Throwing Muses: "Not Too Soon"
The OFFS Awards: Senator and Concern Troll Jim Webb
Democratic Senator Jim Webb has penned quite the piece for the Wall Street Journal. Titled "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege," it's all about how poopy-doopy it is that diversity programs have helped Latin@ and Asian and recent African immigrants who "did not suffer discrimination from our government," but don't help poor white southerners, most of whom, even "at the height of slavery," had, according to "eminent black historian John Hope Franklin... 'neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery'." Webb must have forgotten to mention that many of them supported the Confederacy nonetheless.
There are a very lot of dishonest things in this article. Things like:
A recent NORC Social Survey of white adults born after World War II showed that in the years 1980-2000, only 18.4% of white Baptists and 21.8% of Irish Protestants—the principal ethnic group that settled the South—had obtained college degrees, compared to a national average of 30.1%, a Jewish average of 73.3%, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9%.Those numbers are functionally meaningless without any context about the typical standard of living for, say, a straight, cis, able-bodied, white male Baptist born in 1950 who never went to college versus the typical standard of living for, say, a straight, cis, able-bodied Jewish woman born in 1950 who got a college degree. Anyone want to wager a guess on who was likely to make more money?
Webb might argue that comparing men and women isn't fair, which underscores one of other deceptions in his argument: This isn't about white people; it's about privileged white men.
Because the "special government programs" that promote diversity about which he's complaining were designed to help women and/or gay women and men and/or people with disabilities and/or trans women and men. Lots of the "white people" about whom he's writing qualify for, and have been aided by, "special government programs."
You'd think someone who complains about whites being "treated as a fungible monolith" might acknowledge that reality.
Of course, that does significantly undermine his race-baiting argument that white people are being treated unfairly. Ahem.
It's truly embarrassing that a sitting Democratic Senator would write such an appalling piece for national publication. Or for publication in the Poopsburg Daily Cageliner, for that matter.
Then again, this guy was almost Obama's vice-president, despite being an unabashed misogynist. So I guess we oughtn't be too surprised that he's now spending his taxpayer-funded time penning garbagetorials that mask "what about the white menz?!" whinging behind an exhortation to get beyond racial identity politics.
Still. I expect more.
E-mailing! With Caitie and Kate
Guest starring on this episode: Liss and Deeky
Kate: I was just thinking about booze, and I realized something. If this VH1 lady is a "top shelf transsexual", does that make me, like, the box wine of transsexuals? 'Cause that'd be pretty amazing.
Caitie: Yeah! I think I'm the "homemade lager" of transsexuals. Wait, that doesn't sound right.
Kate: lol! How about bathtub gin?
Caitie: Okay, I guess I'll settle on an English pale ale. ;)
Liss: This makes me a nonalcoholic beer, doesn't it? :(
Deeky: what's that make me? a fruity drink with an umbrella in it?
Kate: Ooooh! Exotic!
Kate: Liss is the designated driver of transsexuals.
Caitie: OMG, you guys are making me laugh so hard I'm crying! :D We should have a poll: If you were a transsexual alcoholic drink, what kind of TAD would you be? ;)
Liss: LOL! Give me your keys.
Kate: LOL! I'm trans, I don't have a car; I'm still saving for a $16,000 vagina.
Liss: Have you checked Big Lots? They have everything.
Deeky: that made me LOL for real.
Caitie: OMG, I can see the packaging now:
VAGYNA*! 100% RECYCLED MATERIAL! COMES WITH REAL FUZZY SOFT CILTORUS!!
YOU WILL SATISFYING YOUR HUSB AND BOYFRIEND WITH GREAT EFFECT!
* Other vulval accessories sold separately. Needs adult assembly before use.
Liss: That's what we call in the biz MARKETING GENIUS. *chomps on cigar*
It's Delightful, It's Delicious, It's De-Lovely...
...it's De-lurk Day! We haven't had one of these in ages, so all you Shaker lurkers who rarely or never pipe up, don't be shy; say hi!
Cheeky devils!
Rehabilitating Bush
Krugman uses his latest column to address the Republicans' emergent effort to rehabilitate Bush, now that the requisite period of daring not speak his name, lest it be associated with the enormous national clusterfucktastrope he left in his wake, is over:
[T]he only problem Republicans ever had with George W. Bush was his low approval rating. They always loved his policies and his governing style — and they want them back. In recent weeks, G.O.P. leaders have come out for a complete return to the Bush agenda, including tax breaks for the rich and financial deregulation. They've even resurrected the plan to cut future Social Security benefits.The Republicans' renewed embrace of Bush would be hilarious, if it weren't so dangerous for the country, given their absurd attempts to distance themselves from him starting around 2006. He was radioactive during the 2006 midterms—none of the House Republicans, nor the Senate Republicans up for reelection, wanted him anywhere near their campaigns—and laughable pieces like Jeffrey Hart's "He's a right-wing ideologue, not a true conservative" in the LA Times were all the rage, making tortured arguments about how Bush wasn't really a conservative and had run the true conservative movement off the rails.
But they have a problem: how can they embrace President Bush's policies, given his record? ... You know the answer. There's now a concerted effort under way to rehabilitate Mr. Bush's image on at least three fronts: the economy, the deficit and the war.
...Republicans aren't trying to rescue George W. Bush's reputation for sentimental reasons; they're trying to clear the way for a return to Bush policies. And this carries a message for anyone hoping that the next time Republicans are in power, they'll behave differently. If you believe that they've learned something — say, about fiscal prudence or the importance of effective regulation — you're kidding yourself. You might as well face it: they're addicted to Bush.
It was bullshit then, and it's bullshit now.
Bush was the Platonic Ideal of the Modern Conservative, the Golden Boy of the current incarnation of the Republican Party—a corporate shill with the demeanor of a country bumpkin, who could hold together the unholy alliance between Big Money and Big Religion, standing at the altar and giving the blessing to the grim marriage between the gullible bigots who pledged to march in lockstep with anyone who promised to protect the children from illegals and feminazis and kissing boys, and the business interests who sought to get rich off those rubes before sending their jobs overseas. Bush didn't just give good speech on Neocon dreams and working class nightmares; he believed that shit. And with a GOP-led Congress and a never-ending stream of media mouthpieces willing to demonize anyone who dared to dissent, he tumbled headfirst into fulfilling every last one of the conservatives' wishes, like a malevolent genie pulled out of a bottle in oil-soaked Texas.
He wrapped himself in the flag and told America to follow him down the Yellow Brick Road. He went to war, and he made his conservative cronies rich. Rich like whoa. And they cheered him all the way, over every last golden cobblestone. Then the nation started getting itchy—and all of a sudden the greatest beneficiaries of President Toad's Wild Ride wanted to pretend they never knew what was there. Why, we had no idea who was behind the curtain! Please.
Bush was a conservative president with no checks and balances, left to pursue every conservative wet dream with abandon. The certain destination for the wanton and unfettered quest for a conservative utopia was always going to be the revelation of the ugly ideology underwriting it all.
It was just embarrassing when conservatives pretended to be shocked by what Bush's policies wrought. And then to claim he wasn't a conservative!
Conservatives believe the free market and privatization is the solution to all our problems. Conservatives believe in social Darwinism. Conservatives believe in defense, defense, and more defense. And maybe, once upon a time, conservatives believed in privacy rights, but once they invited the Gun-Toting Jesus Brigade into their Big Tent to give their corporate agenda the momentum it needed in the voting booths and supported the notion of a unitary executive, they relinquished their claim to privacy rights forever and ever, amen.
There were more than twice as many billionaires in America when Bush left office as there were when the Supreme Court escorted him in, and in the time of their making, we saw soldiers die, felt our rights be stripped away, experienced widespread joblessness and food insecurity, watched an entire American city drown—saw those for whom conservatives have the greatest contempt turn to their government for help in a time of crisis and quite literally be left stranded by the callousness of conservative philosophy. And all the while conservatives wailed about how hard they've got it, and when the hoi polloi turned against Bush and his unfettered pursuit of conservative policies, conservatives wailed some more that their principles were betrayed by the very man they tasked with building their own El Dorado.
But Bush didn't part ways with conservatism; Bush realized its destiny. And in the great tradition of so many martyrs who have gone on before them, that was conservatives' cross to bear, no matter how much they tried to distance themselves from him by retreating into some retro definition of conservatism that hasn't been operable since controlling women became more important than protecting their privacy and bodily autonomy.
But, now, hilariously, after championing a redefinition of conservatism when it suited them to distance themselves from Bush, they're trying to rewrite his presidency and turn it into a legacy of success.
As if the indelible images of the Bush administration aren't just a series of catastrophic failures for anyone who wasn't already wildly successful.
It's breathtaking in its temerity, but it is also terrifying, for the reason Krug says: Republicans aren't trying to rescue George W. Bush's reputation for sentimental reasons; they're trying to clear the way for a return to Bush policies.
Bush policies. Shiver. Like taking this nation to war on false premises; creating millions of refugees; playing class warfare with gilded tax cuts; letting an American city drown; outing one of our own spies; playing wedge issue politics; demonizing immigrants, people of color, LGBTQIs, women, atheists, liberals; promoting avarice above social conscience; relegating philanthropy and empathy to little more than cute, clichéd memories; holding in contempt compassion for those in need; delighting in ignorance; reveling in xenophobic nationalism; pillaging natural and philosophical resources in the acquisition of more wealth; selling We the People piece by piece in massive government-underwritten giveaways to Big Pharma and Big Oil and Big Energy and Big Agriculture; writing more than 1,000 signing statements and using countless National Security Letters to undermine the rule of law; casting aside habeas corpus like day-old bread; treating the Geneva Conventions and our Constitution like suggestions...
Ugh. And braying, thunderously and incessantly, that this country is the Almighty's gift to the world, even though its policies are objectively and demonstrably hurtful for many people in the world, and even despite the reality that it's a still a really shitty place to live for lots of struggling people, and sneering, callously and ceaselessly, that those people are always, only, to blame for their troubles, and that there's something wrong with anyone who doesn't wrap their hands around the throat of American Dream and wring every last bit of life out of it to their own benefit.
Ugh. And calling people who disagree with conservatives America-haters, wrapping themselves in the flag and declaring themselves the True Patriots, the "Real Americans," so it's all but impossible for dissenters to express their abhorrence of conservatism without seemingly attacking America itself, so it's easier for conservatives to do what they really want to do—turn America into a place the people they call "America-haters" really, genuinely do hate, by ridding it of everything that we love.
That's Bush conservatism. That's modern conservatism, no matter what they were saying four years ago. And that's to what they want to return; that's their feverish inspiration for rehabilitating Bush.
Bush, the consummate conservative.
The President Calls Shirley Sherrod
Getting it right the first time would have been preferable:
President Obama on Thursday urged Shirley Sherrod, the black Agriculture Department official whose firing and subsequent offer of rehiring this week renewed a conversation about politics and race, to continue "her hard work on behalf of those in need," the White House said.You know, I am probably not the most objective person to be writing about a prominent politician who begs someone to come back after shitcanning them in a kneejerk reaction to drummed-up charges by a mendacious rightwing mudslinger and frames it as the shitcanned person's duty to come back and keep working hard toward the just causes zie believes in more than the prominent politician evidently does, ahem, but, man, that really chaps my ass.
I hate the implicit suggestion that it's her obligation to accept her position back and get back to "work on behalf of those in need," and the implicit criticism that she's somehow letting those people down if she doesn't come back. Especially because Obama doesn't give a fuck about the hard work she was doing for those people, except in some abstract way; if he had, she wouldn't have been shitcanned in the first place. But he's consistently set a policy of politics over principle, which is why the axiomatic reaction to Breitbart's edited video was to get rid of her.
And now she's supposed to come back for "those in need"? Bullshit. She's supposed to come back to make him not look a total ass. And he doesn't even have the decency to not try to exploit her authentic compassion and activism in order to try to publicly guilt her back to fix his people's fuck-up.
My advice to Sherrod, not that she's asking, is to tell them to shove it, because she'll probably have to quit that shit after three days back anyway. Ahem.
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.]
Sure. Very Cool Idea.
The only thing that could make news of a sequel to The Hangover any better is the rumor that it will be set in Thailand. Great concept. Very exotic.
I'm absolutely certain that this will not result in some of the worst intersectional bigotry ever put on film.
[In case I'm not laying the sarcasm on thick enough, I believe this is a terrible, terrible idea. Which will nonetheless probably make everyone involved very rich(er).]
:Yawn:
Maybe I od'd on estrogen this morning and am overly sensitive, but the Times has a yawn-worthy 5-way about the new sperm donor movie, to go along with their boring-ass review.
Here's my sarcastic synopsis of the heated throw-down:
NYT: Gays in the movies?
Dan Savage: Says some things that make sense to me (gasp!), works gay porn into the conversation (no gasp.)
Lady from The Daily Beast: There are so many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender characters these days! Like on Modern Family! Yay! Problem Solved!
Family History Prof: Makes a good point on the lack of racial diversity in depictions of gays and lesbians. Like on Modern Family! People seem okay with homos, provided they have kids. This movie is about having kids. Kids, kids, kids.
Communications Prof: First there was Liberace, then Will and Grace, and now this. Yay! Problem solved!
New Republic Guy: First there was Will and Grace, and now this. Yay! Problem solved!
I'm tired of this shit. What strikes me about this "debate" is how militantly boring it is. There is zero passion. There apparently isn't a problem with media representation of gays and lesbians (or even bisexual and trans people). Or if there is one, it's no BFD, because it's being fixed, just like all those other problems with media representation of actual human beings.
The important thing is that we got through a heated debate without anyone saying anything. Yay! Discourse is fun!
Daily Dose o' Cute
[Also at Daily Motion.]
Scenes of Dudley settling in at home, playing with Iain and me, and starting to make friends with his kitteh sisters. Also: Clips from the car of Dudz eating the "doggy cup" of Culver's Frozen Custard he was given at the drive-thru, just for being so darn cute. Set to "These Are Days" by 10,000 Maniacs.
By request, here's an update on how things are going: Dudley continues to be an absolute dream. He's just the sweetest boy—loving and well-mannered and delightfully silly. Wherever we go, he is a spectacular ambassador for retired racers, and everyone wants to pet him and kiss him and give him treats, and he laps up the attention without getting overexcited; he seems to have an intuitive sense to be gentle with children and adults who are unsteady on their feet for any reason.
At home, while Olivia isn't quite sure if she's the boss of Dudley, Dudley is certain that she is. Last night, Iain was on the phone with Space Cowboy, and I was sitting and chatting with KBlogz, who was visiting, and neither of us had noticed that Dudz had emptied his food bowl and was giving us the "I'M STILL HUNGRY!" signal. (He is an excellent self-regulator, and walks away when he's full, so if he communicates that he's hungry, it's because he's HUNGRY.) With neither of us catching his desperate doggy plea, he walked up to Livs, who was sitting beside me, and gave her one big "WOOF!" He doesn't bark often, but, with those giant lungs of his, when he does, you know it. Livsy didn't even flinch; she just gave him a disinterested expression that seemed to say, "Don't look at me. I ain't your keeper." I got him more food.
A week or so ago, I experienced a really nice moment where I was struck by how well Dudley's transition into becoming a part of our family has gone: I was in the kitchen making dinner; Iain was unloading the dishwasher, and the girls and Dudz were all milling about, rubbing up against our legs, angling for dropped food and the occasional head scratch. It was exactly the scene for which I'd hoped when we adopted Dudz—all of us together in the kitchen at dinnertime, all the furry residents getting along, one little happy family. I felt so fortunate and so incandescent with gratitude, so full of joy that I thought my heart might burst.
I hugged Iain from behind, pressing my cheek against his back. He turned around in my arms, and we talked for a moment about how pleased and relieved we were everything was working out so well with Dudley. "It's to'ally the fookin' best, apple cheeks," he said.
Our shared life isn't perfect—Iain's got diabetes; I've got PTSD and some as-yet undiagnosed chronic inflammatory disorder; we've got unpleasant ongoing family issues stretching across two continents; our finances aren't always the best; et cetera blah blah snore, lol. But damn if I didn't feel like the luckiest woman in the world, standing in that kitchen with my inimitable partner, our three beloved cats, and a grinning dog.
WHO'S SUCH A GOOD BOY?! YOU ARE!
Fuck.
Report: Marcellus Shale natural gas reserves worth $2 trillion.
Oh, this isn't gonna end well.
For those of you who haven't heard about the Marcellus Shale, let me drop some pseudo-geology on you. There's natural gas in really deep rock formations. The problem with a lot of these formations is that they're dense. The Marcellus is the largest in the US, and it stretches from southern New York into West Virginia.
The thing about this gas and oil is that it's not just sitting there in a big ol' reservoir-- there simply aren't big gas filled gaps in the rocks. Thus, to harvest the gas, you need to create gaps. Enter hydrofracking.
Hydrofracking essentially involves injecting massive amounts of water and chemicals into the rock to open up spaces for the gas to flow to. Basically, you're creating pockets of gas that will flow into your well.
There's already been significant development of the Barnett Shale in and around Texas. Fun times.
Anyhow, the Marcellus dwarfs the Barnett in size, and oil companies have been licking their chops about it for some time.
Interesting story: During the Bush administration, the U.S. government exempted hydrofracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Lately, there have been, um, concerns, and the the EPA has started holding hearings. I admit, it has been kinda fun to watch the debate about whether injecting poison into the ground is a good thing, or a bad thing.
Right on cue, the American Petroleum Institute dropped this report, detailing how oil and gas companies the hard working folks of America will make trillions if we only stop worrying and listen to the experts. That hasn't worked so well in the past for folks in these parts.
Today in Rape Culture, Canadian-style
The Globe & Mail reports that the province of Ontario has provided funding for four centres in the province where men can receive counselling and support related to their being sexually abused.
I think I'd be more excited about this if I didn't know that most of the centres which are available for women for the same issues are chronically underfunded. It is important, absolutely, and I'm glad that men who have been sexually abused will be able to get support.
But it's another brick in the wall of rape culture: rape is at its worst when it happens to men, therefore the government should fully fund some institutions to look after them. Which wouldn't bother me, again, if it weren't that the network of centres which women have built in their communities across this province have to fight for every dollar they can get from the government.
Tip of the CaitieCap again to MzR.
NYC Mayor Has Trouble Fulfilling Campaign Promises
NYC Mayor Bloomberg got himself elected on his promises to make the city government a meritocracy, that he would lead a government that looked like the city. Instead:
Sure enough, a Freedom of Information Act request showed that tucked among hundreds of summer interns picked through a competitive process were dozens of the children of City Hall insiders or of Mr. Bloomberg’s friends. They reflected the mayor’s social and political circles: mostly white, many quite wealthy, coming from private high schools and Ivy League colleges.And the effects thereof? Well, among others:
In short, these are not residents of Stop and Frisk New York.
Mayor Bloomberg promised to lead a government that looked like the city; in reality, he leads one that looks like his mirror, an administration in which key managers are overwhelmingly white and male. It is one thing if this means the annual crop of interns is heavily salted with young Bloombergians.
It is quite another when those managers are shaping policies that wind up leading to the deprivation of liberty of people who do not look like them.
On the Upper East Side of Manhattan where the mayor lives, an average of 20 people for every 100,000 residents were arrested on the lowest-level misdemeanor pot charge in 2007, 2008 and 2009.I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you, to discover that there's been a racist stop-and-frisk spree that's leading to higher rates of incarcertation for people who aren't white, and that there's an emphasis on attacking drug use that just happens to favour the unconstitutional search of people for the made-up crime of "Living in NYC while brown".
During those same years, the marijuana arrest rate in Brownsville, Brooklyn, was 3,109 for every 100,000 residents.
Totes post-racial, baby.
Tip of the CaitieCap to MzR.
Quote of the Day
"There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over."—Newt Gringrich, arguing that the oppressive theocratic leadership of Saudi Arabia's idea of religious freedom is bullshit, so we should act just like them, because we refuse to submit to them, without a trace of irony.
[H/T to Shaker Tiffany.]
More About The Legend of Korra
As reported here yesterday, there will be a new animated series on Nickelodeon in 2011 called The Legend of Korra, who will be the next Avatar after Aang.
Shaker Socchan mentioned in that thread that there was an interview with Mike and Bryan (the two guys who created the show) in the Wall Street Journal.
Speakeasy*: The new “Avatar” is a woman. What inspired you to change the sex of the protagonist of the series?* Speakeasy is the name of the blog at the Wall Street Journal.
Michael DiMartino: It’s not so much about changing because we had Avatar Kyoshi before Aang. We’d established that the Avatar can be male or female and we just thought let’s explore one of those more in depth, because Kyoshi was a popular character with a lot of fans and it seemed like a great opportunity to not retread what we’d done with Aang, who was a great hero, we all loved him, but we really wanted to try something different. And we have so many great female fans out there, who really responded to Katara in the first series, we thought we have the fan base who are really going to enjoy seeing the Avatar be a female.
Bryan Konietzko: Mike and I, we love those characters too, and we’ve encountered countless fans who are male who really like those characters too. We just don’t subscribe to the conventional wisdom that you can’t have an action series led by a female character. It’s kinda nonsense to us.
Top Chef Open Thread
[Image from last night's show: Cheftestant Tiffany flambés the fuck out of her "exotic" ingredient. What did she get? Crocodile heads or something. Good luck, Tiffany, I hear those are chewy!]
Last night's episode will be discussed in infinitesimal detail, so if you haven't seen it, and don't want any spoilers, pack your knives and go...
And It Ends Not With a Bang, But a Whimper
The investigation into the 2006 Bush administration Justice Department firing of nine federal prosecutors—about which, as longtime Shakers will recall, I blogged my fingers to bloody stumps—has quietly come to a close:
The Bush administration's Justice Department's actions were inappropriately political, but not criminal, when it fired a U.S. attorney in 2006, prosecutors said Wednesday in closing a two-year investigation without filing charges.They got through those 22 million emails pretty quick. Lemme guess: Howie Schmidt assured them, cross his heart and hope to die, that there was nothing naughty to be found.
…Investigators looked into whether the Bush administration improperly dismissed nine U.S. attorneys, and in particular New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, as a way to influence criminal cases. The scandal added to mounting criticism that the administration had politicized the Justice Department, a charge that contributed to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
In 2008, the Justice Department assigned Nora Dannehy, a career prosecutor from Connecticut with a history of rooting out government wrongdoing, to investigate the firings.
"Evidence did not demonstrate that any prosecutable criminal offense was committed with regard to the removal of David Iglesias," the Justice Department said in a letter to lawmakers Wednesday. "The investigative team also determined that the evidence did not warrant expanding the scope of the investigation beyond the removal of Iglesias."
Oh well. No one remembers or cares about this shit, anyway. Like every other bit of mischief in which the Bush administration engaged, the investigation outlived our collective attention span.
Sob.
