Don't get me wrong -- "I Am Woman Hear Me Roar" was catchy in it's own way, but as my friend Howie said, I'm just sure they'll be singing this one around the campfire soon.
Video below the fold is DEFINITELY NSFW!
Isn't It About Time for a New Anthem?
Everything Old Is New Again
(Or: It's probably not edgy if your great-grandfather would have laughed at it. Trigger warning.)
In today's Guardian, Brian Logan writes a piece about the "new offenders of stand-up comedy"—that is, the (primarily) straight white dudez who lace their acts with racism, homophobia, sexism, and rape jokes (jokes about "raping women" are, according to one comic, "the new black on the comedy circuit") and call it ironic, edgy, "challenging taboos," "pushing back boundaries," and other euphemisms for using as humor various forms of bigotry and violence by which they'll never personally be victimized, the sting or threat of which will never even touch them.
Naturally, if you don't find it funny, you just don't get the joke. And, hey, if there are people who think they're being serious when they do totes hilarious stuff like "draw[ing] his eyes into slits to mock the Chinese," it's not their problem.
In fact, most of the comics I spoke to denied any responsibility for how audiences interpreted their work. "If you're doing a brilliant piece of irony and someone takes it literally," says [Richard Herring, a veteran comic who is currently sporting a Hitler moustache for his show, "Hitler Moustache," in which he argues "that racists have a point"], "that's not your fault. It's their fault for not being intelligent enough to get it."Small comfort to marginalized people who are targets of the bigots whose prejudices are overtly condoned by rooms full of "enlightened" people having an "ironic" chuckle at racism. Well, we didn't mean to give the impression we think violent prejudice is okay! Oh, that's all right then.
Call me a humorless feminist scold (I know you will!), but I find it remarkably pathetic that Herring defends his material with an expectation that people too fucking ignorant to understand the basic concepts of "equality" or "consent" be sophisticated enough to discern the subtle nuances of privileged wankers ostensibly laughing at bigots/rapists because they find bigots'/rapists' expression of their hatred funny, but not bigotry/rape itself.
Logan veers in the general direction of a discussion of privilege—
[Y]ou will see very few minority ethnic comedy audiences in Edinburgh – or, in my experience, on the mainstream comedy circuit in general… [Brendon Burns, a confrontational Australian comic who, in 2007 painted himself black and dressed up like a Zulu warrior for the poster for his show "So I Suppose This Is Offensive Now?"] proudly says: "Not once has any non-white person accused me of being racist on stage. So I must be doing something right." But this implies that offence is invalid if taken by any party other than the minority in question (as well as overlooking the fact that non-white people make up a small minority of his audience).—but never quite gets there. In fact, he ends his article with the disappointingly noncommittal shrug: "Offence is clearly in the eye of the beholder"—which is just an attempt at a slightly more enlightened "it's a matter of opinion," though somehow worse, when effectively saying offense may well be justified yet nonetheless disregarded—followed by a redirection of singular responsibility onto audiences to demolish the market for bullying comedy.
Which is a fair point—clearly, a believer in teaspoons and expecting more is not going to argue that audiences don't have a responsibility to reject expressions of bigotry and violence for entertainment. On the other hand, comedians are social commentators—their job is to remark upon culture and its various absurdities and failures, and just because their objective is to make people laugh doesn't absolve them of the responsibility that any professional social commentator or critic with any integrity has, which is to expose, not entrench, the cultural narratives that are damaging to the marginalized, voiceless, and dispossessed.
Absolving comedians of any and all responsibility for their material necessitates deliberately misunderstanding or ignoring what the actual role of a comedian is, what purpose they serve.
It doesn't matter if they don't want that role and purpose and responsibility; that's the trade-off for a public career in which your content is culture. Ignoring it doesn't release one from the responsibility; it merely makes one an asshole.
And, generally speaking, a shitty comic. Because the thing about doing socially irresponsible comedy is that those caverns are well-fucking-mined by now. Even jokes that aren't overtly offensive, that seek to tease out the nuances between being black and white, or female and male, or gay and straight, without elevating one or demeaning the other, are yawn-inducingly tired and hacky. And rarely is a comic, especially a straight white male comic, good enough to do this sort of observational dichotomy material without relying on stereotypes, anyway.
As I've said before, I adore good stand-up comedy, and, because I'm always on the lookout for new comics who can make me laugh until I cry (see: Wanda Sykes, Eddie Izzard, among few others), any time I'm channel surfing and see a stand-up, I'll stop and give them a chance. And if they're doing some "X demographic is crazy, amirite?" shtick, I just flip the channel immediately—because they might as well be telling me: I'm uncreative, derivative, boring, and irresponsible. Don't waste your time here.
The funniest thing I've seen in five years is a bit about Hot Pockets. I've seen that shit 100 times, and I still laugh until I'm weeping every time I watch it. A great comedian can make anything funny.
The irony is that the comedians busily building a career out of ethnic slurs and rape jokes are the same ones who would criticize an uncontroversial comedian like Jim Gaffigan for not fulfilling the promise of what comedy can be when its practitioners are social critics, even as they reject the intrinsic responsibility that comes with that role. It's a conflict that reveals their intention—they merely want to shock, not to change minds—and also the inherent flaw in their delusions of envelope-pushing: Getting people to laugh uncomfortably—or not uncomfortably—at a rape joke without challenging that laughter is hardly revolutionary. Or difficult. Or meaningful.
In which case, why aren't they taking up the objectively more difficult challenge of getting people to laugh at a frozen food item? And why are they lambasting the comedians who do?
It's all just so much laziness. And not a small amount of denial that their allegedly "hip" audiences are all laughing for the "right" reasons.
Dave Chappelle was haunted by the idea that there was a segment of his audience laughing for the wrong reasons. And when he couldn't shake that ghost, he walked away.
Maybe that's the difference between being the sort of comedian whose life will never be different if bigots exist in the world, and being the sort of comedian whose life is very different indeed because there are.
[H/T to Shaker SapphireCate.]
Quote of the Day
"It would offer equal or better benefits than any plan—but cheaper."—Rep. Michele Bachmann (?-??) offering another master stroke with her thoughts on why a public option would be a bad thing.
As Faiz says: "Exactly—that's the point."
Bread and Teaspoons - Four
Good morning (unless it isn't where you are, in which case I wish you Good $TIME_PERIOD), and welcome to the fourth weekly installment of Shakesville's networking post, Bread and Teaspoons*.
There are hundreds of us here, maybe thousands, all over the US and Canada, and out into the rest of the world. We work in all kinds of fields, doing all kinds of different things, and most of us tend to be online creatures: we roam the Toobz constantly, and in doing so, encounter many opportunities.
So this is a weekly post, Mondays, providing a spot for Shakers to network a little with one another, see if we can help each other out some.
One new thing this week: In the interest of maintaining interest (because I think this is a long-term project), I'm offering a prize for the first person to report a successful connection made through Bread & Teaspoons. That prize is a postcard from Canadialand, sent by me, with a limerick composed just for you, on the spot (you'll have to send me an address, though - to my address as linked in the Contributors page).
Here's how it works: There should be three sorts of comments here.
1) You comment here with any details of work you're seeking: where, what, that sort of thing. You give an e-mail address at which you can be reached - feel free to set up a special e-mail for it, if you don't want to post your regular one for the world to spam - and if another Shaker has a lead, they can contact you directly to pass it along.
A work-seeking comment should include:
Please do NOT include information such as your full name or telephone number, as this is and will remain a public post, and once posted, there's no taking it back (because it'll be spidered by a search engine, not because we don't want you to).
It is explicitly alright to comment to this each week with similar info.
For example, I might post a comment saying:
I'm a professional translator of French, German and Russian, with nearly 17 years of experience. I'm looking for basically any translation job, academic, commercial, personal, genealogical, you name it, with one exception: I do not currently have certification, so if you need a certified translator (usually for legal docs: birth certificates, divorce decrees, wills), you need someone else.
I am also available as a writer or editor, for academic, journalistic, creative, marketing-oriented or any other type of written communication. Basically, if you'll pay me, I'll write or edit it.
You can contact me for business purposes through my business address, translatey.caitie@translateycaitie.com.**
2) The second type of comment would be task offering: if you've got a job you think might suit someone here, consider posting it as a comment. Use the same guidelines as above: give general information here, and specific information when you exchange e-mails. An offered task might look something like this:
I have a doctoral thesis which needs proofing and editing by Thursday, is anyone available? You can reach me at ABDShaker@shakesville.miskatonic.edu.
I'd like to be clear: only offer tasks which you have explicit permission to offer. If you come across something that isn't yours, but think some Shakers might want to know about it, either ask permission of the offerer, or offer it privately to someone whose comment says they might be interested (based on their skillset). For instance, you're on some other site, you see someone asking for, say, help in designing their new website. Don't come here and offer the job as a comment, unless you have that person's explicit permission. What you could do is go through the comments, and send an e-mail to anyone with the right skillset.
3) The third kind of comment I'd love to see is success stories! We’d love to know when this works out, and people actually find some employment through our efforts. If you feel like sharing, tell us how it worked out for you. :)
So, that's what we'd like to see.
What we do NOT want to see:
So there. Have at it, Shakers, for Bread and Teaspoons!
Important disclaimers: Shakesville makes no endorsement or claim as to the capabilities of anyone commenting to this post, and anyone considering hiring someone should be prepared to treat it like any other business situation: DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE. We're not doing any screening of this, so you'll want to make sure you check references, use safe-payment procedures (e.g., ask for a deposit), all the things you'd do when working with any stranger on the Internet. While this is intended for Shakers in general, remember that there is no real obstacle to being able to comment here, and do the things you need to do to keep yourself safe.
* As might be evident, this is an intentional reference to Bread and Roses, a longtime slogan of the left. In this case, though, my hope is that if we achieve steady bread, we will use it to power our teaspoon use.
** Now, don't go writing to that one yet, because that's not my actual domain name (which I've not got running yet, but should soon), and I'm only using it as an example (though it happens to be true). The e-mail listed for me under Contributors works just fine for now, if you've got something for me.
The last several Bread and Teaspoons: One. Two. Three.
For further back, each post has this last-several in it - skip back, and you can go back further from there.
Feel the Homomentum!
The St. Louis City Board of Aldermen and Mayor Francis Slay passed an ordinance that would require LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination policies (pdf) for contractors on city projects.
Board Bill NO. 75 CS states:
On each public works contract, for which the design teams estimated base value of the contract is one million dollars ($1,000,000) or more, the agency shall require that all contractors assigned to work have a personnel policy which prohibits discrimination based upon race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.Feel it, St. Louis-style!
Palin: Out
On her way out the door this weekend, now-former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin took a rather peculiar swipe at the media:
"You represent what could and should be a respected, honest profession that could and should be a cornerstone of our democracy," she said. "Democracy depends on you, and that is why-that's why our troops are willing to die for you. So how about in honor of the American soldier, you quit makin' things up."Not that she's wrong, but: A) It's something that could be directed at politicians, too; and B) Particularly politicians of her own party.
It's especially rich to hear the woman who spent the final weeks of the last presidential campaign accusing her opponent of "palling around" with terrorists lecture the media about "makin' things up."
Physician, heal thyself.
Fühlen Sie die Homobewegungsgröße!
German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries on Thursday backed changing the law to allow gay couples adopt children.Shaker The Bald Soprano, who emailed this item, notes the political context and realities: "Unfortunately, the other party in the ruling coalition (she's in the SPD, and the other party is CDU/CSU—basically Democrats and Republicans, although not quite so get-rid-of-federal-government) are
Speaking to Deutschlandfunk radio, Zypries said adoption law needed to reflect the reality of the modern German family. She cited a new study showing children raised by gay parents resembled those belonging to heterosexual couples.
"Where kids are loved they grow up fine and protected and have the necessary self-confidence to get by in the world," Zypries said, adding there was no difference if the parents were two men or two women.
up in arms over the concept, so it may not come to pass. *sigh* But still, it feels like a (baby) step forward to me."
Change begins with a public conversation, so I agree it's a teaspoon worth a wee bit of celebration. o.oP!
Feel the Homomentum!
This month, for the first time in its history, the cover of the British Army's official publication Soldier magazine shows Trooper James Wharton – openly gay – clad in his dress uniform, complete with Iraq medal, next to the headline "Pride". It is the most obvious sign that almost a decade after the military lifted the ban on homosexuality it is finally comfortable with its new clothes.According to the article, senior British officers have been "quietly" advising senior American officers on how America can change DADT and ensure a similar success.
British servicemen and women now march at Gay Pride in uniform, all three services have become Stonewall diversity champions and a few months ago the head of the British Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt made history when he became the first army chief to address a Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender conference. "Respect for others is not an optional extra," he said.
The importance of a policy and culture in which gay servicemembers can serve openly, important to both the servicemembers themselves and to the public they protect, is made plain in the story of another soldier who never had the opportunity Trooper Wharton had.
In the genteel atmosphere of the Coldstream Guards' officers' mess, Lieutenant Mark Wakeling was known as "thug". Amongst his fellow guardsmen, he prided himself on being the toughest, the fittest and the most aggressive.Blub.
He not only laughed at homophobic jokes – he was the "straightest of the straight" amongst the young officers. When one of his platoon admitted to being gay, he immediately started the discharge process.
Nobody realised that behind the excessively macho behaviour was a young man who lived in fear that his own homosexuality would be discovered. Eventually, the pressure became too much and he cut short his military career and resigned his commission. "I scurried away like a frightened rat," he explained yesterday, bitter regret still evident in his expression more than a decade later.
...For Mr Wakeling, the news that Trooper Wharton can genuinely live openly as a gay man with a boyfriend in another ancient and prestigious regiment, the Household Cavalry, generates such obvious turmoil that he has to pause to compose himself. "I can't express how fantastic it is to know they are able to be themselves. I regret that I lost out. I felt I didn't really fulfill my ambition in the army. It was tragic. I was a good soldier. I could have been useful to the army," explained Mr Wakeling.
Let us hope we achieve the same success soon. The arguments about troop morale, already quite evidently manifest codswallop, are just laughable when the British military has 10 years of convincing evidence to the contrary. There is no intellectual honesty in the unit cohesion argument anymore, if there ever was; only bigotry.
[H/T to my pal Jess over at The F-Word, via email.]
What The Hell?
Shaker Maud
What the hell is up with your That Girl haircut? What the hell is with that Village of the Damned gaze?? What the hell is that around your neck??? What the hell????
[See also: Deeky, Liss, evilsciencechick, katecontinued, ClumsyKisses, Mistress Sparkletoes, Liiiz, Reedme, Mama Shakes, Mustang Bobby, RedSonja, MomTFH, Portly Dyke, SteffaB, Icca, Christina, Orangelion03, Car, Siobhan, and InfamousQBert.]
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
lol your post-racist country
Recommended Reading: Jesse Taylor's "Post-Racial My Black Ass."
Somehow, when conversations like this happen, when a young black man is called "nigger" by a teacher or when he doesn't receive a callback because his name is Delonte or, as I also saw this weekend, a white woman sees a pitcher in a black family's apartment and says, "That's where he drank his Kool-Aid!", it is never ever asked, "What happened to Barack Obama's post-racial America?"Read the whole thing.
Yet when a black person says things like these are racist, or even just stupid, he is accused of undermining "post-racialism". You're a racial "grievance monger"...
..."Post-racial" was a catchall for the same litany of Things Black People Should Stop Doing, which include alleging racism, being victims of racism and thinking about ways in which people could be racist.
Post-racialism is already supposed to be on at least version 2.0. Of course, whatever version we're on, the only thing post-racialism is supposed to prevent is white people being called racist.
Last night, Iain and Kenny Blogginz and I were talking about our frustration with the media going after Obama, or doing their usual passive-aggressive "we're just reporting!" about people going after Obama, for his comments about Henry Gates' arrest, our consternation with the utter absurdity that there are Americans who (claim to) find remotely controversial the statement: "There is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by police disproportionately. That's just a fact."
(A fact—and a subject worthy of a national conversation—irrespective of whether racism was actually at play in Gates' arrest or not, by the way.)
I noted, once again, the irony how it's never white people doing racist things, or other white people subsequently denying even the possibility of racism inherent to those things, that are called the race-baiters, but instead the people of color who call that shit out. It's always people of color and their gosh darn insistence on talking about racism who are accused of preventing racial unity, not the white people who engage in racism.
Thus, the narrative becomes that Obama, by talking about the history of police racism, is a bigger threat to racial unity than the actual police who practice and perpetuate institutional racism.
KBlogz, always with the devastatingly witty insight, suggested wryly: "The media should go burn a cross on the White House lawn to remind Obama that racism is over."
lolsob.
Photo of the Day
Visitors wear 3D glasses as they watch a preview of the upcoming movie "Avatar" during the 40th annual Comic Con Convention in San Diego July 23, 2009. The convention runs from July 23 to July 26. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
New Specs
There's no green on them; they're silver and just reflecting the vines outside my office window.
They're totally granny glasses, and I love them.
It's such a weird feeling to have such different frames after a decade with the last ones—which were totally non-stylish granny glasses themselves back when I got them, and then suddenly everyone had clunky dark frames. These are so comparatively light on my face that when I look in the mirror, I feel like I've just awakened from plastic surgery or something, because I look so different to myself.
That will last about three days, then back to wevsville.
Complimentary
by Shaker kaninchenzero
It started with a friend who said:
I've discovered something: I really like it when random strangers tell me they like my work. I'm slowly coming to understand how it is that very famous people put up with the pain-in-the-ass of being very famous people, and that understanding is nicely identified by Sally Field's famous "You like me, you really like me!"My friend is trans, and so am I. And I can accept compliments about being clever, too. I thought about how, for both of us, to be complimented on doing clever things is something we can safely accept, because the brain inside the skull? It's never changed radically; we were there for all it, and always clever.
I guess it surprises me because I perceive myself as being so introverted that the idea of being appreciated by people I don't know would alarm me...but it doesn't. It's kind of a rush, actually.
Other compliments, however, are harder.
I think most of us who didn't grow up hearing that we were beautiful have a hard time with that. For those of us who're trans, the hard time comes with layers and sediment and encrustations, in one way or another. I wasn't really consciously aware that I needed to be a woman until I was eleven or twelve, but even before that I knew I didn't look right as a boy. And I'm told I made a particularly beautiful boy specially if you like them slim and pale and fey.
There are issues with accepting compliments as trans—and issues with accepting compliments as a woman.
Naturally, all of this is me and your mileage may vary.
My wife is very bad at receiving compliments. And it's heartbreaking -- it used to be frustrating but I got over myself as the frustrating was about me ("How come you can't just take a fucking compliment!") and not her -- because she's pretty, she's smart, she's funny, she's sexy as hell, and I like her immensely. She has reasons for her reflexes that tell her she's not pretty, she's not smart, she's not funny, she's not sexy. Some of them have to do with the usual family dynamics where one child is designated the Pretty One, as though there could be only one such in any set of siblings. My brother and I suffered from this too -- I was the Smart One, which meant he was the Stupid One, and he was the Social One making me the Antisocial One. There's considerably less truth in that than any of us thought when we were little. My brother is a very smart guy (as well as dead gorgeous) and I do pretty okay socially when I put the effort into it. Similarly, while my wife grew up hearing that her younger sister was the Pretty One, the rest of us think they look nearly alike. There are other reasons which aren't mine to share. Let's just say that bad things happen to girls and young women and not all of the scars are left in their skin.
I used to be really bad at receiving compliments, especially about my appearance. When I was younger, my appearance was a source of conflict. I was called albino -- bizarrely, explaining that my grey eyes meant that I wasn't actually albino just very pale had little effect on bullies. O logic, how many times must you fail me? *shakes her fist* I can't tell you how many times my ugly brown plastic very thick glasses were taken from me. Seriously they were awful and the idea that they had to be enormous or I wouldn't have any peripheral vision is a bigger lie than GlaDOS's cake. My grandmother, who I lived with after leaving my mom's house at thirteen, fought with me constantly. I didn't dress masculinely enough. Like everyone, I wore jeans and t-shirts and Doc Martens or Chuck Taylors. I had earrings, which were bad by themselves, but then I got earrings in weird places. There was an industrial across the top of my left ear with a captive bead orbital around it, which I thought was pretty damn neat. My grandmother cried for a week when she saw them. I got pliers and took them out. Since they weren't healed they bled a little and she cried about that. (The thing about my grandmother, see, is that there is no winning with her. Do what she wants or don't. Either way you lose. Either way she remains controlling and manipulative and she rewrites history in her head to suit her purposes.)
And of course when I looked at myself I kept trying to see the boy everyone else did. I didn't always know I was supposed to be a girl, but I knew the boy was wrong. I spent a lot of time looking at myself in a mirror with my genitals tucked between my legs.
When someone would tell me I was pretty, I'd look away and blush and mumble something self-deprecating. I knew what I looked like, and it was funny-looking, right? Pale. Skinny. Weird. And agreeing with them would be like bragging, and I was definitely told not to brag, that was just rude. Of course contradicting people is also rude, so it was a problem.
I forget who suggested it -- probably a therapist -- but someone told me that when a person said I was pretty I should smile and say "Thank you." I did. It felt awkward and wrong like there were centipedes crawling on my brain at first. But you know, I like hearing that. I like being pretty. It's nice to hear that I'm clever, or that someone likes my writing, or noticed that I actually said something funny. It's still not always comfortable. And I understand that for my wife it feels positively dangerous and I try to not poke at that too much. But sometimes she's just really beautiful and I feel compelled to tell her. And she is getting a little better about hearing it without automatically saying "I'm not."
So we've got lots of stuff here. For cis and trans women, being complimented can carry a certain amount of implied threat that is sometimes difficult to gauge. What does this person want from me? What exactly do they mean? Often we've been told that agreeing with the person giving the compliment "Why yes, I am beautiful and smart and all things good" makes one seem arrogant, or at least assertive, and women are supposed to be self-effacing. (Sometimes I look back on what I remember of my childhood and I really think I got most of the 'girl' parts of socialization -- you should be quiet, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, look for what you can do to help someone else, don't talk up yourself. I didn't get the sex parts, which are kind of huge, but I think I got a lot of the behaviour. Why anyone is surprised I came out I don't know.) For any of us, there could be someone who hurt us badly, who told us we were ugly and unattractive and we should be grateful that they were hurting us. Compliments can trigger that past trauma, as odd as that may sound.
Where does that leave the well-meaning compliment-giver? As always, the first step is learning that if it's not about you, it's not about you. If you tell a friend she's pretty and she bursts into tears, it's really probably not about you. If she wants to talk about it, listen, but if she doesn't, drop it. Find out what's safe. "That's a really great outfit" may be safer for her. Or, "I like talking with you, you've always got something interesting to say." Just plain "I like you" often works really well. And please don't push. Most of us who have issues know we have issues. And if we know we've got them, we're working on them as best we can. Which may seem to move really slowly from the outside, but there it is.
And the way I see it, feminists and womanists are working towards a world where women will feel more secure about receiving compliments because they won't come with such a gigantic load of historical bullshit attached. Where it's safe to feel pretty because there isn't a rape culture to make the victim responsible for her attacker's actions. Where fewer children face bullying from peers for not conforming to assigned gender roles. Where homes are safe for children and not toxic and abusive. Where compliments never come with conditions.
Photo of the Day
U.S. first lady Michelle Obama speaks during the annual National Design Awards in the East Room of the White House in Washington July 24, 2009. REUTERS/Molly Riley (UNITED STATES POLITICS)
Still Not Wanted: Girl Geeks (& We're Not So Hot on Gay Guy Geeks, Either)
In the blogaround, Shaker Rehmeyer dropped the link to a post at Kotaku, in which is republished a poster advertising a contest in which "Electronic Arts is asking Comic-Con goers to 'sin to win' a dinner and 'sinful night with two hot girls, a limo service, paparazzi and a chest full of booty.' To enter the contest, conventioneers need to 'commit acts of lust' by taking photos with the models working the Dante's Inferno booth or any other booth babes at the show. Those photos then need to be uploaded to Twitter, Facebook or emailed to Electronic Arts."
[Click to embiggen.]
In case you can't view the image, or in case it escaped your notice, the background of the top half of the poster is a woman's chest and cleavage, with "Sin to Win," a skull, and the silhouettes of two women on their knees emblazoned across the skin as if a tattoo.
Shaker Knitmeapony points to additional coverage at The Escapist, and Shaker Scott points to Ars Technica.
Shaker Anna also emailed the link to Ars Technica with the note: "I'm honestly not sure where to start. It's bad enough that they are using mostly-naked women to sell video games—but to encourage outright predatory behavior and then reward it with a 'sinful night' with 'two hot babes' just makes my brain bluescreen. Even the ad has naked women posing around a presumably 'geeky' guy in a baggy t-shirt. It's just /sick/."
I don't know what else I can add to that.
[Previously: What More Could a Girl Want?, Again Let Us Contemplate Why There Are Not More Girl Gamers, Still Not Wanted: Girl Geeks, Over at Shakes Manor..., Liss Isn't the Only One Who Writes Letters, Fat Princess Greatest Hits, "Women are treated better than men online," says NerdBoobLoot-man, Rape for Sale.]
See a Real Live Police State—See America First!
by Shaker Sami
We've all heard of the harsh conditions experienced by prisoners interned at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and other American outposts of cruelty and brutality—the ones supposedly justified by the urgency of the War on Terror.
However, if you're an American, you don't need to go to Iraq or Afghanistan to find your way to a vicious American-run prison system operated on principles of deliberate cruelty. And you don't need to travel to an outright dictatorship to experience life in an oppressive police state.
You need only head to Maricopa County, Arizona—and get arrested. This is trivially easy if you're not white, but it's not that hard even if you are: Just criticise the sheriff in public.
This is Sheriff Joe Arpaio, he of the pink punishment and curious media policies, who calls himself "America's Toughest Sheriff" and chases celebrity with a pathetic zeal that would be funny if it were less dangerous.
Maricopa County includes the city of Phoenix, more than nine thousand square miles of territory, and contains nearly four million people. Arpaio was elected sheriff in 1993, and made his mark early.The voters had declined to finance new jail construction, and so, in 1993, Arpaio, vowing that no troublemakers would be released on his watch because of overcrowding, procured a consignment of Army-surplus tents and had them set up, surrounding by barbed wire, in an industrial area in southwest Phoenix. "I put them up next to the dump, the dog pound, the waste-disposal plant," he told me. Phoenix is an open-air blast furnace for much of the year. Temperatures inside the tents hit a hundred and thirty-five degrees.
For the record, pretty much every aspect of the treatment of prisoners in Maricopa County would be prohibited under the Geneva Conventions if they were prisoners of war. America's recent record for treatment of prisoners of war is hardly exemplary, but at least people notice.
[From William Finnegan's "Sheriff Joe," in The New Yorker, July 20, 2009. Registry required for online access to full content.]
Other choice aspects of Arpaio's system:
• A neon sign reading VACANCY on a guard tower.
• Chain gangs. Including the world's first female chain gangs. And then juvenile chain gangs. Chain gangs.
• Deprivation as a simultaneous means of punishment and cost-cutting. Luxuries banned by Arpaio include: cigarettes, hot lunches, coffee, salt, and pepper. Meals were cut to only two a day, and the cost of those meals was reduced to thirty cents per meal. (He told William Finnegan that it cost more to feed the dogs than the inmates.)
• Black-and-white striped uniforms, "comically" old-fashioned, combined with pink underwear, pink flip-flops, socks, and pink handcuffs.
It's worth bearing in mind that this does not apply only to convicted criminals—anyone arrested and awaiting trial is still a part of this system. More on how easy it is to get arrested later.
So let's say you've been arrested in Maricopa County. You're half-starved, eating food that's unlikely even to be fit for the dogs to touch. You're wearing clothes intended to humiliate you, living in tents that are dangerously hot, working on a chain gang that's part labour, part contribution to a theatre of cruelty that rivals the Bloody Code of eighteenth-century Britain for its viciousness, without the Bloody Code's rarity of application or scope for mercy.
At least it can't get worse, right?
Wait, no, it totally can.
Because you could well find yourself Tasered and beaten while strapped into a "restraint chair" or held in solitary confinement. (If you have a strong stomach, check out the "Blood on Arpaio's Hands" section of arpaio.com, a site dedicated to trying to get him out of office.)
According to Finnegan's article, Maricopa County was sued nearly 2,200 times between 2004 and 2008. In that same period, the county jails of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston combined drew 43 lawsuits. Maricopa County has paid an estimated $43 million in compensation to victims and their families. The National Commission on Correction Health Care has withdrawn Maricopa County's accreditation, and a federal judge found that conditions are unconstitutional for pre-trial detainees.
But what of the officers who inflicted violent abuses on helpless prisoners?
Well, a lot of them have been promoted. Arpaio has never so much as hinted at regret.
Though this is only a light summary, I suspect you have an impression now of the unconscionably brutal and deliberately, overtly degrading treatment of Maricopa County's prisoners. So let's move on to that whole "police state" thing.
He has instigated raids on the homes of journalists who published stories critical of him. Citizens attending public meetings have been arrested for "disorderly conduct"—for clapping. Opposing Arpaio is risky: He has four thousand employees, and three thousand volunteer posse members.
It's still 2009, don't worry—I know this stuff seems like it should be from 1809 at the latest, but this is all very much now.
And where things get really into the more modern kind of neo-fascistic horror is Arpaio's crusade against—and I'm sure you can guess what the next words in this sentence will be—"illegal immigrants."
His deputies regularly raid Latino towns and communities. He and his officers claim thirty thousand arrests of undocumented immigrants, and proof of residency status must be shown to visit inmates at the prison. Arpaio, in collusion with the county attorney, has chosen to interpret a state law against human smuggling, intended to target the smugglers (known as coyotes) in an impressively creative way, indicting the coyotes' cargo as co-conspirators in smuggling themselves across the border. Which makes it a class 4 felony and the suspects ineligible for bond, thereby condemning them to Maricopa's dangerous and unhealthy prison system.
When Arpaio and his men come to town, anyone with brown skin is stopped and questioned on their immigration status, in what the sheriff's office calls "crime prevention" sweeps. Or they come through after midnight—even in towns like Mesa, where the mayor and police chief alike are profoundly opposed to such actions, and in Guadalupe, where the population is almost entirely Native American and Latino, but almost no-one is foreign-born, because it's an old, well-established town. The raid there mentioned in Finnegan's article found only nine undocumented immigrants, so instead the sheriff and his men issued traffic tickets, for charges including "improper use of horn."
I'll close my summary with another quotation from The New Yorker. The article alone contains a lot of things I have left out, including much of the fear he instills in individuals, but this will give you an idea of it:The Guadalupe raid did have a chilling effect. It began the day before a Catholic-church confirmation ceremony—a big deal in Guadalupe—was scheduled to take place in the village plaza, and although the children had prepared for months, a number of them were afraid to come out, and missed their own confirmations.
This is the modern America, where children are afraid to go to church, and pre-trial detainees are kept in prison conditions that would qualify as war crimes if used to hold prisoners of war.
America's toughest sheriff is, as ever, unapologetic. Over lunch in New York, he told me that he doesn't mind the effect he has. "If they're afraid to go to church, that's good."
But hey, Arpaio's got a book deal and he's been on Conan and the Colbert Report, so that makes him an American success story, right?
