Lady Sleepington of Couchworth
A Grumbles Extolment!
The finest book for young-men and boys alike since Struwwelpeter is at long last alighting upon Book-store shelves, after too long in dormancy! Yes, I am speaking of Exercises for Gentlemen: 50 Exercises to Do With Your Suit On (Orig. Pub. Date 1908) by my good friend, the sterling and upright Alfred B. Olsen (MD). As you are doubtless aware, Alfie is superintendent of the Surrey Hills Hydropathic Sanitarium, the superior establishment for procuring a milk-and-egg colonic purge or, as my ship's yeoman Bruce is keen on, a relaxing afternoon in the baths, in the company of other physique-minded chums.
As Alfie's masculine words remind us, "as a general rule, flabby muscles may be taken to denote a general mental, if not moral, flabbiness." All the wondrous exercises in these pages can be performed in the comfort of one's parlor, or even the cramped confines of one's Airship. All without the need to disrobe! That last tiddly-bit has not penetrated the wavy tufts haloing Bruce's skull, as I repeatedly find him lounging about the dormitory sans undergarments.
As one-time Head Detector of Potions, Elixirs, and Poisons for the US Government and Its Occupied Territories it is with great assurance you can accept my mustache-bristling endorsement of Alfred B. "Alfie" Olsen (MD)'s book. Send the houseboy out for your copy today!
[Previous Grumblings: Benjamin H. Grumbles, Progress: Dagnabbit!, A Day in the Life of Benjamin H. Grumbles, What in the Sam Hill Are You Rascals Thinking?, Friday Cat Blogging, Damnable Milkshakery, Grumbles' Gashouse, Dash It All, McCain Is Off His Trolley, I Say, Somebody Bet on the Bob-Tailed Nag, Grumbles Writes Letters, Hosiery Is No Laughing Matter, Fear Not, Shakesvillians!, Bunsen's Balderdash!, Taint a Good Man, A Hearty Yawp of Well Wishes, The Grandest Male Organ, Bully for Science!]
Today in Still Not Terrorism
[Trigger warning.]
FBI arrests man for threatening Pelosi: "Several federal officials said the man made dozens of calls to Pelosi's homes in California and Washington, as well as to her husband's business office. They said he recited her home address and said if she wanted to see it again, she would not support the health care overhaul bill that since has been enacted."
Paging the Clean-Up Crew
[Image is the cover of this week's issue of Newsweek, with a picture of the Virgin Mary accompanied by the text: "What Would Mary Do? How Women Can Save the Catholic Church From Its Sins. By Lisa Miller."]
Shaker MJ emails that the question which emerges from "the depths of my escaped-Catholic brain [is]: Women haven't been good enough to be considered anything but second class in the Catholic world since Mary gave birth—and now we should fix your mess?!"
Totes.
The cover story itself, in fairness, is not so much about "how women can save the Catholic Church" as much as it is about how shaking up the insular, hermetically-sealed, all-male leadership can allegedly save the Catholic Church.
Also in fairness, the article is shit, riddled with tiresome stereotypes, strawmen, and the laughably trite invocation of Lynndie England as a Requisite Sober Reminder that "women in power can be as ruthless and self-serving as men." Margaret Thatcher is positively livid that she's gone out of fashion as Exhibit A in any respectable Requisite Sober Reminder, and the female equivalent of Pol Pot paces anxiously as she waits to be born into her long-overdue existence.
I'm no apologist for England or her condemnable actions, but in an article detailing the inherent corruption in insular, hermetically-sealed, male-dominated institutions, picking as evidence that women are Just As Bad a woman on the ass-bottom rung of an insular, hermetically-sealed, male-dominated institution who served as a scapegoat for her male leadership is just bad goddamn writing, apart from anything else.
As is this: "The problem is not, as so many progressives claim, the fact of their celibacy. Nor is it their costumes—the miters and capes—though these vanities do serve as reminders of the great distance between the men with power and the people without." Uh-huh. When was the last time you heard a progressive (or anyone) claim the genesis of institutional sex abuse was the robes? I'm gonna go with...never.
It's too bad, really, because the thesis of the story isn't wrong—institutions in which power is exclusively concentrated in the hands of a highly privileged class are generally rife with corruption and abuse. That is one of the primary arguments in support of diversity and multiculturalism.
But the execution was not awesome. And the cover is in a class of FAIL all its own.
I Get Letters
... From Jesus!
From: JesusGod bless me indeed!
To: deeky@gashlycrumbenterprises.com
Subject: Discover the love of God; Jesus Christ wants to give you salvation and eternal life
Date: Apr 7, 2010 12:15 AM
DID YOU KNOW THAT JESUS LOVES YOU AND DIED ON THE CROSS FOR YOUR SINS?
He has already paid the price for you.
You just need to receive Him into your heart and confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord of your life and your Savior.
Invite Him today to enter your heart. ¡Dare! And now follow this prayer:
Lord Jesus:
- I confess I am a sinner and I invite you into my heart.
- Forgive my sins.
- I give in to you.
- Thank you for this eternal life that you're giving me right now.
- I now confess you as my Lord and Savior.
- Fill me with your Holy Spirit.
- Make your will in my life; help me to find you and obey you.
Read the Bible and find a Christian church to be taught the Word of God.
Go to: http://www.realjesusywebsite.com/
God bless you.
[X-posted.]
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman and a biracial queerbait telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
This is a real thing in the world.
Via email...
Liss: This is a real thing in the world.
Deeky: Please tell me that was published April first.
Liss: NOPE! And I am already planning a JAZZLING SESSION where I shave my ladybits and you shave your head and then we get MATCHING JAZZLE!!! It'll be like a girls' spa day, but SPARKLIER!!!
Deeky: LOL! I can't shave my head. It's too lumpy and misshapen.
Liss: I hear that lumpy and misshapen heads make PERFECT HEADDAZZLING CANVASSES so you, my friend, are in LUCK. Sweet, sweet luck.
Deeky: LOLOLOL!!!
On Collective (and Selective) Memory
You know, I am not at all surprised by the fact that Virginia's Governor Robert McDonnell proclaimed April Confederate History Month. My (Louisiana) parish has done it before and I'm sure it's not an anomaly in the South.
But what gets me, what always gets me, when I see people loving on the Confederacy and declaring that their flags and memorials are all about heritage, is the selective, largely one-sided memory they have. The "Old South" may have been all moonlight and magnolias in their recollections, but there were four million or so people who, I'll bet, remembered it quite differently.
Encouraging people to remember the Confederacy includes encouraging them to remember that those states left the Union largely because of their fear that Abraham Lincoln would not just stop the expansion of slavery, but abolish it all together. Remember that these people were willing to go to war to protect their right to own and exploit other people. That dims the moonlight a little bit.
The irony is, it is "heritage" to remember the Confederacy, but we are never supposed to talk about slavery. McDonnell urges people to "to recognize how our history has led to our present," but when we talk about how slavery has very real effects on our present, that is dismissed. It ended a century and a half ago, after all, and to talk about it is to search for grievances and dwell on the past or however that argument goes. The proclamation itself makes no mention of slavery, just vague allusions to "a time very different than ours today." McDonnell himself suggested that slavery was not important enough to merit mention in a proclamation about remembering the Confederacy.
That is not the only contradiction in that proclamation:all Virginians can appreciate the fact that when ultimately overwhelmed by the insurmountable numbers and resources of the Union Army, the surviving, imprisoned and injured Confederate soldiers gave their word and allegiance to the United States of America, and returned to their homes and families to rebuild their communities in peace
No, they didn't. They fought like hell to reinstate and then maintain their previous control over every aspect of southern life, at the cost of thousands of lives and the continued denial of the most basic civic rights.
And then, the admonition that "this defining chapter in Virginia’s history should not be forgotten," as if that has ever been a possibility. (Some) white southerners and their sympathizers have been busy since the end of the Civil War making sure we never forget their noble "Lost Cause" or how near-perfect the South was before the intrusion and unwarranted intervention of the North. Confederate flags haven't just been on people's bumper stickers or their back windows. They've flown over state capitol buildings and been woven into new flags. We are not in danger of forgetting "this defining chapter."
I think what we are in danger of forgetting--and I say this as a history teacher in Texas absolutely appalled at what the Texas Board of Education is doing to the social studies curriculum--is that not everyone has had the same experiences of every event in U.S. history and that those "defining chapters" have tended to be interpreted very differently by people forced into the margins of society. That doesn't make those interpretations any less valid or real or "American."
It is enraging and hurtful to me that people expect us to learn, to teach, to glorify history in a way that disappears us, our experiences and our contributions. The history of this nation is not composed solely of the experiences and opinions of the dominant group(s).
Neither should its collective memory be.
ETA: I was in such a hurry, I neglected to give hat tips to Shaker Koach, Liss, and Spudsy, who all provided links.
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, publishers of the joint memoir Deeks & Liss: A Couple of Real Sad Bums.
Recommended Reading:
Bri: 23rd Down Under Feminist Carnival
Renee: Dr. Phil Takes on the Fatties
Echidne: On The Death Threats Against Senator Murray
Fannie: The Heterosexist Agenda: Separate and Inferior
Cara: Texas Prisons Have Nation's Highest Rates of Sexual Abuse
Ouyang Dan: The Importance of Being Bellatrix Lestrange
Julianne: Is This a Trick Question?
Leave your links in comments...
Not Trenchant As Hell: NYTimes.com Features Exclusive Sexist, Racist, Transphobic Content
by Shaker EastSideKate, a feminist teacher/scholar/mother/partner/derbygirl from Upstate New York.
[Trigger warning for voyeurism, transphobia, illusions to trans panic.]
I still haven't figured out the New York Times' "Opinionator" section. As far as I can tell, it's a catch-all for material someone at the Times thinks readers might like, but doesn't want to take responsibility for. While the section has had its highlights, Alec Soth's April 1 photo essay [warning: creepy] "Ash Wednesday, New Orleans" (part one in a dude-part series) was not one of them.
Here's my quick summary. According to the text, "Soth explores cycles of sin and redemption in the aftermath of Mardi Gras." In the opinion segment, we learn that Soth will spend the afternoon in his hotel room. There's a photo of his bare legs spread on a hotel room bed, followed by shots of the TV, followed by a photo of cans of lite beer in the hotel sink.
Soth goes out after midnight, where he shoots photos of "the aftermath." Many of these photos consist of passed out people, including several photos of women's disembodied legs. The photos look like they might have been shot by a guy who just spent the day in a hotel room drinking beer.
Soth follows this with a series of Wednesday afternoon portraits of people with ashes on their foreheads. The last segment includes photographs of a Latina woman he re-encounters that evening. He invites her up to his hotel room, where he takes some awkward video. The montage ends with the text "while I was taking her picture, I realized R. was a man."
Okay then.
Shorter summary: Soth is a dudely dude, here are drunk and/or poor people, here's some Jesus stuff (which is totally profound), here's a Latina woman (how exotic!) who turns out to be a Latina trans woman (too exotic! ewwwwww....)
First, as someone who plays with cameras, I have to say I'm unimpressed with most of the photographs (maybe it's a hipster thing). Then there's the whole "cycles of sin and redemption" thing. How do the passed-out folks fit into this? Did Soth get their consent? If they were drunk, could Soth get their consent? Why do I get the sense that this is the point? It's like hipster, rape-culture inspired, poverty porn.
The setting in New Orleans (or at least the French Quarter) doesn't strike me as particularly original or comforting, either. BTW, the audio during the hotel scene included a segment of a newscast about Haiti's infrastructure. Get it?
And the trans woman. In the hotel room. Who Soth proceeds to out. This apparently also has something to do with "sin and redemption"? What, precisely, am I supposed to make of a photo essay that ends with a trans woman in a hotel room with a strange man who is eerily fascinated with taking her picture, and then is shocked to discover that she is, in his words "a man"? I've heard stories of that sort of thing happening, and, yeah... I really didn't need to see that.
In any case, the whole thing was very hip and edgy and profound and not at all sexist, racist, transphobic, or otherwise exploitative.
I can totally wait to see the next installment of Soth's project. Also, I'll be asking the Times what the hell they were thinking, and requesting that they reconsider Soth's place in Opinionator lest I cancel the subscription I cancelled years ago.
[Via Helen and Gina.]
I Just Don't Know What to Say Anymore
Greenwald (emphasis original):
[In January, The Washington Post's Dana Priest reported] that Obama had continued Bush's policy (which Bush never actually implemented) of having the Joint Chiefs of Staff compile "hit lists" of Americans, and Priest suggested that the American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was on that list. The following week, Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, acknowledged in Congressional testimony that the administration reserves the "right" to carry out such assassinations.
Today, both The New York Times and The Washington Post confirm that the Obama White House has now expressly authorized the CIA to kill al-Alwaki no matter where he is found, no matter his distance from a battlefield.
...No due process is accorded. No charges or trials are necessary. No evidence is offered, nor any opportunity for him to deny these accusations (which he has done vehemently through his family). None of that.
Instead, in Barack Obama's America, the way guilt is determined for American citizens -- and a death penalty imposed -- is that the President, like the King he thinks he is, secretly decrees someone's guilt as a Terrorist. He then dispatches his aides to run to America's newspapers -- cowardly hiding behind the shield of anonymity which they're granted -- to proclaim that the Guilty One shall be killed on sight because the Leader has decreed him to be a Terrorist. It is simply asserted that Awlaki has converted from a cleric who expresses anti-American views and advocates attacks on American military targets (advocacy which happens to be Constitutionally protected) to Actual Terrorist "involved in plots." These newspapers then print this Executive Verdict with no questioning, no opposition, no investigation, no refutation as to its truth. And the punishment is thus decreed: this American citizen will now be murdered by the CIA because Barack Obama has ordered that it be done. ...Barack Obama is claiming the right not merely to imprison, but to assassinate far from any battlefield, American citizens with no due process of any kind.
...All of this underscores the principal point made in this excellent new article by Eli Lake, who compellingly and comprehensively documents what readers here well know: that while Obama's "speeches and some of his administration’s policy rollouts have emphasized a break from the Bush era," the reality is that the administration has retained and, in some cases, built upon the core Bush/Cheney approach to civil liberties and Terrorism.
I Don't Think You Understand...
Dear Jami Bernard,
When writing an article about the ableism on display in Burger King's "Crazy King" ads, it is not clever or hilariously pun-ny to state "Mental health advocates are not too crazy about" the advertising campaign. Neither is it somehow better to use "crazy" in the following context:
But perhaps what they should be complaining about is how crazy it is to tout such cholesterol-laden food to a public that is collectively headed for a heart attack.It is not cool to equate peoples' outrage over the campaign with "political correctness"... twice.
And I know you might not have chosen your headline, but really? "Mental health advocates not so nuts about cheesy Burger King ad?"
Jami, maybe you should've passed this one on to someone else.
Sincerely,
elle
Lost Open Thread
Last night's episode will be discussed in infinitesimal detail, so if you haven't seen it, and don't want any spoilers, move along...
Imus Strikes Again
Yesterday, Elle sent me this article under the bitterly amusing subject line "Newsflash: Don Imus is a jackass." Bitterly amusing, you see, because it's really, really, really not a newsflash that Don Imus is a jackass. Though he is most famously a jackass for referring to the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos," an incident for which he was fired by NBC (later landing on his feet at CBS), he's an equal-opportunity bigot, with as much homophobia and transphobia and disablism and fat hatred under his belt as his more well-known racism and misogyny.
But, in fairness to Imus, misogyny really does seem to be his favorite toy in the box.
[Emmy-award winning journalist Cokie Roberts] made the point that women in public life are still spoken about in a demeaning way that men rarely are. She was responding to a point I raised, about an exchange on Imus' radio program.What rakish rapscallions! Boys will boys, amirite?!
Imus asked Fox News host Chris Wallace, who was looking forward to interviewing former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, if he would conduct the interview with Palin while she sat on his lap. Wallace replied, "One can only hope."
I made the point that Palin is also a Fox contributor and a member of the "Fox family" as it were, but that didn't spare her from being subjected to this sexist palaver, and Cokie made the point that the lure of the boy's club often trumps ideology.
It seems that Imus and Wallace did not appreciate our remarks: Imus accused Cokie of being "hysterical," and Wallace — whose office was next door to mine and down the hall from Cokie's when we all worked at ABC News together — pretended not to remember who she was.
It's actually difficult for me to even write anything serious about this infuriating exchange, because I just can't even get past WHY THE FUCK DOES DON IMUS STILL HAVE A GODDAMN FUCKING CAREER?!
I quite genuinely wonder if there exists a level of misogyny that can cost a white man his job. I don't think there is.
Broadcasters like Imus, talkshow hosts like Jay Leno, professional athletes like Ben Roethlisberger, actors, comedians, authors, politicians, any highly privileged white man in a public career can literally talk about women on a daily basis as nothing but fuckholes, as second-class citizens, as hysterics and sluts and sexual objects, as less than men in every conceivable way, with special condemnation for women who deviate from the white thin straight cis young able-bodied neurotypical Beauty Standard in any way, can make rape jokes and domestic violence jokes and murder jokes and Lorena Bobbitt jokes and deceptive tranny jokes and feminazi jokes on a nonstop basis, can malign men by comparing them to women, can demean women day in and day out, using gendered slurs right on the air because "bitch" is just A-OK according to the FCC, and he can even personally rape or hit a woman, maybe a couple, all without any fear of consequence in his professional life.
Post-feminist society!!!!!!!!11!!!1!!eleventy!!!!1!!!111!!!
Understand, I'm not playing the Oppression Olympics here. This isn't an argument that racism, or any other bigotry, is dead—or even that the same people can't get away with a heaping fuckload of other kinds of bigotry, too.
Quite the opposite: Much of the bigotry expressed in these same venues is tied to misogyny. "Nappy-headed hos." "Tranny or Fatty." Militant Michelle. Ann Coulter is a man. John Edwards is a woman. Feminists are dykes. Brown-skinned immigrant women are breeding machines. Welfare queens. Fat bitches. Dumb sluts. White women are all this. Black women are all that. Latinas are all this. Asian women are all that. Bitches are all crazy! Heather Mills doesn't have a leg to stand on HAR HAR. Et cetera et cetera ad infinitum.
If I were a more cynical type, ahem, I would suspect that the dirty little secret of broadcasting bigotry with impunity is: Just make sure it's intersectional bigotry—tie your hate to a little high-larious sexism and you'll get away with it a lot easier.
But back to Imus.
The objectification here is so simple. The idea that an interview of a famous woman would be conducted while she's sitting on the male interviewer's lap. And the retribution is so simple, too. The pretense that an incredibly successful woman is invisible, forgettable, nobody, nothing at all.
It is nothing but the message: Remember, Ladies—You can spend your entire life working at something, learning, practicing, training, honing your skills, building your talents, giving every piece of yourself, your nights and mornings and weekends and every spare minute you have, keeping a laser-like focus on your ultimate goal, inch by inch making your way to the top of your field, becoming the best there ever was, maybe the best there ever will be...and whether you're a presidential candidate or America's best female skier, we can still put you in your place with a single slur, a single touch, a single image, a single shared chuckle over your nothingness.
And now I'm once again back to: WHY THE FUCK DOES DON IMUS STILL HAVE A GODDAMN FUCKING CAREER?!
Fuck.
Texting! With Liss and Deeky!
With special guest star: Spudsy!
Deeky: I love ginger fucking ale.
Spudsy: Me too.
Deeky: I like to get nekkid and pour it on my head and have sexxay ginger times.
Spudsy: Hawt. Put it in a turkey baster and squirt it in your butt.
Deeky: Okay, that made me LOL for real.
Spudsy: Fizzy!
Deeky: That sounds dangerous.
Spudsy: Yeah, dangerously AWESOME!
Deeky: If you're into carbonated ginger farts!
Spudsy: LOL!
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker themiddlevoice: What moment has changed your life—either good or bad?
I can pinpoint two moments that fundamentally changed my life for the better: 1. Exactly nine years and 22 days ago on March 15, 2001, I sent a private message on a now-defunct community site to a random stranger in Scotland about an Oscar Wilde quote in his profile. 2. On October 5, 2004, at 12:54 PM, I posted the very first post at this blog.
There are moments that ostensibly changed my life for the worse, several of them well-known to readers in this space, but I don't feel inclined to talk about them at the moment—in part because I'm not actually certain they changed my life for the worse. I'm still working that out.
Make lemonade, and all that.
OMGOMGOMG
[Image of a tweet from Lost producer Carlton Cuse reading: "Tonight a new chapter in the season commences."]
