Dear English-Speaking World:
I am officially requesting immediate suspension of all further use of the truly detestable phrase "up in this bitch" as a synonym for "in here."
It is contemptible on so many levels that I would hardly know where to begin, had I the remotest inclination to explain everything that's wrong with it. Luckily, I don't. Suffice it to say, hearing people declare "it stinks up in this bitch," or "we need more beer up in this bitch," or similarly comment on whatever else they've observed about their environs (aka "this bitch") is not something I enjoy.
You might say there's a lot of disdain up in this bitch.
Please discontinue use effective immediately.
Bitchily yours,
Liss
I Write Letters
Question of the Day
Inspired by a recently seen Facebook post: "I just never use the word escarpment."
What fabulous word do wish you had occasion to use more frequently?
For The Birds
[Trigger warning for Christian supremacy.]
The truth revealed: Cindy Jacobs of Generals International explains how the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell is what killed all those birds and fish in Arkansas last week.
According to biblical principles, marriage is between a man and a woman, so we have to say “what happens when a nation makes a decision that’s against God’s principles?” Well, often what happens is that nature itself will begin to talk to us – for instance, violent storms, flooding. And you know there are actually some patterns that you can see where a nation will make a decision that is contrary to the principles of God and after that there is some kind of answer that God gives - being the God of creation, the God who created nature - but we don’t always understand what He’s saying.Well, I'm sorry for all the dead fish and birds, but if that's the extent of God's rage over the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, that's a pretty wimpy response. I mean, come on; we're talking about the creator of the universe and who did it in six days, so knocking down a couple thousand fish and fowl is like scratching your ass.
Well, there’s something interesting we have been watching – let’s talk about this Arkansas pattern and say, could it be a pattern? We’re going to watch and see. But the blackbirds fell to the ground in Beebe, Arkansas. Well the Governor of Arkansas’ name is Beebe. And also, there was something put out of Arkansas called "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" by a former Governor, this was proposed, Bill Clinton. As so, could there be a connection between this passage [Hosea 4] and now that we’ve had the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, where people now legally in the United States have broken restraints with the Scripture because the Scripture says in Romans 1 that homosexuality is not allowed.
It could be because we have said it’s okay for people who commit these kinds of acts to be recognized in our military for the first time in our history, there is a potential that there is something that actually happened in the land where a hundred thousand drum fish died and also where these birds just fell out of the air.
We queers are still second-class citizens; where's the fire and brimstone we were promised?
HT to Right Wing Watch.
Crossposted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
Today in Comprehensive Solutions
[Trigger warning for violence]
Fox News:
[Long Island Republican] Rep. Peter King said Tuesday he plans to introduce a new gun safety bill in Congress in the wake of the mass shooting in Arizona that killed six people and wounded 14 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.
King said his bill would make it illegal to knowingly carry a gun within a thousand feet of "certain high-profile" government officials.
Oooookay. I guess that's one option.
Hooray for safety!
Photo of the Day
A sentry dog in the village of Beryozovka outside Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, where the air temperature recently dropped to minus 28 degrees Celsius (-18.4 degrees Fahrenheit), according to local weather reports.I just love that photo.
Earlier today, when I was walking Dudz after about another four inches of snow had fallen, he brushed against a bush which dumped a heap of snow on his head, and he gave me this aggravated look like, "Aw, what the fuuuuuuuck. Shit, I hate this stuff."
From now on I will respond with, "There are dogs in Beryozovka who would LOVE to be in zero degree weather, you ingrate!"
Yes, She Did
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reveled before a standing-room-only crowd of more than 500 State Department employees celebrating gay pride at the agency's Loy Henderson Auditorium in Washington, D.C. last summer. "Gee, let's do this every week!" she said. This, it seemed, was to be more of a reunion of old acquaintances than a perfunctory speech on diversity.From Kerry Eleveld's profile of Secretary Clinton, "Madame Secretary," in this months' Advocate.
At first, Clinton glanced down—to the lectern and her prepared remarks. But her focus on the written page melted away as she looked up and rolled on with the speech, channeling the myriad mental notes she had made over the years.
Displaying an uncanny depth of understanding for the challenges that many LGBT youth experience, Clinton spoke of tragedies that would only come to national attention months later after a spate of heart-wrenching teen suicides dominated headlines for weeks. She called on the staff members before her to help create a safe space for gays and lesbians everywhere, "Particularly young people, particularly teenagers who still, today, have such a difficult time and who, still, in numbers far beyond what should ever happen, take their own lives rather than live that life."
Men and women around the world were being "harassed, beaten, subjected to sexual violence, even killed, because of who they are and whom they love," she said.
"This is a human rights issue," Clinton told the rapt audience. She ad-libbed, recalling an oft-quoted line from a landmark speech on women's rights at a U.N. conference in China: "Just as I was very proud to say the obvious more than 15 years ago in Beijing—that human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights—well, let me say today that human rights are gay rights, and gay rights are human rights, once and for all."
Asked months later what was going through her mind when she offered the unscripted line at the pride celebration, Clinton responds with her inimitable laugh. "Oh, heavens, I don't know—I don't know," she says before settling back into the moment. "I was looking out at the audience where a lot of longtime friends, political supporters, colleagues were sitting, and it just seemed so important and right to make that statement."
It's an excellent piece. I strongly encourage reading the whole thing.
As I have said before: This, Shakers, is a politician who keeps her campaign promises, even when she doesn't win the election.
Local Education Newz
[Trigger warning for gender essentialism, misogyny, and bi/homophobia]
OH HAI!
I see students in one of the poorest (and I believe blackest) parts of your town are struggling. Might I offer to help with some cissexist, heterosexist gender essentialism?
Trust me, I'm a doctor (of medicine), and I'm also good at making shit up.
P.S. Buy my book [TW] about the boy crisis. Then buy my book [TW] about the girl crisis.
P.P.S. [TW] I am totes not a bigot. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
P.P.P.S. Keep your fingers crossed for tomorrow's vote in Syracuse!
P.P.P.P.S. While you're waiting for my books to arrive, DON'T reader this letter from a teacher to Bob Herbert. It's not relevant to anything.
Two Facts
[Trigger warning for disablism.]
1. David Brooks wrote a column.
2. It's garbage.
I know, I know. I could write that every week! So here's a BONUS THIRD FACT:
3. David Brooks is a licensed medical practitioner who graduated with honors from the Bill Frist Institute for Remote Diagnosis.
Whooooooops! That's not a fact! That's a snide commentary on what an asshole David Brooks is. My bad!
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning for violence.]
"The two most common responses to violence in the U.S. are to ignore it or be entertained by it."—Bob Herbert, in another great column (although TW for ablist language), in which he OMG treats as self-evident the idea that violence doesn't exist in a hermetically sealed place separate from violent rhetoric.
Herbert also notes, quite rightly, that the next step is treating seriously the fact that we are "a society saturated in blood," where "more than a million people have been killed with guns in the United States since 1968, when Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were killed."
Random YouTubery: Way Back Home
Danny MacAskill, Scottish bikerobat* genius.
Video Description: A young white man on a bicycle performs all kinds of amazing stunts in front of various beautiful backdrops in Scotland. When I sent Liss the link last night, she described it as "like watching someone do free-running on a bicycle," which is a pretty good description for something I'm finding pretty indescribable.
* Bike + Acrobat. Coined by Liss, of course.
Let's Just Say...
...for shits and giggles that Jared Lee Loughner grew up in a void and the violent rhetoric and imagery that permeates our national political discourse had no relation whatsoever to his actions.
Let us leave aside any notion that people are affected by growing up in a culture in which it's acceptable to a Republican president for his lunch guests to say things like "I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus—living fossils—so we will never forget what these people stood for," and in which those sorts of things are said routinely and considered perfectly normal, where exhortations to violence against ideological opponents are widely regarded with the same sort of head-shaking, resigned, vaguely amused exasperation as the latest casual disgorgance of racial bigtory from Uncle Fred (as if that doesn't matter, either).
Let's get that perfect world of undiluted disconnection in our heads.
Now answer me this: In that magical world, why would anyone feel inclined to vociferously defend their use violent rhetoric and imagery?
Sure, the answer is "free speech." The objection to the principle of censorship, even self-censorship.
But that's a lousy answer, if you claim not to mean to convey and incite violence with violent rhetoric and imagery.
Free speech isn't about the actual words you use; it's about the ideas that you convey. There are many ways to express the same idea.
The only idea that must be conveyed using violent rhetoric and imagery is violence.
"Get Off"
[Trigger warning for fat hatred and discussion of eating.]
So. The fact that I am not a fan of Jamie Oliver and his mission to shame the world into thinness (and his insufferable devotees) will not exactly come as a surprise to regular readers. Which is why I generally try to resist writing about every example across which I stumble of Oliver's increasingly obnoxious crusade.
But this description of a scene from his show Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food, from Dr. Arya Sharma's "The Pedagogy of Obesity Reality Shows" (which I strongly recommend you read in full), is just beyond the everloving beyond:
Jamie returns to Natasha's house to find that she is once again feeding her daughter cheese-chips. "Sorry, I'm just embarrassed," Natasha says eventually. "I don't know how it gets like this. I really try with money, I do."Sharma adds that, in another episode, "another woman explains to Oliver, 'The thing with you, Jamie, is you live in a bubble. You've got no bloody idea what it's like for us.'"
Jamie, looking confused, replies: "Look," he begins, "I'm not going to say to you that I understand, because … well, erm, I don't."
Natasha gets tearful, and explains that during the week she had spent all of her benefit money on bus fares and overdue bills, and had little left to buy the ingredients for the recipe that Jamie had taught her.
As Jamie stands in the kitchen Natasha cries. "Come here," he says, moving towards her to hug her.
"Get off," she says, pushing him away.
Rage. Seethe. Boil.
Leaving aside the three-hour rant I could have about Oliver's manifest refusal to acknowledge people's right to choose to be fat (and/or "unhealthy," or whatever word(s) he would use as if they're synonymous), I'm struggling to find the words to sufficiently convey the profundity of my contempt for his continual insistence on admonishing people to take individual responsibility for systemic problems.
Oliver is hardly alone in sanctimoniously lecturing individual people to eat in a way that every aspect of their environment conspires to prevent them from doing, but he certainly has one of the loudest voices.
And the true absurdity of Oliver walking into people's homes and lives with the confidence that they will reverently follow his empyrean advice, then getting miffed when they don't, is that he is frequently asking them to change things about their lives over which they have no control, which he hasn't bothered to learn.
Yet, even appearing to be completely oblivious to the reality that his expectation entails their being able to overcome poverty, food access, and time constraints, and casually abandon the eclipsing, importune comfort of cultural tradition, he scolds them about how easy it all should be, which is some fucking chutzpah coming from a bloke who can't be arsed trying to understand the basic facts of a life he wants to change.
The privilege is suffocating, even to contemplate. "Get off" indeed.
For many people, changing one's diet is not difficult. For others, changing one's diet is incredibly challenging, whether because of external circumstances, emotional concerns surrounding food, or some combination thereof. That's not a moral failing.
The irony is that Oliver, and those who share his outlook, want individuals to solve systemic problems, and yet he refuses to acknowledge those people as the individuals they are, with individual circumstances and individual perceptions and individual needs.
All of the individual responsibility; none of the individual respect.
Of course, if Jamie Oliver respected people, he'd publish his cookbooks and eating guides and trust that people would use them, or not, in the best way for them, instead of treating people like gormless blobs of embodied helplessness in need of saving.
"Now with MORE unwanted hugs!"
[Jamie Oliver: You, sir, are no Tom Colicchio.]
The Pope on the Important Issues
The Pope is outraged that parents are being influenced by celebrities and their WEIRD BABY NAMES, and has commanded that Catholics give their children proper Christian names. If they don't want their families to BURN IN HELL! Or something:
The pope, who baptized 21 children on Sunday at a traditional annual ceremony at the Vatican, said afterwards that every new member of the faith acquires the character of a son or daughter of the Church "starting from a Christian name."He also noted that "Christian names are an 'indelible sign from the Holy Spirit' that help protect family life." So if your family is fucked up, you can blame your parents for giving you a pope-unapproved name. So there. And if you're named Mark or Mary, and your family is fucked up, that probably means you haven't given enough money to the church.
Italian newspapers had a field day with the story on Monday with headlines such as "Give your children Christian names."CNN just literally ran like a 10-minute segment on this important news.
One mainstream newspaper dedicated an entire page to it, including lists of names, an interview with a pastor, and a personal account by a man who recalled that priests in Italy at one time only allowed names of Italian saints.
Open Thread: Flooding in Australia
A street is covered by a flash flood in Toowoomba, Queensland January 10, 2011. Residents in Australia's third largest city, Brisbane, sandbagged their homes against rising waters on Monday, as police warned people in smaller outlying towns to be ready to abandon homes as forecasters predicted more heavy rain. [Reuters Pictures]Parts of Australia are currently being devastated by massive flooding, of the scope that recently ravaged Pakistan, India, and China.
The Guardian has an excellent interactive map of the flooding here.
For those in the affected areas, information on the flood hotline which has been established is available here.
A few articles to provide background and details on the flooding:
Sydney Morning Herald: Eight dead, scores missing in Australian flash floods.
Herald Sun: More rain hampers rescue efforts as death toll rises from Toowoomba and Lockyer Valley floods.
CSM: Australia flooding racks up a hefty bill.
Reuters: Floods threaten Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
Relief information is available here, and I will post more information as I find it. Readers are also welcome and encourage to post teaspooning suggestions of their own, as well as news links and updates.
Number of the Day
Three: The number of years in prison to which former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has been sentenced by a state judge for conspiracy to launder money.
State Senior Judge Pat Priest, citing the need for those who write the laws to "be bound by them," briskly rejected DeLay's impassioned argument that he was the victim of political persecution and improperly accused of breaking the law for doing what "everybody was doing."DeLay has promised to appeal the verdict to higher courts.
Priest said he agreed with a jury's verdict in November that DeLay had committed a felony by conspiring to launder corporate money into the state election, and ordered bailiffs to take DeLay - who was wearing a navy blue suit and his trademark American-flag lapel pin - to jail immediately. That was averted only when DeLay's attorneys quickly posted a $10,000 bond.
Priest also sentenced DeLay to five years in prison on a separate felony conviction of money laundering, but agreed to let him serve 10 years of community service instead of jail time for that charge.
