...if it weren't for that meddling Reagan.
The administration of the California State Universities has announced that it plans to charge tuition next year. The University of California will likely follow suit.
Since the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education, Californians have largely not paid tuition to attend California's public colleges and universities. They have, of course, paid fees. More on that in a bit.
This move by CSU comes at a time when higher education in the US is under attack, as is the very notion of government.
Colleges and universities do a lot of different things:
1. They engineer new, patentable technologies that are used to fight heart disease and people in Asia.
2. They train the next generation of widget technologists.
3. They push students and society to reconsider what they think they know, and expand (often conflicting) lines of thought.
Our schools still have the money to do the first of those three things (markets hurrah!). We seem to be struggling widget-wise, which makes zero sense even by the logic of bootstraps (but here we are!). However, it's that last bit that got potential California students in trouble.
In 1966, Ronald Reagan defeated Pat Brown (the guy who signed the master plan) to become California's 33rd governor. He looked at the academy (notably Berkeley) and saw a bunch of freeloading, widget-smoking commies who were belly-aching about how people in Asia were people, Black people were people, lady people were people, poor people were people, and so on. He wanted to make those widget smokers pay.
In 1970, State Senator Al Rodda surveyed Reagan's smashing success, which included a doubling the fees charged to attend UC in just two years.
As of this writing, the fees to attend UC hover around $10000, with the fees to attend CSU institutions around $4200. While this wasn't all Reagan, the man certainly deserves some credit.
The reality is that in the US, we're still 'cleaning up the mess at Berkeley.'
Cuts to funding in higher education are not merely about !!bootstraps!!. The anti-government, pro-bootstrap argument doesn't even make sense in the context of higher education (or most things, for that matter). When it comes to de-funding higher education, I think a different framing of the issue is called for.
I don't know about you, but students in my classes frequently get back papers covered with colorful notations like "what do you mean by this?", "you need to refine this", "such as....?", "you should give (more) examples to back up your argument." Historically, that's one of the things I'm theoretically paid for-- thinking critically and getting others to do the same.
Thus, it's hardly surprising that college campuses are places where some folks espouse ideas such as:
We should stop going to war to serve the interests of your friends' corporations.
We should stop putting so many people in jail to serve the interests of your friends' corporations.
And a recent favorite:
Global warming is real, and we need to do something about it yesterday, even if it hurts the interests of your friends' corporations.
Alas, the State of California is poised to end its experiment in tuition-free higher education (depending on your perspective, tuition may actually constitute the experiment) and I blame Reagan and a never-ending line of corporate interests.
The state of California may not have the money, but that's by design.
My nation does have the money to pay for universal free higher education, yet it chooses not to. I humbly suggest that the end of California's fifty-year run is as good a time as any to reassess our priorities.
And they would have gotten away with it too,
Too Clever by Half
[Trigger warning for violence.]
I've really just about had it with Jon Stewart:
After facing criticism for his recent Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, D.C., Jon Stewart has come up with the perfect solution to keep everyone happy: Another rally.Oh my aching sides.
On last night's episode of "The Daily Show," Stewart aired the grievances of left-leaning critics, including "Real Time" host Bill Maher, who claimed the rally was about nothing, and Keith Olbermann, who said Stewart created a "false equivalence" between the services of MSNBC and Fox News.
Stewart then joked that he will hold another event on November 13 to make it right, calling the occasion "the Rally to Determine Precisely the Percentage of Blame to Be Doled Out to the Left and the Right for Our Problems Because We All Know That the Only Thing That Matters Is That the Other Guys Are Worse Than We Are and/or Fear."
The thing that Jon Stewart is really, really, really missing here is underlined by the fact that it's three white, straight, thin, wealthy men (who publicly present as cis and able-bodied) with their own vast media platforms who are arguing about this shit, when the material, practical, demonstrable effects of the differences between the Left and the Right are not most evident among the most privileged of USians.
It is marginalized people who most feel, in all aspects of their lives, the difference between the Left and the Right (monikers which are, btw, distinct from the Democrats and the Republicans, who are generally center-right and extreme right).
Women's bodily autonomy, right to value her own life over a fetus, right to be childless by choice, freedom from marginalizing bullying, harassment, and legislation, and access to legal medical procedures, rape kits, emergency contraception, equal pay, equal opportunity, and equal rights are not (generally) under attack from the Left.
Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer people's basic equality, fundamental rights of marriage, parenting, employment, housing, healthcare, inheritance, etc., freedom from marginalizing bullying, harassment, and legislation, and personal safety are not (generally) under attack from the Left.
People of color do not (generally) find their basic equality, fundamental rights of access and opportunity, freedom from marginalizing bullying, harassment, and legislation, and personal safety under attack from the Left.
Trans people's employment rights, healthcare equity, and personal safety are not (generally) under attack from the Left.
The social programs on which poor people depend to keep them from falling off the edge—foodstamps, housing programs, healthcare assistance—the things that can make the difference between homelessness and a roof over one's head, eating and starving, life and death, are not under attack from the Left.
Undocumented immigrants are (generally) not demonized and scapegoated and spoken about with the most vicious eliminationist language, while simultaneously being exploited in horrendous working conditions, by the Left.
People with physical and/or psychological disabilities do not (generally) find their basic equality, fundamental rights of access and opportunity, freedom from marginalizing bullying, harassment, and legislation, and personal safety under attack from the Left.
When women and their allies and their abortion providers are targeted for violence, it is by rightwingers. Dr. George Tiller was not killed by a leftist. When gay/bi women and men, people of color, trans people, people with disabilities are targeted for violence, victimized by hate crimes, it is not progressives who wield the weapons.
The most vulnerable people in our society, whose actual lives are at risk because of virulent, violent, unconstrained hatred, are not being targeted by the Left.
That fucking matters.
And it matters not because I'm interested in bickering about "Precisely the Percentage of Blame to Be Doled Out to the Left and the Right for Our Problems," but because to gloss over that reality is to aid and abet with indifferent silence the extreme elements who would not merely see marginalized people indefinitely interred in their marginalization, but would see them FUCKING DEAD, given half the chance.
That's why Fred Phelps carrying "God Hates Fags" signs and my using vulgar language and an indelicate tone to vociferously defend gay equality is not the bloody same. And, let's be honest: I wouldn't be screaming my fool head off all the time in defense of gay equality if assholes like Fred Phelps didn't go on the offensive against my family, friends, and fellow citizens.
You're goddamn right I yell. But it's because I HAVE TO.
People die because of this hatred. I'm not going to be made to feel guilty because I don't respond to deadly antipathy with moderation.
The shame belongs to someone so fucking privileged that he doesn't feel obliged to yell, too.
Jon Stewart responded to criticism by "intercutting clips of Maher and other detractors of Stewart's recent D.C. rally (Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow) with a parody of Martin Scorsese's boxing classic Raging Bull featuring Stewart taking a slow-motion beating."
Hilarious. What a comedy fucking genius.
You know, Jon, there are people in this country who REALLY GET ATTACKED AND BEATEN because of who they are and/or what they believe. And the fact that you can equate criticism with violence is precisely the reason why you deserve the criticism you're getting.
For someone whose business is irony, you ought to appreciate that. Asshole.
The Overton Window: Chapter Twenty-Three
[TW for violent rhetoric and death threats.]
Nothing much happens in this chapter aside from a phone call. That's not an exaggeration either. Chapter twenty-three clocks in at a whopping 435 words. Who the heck writes a chapter that is only four hundred words?
I wonder how much blank space is in this book. You think it's ten or fifteen percent of the total page count? Maybe more? It would be interesting to sit down and figure that out. Well, maybe not interesting, per se, but maybe it'd be a solid basis for a class-action lawsuit against Beck's publisher. What's the tipping point between a blank book and a novel anyway?
Kearns calls the terrorist cell using "a hacker gizmo called an orange box to fake the caller ID display" to make it appear he'd called from Bailey's cell phone. I guess it was too much a liability to just bring along Bailey's actual phone. And if he did, we wouldn't get to read about hacker gizmos.
By the end of the call "Stuart Kearns was heartily endorsed as a verified patriot who could absolutely deliver the goods." Whew.
The phone is passed around, since the entire terrorist cell I guess was sitting wherever together waiting to take the call. That's convenient. Everyone talks to their hero Bailey, who I think maybe is the Beckian figure in all this.
Something began to nag at [Bailey] after they'd hung up. The troubling thing was that, though each of those men had laid claim to being his biggest fan, and had seen every video he'd ever produced and read every word he'd ever posted online, they'd all apparently seen and heard and read things that Danny Bailey was pretty sure he'd never actually said.
Aww, the poor thing. He's had his words taken out of context. His violent, dangerous rhetoric has been taken to heart, maybe a bit too literally, by violent, dangerous men. Don't ya just hate when that happens? Whoops! The overthrow-the-government schtick ain't so charming when some douchebag has pinched a nuclear weapon and is actually prepared to detonate it.
Speaking of which...
The cousin of a man arrested for threatening Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) in response to her healthcare vote is claiming the man was "under the spell" of Glenn Beck.
Charles Alan Wilson left a series of threatening messages on Murray's voicemail, saying:
"Just remember that as you are politicing for your reelection. It only takes one piece of lead.... Kill the fucking Senator! Kill the fucking Senator! I'll donate the lead.... Now that you've passed your health-care bill, let the violence begin. Let the violence begin."
"By your attempts to overtake this country with socialism, somebody's gonna get to you one way or another and blow your fucking brains out, and I hope it does happen. If I have the chance, I would do it."
"Kill the fucking Senator! Hang the fucking Senator! I hope somebody puts a fucking bullet between your fucking eyes. Far left liberal socialist democratic bitch. You mother-fucker. You sold the fucking people of the country out for socialism. I hope somebody fucking erasers your fucking life. Yes, I hope somebody assassinates you, you fucking bitch."
"We are going to fuck you up. We are going to fuck you up as bad as we can. Yes, the independents. The real people of this country, not you spineless fucking socialists. You better watch your fucking back, baby, because there's people gonna come after you with fucking both fucking barrels, bitch."
Wilson was arrested by federal agents in April.
Wilson's cousin, in a letter to the court, blamed Glenn Beck's "persuasive personality" as the driving force behind the threats:
What happened later with Charlie is something I think I can understand. He became basically housebound due to illness and his small world became even smaller. His brother got him a computer and he was able to stay connected with family. And he watched television and found Glenn Beck... I found Glenn Beck about the same time Charlie did. I understand how his fears were grown and fostered by Mr. Beck's persuasive personality. The same thing happened to me but I went in a different direction with what I was seeing. Rather than blame politicians for the current issues, I simply got prepared for what Glenn said was coming. I slowly filled our pantry as Glenn fed fear into me. I did not miss watching his show and could not understand why the rest of the world didn't get it -- Glenn became a pariah to me. But I was finally able to step away and realize the error of my ways. The media lost its grip on me. But it still held very tightly to Charlie.
While his actions were undeniably wrong and his choices were terrible, in part they were the actions of others played out by a very gullible Charlie. He was under the spell that Glenn Beck cast, aided by the turbulent times in our economy. I don't believe that Charlie even had the ability to actually carry out his threats.
Another of his family members states that Wilson "has had many surgeries in the past and has battled some major health issues." It seems, irony of ironies, that Wilson actually stood to benefit from healthcare reform, but had been so manipulated, so frightened, that Beck's lies and misinformation "scared him beyond comprehension."
Wilson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison.
PRINCIPLES!
I will readily admit that my profound loathing of John McCain makes me love this story way more than I should, but it's a pretty good story anyhow, revealing as it does the depth of George W. Bush's principles, which is to say about two inches (rounding upwards):
George W. Bush's bombastic return to the world stage has reminded me of my favourite Bush anecdote, which for various reasons we couldn't publish at the time. Some of the witnesses still dine out on it.LOLOLOL!
The venue was the Oval Office. A group of British dignitaries, including Gordon Brown, were paying a visit. It was at the height of the 2008 presidential election campaign, not long after Bush publicly endorsed John McCain as his successor.
Naturally the election came up in conversation. Trying to be even-handed and polite, the Brits said something diplomatic about McCain's campaign, expecting Bush to express some warm words of support for the Republican candidate.
Not a chance. "I probably won't even vote for the guy," Bush told the group, according to two people present. "I had to endorse him. But I'd have endorsed Obama if they'd asked me."
Make no mistake: That's not because he particularly likes Obama or his policies. It's because he hates John McCain SO MUCH.
[Via Ben.]
Question of the Day
Although my earlier post is the first thing I've written about learning something from an animal, it's not the first time I've had the experience, which I'm sure is not all that uncommon among humans generally inclined to learn.
I daresay I've learned from each of my pets, even something as simple as how to expand my patience, heh. (I'm looking at you, Olivia.) And from animals that were not my pets, too—horses I worked with, creatures I've seen at the zoo, the possum who adopted me and came begging at dinnertime on my back porch at a Chicago flat.
So: What is something you've learned from and/or by watching an animal?
Of Course
No charges in destruction of CIA videotapes, Justice Department says:
No one will face criminal charges for the destruction of CIA videotapes depicting harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects during the Bush administration, the Justice Department said Tuesday.Accountability is for suckers! USA! USA! USA!
Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said federal prosecutor John Durham has conducted an "exhaustive investigation" into the destruction of the tapes, which show the interrogations of two of the CIA's high-value detainees. "As a result of that investigation, Mr. Durham has concluded that he will not pursue criminal charges for the destruction of the interrogation videotapes," Miller said.
No, Thanks. I Guess I'll Just Never Go Anywhere.
[Trigger warning for sexual assault.]
Flying While Fat already makes me reluctant to do air travel these days, because I am constantly fearful of being required to purchase a second seat that I cannot afford in order to get home.
Flying While A Survivor presents its own set of problems, which got exponentially worse when airports started installing full-body scanners, and then got infinitely worse last month when the TSA instituted "enhanced pat-downs," to which one must submit if one doesn't want to submit to a graphic body scan.
Despite the fact that the TSA asserts passengers will not be patted-down by opposite sex agents, and that the pat-downs are not excuses for agents to grope passengers, nor that the pat-downs are done in full view of other passengers as a deterrent to pressure them into the full-body scanners to avoid being sexually assaulted, this does not seem to be accurate.
This is not something to which I am willing to subject myself, so I guess I won't be going anywhere I need to fly for the foreseeable future. And I'm going to guess I'm not the only survivor of sexual violence, particularly who lives with PTSD, who is fundamentally unwilling to be put through that shit.
Of course, I have the privilege of not having to fly anywhere to keep my job. Lots of people don't have that option. And, as sexual violence disproportionately affects women, this becomes yet another potential employment obstacle for the gender who is already disadvantaged in the workplace. Swell.
I guess I don't need to point out to this crowd the bitter, bitter irony of terrorizing passengers in the name of protecting them from terrorists.
We have seen the enemy and zie is us etc.
[H/T to Shakers Megan and Zen.]
Daily Dose o' Cute
Video Description: Olivia and Sophie use my workspace to watch the sparrows who like to play in the vines outside my office window.
Pix of all the furry residents of Shakes Manor below the fold (on most browsers)...
"I see you, Two-Legs."
"LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL I'M IN A BOX!"
"Ur controller iz mines now."
"What?"
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.]
I'll Run at Your Side
"That guy coming in now—he's my friend. He had to put his other dog down earlier this week."
Iain and I shifted our gazes from the man standing beside us toward the entrance to the dog park. A white man in his early middle age had just come in with a beautiful black lab at his side. The other dogs, as is their usual habit, ran to the gate to greet the new arrival, who had no particular interest in greeting them. Sam, as we later found out he is called, held fast to his person's side. All he wanted was for his person to throw the ball! throw the ball! throw the ball!
His person accommodated him, launching a tennis ball over and over across the field, which Sam would pursue with singular determination.
It's not totally unusual to find a dog at the dog park who ignores everything else to concentrate exclusively on retrieving. What was unusual about this pair was the silence with which they executed the ritual. There was no excited encouragement, no plaintive and excited barking. It was a perfunctory motion, steeped in grief.
Dudley, bred to run sprints not marathons, was already lying in the grass, panting after having run around a lot already with Buck. And he is resoundingly disinterested in chasing balls or playing with dogs who don't want to interact in any meaningful way.
But something compelled him to get back on his feet and run with Sam.
Dudley, who doesn't care a whit about running after balls, started nonetheless running after Sam every time Sam went after a ball. Over and over and over. Back and forth they ran across the field, Sam chasing the ball and Dudley chasing Sam.
And doing it with a stamina and intensity I've never seen.
He stuck to Sam like glue, and I was a little worried at first that he was being a pest, but Sam didn't seem to mind.
When Dudley finally could run no more, he came over to us with his "I'm ready to go now" look. Sam's owner approached us and patted Dudley's head, complimenting him on what a handsome boy he is. And then, in the way that dog owners have of talking to other dog owners by talking to their dogs, he said, "Thank you for running with Sam today, Dudley. Sam's buddy died unexpectedly this week, and he hasn't had anyone to play with."
Iain and I expressed our condolences.
Sam's owner kept talking to Dudley, while stroking his head. He told him that Sam wasn't very good with other dogs: "But you figured out how to keep him company."
Dudley, his paws stained green with grass stains and the pads of his feet engorged and red from running, leaned against Iain's leg and stood quietly receiving this affection and gratitude.
Sam's owner patted his head one last time before he wandered away, back to throwing the ball for Sam, who was still going. "Go get it, Sam!" he shouted.
I looked down at Dudley, who was so very tired, and told him what a good boy he is.
There are things I had hoped for and things I expected when we adopted Dudley—but though I have read abundant stories of people who learned something from or experienced something profound with their dogs, that was not one of my hopes nor one of my expectations. I hoped and expected to love Dudley vastly and boundlessly, and I do. But I never imagined how capable of moving me, how able to exhort me to a better self, such a silly, awkward collection of legs and ears could be.
I can be someone who does not run away from grief, or squirm in its presence, but runs alongside its bearers, steadily and tirelessly. I'm pretty sure I could have been, anyway, but it was my lovely dog who made me sure, who made me see, on a Saturday afternoon at the dog park, how easy it is to just Be There.
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.
--------------------------------
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.
