As many of you already know, I'm a linguist by training and vocation, as well as by avocation: I simply adore language and languages, always have. One of the first things one often hears when mentioning a background in linguistics is something along the lines of, "Don't you just hate it when people say $EXPRESSION? Wouldn't it be great if they had grammar?"
My answer is always, "Well, no, actually, I don't just hate it; I find all forms of my native English delightful in the most literal sense, that is, they delight me. And further, every language and dialect has a grammar. If they didn't, no one would understand anything anyone said, and they do, or they wouldn't be talking that way."
Because, like most linguists, I'm a fairly staunch descriptivist. In small words, what that means is that I believe language is what it is created to be, and that it changes, constantly, and that change in language is neither bad nor good: it simply is. As linguists, it's not our job to tell people what is or is not "good $LANGUAGE_NAME". It's our job to study how and why language is what it is.
This is where it might be useful to define terms a little bit.
A language, for our purposes, is a system of sounds, and rules for how those sounds should be used to convey meaning to another human being. Every single language that isn't specifically created for the hearing-impaired fits this definition.
A written form of a language is a system of marks and the rules for their use, intended to be a representation of the sounds and their rules. Note that these rules for mark-use may be very different from the rules for sound-use: the written form of "running" includes a "g", where the spoken form for many people in ordinary speech involves so such thing. The "i" in the last syllable is almost exclusively rendered as a schwa, a vowel which English uses constantly in unstressed syllables. Not being aware of these differences is a big part of what characterizes the speech of non-native speakers, what we call "foreign accents".
A dialect is a bit of a funny word, in linguistics. There's kind of a hazy point between when a language is splitting into dialects, and when the languages becomes separate, and this point is often defined for non-linguistic reasons. For a good example, see Serbian and Croatian, which share a huge similarity on many levels, but which are adamantly two languages, not dialects of the same one - for reasons historical, ethnic, and all kinds of non-linguistically-important grounds. And whenever we as progressives find ourselves making what should be objective decisions based on political or religious differences, we should see this as a red flag for likely non-progressive behaviour.
A grammar is, basically, the ruleset which tells the speaker how to organize the sounds used in the language so that meaning will be conveyed. Every language has one, by definition. EVERY language. This explicitly includes those "dialects" which are frequently derided, such as what I learned in university to call the "Black English Variant*", that variant which is labeled "talking 'hood", or whatever other it's been slapped with lately.
It's not news to any of you that this dialect of English (BEV) is widely derided as "having no grammar", and as being the speech of uneducated people and/or people living in poverty. It's not impossible that some of you even have held this view.
So, here's my bombshell for many of you: BEV has exactly as much of a grammar as the more "standard"** varieties we see used in the mass media. It is completely regular, has conjugations and infinitives and passives and every other little gem we love in language. It has rules for how to neologize (create new vocabulary), and those rules are well-enough understood that, for instance, new songs performed in it don't need subtitles for native speakers, as they would if the language didn't include those rules.
It does not limit its speakers linguistically (but I don't think I need to tell anyone here how it can limit its speakers socially/in the work sphere/in education/et c., because of prejudice and bigotry); how could a thriving and vibrant community be making movies and music in it if it did?
Being a fully-fledged language/dialect in its own right, it can be easily seen that it is so by the fact that many of its native speakers are able to code-switch into and out of it with as much ease as any child of a bilingual home. As with any bilingual home, there are usually social rules about when code-switching should be done, which I'm sure at least some of our Shakers of colour and/or immigrant Shakers could give us in moments, if they wanted to.
There are strong elements of classism in this too. When was the last time you gave an "Aw, shucks," and poorly imitated the speech mannerisms of people from the US' Appalachian region? When was the last time you laughed at Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel on The Simpsons?
By appropriating their dialect for use as allegedly "comic" fodder, we tell people who are native speakers of that dialect that they are less than we are, that they are inferior, unintelligent...and think for a moment: if you're thinking that kind of thought about a group of people for no other reason than the way they speak - which is quite simply and only a product of absorbing the language as humans do, by listening to the other humans around them - how are you not being a classic walking definition of the word "bigotry"?
When you deride someone else's use of English for its "failure" to adhere to the "standard" variety, it's not they who end up looking ignorant. Consider, next time, asking yourself about some "pet peeve" about a particular variety of English: Did the speaker achieve communication (the goal of language)? Were their goals achieved, in that you were able to understand what they said, their ideas successfully conveyed from their brain to yours? If so, then what grounds have you for complaint?
Remember that what are today dialects, in 200 or 500 or 1000 years, may be wildly divergent languages. That's how languages happen: groups of people, for various social and psychological reasons, alter their language slightly from the "standard", in order to express various identities. Over time, membership in that linguistic group becomes more and more isolated from people speaking the "standard" variety, and eventually, the standard and the variant become mutually unintelligible.
If, say, Nero had been able to successfully force everyone*** never to change language, all of us in the West would be speaking Latin. Not French, Italian, Spanish, or even a good chunk of English: just Latin.
Language changes; dialects exist. Neither of these things are inherently bad. The opprobrium they bear is only that with which our society chooses to freight them.
* My apologies to you all if this is no longer the apt term, and my gratitude in that case if someone can tell me what the most recent name is. Edit: Per several of you (and my thanks!), the accepted current term seems to be "AAVE", for African-American Variety of (or Vernacular?) English.
** And please note, again, that when you're talking about "standard" language, you're normativizing one group's dialect at the expense of another's. And that ain't real progressive.
*** Please note that this has never happened in the history of humanity, despite strong efforts by many, many people.
Prescriptivism, Classism, Racism: Three Bad Ideas That Go Poorly Together
Nope
There is, perhaps, no more perfect example of the fucked-up ways in which women, womanhood, and female bodies are viewed than at the intersection of the realities of breast cancer and the tone of breast cancer awareness marketing—whether it's the pinkification of everything breast cancer, or the insistence that everything about breast cancer has to be cute and/or sexy and/or funny (see Save the Boobs! Save the TaTas! The Beauty of Breast Cancer Research. Boobleheads!), it's just 87 different shades of obnoxious.
No exception is the increasing trend in getting men "involved" in breast cancer fundraising by reframing breast cancer treatment as a way to save boobs, rather than the lives of the women to whom those boobs are attached.
To wit: The Noreen Frasier Foundation's "Save Some Boobs" campaign, the website for which greets visitors with the tagline "It's a Matter of Life & Breast!" and a welcome video featuring Professional Dudebro Kevin Connolly:
Hi, I'm Kevin Connolly. Please send our pledge to the important woman in your life. You'll help fund groundbreaking women's cancer research—and save some boobs. And who doesn't like boobs?! The Facebook application that Social Vibe designed for the Noreen Fraser Foundation makes it that simple. Because really what is Facebook all about—faces? [laughs] I don't think so. It's about boobs. Ladies go there to show 'em off; guys go there to check 'em out—I mean, really, when you think about it, it should be called Boobbook. So sign in and send the pledge. Every time you do, Social Vibe will make a donation to fund important women's cancer research and you'll help save some boobs. Please do it. It's a matter of life and breast.Well, I won't be giving a donation, but I will dole out 1,000 points for rank sexism, plus bonus rainbow points for naked heterocentrism.
Getting men involved in breast cancer fundraising is a good idea, not just because a lot of men will be the partners, fathers, brothers, sons, uncles, nephews, friends of women with breast cancer, but because men get breast cancer, too.
But surely there's a way to do that without totally alienating feminist/womanist women in the process and more deeply entrenching the divide between the sexes that leaves many women's health concerns (including research into the causes of breast cancer) woefully underfunded.
[H/T to Shaker mschicklet. FYI: The website—at which the video begins playing automatically, so click through with caution if you're at work or in some other space where launching video wouldn't be cool—can be found here, if you're inclined to look at it.]
Daily Kitteh
My oft-mentioned friend, and KBlogz's older brother, Todd and his partner Ken recently adopted three kittens from the same litter. In front: Fizzgig. In the middle: Rufus. In back: Siouxsie Sussudio. Awwwwwwwww!
Federal District Court Rules "National Day of Prayer" Unconstitutional
by Shaker Jadelyn, linguist, witch, feminist, pacifist, progressive, activist, writer, queer, gamer, musician, exile, lover, and superhero, in no particular order.
Last summer, I decided to face one of my fears by taking a public speaking class. The final project for the class was a persuasive speech. I, loving controversy as I do, decided to argue that the National Day of Prayer should be abolished, a position which I took not only for the fun of arguing it to a not-terribly-receptive class, but because I genuinely believed it to be true, and still do.
Well, I got my wish today. A Wisconsin federal district court held yesterday, in a suit brought against the President by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, that the law requiring the President to declare a National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment. The NDoP will still be held this year; the judge added a 30-day stay on his order to allow time for appeals, as is customary, and that extends past the first Thursday in May, so President Obama will still issue the proclamation this year.
But this? Is still a huge step forward for non-believers in America, or those who do not "pray" in the traditional sense of the word, or just those who understand the concept of separating church and state and would like to see it upheld. And it deals a hefty blow to the dominionist types, who are forever arguing that America is a Christian nation, to be told outright that even a non-sectarian and inclusive (for some value of "inclusive", which pointedly does not include atheists or agnostics) Day of Prayer, when mandated by law, is unconstitutional.
Of course, since the right-wing Christians in charge of the National Day of Prayer Task Force were upset over just the scaling-back of Obama's first declarations of the NDoP, from Bush-style prayer breakfasts and public events to a quiet signing and no events at the White House at all, you can bet they are going to flip. their. shit. over a judge declaring the whole thing unconstitutional. The judge, forseeing this, added this explanation to the end of her judgment:I understand that many may disagree with that conclusion and some may even view it as a criticism of prayer or those who pray. That is unfortunate. A determination that the government may not endorse a religious message is not a determination that the message itself is harmful, unimportant or undeserving of dissemination. Rather, it is part of the effort to "carry out the Founders' plan of preserving religious liberty to the fullest extent possible in a pluralistic society." .... The same law that prohibits the government from declaring a National Day of Prayer also prohibits it from declaring a National Day of Blasphemy.
Will this stop the Dobsons and their NDoP Task Force from claiming this as religious persecution? I highly doubt it, but at this moment, I don't care. I just know that I, as an American who does not pray in the way most people mean the word, and who definitely does not recognize some kind of supreme authority-deity that might reasonably be represented by proclamations urging Americans to ask for God's blessing or offer thanks "to God", am grateful that a court has recognized the marginalizing power the National Day of Prayer holds over Americans of non-deistic faith or no faith. We are Americans too, and there is no reason to have a law require the President once a year to insinuate that we're less so because we don't join the rest of the nation in prayer.
It is important to clarify what this decision does not prohibit. Of course, "[n]o law prevents a [citizen] who is so inclined from praying" at any time.... And religious groups remain free to "organize a privately sponsored [prayer event] if they desire the company of likeminded" citizens.... The President too remains free to discuss his own views on prayer.... The only issue decided in this case is that the federal government may not endorse prayer in a statute as it has in §119.
Thank you, Judge Crabb. Thank you for standing by the Founders' true intentions (both James Madison and Thomas Jefferson spoke about the problematic nature of government urging religious expression) instead of the revisionist history that would create America as a nation of faith, and to hell with the rest of us. Thank you for refusing to dismiss the case when the Obama administration asked you to. From the bottom of my godless heart, thank you.
[Cross-posted. Related Reading: On Values and Faith.]
Quote of the Day
"On Lost, most of the answers to the questions we're asked [by reporters] can be categorized in one of two ways: stuff we know and can't talk about and stuff we have no clue about."—Jorge Garcia, who plays Hurley on Lost, in a guest post for People's "TV Watch" blog about the most recent episode of the series.
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, publishers of Olivia Twist McEwan's Couch Potatoing for Dummies.
Recommended Reading:
Victor: Rep. Steve King Physically Grabs Think Progress Blogger When Asked to Account for His Justification of IRS Attack
Marcella: Carnival Against Sexual Violence 92
Cara: The Importance of Consent in Everyday Situations
Fannie: Male Sports Star Accused of Rape Again, Will Not Be Prosecuted
Tigtog: Friday Hoyden: Jane Goodall
Ope: 'Feminists, Womanists' Battle Across Racial Lines
Latoya: Erica Jong Wonders if Oprah is "A Professional Negro"
EastSideKate: Observation
BAC: In Memoriam - Dr. Helen Ranney
Leave your links in comments...
Today in Rape Culture
[Trigger warning.]
Q: When is a rapist not a rapist.
A: According to Australian Supreme Court Justice Dean Mildren: When he's lonely.
CHIEF Minister Paul Henderson said yesterday he did not believe a 13-year-old girl could consent to having sex with her teacher.Rage. Seethe. Boil.
He made the comments after a Supreme Court judge said a teacher was not a rapist "as that word is ordinarily understood" because there was no evidence the sex he had with his student was not consensual.
...Justice Mildren said the teacher was not a "sexual predator" - but had suffered from a "life of loneliness".
What makes Mildren's fuckery even worse is that the teacher started what the article euphemistically describes as a "physical relationship" with his student "after the girl confided to the teacher that she was the victim of a sexual abuse."
So, a vulnerable 13-year-old survivor confides in her teacher, whom she is meant to trust, that she's been sexually assaulted, and he responds by launching a "physical relationship" with her. That is textbook predation. Even if there existed some scenario in which "loneliness" justified an adult man engaging in a "physical relationship" with a 13-year-old girl (note: that scenario does not exist), it still wouldn't be applicable to this guy who is obviously a sexual predator.
It really, really disturbs me how many men can more easily sympathize with male rapists than their female victims, how many men will twist themselves into all manner of logical contortions to make defenses and excuses and explanations for even admitted rapists, to the point of claiming they're not really rapists at all.
The "physical relationship" lasted four months. Mildren sentenced the teacher to two years.
[H/T to Lauredhel, by email.]
Sure, This Makes Sense
Totally legal, totally ethical, totally appropriate. Nothing to see here:
Porter J. Goss, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in 2005 approved of the decision by one of his top aides to destroy dozens of videotapes documenting the brutal interrogation of two detainees, according to an internal C.I.A. document released Thursday.Destroying the tapes and then concealing the destruction, only to be caught later, makes you look awesome, though.
Shortly after the tapes were destroyed at the order of Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the head of the C.I.A.'s clandestine service, Mr. Goss told Mr. Rodriguez that he "agreed" with the decision, according to the document. He even joked after Mr. Rodriguez offered to "take the heat" for destroying the tapes.
"PG laughed and said that actually, it would be he, PG, who would take the heat," according to one document, an internal C.I.A. e-mail message.
...It was previously known that Mr. Goss had been told by his aides in November 2005 that the tapes had been destroyed. But a number of documents released Thursday provide the most detailed glimpse yet of the deliberations inside the C.I.A. surrounding the destroyed tapes, and of the concern among officials at the spy agency that the decision might put the C.I.A. in legal jeopardy.
...According to one of the e-mail messages released Thursday, Mr. Rodriguez told Mr. Goss that the tapes, taken out of context, would make the C.I.A. "look terrible; it would be devastating to us."
Is it really too late to just round up every single member of the Bush administration and throw them in a Halliburton-built jail...?
Feel the Homomentum!
Obama extends hospital visitation rights to same-sex couples:
President Obama mandated Thursday that nearly all hospitals extend visitation rights to the partners of gay men and lesbians and respect patients' choices about who may make critical health-care decisions for them, perhaps the most significant step so far in his efforts to expand the rights of gay Americans.Um...wow. Okay. Granted, I'd prefer that he just issue an executive order extending marriage rights to same-sex couples, but federally-mandated visitation rights is a very, very important interim mandate.
The president directed the Department of Health and Human Services to prohibit discrimination in hospital visitation in a memo that was e-mailed to reporters Thursday night while he was at a fundraiser in Miami.
Administration officials and gay activists, who have been quietly working together on the issue, said the new rule will affect any hospital that receives Medicare or Medicaid funding, a move that covers the vast majority of the nation's health-care institutions. Obama's order will start a rule-making process at HHS that could take several months, officials said.
My one concern is whether this is going to cause the huge network of Catholic hospitals (or any of the smaller religiously-affiliated hospitals, many of whom already have ridiculous policies like denying emergency contraception to rape survivors) to stop accepting Medicare/Medicaid. Because that, of course, would be bad for everyone, including same-sex couples, dependent on Medicare/Medicaid in small communities where such a hospital is the only option.
It seems the administration may have considered that possibility and thus also included this provision: "[The new rules] also will affect widows and widowers who have been unable to receive visits from a friend or companion. And they would allow members of some religious orders to designate someone other than a family member to make medical decisions." ("Some religious orders"? No clue.)
Naturally, it wouldn't be an article in the mainstream media without a sop to "the other side," so the fuckos from the the Family Research Council were called in to comment.
But opponents of same-sex marriage have called the visitation issue a red herring, arguing that advocates want to provide special rights for gays that other Americans do not have.AAARRRGGGHHH!!! YOU DO NOT GET TO ARGUE "SPECIAL RIGHTS" WHEN THIS IS A SECOND-BEST OPTION GIVEN TO PEOPLE DENIED BASIC RIGHTS!!! JUST SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!
Ahem. Sorry. You were saying, asshole...
"In its current political context, President Obama's memorandum clearly constitutes pandering to a radical special interest group," said Peter S. Sprigg, a senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council. He said that his organization does not object to gays giving their partners power of attorney but that it questions Obama's motives.Radical gay blah blah. Undermines sanctity of yadda yadda. Snooze. These people don't need "senior fellows." They just need a tape recorder with their tired-ass comments from 1982.
"The memorandum undermines the definition of marriage," he said.
Jackasses.
Question of the Day
Following on the heels of last night's QotD: What turn of phrase do you love so much that you use it like it's going out of style?
As for my answer, all I can say for myself is: See the Shaxicon, lol.
Seen
A white guy driving the shittiest, beat-up GM pick-up you can conjure, sporting on its back window a sticker recreating the iconic Ford logo, except instead of "Ford," it read "Fags."
Iain pointed it out to me while we were on the way to the grocery store—in our Ford Fusion.
"I think that makes us fags," I observed.
"And it makes that guy a total douchebag," Iain added.
"It's pretty fucked up to see hate speech just driving down the road like that," I said.
I imagined the gay children who didn't even have words to describe themselves yet but maybe already had some sense of what the word "fag" means, maybe because they'd been called a fag on the playground—what would they feel when they saw that guy's truck and his despicable sticker? And then I imagined shattering that window into a million billion pieces with one arcing swing of a baseball bat.
But I don't wield a baseball bat. I wield a teaspoon.
Donate to Advocates for Youth.
Um...
[Trigger warning for reference to clergy abuse.]
[Click to embiggen.]
If you can't view the image, it's of a ten-foot-tall crucifix hanging in St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Oklahoma, in which Jesus' abs (I ain't gonna mince words) look like a huge cock and balls.
The controversial crucifix has caused a deep divide among members of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, where it hangs above the main altar.Via Andy, who notes: "The crucifix is based on the San Damiano Crucifix. As you can see, it has distended abs too."
"There are a couple people who have left the parish," said the Rev. Philip Seeton, the church's pastor. "There are people in the parish who don't like it and have stayed."
Critics of the crucifix take issue with what appears to be a large penis covering Jesus' abdominal area. Seeton said the portion of the crucifix in question is meant to be Jesus' abdomen "showing distension" — not a penis.
In all seriousness, do Rev. Seeton, who says "the crucifix doesn't concern him, and there are no plans to remove it," and Monsignor Edward Weisenburger of the Oklahoma City Archdiocese, who says "he has no problems with the crucifix," really not get how this image, irrespective of its historical context, is perhaps not strictly the best choice for display in a Catholic Church when juxtaposed against an international sex abuse crisis...?
Somebody nick a fiver from the collection plate and buy these dingalings a fucking clue.
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.]
Skinny Jesus Chef Less Messiah, More Mess-Maker
A few weeks ago, I reviewed the first episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, an ABC reality show in which "Naked Chef" Jamie Oliver travels to Huntington, WV—deemed the Obesitiest Place in America by the Centers for Disease Control—where he was going to makeover the town's eating habits, a project that included revamping the school lunch program.
Well, Arun Gupta investigated Oliver's success in the latter endeavor and found that "Jamie Oliver's 'Food Revolution' Flunked Out." Oliver, it seems, is not merely a self-congratulatory fat-hating ass, but also a liar concealer of information:
At the end of one episode, we hear Rhonda McCoy, director of food services for the local county, tell Jamie that he's over budget and did not meet the fat content and calorie guidelines, but she's going to let him continue with the "revolution" as long as he addresses these issues. What is not revealed is that the "meal cost at Central City Elementary during television production more than doubled with ABC Productions paying the excess expense," according to a document obtained by AlterNet from the West Virginia Department of Education.Ouch. And there is yet more.
…Turns out that even with an unlimited budget, Jamie was unable to design a menu that provided a minimum number of calories while not exceeding the fat limits. A nutritional analysis of the first three weeks of meals (15 lunches) at Central City Elementary conducted by the West Virginia Board of Education flunked him on both counts. A whopping 80 percent of his lunches exceeded either the total fat or saturated fat allowance, and most of the time both, and 40 percent of his lunches provided too few calories.
…A document from the West Virginia Department of Education indicates Jamie's escapades put Cabell County's entire lunch program at risk. It stated: "Noncompliance with meal pattern and nutrient standard requirements may result in a recovery of federal funds." In plain English, the county could lose a large amount of funding because of the failure to meet the standards.
While Jamie did raise $80,000 to pay for trainers to teach cooks in all of Cabell County's 28 schools to produce the new menus, a document from the county outlined many other expenses that have not been detailed on the show. Meal preparation required more cooks to the tune of $66,000 a year; each school needed new equipment ranging from $20 containers to $2,945 commercial-grade food processors; the county was paying more for fresher items, such as cooked chicken at an additional 10 cents a serving; schools that rolled over to the new program were unable to use "donated food" from the USDA, valued at $522,974.68 last year, with officials bluntly noting, "The program cannot afford to lose this amount"; and the county was losing purchasing power because it was having difficulty getting the fresh ingredients through the buying cooperative it shares with eight other counties.
In a perverse way, Jamie Oliver has highlighted many of the shortcomings of the U.S. food system. But it was like taking a wrecking ball to a termite-infested house to show the rot inside at the cost of smashing the structure.
The reality behind "Food Revolution" is that after the first two months of the new meals, children were overwhelmingly unhappy with the food, milk consumption plummeted and many students dropped out of the school lunch program, which one school official called "staggering."Oliver, who spent a good part of the first episode harrumphing about the bureaucracy that was making it difficult for him to get done what he wanted, didn't dedicate any time to talking about the fact that the US "federal government reimburses schools a paltry $2.68 for lunches and $1.46 for breakfasts (pdf) for children who qualify as long as the food meets specific guidelines," nor that, as reported by Jan Poppendieck, author of Free for All: Fixing School Food in America, "after school districts pay for labor, equipment, administration, transport, storage and other expenses, it leaves them with 'somewhere between 85 cents and a dollar' for the actual ingredients for lunches."
Gee, that might have been a good tidbit to highlight. If, y'know, he was actually concerned about why USian kids aren't eating fresh organic foods at lunch.
Of course, it's way easier to appear to "fix" children being served pizza for breakfast than fix an institutional clusterfuck that demands school cafeterias serve up healthy grub for a buck a kid.
And what of that pizza? Another little slice (heh) of info left out of Oliver's show is that it had a whole-wheat crust and lowfat cheese—and that serving whole-wheat and low-fat dairy to kids in a slice of pizza means they are less likely to pick and choose what they eat when the ingredients are served separately.
And then there's this:
Even though these kids are eating "breakfast pizza" with "luminous pink" milk, it's probably more nutritious than what they would eat otherwise, assuming their parents were even able to feed them breakfast. The median household income in the city of Huntington is about 55 percent of the U.S. average. We never learn that a phenomenal 86 percent (pdf) of the children at Central City Elementary qualify for free or near-free meals because of widespread poverty.Fawn Boyer, a resident of Huntington, points out: "In a town where many of the state employees are making so little income that they qualify for welfare, it's unrealistic to expect people to be able to shop at the higher line supermarkets that offer organic foods." Indeed so. Which means that as kids gave up the lunch program because they didn't like Oliver's (higher-fat, lower-calorie than the school lunches they liked) lunches, their parents had to provide alternative food on the cheap, meaning highly-processed, HFCS-riddled, high-sodium junk food.
Which, despite its limitations, the school lunch program was not serving.
So what Oliver ultimately accomplished by "staggeringly" driving more students out of the school lunch program is increased consumption of the very food that no one should be eating. Classic.
If Jamie and Co. wanted to make a real difference they should go after the fast-food industry and abominations like the KFC "Double Down," a breadless sandwich composed of two fried chicken cutlets piled with bacon, cheese and "Colonel's Sauce." Then again, a recent issue of the Jamie Magazine reportedly features a "wholesome" school meal of "tuna Waldorf pita with hot vanilla milk, an oaty biscuit, and a banana" that has 643 more calories and 23 grams more fat (pdf) than a Double Down.Snort.
And just in case anyone's still wondering if Jamie Oliver is the victim of bad press, and isn't the grandstanding, opportunistic, smug fat-hater I've accused him of being, please enjoy these photos of Oliver dressed in a fat suit and "riding" a scooter with a broken wheel, a stunt designed "to show the dangers of eating too much junk food."
It's not being unhealthy that's the problem, you see, so much as being FAT!
These are not the pictures of a man who cares about my health (or anyone else's). These are the pictures of a man who loves nothing more than the sound of his own voice and reading his own favorable press, and has convinced himself that his "good intentions" justify any amount of insult (or deceit).
[Via.]
I Write Letters
Dear CNN:
Repeat after me: Women are not a reward for good behavior. Women are not a reward for good behavior. Women are not a reward for good behavior.
And being a "nice guy"—defined here as someone who "puts a girl's [sic] demands first," "puts women on a pedestal," and "gives [them] thoughtful gifts," all in the interest of getting sex—isn't being "nice." He's being manipulative. And pathetic.
Sincerely,
Erica C. Barnett
P.S. Next time you write a story about "what women really want," maybe consider including the perspectives of, I dunno, some actual women?
Tell 'Em, JK!
JK Rowling writes an awesome column ("The Single Mother's Manifesto") explaining why she doesn't vote conservative, despite having becoming incredibly wealthy—and although it's specifically about British politics, it is, as you'd expect, widely applicable:
Yesterday's Conservative manifesto makes it clear that the Tories aim for less governmental support for the needy, and more input from the "third sector": charity. It also reiterates the flagship policy so proudly defended by David Cameron last weekend, that of "sticking up for marriage". To this end, they promise a half-a-billion pound tax break for lower-income married couples, working out at £150 per annum.Read the whole thing here.
I accept that my friends and I might be atypical. Maybe you know people who would legally bind themselves to another human being, for life, for an extra £150 a year? Perhaps you were contemplating leaving a loveless or abusive marriage, but underwent a change of heart on hearing about a possible £150 tax break? Anything is possible; but somehow, I doubt it.
…I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major's Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism. On the available evidence, I suspect that it is Lord Ashcroft's idea of being a mug.
[H/T to Shaker differentdrummer.]
Today in Rape Culture
by Shaker BrianWS, who, in addition to horseracing, loves fantasy football and Kodak.
[Trigger warning.]
You know what I love?
Horse racing. It's quite literally my favorite thing in the entire world.
From the very first time my mom took me to the track when I was in elementary school, I knew I loved it. What I didn't know then was that twenty years later I'd be making a living watching it, writing about it, following it, talking about it, and basically living my dream surrounded by all things horse racing all the time.
But you know what I don't love?
That horse racing, my favorite thing ever, gave me a nasty reminder that there really isn't any place anywhere that isn't affected by rape culture.
Why, just last night at Charles Town Race Track and Slots in West Virginia, a runner named No Means Yes was sent off as the heavy 2-5 favorite in the 4th race, and won.
As the community's certified eyebrow actor, this is giving me a raging case of the sighbrows, Shakers.
While I'm thrilled for all the bettors who analyzed the race and are able to bask in the glory of their $0.80 profit for getting it right, I can't help but wonder how many people who threw their dollars at that horse even thought for one moment about the fact that the horse is named No Means Yes. I, for one, could only think about that as I listened to the track announcer call her name over and over during the running of the race.
Oh yea, did I mention that the horse is a mare? Surprise, surprise, a female horse called No Means Yes.
The fact that someone bought this horse, and when tasked with coming up with a name for her, landed on No Means Yes, can only further speak to just how pervasive rape culture is.
I'm further disappointed because I'm privy to the knowledge that people by and large take naming their horses very, very, seriously. It's almost a discipline all its own, coming up with the perfect name for a horse. Sometimes that name is some combination of the horse's parents, sometimes it's a touching tribute to someone else, other times it's an inside joke. That's why it's even more upsetting, because when given the opportunity to name this runner and give her a moniker that she'd race with for all of her days, the idea that consent is a constant that is also given through use of the word "no" was the best this owner could do.
When does no mean yes? Never.
The idea that "no means yes" is not just some cute, throwaway saying that you give to a horse as a name. It's a disgusting concept that has been used time and again to reinforce the idea that sexual assault survivors really wanted it and were really giving consent when they repeatedly said "no."
And in a somewhat sexist, hardly progressive environment like horse racing, naturally I'd be labeled a hysteric for commenting on this. I'd be accused of making it a bigger deal than it is – that is, if anyone would even be willing to acknowledge that it was a problem in the first place, an idea I'd label a longshot if I've ever seen one.
[Commenting Guidelines from Liss: This is a thread about the insidious ubiquity of the rape culture; please note that comments discussing the merits/ethics of horseracing and/or gambling will not only be considered off-topic, but will rightly be regarded as an attempt to derail a conversation about the rape culture.]
