[Trigger warning for Fred Phelps and homophobia. The image has been placed below the fold because of the signs Phelps carries in it, which are real and undoctored examples of his typical fuckery.]
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.]
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
I Write Letters
Dear Martha Plimpton:
I adore you.
When I was 11, this totally awkward thing with too-short hair and too-big glasses, kind of a tomboy with a best friend who was prettier than I was, and already having begun construction on a fortified wall of sarcasm behind which I'd hide for the next ten years (or so), I saw Goonies. It is a film remembered primarily as a boys' adventure, but tucked in among them was Stef Steinbrenner, this totally awkward, kind of a tomboy, sarcasm-wielding revelation.
Stef Steinbrenner pretty much rocked my world.
She was a girl like me, or, at least a girl I wanted to be—a smart and adventurous and tough and cynical and vulnerable and sentimental and funny girl. With gigantic glasses. I lived and died with every step that Mikey and Mouth and Data and Chunk and Brand and Andy and Sloth took, too, every one of the nine billion times I watched the movie until I wore out my VHS tape, but it was Stef whose Converse I felt like I really filled.
Then there you were the year after, as the rebellious daughter of Christian missionaries in The Mosquito Coast. Emily Spellgood was not at the center of story, but she was important. She was dependable, resourceful. It was because of your real boyfriend—and my imaginary one—River Phoenix that I wanted to see the film. But twenty-four years hence, it's you I remember. And by the time Running on Empty came out two years later, I wanted to see it as much because you were in it as because he was.
I was just at the age then when I was starting to notice actors who chewed the scenery, to tell the difference between good actors and bad. And it was watching Running on Empty, for the third or fourth or fifteenth time, that I saw how good you really are. Good like whoa. You were the only girl whose picture, cut from teen magazines, hung on my wall. You and River and Tom Cruise.
I watched for you in other films: I saw Parenthood (oh how I loved Julie Buckman! Julie Buckman and her shaved head!) and Stanley & Iris and Inside Monkey Zetterland because you were in them. I watched Law & Order: SVU because you were a guest star.
And I danced with delight when I got tickets to see you at the Steppenwolf in Chicago. Martha Plimpton at my favorite theater. Oh. Mah. Gawd. You were so good. So fucking good.
When I read that this season's new shows included a sitcom featuring you and Cloris Leachman (who, let's face it, deserves a letter like this of her own), I was so there. And, yeah, you aren't "the only reason 'Raising Hope' could be the best new sitcom of the season, but [you are] the main reason," and it is indeed because of the "incandescence in the way that [you manage] with two words to morph into a comically hardened, uneducated, working-class mom without becoming either a caricature or a cruel joke." You are, as always, good like whoa—but now you're making me laugh.
And the thing about Virginia Chance—mother, grandmother, granddaughter, provider of elder care and child care, cleaner of homes she dreams of owning, realist, optimist, and world-class malapropism machine—is that I really like her. She's hard but she's nice. Of course that's down to the writing, but it's easy to see how Virginia would be a harpy or fool if she were inhabited by someone less deft at her craft than you are.
(I apologize in advance that it's destined to be canceled, since virtually every sitcom I've ever watched and enjoyed from episode one goes off the air in record speed. I'm sorry, "Everything's Relative." I'm sorry, "It's Like, You Know…" I'm sorry, "Sports Night." I have many more apologies to make, but I digress…)
While watching the latest episode, I thought about how Virginia is flawed but well-meaning, moving into middle-age still open enough to the possibility she could do better, be better, and I realized that you have created yet another character that I wouldn't mind being a little bit like.
Over the years, I've read articles about you that have suggested if you were a little more conventionally beautiful, looked a little less like your dad, perhaps, that you might have had a different sort of career (thus far). That's probably true. And for all the things that alternate career universe might have given you, selfishly I'm glad for all the things the career you've had has given me.
...And all the other totally awkward, kind of a tomboy, sarcasm-encased girls who maybe felt a little feistier, a little less self-conscious, a little more rebellious because of the characters you played, because of the way you played them.
Thanks, Martha.
Love,
Liss
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Sophie Brand Monitor Warmers.
Recommended Reading:
Fannie: But Articles Like This Are Totally Helping [TW for homophobia, gender policing, and suicide]
Renee: Here Comes The Rain Again: Disability and Pain
Grace: Google Doesn't Want to Give Us Lesbians [TW for homophobia and violence]
Andrew: Rutgers President Defends School's Handling Of Clementi Case
Cripchick: Happy Disability History Month!
Riot Nrrd: Defense
Action Item: Tell North Carolina to Overturn Decision Legalizing Rape
Leave your links in comments...
Quote of the Day
"We need to make sure someone has seen the video. I am quick to jump to conclusions but want to be certain it is what it is said to be before I tell the Secy."—Department of Agriculture official Krysta Harden, seemingly the only person with any sense involved in the decision-making process about Shirley Sherrod's job at the USDA, after Andrew Breitbart posted a selectively and misleadingly edited video of Sherrod, cut to make her words appear racist. Administration emails obtained by CNN through a Freedom of Information Act request appear to confirm the worst (and the obvious): That politics was prioritized over people, and over truth.
When Harden suggested they hold off on a decision about Sherrod's fate until the entirety of the video was seen by someone at the USDA or the White House, she was overruled.
Obama said he'd bring change to the White House, and he sure did: When the Bush administration shit-canned people for political expediency and threw public servants to the wolves, at least they knew why they were doing it.
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
Why Some People Have Issues With Men: Misandry is not in everyone's dictionary but it's out there.
Another awesome bit of reading material, care of the always-hilarious Psychology Today.
What Happens
[Trigger warning for rape (including descriptions in the New York Times article), abuse of prison inmates, and transphobia]
I apologize to folks at Questioning Transphobia for stealing the title from one of their posts earlier in the year, but honestly, it's the most appropriate thing I can think of.
Intersectional transphobia, for a variety of reasons, leads to trans people (especially, I suspect, younger trans women, especially especially younger trans women of color) to be incarcerated at [TW] disproportionately high rates.
Locked up in prisons, governments attempt to do whatever they can to disrespect the autonomy of trans inmates, including but not limited to housing transsexual inmates in the incorrect sex-segregated facilities.
And then this disrespect leads to sexual abuse, which very, very rarely leads to the arrest (and/or punishment) of abusers and/or mention in the pages of a major newspaper:
[TW] NYT:
A New York City correction officer was arrested and charged on Thursday with forcing a transgender inmate to engage in a sex act with him at a Manhattan jail.Words fail to the extent of my outrage and complete and utter lack of surprise.
...According to a complaint filed in court, the victim had filed a grievance with the Correction Department about a month before the stairwell attack took place, complaining that [the officer in question] had repeatedly harassed her.
...In her suit against the city, the woman alleged that she was also assaulted earlier in the summer of 2009 when — as an inmate at Rikers Island — she was taken to the prison ward of a hospital for treatment. In that incident, a nurse forced her to perform oral sex on him in her hospital room, the suit contends. The nurse, Carl Wiley, later pleaded guilty to committing a criminal sexual act.
Fuck.
Ozzy Osbourne to Westboro Baptist: STFU
Ozzy Osbourne is none too pleased that Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church, they of the "God Hates Fags" signs, played his song "Crazy Train" on the steps of the United States Supreme Court yesterday.
"I am sickened and disgusted by the use of 'Crazy Train' to promote messages of hate and evil by a 'church,'" said Ozzy, referring to the iconic song off 1980's Blizzard of Ozz.Ozzy Osbourne spent nearly four decades, in his own words, destroying his brain with booze and drugs, and he's still got more sense than the Westboro Baptist clan.
We are officially living in Bizarro World when Ozzy Osbourne, who spent the entirety of the '80s being condemned by Christian groups for his music, is now lambasting a Christian group for misusing his music.
Fr. Madigan Is Not A Good My-Team Player
Tea Partiers want to "take back our country". After all, (some of) our ancestors stole it from the Native Americans, instituted registration of private property so that they could legally prove ownership of what they'd stolen, and contemplated contentedly the prospect of never having to share it with anyone not on their team.
The system wasn't perfect, alas. Some of our ancestors had stolen a bunch of people, too, and brought them here as more legally-owned property, to work, but the ingrates struggled for their freedom, and some ancestors actually thought that legally owning people was carrying the system of your-life-is-what-you-own a tad far, and before 200 years of saying, "The Bible treats slavery as a fact of life, therefore it is a holy estate," or the simpler "But they're mine! I paid for them!" had gone by, those people were free. Well, technically.
Not letting them own anything much, taking their property away and giving it to a team member when they had managed to acquire some, limiting their educational and employment opportunities and not allowing them any say in making the legal system which controls who is entitled to what did provide some excellent controls on their freedom for many decades.
Then too, some of those Native Americans insisted on hanging about the place, despite their reduced numbers being chivvied from their homes to lesser lands repeatedly. So, in spite of the laws about not letting not-our-team people into the country except to build our railroads and wash our shirts and stuff, over time our team kind of expanded.
But it worked out okay so long as those not-us types who weaseled their way in proved how devoted to the team they were by immediately turning around and condemning as evil and sure to be the destruction of our team anyone not-us-or-almost-us was.
Unfortunately, not all of those ungrateful jerks recognize their responsibility to do this. Sometimes you get one of these bleeding heart-types who says, "I didn't enjoy being treated like that, and I don't want to treat anyone else that way." Or even something so ridiculous as, "We're all in this together, and weapons turned on you can be turned on me." And, of course, if that's already happened, it may seem even more plausible.Many New Yorkers were suspicious of the newcomers’ plans to build a house of worship in Manhattan. Some feared the project was being underwritten by foreigners. Others said the strangers’ beliefs were incompatible with democratic principles.
And thus, the Rev. Kevin V. Madigan, current pastor of St. Peter's — which is located two blocks from the proposed Muslim community center and place of worship which has drawn outraged protests, along with displays of political cowardice from those who say that of course, 1st amendment, blah, blah, but maybe the developers should move it anyway, to avoid upsetting bigots — has written and preached to his congregation on the parallels of the history of their church with that of the Muslim center, Park51.
Concerned residents staged demonstrations, some of which turned bitter.
But cooler heads eventually prevailed; the project proceeded to completion. And this week, St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church in Lower Manhattan — the locus of all that controversy two centuries ago and now the oldest Catholic church in New York State — is celebrating the 225th anniversary of the laying of its cornerstone.
Regrettably, in his defense of the Muslim group developing the Park51 center, the priest is quoted by the NY Times as saying that, "Park51’s organizers would have to 'make clear that they are in no way sympathetic to or supported by any ideology antithetical to our American ideals, which I am sure they can do'.”
As this requirement is imposed on no one developing a site for the use of any religious group other than Muslims, I see no reason why it should be an expectation here. I assume Fr. Madigan is just being "practical" and thinking that the mob must have some assurance from the Park51 developers that they are just as good Americans as the bigots themselves.
But Fr. Madigan also saysCatholic New Yorkers have a special obligation to fulfill.
I think we all have an obligation to prevent the mistreatment of others. But I also think that, when you know yourself, or others like you, to have experienced suspicion, discrimination and abuse based on being seen as Other, you do have an obligation to recognize that this was not unjust simply because it affected you, that the many faces of injustice stem from the same source, and the many faces of the victims of injustice can include your own, or those of people you care about — that injustice allowed to feed freely on bigotry will grow too big to direct only at those whom you consider satisfactory targets, or to whom you are simply indifferent.
The discrimination suffered by the first Catholics in America, he said, “ought to be an incentive for us to ensure that similar indignities not be inflicted on more recent arrivals."
When you see that the target could be you, you have a choice: Join the team feeding the beast of bigotry, or simply try to blend in with them and hope to escape its appetite, or recognize that the risk of speaking for justice may seem more immediate and scarier than the risk of encouraging the beast while hiding behind it, but that there is risk each way, and you can share that risk with bigots and haters, or with those working against such things who, in my view, make better companions, anyway.
And if there is any part of yourself with which you have not yet made peace, which you fear may seem alien or unwelcome to others — not harm you have done, but simply who you are — then, especially, trying to blend in with the my-teamers is surely a losing move. When you are finally ready to claim that part of yourself, or when hiding it is no longer possible, if you are among those constantly fighting the Other, you may lose your every place in their world.
Whereas, if you are among those fighting for equality, you will already have the friends you will need.
Question of the Day
Following up on yesterday's question... What's your favorite board game?
I like all kinds of board games, particularly classic puzzle and word games. Top of the list are Boggle, Scrabble, backgammon, and mahjong.
A contemporary favorite is Apples to Apples.
Daily Dose o' Cute
Video Description: Scenes of Olivia and Sophie watching the sparrows playing in the vines out the office window. Set to Ennio Morricone's "Il Buono, Il Cattivo, Il Brutto."
Meanwhile, Tilsy and Mr. Doodles napped on the couch.
Birdwatchers.
Snoozers.
Teases.
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
[Background.]
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.]
Something Stinks
[Trigger warning for sexual assault.]
Mike Myers does not get a lot of love at Shakes Manor.
This is mostly due to the existence of the multi-part culture-saturating Shrek franchise, the central character of which is literally just a collection of nasty Scottish stereotypes (which, as Scott points out here, are Myers' stock in trade)—although we're not exactly enamored of his gifts, ahem, to the Japanese, the Dutch, and Indians, either.
And now he will be getting even less love, if it's possible to give less love than none, as he's signed on to voice the lead role in a live-action/CGI hybrid film featuring everybody's favorite purveyor of the rape culture to children, Pepé Le Pew!
Awwwww, how adorable!
[Image Description: Still images from various PLP cartoons, showing Pepé the Skunk grabbing, kissing, chasing, pursuing Penelope the Cat.]
Lest anyone suffer from the misapprehension that it is only humorless radical feminists who are always looking for things to get mad about that see attempted rape in Pepé Le Pew cartoons, it is not. Frankly, it's astonishing that anyone watches these cartoons and doesn't see it the same way, given that the entire premise is that Pepé Le Pew is trying to "romance" Penelope against her will.
She pushes him away, she squirms out of his grip, she runs from him, she jumps off a cliff to get away. In some of the cartoons, Penelope would eventually attack Pepé and finally manage to free herself, leaving him a cloud of dust, scratched and defeated, but still as "amorous" as ever. And, in others, Penelope would eventually submit to Pepé, at long last (inexplicably) returning his affections.
Pursuit in defiance of interest, stalking as romance, sexual aggression, and disregard for consent—all the key narratives of the rape culture are handily conveyed to children via a "harmless" cartoon.
Gee, it'll be fun seeing this brought to the big screen.
I don't give a shit how much they're paying you, Mike Myers. It isn't worth it to participate in introducing yet another generation to this shameful character.
Oh Look
Vanity Fair has finally noticed that John McCain the Straight-Talkin' Maverick was a figment of the media's imagination, and that the man behind the curtain was always an opportunistic, unprincipled, foul-tempered jackass who would embrace the man whose operatives called his wife a junky and his adopted daughter illegitimate, and distance himself from his own daughter, as long as it was politically expedient.
In Things I Could Have Told You Years Ago.
The People in Your Neighborhood
A few days ago, a student teacher in a suburb around here was asked, by the district, to be reassigned because when he was asked--by a fourth grade student--why he is not married, the teacher replied that he could not be, as he would marry a man and that's currently illegal.
Seth Stambaugh told a fourth-grader who asked if he was married, that he was not. When the student asked why, Stambaugh, who is gay, replied it was not legal for him to get married because he would choose to marry another man. The student then asked does that mean you like to hang out with other guys? and Stambaugh responded yes, said Lake Perriguey, Stambaugh's attorney.Now, the parent of the student who actually had the conversation with Mr. Stambaugh is not the one who complained. This was a parent of another child who overheard the conversation--the same parent who had already previously complained about Mr. Stambaugh:
The parent of a student who overheard the conversation complained, Perriguey said, and district administrators asked Stambaugh's advisors at Lewis & Clark College to find him another school.
Perriguey said the parent who complained had already raised an issue about Stambaugh's appearance, which Perriguey described as pressed pants, an oxford shirt, a tie and a cardigan. Stambaugh has a light Van Dyke and pulls his hair back into a pony tail.Pressed pants? A dress shirt? A cardigan? Do you know who that is, Complaining Parent? That's:
I don't think I can think of a less objectionable wardrobe. OFFS. Axe to grind, much?
According to Stambaugh's school, it's not unusual for student teachers to move around and be reassigned. However, what is unusual is the way Beaverton School District handled it:
Lewis & Clark spokeswoman Jodi Heintz said it’s not uncommon for student teachers to change positions due to conflicts with their mentor teachers or other reasons. However, the decision usually comes at the end of a mutual discussion.Clearly something went wrong, that's for sure--and it's not particularly on Mr. Stambaugh's end that it happened. Shame on Beaverton School District (again--as back in 2005, they shut down Southridge High School's performance of The Laramie Project) for not standing behind their student teacher and caving to a parent--a parent who obviously was looking for something.
“Standard operating procedure includes all parties sitting down at a table and working out solutions,” Heintz said. “Clearly, in Seth’s instance, that collective conversation did not happen.”
I've heard and read several teachers' opinions on the matter and many have expressed the general idea that "this is why you never, ever discuss personal stuff with students". Well, maybe it's a "good policy" to not discuss personal subjects. However, as someone viewing it from "the outside", so to speak, I can't say that I find Mr. Stambough's answers to very direct questions to in any way inappropriate. They seem perfectly factual. He didn't bring a "political opinion" into the conversation (as I've seen said of it). Yes, gay marriage is a current political issue but simply stating "I cannot get married because it's illegal", is not "a political opinion". It's a simply statement of unfortunate fact. It wasn't even embellished with "...because of the ignorant and bigoted", although those, too, would be factual. Mr. Stambaugh should not have to deny or deflect about his existence. He should be able to be just as "there and existing" as any other straight teacher.
Hey Ignorant Parent(s) and Beaverton School District: gay people exist. They work, they live, they teach. They are the people in your neighborhood. Time to pull the head from the ass, as fresh air is a lot better for everyone than the stinking darkness of ignorance from whence your head came.
(Yah, I know the 'people in your neighborhood' is a Sesame Street song and not related to Mr. Rogers)
LOL UR DATA POINT
Today's New York Times contains a story titled "Democrats in Tight Races Put Focus on Abortion Rights." In other words, exactly what Liss has been saying (in that it's largely the opposite of what she's been saying).
How's the weather on planet Times?
The article discusses two races. In the case of New York, I haven't heard Cuomo say anything about abortion (or much of anything really-- the Cuomo ads I usually see feature Republicans having bipartisangasms over what a nice guy he is). The New York ad the article cites was put out by NARAL, not the Cuomo campaign. In other words, an abortion rights group is trying to put a focus on abortion rights, and some Democrats are having none of it. This is a wee bit different than the headline. Basically, there's this one Democrat in Colorado who ran an ad in favor of abortion rights, but that's not news. Or is it?
Newt. Ugh.
Newt Gingrich is a mendacious wad, and the latest in his decades-long involvement in professional mendacious waddery is disputing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's assertion that food stamps have a stimulative effect. Last night, Gingrich made an appearance in his natural habitat, Fox News, to blink naively and profess not to "understand how liberal math turns $1 into $1.79."
Well, you know, I carry around a bumper sticker that says 2 plus 2 equals 4. So I'd be very curious how a dollar given to somebody becomes a $1.79. And I think if we could get that to work with the U.S. Treasuries, so if people gave the Treasury $1,000, it became $1,790, we could pay off the federal debt and never worry about spending or anything. I mean, I — you know, somehow, I don't understand how liberal math turns $1 into $1.79.As Ben points out at Think Progress, "the Wall Street Journal explained this alleged 'liberal math' that Gingrich doesn't understand."
Money from the program — officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — percolates quickly through the economy. The U.S. Department of Agriculture calculates that for every $5 of food-stamp spending, there is $9.20 of total economic activity, as grocers and farmers pay their employees and suppliers, who in turn shop and pay their bills.Gingrich, of course, understands this principle perfectly. He's just counting on the fact that most of the people watching Fox News won't.
While other stimulus money has been slow to circulate, the food-stamp boost is almost immediate, with 80% of the benefits being redeemed within two weeks of receipt and 97% within a month, the USDA says.
Quote of the Day
"He's still a draw. People still respond really well to him."—An anonymous Republican strategist, on disgraced Republican Senator George Allen's planned 2012 Senate comeback.
Allen, who is an authentic asshole, lost his senate seat in '06 after referring to one of his opponent's staffers, S.R. Sidarth, a Virginian of Indian descent, as "macaca," which is a kind of monkey.
He's still popular with the rightwingers, though!
