HBO working on a show about porn business:
Following in the risqué footsteps of HBO's "Hung" and Showtime's "Secret Diary of a Call Girl," HBO has a show in the works about the pornography business. "Entourage" and "Boardwalk Empire" executive producers Mark Wahlberg and Steve Levinson are working with controversial writer James Frey -- whose next book is titled "The Final Testament of the Holy Bible" -- on a one-hour drama that will use both legit actors and real porn performers. The plot will focus on a giant video company under siege from Internet competitors and a girl from the Midwest whose boyfriend convinces her to move to Los Angeles to become a star. Reached by Page Six, Frey, who's writing the pilot, said, "We're going to make a sprawling epic about the porn business in LA. We're going to tell the type of stories no one else has told before, and go places no one has gone before."I'm most encouraged by the fact that these trenchant-as-hell stories are going to be told by three straight white guys, especially when two of them are the sensitive masterminds behind "Entourage."
As we know, yesterday was the 90th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I noticed that Google recognized the anniversary:
So, the last US combat troops have left Iraq (which still leaves about 56,000 U.S. troops in the country), nearly eight years after the first convoy entered. And seven years and three months after former president Mondo Fucko declared Mission Accomplished.
Senator John McCain responded to the news with a brilliant tweet:
18. The percentage of Americans who believe that President Barack Obama is a Muslim.
Zaid at Think Progress (emphasis original):
[Yesterday was] the anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted the right to vote to women. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has decided to use this day of equal rights for women to argue that women are now to blame for unequal pay in the workplace. On the organization’s official blog, ChamberPost, Senior Director of Communications Brad Peck today makes the argument that the pay gap between men and women in the American workforce — women currently earn roughly 77 cents to every dollar a man earns — is "the result of individual choice rather than discrimination." He argues that, instead of bold legislative action being taken to help correct this pay gap, women should pick the "obvious, immediate, power-of-the-individual solution: choosing the right place to work and choosing the right partner at home":I'm just going to go ahead and direct you over to the lovely Echidne for a response to this mess, and add a note that Peck's solution, despite his careful use of "partner," is profoundly heterocentrist. Even affording him the most generous interpretation of "choosing the right partner at home"—that he intended to mean a woman needs to choose a good partner to help with work-life balance, rather than subsidize her lower income—that admonishment fundamentally ignores that being an out lesbian in large swaths of this country can affect one's employment options, so scolding those women for not "choosing" their employment more carefully is pretty damn ignorant.
Most of the current "pay gap" is the result of individual choice rather than discrimination. [...]Peck's argument that women could close the pay gap by simply choosing jobs in better paying fields and marrying wealthier men is based on a faulty premise — that the pay gap in the United States between genders exists because women choose to work for less and men choose to work for more.
It is true that culturally speaking women are more likely to have to make the tough choices about work-life balance. But as we all seek to fit our values into a dynamic 24/7 economy, let's not overlook the obvious, immediate, power-of-the-individual solution: choosing the right place to work and choosing the right partner at home.
While it's true that women sometimes migrate into fields that have lower pay, what Peck ignores is that even within the same occupation, women are paid less.
I love checking out the news agencies' photos of Hillary Clinton, because, on any given day, there could be a brilliant picture of our female Secretary of State doing something great, or one of the Remember Your Place pictures. Clinton is typically reminded of her place, as a woman, in one of two ways: The accoutrements of womanhood photo (high heels, lipstick), and the zany face photo. There are an endless number of images of Hillary Clinton making zany faces; just do a Google image search for "Hillary Clinton," and you'll see what I mean. "Bitch is crazy!" their preponderance seems to say.
Today, after not checking photos for awhile, I found these two gems:
The shoes of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are seen as she talks about the New START treaty while at the U.S. State Department in Washington, August 11, 2010. [Reuters Pictures]START, for those who don't know, is the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. So you can understand why it's important to get a glimpse of the shoes Clinton is wearing while discussing the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms in the United States and Russia.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (C) greets women attending a Women's Empowerment event at the US Embassy in Kabul on July 20, 2010. Afghan women have long been excluded from public education, healthcare, employment opportunities, and participating in public life. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a major international conference in Kabul July 20 that there was still 'much more work' for the Afghan government to do to stabilise the country. [Getty Images]You know, the zany face photos are fucking annoying enough when Clinton, who's made global women's rights a centerpiece of her tenure at the State Department and takes global women's rights more seriously than anyone at the top levels of US government in the nation's history, isn't positioned between two Afghan women at a Women's Empowerment event. But this is just beyond crass.
...with the fucking mosquitoes this year?! ARGH. Not only are they plentiful and alarmingly huge, they are super aggressive. I am perpetually covered in mosquito bites, and the determined little fuckers are even biting my face and scalp this year.
I need a damn bat-house.
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, proud distributors of Deeky W. Gashlycrumb's new cologne por homme, Dogfartz.
Recommended Reading:
scatx: The 19th Amendment: 90 Years Old Today
Rebecca: Why The LGBT Community Doesn't Believe Anything Democrats Say Anymore
Andy: Watchdog Pushes IRS to Investigate Anti-Gay Pastor for His Support of Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern
Sandip Roy: Why "Eat, Pray, Love" Makes Me Want to Gag
Tassja: Racism and Social Responsibility, aka Why I Can't 'Just Enjoy' a Movie [TW for violence and othering]
Marianne: Delta Burke, Suzanne Sugarbaker, and My Memory of Being 9 Years Old
Atrios: Nobody Could Have Predicted
Also: Portly Dyke is looking for questions. Got any?
Leave your links in comments...
Last weekend, my friend Miller was visiting from her adopted home Brazil, and we convened at the beach house at the Indiana Dunes, right on the shore of Lake Michigan, which has been in her family for generations. It was a lovely visit, which not only gave us a chance to see Miller and other friends, but also provided Dudley with his first opportunity to go for a swim.
The lake was the calmest as I've ever seen it on Saturday, and when I walked Dudz down to the water's edge, he trotted straight into the water and followed me out into the lake, where he paddled toward me into ever deeper water. Greyhounds are not naturally strong swimmers, having no body fat to help keep them afloat, but he took to it well and really enjoyed it. Iain went back to the house to get the camera, so we could film a bit of it.
