This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, proud endorsers of the UNOHDCTRDBWAE1 movement.
Recommended Reading:
The 99: Islamic Superheroes!
- I am totally in love with this, and will be downloading the whole series when I can afford it.
Renee at Womanist Musings: Tea Party Member Rand Paul Wants to Abolish The Americans With Disabilities Act
- There's a reason Renee shows up in almost every blogaround here: high-quality work, and lots of it.
Climate Progress: BP's dispersants are toxic - but not as toxic as dispersed oil
- Sure is nice to have that smaller government, ain't it, Reaganites? I mean, those extra few bucks every year that could have been spent on actual oversight were so much more useful being put in your SUV's tank and burnt for a trip to the convenience store 300 metres away...
The Sexist: Feminine performance and thinking of the children
- Excellent feminist analysis of reaction to a video of girls dancing to a very sexual song, and related trends.
The Mongoose Chronicles: The version of your body currently running is not bedroom compatible
- One of Barbados' best, on gym marketing to women
Alas, A Blog: If Iranian lesbian Kiana Firouz is deported from the UK, she faces certain death in Iran
- Includes a link to a petition.
The Thang Blog: Asserting identity in the hospital
- Rebecca posts about having to assert her identity while dealing with the medical care system. This rang so true for me - how many times I avoided hospitals for exactly the same reason. I once cut a ring off my own allergy-swollen finger, with a rotary tool, using my left hand (I'm very right-handed), because I didn't want to go to the hospital and face being misidentified all night.
Tami, of What Tami Said, at Psychology Today: Ending racism starts with accepting bias
- This should be required reading for anyone who's ever defensively shouted "But I'm not a racist!"...and maybe for the rest of us too.
Deeply Problematic: Brave teen fights back against transphobic school administration
- But hey, ENDA? Who needs that kinda "special rights" bullshit, amirite?
Leave your links in comments...
1 United Nations Organization for Helping DoucheCanoes To Recognize the Difference Between Women and Ewoks.
Wednesday Blogaround
It Never Ends
[Trigger warning.]
I've got a new piece up at the Guardian's CifA responding to Robert Harris' assertion that a "media lynch mob is bent on destroying" Roman Polanski.
In a touching display of generosity to his friend and colleague, Harris describes Polanski as "fighting extradition to the United States after his 1977 conviction for unlawful sex with a minor," which is certainly a genteel way of noting that an admitted sex offender who drugged and assaulted a child continues to deny justice to his victim and the community by refusing to return to the United States and serve out the sentence for his crime. Harris is no doubt a very good friend to Polanski.Read the whole thing here.
He also appears to be very adept at victim-blaming.
Harris is extremely concerned about the "lynch mob" that is out for Polanski, and the evidence he provides of this violent predation is the reporting of allegations made by British actor Charlotte Lewis last week that she was also sexually assaulted by Polanski in 1983. "More than a thousand newspapers across the world have reprinted her story, unchallenged," complains Harris, in an opening salvo to an argument predicated on the truly preposterous idea that the international media is in the business of siding with rape accusers.
Nearly every news account of the allegations I have seen included the detail that Lewis worked on the film Pirates with Polanski reportedly subsequent to the alleged sexual assault – which, by any reasonable measure, is a challenge to the veracity of her accusation, since "Why would she work with him/live with him/have consensual sex with him/have anything to do with him after he raped her?" is a classic victim-blaming trope, rooted in the erroneous idea that a "real" survivor of sexual assault would never voluntarily interact again with one's abuser.
As Harris sniffs: "Lewis alleged that the assault ('the worst possible') took place in 1983, but apparently it was not so horrible that it put her off working with Polanski, since she appeared in his 1986 film, Pirates."
Harris reveals that Lewis is "a former Playboy cover girl, who has not appeared in a film for seven years", and reports that her attorney "briskly responded: 'Next question'," when asked if Lewis was looking for a book deal, thus having slut-shamed Lewis for her past as a nude model and cast her as a desperate out-of-work actress who may be willing to make false rape allegations to find her way back into the limelight.
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
[Trigger warning. Background.]
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 (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
Quote of the Day
"I actually choose the way I eat according to the way animals have sex. I think fish are very dignified with sex. So are birds. But pigs, not so much. So I don't eat pig meat or things like that. I eat fish and fowl."—Nicolas Cage, being Nicolas Cage.
Shaker Help Request
Shaker sunflwrmoonbeam emails:
I live in a solidly middle class neighborhood bordered by a lower middle class one to the west, very upper class one to the south, and lower class one to the north.I once intervened with a cop who was harassing black teens outside my building ("Officer, is this really necessary? These kids don't seem to be doing anything wrong to me," and stood there until he let them be on their way), but I'm honestly not sure what would be the best course of action after the fact, without the officers' names or badge numbers.
Today I was looking out my window and saw 3 cops harassing 4 brown teens on bikes for no ostensible reason. Kids weren't disturbing the peace or anything like that, and I highly doubt any of my neighbors called the cops on them.
It was my first ever witnessing of a "xing while brown/black" and I'm frankly disturbed. They're just kids! What the hell?!?! Yes, I realize I'm very privileged to have never seen, let alone experienced that.
Do you think there's some way I can leverage my privilege to help? Would writing a complaint letter do anything?
A lot of police departments, especially in metro areas with big forces, have community liaisons now, and I would probably try to contact the community liaison first (provided there is one) to report what I saw and inquire about the department's policy on suspected cases of profiling or officer harassment.
Shakers?
NQDTR Discussion Thread – W190510
Hiya, Shakers, time for another Discussion Thread for the Not Quite Daily Teaspoon Report!
This is the thread in which you may offer congratulations or admiration for a teaspoon or teaspooner. If you're posting with just congrats or admiration, though, do take a moment and check the thread to see whether other people have said so a number of times already. Remember that no one is required to read here just because they posted over there, so there's no guarantee you'll get a response to a given comment.
The Not Quite Daily Teaspoon Report – W190510
Time for another Teaspoon Report, brought to you by a bunch of lovely Danish people, and Mukhtar the Bus Driver. Happy Birthday, Mukhtar!
Leave comments here that describe an act of teaspooning you encountered or committed. They don't have to be big, world-shaking acts; by definition, a teaspoon is a small thing, but enough of them together can empty the ocean.
If you would like to discuss the teaspoons here reported, or even offer congratulations or your admiration to a fellow Shaker, we ask that you do so over here in the Discussion Thread for today's NQDTR.
Shaker bgk has been kind enough to get a Twitter-pated version out there for you young twittersnappers (and by the way, get off my lawn, you meddling kids! *shakes cane*). You can find the details about the Tweetspoons project right here. That runs all the time, as far as I'm aware (*grumblenewtechnologygrumble*), and we encourage you to let other people know that there's at least one tweetstream talking about just going out and doing good things for the human species.
Teaspoons up, let's hear 'em, Shakers!
ô,ôP
Because Why Should McCain and Fanelli Get All The Asshole Points?
In an offensive legal segment Tuesday evening Bill O'Reilly of the Fox New's O'Reilly Factor commented on the American Eagle decision to reverse its anti-trans policy. He made the offensive suggestion that "men who dress like Dolly Parton can be protected" and asked whether "people who dress like ewoks also deserve workplace protections?"Yo Bill: Lord Fuckley St.Fuckington of Fuckingtonshire called, and said, "Wtfsup, bro?
Because clearly, a belief that one is a woman is pretty much exactly equivalent, in ORLY's mind, to a belief that one is an imaginary furry creature from a galaxy far far away and long long ago. Subtract the same from both sides, and one could come to the conclusion that Bill O'Reilly has a difficulty distinguishing women from Ewoks. Which suggests that Mr. ORLY needs to spend some quality time with an optometrist, for a start, and perhaps a little time with a pshrink on that "can't tell small fuzzy aliens from females of my own species" problem.
Happy Birthday, Mukhtar
In Copenhagen on May 5, it was Mukhtar's birthday:
[Paraphrase: Copenhagen bus driver Mukhtar makes a stop, where a man in a tuxedo gets on the crowded bus and begins playing a trumpet. Mukhtar, filmed from the front by the bus' security camera, looks confused. Then a woman begins to sing a birthday song; it is his birthday! He laughs. Others on the bus begin to sing. Then almost the whole bus is singing happy birthday to Mukhtar. He drives on, and comes to a group of people in the road who appear to be protesting. He stops and honks the horn. They turn around and begin to chant his name and cheer. Their signs bear his name. The people on the bus sing more loudly. Mukhtar grins in disbelief. His friends run to the bus and bring him flowers and presents. He looks over the scene with tears in his eyes.]
The hat tip goes to Shaker Charlotte, who credits Zee, who explains: "For those who might consider it a fake, I'd think twice, it's actually a well planned event by Arriva (a European bus company). They've done a number of these style events to make a better work environment for their bus drivers in Copenhagen."
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...
Specter: Out
Five-term Senator Arlen Specter, who switched parties last year, was defeated in the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania last night. Representative Joe Sestak will now be the Democratic nominee in the upcoming Senate race, and Specter is out of a job.
"Sen. Arlen Specter's primary loss continues bad 2010 for President Obama, Democrats" says the New York Daily News.
"Specter Defeat Signals a Wave Against Incumbents" announces the New York Times.
"Activists seize control of politics" grimaces The Politico.
Et cetera.
Or, you know, Democrats just wanted someone who didn't switch to their party because he couldn't have beaten a primary challenge from the Right. For all his talk about principles, the only principle that ever mattered to Specter was winning—which is why the so-called "moderate" spent the entirety of the Bush administration as a complicit Republican and only developed a case of the oopsies when it was evident he still wasn't rightwing enough for the rightwingers in his home state.
Turns out he wasn't leftwing enough for the leftwingers in his home state, either. Guess that's what happens when you spend 30 years straddling a fence, instead of staking out firm territory on one side or the other (even when the fence moves way the hell to the right).
That Democratic primary voters opted to go for a reliable Democrat only looks like a harbinger of bad news for Democrats, or evidence of an anti-incumbent frenzy, or proof of "activism," to a media who can't see past their pre-written narratives about Democratic losers and Republican comebacks.
It would be laughable, if only this sort of irresponsible bullshit didn't so frequently write those narratives into reality.
Question of the Day
To follow-up on yesterday's QotD: What's your least favorite word, based solely on its sound?
I can't think of anything off the top of my head that I don't like based solely on its sound, but I know a ton of people who hate the sound of moist.
Scene from Cannes
[Trigger warning for Polanski shit.]
French director Xavier Beauvois shows his support for renowned child rapist Roman Polanski with a great t-shirt that is definitely the appropriate tone to make a statement on behalf of a fugitive from justice in a 30-year-old rape case, as long as he's made great art or whatever. Nothing says considered and principled position like a t-shirt that looks like it was made by a t-shirt shop at the local mall in the 1980s.
I believe the garment is from the Bernard-Henri Lévy 2010 collection, Rape Apologia in Black and White—because rape never goes out of fashion and defending rapists is all the rage at Cannes this year.
[Via Gabe. Please note that although Gabe is decidedly not in the pro-Polanski camp, Videogum is not a safe space and I strongly recommend caution before clicking through on this one in particular, given the subject matter.]
Stay Classy, Teach
[Trigger warning for violent imagery.]
An Alabama geometry teacher has been placed on leave following a lesson on angles in which he used the assassination of President Obama as an example.
The teacher was apparently teaching his geometry students about parallel lines and angles, officials said. He used the example of where to stand and aim if shooting Obama.Yes, please carefully explain to this college educated gentleman why it's a no-no to make ha-has about killing the president to a roomful of impressionable kids.
"He was talking about angles and said, 'If you're in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president'," said Joseph Brown, a senior in the geometry class.
Efforts to reach the teacher for comment Monday were unsuccessful. Superintendent Phil Hammonds said the teacher remains at work, and there are no plans for termination.
"We are going to have a long conversation with him about what's appropriate," Hammonds said. "It was extremely poor judgment on his part, and a poor choice of words."
Christ.
Seen
I had yet another doctor's appointment earlier today, so you know it's time for me to report what inspirational message is currently on display on my favorite local church sign:
Man's way is a hopeless end. God's way is an endless hope.Kudos for the clever reversal, Local Church Sign Messageers, but I'm still going to have to deduct 1,000 points for nonsensical balderdashery.
Unless, of course, you intended to imply that Christianity is a series of empty promises that never deliver.
In which case, good job with that "endless hope" business.
Oh, Getty Images
So, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified today at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, and there is a whole series of awesome pictures of her in her pink blazer looking all smart and awesome and shit.
And then there's this image:
WASHINGTON - MAY 18: Lipstick is left on the straw of a plastic cup of tea that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton drank while testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the new START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) treaty on Capitol Hill May 18, 2010 in Washington, DC. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed the new arms reduction treaty in April. The treaty, which says the two countries must cut back to no more than 800 total launchers and slash their weapons stores by 30 percent, must be approved by the Senate.Any word on what Dmitri Medvedev thought of Hillsy's lipstick?! DON'T LEAVE ME HANGING, GETTY IMAGES!
This has been your regularly scheduled reminder that Hillary Clinton is a Woman.
Quote of the Day
"We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam."—Connecticut Attorney General and Democratic US Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal. He's right; we've learned lots of things since those days. Like the fact that he didn't actually serve in Vietnam.
Oops.
