Sinéad O'Connor: "Nothing Compares 2 U"
Ooops your nouns
On the subject of objective media, The Times [New York] had a story up earlier this week:
In Efforts to End Bullying, Some See Agenda
Some is a nifty little pronoun, but it's not clear to me who it refers to. People? Bigots? People who are bigots?
Agenda is another word. According to Wiktionary, it can mean "A temporally organized plan for matters to be attended to (or the plural of agendum, if you're into that)." A temporally linked series of actionable items, got it. My agenda for the afternoon is to finish this post and take a nap grade papers. The Times' agenda is to make money by gaining readers (via the misappropriation of nouns, apparently) and selling advertising space. (Good luck with that, BTW.) These bigots' agenda is to cement their version of Christian supremacy in part by getting us all to focus on OMGQUEERZ.
Agendas, we all have them.
The story here isn't, as the headline indicates (or doesn't) that horrible bigots say horrible things. Rather, it's that horrible people in positions of power are doing horribly bigoted things at the behest of other horrible bigots. This is slightly different than the age old question: 'What do privileged people think about their own privilege?'
--
On the actual subject of the article, for the bazillionth time, relationships and sexuality are not entirely the same thing. Heather has two mommies. Heather's mommies also probably have sex. Granted, if lesbians controlled the media, there'd probably be some sort of lesbian Oprah and Dr. Oz lecturing us on the evils of lesbian bed death. In America, we all get to make culture, including fucked-up and judgmental parts. Yay!
Now, I'm not saying that our schoolchildren shouldn't have amazing, empowering, healthy discussions about sexuality that don't erase everyone. What I am saying is that AFAIK my daughter's sex education has been largely confined to the very rare 'uh...that? It's nothing... Look over there! A pony!!!!' Yet, she very clearly understands and accepts that she has two moms. She's 3, BTW.
What I understand is that there are people who want my daughter to feel bad about her parents. That's not about sexuality as much as it is about bullying. Which brings us back to the issue of agendas. The circle of life continues, in small part aided by a not-so-thorough probing from the Times.
UK Seasonal Selection Plate: Racism, Elitism, Misogyny & Blue Stilton
by Shaker ladyjulian
Okay, so I made the blue stilton up. But the rest is all here, just as the first winter decorations are going up.
Former Immigration Minister Phil Woolas (Labour Party, UK) has just been suspended for three years as a result of his dirty election campaign. Concerned that he might be about to lose, he authorized a series of election leaflets which accused his Lib Dem opponent of condoning violent Muslim extremism, accepting money from Saudi Arabia and courting "militant Islam." The court, which saw the emails leading up to the campaign, has ruled that he knew that these claims were false, and that they were slanderous to his opponent.
For law nerds like me, the judgment can be found here. The unpleasant details in the emails are at paragraph 132 onwards: knowing that it was 'likely to cause offence,' Woolas' campaign headed straight to the gutter of racism and Islamophobia, with one email saying openly that "If we don't get the white folk angry he's gone". The leaflets are appended to the judgment.
Woolas did win the election, but only by 103 votes. He has now been suspended for three years and a by-election is in the offing. He himself of course can't see that he's done anything wrong, and is apparently going to appeal.
The deputy leader of the Labour party, Harriet Harman, has laudably said that she will not welcome Woolas back, and that it is "not part of Labour's politics for somebody to be telling lies to get themselves elected." And how has the party reacted? With relief, that someone who brought discredit to them is gone? With applause for Harriet Harman's principles? Not even slightly; they're whinging that she has gone 'far too far' and that poor little Phil "has been treated in an unbalanced way." The BBC reports mutiny.
This isn't hugely surprising, for anyone who follows British politics: Harriet Harman is routinely mocked as "Harriet Harperson" as a result of her peculiar belief that women are people. The right-wing Mail once described her as a hectoring, bleating, finger-wagging nanny, and her feminist principles have won her few friends at the boys' club at the Commons.
It's depressing that the Woolas election debacle happened in the first place. It's even more depressing that the Labour party seems readier to get behind a corrupt racist than a deputy leader exhibiting principles.
How Remarkably Unremarkable!
by Shaker PlusSizedWomanist, a young, plus-sized woman of color and full-time college student studying nursing, who most definitely plans on incorporating HAES into every single care plan she makes.
[Trigger warning for discussion of body size and fat hatred.]
Below is the newest Call of Duty: Black Ops trailer, titled "There's a Soldier in All of Us." Now, normally, I wouldn't find this video remarkable, seeing as how I can't play first-person shooter games to save my life, but there is one specific part that stood out to me like nothing I'd ever seen:
Location: A war zone. Scene 1: View of helicopters flying in the background in a worn down area. Scene 2: A young black woman wearing a gray business suit is shown walking away from an explosion holding a semi-automatic machine gun, aiming at unknown assailants. Scene 3: Two men drop down hanging in suspension, shooting machine guns at unknown assailants and then drop down even further. Scene 4: A young woman wearing glasses and a purple button-up shirt shooting at a door to possibly open it and then moves to the side as her female friend kicks down the door and and a young black male wearing hospital scrubs throws a grenade into the room. Scene 5: A male construction worker in a helicopter shooting at unknown assailants, and a man in the building being shot uses a rocket launcher to bring down the helicopter. Scene 6: An older bald man hides behind a pillar, struggling to get a cell phone out as Kobe Bryant runs in, shooting at a military Jeep, causing it to explode. Another man springs up and shoots another military Jeep, and it also explodes, causing a running young man wearing a jersey to tumble forward in the blast. Bryant smiles at the sight and shoots out at another man, who is brandishing a shotgun. Scene 7: The camera goes into first person view through the eyes of the aformentioned shotgun brandishing man, and then goes to a view of Jimmy Kimmel struggling to get to his feet, aim a rocket launcher with the words "proud noob" inscribed on it, and shoots. Scene 8: A man wearing a diner employee outfit is shown walking away from an explosion, shooting two pistols to the side. The screen pans out to show the battlefield. It pans back in to the diner employee dropping his empty pistols, with the screen reading "There's a soldier in all of us." Scene 9: The cover of Call of Duty: Black Ops is shown.Can you guess what scene stood out to me? You can't if you didn't/couldn't watch the video, because I left something out of my description.
Scene 4. Twelve seconds into this trailer. What makes this scene remarkable is the fact that this young purple button-up shirt wearing woman is a FAT woman. *gasp*
And no, I'm not talking about the BS "Anything over a size 4 is considered fat" drivel that America's Next Top Model and the like purports. No folks. I mean a VISIBLY FAT WOMAN is being shown in this video. Somebody get the smelling salts. I'm sure we're gonna need them.
Because guess what else? There was nothing derogatory mentioned about her. She was treated as an equal human being, as an essential part of the team effort to find whatever fictional video game perpetrators that stood in their way. Fat hatred has permeated our culture so much that to see fat people being shown as something other than the stereotypical headless fatty, or the fat person who is so deep in self loathing and self hated, the fat person who is continually apologizing for even THINKING of existing while fat; to see ANYTHING other than that is an amazing feat.
It is sad that this is something that extraordinary. But right now, I'm cheering my butt off for the badassery of this purple shirt wearing fat girl brandishing a shot gun, because she's showing what we all knew: Fat people are capable human beings.
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Commenting Guidelines: This post is not about the inclusion of accused and acquitted rapist Kobe Bryant and such discussion will be considered off-topic, not because his continued role as go-to advertiser isn't a legitimate conversation to have, but because it's not a conversation that can be had in this thread without derailing from its primary (and important) topic. Ditto on any other unrelated though legit convos, like violence as entertainment, etc.
Related Reading: Fat Ladies UK.
Quote of the Day
"If you look at American TV as much as the rest of the world does, you would think that we all went around wrestling and wearing bikinis. I mean, that's what you would think we spent our entire day doing, right?"—Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during an interview with an Australian radio comedy show.
Clinton also explained what she and her husband former President Bill Clinton do when they can't agree on takeout for dinner: "We practice different modes of negotiation around important issues like that."
But do they do it while wrestling and wearing bikinis...?
Conservatives: Charity > Social Safety Net
As the recession whacked the economy, charitable giving by even the wealthiest Americans took a substantial hit, according to a study released Tuesday.The conservative philosophy of limited government asserts that charity, philanthropy, faith-based orgs, etc. should take care of people in need rather than the government. There are a lot of problems with this idea (starting with the fact that conservatives frequently determine that certain people aren't deserving of charity), but perhaps the most obvious is that charitable giving declines in times of greatest need. So.
Although 98.2% of high net worth households donated to charity in 2009, they gave substantially less than in the years before, according to a survey for Bank of America Merrill Lynch by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.
Average charitable giving by wealthy households sank 34.9% [last year]. In that same time, the unemployment rate rose to 9.3%, up from 5.8% in 2008.
Ideology fail.
Today in Backlash Broadcasting
Sure. Absolutely. This sounds great:
After a heated bidding between ABC and CBS that stretched over the weekend, Man Up, a new half-hour project from veteran comedy writer-producer Jack Burditt (30 Rock) and a potential starring vehicle for Tim Allen, has landed at ABC with a put pilot commitment. ... Man Up, from 20th TV and studio-based 21 Laps/Adelstein, is a multi-camera family comedy about a guy fighting for his manhood in a world of women.Perfect.
For international or younger readers who may not know, Tim Allen is a pick-up truck and power tool commercial voiceover performer who started his career as a stand-up comic specializing in grunting like an ape:
He later starred in a very terrible and very successful garbage sitcom called "Home Improvement," where he flexed his ACTING CHOPS by playing a dude who grunted like an ape:
I really hope he GRUNTS LIKE AN APE in his new show! That would be HILARIOUS! "MAN UP OOG OOG OOG!" Classic.
Tim Allen, much like Adam Carolla, has made a career for himself out of equating adult human men with caricatures of animals that are insulting even to the animals. Men are just simple brainless slaves to their basest urges, whereas women are mystifyingly complex creatures (who are still somehow inferior to men).
Implicit in feminism is not only the belief, but the expectation, that men are not animals—nor infantile, stupid, useless, inept, emotionally stunted, or any other negative stereotype feminists have been accused of promoting—but instead our equals just as much as we are theirs, capable not only of understanding feminism (and feminists), but of actively and rigorously engaging challenges to their socialization, too. Feminists, of course, have the terrible reputation, but it isn't we who consider all men babies, dopes, dogs, and rapists. The holders of those views, inevitably, are aggressive purveyors and defenders of the patriarchy—which itself, after all, takes a rather unpleasantly dim view of most people.
Still, it's feminists who are accused of being man-haters, while men like Tim Allen are lauded by misogynists as brave, truth-saying geniuses.
DOMA May Fall Before DADT
The Defense of Marriage Act, aka DOMA, the heinous federal statute that defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman and allows states to refuse to recognize as marriages same-sex marriages performed in other states, is getting what is at least its third challenge from the East Coast states recognizing same-sex marriage in the past couple of years:
Joanne Pedersen tried to add her spouse to her federal health insurance on Monday. She was rejected. Again.As you may recall, in July, a federal judge in Boston already ruled DOMA unconstitutional, and the Obama administration is currently appealing that decision because FIERCE ADVOCATE.
The problem is that while Ms. Pedersen is legally married to Ann Meitzen under Connecticut law, federal law does not recognize same-sex unions. So a health insurance matter that is all but automatic for most married people is not allowed for them under federal law.
Ms. Pedersen and Ms. Meitzen plan to file a lawsuit Tuesday against the government in an effort to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that prohibits the federal government from recognizing marriages of same-sex couples.
Cases like this exemplify why the "states' rights" argument about same-sex marriage is intellectually bankrupt garbage. Leaving each state, and the federal government, to recognize or not recognize same-sex marriage prevents even couples in states where same-sex marriage has been legalized from enjoying full equality, as they are yet denied federal benefits and are barred from relocating to any other state that doesn't recognize their marriage.
I have written probably two dozen times over the last five years about how this very conflict was inevitable, as soon as states started calling the bluff on both parties' "states' rights" punt. There are too many federal rights conferred by marriage, and access to benefits contingent on marriage, for a state-by-state hodgepodge of marriage statuses to be built while the federal government stays out of it.
Equality is quickly becoming the only reasonable solution.
Opponents of marriage equality just need to give the fuck up already. This is like the losingest battle in the history of battles, and it's looking more losery every day. They ought to just concede with whatever infinitesimal fragments of dignity they've got left.
And those "fierce advocates" whose positions are still "evolving" better get Darwin on the horn to help speed up the process or whatever. (Science!)
Oh. He's Still Around.
by Shaker nina_bruja
[Trigger warning for misogyny, gender essentialism, heterocentrism, classism.]
So, for the last few days one of the main headlines on CNN's homepage has been "Carolla: 'Are men becoming chicks?' Now, Adam Carolla has made a career for himself as a professional misogynist, the consummate anti-feminist man's man, and [TW for trans and fat hatred] an all-around dirtbag, so I avoided it for about a day, and then my curiosity got the best of me and I clicked on the link.
Surprise! It was overflowing with FAIL.
[Full transcript at end of post.]
Of course, Carolla confuses women's gains in equality with "men becoming chicks".
Spitzer: "You think this is a dangerous thing to be avoided?"It's possibly the most back-asswards, gender-essentialist, classist, stupidest FAILboats I've seen in a long time, all rolled into about 2 minutes of OMGWTFLOLSOB.
Carolla: "It is! Well, I think there's a reason why we're different, and it's mostly about the kids. It's mostly about saying 'Here's Dad and here's Mom,' not 'Here's bluughhhhhh and here's blluuuuuuuuggggghhhhhhh.'" [laughter all around]
On top of the fact that Adam Carolla was allowed this platform to ponder the nature of prescribed gender roles and get plenty of laughs from the hosts on this topic in the first place, he goes on to vilify welfare recipients, including his own mother. He invokes the classic, yet somehow still-in-use-today "welfare makes pplz lazy" argument. ::facepalm::
But wait! It gets better!
Turns out he's coming out with a book, titled "In 50 Years We'll All Be Chicks: And Other Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White Guy". Yeah, that's a common complaint in my circles of ladyfriends.... /snark
In case you haven't had enough brilliant Carolla-isms yet, here's a snippet from an interview about the upcoming book:
You say in the book that "guys are smarter than women. ... Men build all the bridges, all the dams, go to the moon, et cetera. It's a fact" and note it's frustrating to see men depicted as idiots in TV commercials. How do you reconcile that with the fact that you have a daughter?Thanks for telling me what attitude to "adapt" toward your shameless, bare-faced sexism, Adam! Since a menz is telling me how to feel, I can be confident that it'll be the right way. XD
There are certain things that women are better at than men and men are better at than women, and I'm tired of everyone trying to shove us into the same Cuisinart. Every single commercial has a guy as a buffoon, but we sit and take it. Women maybe should adapt that attitude toward the book. There are obviously differences, but it doesn't mean my daughter can't be an inventor. She can be whatever she wants to be."
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Transcript from the Parker Spitzer interview starts here - although it starts a little bit before the video begins and concludes after it ends, so you get the full effect of this FAILtastrophe:
SPITZER: Now it's time for fun with politics. As we all know Kathleen wrote a book "Save the Males" and our guest tonight seems to agree with her that men are an endangered species.
PARKER: He's got a lot of man cred. He rose up from being a construction worker and boxing training to "Jimmy Kimmel," comedian and co-host of TV's "Love Line" and "The Man Show." Please welcome author of "In Fifty Years We'll all be Chicks," Adam Carolla.
CAROLLA: Thank you.
PARKER: All right, Adam, you don't look like a chick. Do you think you're becoming a chick?
CAROLLA: Well, if I took my shirt off I think...
PARKER: You did dance in a Zorro contest on "Dancing with the Stars," come on.
CAROLLA: Well, I was the only one entered in a Zorro contest, everyone else was trying to win a dance contest.
SPITZER: On a unicycle, no less.
PARKER: On a unicycle.
CAROLLA: You know what? I got no love for going out there on my unicycle in front of 20 million people and possibly landing on my keister and...
SPITZER: Oh come on, people must applaud you when you walk down the street, now.
PARKER: All right. So why do you think men are becoming chicks? I mean, I know why I think men are becoming chicks, why do you think?
CAROLLA: Well, I don't even think we're becoming women, I think we're becoming one. I think it's like an "X" and somewhere whenever they filmed "Mad Men" we were at the bottom of one side of the "X" and you guys were at the bottom of the other and we're heading toward this.
SPITZER: You think this is a dangerous thing to be avoided?
CAROLLA: It is.
SPITZER: You're trying to swing away this trend.
CAROLLA: I think there's a reason why we're different and it's mostly about the kids. I mean it's mostly about saying, here's dad and here's mom. Not here's blah and here's blah. You know, mom's got the six-pack abs and the dads staying home...
PARKER: OK, so you know that when kids come out of the chute they are different for the most part, they are very, very different, right?
CAROLLA: Totally different. Absolutely. I have twins.
PARKER: We try to make them the same. What's up with that?
SPITZER: Twins, boys, girl.
CAROLLA: I have a boy and girl and they're wildly different and it's the same deal. It's the same thing I sort of grew up on a steady diet from the '70s of all this crap where, well it's all society and the man and if you give a little boy a dolly he'll love the dolly just like he'll love his truck.
SPITZER: No, no.
CAROLLA: BS. BS. These people should all be run down and sued, by the way.
SPITZER: You're winning this debate now, right, I mean, you're winning. I think there's a real pushback and people are buying your... CAROLLA: How can you argue with it? it's so true, you have kids. You can tell.
PARKER: I gave my son a doll. I was one of those people...
SPITZER: No, you didn't.
PARKER: Yes, I did. I gave him a doll because I wanted him to be -- I grew up the same time you did. I did, but you know, he like started ripping the arms off and then...
SPITZER: Oh, my god.
PARKER: No, I recovered quickly because then I said what am I doing? This is ridiculous. And girls, girls will sit and watch things and talk and chitchat. You know, they like to do that. You know, they build little nests.
CAROLLA: We're very different. We're different and it's good. In the animal kingdom they're different. We don't have a problem with it. We're not like, hey, that polar bear chick and that polar bear dude aren't almost the same. How come she's doing this and he's out hunting for blubber? This is -- no, it's just the way it is.
SPITZER: You've got a view on everything in the world. You read this book and there's nothing you don't have an opinion about. I mean, you want people to vote based on how much they pay in taxes.
CAROLLA: Sure.
SPITZER: So Bill Gates and Warren Buffett get to choose the next president.
CAROLLA: Yes. Well, I have an idea -- I, in the book, say for every 10 grand you pay in you get one vote, because right now my mom's vote is canceling out Warren Buffett's vote.
PARKER: Is that right?
SPITZER: Your mom may be listening to this.
CAROLLA: She can't afford cable.
SPITZER: Another thing you love to say is "greed is good."
CAROLLA: Yeah, I think so. It motivates people. I know, you know, this sort of thing where it's like big pharmaceuticals always -- they're the man and they're nasty, bit it motivates them to come up with cures.
SPITZER: When you saw Gordon Gekko say that in "Wall Street" you know, that famous moment when he's up there, "greed is good" you said, that's it, that's great.
CAROLLA: Well, I mean, obviously there's limits, as we've seen, things can spin out of control but you want society and you want companies motivated. I mean you want someone to go, look, you cure AIDS and we'll give you a pat on the back or you cure AIDS, we'll give you billion, you get AIDS cure a lot faster.
PARKER: Apparently your mother is a good short because you talk about her a little bit. You said that you grew up on welfare and that welfare is "monetary methadone."
CAROLLA: Yes.
PARKER: So what do you wish would have happened instead?
CAROLLA: Well, I wish -- well, actually -- I mean...
PARKER: You wish you had been adopted.
CAROLLA: The thing is, is if you give somebody just enough to get by sort of in perpetuity then they will just sort of sink to that level. I saw all the wind taken out of my mom's sail. I saw all the fire taken out of her belly, you know? It's like you need to be a little bit hungry. You need to be a little cold when it's cold outside or a little too hot. I said, this is horrible. It's embarrassing. I don't want to live this way and it motivated me and I think when you just give people just enough it sort of just makes them all docile.
SPITZER: All right.
PARKER: All right, Adam Carolla, thank you so much for being with us. He's also got a podcast on iTunes and we will be right back.
The Overton Window: Chapter Twenty-Two
Kearns and Bailey, remember them? They're like Glenn Beck's own Odd Couple. "One's a narc, the other's a rat, they're Kearns and Bailey, Bailey and Kearns!" (Sing along!)
They're hanging out in Kearns' "double-wide" with "an ugly off-white cat, and a full-scale model of a small atomic bomb." (No singing!) The two are In Winnemucca, which is somewhere between Reno and Salt Lake City, prepping for their big sting operation.
"I don't want to come off like a puss, but is this bomb-looking thing, like, radioactive?"Oh, man, Bailey is such a puss! What a fag! Who's afraid of a little radiation? Radiation: You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too.
"Nah, not too much." Kearns returned with their coffee and sat in a nearby chair. "The core's inert; it's just a big ball of lead. There's some depleted uranium under the lining, so it'll set off a Geiger counter in case anybody checks. Here, look." He flipped a switch on a boxy yellow gadget on the table and brought its wand closer to an open access panel at the fore end of the model. The meter on the instrument twitched and a rapid clicking from its speaker ramped up to a loud, raspy buzz as the tip of the wand touched an inner metal housing. "Sure sounds hot enough though, doesn't it?"
Ahem...
Where was I?
Oh yes, so Bailey asks how Kearns convinced his partners that he scored a real nuclear weapon. There is some faction (faction!) thrown our way as Kearns references this incident, except makes it more John Travolta/Christian Slater by saying "six nukes left the base, but only five showed up" on the other end.
"Now we both know that something like that can't just happen, not as an accident anyway. It's like the Secret Service accidentally putting the president into the wrong car and then nobody missing him until noon the next day. It's impossible; there are way too many safeguards in place. Unless, of course, it was an inside job."Plot point! Plot fucking point! An inside job? The deuce you say! Anyway, blah blah blah, Kearns' story is that he, being the anti-government online superhero that he is, made some connections at the AFB and arranged to smuggle a nuke out before anyone knew it was missing.
Bailey asks more leading questions, delivers some clunky dialogue ("I haven't slept for twelve hours like that in twenty years"), and basically exists to give Kearns someone to exposit to.
"I would have thought you guys had all kinds of labs and engineers back at headquarters that would have built a model like this for an undercover operation. You know, so someone like you wouldn't have to bother with any of it yourself."Plot point, part two, electric boogaloo!
"Yeah, they do, but these last few years I've gotten accustomed to working alone. The less contact you make when you're undercover, the safer it is. Hell, I've been out in the cold so long on this one, as far as I know only one guy inside even knows I'm still on the payroll."Plot point III: Revenge of the Sith!
Woah! Are you getting all this? Because if you're not, I might be a little worried about your deductive capabilities, Miles Archer. Kearns' supposedly fake nuke is suspiciously real. Why? Because Kearns is so far undercover no one even knows he's still with the FBI! OMFGWTFHolyGuacamole! I am beginning to think Kearns ain't on the up and up. Danny Bailey, what have you gotten yourself into?
Is Kearns on the Doyle & Merchant payroll? Is the nuke active? Is Bailey a stooge? Yes! Yes to everything! Yes yes yes, and more yes!
At least that's my guess. What's your pet theory at this point?
Question of the Day
What popular band do/did you just never understand the appeal of?
I never really got 'N Sync, and I'm saying that as someone who saw NKOTB in concert not once, not twice, but five times. And, I kinda like some of Justin Timberlake's solo stuff. The whole 'N Sync thing just baffled me, though.
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.]
Also Today in the Rape Culture...
[Trigger warning for sexual violence, rape apologia, hostility to survivors.]
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled on the case of the cheerleader who was kicked off the squad for refusing to cheer for her rapist, and naturally they have ruled that she is required to cheer for the man who sexually assaulted her. The court additionally ordered her family "to pay the school district's legal fees on the grounds their suit was far-fetched and frivolous." Of course. The family is appealing the ruling. [Via.]
Meanwhile, in Britain, a woman who accused her husband of rape (to which he later pleaded guilty), but retracted the charges after her husband and his relatives convinced her to say they were untrue, has been sentenced to eight months in prison for a "false retraction." [H/T to Shaker gegi.]
Rage. Seethe. Boil.
Drop in the Bucket, But Every Drop Counts
[Trigger warning for sexual violence against children.]
So, there was a huge FBI sting called Operation Cross Country V this weekend, a product of ongoing investigations into the sexual exploitation of children, which resulted in more than five dozen (!) children being rescued from sexual slavery and nearly 900 arrests of adults suspected of involvement with adolescent sex slaves.
FBI spokesman Jason Pack said 69 children were removed from prostitution and 99 suspected pimps were arrested in 40 cities across 30 states and the District of Columbia. Authorities arrested 785 other adults on a variety state and local charges, Pack said.Prostitution connotes at least the possibility of consent. These children were not prostitutes.
(And thanks a shitload, MTV, for rendering "pimp" into a word that evokes images of garishly decorated automobiles, rather than a garbage nightmare of a human being who forces children into sexual servitude.)
All of the children who were found during the sting were aged 12-17. "Authorities are working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to confirm their identities," so that the children can be returned to their families (where appropriate). Children not safe with their families of origin will be placed into protective custody for the time being.
[FBI executive assistant director Shawn Henry] said child prostitutes are often recruited by loose knit groups that seek out kids who may be involved in drugs or runaways looking for a "responsible adult" to help them.And, ya know, out of trust and ignorance. Because they're children. I mean, any child who isn't naive to "the way of the world" when it comes to sexual exploitation is a kid who's probably already been victimized by sexual violence.
"There are groups of people out there preying on naive kids who don't have a good sense of the way of the world," Henry said. "Sometimes there's a threat of force, threats of violence. A lot these kids operate out of a sense of fear."
This isn't about what kids know or don't know. It's about dangerous, despicable, and determined predators. Let's try to keep the responsibility for this horror where it belongs. Which is directed at the AP, who almost certainly focused exclusively on the parts of Henry's statement that sounded the most like the axiomatic victim-blaming of exploited children that is so popular with the many purveyors and beneficiaries of the rape culture. (Like Bill O'Reilly.)
Aw, Hell Naw!
Don't have much time for comment, but had to post this:
GOP Candidate States Black Men Prefer Drugs to EducationReynolds lost, but I just don't know what to say about Republicans anymore. Many of them become angry when you point out that racism and protecting privilege seem to be HUGE parts of the party platform, but what do they do to counter stuff like this?
At a recent political debate in Champaign, Illinois, sponsored by the NAACP and the League of Women Voters, candidates for the state Senate were asked for their ideas on how to increase black enrollments at the University of Illinois. GOP candidate Al Reynolds of Danville stated, "Minority women are motivated more so than the minority men. The minority men find it more lucrative to be able to do drugs than to do education. It's easier."
And the absolute refusal to recognize and acknowledge structural factors that influence who gets educated, to pretend it's all about individual choices? Yeah, I'd like to bathe in that cluelessness one day. Maybe I wouldn't be so stressed.
I want to write a letter that includes a line that says, "Just FYI, not all or even most men of color are drug dealers. Try again."
Ugh!
And if y'all love me, somebody come get me!
Texas Considers Medicaid WithdrawalAnd these are the people who imagine themselves at the forefront of "protecting life."
Some Republican lawmakers — still reveling in Tuesday’s statewide election sweep — are proposing an unprecedented solution to the state’s estimated $25 billion budget shortfall: dropping out of the federal Medicaid program.
Daily Dose o' Cute
Video Description: Dudley and his pal Buck the Brindle Boxer have a run around the dog park.
They ran around together for ages, and when Iain and Dudley and I started playing our usual game of tag, Buck joined right in. He's such a sweet dog; I really like him, even though he's a total slobberchops who left my coat covered in drool.
Pix of all the furry residents of Shakes Manor below the fold (on most browsers)...
Matilda, who is 8.
Olivia, who is 6.
Sophie, who is 2.
Dudley, who is 2.
Actual Headline
"Blacks struggle with 72 percent unwed mothers rate."
Dunno if it was Yahoo News or the AP that slapped that garbage headline onto the accompanying article. 10,000 demerits to each of them, just for good measure.
There's a lot of fail in this piece: The gender essentialism. The disappearing of partnered-but-not-married parents, as well as traditional but not "traditional" (where "traditional" is a dog-whistle for a privileged white conservative fantasy world) family structures, e.g. intergenerational child-raising. The backwards framing of institutional racism, endemic poverty, an inequitably prosecuted "War on Drugs," a broken educational system, the outsourcing of industrial labor jobs, and a corrupt welfare system that tacitly encourages broken families as the "simple arguments for why so many black women have children without marriage," while heterocentrist slut-shaming is somehow the cutting edge of sophisticated debate.
But that headline. Ugh. That headline.
There are, of course, women who do struggle as single parents, but it's not the "unwed mothers rate" with which they're struggling. It's poverty. It's healthcare. It's childcare. It's paying the goddamn electric bill.
Which means that for women who are struggling, the solution is A FULLY FUNDED AND COMPREHENSIVE SOCIAL SAFETY NET, not encouraging marriages between people who don't want to get married.
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The woman pictured with her family alongside the article is Christelyn Karazin, founder of the "No Wedding No Womb" movement, about which Tami writes today here.
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, publishers of Dudley's Guide to Looking Cute for Treats, by Dudley Q. McEwan.
Recommended Reading:
[Trigger warning for suicide, bullying, homophobia] Andy: Anti-Gay Bullying Blamed in Suicide of Pennsylvania Teen
Peter: On 60 Minutes, President Obama apologizes to America for being a Democrat.
Mannion: What have you done for us lately, Mr President?
Fannie: I Eat [Trigger warning for disordered eating and fatphobia.]
Erin: I Am Your Mother [Trigger warning for fat hatred, disordered eating, sexual violence.]
Shoshannah: I Am An Actor. I Am Also Deaf.
BAC: In Memoriam - Jill Clayburgh
Blue Girl: Reduced and Owned
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