Hosted by a baguette.
Question of the Day
Does it seem like there's a dearth of big end-of-year movies this year? Maybe it's just me, but I'm not even sure what the Oscar contenders are supposed to be, even despite the studios' habit of packing in all the "good stuff" at the end of the year.
Usually at this time of year, there are about 10 different movies on my list that I want to see, but right now I'm basically just looking forward to Tron. (I'd also like to see 127 Hours, if it ever plays closer to us than a 45-minute drive into the city.)
What end-of-year films do you want to see, if any?
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.]
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Trigger warning for fat hatred and patient abuse.]
This is a letter-to-the-editor about "the true nightmare of people who are obese and smoke." It is written by an asshole.
The asshole, Phillip Jones of Birmingham, Alabama, is no ordinary asshole, though. He begins his letter with an establishment of his unassailable expertise by informing us that he is "a medical sales representative who attends many spine surgeries."
I'm sorry—why, exactly, is a medical sales representative attending surgeries? Oh, right. So he can attain Super Special Medical Wisdom, which he can then impart to us, like: "Adopt a sensible diet now and give up the cigarettes." Thanks for the lecture, Dr. Genius.
Here's some mind-blowing info for you, sir, in return for your kindness: Not all fat bodies are the same.
Insert here every post I've ever written about how being fat is not always a choice, about the intersection of fat and disability, about how some people are fat because they have back problems rather than the other way 'round, about the intersection of fat and surviving sexual assault, about the intersection of fat and poverty, about access to fresh foods, about how there exist plenty of healthful fat people, about the changing parameters of obesity, about the correlation between HFCS subsidies and obesity, etc. etc. etc., none of which ultimately matters when it comes down to the basic fucking decency of treating fat people with dignity, irrespective of their particular reasons for being fat, and honoring their individual agency.
Now that that's out of the way, can we get back to WHAT THE FUCK THAT DUDE IS DOING ATTENDING SURGERIES?!
[H/T to Shaker Kathy. Commenting Guidelines: This is not a thread to debate individual choices about eating or smoking. In fact, this is a thread about how that's nobody else's fucking business.]
Quote of the Day
"I made it clear I am not going to compromise on my principles, nor am I going to compromise the will of the American people."—Rep. John Boeher, on bipartisanship.
Btw, I really love how "the American people" are constantly said to have a singular will. You'd think if anyone would appreciate the inanity of that assertion, it would be the jackasses whose livelihoods are made by being elected to a perpetually and disagreeably fractured legislative body as part of a representative democracy.
Ann Coulter Plumbs New Depths
by Shaker BrianWS
[Trigger warning for homophobia, rape culture narratives.]
I know I shouldn't expect much from Ann Coulter, and in all honesty, I don't. But I read anyway, because obsessively reading the garbage heaps that regularly get published by conservative commentators is what I do.
Usually I get through an Ann Coulter opinion piece with something close to the following formula – laugh once from either an inoffensive joke or some clever wordplay, agree with her once (usually on a matter of indisputable fact that cannot be poisoned even by her dishonesty or bullshit worldview), and then spend the rest of the piece holding my hands tightly around the top of my head to make sure that just in case my eyeballs pop out of my face from rolling them too much, I'll be able to catch them and they won't dirty my couch.
But this one – this one seems low, even for her. She managed to avoid the single laugh and the single point of agreement that she and I usually share once a week over coffee.
I've just been doing this the entire time I've been reading this pile of trash.
Coulter's argument can be boiled down to this: Marines don't want to fight with gays, and who gives a shit about what anyone else wants?
From there on out, the piece devolves into nothing but a long string of homophobic "jokes" that aren't even clever to begin with. Let's check out a "Greatest Hits" of sorts.
The rest of us shouldn't get to vote on gays in the military any more than we get to vote on the choreography of "Chicago."Get it? The military is full of straight dudez, so who cares what the gays want! Hey queers – leave our straight men to do the manly shit like fighting, and we'll leave you to do the gay shit like dancing and choreography. Know your place!
Military combat is a very specialized field comparable to nothing in civilian life. There has to be a special bond among warriors -- and only one kind of bond.Ha! LOL! "And only one kind of bond." This one is pretty tired, and I'm a little disappointed in Coulter for taking such an easy way out, because we all know that if we let predatory gays (who, as an aside, we know only care about having lots and LOTS of sex and that every gay man thinks every straight man is HOT and loses all control around them! You should see me out at a bar on a Friday night, she's totes right!) into the military, then all of the sudden everyone will just be fucking in the barracks instead of fighting wars for us. (As another aside, I think this might actually be good military policy – less war, more gay fucking in the barracks. Pretty much eliminates civilian casualties in wars of choice, eh?) But back to the point – they'll be "bonding" with their raging, uncontrollable hard-ons! Too easy, Ann. Oh, and still wrong.
Racial prejudice is not the same thing as sexual attraction, so please stop telling us this is just like integrating blacks in the military.Well, Coulter is right about one thing there: Racial prejudice is not the same thing as sexual attraction – mostly because they're two totally different things. One demerit point for not even making sense. Hating baseball is not the same thing as liking ballpark hot dogs. There, I've found new logic, thanks to this new example. But then again, I'm not even sure that I made a point about the merits of either baseball or ballpark hot dogs, but I suppose I made as much sense as she did, so wevs, I won't waste any more time on this one. I think we all know what the point she was TRYING to make was – and that's still wrong anyway.
A Military Times survey in 2005 found that nearly half of all women in the military claim to have been the victim of sexual harassment -- ludicrously more than women in civilian life.Not sure where this point really comes in or what purpose it is supposed to serve in her argument, but she gets to call women liars, and I believe that it is in the Handbook on Conservative Opinion Pieces that you must call women liars, power-hungry harpies, or sluts at least once or it won't get published – but is it really that "ludicrous" to believe that an institution that values macho attitudes, hyper-masculinity, and male bravado would produce such results? Color me less than shocked.
Only 15 percent of gays currently serving said they would want their units to know they're gay.Gee, I wonder why? See the commentary directly above this.
Also, 2 percent of gays currently serving giggled when asked about their "unit," which is down from 5 percent from last year.Oh my aching sides! Gay men only think about their dicks, amirite?!
After talking about the number of discharges for "homosexuality," Coulter concocts a wonderful storyline about how it is likely happening…
So gays and girls can join the military, get taxpayers to foot the bill for their education and then, when it comes time to serve, announce that they're gay or pregnant and receive an honorable discharge. Indeed, there's no proof that all the discharges for homosexuality involve actual homosexuals.Yep, spot-on again. All of these folks getting discharged like Lt. Dan Choi, Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, and Sgt. Jene Newsome, among countless others, could really possibly be just heterosexual people gaming the system.
Which leads me to…
Maybe we could have an all-gay service! They'd be allowed to wear camouflage neckerchiefs (a la Paul Lynde) and camo capri pants. To avoid any sexual harassment claims, they'd have to have their own barrack, which we could outfit with a dance club, a cosmo bar and a counseling center called "The Awkward Place." Their band would mostly play show tunes, and soldiers captured by the enemy would be taught to reveal only their name, rank and seasonal color analysis ("I am Private First Class Jeffrey Smith and I'm a 'winter.'")There are too many bullshit stereotypes to even begin to break down, but I'm sure they don't all need to be pointed out to Shakers.
What angers me the most about her essentially wrapping up this entire column with this heap of garbage is that it's clear that this is all one big joke to her. The idea that there is an epidemic of straight people playing gay so they can lose their jobs and go to college is absurd, as are all of her other ideas.
The reality is that this incredibly discriminatory policy affects real people with real lives doing their real jobs. There's no excuse for this policy still being in place, and to treat it as an opportunity to trot out stereotypes about gays is as offensive as it is a waste of written words.
These are real people who are being affected by this – people who are willing to die for their country, and she's reduced their bravery and the discrimination they face to "jokes" about dance clubs, cosmo bars, and show tunes. If I were going to build a scale of bravery, honor, and integrity, I would have to think that being willing to die for your country as a job must rate at least one rung higher than getting paid to make gay bar jokes, right? And it's low, even for Coulter, to treat every brave LGBT person who has been discharged, and those willing to join and fight for their country, as little more than something comparable to the punchline of a Will & Grace episode.
[Commenting Guidelines: If you can't comment without invoking Coulter's appearance, questioning her gender, or centering her womanhood, don't bother commenting. Comments which fail to adhere to these guidelines will be deleted.]
Photo of the Day
Speaking of Liss' pro-life/toilet thread, I just happened to snap this pic in Saint Paul a couple of weeks back:
[A picture of a billboard that reads (in an adorable faux Comic Sans): "Dad says I'm the CEO of the House. A New Human Life Begins At Conception." It features a baby wearing a tie and sitting in what is undoubtedly a super-serious business chair.]
I'll Clean Your Toilets...IF I'M BORN!
Via Copyranter, a series of posters that are part of a truly creeptacular anti-abortion campaign in Russia:
They read, from left to right: "I will make you happy. If I'm born." / "I will amaze you. If I'm born." / "I will help you. If I'm born."
Well, no one ever told me I could have a MAGIC baby! This changes EVERYTHING.
Naturally, I particularly love how all three of the featured babies read as female, which makes their promises to serve and delight fucked-up on an even grander level.
Winter Wonderland
It is STILL snowing here, and we are really starting to get buried. It's beautiful, though, and I'm going to try to enjoy it before it gets all dirty and gray.
Below the fold are more still images of the winter weather, as well as a strange but wonderful story and a video of Dudley from this weekend.
The arrow in the above picture points to where I took a faceplant in the snow earlier today while walking Dudz, lol. (It's so bright and white outside I couldn't tell exactly where I was aiming the camera!) There's a huge hole which isn't visible under the snow, right near the street in front of our neighbor's house, and I was just thinking, "Ooh, I'd better be careful because that big hole is right arou—MOTHER FUCKER!"
No damage. Just a lot of snow coverage. And Dudley gave me this look like, "See? I TOLD you we shouldn't be outside in this shit!"
[Also at Daily Motion, here.]
Video Description: Dudley was having NONE of being outside while it was sleeting on Saturday, and did not even want to leave the veranda at the dog park. We still managed to find a way to have fun, though: Iain and I stood at either end of the veranda, and Dudley ran between us, or ducked out the exit in its middle, and ran around for maximum fun-time with minimum exposure to the elements, lol.
Re: the fleece coat Dudley is wearing at the beginning of the video... The other day, before the big storm hit, I'm out walking Dudley, and he's not wearing his coat because it was poop-time and he won't do poop business while he's wearing it, I believe because the material is kind of noisy when he squats, which freaks him out. I'm thinking about how we need to get him a fleece coat when this guy comes walking up to me carrying what looks like a blanket. (He got out of a running pick-up truck parked in a nearby drive-way, and I don't know if he lives there—it's neighbors we don't know—or if he just pulled into the driveway because he was passing by.) Anyway, he holds out what I think is a blanket and says, "These are two fleece coats I made for my greyhound. He died and I thought you might be able to use them."
Me, gape-mouthed and babbling: "Thank you so much! I'm so sorry about your dog. This is just so nice of you. I was literally just thinking I need to order a fleece jacket for him. I can't even tell you how appreciative I am!"
He told me he hoped I could use them, but if they didn't fit to go ahead and give them away to another greyhound. I was so shocked, I barely knew how to respond, except to sputter thank you like a half dozen more times. He just smiled and pet Dudley's head and said, "I still miss my greyhound every day." And then he turned and walked away.
So Dudz has been wearing his new handmade fleece coat, and guess what? He totes does his poop business while wearing it!
What a strange and wonderful world we live in.
The Overton Window: Chapter Thirty
Where were we? It's been a while, so maybe we need to get caught up. Oh yeah, Molly slipped Noah a mickey and he just now woke up, some days later. (Elsewhere, Bailey and Kearns are off to sell their nuclear warhead, but that's not important in this chapter.)
Noah showers, puts on some clean clothes, and heads to Darthur's office. Darthur is there, "long fingers knit together." I wish he'd been doing this, but c'est la vie.
Charlie Nelan, Gardner family lawyer, is there, though no longer looking like the fancypants he is. (From chapter thirteen: "No matter where you happened to see him, he always looked as though he'd just stepped out of the 'Awesome Lawyers' issue of Gentlemen's Quarterly.") But tonight, he's a mess:
Charlie Nelan was standing by the window. He looked over, then shook his head almost imperceptibly as Noah met his eyes. Charlie seemed worn-out and wired at the same time, his wrinkled shirt undone at the collar, sleeves rolled up to the forearms, no necktie. This was far from the lawyer's polished public face; it was the look of a man who'd been awakened from a sound sleep to help fight a five-alarm fire.
So, you know things must be really bad if Nolan's shirt is wrinkled. Noah pops some pills the doctor gave him "to counteract the lingering effects of that anesthetic patch she'd peeled off his chest when they found him." Okay.
Also there is "the boss of the firm's security service, an ex-mercenary hard guy named Warren Landers." Yay for new characters! boo for ex-mercenary hard guys. No offense to any ex-mercenary hard guys in the audience, but that is just a clunky, and seemingly disingenuous, descriptor.
Landers was the bully in the schoolyard who'd grown up and found himself an executive job where he could dress up and get paid for doing what he still loved to do. There was always an undertone when he spoke, a smirk in his eyes as if something about you was the punch line of a running joke he was telling in his head.
That is certainly a timely, if unfortunate, choice of words from our author. Anyway, Darthur is glad Noah wasn't hurt, but there are more important things to discuss.
"How did you find me?"
"The same way I found you last Friday night, at the police station," Charlie said. "We found your cell phone. They'd taken out the battery, but someone put it back in and turned the phone on about an hour ago."
Whut? They tracked his cell phone on Friday, too? Wasn't he supposed to be on a date on Friday? Do they always track his cell phone on his free time? Is that how they gauge his outstanding record of success with the ladies? Or did they know something was up from the beginning? And if they knew something was up on Friday, why'd they let all that business of breaking into to office happen Saturday? Jebus, that makes no sense.
Even assuming they had no clue on Friday, after Noah was arrested with the teabaggers, you'd think they'd have kept an eye on him and not let him break into the conference room and steal the Powerpoint presentations.
I must say, The New World Order's security team does not impress me very much.
"The first piece," Landers said, "was that we figured out who leaked that government document to the press last week."
"Who was it?"
"It was scanned and sent out from right here. About two hours after it came into the mailroom."
Whoops!
The next four pages or so detail how Molly infiltrated Doyle & Merchant, got herself close to Noah, and then used him to steal the Powerpoint presentation.
Noah looks at the dossier on Molly Ross, and it is apparent she sent out the document, and did her best to hide that fact.
"Keep going," Landers said. "It gets better."
And by better, Landers means, quite obviously, "even more ridiculous":
The next page was a photo of her in some academic environment, and it took Noah a few seconds to recognize all the things that were different. She wore glasses, thin half-rim frames and subtly tinted lenses. Her hair was longer and lighter, almost blond. But the changes went beyond her appearance. There was a sophistication about her in this photo, a style and a seriousness that he'd either overlooked or that she'd somehow hidden in their short time together.
In another shot she appeared to be at a rally of some kind, with her mother on one side and the ubiquitous Danny Bailey on the other, his arm around her waist and hers around his as they all pressed together for the camera.
The next picture seemed more recent. Molly was alone, wearing aviator sunglasses, a backward baseball cap, cut-off Daisy Dukes, and a camouflage tank top. In her hands was what looked like a military-grade automatic rifle with a drum magazine, held as if it were the most natural accessory a pretty young woman could be sporting on a bright summer day at the gunnery range. For whatever reason he was reminded of that famous shot of Lee Harvey Oswald in his backyard, holding his radical newspapers in one hand and his murder weapon in the other, just a few months before his appointment with JFK at Dealey Plaza.
Seriously? Cut-off Daisy Dukes and a military-grade automatic rifle? What garbage.
"The way we figure it," Landers said, "these people wanted to get some dirt on the government, our new clients, specifically, and they identified our company as a weak spot in the security chain. So they sent this girl to a temp agency we use, and you can see right there"-he tapped one of the papers in the open folder-"she wrote up a résumé that made her look like a perfect fit for a job here, and talked her way in. This Ross girl, she can be a charmer, I understand.
"But it wasn't enough just to get into the mailroom," Landers said. "Oh, it gave her some limited access, but to do the kind of damage they wanted to, they needed some inside help."
Whoops!
And blah blah blah, Molly had been sent in to put the moves on Noah, teabagger style. She used "his Facebook profile, his Twitter history, his full set of responses from a variety of questionnaires at his online dating sites, the rambling, soul-searching posts from his personal blog, even his browser history from a number of recent consecutive weeks" to get inside his head, as it were, and sidled right up to him.
"You didn't stand a chance, Noah," Charlie said. "She came here specifically to get close to you and then make the most of it."
Blah blah blah Molly copied the key to Noah's apartment while he was asleep and then used it to break into his place later. ("We'll know pretty soon if they planted something there, but it doesn't look like they took anything.") Then, after she drugged him, she took the teabaggers back to Doyle & Merchant to steal the rest of the Powerpoint files, which Noah just showed her how to do. Whoops again, Noah.
Noah "had a brief impulse to ask how Landers had managed to gather all of this" information, and it seems a really good question. Well, sort of. I mean, if Landers found out all this info so easily, why the fuck didn't they do this before she made her way into the mailroom?
I get that this is just a mailroom clerk form a temp agency, but still. You're trying to enact the New World Order or whatever. Wouldn't everyone get a background check? They just caught a fucking janitor stealing secrets, right? You think they'd tighten up security just a bit after that. (Nevermind that the woman the janitor called (Molly's mother) appears in the very fucking dossier everyone is mulling over right now.)
Like I said: The NWO's security detail: Less than impressive.
"They cleaned out that squatter's apartment where we found you," Charlie said, "but they left some conspicuous incriminating evidence behind: some radical wing-nut literature, a couple of weapons, and some other assorted contraband. They were probably going to call the police to the place with an anonymous tip."
"Why would they do that?"
"We think they wanted you to be found there with that stuff, so you'd be implicated as an accomplice in this whole thing. That way we'd want to keep it quiet to protect you, and we'd be less likely to make a federal case out of it."
That makes even less sense. They wanted to frame Noah for stealing files from work? To keep it quiet? Huh? Oh, who cares.
So, yeah, that's chapter thirty, more or less. The good news here is that this has brought us over the two-hundred page mark. So, yay for there being only eighty more to go! Though, that is gives us precious time for something to actually happen.
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, from deep in the snow bunker.
Recommended Reading:
Fannie: Civil Union Me
Tami: Exemption from Criticism Not One of the Five Freedoms [TW for racism]
Andy: Three Gay Discharged Veterans Sue Government in New Federal Court Challenge to 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'
Melissa: Headline of the Day [TW for racism]
Athenae: Changing Everything
crunktastic: Men and Feminism: A Primer [TW for reference to related discussion about sexual violence]
Mustang Bobby: Coal in Their Kettle [TW for Christian supremacy]
Brian: They Are Talking About You and What Fat Acceptance Really Threatens {TW for fat hatred and diet talk]
Leave your links in comments...
Parts of Healthcare Legislation Ruled Unconstitutional
CNN is reporting that a federal judge has ruled parts of the healthcare legislation unconstitutional. "The key issue of contention was the "individual mandate" requirement that most Americans purchase health insurance by 2014." The Justice Department is expected to appeal.
UPDATE: You can read the whole decision here (pdf).
UPDATE 2: Atrios tweets:
i guess we could just tax people and pay for health care that way #extremeleftideasthatareconstitutionalLOL.
UPDATE 3: Josh Marshall observes that the federal mandate being ruled unconstitutional "is an example that decades of Republicans packing the federal judiciary with activist judges has finally paid off."
Ugh
Steve Harvey is back with more of his wisdom about men and women and relationships. (If you're not familiar with this guy's shtick, here is Renee's "Steve Harvey" archive.) And, like all the rest of his gender essentialist, heterocentrist, deeply misogynist claptrap, this "men and women can't be friends" garbage is about as fresh as pterodactyl droppings. It's also one of the key narratives of the rape culture.
[Transcript below.]
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Remember in the classic movie "When Harry Met Sally," and the character played by Billy Crystal insisted, "Men and women can't be friends!"…? Well, hugely popular syndicated radio and talk show host Steve Harvey agrees—in a big way. In his latest book on relationships, "Straight Talk No Chaser," Harvey tells me face-to-face why women who think he's just a friend are delusional. This kind of frank talk is why expectations are high that "Straight Talk" will rival his first breakthrough best seller. [begin videotaped interview] So where'd this come from—
STEVE HARVEY, ENTERTAINER/AUTHOR: I mean, it's a blessing, true enough, but really it was just me sitting down being honest. All of my friends are men. I don't have female friends. I don't. I'm incapable of that.
WHITFIELD: Why? What do you mean?
HARVEY: Well, because, you know—
WHITFIELD: Because you have a wife?
HARVEY: Well, I have a wife and I don't really have female friends because, look— Okay, let's get rid of this myth right now—
WHITFIELD: [laughing] I want to know why!
HARVEY: OK, let me tell you this. Let's get rid of the myths. You're an attractive woman. There's some guy somewhere saying, yes, we're friends. No, that's not true. He's your friend only because you have made it absolutely clear that nothing else is happening except this friendship we have. We remain your friends in hopes that one day there will be a crack in the door, a chink in the armor, and trust and believe that guy you think is just your buddy…? He will slide in that crack the moment he gets the opportunity. Because we're guys.
WHITFIELD: [laughing] And you think most men think this way?
HARVEY: Ninety-nine point nine percent of us think that way. And you tell this to a woman and it just blows her back. "No, I have male friends." You have male friends because they know it can be nothing else right now. I'll tell you what, all your male friends—just ask them in a friendly way: "If I wanted to date you, would you be okay with that?" And watch—WATCH!—the fireworks. Watch! I'm telling you.
Also...
As a good companion piece to Rep. Weiner's comments, Paul Krugman notes Beltway Myth becoming reimagined fact in real time, in response to Dana Milbank's terrible piece in which he claimed that "a protracted debate on the public option" delayed the passage of the insurance industry giveaway healthcare legislation. Observes Krug:
Um, that's not what happened — and I followed the health care process closely. The debate over the public option wasn't what slowed the legislation. What did it was the many months Obama waited while Max Baucus tried to get bipartisan support, only to see the Republicans keep moving the goalposts; only when the White House finally concluded that Republican "moderates" weren't negotiating in good faith did the thing finally get moving.Yes, well, it's certainly easier to be indignant at your ungrateful base if you imagine you tried valiantly to get them everything they wanted and failed, rather than treating the primary goal as your first bargaining chip.
So look at how the Village constructs its mythology. The real story, of pretend moderates stalling action by pretending to be persuadable, has been rewritten as a story of how those DF hippies got in the way, until the centrists saved the day.
The worst of it is that I suspect Obama's memory has gone down the same hole.
Let It Snow
As you might have heard, we're having quite the blustery snowstorm here in the Midwest. I managed to get a few shots before the wind picked up this afternoon, giving us the white winds of a lake effect blizzard.
Open Thread
Hosted by Bruce Springsteen.
This week's open threads have been brought to you by bosses.
