Suggested by Shaker queenb850, who notes the question was "inspired by hanging around on YouTube the other day listening to all of the 90s R&B from my teenage years": If you could put together a play list of 10 songs from your favorite music decade, what songs would be on it and what decade would they be from?
Daily Dose o' Cute
For anyone who can't view the videos Deeky posted for me earlier... Normally, as you know, I publish them at Daily Motion, too, which tends to be more accessible for international Shakers, but Daily Motion rejected these videos based on the songs I used. Sorry. So here's a snapshot instead.
Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiig streeeeeeeeeeeeetch.
Love Story
So. There were two stories I read last week on which I wanted to comment. One was the NYT piece about eroding Roe on the state level, and the other was the separation of Al and Tipper Gore.
Actually, I don't want to comment on the separation itself, but on the coverage of the announcement. I saw a lot of headlines categorizing the likely end of their 40-year marriage as "shocking," which I found rather amusing, as one must have some intimate knowledge of a marriage to be genuinely shocked by its demise, unless of course some scandalous betrayal has been made public, in which case it's only "shocking" if the couple stays together (see: the Clintons).
Many of the articles discussing the "shock" of the split referenced the Gores' passionate kiss at the 2000 Democratic convention, as though justification for the astonishment. Yes, how positively baffling that a couple who made out very publicly a decade ago could be contemplating divorce today!
The abundant invocation of the Gores' convention kiss pointedly underlined the flimsy silliness of what we think we know about other people's lives, and why we think we know it—and the collective "surprise" itself was an interesting commentary on how we feel both privy and entitled to the inner workings of public figures' relationships. Or, really, others' relationships, whether famous or not.
I was married once upon a time to a lovely guy who was a great friend. We divorced because we never should have been married in the first place; we'd mistaken a wonderful friendship and a charming affair for something bigger—and a divorce was really just our way of setting things right again. We seemed like a happy couple, and, in some ways, we were. So when we divorced, it was "shocking" to some of our friends and family. Well. The creeping feeling that you aren't suited to love another person that way for the rest of your life isn't something that one easily articulates to oneself, no less shares with people who are inclined, quite understandably, to say, "What the fuck are you thinking? Your marriage is great."
But the truth of a marriage lies between two people alone (or any long-term partnership, between whatever number of people)—and parts of what holds it together, or tears it apart, reside secretly in individual hearts, bindings or fissures that are unknowable, or indescribable, even to the person in whom they reside.
No one knows everything about any relationship, even the people in them. Which is what makes loving another person terrifying, and what makes it exhilarating.
The very thing that makes love precious also makes it a breathing thing, with ebbs and crescendos and, sometimes, an end—which may mean that love taking a different shape, like friendship. Its mutable nature, its lack of any guarantee, means that love doesn't always last forever, looking like it once did—which is seemingly what happened to the love Al and Tipper Gore had for one another. This was described in different places, as a "failure."
"They were an odd couple from the start," wrote Howard Fineman, "a teenage romance that tried—and, after 40 years, failed—to bridge the divides that were inherent in it from the start."
To which Matt Yglesias responded, "Life in a modern-day developed economy is quite long. If two people can be happy together for 38 years, during which time they raise a few kids, and then maybe be unhappy for two years and wind up realizing they want to get divorced is that really such a 'failure'? It sounds okay to me. … Failure is relative."
Indeed so.
I do not describe my previous marriage, which lasted only 1/10th the time the Gores' did, as a "failed marriage." The failure would have been to stay, to hold on and hang in and obstinately stay, to honor some idea of love that actually didn't exist between us. It was just a marriage. No qualifications required.
By any realistic measure, the Gores had a successful marriage—an accomplishment no one would deny them if one of them had died in a terrible accident last month. But because they are both still alive, and still determined to live in the best way for them, even if that way is "apart," their marriage is deemed a failure.
That's too bad. Because letting go can be an act of love, too.
And perhaps if we had a cultural narrative about marriage—or any kind of partnership—that also honored the relationships which end in letting go in life, the love stories that are journeys with destinations other than death, perhaps we would be less inclined to view two people taking steps in different directions, after some time together, as failures, and instead view them as people who know how to do love right.
This week, Iain and I will celebrate our 8th anniversary. I hope we make it to 40 years, or however long we've got together. I want, right now, to be with him for the rest of my life—and he wants the same. But if that ever changes, for either of us, I hope we can "fail" as gracefully as the Gores seem to have done.
Best wishes, and love, to Al and Tipper Gore.
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 (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
Wake Up, Fauxgressive Dudez
[I'm posting this quickly, while Blogger is giving me access, because I'm not sure how long I'll have it...!]
Me, during the election, once of a zillion times making the same point:
Using Roe as a cudgel to batter feminists/womanists (FWs) into line is becoming increasingly futile because the Democrats have been weak on protecting choice—and, hence, women's autonomy—for years. Yes, Roe is still in place, but the GOP has successfully chipped away at abortion rights on the federal and state levels for two decades. The point is, certainly the Democrats will nominate and approve justices who will protect Roe, but if they aren't willing to protect it from being rendered an impotent and largely symbolic statute because it's been hollowed out by "partial-birth abortion bans" and "parental consent laws" and state legislatures that refuse to fund clinics offering abortions, what does it really matter if they protect Roe?Last week, I read this piece, titled "Abortion Foes Advance Cause at State Level," in the New York Times, which begins: "At least 11 states have passed laws this year regulating or restricting abortion, giving opponents of abortion what partisans on both sides of the issue say is an unusually high number of victories. In four additional states, bills have passed at least one house of the legislature."
FWs who are paying attention to what's happened to practical choice in this country know that the Roe card is already functionally meaningless at this point in large swaths of the country—and that's about the national Democratic Party as a whole, not just about its nominee in this election. The Dems are falling down on the job of serving their FW constituents in general and women specifically.
And the argument about appointing pro-Roe justices is designed, in part, to mask that failure. Not all of the restrictions on abortion rights have been decided in the court; many (if not most) are proposed and passed in state legislatures—and only those challenged n court depend on judicial appointments. Federal, state, and local funding of clinics has nothing to do with whom Democrats appoint to the bench. Fights over zoning laws and gifted property to build new clinics may also find their way to court, but oftentimes never make it that far. Anyone who still thinks that every encroachment on reproductive rights is being decided in a courtroom has some catching up to do.
A lot of progressives treat legal abortion like an on-off switch, but it's not remotely that simple. Legal abortion is only worth as much as the number of women who have reasonable and affordable and unencumbered access to it. That number is dwindling; IIRC, as of the year 2000, less than a third of the incorporated counties in the US had abortion clinics. That's not just inconvenience—between travel expenses and time off work along, the cost of securing an abortion can become an undue burden.
Realistically, if you're a woman who already has to drive three hours and across state lines to get an abortion, how much is "we'll protect Roe" actually supposed to mean to you?
Those making the Roe argument seriously need to consider what it sounds like to one of those women when she's told how her right to choose is best supported by someone who treats Roe as a magical abortion access password.
I'm surprised (ahem) at the cavernous void of outrage across the progressive blogosphere at this affront to women. You'd think the male-authored blogs at which protecting Roe is such a huge issue during elections would be prominently featuring coverage of this assault on women's basic bodily autonomy.
It's almost like certain gentlemen ostensibly on the Left side of the aisle only care about Roe as a bargaining chip, and not as a fundamental right of women. Huh.
Texting! With Liss and Deeky!
[For those missing Liss during her Blogger exile.]
Liss: ARGH. Fucking Blogger. I am literally watching "The Boyfriend School" with Steve Guttenberg right now.
Deeky: WTF?
Liss: LOLOLOL! I love u, Encore.
Deeky: What year was that made?
Liss: 1990.
Deeky: What???
Liss: I know, right?! LOL.
Deeky: There is something terribly, terribly wrong with the world.
Liss: I swear when this movie came out, it was called "Don't Tell Her It's Me."
Deeky: According to IMDb, that is true.
Liss: I am The Lint Trap. Hear me roar.
Deeky: Oh jebus. That's the one with the really bad wig, isn't it?
Liss: Yes! Where he pretends to be from New Zealand.
Deeky: Tell me his accent is brilliant.
Liss: Brilliant…and Australian.
Deeky: LOL.
Liss: We should start a blog about Steve Guttenberg. Just all Steve Guttenberg, all the time.
Deeky: LOLOLOLOLOL!!! Totes.
Liss: "I hear they're remaking 'Police Academy.' They'd better give Hollywood Legend Steve Guttenberg a cameo in that shit, or there will be HELL TO PAY! He MADE that franchise!" Just like that. All day, every day. Wall-to-wall Guttenberg.
Deeky: Genius. We'll double-handedly revive his career.
Liss: How dare you. He is still a star.
Deeky: Btw, I saw two minutes of "Big Bang Theory" the other day. Vom.
Liss: Totes. That show blowzzz.
Deeky: The premise of the joke was one of the dudes liked "Sex and the City." So, obviously: FAG.
Liss: HAHAHA FAGS R SO FUNNAY!!!!!!
Deeky: You do laugh at me all the time.
Liss: That's true. But it's because you're a buttfor, not because you're a homo.
Deeky: LOL! Shut it.
Liss: TLC, aka The Learning Channel, has a new show called "Mall Cops." Because, y'know, everyone needs to learn about blartology.
Deeky: How does that show even exist?
Liss: I have no fucking idea. "Have you hugged your MALL COP today?"
Deeky: Hey, remember when Billy Idol did that concept album called "Cyberpunk"?
Liss: What was I—dead in the '90s? Of course I remember it.
Deeky: LOL! I dunno. Maybe you were busy being a hobag or something.
Liss: If I stopped being aware of musicians' fuckwit vanity projects because of hobaggery, I wouldn't know shit about shit since the Traveling Wilburys.
Deeky: LOLOLOLOLOL!!! There's nothing like a Traveling Wilburys reference.
Liss: OMFG I HATE BLOGGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Deeky: It still won't let you in??????
Liss: No! I am getting really fucking irritated.
Deeky: You know why? Someone put a "no fat chicks" sticker on it. So you're out of luck.
Liss: That made me LOL 4 realz.
Deeky: You know what else sucks? That "Rock Me Amadeus" was originally written and recorded in German, but when the song was released in America, all the verses were cut out and replaced with that dumbass narration. So Falco's biggest hit, his only hit really, features virtually no Falco! How sad for him.
Liss: Also: Tom Hulce, who played Amadeus, should have had a better career than he did. I blame Steve Guttenberg.
Deeky: What the fuck did Steve Guttenberg ever do to Tom Hulce?
Liss: Look like him and star in poop.
Deeky: LOL! You think people were getting them confused?
Liss: Not getting them confused—but you know how when there are two stars who kinda look alike, they sorta cross-contaminate each other's careers? No one wants the Gutenberg Taint.
Deeky: "The Guttenberg Taint." Now there's an image I don't need.
Liss: That should be the name of our all-Guttenberg all-the-time blog.
Deeky: LOL! No, no it shouldn't.
Liss: Linky.
Deeky: LOL! You're such an asshole.
Liss: LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Beautiful Day
[Note: The following is from Liss, which I am posting on her behalf.]
I still can't get into Blogger to post anything (and neither can Spudsy, so it might be effectively a regional blackout, and the tech serving our area is still down for some reason), so here are a couple of videos from our holiday-at-home last week, starring the kittehs and puppeh of Shakes Manor, with whom we power-lounged during our time off. Suffice it to say, there was lots o' cuddling.
The first is just a montage of ridiculous levels of cuteness from throughout the week, set to U2's "Beautiful Day." Featuring a Deeky cameo!
The second one is mostly Dudz at the dog park, where everyone loves Dudz and wants to play with him, as well as a few snippets of him with the girls, still hesitantly making friends. Yesterday was his birthday—he turned 2 and is now all growed up!
The second video is "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out," by Cat Stevens.
"You Can't Use People As Laboratories"
Ah, but you can, providing you have sufficient power and are untroubled by ethical considerations. And it seems we have. So say Physicians for Human Rights, who today issued a white paper entitled Experiments in Torture: Evidence of Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the "Enhanced" Interrogation Program. From that document's Executive Summary:
Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush administration initiated new human intelligence collection programs. To that end, it detained and questioned an unknown number of people suspected of having links to terrorist organizations. As part of these programs, the Bush administration redefined acts, such as waterboarding, forced nudity, sleep deprivation, temperature extremes, stress positions and prolonged isolation, that had previously been recognized as illegal, to be “safe, legal and effective” “enhanced” interrogation techniques (EITs).Pish and tosh, says the CIA.
Bush administration lawyers at the Department of Justice’s (DoJ’s) Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) accomplished this redefinition by establishing legal thresholds for torture, which required medical monitoring of every application of “enhanced” interrogation. Medical personnel were ostensibly responsible for ensuring that the legal threshold for “severe physical and mental pain” was not crossed by interrogators, but their presence and complicity in intentionally harmful interrogation practices were not only apparently intended to enable the routine practice of torture, but also to serve as a potential legal defense against criminal liability for torture.
Investigation and analysis of US government documents by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) provides evidence indicating that the Bush administration, in the period after Sept. 11, conducted human research and experimentation on prisoners in US custody as part of this monitoring role. Health professionals working for and on behalf of the CIA monitored the interrogations of detainees, collected and analyzed the results of those interrogations, and sought to derive generalizable inferences to be applied to subsequent interrogations. Such acts may be seen as the conduct of research and experimentation by health professionals on prisoners, which could violate accepted standards of medical ethics, as well as domestic and international law. These practices could, in some cases, constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“The report is just wrong,” said Paul Gimigliano, an agency spokesman. “The C.I.A. did not, as part of its past detention program, conduct human subject research on any detainee or group of detainees. The entire detention effort has been the subject of multiple, comprehensive reviews within our government, including by the Department of Justice.”The CIA here, however, seems to have redefined the word "entire" – and possibly the words "did" and "not" – to complement its unconventional redefinition of the words "safe", "legal", and "effective". Specifically, there has been no government investigation of medical personnel involved in the interrogation of detainees. The New York Times quotes Dr. Steven H. Miles of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota "and an expert on the role of medical professionals in torture", saying:
There are countries that, over the years, have condemned medical complicity in torture in principle, but which haven’t really been willing to investigate medical professionals or hold them accountable. That group of countries includes the United States.Aren't we special. I wonder who else is included? I'm sure we're in good company.
The PHR report doesn't present new information about what was done during
It's true that the research being done on these subjects was not the purpose of the torture. It is difficult to see, however, how the fact that the abhorrent practice of medical experimentation on captives was done, not as an end in itself, but only secondarily to the primary purpose of torture, somehow resolves all ethical difficulties.
Says Jonathan D. Moreno, a professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania:
There was no therapeutic purpose or intent to monitor and collect this data. You can’t use people as laboratories.But the question seems to be: can you do it, in the United States, with impunity for all those complicit - the President who authorized it, the C.I.A. personnel who set it up, and the medical personnel who used their training to monitor torture and refine its conduct with scientific precision?
A couple other questions suggest themselves when contemplating the extensive role played by medical professionals in crafting methods of interrogation designed both to satisfy the CIA's and the White House's desire to inflict torture on detainees, and their desire to do it in a way which would support their effort to avoid legal penalty for doing so:
Who among all those responsible, in addition to the torturer-in-chief, would do it again?
And given a desire to do it again among politicians, spies, and even health care professionals, what is to stop them, in the absence of any legal penalties being imposed on those who are known to have done it?
PHR has a form here for emailing President Obama to urge that he instruct the Attorney General to investigate this matter, and prosecute anyone found to have committed a crime.
The PHR white paper can be downloaded here: The Torture Papers.
Prescott to Bigots: We Have Shiny Teaspoons, Look!
Shaker maatnofret commented to the Note to Racist Jackhole post, that the people of Prescott Unified School District had held a big old-fashioned community teaspoon-raising on Saturday (blub warning; also, for Maude's sake, stay out of the comments, on pain of contact with memetic toxic sludge):
PRESCOTT - Prescott Unified School District administrators announced to a cheering crowd Saturday morning that the Mural Mice will restore the original design of the 'Go on Green' mural at Miller Valley Elementary School.That's the way you do it. It takes a village, indeed.
District Superintendent Kevin Kapp and school Principal Jeff Lane also admitted they erred for instructing the Mural Mice to lighten the faces on some of the children depicted in the mural that adorns the district's most ethnically diverse campus.
Monday Blogaround
[Note: Blogger is still being a jerk, and Liss can't post at all at the moment, so she asked me to put this up in her stead.]
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Dudley's Cute Juice, a 100% satisfaction guaranteed elixir for improving your cuteness. Made from organic cute.
Rachel: The Down Under Feminists Carnival
Veronica: I'm still not White, but am I American Indian?
Resistance: Water Still Wet
Beth: Dear Ms. Obama: Promote healthy food options, but please don't promote discrimination
Melanie: Secretary Clinton Announces $1 Million for Women and Girls
Angry Asian Man: Anamika Veeramani Wins 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee
Andy: Gay Exorcisms Fail to Deliver
Leave your links in comments…
The Sign Post Up Ahead
Residents and travelers in Oxfordshire UK have been advised to think of the local fauna population and slow their driving just a bit.
A local citizen has posted a sign instructing "For Fox Sake Slow Down." I hope everyone takes it to heart.
For the foxes.
Blog Note
Just FYI, Blogger is being a bit pissy this morning. We may be a little light on posting until they get their issues resolved. Thanks for your patience.
UPDATE: Blogger is still acting wonky (I originally typed that as "wanky," by the way), but some of us can post again. Thanks again for your patience.
Doctor Who Open Thread: S5E07: Amy's Choice
Time for another Doctor Who Open Thread, you Whopsters, and it's this week's (per the US/Canadian broadcast schedule) episode, Amy's Choice.
SPOILERS! This thread will contain spoilers for this episode, and possibly any episode which has come before it. Please be careful not to give spoilers from episodes beyond this point, as your thread host is a nasty cranky misanthrope when her shows get spoilt. :D
Have at it, Whopsters, what did you think of this episode? Didja find it...dreamy?
Soccer v HIV in Africa
Following up yesterday's horrid story about FIFA refusing to allow distribution of condoms at the upcoming World Cup in South Africa (a country with one of highest HIV infection rates in the world), Shaker rhiain dropped a link to a really wonderful organization, Grassroot Soccer.
Now, it's no surprise to many of you, I think, how much I love that game. I still play every week, nearing 44 and using a cane most of the time (but not while playing! - then, I just take a lot more pain pills), just because I enjoy it so much. So when I see a group who are using the game I adore to do good works, well, that's a time when Caitie gets all squeeful.
This group is using the love of the game, shared by so many people, to spread good HIV prevention, life skills education, and safer sex practices to people growing up in areas with very high infection rates - not just in Africa, but also in Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, a little closer to home for most Shakers.
Anyway, they do a good thing, and like any group doing a good thing, they can always use more support. I'm going to be taking this information to my soccer team myself tomorrow, see if we can come up with fun ways to raise some money for the organization - maybe put together a marathon game or something.
I have no connection to the group at all - I just really like what they're doing, how they're doing it, and want to boost their profile here. They've got a great page listing ideas of how people can help them in their mission, beyond just giving money (although they can find uses for money too!).
If you're in a position to help, it'd be a great teaspoon to do so.
Tip of the CaitieCap to Shaker rhiain, for the awesome link.
