"If I could issue hunting permits, I would officially declare today opening day for liberals. The season would extend through November 2 and have no limits on how many taken as we desperately need to 'thin' the herd."—Congressional District 11 (California) Republican candidate Brad Goehring, engaging in a little eliminationist rhetoric on his Facebook page yesterday.
The Facebook entry has since been removed, and Goehring naturally explained he was just joking. Har har. "I intended to include the wording 'we would use votes and not bullets' (but) hit the share button by accident before I finished and decided to leave it, thinking it would not be taken in a literal sense. I'm sorry if I confused anyone."
Yeah, the real problem was the "confusion" he caused; not the fact that he was obviously playing on an eliminationist "joke" (and would have been even if he'd added his allegedly intended voting clause) that has been around for years:
Note the above-linked post is from '05, and I'm certain I wrote about the "liberal hunting license" even earlier (although I can't find it at the moment). These things, and others like them, have been onsale at gun shows and conservative conferences for quite some time.
Digby notes: "Here is the story of some of these adorable jokes... These are the kind of things they sell [at] CPAC every year. It's perfectly common right wing rhetoric."
Indeed so.
Despite the fact that many of the marginalized populations who comprise the liberal bloc in the US are disproportionately targeted for actual violence in real life, outside the absurd imaginary world in which conservative jokes about killing liberals are totes hilarious.
Sexual harasser and alleged rapist Joe Francis, convicted of child abuse and prostitution and accused of much more throughout his career of building the "Girls Gone Wild" exploitation video franchise, has been given his own un-rated, 12-part, half-hour reality series, "Search for the Hottest Girl in America," which has been given the greenlight to air with uncensored nudity.
The controversial franchise will feature complete nudity on a station many viewers get with basic cable.
…["Search for the Hottest Girl in America"] will air in the 1 a.m ET/10 p.m. PT slot on Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban's HDNet channel. The independent network is generally included automatically in HD packages with leading providers such as Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network and Verizon. In fact, it's not even a pay-to-order station like HBO or Showtime.
…Francis argues that the reality show is suited to a "“mature audience" – although an edited version will also be made available for a "run on all stations" and will be acceptable for all time periods and all viewers.
"The show is by no means anything harder than anything that's been on HBO. Cuban has brilliantly designed this programming block, what he's done is taken HBO's whole niche and made it for free. You get HDNet as part of your basic cable package," Francis told us. "'Girls Gone Wild' has been demonized for all these years, it's been made out to be controversial when in fact HBO has ten times the harder core stuff and Cinemax is what we call 'Skin'emax. Mark (Cuban) is genius and taken it into the free market."
Neither HBO nor Cinemax have, to my recollection, been sued by women who allege they were coerced into appearing nude or their nude images were used without their permission.
I've nothing to say about the loathsome Francis that I haven't said before. He is the WORST.
A perfect example of why crime stats and conviction stats (such beloved tools of rape apologists) don't really say anything about the actual frequency of rape, care of the NYPD:
Those tapes show vividly that NYPD street cops are told by superiors to "downgrade" crime reports whenever possible, such as convincing a victim to file a "stolen property" complaint even after being physically assaulted in a robbery.
Now, the Voice has learned that the NYPD downgraded a felony sexual assault in a park in upper Manhattan earlier this year to a misdemeanor.
The incident was only reclassified and upgraded to a felony after the victim, journalist Debbie Nathan, protested and the Manhattan District Attorney took the extraordinary step of interviewing the police officers involved and confirming her account.
Nathan was walking in Inwood Park when she was "grabbed by a young man who pushed her off the path and into the woods," telling her he wanted to "have sex with" her. She tried to free herself, but could not.
He grabbed her from behind and pinned her arms at her sides. He began masturbating against her, for a couple of minutes, had an orgasm, and then fled.
What's particularly chilling about this incident is that it's a classic starter attack by someone with the potential to become a serial rapist, the violence of whose acts tend to escalate over time (and with practice). Catching this guy, intervening early, is hugely important.
After hearing her account of the attack, they told her the crime was a misdemeanor for "forcible touching." Nathan, forced to tenaciously pursue justice under the duress of having survived a sexual assault like so many women before her, would not go away quietly.
Nathan insisted that it was an attempted rape, a felony. "I argued that the force used against me, the masturbation, and the veritable kidnapping constituted far more than a misdemeanor," Nathan says.
The officers ignored her protests and left.
On February 22, Nathan called the Inwood Safety Patrol, a citizens group which monitors neighborhood safety. That group called the local state assemblyman, Adriano Espaillat, and the 34th Precinct commander to complain.
After that, Nathan's complaint was upgraded to felony attempted rape. At a packed community meeting, the precinct commander apologized to Nathan, and promised an investigation.
...Nathan was in for a second shock when she got her complaint report. "My story had been scrubbed of everything except the fact that the perp grabbed me, pushed me, and mentioned sex," she says. "Almost every detail of the crime was missing from the report."
The officers had left out her being overpowered and pushed into the woods, the duration of the assault, the masturbation. The report, she says, even said she had reported no sexual assault.
"After special victims downgraded my crime to a misdemeanor, an officer from my precinct tweaked my report so it described a misdemeanor," she says. "They had written non-report to conform to a misdemeanor. They were so sloppy, they forgot to rewrite the report to conform to felony."
Nathan says she was told by Assistant District Attorney Lisa Friel, chief of the Manhattan District Attorney's sex crimes unit, that there was no question that the crime she described was a felony.
Friel, Nathan says, interviewed the police officers involved and learned that they admitted to omitting many details from the report. "It is difficult to believe the omissions were accidental," Nathan says.
Nathan says she spoke with rape crisis advocacy groups, which told her that her case is not unique, that it has been happening across the city over the past year-and-a-half.
"The difference here was that I was a well-educated journalist, someone who knew how to get action," she says.
Not only does this practice deny survivors of justice; it creates more victims, as sex predators are allowed to remain free to continue their predation. It's difficult to overstate how wildly inappropriate and equally ineffective reducing crime rates by downgrading sex crimes is.
This policy also underlines the inherent ignorance in rape apologists' arguments that are contingent on the idea that law enforcement is sensitive and responsive to women alleging sexual assault. (And renders hilarious their ubiquitous argument that law enforcement is overzealous in response to allegations of sexual assault.)
Naturally, there are excellent cops all over the country who are sensitive and responsive to victims, but, when one of the biggest police departments in the country is actively and systemically working against victims—and quite literally allying themselves with sex predators, aiding and abetting their continued predation—to assume a robust response to allegations is universal is to deliberately engage in willful ignorance.
And it is to enthusiastically play a role in perpetuation one of the most pernicious myths of the rape culture.
And sadly, I must report that the PM will be Cameron, the Tory, after the Lib Dems decided to throw in with them on a promise of a referendum on alternative voting. I don't know the details of the promise, but I can't help but feel the Tories wouldn't have offered it if they thought there were any chance of it actually happening, as the current system favours the two biggest parties disproportionately*.
Consider this basically an Open Thread on the UK election results, if you will.
* The current system, for instance, where Labour gained something like 23% (I think? can't be arsed to look it up, but the next part's true) of the vote, only a couple of per cent more than the Liberal Democrats, but were able to claim nearly five times as many seats in Parliament. This works because First Past the Post systems only reward victory in a binary/zero-sum fashion (one party wins the seat, all the others lose; you could come second in every riding in the land, take 49% of the popular vote, and still not win a single seat if each riding had someone from another party who was even 1% more popular). Lib Dems (and the Greens, and other small parties) would like very much to see a shift to some form of either mixed or proportional representation, where results are closer to those predicted by the popular vote.
what is the best and/or worst birthday present you've ever gotten?
I can't think of any offhand that were really terrible. The best is easy. Eight years ago today, Iain and I were living in Edinburgh, and he surprised me by whisking me away to the charming little restaurant at which we'd had our very first date, and then to an absolutely splendid hotel, which had been arranged for by my sneaky and fabulous girlfriend Miller, who also saw that there were champagne and strawberries waiting for us, as well. They planned the whole thing without my ever cottoning on, which is no small feat.
It was a really wonderful evening, and what I remember most about it is how handsome Iain looked in his charcoal suit, and how nervous he was, even though I had already agreed to marry him in notarized paperwork submitted to the US government, lol.
A zookeeper holds two-day-old white lion cubs in Belgrade Zoo, Serbia, Friday, May 7, 2010. The two white lions cubs, an extremely rare subspecies of the African lion were recently born in Belgrade Zoo. White lions are unique to the Timbavati area of South Africa and are not albinos but a genetic rarity. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)
Shaker TG just emailed me this listing on Craigslist, advertising a "Man Sale."
[Click to embiggen.]
The text—which is superimposed over a background collage composed of images of, I guess, Things Men Own, like stereo equipment, guns, beer, and women—reads: "MAN SALE: Friday and Saturday, May 14th & 15th, 7am until whenever. 13311 W. Prospect Dr. New Berlin. BUY – SELL – TRADE. Whatcha have? Whatcha need? Whatcha want? [Image of a struck-through female symbol, followed by an image of Al Bundy.] NO MA'AM. Women welcome just not girlie items."
While my dear friend Butch Pornstache heartily approves of any and all linguistic masculinations (mandals, guyliner, bromance), I daresay that the host(s) of this spectacular event may not have thoroughly considered the implications of replacing the traditional "rummage" or "garage" or "yard" with "man." Mixed messaging, at best.
Or maybe not. In which case, I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of men are for sale at the "Dollar & Five Dollar Tables."
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.]
"What would people most like to see in 3-D? Probably a naked lady."—Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, whose magazine features a 3-D centerfold in its June issue.
In what is one of the most deplorable examples of "What About the Menz" I've ever seen, Milwaukee County's chief mental health official, John Chianelli, decided to placate violent male psychiatric patients by housing female patients in the previously sex-segregated locked ward. When the integrated ward resulted in a surge of sexual assaults against the female patients, Chianelli then defended the decision as a "trade-off."
Three Milwaukee County supervisors turned up the heat Monday on the county's top mental health official, calling for the firing of John Chianelli over mishandling of patient assaults.
Their remarks follow a report Sunday in the Journal Sentinel in which Chianelli defended housing female patients with dangerous male patients to quell male-on-male violence, according to written account by Supervisor Lynne De Bruin. Chianelli called it a trade-off that resulted in more sexual assaults of female patients, according to De Bruin and two other supervisors.
…Chianelli described the rationale for the county's mixed-gender wards as a "trade-off" that avoided more fights common to all-male wards but increased the chance of sexual attacks in mixed-sex wards, according to De Bruin's letter.
"Going to gender-based units trades violence for sexual assaults," based on his review of psychiatric literature, Chianelli told the panel, according to the letter.
A "trade-off." Sure. Spoken like a true believer in the idea that no one gives a fuck about female psychiatric patients, anyway—so might as well hand them over to the male patients who will be less inclined to be aggressive toward one another if they've got vulnerable, unprotected women to rape. Heaven knows we wouldn't want those men hurting themselves, or each other, or one of the facility staff. You know, people who matter.
White cis man Dan Fanelli, standing for Congress in Florida, wants in on the party.
(Warning: thoroughly racist bullshit, may induce a desire to make rude gestures at Mr. Fanelli)
Tip of the CaitieCap to Jen over at Disgrasian. Plus, y'know, it's a damned good blog, read it anyway.
DeeplyProblematic also has a post analysing this racist screed, here.
Transcript below the fold, provided by the good offices of Shaker museclio. [Two men speaking in what appears to be Arabic. A young man is balancing what looks like a metal thermos but I think is supposed to be a bomb.]
Young Man: (captioned)How will I reach martyrdom if I’m captured?
Man two: (captioned) If you spill the blood of the infidels [obscured] allow yourself to be captured. We will use the infidel’s lawyers and Miranda rights to send a message. Then you will go to God.
[Men freeze. Dan Fanelli comes out.]
My name is Dan Fanelli. Send me to Washington and I’ll send our enemies where they belong. And that’s not to a court room.
[DF stands next to elderly white man] Does this look like a terrorist? [Man 2 appears] Or This? Time to stop this political correctness and invasion of our privacy.
[DF steps up an mugs for the camera] Let’s face it, if a good looking ripped guy without much hair was flying airplanes into the twin towers I’d have no problem being pulled out of line at the airpoirt.
[DF appears next to a small plane and points] This is an airplane. [DF reaches down and yanks up Man 2 with a white turban, duct tape over his mouth and what appears to be a bomb strapped to his chest] And this is a terrorist. Send me to Washington, and get rid of that bum Alan Grayson and I’llmake sure guys like this get nowhere near things like this.
[DF’s face over the American flag]I’m Dan Fanelli and I approved this message.
My favorite part is the first bullet point on CNN's regrettable "Story Highlight" article-summarizing feature: "Some times an affair can lead to marriage."
In honour of Liss's birthday, and the impending finale of Lost, this week's show is a collection of songs featured throughout the series. Press the button, download, listen.
Songs: 15. Running time: 1:08.
Here is a link to the podcast blog where you can download the show.
And this is the list of all songs used in this week's ep.
Pope Benedict XVI says the Church's child abuse scandal shows that the greatest threat to Catholicism comes from "sin within" the Church.
"Today we see in a truly terrifying way that the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from outside enemies, but is born of sin within the Church," the pontiff told reporters on a plane bound for Portugal.
Okay, first of all, the Catholic Church is not being persecuted. Let's just get that out of the way right now. Political prisoners, women being raped as a weapon of war, trans men and women assaulted by bigots, gay teens bullied at school, children being abused by parents, ethnic minorities denied basic rights, people who don't conform to dominant religious faiths (including, perhaps, individual Catholics in some places), marginalized people all over the world—these are people who are persecuted. A vast international organization with its own country and immeasurable wealth and influence, whose members are shielded from the law, is not suffering from persecution. And the mere suggestion is almost incomprehensibly vulgar.
People and institutions persecute. "Sin" doesn't. The "sin" being committed by predator priests is making the Church look bad, not persecuting it—and the wall of silence (sans the occasional gay-scapegoating rape apologia) that the Church has constructed around that "sin" is doing its fair share to make the Church look bad, too.
The only thing of which the Church is a victim is its own crushing corruption, cloaked in an impenetrable, arrogant, self-pitying conceit that allows it to see itself as the primary sufferers at the hands of predator priests, and the actual children and adults they assaulted as nothing but inconvenient evidence of the "sin" that the Church is forced to publicly bear. Boo fucking hoo.
Welcome to Shakesville, a progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, social justice, cute things, and all that is in between. Please note that the commenting policy and the Feminism 101 section, conveniently linked at the top of the page, are required reading before commenting.
Hey, Losties!
