Now that a little time has passed since the recent Disqus upgrade, I wanted to create a thread for posting about any technical issues that you are still experiencing with Disqus. Consolidating the issues in one thread will make it easier for me to present to their support staff. To that end, I'd appreciate your keeping the tone civil, even for an issue that's really bugging the crap out of you. ;)
Please be as descriptive as possible and don't forget to include your operating system and browser version, both of which are extremely helpful in diagnosing the issue.
One item that I'm already aware of is that the comment permalinks don't work (i.e. clicking on one will bring you to the top of the thread instead of the actual comment).
Blog Note: Disqussion
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.]
Bob Herbert Says Brilliant Things (Again)
I know the president has a lot on his mind, but the No. 1 problem facing the U.S. continues to fester, and that problem is unemployment.Go read the whole thing.
...For all the money that has been spent so far, the Obama administration and Congress have not made the kinds of investments that would put large numbers of Americans back to work and lead to robust economic growth. What is needed are the same things that have been needed all along: a vast program of infrastructure repair and renewal; an enormous national investment in clean energy aimed at transforming the way we develop and use energy in this country; and a transformation of the public schools to guarantee every child a first-rate education in a first-rate facility.
This would be a staggeringly expensive and difficult undertaking and would entail a great deal of shared sacrifice. (It would also require an end to our insane waste of resources on mindless and endless warfare.) The benefits over the long term would be enormous.
How Hard Are Opponents of Marriage Equality Losing?
So hard. So very hard. So hard that progressive John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, and libertarian Robert Levy, chair of the Cato Institute, have signed on as co-chairs of the advisory board to the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which will be appealing the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, currently before a federal district court in California, all the way to the Supreme Court in pursuit of marriage equality.
Although we serve, respectively, as president of a progressive and chairman of a libertarian think tank, we are not joining the foundation's advisory board to present a "bipartisan" front. Rather, we have come together in a nonpartisan fashion because the principle of equality before the law transcends the left-right divide and cuts to the core of our nation's character. This is not about politics; it's about an indispensable right vested in all Americans.Podesta and Levy make excellent points about the role of the courts and the responsibility they carry to balance mob rule that denies what ought to be constitutionally protected rights (e.g. Loving), arguments that will surely be familiar to anyone who's been hanging around here for five minutes. It's really quite a stunning thing to see, right there in the Washington Post. That CAP and Cato are both on board with marriage equality, no less on the same damn train, quite genuinely means marriage equality is soon to be reality; it's just a matter of time.
…The decision in Perry depends, of course, on values far more permanent and important than opinion polls. No less than the constitutional rights of millions of Americans are at stake. But the public appears to be catching up with the Constitution. Just a little more leadership from the courts would be the perfect prescription for a free society.
Last weekend, I was watching the documentary Same Sex America (trailer here), which followed seven same-sex couples through the historical Massachusetts constitutional convention and associated legal wrangling which eventually resulted in legalized same-sex marriage in the state. I saw the film when it first came out in '06, and even then the juxtaposition between the opponents of marriage equality caterwauling about the end of society as we know it, and life carrying on approximately as usual, save for the long-denied benefits of marriage finally being enjoyed by same-sex couples, was hilarious. Four years later, the doomsayers look positively absurd.
By the time Perry reaches SCOTUS, I can't imagine that the "society has a vested interest in privileging a traditional family structure" bullshit that has been used in lower court decisions won't be regarded as wholesale disingenuous poppycock, the province of no one but the intellectually dishonest and the immovably bigoted.
Which doesn't mean that the court won't find yet some stupid way to delay the inevitable—but it's going to be harder than it used to be.
Quote of the Day
"It's much worse to see a woman drunk than a man: I don't know quite why this is true but it just is. Don't ever be responsible for it."—Christopher Hitchens, part of his "simple pieces of advice for the young" about drinking, excerpted from his new memoir Hitch-22.
[TW] Aside from the overt misogyny of his statement, the curious admonishment to "the young" (by which Hitchens clearly means young straight men) to never "be responsible" for a woman being drunk disturbingly brings to mind his younger brother Peter's penchant for victim-blaming women who are raped after drinking.
There are many things in this life for which I am grateful. Among them is not having been raised in the Hitchens household.
[Related Reading: Christopher Hitchens: Minister of Funny.]
On Helen Thomas
Like Josh Marshall, I feel obliged rather than eager to address White House correspondent Helen Thomas' retirement following comments in which she said Israeli Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go back home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else." She later apologized for the comments.
Her comments were, suffice it to say, profoundly disappointing to me—and the brevity of that response should not be mistaken as indifference. It is, frankly, not easy to write in a measured way about people one has admired when they behave in ways unbecoming one's expectations.
On the content of her statement, I will simply note that there principled arguments against occupation of disputed territories: I've heard them made by progressive American Jews, among them a friend who survived the Holocaust, rescued as a child with his mother and brother from a camp in France with forged papers, after which they escaped to the US. But telling Israeli Jews to "go home" to countries from which they (or their families) fled under the threat of extermination isn't one of those principled arguments—and not just (or chiefly) because Israel is not exclusively populated by Jews of European extraction. My aforementioned friend does not consider France his home, for reasons which should be evident, and the many Israelis who share his history do not consider, for the same reasons, their countries of birth "home," either.
This is not an issue of whether Israel can be criticized, or an issue of some sort of ideological litmus test: It's just flatly indefensible, and hostile, to exhort Israeli Jews to take up residence in countries that participated in a genocide against their Jewish populations. Thomas obviously isn't ignorant about that history, but she nonetheless disregarded it to deliver a smug and careless retort—on a subject about which flippancy, is, to put it politely, neither advisable nor kind.
There are other things that could be written here, points being made in other spaces about double-standards and hypocrites, and questions being raised about whether the reaction to Thomas' comments would quite be the same if she weren't old, or female, or Lebanese, or the toughest nut in the White House Press Corps—but lingering on these things beyond this cursory mention would feel to me like an attempt to mitigate or obfuscate her comments and what was wrong about them, which I've no yen to do.
Helen Thomas never had any tolerance for bullshit or excuses, so I'm just going to leave it there.
What's Up With Elton John?
Anyone know? I'm trying to figure out why he would perform at Rush Limbaugh's wedding. He can't have needed the $1M paycheck. I'm totally confounded.
Study: Children of Lesbian Parents Have Fewer Behavioral Problems
Fundies: No! No! No! *feet stamping* No! NO! *doors slamming* NOOOOO!!!!eleventy!!
Question of the Day
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.
