Write a condescending 800-word essay blaming the other team for mucking things up with their condescension.
If you're looking for inspiration, here's today's David Brooks column. I'm sure you won't understand it, what with your cold, steely, rational liberal minds, but it's definitely "A" work.
Creative Writing Assignment
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
And it's only 66 words. It's not really the text as much as the actual poll, though.
And the fact that these two women are being treated as if they're in some kind of fucked-up contest together: The woman who used to belong to Nick Lachey vs. the woman who belongs to him now. Yikes.
[Commenting Guidelines: This is not an invitation to snark on Jessica Simpson, Vanessa Minnillo, Nick Lachey, or Eric Johnson. It's not an invitation to talk about them at all, really. It's about US' framing, e.g. how women are cast to be in competition for men, how engagement rings are represented as the measure of a woman's worth, etc.]
Random Druidery
Alfie showing off the latest fashion in canine Druidic wear.
I cannot be arsed to look at Stonehenge right now.
Colin Powell Joins the "Let's Not Rush Equality" Contingent
Colin Powell was on Larry King Live last night, to play concern troll about rushing into equality by repealing DADT: "I share Senator McCain's view that we ought to let the process unfold and not try to intercept it with court rulings or with people trying to get a vote out of the Congress when the Congress is not ready to vote on it."
I can't wait to see what happens when that can is kicked to the end of the road.
This dog and pony show to delay the inevitable is truly disgraceful. It's not only completely dishonest, but I am sick to the fucking teeth of the overt US exceptionalism embedded within this argument. Other nation's militaries have integrated openly gay/bi servicemembers for years without "undermining military readiness," or any other catastrophic problems.
But our military is so super special that we can't just trust their example! I mean, acting as if someone else could teach us something?! Hell no! That's downright un-American!
Barf.
Question of the Day
What's the strangest purchase you've ever made online?
(If you've never made an online purchase, a meat-world purchase will suffice.)
This is a real thing in the world.
I was looking for something on eBay this weekend and among the results was the below listing, which had absolutely fuck-all to do with for what I was searching, making stumbling across it all the more hilarious:
Image Description: A screen cap of an eBay listing for a "HORRIBLY UGLY CHRISTMAS SWEATER VEST."
Image Description: Screen cap of the item description, which reads: "UGLYCHRISTMAS SWEATER VEST SIZE 3X. THIS HORRIBLY UGLY VEST IS BLACK WITH GOLD METALLIC CROCHETED TRIM AROUND FRONT,BOTTOM AND ARM HOLES. IT HAS TACKY RED AND MAROON POINTSETTIAS WITH METALLIC KNOTTED BALLS IN CENTER.ORANGE AND GOLD KNIT BOW ACCENTS.V NECK WITH GOLD BUTTONS DOWN FRONT WOMENS SIZE 3X BUT WILL FIT A MAN AS WELL. LEAVE OPEN FOR EXTRA ROOM. SEE MEASUREMENTS."
So brilliant.
I'm only sorry that I forgot to post it before the auction ended, Shakers.
With any luck, it will be relisted, since there were, shockingly, no bidders.
Daily Dose o' Cute
Video Description: Dudley runs around the dog park on a truly beautiful autumn afternoon, with some of his friends: Dash the Australian Shepherd, Emma the American Bulldog, and her older brother (whose name I don't know), and Sam the Labrador. Set to Yann Tiersen's Comptine d'Un Autre Été: L'après-midi.
My battery ran out before I got any great video of Dudley and Sam running together, but there is a still shot of the two of them together at the end of the video. (And also below.)
As always, pix of all the furry residents of Shakes Manor below the fold (on most browsers)...
Dudley and Sam. In this picture, Dudley's caught in Iain's favorite position when he runs, where he's almost folded in half and his back legs actually stretch out in front of his front legs.
Dudley.
Sophie, aka Monitor Cat.
Olivia.
Matilda.
Action Item
Tomorrow, the Center for Reproductive Rights is taking the FDA to court "for ignoring a March 2009 court order to end age restrictions on emergency contraception."
At the start of his administration, President Obama declared that politics would no longer play a role in U.S. science policy, stating, "we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology." And soon after FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg was confirmed, she told reporters that it was her mantra to make FDA's decisions more "science-based."The age of consent is 17 or younger in all but 8 states. Only in the fucked-up paradigm where young women are considered mature enough to have sex but not mature, intelligent, or autonomous enough to make their own decisions about both sex and its potential consequences, and only in a fucked-up rape culture where we diligently ignore anything resembling sense, can some tortured argument be conceived to deny emergency contraception to young women.
So in March 2009, when the court ruled that the FDA acted in "bad faith and in response to political pressure" when it repeatedly and unreasonably delayed making a decision on Plan B and departed in significant ways from its normal procedures, it thought the new administration would "conduct a fair assessment of the scientific evidence." This has obviously not happened, and the Center is returning to the courts to make sure the FDA complies with medical and scientific consensus that says there is no rationale for age restrictions to emergency contraception.
It is imperative that this restriction be ended. Voice your support of the Center for Reproductive Rights here.
Earworm
Space Oddity, I love you dearly. DEARLY. But you can get out of my head now. Three solid weeks of running on a constant loop is quite long enough.
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.]
Quote of the Day
"I fully support the NOH8 campaign and all it stands for and am proud to be a part of it. But I stand by my husband's stance on DADT." — Cindy McCain, tweeting support for DADT the same day she appeared in a video denouncing it.
Number of the Day
917: The number of deaths in Haiti, as of Friday, from a vast cholera outbreak.
The Ministry of Health reported that as of Friday, there had been 917 deaths and more than 14,600 were hospitalized with cholera-like symptoms. That is up from the 724 deaths and 11,125 hospitalizations reported a few days before.One of my favorite charities, Water.org, has been working in Haiti since before the earthquake to give access to clean water to Haitians. If you want to and are able to help, please donate to Water.org here.
The disease has been found in 6 of Haiti's 10 provinces, known as departments, and is most severe where it originated, in Artibonite, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of the deaths.
Several epidemiologists have said the disease has not peaked and will likely worsen and break out in other regions of the country, with United Nations health officials estimating about 270,000 may be sickened in the coming years.
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Livsy's Fluffy Fatpants.
Recommended Reading:
Mustang Bobby: McCain Shifts on DADT Again
Restructure: In which white people dislike Asian people attending Canadian universities. [TW for racism]
Fannie: Whoops! Anti-gay Ordinance Accidentally Hurts People Who Matter [TW for homophobia]
Digby: Credibility
Amanda: "Abortion" as the Right's Multipurpose Scare Word [TW for misogyny and body policing]
Andy: 'The Most Incredible Thing': Pet Shop Boys Write New Contemporary Ballet
Leave your links in comments...
The Stephen Fry Thread
[Trigger warning for misogyny and sexual violence. This came up in an unrelated thread this weekend, so I thought I'd open a post about it for discussion.]
So, Stephen Fry gave an interview. And in the interview, the openly gay writer and actor (whose sexuality I'm noting only so that readers know when he talks about how straight men feel, he is not merely treating personal experience as universal, which would be bad enough) was quoted as saying some pretty nasty things about women and female sexuality:
[Fry] said he believed most straight men felt that "they disgust women" as they "find it difficult to believe that women are as interested in sex as they are".Fry then took to his Twitter account to denounce the interview, and to accuse The Observer, who quoted the article, "of portraying him as 'the antichrist' after it reported that he said women do not really like sex."
"For good reason," he declares in a candid interview in the November issue of Attitude magazine. "If women liked sex as much as men, there would be straight cruising areas in the way there are gay cruising areas. Women would go and hang around in churchyards thinking: 'God, I've got to get my fucking rocks off', or they'd go to Hampstead Heath and meet strangers to shag behind a bush. It doesn't happen. Why? Because the only women you can have sex with like that wish to be paid for it."
Fry, 53, continues: "I feel sorry for straight men. The only reason women will have sex with them is that sex is the price they are willing to pay for a relationship with a man, which is what they want," he said. "Of course, a lot of women will deny this and say, 'Oh no, but I love sex, I love it!' But do they go around having it the way that gay men do?"
"So some fucking paper misquotes a humorous interview I gave, which itself misquoted me and now I'm the Antichrist. I give up," he tweeted.
He then wrote about the incident on his blog (via), and said, in part: "For reasons that should be obvious now if they weren’t before, I don’t give print interviews. I never consent to them any more than you, dear reader, would voluntarily consent to being mugged, raped or burgled, but when under pressure I will compromise by agreeing to do a profile for some small magazine or other."
Yes, being misquoted is exactly like being raped. (No, it's not.)
And, oh yes, about that "misquote." Attitude stands by its reporter. As well they should do, considering that Fry has made exactly the same comments before:
Text Onscreen: Men & Women. Stephen Fry then speaks, sometimes onscreen, intercut with images of women and men running in marathons and other pointless images (emphasis original): Women, for some reason, like to claim that they're as excited about the idea of sex as men are, but it's manifest nonsense. I mean, when do women hang around in parks, looking for casual encounters with men? They just don't. Well, the only ones that do are prostitutes, who do it for money, which proves the very point. [laughs] They have to be paid to do it. Whereas, when it's just men, they don't want to have a relationship; they just want to have sex. Now, if women were like that, we all know, men would say, "Oh, thank you!" And for some bizarre reason, women don't want you to believe this. "Oh, that's not true at all! I saw a waiter the other day with quite nice buttocks—made me quite juicy just thinking it!" And a man would say, "The other day?! What about every fucking minute of every hour of every day?! You just don't get it! You don't get it; you don't get it, what it's like to have one of these in your bloody trousers. You have no idea what it's like!" And women don't. Lucky for them!"So, what we have here is a gentleman who claims to have been misquoted saying misogynist things he's said on camera previously, and then saying it's like being raped.
Yikes.
I Write Letters
To Whom It May Concern:
Calling me an "angry leftist" is pretty pathetic as insults go. Yes, I'm a leftist. Yes, I'm angry. I don't feel like either of those things is something for which I ought to be ashamed.
I recognize that there are groups of people among whom calling me an "angry leftist" discredits me. But I don't really give a fuck what those people think of me. So.
Better insults, please.
(Fair warning: Any insult containing "fat" or "cunt" is an automatic disqualification in the category of "better.")
Love,
Liss
Angry Leftist
CNN Plays Cheerful Jackboot for TSA
[Trigger warning for sexual assault.]
The below clip aired on CNN this morning. Honestly, I don't think the TSA and the US security state could've gotten any better if they wrote the segment themselves. Discussing a viral video of a male passenger warning a male security agent about to give him an enhanced pat-down, "if you touch my junk, I'm going to have you arrested," the two anchors yuk it up about what a goofball the passenger is, noting that he was not allowed onto the flight and is "now facing a $10,000 fine and a possible civil suit," for asserting his desire and right to not be sexually assaulted. That's followed by a whaddaya-expect sort of exchange about how compliance is required and how that requirement is justified because "you've got to remember the Underwear Bomber."
Not a single hint of questioning the efficacy of the security measures. Not a passing thought of debating whether invasive screening is safe, appropriate, justifiable, or even good business. Just an argument for submission, disguised as a friendly conversation. On a national news program.
[Transcript below.]
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Things are getting very tense at airline security checkpoints across the country, and that would be an understatement. [laughs]
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: [laughs] Boy, are they ever.
COSTELLO: Yeah, get this: A confrontation between a California man and TSA officials in San Diego has gone viral this morning. [laughing] Thirty-one-year- old software engineer John Tyner was going on a hunting trip with his father-in-law on Saturday. He refused that full-body scan, and then he turned his cell phone video camera on, recording this exchange with security agents.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TSA: Come on over here.
PASSENGER: All right.
TSA: Do you have anything in your pockets?
PASSENGER: I don't think so. They had me take it all out.
TSA: No belt, no nothing?
PASSENGER: No, no belt, no nothing.
TSA: Do you have any external or internal implants that I need to be aware of?
PASSENGER: No.
TSA: We are going to be doing a standard pat down on you today, using my hands and going like this on your body.
PASSENGER: All right.
TSA: Also, we're going to be doing a groin check. That means I'm going to place my hand on your hip, my other hand on your inner thigh, slowly go up, and slide down.
PASSENGER: Okay.
TSA: We are going to do that two times in the front and two times in the back.
PASSENGER: All right.
TSA: And if you'd like a private screening, we can make that available for you also.
PASSENGER: We can do that out here, but if you touch my junk, I'm going to have you arrested.
TSA: Actually… [long pause] We are going to have a supervisor here because of your statement.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: Oof! Oof! Tyner, of course, never made it to that hunting trip. TSA agents didn't really like his response. Supervisors were called in, and he's now facing a $10,000 fine and a possible civil suit. I understand his pain, but you've got to remember the Underwear Bomber. And he refused to go through the big x-ray check [laughing] that shows you kind of naked.
ROBERTS: Yeah, he didn't want to go through the body scanner. So opted for the security check then didn't like that. So… There's a lot of controversy going on with these things.
COSTELLO: And once you go through security, you can't get a halfway security check.
ROBERTS: Yeah, you can't say, thanks, I'm going to leave without them threatening you, right?
COSTELLO: Yes. Without them threatening you— You're not getting on that plane. Unless they do the whole security check, you're not getting on. So he couldn't go halfway through. So he was out of there.
Um
[Trigger warning for mention of sexual violence.]
Bill Clinton Joins Cast of The Hangover 2:
First Mike Tyson and now … Bill Clinton?Apart from the fact that the Hangover franchise is deeply misogynistic and thinks rape jokes are hilarious, the first film was also racist, homophobic, fat-hating, and classist. (Maude knows it was probably objectionable in other ways, too, but I've not seen the whole thing.) That the former president believes this is a project with which he wants to be affiliated is enormously disappointing (if not terribly surprising).
Sure enough, that will be the former president sharing screen-time with the fun-loving guys in The Hangover 2, now filming in Thailand, a Clinton source confirms to PEOPLE.
Clinton, who'll play himself in the comedy, shot his brief appearance on Saturday in Bangkok, where part of the production takes place. He was in the capital city to deliver a speech on clean energy.
Fans of the first Hangover will remember Mike Tyson's memorable performance in that movie last year, while this sequel recently made news for the coming and going of Mel Gibson, whose cameo role will now be filled by Liam Neeson.
And given the location of the sequel, the tone of the first film, and Todd Phillips' general oeuvre, there are almost certainly going to be jokes about the sex trade and sex workers from marginalized populations.
You know, a primary concern of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Something tells me that someone didn't quite think this through. Then again, Bill ain't exactly known for not impulsively doing stupid things to amuse himself without much thought for how it might affect his wife.
