In case you were wondering what Judd Apatow finds funny, besides rape jokes and misogyny, now it's been compiled into handy book form for you. Thanks, McSweeney's!
P.S. I love that it includes one of his own essays.
Great Book. Very Cool.
P.S. I love that it includes one of his own essays.
This is a real thing in the world.
Here's The Situation: A Guide to Creeping on Chicks, Avoiding Grenades and Getting in Your GTL on the Jersey Shore by Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, Gotham Publishing, 144 pages.
[Via Michael K.]
Gibson Cameo Cancelled
It's a tough week for racist d-bags, I guess. It looks like Mel Gibson's upcoming appearance in Hangover 2: Bangkok Boogaloo has been scuttled. Sad face for old hatebag Mel. (Not really.)
Thank Zach Galifianakis for this one. Earlier this week he was quoted as saying:
"A movie you're acting in, you don't have a lot of control; you just show up and vomit your lines out. I'm not the boss. I'm in deep protest right now about a movie I'm working on, up in arms about something. But I can't get the guys to [listen]. ... I'm not making any leeway."
The allusion was widely believed to be about Gibson's cameo in Hangover 2. Gibson was canned shortly thereafter. Director Todd Phillips had this to say:
"I thought Mel would have been great in the movie and I had the full backing of Jeff Robinov and his team. But I realize filmmaking is a collaborative effort, and this decision ultimately did not have the full support of my entire cast and crew."
Good on Zach and company for protesting. Sad face for Todd Phillips and whomever thought the choice of Gibson was a good idea.
Hobbit Casting Finalized
Heads-up, fellow nerdlings: Martin Freeman, who you may know as Tim from The Office (UK) or as the naked stand-in from Love, Actually, has been officially cast to play Bilbo Baggins. Yay! Good casting.
Interestingly, Ian McKellen is reportedly returning as Gandalf and Andy Serkis as Gollum, but the item notes that Elrond is still being cast. Huh. I wonder if Hugo Weaving declined, or if he wasn't asked, or if that discussion hasn't even happened yet. Curious.
[TW] Now that Free Polanski signatory Guillermo del Toro is off the project and Peter Jackson back on, I'm really excited about the film(s) again.
Grumble Growl Grumble Grumble Growl
Clint Eastwood says he thinks President Obama is a "nice fella," but he's "not a fan of what he's doing at the moment."
Maybe some crusty, narrow-eyed, weathered-but-wise, no-nonsense, old straight white conservative dude, half patriot, half reluctant hero, can grit his teeth, get his scowl on, and go rescue the black president from himself, eh, Clint?
(If you've not seen a lot of Clint Eastwood films, you'll have to take my word for it that that's pretty damn funny, in a lolsobby sorta way.)
[Previous Clint: Creepy, Mancentric.]
In Case You'd Missed Being Called Stupid by the Obama Administration...
Igor catches White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett noting, with regard to the repeal of DADT, that the "members of the gay community who actually understand [that the Justice Department is required to defend the law of the land are] working with us to try to put pressure on Congress to repeal it."
So, if you're not behind the White House interminably delaying the repeal for bullshit reasons, it's because, as per usual, you're too stupid to understand (or too hysterical to care) How Things Work.
Whoooooooooops.
Savage Advice
[Trigger warning for sexual violence and victim-blaming.]
I'm asking this not to be snarky, but because I truly want to know: What qualifies Dan Savage to hand out advice in a nationally syndicated column on sex and sexuality?
Because after reading today's column, he seems woefully, and dangerously, deficient in that capacity.
The long and the short of it is this: A woman in an open marriage wrote in saying how, since a former partner sexually assaulted her five months ago, she's been unable to be intimate with her husband, but has no problem being intimate with her boyfriend. Specifically, when her husband "tries to initiate sexual contact [her] skin crawls," but sex with her boyfriend "is amazing and leaves me feeling loved and whole and wonderful." This has left her husband feeling "incredibly jealous," "depressed," "angry," accusatory that she no longer loves him, and demanding that she "stop sleeping with [her] boyfriend until [their] marriage is back to normal."
She wants to know what to do. She signs her letter "Potentially Traumatized Sexual Deviant," the acronym of which is PTSD, also the acronym for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Dan Savage tells her: "You're being a total shit."
That is not a paraphrase. That is a direct quote.
He lectures her that she should be reporting the crime, tells her he hopes she knows "that being the victim of sexual assault is not a Get Out of Being a Human Being Free card," accuses her of "emotionally assaulting" her husband, and tells her, as I mentioned above, that she's "being a total shit."
Yeah.
I don't have PTSD (although I am close to someone who does), but I do understand that, especially when one is first learning to live with it, it can be hard to know exactly what will and does trigger it, including what could be causing an aversion to sex. It's entirely possible her husband (her currently jealous, depressed, angry, accusatory, demanding husband, mind you) may be unintentionally doing something as part of their sex routine that's triggering her, and the only language she has for it right now, even in her own mind, is "I don't want to have sex with him."
That's a possibility that anyone who professes to be a sex expert should recognize, if they're going to respond to survivors' sex questions.
It's unconscionable that Savage would advise this woman, a sexual assault survivor, to, essentially, get over it, and fuck someone she doesn't want to.
Oh, not that he says that directly, of course. She should just stop being "cruel and selfish," and get her "ass into therapy," if she "truly" loves her husband and values her marriage. Savage isn't telling her to fuck someone she doesn't want to; he's just telling her to figure out a way to fuck someone she doesn't want to. Or end the marriage.
Because it's cruel and selfish, it's downright "emotional assault," to not have sex with her husband while she's having sex with the boyfriend her husband was totes okay with her having, as long as she was fucking him, too.
As Liss said in an email exchange about this: "Yes, it's difficult to understand why, after being sexually assaulted, she doesn't want to have sex with someone who considers her autonomy a negotiable item, contingent upon whether she's sexually servicing him."
How "cruel and selfish" she is. What a "total shit."
Savage's response is incomprehensibly callous. And if it weren't bad enough on its own, it's accompanied by this positively adorable cartoon of a man trying to woo a woman who's crying.
[H/T to Shaker Jill.]
Pop Quiz
Which one of these things is not like the others?
Conan O'Brien's Nov. 8 TBS debut is drawing ever-closer, and boy, what a doozy of a first week he's lined up.If you answered: "Ten of the 11 names are white men, and only one of them is a woman, also white," give yourself 1,000 points.
Deadline Hollywood reports that within four days, Coco will host Tom Hanks, Seth Rogen, Michael Cera, 'Mad Men' hunk Jon Hamm, 'Modern Family' star Julie Bowen and '30 Rock' comedian Jack McBrayer. White Stripes rocker Jack White will hit the stage as the first musical guest on 'Conan.'
O'Brien is hosting a poll online for another special guest, with personalities ranging from (we think) jokey -- Pope Benedict XVI, Vladimir Putin -- to probably serious, like Jack Nicholson and Justin Bieber.
Team Coco 1, Diversity 0.
WHAT. THE. EVERLOVING. FUCK.
[Trigger warning for suicide, homophobia, and Christian supremacy.]
Officials on college campuses across the nation are alarmed at a wave of recent suicides involving Christians who have been harassed by homosexual activists. The main stream media isn't covering the story so, as usual, I have taken it upon myself to do their jobs for them. None of the following eight cases have been covered by any of the three major news networks.Thus begins an article titled "Eight Straight Suicides" by conservative writer Mike Adams at the cesspool known as Townhall.com. He then goes on to describe the details of these cases, in which straight Christians purportedly killed themselves after being "harassed by homosexual activists." The details, I assure you, are not important, because this is the final paragraph:
These eight cases are all true except for one thing: The Christians who were bullied by gays and gay activists are all still alive. Not a single one has committed suicide. That is because they have centered their lives around Jesus Christ, rather than their sexual identity. And no amount of bullying can change my mind about that.Psych! They didn't kill themselves after all! And it isn't because the entire culture in which they reside is structured to assure them in every conceivable way that being straight and Christian is superior to being not-straight and not-Christian; it's just because they're inherently better people, stronger, blessed.
This is vile even by Townhall's execrable standards.
I will leave it to you to dissect in comments everything that is wrong with this pile of fetid shit, from disappearing gay Christians, to pretending there's no such thing as straight or Christian privilege, to appropriating the suicide of bullied teens for a breathtakingly inappropriate literary conceit all in the name of playing another round of Poor Persecuted Christians. (See also. And here. Among many others.)
I will instead just make this one observation...
You know, I know a lot of straight people and a lot of gay people (and a lot of people who fall somewhere in between), and no one—but no one—centers their lives around their sexual identity more than straight conservative Christians, whose identities as man/husband/father and woman/wife/mother are inseparable. They speak of procreation as their purpose, and assert that procreation must be between one man and one woman, only, ever.
Being straight, getting married, making babies, raising those babies to be straight, get married, and make more babies, quivers full of them, is the essence of conservative Christianity.
To assert that it is gay people who "center their lives" around their sexuality is just another example of conservative Christian projection. (See also. And here. Among many others.)
And their genuinely pathetic campaign of self-pity would be thoroughly hilarious, if only it weren't contributing the the environment in which the suicides of gay youth really, actually happen.
[H/T to Shaker Rachel.]
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
Immediate Action Item
An Anonymous Shaker emails (which I am publishing with permission):
Liss:Please pick up the phone and make a call to let NPR know that you support their decision to require their employees to refrain from engaging in overt bigotry against marginalized populations.
NPR fired Juan Williams this morning [after he made negative comments about Muslims on Fox]. The right wing response has been immediate, intense, and cruel. I answer the phones at Listener Services, and we answer emails, too; so far the names I have been called are very similar to what I imagine trolls call you daily. I have no idea how you stand up under constant abuse from screaming people (textually or telephonically), but I'm drawing a lot of strength from your example.
If you have the ability or energy, I'd really appreciate it if you could ask Shakers to either call 202.513.3232 to give me and my colleagues some idea that there's someone in the universe out there that thinks journalists following an ethical code is a good idea. We have received so many angry, vitriolic, and vicious comments that our email system has collapsed; and I myself have received over fifty furious calls from self-described conservatives who believe that Mr. Williams' comments were protected under the Constitution and that we are evil liberal censors.
We have received zero positive calls. The phone is ringing off the hook. We'd really, really, really like the support.
DADT Update
Another setback in LGB equality, but a big win for the president who once claimed to be a "fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans," which would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic:
A federal appeals panel on Wednesday temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that halted enforcement of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy banning openly gay and lesbian soldiers from the military.Such bullshit. If they were arguing that "changing it abruptly" (as if this hasn't been coming for nearly a year now, anyway) could put LGB soldiers at risk, that would still be bullshit, but at least it would put them on the bullshit side of the bullshit angels. But they're just going full-tilt garbage.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals gave the government the delay it sought in challenging a federal judge's order last week to stop enforcing the policy around the world.
"The order is stayed temporarily in order to provide this court with an opportunity to consider fully the issues presented," said the appellate panel's ruling, which gave parties in the case until October 25 to file further documents.
Aubrey Sarvis, an Army veteran and executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said the appeals court panel's ruling "means that 'don't ask, don't tell' is once again on the books, and is likely to be enforced by the Defense Department."
...The administration argued that changing it abruptly "risks causing significant immediate harm to the military and its efforts to be prepared to implement an orderly repeal of the statute."
The military reportedly wants time to consider, and possibly implement, sexuality-segregated housing into which straight soldiers can voluntarily opt-in, if they don't want to live with gay soldiers. Personally, I believe that housing already exists: It's called civilian life.
After hundreds of years of LGB soldiers not being allowed to serve openly, the least they're owed is the requirement from their fellow soldiers to like it or lump it. LGB soldiers shouldn't be required to fight for separate but equal.
Top Chef: Just Desserts Open Thread
[Image from last night's episode: Pastrytestant Danielle, taking the elimination challenge a bit too literally, plates cat turds for her dookie pie.]
Last night's episode will be whipped and folded, so if you haven't seen it, and don't want any spoilers, pack your liquid nitrogen and go...
Tea Party Racism
The Tea Partiers continually deny that they are motivated by racism, that their leadership promotes or facilitates racism, that their members are disproportionately racist, that racism has anything at all to do with their movement.
Well.
David Neiwert reports: "The NAACP has now fully backed up its accusations of racism within the Tea Party movement with a meticulously documented report on the Tea parties' multifarious connections to racists and various far-right extremists."
The report, "Tea Party Nationalism," looks at the relationships and differences between the six major Tea Party organizations -- FreedomWorks Tea Party, 1776 Tea Party, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet, and Tea Party Express -- and the various ways that each group has established connections with, and empowers, outright racists and white supremacists, as well we far-right "Patriot" extremists of various stripes.There's more at the link.
"In these ranks, an abiding obsession with Barack Obama's birth certificate is often a stand-in for the belief that the first black president of the United States is not a 'real American.' Rather than strict adherence to the Constitution, many Tea Partiers are challenging the provision for birthright citizenship found in the Fourteenth Amendment," write authors Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, which produced the report for the NAACP.
The heart of the report is the section titled "Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Militia Impulse," which includes some previously overlooked facets of the movement and revealing details:
-- James von Brunn, the white supremacist who killed a Holocaust Museum guard last year, posted on Tea Partner Express partner websites.
-- Mark Williams, former chairman of the Tea Party Express, not only wrote racist screeds, he made death threats against President Obama,
-- Billy Joe Roper, a member of the ResistNet Tea Party who also happens to be the founder of the overtly racist White Revolution organization, indulging in "Nazi glamorization" with his eulogy for William Pierce, author of The Turner Diaries, the notorious race-war blueprint.
Naturally, the Tea Partiers are dismissing out of hand the demonstrable proof that there is an ugly thread of racist extremism running through their "we're just good patriots and totes condemn racism, we swears" quilt:
"Here we go again," said Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation. "This is typical of this liberal group's smear tactics."Yes, "facts" are indeed typical of the NAACP and the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights.
