The time of year when women (and their dogs!) are expected to celebrate Halloween by dressing like the stripper version of any costume—You can't be a nurse; you've got to be a SEXY nurse! You can't be a witch; you've got to be a SEXY witch! You can't be a cat; you've got to be a SEX KITTEN! You can't be a schoolteacher; you've got to be a SEXY Catholic schoolgirl!
My friend Todd texted me this picture the other day:
Image Description: A sexy Big Bird costume. Todd told me he also saw a sexy Freddie Kreuger in the store, but he's decided to go as sexy Osama bin Laden this year. I told him I'm going to be sexy Saddam this year, with a sign on my tittays reading "Weapons of Mass Seduction." Because Halloween is now apparently about sexualizing the most inappropriate things of which one can conceive.
Like children's icons.
SEXY FUN!
*headdesk*
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What trait that you don't possess do you admire in others?
I admire anyone who can walk confidently into a room full of people. Well, confidently isn't the right word, exactly, because I'm not lacking confidence; I just have general social anxiety.
The thing is, if I'm one of the first people to arrive to a party, say, I'm fine as people slowly pile in. It's the arriving to a crowded party already underway that gives me a case of the panics.
The one exception to this is if I'm addressing a group for some reason. I have absolutely no fear of public speaking at all. Go figure.
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"You have in the defense bill, obviously, very important funding for the priorities of our Pentagon and our troops The president also supports repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' and the DREAM Act. ... And we're disappointed at not being able to proceed to the legislation, but we'll keep trying."—White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.
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At STFU, Conservatives, I saw this editorial cartoon, featuring two "parent" elephants labeled "GOP Establishment," one looking angry and one looking worried, trailing after a "baby" elephant, masquerading as a teapot:
"Where did we go wrong?" asks the worried-looking parent.
As if
that's a mystery.
The "GOP Establishment"—the people who flatter themselves by claiming to be the intellectual wing of a party that depends on the exploitation of an intractable streak of anti-intellectualism among its key demographic, the people sophisticated enough to not
personally be offended by gays and people of color and feminists, but unethical enough to exploit such bigotries nonetheless—have lost control of their base. After decades of fear-mongering, scapegoating, and wedge issue politicking, they're left with a seething conglomeration of intolerant bullies whose stubborn refusal to evolve ideologically is matched in astonishing obduracy only by their unjustifiable hatred.
And now they have the unmitigated temerity to be surprised?! Snort.
For longer than I have been alive, the Republican Party has deliberately, cynically, and unapologetically fanned the flames of that hatred, which served as the fuel for the base's single-minded crusade to protect their privilege and thus the rationale for voting Republican—the party who promised to "protect tradition."
"Tradition" is the kind of word that appeals to people for whom the world is changing more rapidly than they can comfortably adjust, who are too busy to or socially discouraged from reading or thinking about things too much, who have heard some things about how feminism is responsible for the breakdown in the family and gays want to redefine marriage and immigrants are taking all the good jobs. "Tradition" is a word that plays well with people who can't be bothered to examine anything too closely, or were never taught how to properly think, how to analyze and assess information in a way that teases out the truth.
And it's an even better word for speaking to the unabashed bigots of the base, obliquely reassuring them that they're right to hate women and gays and brown people, those three separate monolithic groups of faceless enemies, and implicitly promising them they'll be protected from the onslaught of the radical hordes. America's great tradition of conferring undeserved privilege on you won't fail. Not on our watch.
That has been the sacred covenant between the Republican Party and its straight, white, patriarchal, Christian supremacist base for a generation: Vote for us, and we'll protect you.
And so they voted. And, in the process, they gave away their standard of living, their children's education, their jobs, their civil liberties, their national security, their environment, and their economy—all in exchange for the gossamer promise of a return to a time that never happened in a country that never really existed.
The Republican Party has traded again and again on the conjured idea of an American golden era, circa 1945 to 1960, after boys who were ripped from the arms of their virginal sweethearts and sent to another continent to fight a great war against tyranny and despair, had returned home as men, as heroes, and set to work, every last one of them, making babies with doting wives and grabbing the American Dream with both hands in the dawn of suburbia. Scientists in white lab coats and square, black-framed glasses toiled away to make American astronauts the first on the moon, and to fill all the pretty new homes behind perfect white picket fences with fancy, new-fangled household gadgets to make life easier and more fun. Teenagers hung out at sock hops and neon-lit diners, girls longing for lavaliers and boys wondering how to get laid. Elvis' pelvis was considered a scandal, and Marilyn Monroe a bombshell. Dad had a pension and the promise of a gold watch at the end of a long career with a single firm, and Mom had a Frigidaire. And everyone was happy.
Vote for us—and we'll give you that.
It's an empty promise built on an illusion, carefully constructed to conceal that America's so-called golden age was imperfect like any other, and perhaps even more so than most. Half a million of those boys who went off to war never came home—and some of them weren't boys at all, but men, who left wives and children with desperate struggles in the place where their husbands and fathers had been. Some who had come home were never the same, their bodies or minds damaged beyond real repair. Women who had been called to duty in factories were forcibly driven back into domesticity, segregation was a legal fact, every gay had a closet of hir very own, mental illness was treated with lobotomies, McCarthy was on his Communist witch hunt, and we fought an all-but-forgotten war in Korea for three years and lost over 35,000 soldiers. There were back-alley abortions, and the KKK, and Elvis and Marilyn both died of drugs.
The Republican promise has always had the very same flaw as their policies: It is contingent on pretending that the complexity and complications of human existence, and the flaws of humankind, don't exist.
The Republicans have held out this chimera to their base—this Leave It to Beaver bullshit—as if the typical family once was, and should be again, a model of white Christian perfection that never fought, never struggled, never suffered. And never had to be subjected to interactions with people of color, or gays, or any women besides Mom and maybe a nice lady to help sons take out books on the Boy Scouts from the local library. They have held it out as if it has actually been, and as if it could be again.
And they did so even knowing that the fantasy of this nonexistent perfect America is the very thing that created the beloved "traditions" of racism, sexism, and homophobia in the first place. It has been the dangling enticement of a happy family, supported by a single secure and well-paid job, in which no one is wracked with disillusionment, dispossession, or a lack of opportunity—an invitation to join for which most Americans are never given the chance to RSVP—which created the resentment and scapegoating that are the foundations of social conservative traditionalism.
Now the Republicans are stuck with the result—their revolting (in every sense of the word) base, who still believe, and must, lest they face their complicity in having been left with naught but their biases, that the responsible party for their struggles, their disaffection, their undefined but keenly-felt fury, is those people, not the Grand Old Party who promised them something better in exchange for their votes.
The political leadership taught their base too well whom to blame for what ails them, and thus cannot now move them from their fixed gaze and finger-pointing, even as it isn't helping the party anymore—and stands likely to hurt the party for the foreseeable future. They sowed the seeds of prejudice for decades, and now they reap nothing but the only crop such seeds can yield.
It would be amusing, if only the rest of us weren't stuck with the result, too.
And even as the conservative elites whinge grimly about the rabble whose greatest fear is liberals overrunning the perfect, lily-white, patriarchal Christian nation that only exists in their fever-dreams and RAISING THEIR TAXES, they're trying to rehabilitate George W. Bush, 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.
Even as they lament the radicalization of their increasingly extreme base, they foment it at every opportunity. Because it's the only way they know how to win.
Which is still the Most Important Thing.
And if the Mommy and Daddy Elephant find their Tea Partying spawn terrifying now, just wait until they see the monster it becomes once it has demonstrable, irrefutable proof of helping secure that win, but isn't getting the respect from Mommy and Daddy it feels like it deserves.
An empowered and rampaging elephant can do a fuckload of damage, even if it is a baby.
Despite their affected mystification, the Republican leadership knows precisely whence came the Tea Partying extremists. And they're going to keep exploiting that extreme and volatile rage as long as they can, even though a principled party would denounce this three-ring circus of unfettered bigotry before it's too late. If it isn't already.
"Where did we go wrong?" the philosophical sages of the Republican Party muse, shaking their heads gravely and publicly wringing their hands, before shuffling off to wash them of any responsibility.
[Some text originally appeared in "Rank (and File) Bigotry," published April 2009.]
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Photo Description: Dudley curled up on the couch, with Olivia curled up on the arm of the couch beside him.
They were
looking even sleepier together when all I had was my cell phone camera.
Having a white cat was supposed to be the biggest obstacle to facilitating a harmonious environment when we adopted a retired racer, since greyhounds are trained to chase fluffy white things. But between making sure Dudley understood from the moment he arrived that Olivia was not his prey, Dudley being a good boy, and Olivia being a tough girl, it's nothing but cuddly love at Shakes Manor.
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CNN: "A defense bill that includes the repeal of the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy failed to advance in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday as Republicans closed ranks to keep the bill from coming up for debate."
Even the GOP Senators who ostensibly support the repeal of DADT found some justification for failing to break with their colleagues.
Republican opponents complained that Democratic leaders are limiting the debate and could have refused to allow GOP amendments to the broader National Defense Authorization Act, which included the "don't ask, don't tell" repeal provision.
GOP senators also disliked Reid's plan to add an immigration-related provision to the defense bill. Reid wants to tack on a measure that would provide a path to citizenship for students and soldiers who are children of illegal immigrants.
"I am opposed to illegal immigration, and I am deeply disappointed that Washington politicians are playing politics with military funding in order to extend a form of amnesty to certain illegal immigrants," Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts said in a statement issued hours ahead of Tuesday's vote.
One of Maine's two moderate Republican senators, Susan Collins, said Tuesday she would join a GOP filibuster unless Reid agrees to open the debate.
"I find myself on the horns of a dilemma," Collins said on the Senate floor, explaining that she supported repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy but "cannot vote to proceed to this bill under a situation that is going to shut down debate and preclude Republican amendments."
...In addition to Collins and Maine's other Republican senator, Olympia Snowe, Democratic hopes took another blow when Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio also said he would join his party's filibuster.
Blah blah fucking blah. Yeah, everyone in the GOP's got other principles they can't possibly compromise when it comes to supporting the principle of equality.
Quelle surprise.
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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.]
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So, last night, in a desperate attempt to fill the gaping hole in our lives where Lost used to be, Iain and I watched the premieres of The Event and Hawaii Five-0.
The Event has been promoted as a sort of Lostian sci-fi mystery thing, five seasons of which have already been written in their entirety, which every person associated with the show has been sure to mention, followed by some version of, "So there's none of that making-it-up-as-we're-going-along" business.
I'm not sure that throwing side-eyes at the creators of one of the most best-loved television shows ever, whose success made your show possible, and whose highly loyal audience you're hoping to steal, is the best marketing strategy, but okay. It wasn't enough to deter me from tuning in.
And it does share a lot in common with Lost: Mysteries! An airplane! Tropical locations! Disappearing things!
Things it does not share with Lost include: Josh Holloway and being as good.
Still! It was pretty good. And it's got Laura Innes in it, who I really like, and is playing a character who's the leader of some ragtag group of detainees and was originally written as a male character, so has the distinct chance of being three-dimensional. (Read more in my upcoming book, Dispatches from Cuntistan.) And hello, Blair Underwood. Say, it's kinda cool to see a black president and not think, "HA HA MAYBE SOMEDAY!"
Jason Ritter (who is genuinely charming and quite funny) and Sarah Roemer (who I really liked in Disturbia) were also very good. And the story was interesting enough, despite some potential Women in Refrigerators problems, that I'll tune in again next week.
As for Hawaii Five-0, well, it sure had Daniel Dae Kim in it!
I'm being a little harsh. Scott Caan was also enjoyable. Whoever is playing the main dude is aggressively annoying, though. I give it points for being essentially a popcorn cop show that nonetheless made human trafficking a centerpiece of its premiere episode, and allowed the female member of the team to kick some serious ass. And the long-delayed "Book 'em, Danno!" was very satisfying. Negative points for stuff previously discussed here.
Did you watch either of them? What did you think?
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[Last night...]
Liss: Why the hell are there so many shows about fucking cakes?
Deeky: LOL! You know what they actually need a show about? Fucking cakes.
Liss: LOL. Showtime presents: "Cakefuckers."
Deeky: Totes! "Frosters."
Liss: F/X presents: "XXXtreme Cupcakez." Airs in the same timeslot as Spike TV for Men presents: "Cake and Tits."
Deeky: LOL! And on Logo: "Pink Donuts."
Liss: The History Channel presents: "Nazi Cakes."
Deeky: LOL for real @ "Nazi Cakes." Although it's more like "Nostradamus Cakes" on the History Channel nowadays.
Liss: Or "Jesus Pie."
Deeky: "UFO Cookies."
Liss: "Ghost Tarts."
Deeky: "Atlantis: The Lost Bakery."
Liss: VH1 presents: "Hey, Remember Fruit Roll-Ups?!"
Deeky: LOL! By the way, we need to produce "Cake and Tits." We'd be rich.
Liss: Totes, lolsob.
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If only someone could have predicted that building "healthcare reform" around the delicate sensibilities of the for-profit insurance industry would be a bad idea.
Ah, well. Hindsight is 20/20.
I mean, sure, there were people who predicted that, loudly and often, but it's not like we want our president listening to dirty hippies, amirite? HIGH FIVE.
[Previously: Compassionate Coveragism, No One Could Have Predicted the Insurance Companies Would Be Uncooperative, At Least It's Warm Under the Bus, Not Even Healthcare Reform!, Bad Faith.]
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There's a lot of interesting and/or infuriating stuff in this article about the gender gap on Wall Street, but this particularly jumped out at me:
The figures suggest that women bore the brunt of the layoffs in the recent recession. But other forces are at play. Across the economy, computers have replaced junior, back-office workers, jobs that were largely filled by women.
There are all kinds of studies that have been done finding how women who graduate from business school tend to start out in lower (administrative) positions than their male peers. As those admin functions have been being automated, it should have created parity for entry-level positions, but it isn't working out that way: Instead, it's simply cutting off the primary route into corporate work for many young women.
Something tells me that's not going to get the same level of attention as when factory automation started putting men out of work.
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A new (but small) study has uncovered a possible correlation between childhood obesity the presence of a virus: "Children who showed signs of infection with adenovirus 36 (AD36), a common cause of some colds and eye infections, were an average of 50 pounds heavier than those who had no antibodies to the virus."
This doesn't axiomatically indicate causation. Other "obesity experts" (particularly those with a vested interest in the fat-makes-you-sick framing) point out that being fat could conceivably make one more vulnerable to contract the virus. However:
Earlier research with cells in petri dishes suggests that the virus may cause changes in the body that lead to weight gain. Some studies have shown that the virus can enter fat cell precursors, rewiring them to spew out more fat cells, while others have shown that the virus can modify fat cells themselves so that they store more fat.
Other experiments have shown that animals have significant weight gain after researchers infect them with AD36.
...The virus appeared to have a particularly pronounced effect among the heavy children: those who were positive for AD36 weighed an average of 35 pounds more than other obese kids who didn't have the antibodies.
"This shows that body weight regulation and the development of obesity are very complicated issues," says
Captain Obvious Dr. Jeffrey Schwimmer, the study's senior author. "It's not simply a case that some children eat too much and others don't. There are children who eat all the wrong things in all the wrong quantities who are not obese."
Huh!
At the moment, though, there is no test for AD36 available to the general public, and no vaccine for AD36, anyway. So Dr. Goutham Rao, clinical director of the Weight Management and Wellness Center at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh recommends: "Instead of coming to the doctor and requesting a test for the virus, parents would do better to discuss key behaviors to combat obesity." LOL.
[H/T to Shaker roro80.]
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Okay, yesterday I mentioned this cab ride Noah took, and I admit, it was kind of bothering me.
The cab mounted the curb and surged forward at a twenty-degree tilt, half on and half off the street, threading the needle between a hot-dog cart and a candied-nut wagon on the sidewalk and the line of incredulous fellow drivers to the left.
That twenty-degree tilt really stuck in my craw. And because I'm weird about things like that, I sat down and figured out, like I'm one goatee away from being a fucking Mythbuster, what it would take to get a typical NYC taxi to tilt at twenty degrees.
I chose the Ford Crown Victoria, which, with no real evidence, I assume is the most common of taxi vehicles in the U.S. I did a little googling and found out the Crown Vic has a track width of about 65". Applying that figure, and the twenty degree angle to the Pythagorean Theorem, I discovered, that to get a five-and-a-half foot wide car to tilt at twenty degrees, you'd need some pretty steep curbs.
Twenty-two and half inches, more or less.
Now, it's been a long time since I've been to New York, but I certainly do not recall the city having curbs that were two feet high. I am also fairly certain that if they
were that high, no taxi cab outside of a
Hummer would be able to get up them.
All of which is to say this book really has some sloppy ass writing. But we already knew that. And one other thing: All this talk of Lenny's pastrami sandwiches, and crazed cabbies, and candied-nut wagons, it makes me wonder. Has the author ever been to New York? Or is he just using a Rough Guide as his sole source of information on the marvels (and perils!) of big city life?
Nevermind. That was all last chapter. What about this one? Well, Beck is back to his old self. Some might call it filler. Others might call it padding. I call it another chapter where nothing happens. Something happens, sure: Noah walks in the rain, but it isn't very interesting.
Unable to hail another cab, and being, I guess, completely unaware that New York City has one of the finest public transportation infrastructures in the world, Noah decided to "suck it up and hoof it rather than risk another ill-fated ride." Which, again, gives our author an excuse to serves us another tired cliché. An opportunity he never passes up:
Noah had drifted close to the curb on the sidewalk, an error no seasoned pedestrian should ever commit when it's been raining. Right on cue a city bus roared by, shooshed through a sinkhole puddle the size of Lake Placid, and a rooster tail of oily gutter water splashed up and soaked him to the waist.
Seriously? That shit doesn't even happen in the movies anymore.
Okay, so Noah heads to his teabagging party, and thinks, guiltily, about the cabbie being dragged away by Blackwater goons. But he pushes the scene from his mind, rationalizing away his complicity:
First of all, buddy, I'm not your friend. Second, it wasn't my responsibility. And third, there is no third required. You can't take them all under your wing. Once you start trying to rescue everybody, where would it ever stop?
Yeah, once you start trying to rescue everybody, where would it ever stop? Which is sort of the Libertarian ideal, isn't it? Fuck everyone else, right? Not that Noah is supposed to be admired, not yet. He's still in need of a Great Transformation, in which he goes from spoiled, selfish turd, to teabagging patriot fighting for freedom. Or whatever the teabagging types want. I'm still not sure, and they've been around for a good six or seven months now.
Noah thinks about his father, and his billions, and his thirst for power. (And really, did I just write "thirst for power"? Speaking of clichés.) It's also hinted that Noah doesn't really think Darthur is going to overthrow the government. It's all just a PR exercise, "empty carnival-barking." Now, it seems to me, that Noah may be as dumb as a fucked cake, so I am not sure how he's supposed to help save America from the New World Order. One moment he's in awe of his father's quest for power, and in the same breath he's shrugging off the whole NWO thing.
Maybe it's not Noah who's a dumbass. Maybe it's the author.
But, at long last, Noah reaches his destination, "the Stars 'n Stripes Saloon, a charming, rustic little dive down here in Tribeca." (Tribeca, for authenticity.)
The Stars 'n Stripes was known as something of a guilty pleasure, a little patch of down-home heartland kitsch complete with friendly, gorgeous waitresses, loud Southern rock on the jukebox, and cheap domestic beer on tap.
Because New Yorkers hate the heartland. At best, they find it kitschy, what with its love of domestic beer and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Ha ha! Rubes! Those east coast elites, always looking down their noses at real Americans.
Noah had been holding out hope that the rally, or whatever it turned out to be, would be sparsely attended and quiet enough to allow him to corner this Ross woman for a quality conversation. The odds of a low turnout seemed pretty good. After all, how many right-wing nutcases could possibly live in this enlightened city, and how many among them would knuckle-drag themselves out of their subbasement bunkers for a club meeting on a chilly, rainy Friday night?
The depressing answer to that question, he saw as he rounded the final turn, was absolutely all of them.
I hope this transformation of Noah comes soon. I don't know if we can stick by him if he's gonna bad-mouth knuckle-draggers (Beck's audience, teabaggers) through this entire book. That being said, I am soooooooooo looking forward to stepping inside the Stars 'n Stripes with him.
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In which Liss re-imagines masterpieces of modern cinema, making them muscletacularly better by adding me (Deeky, naughty nurse) to their classic posters. Today, the comedic hijinx of inappropriate gender roles!
Mr. Nanny
(
See also.)
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You have GOT to be kidding me:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had an unusual form of praise for New York's junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, this morning at the fundraiser Mayor Bloomberg hosted for him at his townhouse - referring to her as "the hottest member" as she sat just a few feet away, according to three sources.
...[Reid said] something about how "many senators are known for many things," according to a source. He added, "We in the Senate refer to Sen. Gillibrand as the hottest member."
The comment prompted Gillibrand to turn red, according to the sources, and created a bit of stir among the small crowd there.
"It was pretty shocking when he said it," said one source familiar with the remark and the reaction.
A Reid spokesman confirmed it happened, but also noted that the Democratic Majority Leader also praised Gillibrand for her work.
Oh, well, as long as he praised her for her work, then it's totally fine that he SEXUALLY OBJECTIFIED A SITTING US SENATOR.
The Democrats want my support, my money, and my votes. They constantly assert to be the party that values women and women's issues. And yet their Senate Majority Leader publicly humiliates a fellow Democrat by commenting on her "hotness" at a fundraising event, and then sends out his spokesperson to argue with a straight fucking face that it's not inappropriate.
I just...wow.
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[Trigger warning for stalking, violence, arson, misogyny, apologia.]
Shaker Kira emailed me an amazing example of how violence against women is minimized in news reporting.
The headline is: "Man badly burned when girlfriend's house set on fire."
The opening paragraph is: "Clark County sheriff's deputies say a Vancouver man was badly burned when a house with his girlfriend and three others inside was set on fire."
OMG this poor guy, right?!
The sheriff's office says deputies responding to a domestic disturbance Friday night were told the boyfriend had doused the 23-year-old woman with gasoline, poured gas around the house and fled.
A fire broke out, but the woman, her 5-year-old son, her sister and mother were able to escape.
Oh.
The girlfriend's father said she had just broken up with Miller.
So...not so much a "girlfriend," then, as much as an ex-girlfriend. And Miller is not the "boyfriend" as which he is identified as in the headline as much as he is a vengeful stalker.
The father said Miller texted the family Friday afternoon, saying he was going to burn the house down.
The father said his daughter did not get burned but did get gasoline in her eyes. The 5-year-old son also got gasoline on him but he is OK, too.
They are not burned. Calling them "OK" nonetheless frankly feels
a little presumptuous.
And minimizing: The violent stalker is badly burned. His intended victims, who merely were doused with gasoline and terrorized, are OK.
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Suggested by Shaker The_Great_Indoors: What's the geekiest thing you've done lately?
TGI explains:
Here, "geek" is defined as: "One who posses great enthusiasm for and deep, technical knowledge of a particular subject or activity for primarily recreational purposes. The level of enthusiasm and depth of knowledge, in addition to time, money, and effort spent on the subject, is often baffling to the geek's associates."
So while we have the more archetypical gaming and computer geeks, it's also possible to be a band geek, a feng shui geek, a needlepoint geek, a copyediting geek, a Marcel Proust geek etc. ad nauseum.
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