Dear NBC,
When I was a 10 year-old closeted lesbian, I knew I would grow up to do one of two things with my life. Either I'd be a newspaper reporter, or a comedienne. I mention this, because I need you to understand that each day for the last 21 years has been an exercise in waking up, brushing my teeth, going out into the world, and watching a piece of me die.
While convalescing from a brain injury, I realized that I had never really watched Last Comic Standing, and resolved to do so. This involves something I cared about, and would undoubtedly not crush my soul.
Would you believe it that there are a number of people out there who are pretty funny, and dare I say, good at stand up comedy? And that some of them were on your show? Or that stand up is kinda hard? I know this because you were kind enough to put together a couple of episodes of awful auditions.
A couple of observations:
1) 'I'm a hyper-masculine jerk who doesn't like anyone' is somewhat less funny in person than it is on stage.
2) If your judges were going to give only 1 of yesterday's 5 slots in the finals to a woman, it probably shouldn't have gone to that chick with the routine about how she's afraid she'll find herself dating some overly sensitive feminist guy who has ambiguous genitalia, wants her to feel good about herself, and will make her soup. Of course, as Greg Giraldo pointed out, the audience did seem to think she was attractive, which makes it really hard to get laughs.
Going out into the world and watching a piece of me die.
Assuming General Electric cares about my well-being, here's a suggestion. Hire Eddie Izzard, Bob Newhart, Betty White, and Lily Tomlin. After that, it's all gravy. Betty White could display sexual agency. People could bring in antiques for Eddie Izzard to appraise. Bob Newhart and Lily Tomlin could make fart jokes as far as I care; they're really funny people.
Either that, or you could go with the pilots of Two-and-a-Half Seinfelds and How I Met Mencia. I really don't care anymore.
An Open Letter to NBC
Surprise
Austerity isn't working.
Good thing all the Professor Moneyheads at the G20 are ignoring inconvenient facts in order to prioritize deficit reduction. Otherwise, a smart economic idea might accidentally be put into action.
Also see: Krug and Atrios.
Update on Suspiciously Sitting While Black and Autistic
(TW for references to violence)
My previous post about 18-year-old Neli Latson described the series of events which led to his being beaten, jailed, and faced with serious criminal charges simply because someone found "suspicious" the sight of a young, black, autistic man sitting on the grass waiting for the library to open. So suspicious did that seem to this person that they imagined a "possible", though non-existent, gun in his possession.
A number of Shakers were very interested in Neli's plight, and wanted to know what they could do to help. Neli's mom, Lisa Alexander, has begun an email campaign to try to bring attention from the news media to her son's situation. At her website, A Voice for Neli, she has compiled a long list of email addresses of news people, along with an email which you can copy and paste to send to them.
And here you will find a video Lisa made on a recent visit to Neli in the institution where he's been placed for a 30-day mental health evaluation. In this video, Neli tells the story of how he was vilified, assaulted and arrested, then assaulted some more.
It. Will. Make. You. Sick. Trigger Warning on this video for descriptions of violence (not graphic), racism, misogyny and despicable inhumanity. But by all means watch it if you can, and share far and wide Neli's story and Lisa's email campaign on his behalf.
Human Rights Violations at the G20
[Trigger warning for sexual assault and homophobia.]
Shaker GimliGirl sent me the link to the below video (for which I've also provided a transcript), which shows journalist Amy Miller recounting her experience being detained at the G20 summit this weekend in Toronto. It is a harrowing retelling, in which she bears witness to young people being brutalized by police and young women being sexually assaulted under the auspices of "security." GimliGirl emails:
I've been following the G20 protests very closely in my local media (CTV News) as well as via Twitter for a more 'on the ground' feel of what's been happening. Other than the Black Bloc, it's good to hear that most of the protestors in T.dot were well behaved despite police interference like shutting down the free speech zone and bottle-necking marchers into specific, ineffective for protest, areas. It's not good to hear that two (at least) of our Charter rights were suspended down in Toronto though; our right to freedom of assembly and our right to free speech, as well as our right to travel without having to identify ourselves/be detained. These rights were similarly suspended during the Olympics this past winter in Vancouver but there was a lot less of an outcry (as far as I know.) I'm deeply ashamed of my Prime Minister and Premier Dalton McGuinty for their choice of actions surrounding the G8 and G20 summits, the amount of money spent on these events, and especially the Toronto Police response to protesters both benign and violent. Naomi Klein has a lot to say about what's happened with the G8/20 and she says it better than I ever could.
My name's Amy Miller. I was detained yesterday at approximately noon. I was with Adam [gestures to colleague standing behind her] as well as one other colleague; we were on our way to cover the Jail Solidarity Action. On the way, we stopped because we saw a group of young people being detained and being searched, so we wanted to see what was happening.Shaker Gabriel also forwarded this video in which 18-year-old Dan Hamilton recounts being detained for twenty-six hours, where he was first held in a cell with about 40 other men where there was no toilet privacy, and was then moved to a "dog pen" with his boyfriend when he said he was gay. All the gay detainees were said to have been segregated for their "safety," but, as Hamilton explains, the only homophobic people in the building were the police themselves.
As Adam recounted, we were—he was quickly taken down, and the same thing happened to me; I was throttled at the neck and held down, and then I was detained for nearly thirteen hours. I was placed in a cell at the Toronto Film Studio, and I was in a cell with twenty-five other young women for approximately thirteen hours.
Throughout the time that I was detained, I was told many statements that I find repulsive and completely inappropriate and what I view as threats. I was told I was going to be raped; I was told I was going to be gang-banged; I was told that they were going to make sure that I was never going to want to act as a "journalist" [she does air quotes] again, by making sure that I would be repeatedly raped while I was in jail.
When I was in the detention center, I saw numerous young women who were completely strip-searched, who weren't strip-searched by officers—male—who were strip-searched my male officers, and one young woman, when she was coming out, she was completely traumatized, said that she had had a finger put up her, and I find this completely unacceptable, and I hope that people will investigate this, because from what I saw, in the cell, from the women who were coming out, who were being strip-searched, they were definitely traumatized, and there was very much violence that was targeted toward young women.
While I was detained, it was very obvious that there was profiling going on; it was primarily young people, under the age of 25, who don't know their rights, or who have less knowledge of their rights, who were being told all kinds of different things. And so we—we had stopped to cover it because these were young people who were being detained and searched and who didn't know what was going on, who were just wanting to get onto their bus back to Montreal, and, despite having my press pass on me the whole time, it was quickly ripped off of me; I was throttled down, and then, next thing you know, I was being cuffed and put in one of the wagons.
Contact the premier here.
How Do You Say Congrats in Icelandic?
Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir and her partner, writer Jónina Leósdóttir, were married on Sunday, the day gay marriage became legal in Iceland. There was no ceremony, the couple simply applied to have the partnership they had registered in 2002 converted to a marriage under the new law. That law was passed without dissent by Iceland's parliament on June 11.
Jóhanna* became the first openly lesbian head of state on acceding to the position of Prime Minister in 2009. Now she is the first head of state to be married to a same-sex partner. All happiness to them.
*Wikipedia says the Prime Minister (when not referred to by title) is properly called "Jóhanna", not "Ms. Sigurðardottir", as the second name is a patronymic/matronymic and not a family name.
Via
Cold War Kids
FBI arrests 10 accused of working as Russian spies (and I just heard a report on CNN a few minutes ago that an 11th has been arrested):
FBI agents arrested 10 people on charges that they spent years in the United States as spies for Russia, taking on fake identities and trying to ferret out intelligence about U.S. policy and secrets by making connections to think tanks and government officials, the Justice Department said Monday.How retro!
...The operation, referred to by U.S. investigators as "the Illegals program," was aimed at placing spies in nongovernmental jobs, such as at think tanks, where they could glean information from policymakers and Washington-connected insiders without attracting attention.
Whether it succeeded was unclear Monday. Federal law enforcement officials portrayed their operation as a spectacular counterintelligence success that uncovered a group of spies capable of doing great damage to U.S. national security. "I can't remember a case where we've been able to arrest 10 intelligence officers from a foreign country in one fell swoop," one official said. "This network in the United States has now been completely compromised."
Seen
"WIENER WINNER OUT! Kobayashi won't compete in hot dog contest."
Prediction: Deeky and I will use the phrase "wiener winner" in text messages to one another somewhere between 87 and one billion times today.
Question of the Day
What has made you grin today?
A few things, but at the moment, I am in the middle of a full-tilt swoon because I just put on Mozza's "To Me You Are a Work of Art," after having not heard it for a very long time.
[Lyrics here.]
Once Upon a Time…
…I worked with two guys we'll call Chad and Thad.
(This was indeed at the same place where I also worked with Tim and Doug—I wasn't kidding when I said I could write a magnum opus about that place.)
Chad and Thad were not their real names, but they both had four-letter first names that were fairly common names for dudes of their cohort (slightly older than I, so they'd be about 40 now). They were also both male, white, straight, cisgender, without visible disabilities, thin, blond, and blue (or green) eyed, and approximately the same height. They both worked in the same department and shared similar interests in working out, drinking, and getting laid.
I nonetheless never had any trouble telling Chad and Thad apart, despite their many superficial commonalities.
Both Chad and Thad, however, had difficulty distinguishing between my coworker (and close friend) Miller and I. That was something else they shared in common—an inability to speak to one of us with certainty about to whom they were speaking.
Miller and I are both female, white, straight, cisgender, without visible disabilities, brown-haired (though different shades), blue-eyed, and almost exactly the same height. There were other women in the firm who met the same approximate description, but Chad and Thad never confused them for us, or us for them—only Miller and I for one another.
Miller and I lived in the same neighborhood, too, but I suspect that was not the characteristic that we shared in common—and did not share in common with the other similar ladies at the firm—which caused Chad's and Thad's inability to tell us apart.
I suspect the thing that set us apart, and made us the same, was that we were both fat.
At the time, we were about the same weight. Miller is now thinner, and I am now fatter—but back in the days of Chad and Thad being unable to differentiate between the two of us, we had a pretty similar body shape. We didn't dress alike, and we didn't wear our hair the same way, but I don't think those were details that Chad and Thad could be bothered to discern; they simply viewed each of us as a featureless blob whose unfuckability rendered our individuality superfluous.
"I'm not Miller; I'm Melissa," was a sentence I uttered approximately two dozen times in the two years (or so) that spanned their total employment.
"Oh, sorry," one would murmur, the nicer of the two, who at least had the sense to look embarrassed. The other would look aggravated by my insistence on asserting my personhood, and once snapped at me, on a day I happened to be wearing my specs rather than the contacts I typically wore back then, "You should wear your glasses if you want me to be able to tell you apart."
My sister, who inherited the squarer face and slanted eyes and luscious lips from my father's side of the family, and I, who inherited a perfectly spherical head and round eyes and impossibly thin lips from my mother's side of the family, have been told our whole lives that we look like twins. We do not look like twins; in fact, we have cousins whom my sister more closely resembles than she resembles me.
If we were not both fat, people would probably remark with surprise that we are sisters. But being fat has rendered our differences invisible.
Other fat women have the same experience.
It is an experience that will, of course, be particularly recognizable to women of color (and probably men, too) who have worked in a predominantly white environment with one other woman of the same ethnicity. (Or one presumed to be the same: I had a teacher who could not distinguish between two classmates, even though Tram was Vietnamese and Kim was Korean, and they looked nothing alike.)
And because there exist in the world individuals who might have occasionally mixed up Chad and Thad, or two men very much like them, there are undoubtedly people who feel obliged to conjure other reasons for privileged people not to be able to tell two vaguely similar marginalized people apart. Surely there had to be, or at least could be, some other reason underlying Chad's and Thad's shared perplexity, they will think.
But a lifetime of being not seen because of being fat has taught me the difference between someone who simply doesn't recognize me and someone who doesn't see me.
After getting new specs—ones I kept for 10 years and was still wearing in my old author pic—I wore them to work. I'd recently had my hair cut off into a short bob, too. Chad saw me in the hall at work and said, "Well, you're looking all artsy-fartsy lately."
I squinted at him. "What?"
"You're looking different. It's good, though—now I can tell you and Miller apart."
Thank you for sticking some recognizable accessories onto your nondescript fat blobbiness. It really helps me out.
I stared at him for a moment, with a mixture of disbelief, pity, and contempt—and then I just walked away.
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.]
Protestantism FTW!
Cotton Mather and Protestantism in general is pretty chill. As a result, the United States is finally a post-religious, post-racial, post-feminist meritocracy, as evidenced by Elena Kagan and the Ivy League. It's like how Branch Rickey signaled the end of racism by signing Jackie Robinson, only even more magical. So the next time you're not being discriminated against, thank Pat Robertson. So insinuates some white Harvard law professor who went to Oxford, Cambridge and Yale, and presumably got a gig writing occasional op-ed pieces for the Times on account of merit.
Okay, I'm being sarcastic. To tone it down just a bit, as far as I can tell, Noah Feldman is saying that things these days are better for (certain) Jews and Catholics (which is an oddly Blues Brothers-ish approach to religious diversity in the US, if you ask me), as evidenced by the composition of the Supreme Court. He then goes on to argue that this is a BFD (I'm happy for them? And for the nation?).
Feldman then goes on to give Protestantism the credit for select good things about colonial America, which aside from being the rhetorical equivalent of giving Catholicism the credit for select good things about the Vatican, and water the credit for select good things about the ocean, tends to erase Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and other constitutionally crafty types.
Away He Goes
I went to the dog park this weekend determined to get some decent still shots of Dudz doing his greyhound thing, not merely because I love the challenge of trying to photograph him in motion, but because a handful of Shakers have requested still shots of his running. So, armed with my trusty camera and steely resolve, I got a few decent snaps of a gleefully accommodating dog.
The pictures taken of him from the back really show the mechanics of his running. I absolutely love this picture of him mid-flight; one could almost imagine his feet were in the grass, were it not for the shadow beneath him.
Meanwhile, the pictures taken of him from the front and sides reveal the sheer love of running he has. He is a grin on four legs.
Below are two short slideshows (8 and 9 pix, respectively) of my best mechanical pix from the back and best überjoy pix from the front.
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Dudley's Running Shoes, for people and dogs who like to run fast.
Recommended Reading:
Bree: Fat Hatin' from C. Everett Koop
Deborah: Justice Is Only for White People
SleepyDumpling: You Just Can't Know
Mar: Me and Samuel Beckett and Homophobia in the Caribbean
Kyle: If You Can't Beat 'Em, Outbreed 'Em
Mo Pie: Harry Potter Ride Turns Away Fat Riders
Andy: [video] Illinois Senate Candidate Alexi Giannoulias on Equality (Key Quote: "We are going to look back at this issue and be embarrassed and disgusted at the fact that we didn't let two people who love each other get married. It's as simple as that, folks.")
Leave your links in comments...
Texting! With Liss and Deeky!
Spudsy:
[Image of Ghostbuster key covers.]
Deeky: How many of those did you buy?
Spudsy: Just one. I don't think they;ll fit on my keys, LOL. I tried sending you that pic this weekend, did you get it?
Deeky: Yes, I have two copies now
Spudsy: It's worth two. Two copies of AWESOME.
Deeky: LOL! Which one did you buy?
Spudsy: Both are included on the card, the No Ghosts logo and Stay Puft.
Deeky: Oh, I see.
Spudsy: Bustin' makes me feel good.
Deeky: LOL! Speaking of which, is that new Ghostbusters game any good?
Spudsy: Do you even need to ask? YES.
Deeky: Yes, I need to ask! What platform do you have? Besides your shoes, Elton.
Spudsy: PS3. Like all cool people.
Deeky: But you're not cool!
Spudsy: I'm totally fucking cool. Just no one will admit it.
Deeky: Maybe they would if you laid off the bow ties a little.
Spudsy: Bow ties are cool.
Deeky: Okay, Pee-wee.
Swell
In a ruling more in keeping with the slow construction of a conservative utopia where all your problems can be solved by an invisible hand holding a gun, SCOTUS also ruled this morning that Chicago's handgun law is unconstitutional because, according to the Court's majority, "It is clear that the Framers…counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty."
And that's still relevant 200 years later, despite the fact that the Framers, as ingenuous as they were, did not envision a country of 300 million+ people where almost everyone is literate and almost every adult can vote. Nor did they imagine handguns, which didn't fucking exist.
I'm too aggravated to write a thoughtful post about this decision, so I'm going to go ahead and direct you in Echidne's direction, where, as ever, the thoughtfulness flows like a river of flowy liquid thoughts.
"But haven't you heard—the law doesn't apply to us!"
[Trigger warning for clergy abuse.]
SCOTUS made surprisingly decent decision this morning:
The US Supreme Court declined Monday to hear an appeal by the Vatican in a landmark case that opens the way for priests in the United States to stand trial for pedophilia.In case you're understandably wondering how it could even be in question whether a US priest would stand trial in US courts for US crimes committed in the US against US residents, the Vatican was essentially arguing diplomatic immunity, claiming that priests are immune as Vatican state employees under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
Allowing a federal appeals court ruling to stand, the decision means Vatican officials including theoretically Pope Benedict XVI could face questioning under oath related to a litany of child sex abuse cases.
The federal appeals court cited one of the exceptions to that Act, "ruling the lawsuit has sufficiently alleged that [accused priest Reverend Andrew Ronan] was an employee of the Vatican acting within the scope of his employment under Oregon law." SCOTUS agreed.
There is another lawsuit pending in Kentucky in which the Vatican claims US bishops are employees of the Holy See and thus immune from prosecution. Let us hope the SCOTUS is as similarly disinclined to make an exception for the bishops as they were for the priests.
Meanwhile, over in Europe where the history comes from [/izzard] , the Vatican is positively "indignant" that Belgian police investigating sex abuse allegations had the unmitigated temerity to, um, investigate.
Of particular concern is Belgian police having drilled small holes into the tombs of two Belgian cardinals at Mechelen cathedral, to send in cameras in search of hidden documents, a part of the investigation that was carried out "after someone mentioned [to investigators that] work had recently been carried out on the grave's exterior."
In a statement, the Vatican called the search—which also resulted in the seizure of "nearly 500 files and a computer from the offices of a Church commission investigating allegations of sex abuse"—a "violation" of both the graves and the "confidentiality of precisely those victims for whom the raids were carried out."
Somehow, I'm not feeling any sympathy that the Church feels "violated" by an investigation into a global sex abuse problem it conspired to conceal for more than a century.
And their affected concern for survivors is revolting. I would hope that no one yet suffers from the misapprehension that the Catholic Church is more concerned for protecting survivors' confidentiality than for protecting the anonymity of its abusive priests.
[H/Ts to Shakers Constant Comment and TehKenny.]
Florida Netroots Awards 2010
The voting is open for the Florida Netroots Awards. Go here to vote.
Bark Bark Woof Woof has been nominated in two areas: "Best National Blog -- Blogs written by Floridians that cover primarily national politics," and "Best Series" for "Question of the Day."
(There is no requirement that you have to live in Florida to be eligible to vote. Just ask my mom.)
I'm Mustang Bobby, and I approved this message.
