So. President Obama—because he loves bipartisanship so, so much—selected former Republican Senator Alan Simpson to co-chair his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. And Simpson—because he is a conservative and conservatives hate Social Security so, so much—has continually stated that substantial reforms to Social Security are the key to fixing the deficit.
Well, he is wrong. And in April of this year, Ashley B. Carson, the director of OWL, the Older Women's League, wrote a column saying he is wrong—and additionally calling him out on his use of ageist and sexist rhetoric.
Someone evidently forwarded Carson's column to Simpson recently, and he decided to email Carson (pdf) to let her know what he thought of her piece (emphasis mine):
Dear Ms. Carson,
Someone was good enough to forward me your column of "Enough with the Pink Panthers Bit" of April 27, 2010.
Some of what you say is true. Much is not – but that's nothing new about public life for me! I have news for you too, my friend. There may be no group called the Pink Panthers working to protect Social Security but I sure as hell am! I've spent many years in public life trying to stabilize that system while people like you babble into the vapors about "disgusting attempts at ageism and sexism" and all the rest of that crap.
Now hold on tight, because you won't like what I'm sending you. You may obviously be aware that the Social Security system is "in trouble." If you don't agree with that, then there is no need to read any further. But I wish to share with you the presentation by Stephen C. Goss, Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration on May 12, 2010 to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. If you think the statistics on poverty for seniors are alarming – then you need to read this little pamphlet to know what is really alarming.
If we can't get a handle on this system and make it sustainable and assure long term solvency, and make some changes that are "minor" at the present time and will become "major" as each year passes, then take a look at the chart on Page 6 which I hope you are able to discern if you are any good at reading graphs – or anything that might challenge your biases and prejudices.
Anyway, have a look at it and if you should choose, you might communicate with me. If you have some better suggestions about how to stabilize Social Security instead of just babbling into the vapors, let me know. And yes, I've made some plenty smart cracks about people on Social Security who milk it to the last degree. You know 'em too. It's the same with any system in America. We've reached a point now where it's like a milk cow with 310 million tits! Call when you get honest work!
Al
I have but two questions:
1. Is there anyone in the Obama administration who doesn't have nothing but undiluted contempt for activists, who doesn't take any opportunity offered them to crow about their own super-exceptional dedication to the betterment of the US while condescendingly demeaning as woefully ignorant anyone who deigns to criticize, or even disagree with, their strategies?
2. Is Obama going to ask for Simpson's resignation, or is the president totally okay with someone he personally appointed not only referring to Social Security (or the US government in its entirety?) as "a milk cow with 310 million tits" and telling a prominent women's rights activist that her concerns about his ageist and sexist rhetoric are "crap"?
Sign the petition calling for Simpson's removal here.
[H/T to Spudsy, who got it from HuffPo. Related Reading: Get a Life.]
[Edited by contributor] There may be two or three people who think we've got journalistic standards, but we're basically a bunch of douchenoodles who will resort to anything to sell our paper in a desperate attempt to turn a profit. To that end, we've used an incidence of discrimination as an excuse to flaunt our naked bigotry in the hopes that you'll gawk at a person much more dignified than our editorial staff. We have yet to comprehend or care about the reasons that many people refer to us as "The Daily Fail" because we're busy looking for totes important pictures of naked ladies.
We are neither aware of the conventions of your bingo-derived games, nor our role in helping you excel at them.
eastsidekate 0 minutes ago responding to The Daily Mail
I shall crush your so-called paper with my appropriately tall, dress-wearing body. Katie smash. Katie need pointier shoes.
Investigative outlet ProPublica, in conjunction with The New Orleans Times-Picayune, has published a report about some truly disturbing orders given to New Orleans police in the aftermath of Katrina, as part of its ongoing investigation into unresolved cases where police abuse has been alleged.
In the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, an order circulated among New Orleans police authorizing officers to shoot looters, according to present and former members of the department.
It's not clear how broadly the order was communicated. Some officers who heard it say they refused to carry it out. Others say they understood it as a fundamental change in the standards on deadly force, which allow police to fire only to protect themselves or others from what appears to be an imminent physical threat.
The accounts of orders to "shoot looters," "take back the city," or "do what you have to do" are fragmentary. It remains unclear who originated them or whether they were heard by any of the officers involved in shooting 11 civilians in the days after Katrina.
[...]
In one instance captured on a grainy videotape shot by a member of the force, a police captain relayed the instructions at morning roll call to cops preparing for the day's patrols.
"We have authority by martial law to shoot looters," Captain James Scott told a few dozen officers in a portion of the tape viewed by reporters. Scott, then the commander of the 1st district, is now captain of the special operations division.
Of course he is.
The lack of meaningful accountability, from local police to the utterly useless and criminally apathetic former President of the United States who let an American city drown on his watch, for institutional failure in the Katrina's wake is one of the great shames in this nation's political history.
And the terrifying part is that we have not learned from it, and thus are we doomed to repeat it.
Salon's Alex Pareene has done a splendid job of deconstructing Goldberg's latest mess, in which he asserts that "The 70% of Americans who oppose what amounts to an Islamic Niketown two blocks from ground zero are the real victims of a climate of hate, and anti-Muslim backlash is mostly a myth."
Yes, sure, absolutely. It's the bigots in this country who are marginalized by hatred.
Would that it were true. Since, unlike Goldberg, I don't find any reason why bigots shouldn't be marginalized.
The kids still say "puttin' it on wax," don't they?
News Flash! Paul the Psychic Octopus' agent (the cephalopod has an agent! (and how the fuck is it a mollusk has an agent and I don't?)) says Paul the Psychic Octopus will be recording an album of Elvis tunes. (Because, duh, what, you think his tentacled ass is gonna do a Sinatra tribute? Don't be a dumbass.)
Anyway, you remember Paul the Psychic Octopus, don't you? He predicted the world cup victory by some team. So, yay, Paul the Psychic Octopus! And yay for Elvis covers!
And before you crack wise and scoff at the idea of a singing octopus, let me remind you, that in the annals of rock-n-fuckin-roll, there have been plenty of acts who have recorded albums that might have not seemed all that possible. Don't believe me?
Because Hayworth was a Tea Party darling, McCain had to run even further to the right than the "maverick" had already run during the last presidential election, and courted the extreme rightwing he once despised, with adorable sops to intolerance and bigotry like his charming "Complete the Danged Fence" campaign.
By the time primary election day rolled around, McCain had virtually transformed himself into a Tea Partyin' fool.
Today, the Republican party of Arizona nominated for Senate JD Hayworth in the shell of a politician that was once John McCain. The complete takeover of the Republican party by the Tea Party has included taking over the soul of a Senator who was once the face of comprehensive immigration reform and who now would just build the 'danged fence;' a man who once reveled in being a maverick and who now is a rubber stamp for the extreme rightwing; a man whose name was synonymous with campaign finance reform and who now barely registers a notice when the law that bears his name was gutted by the Supreme Court to favor corporate America. So, we congratulate JD Hayworth on his nomination tonight.
You [TW: transphobia] may recall Erin Vaught, the trans woman who was denied health care at an Indiana hospital despite the fact that she had "coughed [up] almost a cup of blood." The Muncie hospital has just announced that all employees will undergo the sensitivity training that is obviously needed.
I'm still left to wonder what happened to the employees in question. Speaking from experience, I'll argue that there are two aspects to this type of injustice: 1) dangerously substandard medical care that 2) is substantially different than medical care given to members of other groups. Yes, the treatment that Vaught received was discriminatory, but leaving that aside for the moment, it clearly showed that several employees at said hospital are unfit to provide medical care. Unable to figure out what to do with a person who's coughing up blood? Fail.
My family's own experience last year shows a similar bifurcation. Based on our observations over several visits to one of our local hospitals, we feel that the care we received was discriminatory. However, our complaints include:
Patient denied call button (which incidentally, led to my partner laying in bed screaming for help; the ER staff largely ignored said screams)
Patient denied pain medication, including that prescribed by the same hospital for the surgery that lead to the ER visit
Patient denied ice pack
Patient not helped in and out of bed, not given assistance in leaving hospital (e.g., we're done here, you know where the door is)
Yes, we have other complaints including the nasty demeanor of the staff and the ejection of me from the room, but you'll note that the list above has fuck all to do with discrimination, and everything to do with a failure to follow the most basic standards of medical care. This is stuff that our nursing friends tell us is fundamental. I also imagine it's the sort of thing that accrediting bodies look at. :ahem:
FWIW, we received a letter from the hospital administration assuring us that they take our concerns very seriously, that they have core values, and that they're totally looking into it. Yawn. I'm not so sure that this means that they're looking to hire competent staff.
We've pretty much decided not to pursue the matter further, but this kind of garbage pisses me off. Yes, you need to work on cultural sensitivity, but you also need to stop being a sucky hospital. Any word on that?
What was a moment that by all rights should have been an embarrassing moment for you, but was so absurd you couldn't help but laugh?
I've had dozens of these moments, but the first one that came to mind was a time in high school when I was spending the night at a friend's house. She was in the shower, and I was puttering around in her bedroom, and found a brightly-colored (like the most putrid neon; hello, it was the '90s!) plastic water-gun. I put on my best Emma Peel and waited for her to come back to her room.
The door creaked. "Freeze, dirtbag!" I commanded, pointing the garish toy pistol.
Her father—who was actually the person coming into the room—startled, looked at me with a mixture of confusion, terror, and exasperation, tossed the blanket he was holding onto the floor, and scurried away.
LOL.
Her dad was just this 100% Grade-A humorless, bullying, patriarchal, fascist ass, so it was eighty million shades of hilarious that it was her dad, of all The Dads, who became the unintentional target of my misplayed prank.
When my friend returned to her room, I blurted out, "I just barked 'Freeze, dirtbag!' at your dad while pointing this water-gun at him." She collapsed into a heap, and we laughed for ten million years.
When I apologized to him later, he responded by looking at my friend and saying, "It's this kind of stupidity that I'm talking about," then walking away.
Which, naturally, made us laugh all over again, and we quoted that shit for fucking ever.
"When Snooki tweeted that she was mad at Obama for raising taxes on tanning beds, I tweeted back that I would not do that [raise taxes] and that she should wear sunscreen. ... That same week I gave a speech on human rights in Iran, and everyone just wanted to know about Snooki."—Senator John McCain, overtly on tweeting with Jersey Shore sensation Snooki, and obliquely on bread and circuses.
[Trigger warning for discussion of sexual violence.]
So, according to Marine Corps Commandant General James Conway, if "Don't Ask Don't Tell" is repealed, the Marines should consider "voluntary" sexuality-segregated quarters, because a lot of Marines are "very religious" and have "moral concerns" about homosexuality and thus "don't want to room" with gay peers.
Okay, ignoring the incoherence of axiomatically equating "religious" with "homophobic," let's break down this logic: Religious (ahem) Marines object to rooming with anyone who engages in any activity that they deem immoral. Except not. Because there's no movement to create separate quarters for Marines who have premarital (straight) sex, or adulterous (straight) sex, or who gamble, or who take the lord's name in vain, or who fail to honor their mothers and fathers so it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long on the earth.
Onceagain, we meet a special argument reserved especially just for the very special case of gay people and their specialized sin.
Why would straight male Marines have a special concern about bunking with gay peers? Well. It's not fashionable for homophobes to say it these days, unless it's framed as a don't-drop-the-soap "joke," but they have the same fear as did the homophobes of yore, back when it wasn't politically incorrect to flatly say: "I don't want them queers trying to put the moves on me."
Nowadays, it's "politely" couched as a "moral concern," as if a religious (ahem) Marine's delicate sensibilities can tolerate killing another human being but not sharing sleeping space with a man who kisses other men.
But the reality is that what underlies their fear are pernicious narratives about gay recruitment and the stereotype of gay men as predatory and sexually aggressive.
Which itself is a projection created by straight homophobic men, who—by virtue of socialization in a patriarchal culture that casts women's bodies as men's property, to which they are rightfully entitled, and frames straight sexuality as a game between male hunter and female prey—assume that all men are sexually aggressive and indifferent to the concept of consent.
In short, they fear gay men treating them the way they treat women.
One would think that might make them reconsider their own philosophies on respect for bodily autonomy, ownership of self, and consent—but it just never seems to work out that way.
Video Description: Scenes of the three kitteh girls of Shakes Manor being generally cute, with cameo by Dudley, set to Kelly Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You," mostly just because I like the music, but also a little bit because my life would suck without these adorable furry girls (and their brother) in it.
As always, still images for those who can't view the video below the fold.
Matilda lies on the chaise in the loft, an explosion of fuzz.
Olivia dozes on the couch.
Sophie plays one of her favorite games: Scoot Around on My Back in the Loft.
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.]
Nick Randall (Rutger Hauer, again) is a bounty hunter. He is the great-grandson of Josh Randall, the character played by Steve McQueen on the TV show Wanted: Dead or Alive. Rutger Hauer is not as cool as Steve McQueen, duh, especially since he now looks like Roy Batty with a mullet.
In addition to being a bounty hunter Randall is also a former secret agent. I assume he was with the CIA, but it isn't exactly clear. What I do know is that this group uses Gold's Gym as a front for its office in L.A. I'm not sure why they didn't pick a more low-key location, like a probate lawyer's office or something, but strategic planning doesn't seem this outfit's strong suit anyway. Years ago Randall left the agency, having grown tired of "walking around with a bull's-eye on [his] forehead." He's retired, lives on a boat, blah blah blah.
Why does every tough dude on the edge have to live on a boat in movies like this? Is that substitution for characterization? "Oh, he lives on a decrepit trawler, he must be a badass!"
Okay, so, back to the plot: Super-Terrorist™ Malak Al Rahim, played by the always annoying Gene Simmons, sneaks into the U.S. and his first order of business is blowing up a crowded movie theater. A movie theater showing Rambo, to be precise. I think this is supposed to be some sort of joke, but I can't tell how exactly it's funny. I mean, the exploding theater isn't supposed to be funny, that's super serious (there were kids in there!), but why Rambo on the marquee? Whatever.
The Feds beg Randall to come back for one last job, and blah blah blah blah blah...
Do I even need to bother? Stuff explodes, there are gunfights and car chases and lots of people die. Right? Right. You've seen this shit a thousand times before. Sometimes it's been better done. Sometimes not. If mediocrity is what this movie was aiming for, it's hit its target dead on.
Anyway, Al Rahim is planning to next blow up a chemical plant in Los Angeles, and thereby release enough toxic gas to wipe out 50,000 Angelinos. Why is he doing this? Who knows? The film never bothers to explain his motivations. The fact he's Middle-Eastern should be reason enough for the audience to know he's evil.
Every Middle-Easterner in this movie is either a terrorist or a collaborator. And when they're not being portrayed as bloodthirsty sadists, they're being tortured and killed by the film's heroes. Almost invariably these latter moments are played for laughs. And when Gene Simmons finally gets his head blown off at the film's climax, what should be a joyous moment is spoiled by the racist tone that pervades the 100 minutes preceding it.
The only enjoyment I got out of this film was the way the Middle-Easterners were constantly passing around big bundles of dynamite. The sheer absurdity of it was comical. I half expected them to be marked with TNT in big letters, and maybe even have ticking alarm clocks attached to them. The Middle-Easterners in this film are such caricatures that it might not have been too surprising. If everything about their portrayal wasn't so offensive, this film might otherwise be forgettable. Instead it stands as a testament to anti-Arab sentiment that has only grown in this country since this film's release.
1. David Brooks has written yet another garbage column for the New York Times [trigger warning for a graphic description of a surgical procedure], because they inexplicably continue to employ him for his peerless garbage column-writing services.
2. This column is THE WORST, even by Brooks' own deplorable standards.
Where do I begin recounting everything that is wrong with this column? It starts right at the headline (which Brooks may not have written himself): "A Case of Mental Courage." As opposed to what? Testicular courage? Liquid courage? Where else does courageousness reside, if not in the mind? What other kind of courage is there? But never mind that. Brooks isn't even talking about courage, anyway; his thesis is about character.
But we must read five paragraphs, spent recounting the gruesome details of an early nineteenth-century mastectomy performed without anesthesia, before Brooks gets to his point (such as it is):
Burney's struggle reminds one that character is not only moral, it is also mental. Heroism exists not only on the battlefield or in public but also inside the head, in the ability to face unpleasant thoughts.
WHUT.
Leaving aside discussion about the propriety of appropriating Fanny Burney's intimate recollections of her agonizing breast cancer surgery to launch into another one of his twaddling, pedestrian, insubstantial missives about how terrible it is that conservatives and liberals aren't as wise as middling milquetoast sages like himself, I can hardly conceive of any reference that could more conspicuously underscore the transparent banality of his jejune ruminations.
Fanny Burney: "I began a scream that lasted intermittingly during the whole time of the incision—& I almost marvel that it rings not in my ears still."
David Brooks: "She lived at a time when people were more conscious of the fallen nature of men and women. People were held to be inherently sinful, and to be a decent person one had to struggle against one's weakness. In the mental sphere, this meant conquering mental laziness with arduous and sometimes numbingly boring lessons."
Only a privileged wanker of the highest wankery would romanticize a woman's profound suffering in order that he might scold the hoi polloi about their "mental laziness."
While Brooks lounges around his ivory tower waxing nostalgic for the strong characters built by incomprehensible suffering, he is insulated from a painful reality: The very people he thinks would benefit from a little old-fashioned suffering are, in fact, suffering the very indignities he considers a long-lost educational tool. I know someone who is scheduled to get surgery on an injured wrist using only local anesthetic, because he is uninsured, and cannot afford the high cost of a general. It will be painful.
This, almost exactly 200 years after Burney's surgery, in a nation where we could provide everyone with healthcare, but choose not to.
Somehow, I don't take a lesson of "moral courage," or character, from that anecdote.
And lest anyone forget, for a brief moment, that Brooks is a man of undiluted privilege, he compares the lack of character he finds among the US population to being weak/disabled, and then to being fat:
[I]n general, the culture places less emphasis on the need to struggle against one's own mental feebleness. Today's culture is better in most ways, but in this way it is worse.
The ensuing mental flabbiness is most evident in politics.
He is a parody of wankers.
Brooks ends his garbage column thus:
To use a fancy word, there’s a metacognition deficit. Very few in public life habitually step back and think about the weakness in their own thinking and what they should do to compensate. ... Of the problems that afflict the country, this is the underlying one.
Have y'all heard about the new Ambassador Hotel cum high school in Los Angeles? Would you like to?
According to my friends at the Boston Globe (my source for all things SoCal-- the Globe grabbed the story off the AP Wire, BTW):
"With an eye-popping price tag of $578 million, it will mark the inauguration of the nation’s most expensive public school ever.
The K-12 complex to house 4,200 students has raised eyebrows across the country as the crème de la crème of 'Taj Mahal’ schools, $100 million-plus campuses boasting architectural panache and deluxe amenities....
At Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, the features include fine art murals and a marble memorial depicting the complex’s namesake, a manicured public park, a state-of-the-art swimming pool, and preservation of pieces of the original hotel."
Well, that sounds pretty neat. In a way.
Let me go on record in favor of the construction and maintenance of grand social spaces replete with Diego Rivera murals (FWIW, the late painter was unavailable to help with the RFK schools). Libraries and rotundas (rotundi?) should be plentiful and made of limestone or better.
Speaking of large urban schools, I remember trips to play the Minnesota High School League Presents: Quiz Bowl! at Minneapolis North. In some of the classrooms the students' chairs appeared to consist of whatever had been dragged in from the curb. Everything wobbled. Ancient books were held together with duct tape. Tables (some of the fancier rooms had desks) were held together with duct tape.
I won't say that North was literally held together with duct tape, but there was a lot of the stuff. I like duct tape. I like how it holds my car together. I'm not such a big fan of it holding society together.
Crumbling half-assed schools send a variety of messages to students and the community. The Board of Education is broke. The Board of Education is broke because we don't have a tax base, on account of your community is broke. The Board of Education might not be broke if anyone cared about you, but, well, you know. Your community might not be broke if anyone cared about you too, but, yeah, that too. Just try not to go to other neighborhoods, lest other people call the police, okay? Also, stay in school, 'cause it's totes important to your future.
State of the art swimming pools represent an improvement. Among other things, they send a message to students and communities that they are important, and that schools are important.
Schools, education, whichever.
Call me an AFT member (I'm an AFT member), but there's something missing here.
"The pricey schools have been built during a sensitive period for the nation’s second-largest school system: Nearly 3,000 teachers have been laid off over the past two years, and the academic year and programs have been slashed. The district also faces a $640 million shortfall, and some schools persistently rank among the nation’s lowest-performing."
I see a trend in how we address education. The trend is, well, trendy. Affluent do-gooders throw money into urban charter schools in order to feel good about themselves, or make some point about bootstraps or My Fair Lady or whatever. Colleges sink money into fancy rec centers and dorms. The US government rewards states for synergy or hopey-change or whatever.
There's more to education than trendy facilities, cutting edge business models and swimming. (What is it with you people and swimming? I didn't learn to swim until I was in my 20s, and I turned out as a perfectly happy roller skating atheistic transsexual lesbian socialist lady).
We need libraries that have decent selections of books. And are open when students (and others) wish to use them. We need teachers to do the messy, time-consuming work of teaching students. This takes money that, evidently, we don't have.
Schools and education: they're not entirely the same thing.
Just the concept of a conservative advice columnist makes me shiver, but this is a real stunner.
Dear John: Do not listen to Dave. Treating a 36-year-old person—who's just lost his business, exhausted his financial resources, can't find a job, has run out of time, and has to move back in with his parents—like a naughty teenager who's dragging his "sewage" home with him is quite possibly the worst conceivable approach. Negotiate boundaries with him like the adult that he is, and have high expectations for his future to which he can live up to. Your son will thank you. Love, Liss.
Shirley Sherrod has turned down a job offer from the Agriculture Department, after being forced to resign in July on the basis of Andrew Breitbart's doctored video.
[Sherrod] declined an offer Tuesday to serve as the agency's deputy director of the Office of Advocacy and Outreach. The newly created position was designed to improve the department's civil rights efforts and image nationwide.
Sherrod said she also turned down an offer to return to her previous position as the department's director of rural development for Georgia.
Sherrod met Tuesday morning with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to discuss the offers. It was the first face-to-face meeting between the two since a controversial sequence of events last month culminated in Sherrod's stepping down.
...Sherrod said Vilsack pushed "really, really hard" for her to stay at the USDA during their roughly 90-minute meeting, but that she just didn't "think at this point with all that has happened" that it would be possible to continue working there.
She needed to "take a break" from the furor surrounding her dismissal, she said.
But "it doesn't mean I'm not interested in that work, because I am," Sherrod told reporters at the Agriculture Department.
Sherrod said she enjoyed her work at the USDA and "would want to see (it) continue."
"We need to work on issues (of) discrimination and racism in this country, and I'd certainly like to play my role," Sherrod said.
She praised "new processes in place" to prevent discrimination and inappropriate firings at the department, but said she doesn't "want to be the one to test it."
To be perfectly frank, I find it the height of patronizing bullshit that Sherrod was asked to be the director of the newly-created Office of Advocacy and Outreach. "Sorry we shit all over you; we don't know how to be reasonable or sensitive, but we sure want to look like we do to the public. So, um, can you do the very difficult task of building and leading a new department for us, so that we don't do the same shitty thing to someone else that we did to you? We totes swear that this isn't just a public relations stunt, and you won't be abandoned to bureaucratic hell, tasked with an objective we won't fund, as soon as the cameras look the other way. WE SWEARS IT!"
Typical.
As much as I want people just like Shirley Sherrod working for my government, I'm glad she didn't take the job, just on the principle of the thing. It isn't the obligation of people this (or any other) administration unfairly slights to fix the mess by letting themselves be used in a cynical public ploy.
I hope the Department nonetheless creates its Office of Advocacy and Outreach, and hires someone great to lead it, even and especially if the administration stands to gain nothing from hir employment.
Welcome to Shakesville, a progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, social justice, cute things, and all that is in between. Please note that the commenting policy and the Feminism 101 section, conveniently linked at the top of the page, are required reading before commenting.
Sign the petition calling for Simpson's removal here.
Why does every tough dude on the edge have to live on a boat in movies like this? Is that substitution for characterization? "Oh, he lives on a decrepit trawler, he must be a badass!"
