House Minority Leader John Boehner, (R-Eprehensible), who thinks it's totes cool to campaign with Ohio 9th Republican candidate Rich Iott, who, as you may recall, it was recently reported, "for years donned a German Waffen SS uniform and participated in Nazi re-enactments."
Sure.
Dipshit of the Day
News from Shakes Manor
Iain, via email, under the subject line "I have a new life goal": To beat this guy.
[The link leads to a story about a man who's set a world record for collecting (and storing) the most navel lint.]
Liss: And to get divorced, presumably. Cuz, eww.
Iain: Lol, I'm setting a jar up in your office.
Liss: Set up a jar on your desk to collect funds for your new bachelor pad. Where you can store ALL the navel fluff!
Iain: Ha! My bachelor pad will be carpeted in the finest navel lint rugs, and you will be JEALOUS!
Liss: This is your worst idea since you wanted to build a toejam castle called the Toes Mahal.
Iain: Lol, don't give me ideas. That would be awesome.
Liss: Weirdo. In the immortal words of Kelly Clarkson, my life would suck without you.
Iain: Dittoid.
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
Actual headline: Ladies, try marketing approach to get a man.
Leaving aside the evident and entirely typical assumption that anyone who's a "lady" wants to "get a man" in the first place, I've got some real problems with a relationship strategy that essentially asks women to turn themselves into branded objects (if not explicitly sex objects) that are "marketed" to single men.
If your partner sees you as an object, of any sort, that makes you a fixed product. When you've branded and marketed and sold yourself as a catchphrase, it doesn't leave you a lot of room to change, or grow, and still be "the same person."
Growing together with a partner can be a challenging enough task for any couple, even without the additional pressure of constantly being measured in increments of deviation from a personal brand that the simple act of living life will likely lead one to outgrow.
Blog Note
The numbers of comments showing on posts is screwed up again this week. Don't know why; we'll put in a ticket with Disqus and hope it gets fixed soon.
Some people have mentioned that they're having trouble editing their comments, too, or the comments threads are hanging and not loading properly without refreshing. Hopefully that will be resolved soon, as well.
In the meantime, my apologies for the inconveniences.
Obama on The Daily Show
So, the president was on The Daily Show last night. (If you didn't see it, and want to, you can watch it here.)
Predictably, I found the whole thing annoying, as the president pleaded for patience, and whinged about not getting enough credit, and audited for "fairness" various criticisms of the administration. (Guess what? None of the criticisms I tend to make are fair. Shocking!) He also used the word "folks" like nine thousand times in the first five minutes of the show. When his 2012 reelection campaign starts in earnest, we're so playing the "Obama Says 'Folks' Drinking Game" during his stump speeches and the debates. Start stocking up on the booze now!
The high-point: His plug for voting. His encouragement to people to get involved in the process (while ironic, given that he panders to corporate elements who render individual voters increasingly irrelevant) is a refreshing change from the fearmongering "VOTE! AND VOTE FOR US OR YOU WILL BE DEAD!" horseshit that used to emanate from the Bush administration.
The low-point: "Heckuva job, Lawrence Summers." Ugh. He tried to recover quickly with a wink and a grin and an assurance it was a pun (oh really? so you think he did a shitty job, too?), but nope. Fail.
In other news, the president met with some bloggers yesterday, and, during that meeting, claimed his position on same-sex marriage is "evolving." This has become the new Democratic punt, replacing "state's rights" to buy some time before having to actually commit to a principled (or unprincipled) stance on one of the nation's most important civil rights issues.
I predict the Democrats' "evolving" position on same-sex marriage will evolve right into full-throated support the moment it becomes politically expedient. Which will naturally be a total coincidence.
So Much For Principles
Guess who's back for a cameo in The Hangover 2? No, not Mel Gibon. Mike Tyson will be returning, according to the film's director Todd Phillips.
Way to go, Zach Galifianakis, your integrity remains intact!
[H/t to Shaker scatx.]
Photo of the Day
Would you not buy massive quantities of potato chips from this man?
[If you can't view the image, it's a picture of Deeks in a Halloween costume aisle, snapped with his mobile phone and texted to me. He has a hilarious look of indifference on his face, whilst wearing a sailor cap at a jaunty angle utterly discordant with his affectation of undiluted pococurantism.]
Dipshit of the Day
Republican Congressional nominee from Kentucky Todd Lally, who "doesn't believe [sexism] exists."
I look at women's issues like any other issue. We have equal rights in this country, we have fought -- women have fought very hard for those equal rights. Uh, it's up to them. I mean my wife is a working woman, she works very, very hard and she's been very successful. I've not seen any barriers in her career and I don't believe that exists.Okay, player.
[H/T to Shaker Ashley.]
Daily Dose o' Cute
This is a strange little picture I got of Matilda grooming Olivia. Tilsy's blurred head, the awkward framing, the look on Livsy's face...everything about it makes me laugh.
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.]
Um
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, official sponsors of the Fatcunt Army production of Fats!
Recommended Reading:
[TW for fat hatred] Marianne: Keep Leveling Up
[TW for Tiller murder] Stephanie: Quote of the Day: Rachel Maddow
Steve: "This is the world that Fox News has created."
[TW for violence] Peter: White House Focuses on Domestic Violence
[TW for homophobia] Andy: Texas NBC Affiliate Asks, 'Will Gays Destroy America?'
And Digby makes the case for defensive voting.
Leave your links in comments...
Madame Secretary
[Trigger warning for sexual violence.]
Yesterday, on the 10th anniversary of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke about the continuing need to honor the resolution's as-yet unfulfilled promise to meaningfully engage and involve women in peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peace building:
Women's participation in [peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peace building] is not a "nice thing to do." It's not as though we are doing a favor for ourselves and them by including women in the work of peace. This is a necessary global security imperative. Including women in the work of peace advances our national security interests, promotes political stability, economic growth, and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Just as in the economic sphere, we cannot exclude the talents of half the population, neither when it comes to matters of life and death can we afford to ignore, marginalize, and dismiss the very direct contributions that women can and have made.Full transcript available here.
[H/T to Shaker MKP-hearts-NYC.]
Won't Someone Think of the Children?
[Trigger Warning: Eliminationism, Violence, Highly Disturbing]
The children in Midland School District (Arkansas), that is. Clint McCance, school board member and local business owner, took to Facebook recently to protest Spirit Day and the existence of LGBTQI people. Said McCance in his status update (all spelling original to McCance):
“Seriously they want me to wear purple because five queers committed suicide. The only way im wearin it for them is if they all commit suicide. I cant believe the people of this world have gotten this stupid. We are honoring the fact that they sinned and killed therselves because of their sin. REALLY PEOPLE.”After someone commented "Because hatred is always right....", McCance responded:
“No because being a fag doesnt give you the right to ruin the rest of our lives. If you get easily offended by being called a fag then dont tell anyone you are a fag. Keep that shit to yourself. I dont care how people decide to live their lives. They dont bother me if they keep it to thereselves. It pisses me off though that we make a special purple fag day for them. I like that fags cant procreate. I also enjoy the fact that they often give each other aids and die. If you arent against it, you might as well be for it.”After that, someone else expressed the sentiment that he should STFU and what if someone's kids are reading his bullshit (ok, slight paraphrase) and, of course, he responded:
“I would disown my kids if they were gay. They will not be welcome at my home or in my vicinity. I will absolutely run them off. Of course my kids will know better. My kids will have solid christian beliefs. See it infects everyone.”You, McCance, should not be welcome in the vicinity of civilised society, much less be a sitting member of a school board. I went looking for contact information for Midland School Board but it appears the district has scrubbed that information from their site. There is this site the district also has but there isn't school board contact information.
You can contact Superintendent Dean Stanley: Phone: (501)345-8844 E-mail: dstanley@midlandschools.org
Another option is the Arkansas Department of Education. They say right on their site:
The purpose of the Arkansas Department of Education is to provide the highest quality leadership, service, and support to school districts and schools in order that they may provide equitable, quality education for all students in Arkansas public schools. With a staff of approximately 300 professionals, the ADE is firmly committed to this mission.Polite, yet firm, generally works best--even though McCance's comments were absolutely rage-inducing.
McCance shouldn't be anywhere near a school board.
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning for body policing, disordered eating, fat hatred.]
"Maura Kelly is a very provocative blogger. She was an anorexic herself and this is a subject she feels very strongly about."—Joanna Coles, editor-in-chief of Marie Claire, on standing by the magazine's contributor Maura Kelly, who penned a detestable fat-hating piece in which she claimed to "find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room."
Coles, as Kelly herself in her failful apology, is invoking Kelly's history of disordered eating in the most ignorant and opportunistic way. The implication that all superfat people ("morbidly obese," as Kelly assured us she was exclusively speaking about, to justify her bigotry) arrived at our respective weights via disordered eating is flatly inaccurate. Not all of us do.
And even worse than that repeated expression of wrongity-wrongness is the fact that Kelly and Coles are relying on it in order to, unbelievably, try to cast Kelly as some sort of ally to the superfat. "This is a subject she feels passionate about," where "this" equals disordered eating.
Well. That's certainly an interest attempt to rewrite history, but I haven't forgotten (in 24 hours) that Kelly was not writing about disordered eating, but about her visceral revulsion at my and other superfat people's very existence in her presence.
And, somehow, I'm just not feeling the ally love.
FAIL.
Discussion Thread: I Was Fat-Shamed
[Trigger warning for fat-shaming and discussions of body image and body policing.]
Yesterday, I wrote a post in which I shared an experience of being fat-shamed in public. One of the things that crops up in my inbox, in comments here, and in comments elsewhere, when I or another author shares an experience of being fat-shamed, is the surprise at how blatant and how frequent fat-shaming can be.
There are also vanishingly few spaces where people can share stories of being fat-shamed without fear of ridicule and/or victim-blaming—which is a tragic deficiency, since the telling of shaming stories we bury in a leaky vault somewhere beneath our sternums can be an important catharsis, a relief from the oppressive burden that is carrying around anguishing secrets. It's difficult not to succumb to fat-shaming that one internalizes without release.
So. Let us share our stories, for ourselves, and toward the goal of challenging that particular piece of thin privilege that is ignorance to the ubiquity and effects of private and public fat-shaming.
The companion thread with a discussion of engaging in fat shaming is here.
[Commenting Guidelines: Fat hatred, including admonishments to lose weight and/or suggestions about how to lose weight, is off-limits, as it is in any other thread, and will be removed and its purveyors banned. This thread is specific to fat-shaming and fat hatred; it is not a general body policing thread. However, fat-shaming is not just used against fat women and men, so thin and in-betweenie women and men who have been fat-shamed are welcome and encouraged to participate.]
Discussion Thread: I Fat-Shamed Someone
[Trigger warning for fat-shaming and discussions of body image and body policing.]
Part of coming to Fat Acceptance, whether one is hirself fat or thin, is teasing out internalized fat hatred for examination and dismantlement. For most of us, fat or thin, that process includes revisiting times when we have expressed narratives of fat hatred, or fat-shamed other people—sometimes intentionally and cruelly, sometimes unknowingly, sometimes in a desperate bid for self-preservation lest a group fat-shaming turn on us.
Like telling stories of having been fat-shamed, confessing stories of having fat-shamed someone else is an important part of awareness-raising about the endemic bullying that is fat-shaming. And it's also part of the personal process of letting go of judgments—of self, of others.
So. Let us share our stories, for ourselves, and toward the goal of creating a new understanding of what fat-shaming actually is: Not a "helpful" expression of "concern," but dehumanizing bullying that robs fat people of their dignity and self-esteem.
The companion thread with a discussion of having been fat shamed is here.
[Commenting Guidelines: Engaging in fat-shaming and fat hatred here is off-limits, as it is in any other thread, and will be removed and its purveyors banned. This thread is for people who want to be engaged with ending fat-shaming, not for people interested in perpetrating it.]
