
I do not think it's reasonable for us to say or imply he's a bad Governor because his dereliction of duty included Father's Day. I do not think it's reasonable to criticize him for having sex outside of his marriage. I do not think it's reasonable to criticize his wife for her choices on what to do about their marriage.
Why? Because as a queer, polyamourous person, I don't want to be denied the right to run for public office because of my sexuality or behaviours; it behooves me, then, to be certain I don't criticize others for those things, or it's me being the hypocrite, and that makes me a lot less reliable narrator in trying to bring opinion pieces before the public. How can I make the claim with a clear conscience that I should be allowed that freedom, if I won't respect someone else's freedom to their own sexuality and behaviours?
So yes, have at him about the hypocrisy of espousing a set of values he clearly doesn't hold himself to. About the hypocrisy, mind! Have at him over the allegedly misappropriated funds. Have at him over the abdication of responsibility in not respecting his succession, when he took off for his lost weekend.
But we don't need to know who, or when, or why or how often, except insofar as it relates to the above issues. We don't actually need to know what it means to cross some lines, including some physicality, and not others.
And yes, the Republicans are scrambling to say how we should forgive him, and they, too, are being big hypocrites, which I think it's perfectly reasonable to address. And yes, that means they're "getting away with it" in a way they won't let Democrats.
But if we're to be true to who we proclaim ourselves to be, and what we claim to believe in, we need to focus on the political issues, and governance issues, rather than who did what with whom in what hotel when.
* I wish we had a different idiomatic word for "clear" than "straight": I want to say, "Let's just keep this appopriately bent:..."
Quote of the Day
"The Supreme Court has made its decision and I will abide by the results."—Former GOP Senator Norm Coleman, who has, at long fucking last, conceded to Al Franken the November election for the Minnesota senate seat Coleman once held.
Another sister attacked
(Possible trigger warning - linked article includes a description of the object used to attack, and of her injuries)
You wonder why I make some efforts to preserve my anonymity? This is why.
I bring you the sad news that yet another of my sisters has been brutally assaulted, this time in Queens. Two men accosted her as she walked home from a nightclub, at 2:30am on the 19th. Shouting "faggot" in Spanish at her, they beat her until a passing motorist stopped to threaten to call police. Police found her nearly naked, and bleeding on the sidewalk. The object used to assault her was found nearby.
The two men continued their night of astounding bravery by running away, but were arrested by police shortly after, and charged with assault with intent to cause physical injury with a weapon, and released on their own recognizance.
Despite shouting anti-gay slurs at her in Spanish while they attacked her, the assailants have not been charged with any hate crime, as the Queens Co. DA has declined to even investigate it as such.
There are a whole bunch of things I could point out about this: that it's just about the most obviously hate-based crime I've heard of in a while, that calling it only assault leaves out that they were only stopped from killing her by the passerby - why isn't it attempted murder, exactly? - that there was no bail set for two men who tried to kill a random stranger on the street.
That people will be saying it was her fault for walking alone on the street late at night, or that she'd been drinking, or blah blah victim-blaming blah.
On average, at least one transgender person is killed in the US each month. It seems only by the intervention of "good fortune" that Ms. Mora didn't join so many of our sisters and brothers already listed at the Transgender Day of Remembrance site.
Please, if you have the time, consider writing a polite but firm e-mail to the Queens Co. DA's office, reminding them that hate crime laws are only as effective as the prosecutors' willingness to use them when appropriate.
I'm sure I can safely speak for the rest of Shakesville in saying we hope that Ms. Mora returns to full health soon, and that she sees justice for this appalling hate crime.
Check Under Your Bed for Sarah Palin
So, there's this significant profile of Sarah Palin in Vanity Fair, and it's comparatively good for the most part, sticking mostly to relevant issues and giving time to both Palin's strengths and flaws as a politician—which are frequently the same thing, as in her willingness to fly fast and loose with the facts (an electoral strength; a governing flaw).
Calling it "comparatively good," given the grim material critiqued in the Palin Sexism Watch during the campaign, might reasonably be read as damning the article with faint praise—and I won't discourage that interpretation. Aside from its obviously problematic imagery, which conflates Palin with a candidate's wife, a habitual misrepresentation in the mainstream media leading up to the election, there are problems with the piece.
They are the usual problems with pieces about Palin—oblique or overt classism ("the surprise pregnancies, the two-bit blood feuds, the tawdry in-laws and common-law kin caught selling drugs or poaching game [make] Billy Carter, Donald Nixon, and Roger Clinton seem like avatars of circumspection")—and the usual problems with pieces about women—a feisty woman is little more than an animal in need of domestication ("campaign aides cast about for someone who could serve as a calming presence: Palin's horse whisperer") or in need of meds for a case of the crazy ("Polar Disorder," "there were ominous signs—indications of an erratic nature," "More than once in my travels in Alaska, people … told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of 'narcissistic personality disorder' in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders").
That said, even the (relatively few) passages examining Palin's being "at once the sexiest and the riskiest brand in the Republican Party," even if still insufferably sigh-eliciting ("fertile female," really?), are better than the usual fare, giving time to the reality that Palin's appearance is a double-edged weapon:Another aspect of the Palin phenomenon bears examination, even if the mere act of raising it invites intimations of sexism: she is by far the best-looking woman ever to rise to such heights in national politics, the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs. This pheromonal reality has been a blessing and a curse. It has captivated people who would never have given someone with Palin's record a second glance if Palin had looked like Susan Boyle. And it has made others reluctant to give her a second chance because she looks like a beauty queen.
But here's the thing (there's always a "thing" about these things, heh): Despite the article's being one of the fairer and comprehensive pieces I've seen written about Palin—or any female public figure, for that matter (more faint praise)—it's nonetheless given the B-movie monster headline: "It Came from Wasilla."
Nearly 10,000 words, done in by four. Never mind the author's almost-realized attempt to draw an inclusive portrait of a complex person and her immediate environment. Instead, remember this: She is a monster.
(In case you didn't get the message, it is later reinforced, when an entire section is labeled "Little Shop of Horrors," the nickname reportedly given to Palin on the campaign trail by an anonymous "longtime McCain friend.")
It's particularly frustrating to see this sort of thing in a piece that spends the vast majority of its time clearly detailing why Palin was a flawed candidate, and what's wrong with her still, and what her future (and ours) may hold: In the aftermath of the November election, the conventional wisdom among Palin's supporters in the Republican establishment was that she should go home, keep her head down, show that she could govern effectively, and quietly educate herself about foreign and domestic policy with the help of a cadre of experienced advisers. She has done none of this.
Not an unimportant point.Palin has shown herself to have remarkable gut instincts about raw politics, and she has seen openings where others did not. And she has the good fortune to have traction within a political party that is bereft of strong leadership, and whose rank and file often demands qualities other than knowledge, experience, and an understanding that facts are, as John Adams said, stubborn things. It is, at the moment, a party in which the loudest and most singular voices, not burdened by responsibility, wield disproportionate power. She may decide that she does not need office in order to have great influence—any more than Rush Limbaugh does.
Also not an unimportant point.
There are, it happens, lots and lots of very good points about Palin made in the piece.
And all of them risk being lost beneath the crushing weight of the lazy implication that she is a monster.
Worse yet, dismissing her as a monster, as a wild animal, as crazy, is tacit encouragement to pay her no real attention at all. She's not even serious enough to warrant your time.
They said that about another Republican once.
Just sayin'.
[Standard disclaimer: I defend Sarah Palin against misogynist smears not because I endorse her or her politics, but because that's how feminism works.]
Franken to Senate at Long Last?
MSNBC is reporting that the Minnesota Supreme Court has paved the way for Democrat Al Franken to fill the still-vacant Senate seat over which he and Republican Norm Coleman have been jousting since November, and, Mr. Petulant emails that on the teevee they're saying that the court has certified Franken as the winner.
If It's Tuesday, It's Boehlert!
How ABC News debunked the Obama "honeymoon" myth:
Poor Jake Tapper.Read the whole thing here.
The ABC News senior White House correspondent was scheduled to appear on Good Morning America on June 23 to discuss the latest results from the network's polling division. The Beltway press had been buzzing for days about President Obama's lagging job approval ratings. Actually, Obama's ratings remained high, in the upper 50s and even into the 60s. In spite of that, the press had shifted the emphasis and announced that the real problem was that Obama's policies were not as popular as Obama the president.
...So what was Tapper to do on GMA? Would he buck the Beltway's beloved narrative about Obama's supposed waning popularity and simply report the news of the ABC poll: a 65 percent job approval rating? Or would Tapper spin away and emphasize that trouble loomed for the Democrat in the White House?
You guessed it: Tapper spun hard and stuck with the Beltway's preferred "yes, but" story line: Yes, Obama is (very) popular, but people have some doubts about his policies. Tapper simply refused to allow Obama's nearly unprecedented job approval numbers to get in the way of the story he wanted to tell about Obama's "sinking numbers," which, believe it or not, was part of the on-screen text that appeared during Tapper's report on GMA. ("Make or Break? President Sees Sinking Numbers," to be exact.) Yes, sinking numbers for a report on Obama's approval rating, which hovered at 65 percent, a mark his immediate predecessor could have only dreamed of five months into his first term. And, of course, an approval rating that nearly doubled Bush's when he limped out of office in January.
But as Media Matters' Jamison Foser recently noted, a White House approval rating in the mid-60s is suddenly a bad thing from the press' perspective.
News, According to the Politico
Some dude griping about a First Lady who has the shameless gall to make use of her position.
And not just any old griping, but the sort of griping that warrants a headline like "Queen Michelle the First?" and an accompanying image of First Lady Michelle Obama caught applauding while wearing an expression in which could be read vague haughtiness, by those who want to find it:
[Click to embiggen.]
And the sort of griping that has to include retroactive snipes at (yawn) former First Lady and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:
Washington insiders haven't seen a first lady this ambitious since Hillary Clinton, without question the most powerful holder of that unofficial office.Yes, the thing that was really missing from the healthcare debate back in the '90s was more criticism of Hillary Clinton.
Clinton put herself in charge of her husband's plans to radically reform health care, and the nation is still paying the price for her mistakes.
While the failure of the Clinton administration's health care agenda had many causes, she made some missteps that a more experienced Washington policymaker would not have made. And because she was the spouse of the president, it was very tough for anyone to tell her husband that things were going badly.
And because the author—Jeremy Mayer, whose credentials are given as "director of George Mason University's master's program in public policy," which I'm not certain is relevant expertise regarding what the First Lady's role ought to be; silly me, I thought that was for the First Lady to decide for herself—just wasn't content with his diminishment of Hillary Clinton as lady-remora, he moved on to further yawn-inducing slams against Yoko Ono and Linda McCartney.
How not to show you don't have an agenda while talking about Michelle Obama's role as First Lady: Shame other women who had the temerity to refuse to exist solely as their husbands' accessories.
Truly abysmal.
[H/T to Shaker SamanthaB.]
The Gay Recession
Today's entry for the piñata of asshattery comes from the great state of Oklahoma, where State Rep. Sally Kern (R, naturally) is working to get the state to issue a proclamation blaming the gays for the current economic crisis.
WHEREAS, we believe our economic woes are consequences of our greater national moral crisis; andYou get the idea. Wall Street had nothing to do with it; the crappy economy that started to tank under President Bush is really the fault of President Obama because God can see into the future and knew that he would be elected and that Iowa, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut would allow same-sex marriage. He timed the sub-prime mortgage crisis just in time as punishment for Pride Month. Got it.
WHEREAS, this nation has become a world leader in promoting abortion, pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, and many other forms of debauchery; and
WHEREAS, alarmed that the Government of the United States of America is forsaking the rich Christian heritage upon which this nation was built; and
WHEREAS, grieved that the Office of the president of these United States has refused to uphold the long held tradition of past presidents in giving recognition to our National Day of Prayer; and
WHEREAS, deeply disturbed that the Office of the president of these United States disregards the biblical admonitions to live clean and pure lives by proclaiming an entire month to an immoral behavior;
If she's lumping in divorce with debauchery, then she's just called Ronald Reagan, John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, and Rush Limbaugh debauchees. For sex trafficking, she's got Sen. David Vitter, Republican of Lousiana, by the short ones. Meanwhile, her target, President Obama, is still married to his one and only wife, as is former President Bill Clinton. And while it's hard to imagine how she can link gays with the debauchery of divorce since the only way a gay marriage can disrupt a straight one is if one of the partners has been getting a little down low on the side, in which case their "traditional" marriage was pretty much a lie to begin with, to a homophobe just the very existence of a gay man or lesbian is a threat. After all, homophobia has been described as an irrational insecurity about one's heterosexuality.
Only a really eye-twirling religious fanatic could finesse a recession into a theocratic screed, but then, Ms. Kern has been down this road before, so she's had some practice. It makes you wonder if the wind that Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote about in Oklahoma! ("where the wind comes sweeping down the plain") isn't whistling through her ears.
Cross-posted.
OMGWTFLOL WHAT?
So, yesterday in the East Room of the White House, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, Obama gave a speech, which I'm going to call his "Please Don't Be Mad at Me, You Hysterical, Impatient Queers" speech, and asked that he be judged "not by promises I've made but by the promises that my administration keeps."
Once I stopped laughing, I tried parsing that in any way other than a synonym for "Take the crumbs you're given and stop expecting me to do what I said I was going to do for you when I wanted your votes," but it just didn't happen.
It gets better.
"I know that many in this room don't believe progress has come fast enough, and I understand that," Mr. Obama said. "It's not for me to tell you to be patient any more than it was for others to counsel patience to African-Americans who were petitioning for equal rights a half-century ago.Shorter Obama: It's not for me to tell you to be patient, but BE PATIENT!
"We've been in office six months now. I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration."
Obama has, of course, many foot soldiers in the left-leaning blogosphere, who are also admonishing queers and their allies to settle down and give the man some time geez gosh golly settle the fuck down. But the point is this: If the queer community is still being all but ignored while making this much noise, imagine if they were silent.
Impatience, and anger, are the stuff of progress. Exhorting patience and silence is, quite literally, counter-progressive.
One might even say it's downright conservative.
