[Trigger warning]
Dear Jason Whitlock,
Do shut the fuck up.
Love,
Deeky
p.s. Thanks for putting "in proper perspective" the rape accusations against Ben Roethlisberger. I really love (where "love" equals "hate with all the contempt I can muster for a misogynist wankstain like yourself") how you said "Statements made by drunken sorority girls are not facts." Of course, what is unsaid here is your obvious belief that statments by drunken, bar-hopping athletes are facts.
p.p.s. I totes loved (see above) as well when you said "Statements made by sober sorority girls about an evening spent bar-hopping and drinking are not facts."
p.p.p.s. Next time, you know what would be easier? If you just came right out and said what you really mean: "Statements made by women are not facts."
[h/t to Shaker wisiti.]
**Trigger Warning**
So apparently, Oprah Winfrey had Mo'Nique's brother, Gerald Imes, who molested Mo'Nique beginning when she was seven, on her show Monday.
Why? I am asking seriously because I really can't think of a good reason.
And he apologized.
So?
I know it's not my place to be dismissive, but I don't understand what the apology is supposed to do. A few years ago, the uncle who molested me, apologized.
I pretended I didn't hear him.
I don't know the purpose beyond making him feel better. I didn't feel closure or any need to forgive. I just didn't care. I am not saying that I don't care about the abuse or the effects it has had on me and my life. About him, as a person and about any remorse he might be feeling, I don't care.
My father's brother mumbled an apology to me under a tree in someone's front yard with two witnesses who didn't care to hear, either. All of that facilitated my pretense, I suppose.
I am angry that Oprah gave Gerald Imes such a public, highly visible venue to make his apology. Though Mo'Nique has refused, understandably, to respond, he has created the impression that "the ball is in her court." It as if he has shifted a burden onto her because of the unspoken expectation that she do or say something. He hopes, he says, that they can "come back together as sister and brother," putting further pressure on her to negotiate some kind of relationship.
He gets to re-image himself as penitent and remorseful and as a victim in his own right. And in remaking himself, he tries to disrupt what Mo'nique said, ensuring that he has the final word if she keeps to her silence. According to his story, it's not that she's a liar... exactly. She's just wrong about the details.
From Liss, I learned that their parents were there. That they would join him in this very public forum made me angrier. Yes, I can understand that they don't want to abandon their son, or whatever.
But what does their appearance, as he was giving his apology, mean/say to their daughter? To me it says, "We have forgiven him." What it doesn't say, but seems to imply, is--"You should, too." That's how that sort of pressure works. I don't think I'm far off in my assertion; Mo'Nique's own parents seem to have a "Let's put this behind us" attitude:The Imeses told Oprah they thought the matter had been addressed when they temporarily asked Gerald to leave the family home after Mo’Nique told them her older brother had “tried to lay on top of me” when she was 15.
I don't think Mo'Nique's hurt is the primary concern here, especially since she is the one being portrayed as betraying the family bonds.
(snip)
Imes now regrets not revisiting the sexual assault with her daughter after banished Gerald returned to the family home - but she was hurt when Mo’Nique decided to go public with the family’s secret on national TV.
She added, ..." ‘As a family such as we were, this is something I felt that should have been discussed first privately within the family. Now, if you wanna tell the world, but give us a chance (sic).'
(snip)
“I only hope, with doing this, this can cleanse her hurt.”
I am viewing this through the lens of someone who has been disheartened by the way many communities rally around men who abuse--that in itself is not a racially specific thing.*
But the pressure on women of color not to tell, because men of color already have a difficult time having to deal with a racist/kyriarchal system is well-documented.
As if we don't exist, and as women (!), under that same system.
There may be survivors to whom the apology means something. Mo'Nique and I are both in situations in which, while the abusers weren't prosecuted, our stories were believed/verified. If an abuser was denying the abuse or walking around as if zie had done nothing and people were doubting or disparaging the survivor, maybe the apology would mean something. Or maybe there are people, in circumstances like mine, to whom the apology means something. I don't know.
I really want to understand why Oprah had him on.
What is that apology supposed to mean or do? Especially, if it is true that Gerald Imes is seeking to make money off the "story."
_______________________________
*Now, that is the one thing I will raise hell about when my uncle's name is brought up in some complimentary way. Do not come in my face with that bullshit; my family got that message pretty quickly.
"All men are dogs, the way I look at it."—Robert Donald, the only person to contribute to disgraced Republican Senator John Ensign's reelection campaign this year. Donald made two contributions for $25 apiece.
[Trigger warning for violence.]
Sometimes Facebook is reminiscent of YouTube comments, such as with this group that's making the rounds (spelling original):
DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN.CNN asked Facebook about it:
Similar imprecations were circulating online last year. But Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said that "while it may be considered distasteful and objectionable to some," the page doesn't violate the company's content policies.I suppose they don't consider it an "actionable threat of violence" since the people want their deity to cause Obama to die.
"We're sensitive to content that includes pornography, bullying, hate speech, and actionable threats of violence, and we react quickly to remove content that violates our policies when it is reported to us," Noyes said in a written statement.
"Facebook is highly self-regulating and leverages its more than 400 million users to keep an eye out for offensive content," he added. "We encourage users to report such content, and we have a large team of professional reviewers who evaluate these reports and take action per our policies."
Both houses of the Arizona state legislature have passed SB1070, a truly frightening piece of "immigration legislation":
Arizona's bill orders immigrants to carry their alien registration documents at all times and requires police to question people if there's reason to suspect they're in the United States illegally. It also targets those who hire illegal immigrant day laborers or knowingly transport them.As a historian, I don't like to hear people say "If we don't learn history, we're doomed to repeat it." We learn history all the time, and still do much of the same, hateful stuff that's always been done.
The law required all Chinese residents of the United States to carry a resident permit, a sort of internal passport. Failure to carry the permit at all times was punishable by deportation or a year at hard labor.or the 1954 INS-sponsored operation that
coordinated 1075 Border Patrol agents, along with state and local police agencies, to mount an aggressive crackdown, going as far as police sweeps of Mexican-American neighborhoods and random stops and ID checks of "Mexican-looking" people in a region with many Native Americans and native Hispanicsor, in Arizona's own more recent history, the actions of Joe Arpaio?
[T]his bill represents the most dangerous precedent in this country, violating all of our due process rights... We have not seen this kind of legislation since the Jim Crow laws. And targeting our communities, it is the single ... largest attack on our communities.
You know, this is amazing to me. We trust officers, we put guns on them, they make life and death decisions every dayThe casual assertion that everyone lives in communities in which police and their decisions are respected and trusted?
The only thing I can imagine that's more selfish than trying to stop the wedding of a woman whom you "expected" to "follow" you when you moved across the country (but didn't), is inserting oneself into that emotionally manipulative clusterfuck by volunteering to write a love letter for the entitled young man because you're fucking bored.
You know, life isn't a romantic comedy movie. If a woman didn't follow a man across the country to be with him, there was probably a damn good reason. And if she got engaged to someone else, there was probably a damn good reason for that, too. And if the man doesn't have any clue if the woman will be happy to see him, that's a pretty good indicator that she probably won't be, even if he is bearing a love letter waxing rhapsodic about their future kids (!) that a stranger wrote but he totes copied into his own handwriting.
Just UGH.
Federal agents and local police raided 35 homes in rural Southern California this week in response to the totally-not-terrorist attacks on local police by white supremacists.
The Hemet Police Department has been the victim of several attacks this year including: four city trucks set ablaze, an explosive device attached to an unmarked police car, a ballistic device strapped to a fence at a police compound, and a rerouted natural gas line at the same compound which filled a building with flammable vapor.
"A fire at a police rifle range was being investigated as a possible arson."
Yup, that is totally not terrorism. Because that doesn't happen here.
[H/T to Shaker Lena D.]
by Shaker TheLadyEve
In the past year there have been several studies covering the alleged connection between body fat and dementia. Melissa and Quixote covered the implications and scientific aspects of the some of this research last year. I read Olivia Judson's April 20th opinion article "Brain Damage" in the New York Times half-heartedly hoping that it would call into question some of the assumptions that have been made about the alleged connection between body fat and dementia. How predictably wrong I was!
Dr. Judson is an evolutionary biologist who earned her doctorate from Oxford and has published the unfortunately titled book "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex." Okay, I have not read her whole book, so I can't really critique it—but the first chapter is titled "Let Slip The Whores of War!" and it repeatedly refers to the "battle of the sexes" with regards to evolution. So that provides a bit of context to frame where she's coming from.
The piece is correctly labeled as opinion, as it's riddled with bias, judgment and terminally cute bon mots about Deathfat; yet it reads like a faux-rational attempt at a science article:FTO, as the gene is known, appears to play a role in both body weight and brain function. This gene comes in different versions; one version — let's call it "troublesome"— appears to predispose people to obesity. Individuals with two copies of the troublesome version tend to be fatter than those with only one copy of it, who in turn tend to be fatter than those with two copies of the "regular" version.
Dr. Judson's narrative tone—let's call it "annoying"—is similar to so many of the editorials, essays and interviews about the alleged "problems" posed by fat. She comes off as smug, someone who has never been discriminated against based on her size and, what's more, someone who is proud to have never been counted as such. She sets up the predictable polar relationship between "regular," and "troublesome," or, if you prefer, "normal" and "other." If you do not fit into the "regular" category, then you are an inconvenience to all the "normal" people. And what should you do if you're an inconvenience? Why, starve yourself and get a gastric bypass, of course!The possibility that obesity today will lead to higher rates of dementia in the future is, therefore, deeply alarming. The obvious question is: can obesity-associated brain damage be reversed? No one knows the answer, but I am hopeful that it can. Those two old friends, a healthful diet and plenty of exercise, have repeatedly been shown to protect the brain. Foods like oily fishes and blueberries have been shown to stimulate the growth of new neurons, for example. Moreover, one study found that dieting reversed some of the changes to brain structure found among the obese. Which suggests an interesting study. The most effective — and radical — treatment for obesity is bariatric surgery, whereby the stomach is made much smaller or bypassed altogether. Do people who have taken this option show a reversal, or at least a slowing, of brain atrophy?
Lecturing about diet and exercise? Check. Jumping to conclusions about causality without supportive data? Check. Use of unbearably moral language? Check. There are many individuals in the U.S. who have been diagnosed with various forms of dementia. The U.S. also has impossibly high body standards, a proliferation of fad diets, and rising eating disorder rates. Advising people to go on diets and lose weight to reverse brain atrophy is beyond irresponsible. And suggesting that dangerous surgery can slow or reverse brain atrophy is downright reprehensible.
Obama suggests value-added tax may be an option:
President Barack Obama suggested Wednesday that a new value-added tax on Americans is still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days.Yes, yes it would. That's because a VAT, which is essentially a national sales tax, is a regressive tax, meaning it's more of a burden the less money you make, because the 10¢, say, added to a gallon of milk is a bigger percentage of the income of someone making $15,000/year than someone making $100,000/year.
Before deciding what revenue options are best for dealing with the deficit and the economy, Obama said in an interview with CNBC, "I want to get a better picture of what our options are."
After Obama adviser Paul Volcker recently raised the prospect of a value-added tax, or VAT, the Senate voted 85-13 last week for a nonbinding "sense of the Senate" resolution that calls the such a tax "a massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income and only further push back America's economic recovery."
In the CNBC interview, Obama said he was waiting for recommendations from a bipartisan fiscal advisory commission on ways to tackle the deficit and other problems.Of course he is.
When asked if he could see a potential VAT in this nation, the president said: "I know that there's been a lot of talk around town lately about the value-added tax. That is something that has worked for some countries. It's something that would be novel for the United States."I'm quite genuinely not sure what details he needs to understand this is a terrible, terrible idea.
"And before, you know, I start saying 'this makes sense or that makes sense,' I want to get a better picture of what our options are," Obama said.
What was your favorite magazine when you were a child?
Your answer doesn't necessarily have to be a children's magazine.
I loved Mad Magazine, Highlights, and National Geographic when I was a kid, but my favorite magazine, hands-down, was Ranger Rick, to which I had my own subscription, and it always made me feel so grown-up to get my magazine with my own name on the label.
So, there's this lady named Sue Lowden. She's the Republican Senate candidate challenging Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for his Senate seat in Nevada. And, like every other Republican in America, one of her pet issues is the healthcare legislation–namely, how it is the Worst Thing to Happen in the History of America Since Jesus First Landed His Ark on Its Wheat-Filled Shores. Or whatever.
Recently, candidate Lowden proposed that one good way (spoiler alert: this is not a good way) to bring down spiraling healthcare costs is for Americans to barter with their doctors. And when some people suggested that this is not actually a good way at all to address what is a massive institutional clusterfuck exacerbated by several other major industries related to healthcare, including the very powerful insurance industry and the very powerful pharmaceutical industry, Lowden, blithely resistant to facts as is required by the Republican charter, insisted:
I'm telling you that this works. You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor, they would say I'll paint your house. I mean, that's the old days of what people would do to get health care with your doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people. I'm not backing down from that system.Now, this is very silly, because our medical system as a rule doesn't look like that anymore, and hasn't for quite some time.
will allow people to send Lowden a "personalized message asking for her help in finding a doctor for their 19th century illness," DSCC spox Deirdre Murphy says. It will include a menu of stuff you can choose to barter for treatment.True. But Democrats (and progressive bloggers picking up this particular torch) are completely out of touch with reality if they don't recognize that their kneejerk reaction has a rank whiff of classism to it.
"You can't make this stuff up," Murphy says. "Sue Lowden is completely out of touch with reality if she thinks trading chickens for checkups is smart health care reform."
The US$100 note has been redesigned. But don't worry—Ben Franklin still looks pissy.
