[Trigger warning for sexual violence; rape apologia; victim-blaming.]
Not two months after the New York Times was quite rightly resoundingly excoriated for its appalling coverage of the rape case in Cleveland, Texas, I read this unbelievable piece about a New York City police officer on trial for raping a woman who he had been summoned to help while his partner "stood guard."
The article is headlined "In Rape Trial, Officer Calls Woman the Aggressor and Says They Only Snuggled." Now, using the claims of an accused rapist as a headline is a pretty dodgy move in the first place, but it's particularly repulsive when it is patently a lie: The story later reports that the woman has a recording of the officer "in which he made several statements implying that he had had sex with her."
That piece of information, however, is buried in the nineteenth paragraph, well beyond the first couple of paragraphs read by the average reader. Leaving a crucial fact that contradicts the headline until six paragraphs from the end of the story is such awful, and such evidently biased, reporting that it quite literally would not have passed muster in my high school Journalism 101 class.
But here it is nonetheless, in the Paper of Record.
In an article, by the way, which opens with the sentence: "For the past several weeks, Police Officer Kenneth Moreno has sat silently in a courtroom amid accusations that he raped a drunken woman whom he had been called to help."
A drunken woman.
Not inebriated. Not intoxicated. Not incapacitated. Drunken.
She is drunken. Her alleged rapist, however, is emotional: "Officer Moreno flatly denied ever having sex with the woman, becoming emotional when one of his lawyers, Joseph Tacopina, asked him about the allegation."
Well. Between a drunken slattern and an emotional officer of the law, it's clear whose story we should believe. Please disregard the recorded evidence in paragraph nineteen.
Email the Public Editor, Arthur Brisbane and/or submit a Letter to the Editor.
The New York Times' Coverage of Sex Crimes Continues to Be an Absolute Disgrace
Question of the Day
If someone gifted to you a small plot of land, say five US acres, in any climate you desired, and money was no object, what would you do with it?
Still Talking, This Guy
[Trigger warning for misogyny, Islamophobia, and reference to self-harm.]
Rush Limbaugh says so many stupid things on such a regular basis that it's hardly worth the time to single one out as if it's a rare event, but occasionally he says something so absurd that it warrants a quick comment. This is one of those times…
Now before you people go getting all offended on me, you gotta understand something: The customs in Islam and the Muslim world are quite different from the feminized culture of the United States. Here's a guy with three wives living in a pigsty; one oughtta be enough to keep it clean. No—don't do that to me! Do not look at me that way! We're talking about—we're talking about the Muslim religion; we're not talking about feminized America. I told ya—even, even warning you, I got the reaction I was warning you not to bother me with. It's suicide to tell a joke today about how a dirty place is 'cuz a woman won't clean it. I'm not stupid enough to do that! But over there, what else do they do? You know, that and run around in a kitchen! I mean, that's exactly—you got three of 'em over there, and the place is still a pigsty. Well, that's what I say—babies and clean!First of all, I love the idea that it's dangerous to say something misogynist in the US. Let's ask Imus about that one.
But the real kicker in this one, for me, is the utter absurdity of Limbaugh simultaneously sneering at the "feminization" of the US (which he evidently regards as a terrible thing) and at the subjugation of women in some Islamic traditions (which he also naturally regards as a terrible thing). Leaving aside his false premise of an imagined monolithic Muslim culture and his hilarious implication that the US is a misogyny-free zone, I wonder what role it is that Limbaugh imagines women should play in the world, since Muslim women shouldn't be oppressed, but US women shouldn't be influential.
The calculation with which I'm left is that Limbaugh believes all women should be dominated, but in the right way—that is, by white American men.
Sounds about right.
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
He's a Frog, Stupid! — A Very Helpful dating primer for the ladies, because women (not straight women, but just "women") SAY they want to date nice guys, but then the stupid bitchez "choose guys who are six payments behind on their Harleys and spend the greater part of their days trying to find space for their next tattoo or explore extraneous body parts to pierce."
Ho ho! John R. "Jack" Schafer, Ph.D. really has us pegged AMIRITE, LADIES?!
I'm not sure whether my favorite passage is:
In the story of the frog and the prince, a princess kissed a frog and the frog magically turned into a prince. Ladies, this is only a fairy tale.or:
Women often remark that nice guys are boring. Ladies, if you want excitement, go skydiving.Let's call it a tie.
Whoooooooooops There Is SO MUCH Green in Your Movie!
One of trailers preceding Thor this weekend was the trailer for Green Lantern, otherwise known as The Green Ryan Reynolds, which looks as though it will be as bad as Thor was good. Even though The Green Ryan Reynolds looks like a low-rent garbage disaster, I will almost certainly be seeing it, because nerd.
But let me tell you this: However bad the special effects look in the below trailer, they look even worse on the big screen, which is approximately as bad as they looked on the cover of Entertainment Weekly.
And OMG THIS MOVIE IS SO GREEN. I mean, you expect a lot of green, because no doy, but OMG IT IS SO GREEN. It's so green it looks like it was directed by Joel Schumacher in the mid-90s. It's so green that the title track is "It Ain't Easy Being This Movie," by Kermit T. Frog. It's so green that Big Energy has lobbied Congress to have it banned. It's VERY GREEN, is what I'm saying.
Oh, and also: It stars Ryan Reynolds.
Green planet with lots of green things and glowy green light and people wearing greensuits. They're having a meeting about an "unprecedented danger, an enemy powerful enough to destroy entire civilizations." The
Purple Squarehead Alien in greensuit delivers ring to Ryan Reynolds: Here is your personal invitation to become a hero, sir! Ryan Reynolds speaks the oath while holding the green ring near the magical green lantern and gets his own greensuit. He is whisked through space and time to the green planet, where he gets his green training on and receives a green sword. A greensuit gives him the lowdown on his magical superbowl ring: "Its limits are only what you can imagine." Ironically, this is a message that would also be useful for writers of superhero movies. (But CANON!!!!!!eleventy!!1!)
Cut to Peter Sarsgaard, who is obviously evil because his assistant is a black woman and his laboratory is DEFINITELY more teal than straight-up green. Whatever evil he's gotten himself into has apparently settled in his frontal lobe, which is getting distractingly bulbous. Tim Robbins is so going to barf all over that mutant head.
Blake Lively consoles the Green Ryan Reynolds who has doubts about being the chosen one. She believes in him. Yay! Don't let us down, Green Ryan Reynolds, because ALL OF EARTH is counting on you! No pressure, though.
Peter Sarsgaard's head continues to bulbify. Green Ryan Reynolds seeks the help of the other greensuits. He's got a green machine gun! Take that, Peter Sarsgaard. I hope it's enough to save THE PLANET!
P.S. Peter Sarsgaard LOL YOUR HEAD!
In the Navy...
You can:
1. Find pleasure
2. Search the world for treasure
3. Learn science technology
4. Begin to make your dreams all come true
5. Learn to fly
6. Play in sports and skin dive
7. Study oceanography
8. Sign up for the big band
9. Sit in the grandstand
10. Sail the seven seas
11. Put your mind at ease
12. Protect the motherland
13. Join your fellow man
14. Make a stand
15. Get married on base by a Navy Chaplain if you're a same sex couple stationed/residing in a state that recognizes same-sex marriage.
The changes came in the form of an April 13 advisory memo issued to all chaplains which said the Chaplain Corps was revising its Tier I DADT Repeal training manuals, which had previously indicated that same-sex marriages are not authorized on federal property.Good news! Homomentum AHOY!
Citing “additional legal review” by Navy attorneys, the Chief of Navy Chaplains, Admiral Michael Tidd said the Navy “has concluded that, generally speaking, base facility use is sexual orientation neutral.”
“If the base is located in a state where same-sex marriage is legal, then the base facilities may be used to celebrate the marriage,” added Tidd.
(If you do not get the list reference, it comes from the 1979 Village People hit, In the Navy)
Quote of the Day
"Well, you know, when it comes to racism and racists, I am the least racist person there is. And I think most people who know me would tell you that I am the least racist; I've had great relationships. In fact, Randal Pinkett won, as you know, on The Apprentice a little while ago, a couple of years ago. And Randall's been outstanding in every way. So I am the least racist person."—Donald Trump.
Just LOL.
You know, not that I expect a man whose life revolves around numbers and competition to appreciate this idea, but ranking precisely how racist you are compared to someone (or everyone) else is really bullshit.
Donald Trump is a white man socialized in a white supremacist culture—and I'd love to meet the white person born and raised in the US who doesn't have internalized racial biases.
Without rigorous self-examination, we're all racists (and sexists and homophobes and transphobes and disablists and fat-haters and…) by default, by virtue of our socialization in a culture steeped with negative stereotypes; we internalize those messages so profoundly that even those bigotries that target us, the narratives used to marginalize our own identities, get turned in on ourselves. The question is not whether we have biases; we all do. The question is whether we leave them unexamined.
And something tells me that Donald Trump hasn't spent a lot of time meaningfully engaged with self-examination.
[Related Reading: Speaking of Racism; Actual Headline.]
Daily Dose of Cute
I was sitting at the table, going through some pictures I just uploaded and a figure appeared behind my laptop screen.
The Thor Thread
So, I saw Thor this weekend, and it was actually quite fun. It also passes the Bechdel Test: Natalie Portman and Kat Dennings discuss SCIENCE! (and good job on the SCIENCE!, Sean), and Portman's Jane Foster may be one of the most well-drawn female scientists who's graced the big screen, simply by virtue of her being allowed to look and behave like a real person. She isn't stuck behind a pair of unfashionable glasses that are meant to oblige us to pretend that Natalie Portman isn't beautiful, nor is she socially awkward and graceless and imbued with the other stereotypically characteristics of the Female Nerd. It's evident that Foster is a smart, dedicated, ambitious, and courageous professional woman—who also happens to be beautiful.
Foster also mentions having an ex-boyfriend, which was perhaps just a throwaway line to explain why she'd have men's clothes and an identity to lend to Thor, but that seemingly minor detail is strangely effective in fleshing out the character and underscoring that she's a complete human being, with a personal life (and quite possibly a sex life), in addition to her professional life, that existed pre-Thor.
As regards The Big Canon Controversy, i.e. the casting of the amazing Idris Elba (pictured above) as Heimdall, the gatekeeper for Thor's home of Asgard, well, you all know how I feel about that sort of thing—and, frankly, if one can suspend disbelief to get one's head 'round a magical hammer but can't get one's head 'round a black man playing an imaginary deity BECAUSE CANON!!!!!!eleventy!!1!, one really ought to consider that there is a line at which "canon" starts to operate in the same way as "tradition" to entrench privilege.
There were people who threatened to boycott the film over the casting of Elba as Heimdall (and/or the casting of Tadanobu Asano as Hogun the Grim), to whom all I can say is: Good. I'm glad your racism ruined a fun movie experience for you.
Overall, the movie was pretty decent—a bit of mindless fun. It looks pretty, and the special effects have a nice sort of gauzy retro feel that evokes the 1980's Clash of the Titans and the 1983 Lou Ferrigno classic Hercules. There were a couple of belly laughs, and, despite the absurdly compressed timeline inherent to all such films (sure, everyone can totally become a new person in three days, and doesn't every gal fall in love with an alien titan in like two seconds?), the story's pretty good. Loki's reversal is maybe a little thin, but, again, still quite strong for this sort of film.
My biggest complaint, frankly, is that Kenneth Branagh had Rene Russo (!) on board and didn't do a thing with her. More Rene!
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, publishers of Deeky's Guide to the Movies: Stay Home!
Recommended Reading:
Rabbi Jason: Hillary Clinton Removed from Iconic Photo by Hasidic Newspaper
Paula: US Navy Gives Okay for On-Base Same-Sex Marriages
Andy: Holder Clarifies LGBT Immigration Decisions; Says Administration Will Continue Enforcing DOMA
Charlotte: One of the Most Extraordinary Experiences of Fat Embodiment in My Life
Arturo: Open Movie Thread: Thor Scorecard, Conan & Colombiana Trailers, Tarantino vs. Slavery?
The Angry Black Woman: Giant Double Helix Made of People!
Leave your links in comments...
Box Office News
I was scouring the internet this morning for Atlas Shrugged Part 1 news, but there's nothing new out there. It's almost like the whole liberal news media blackout thing or whatever producer John Aglialoro was calling it is real. Except it's not. The truth is no one cares. Not even me, really. (And yet I keep writing about it. It's a sickness.)
Atlas Shrugged Part 1 dropped to 29th place at the box office, pulling a dismal $600 per screen this weekend. That is roughly about six viewers per screening. Ouch! The good news here is that it will be out of theaters ASAP and on DVD shortly. This still doesn't mean you can park wherever the fuck you want when using Redbox though. Just keep that in mind.
Meanwhile, it looks like Mel Gibson is officially box office poison. The Beaver, directed by Jodie Foster, tanked in its opening weekend. Whoops!
In better news, I guess, Thor hammered its way (See what I did there? Yeah, I know, I hate myself too) into theaters with $66M. Also at the top of the heap: two movies about heterosexuals getting married (Jumping the Broom and Something Borrowed), a Christian film (Soul Surfer) and a handful of sequels.
Note, on those sequels, I've never seen anything in the Fast and Furious franchise, not even by accident when flipping the channels. I've never heard of the Hoodwinked series, but I think it's for kids. (Any kids out there that can confirm that?) I hearby nominate Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family for most awkward film title of the year.
Rounding out the top ten was a cartoon of some sort (Rio), RPattz in a non-sparkling-dracula role (Water for Elephants), and a raunchy teen sex comedy (Prom). Go, modern cinema!
A Tale of Two Stories
Story the First: Home Market Takes a Tumble. Most of this story is behind Wall Street Journal's paywall, but here's an excerpt:
Home values posted the largest decline in the first quarter since late 2008, prompting many economists to push back their estimates of when the housing market will hit a bottom.There are a couple of important points about this I want to note: 1. A lot of USians, especially following George "Everybody Gets a House!" Bush's administration, are directly affected by the housing market in a way they are not by the stock market. Especially because...
Home values fell 3% in the first quarter from the previous quarter and 1.1% in March from the previous month, pushed down by an abundance of foreclosed homes on the market, according to data to be released Monday by real-estate website Zillow.com. Prices have now fallen for 57 consecutive months, according to Zillow.
...[M]onthly declines for February and March were "really staggering," [Stan Humphries, Zillow's chief economist] said. They indicate "a reflection of the true underlying demand, which is now apparent because most of the tax credit is out of the system, and it's being completely overwhelmed by supply."
...Prices are decelerating in large part because the many foreclosed properties that often sell at a discount force other sellers to lower their prices. Mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have sold more than 94,000 foreclosed homes during the first quarter, a new high that represented a 23% increase from the previous quarter. More could be on the way: They held another 218,000 properties at the end of March, a 33% increase from a year ago.
2. USians who owned homes were encouraged to treat their home equity like a piggy bank during the last two decades. (Because why address the spiraling healthcare costs bankrupting USians, for example, when you can tell people to gamble with their homes to save their lives?) Now people who took out "home equity loans" are frequently carrying two mortgages on a property that is worth less than it was when they took out the second mortgage, so they are doubly underwater on their property.
This is but one small slice of why residents of the US—who are also facing, just for a start, record unemployment and underemployment, crushing credit card debt, rising heating and cooling costs, falling social services assistance, increasing educational costs, decreasing job benefits, exploding local and property taxes, and prohibitively high healthcare costs if they lack insurance (and frequently even if they do have insurance, because insurance companies want to make profits, not actually pay for healthcare)—are struggling mightily. We're being pushed from every conceivable angle, and we're losing the battle.
Story the Second: CEO Pay in 2010 Jumped 11%.
Chief executives at the biggest U.S. companies saw their pay jump sharply in 2010, as boards rewarded them for strong profit and share-price growth with bigger bonuses and stock grants.Yeah.
The median value of salaries, bonuses and long-term incentive awards for CEOs of 350 major companies surged 11% to $9.3 million.
...[T]he sharpest pay gains came via bonuses, which soared 19.7% as profits recovered.
Sunday Shuffle
Cheating a bit, since it's not really a shuffle today:
My lovely daughter is named Elanor--and, yes, her name comes from Sindarin, meaning "sun star", the golden flower of Lothlórien. She is one of my four wonderful kiddos who helped to create a very fabulous day for me.
What comes up on shuffle for you today?
Happy Mothers' Day
Mama Shakes looking gorgeous and me making some sort of WTF face, 1975.
Happy Mothers' Day* to all the Shaker mothers and grandmothers and godmothers and aunties and female guardians of various description whose love and care, for the fortunate among us, made us who we are.
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* Being celebrated in the US and some other places today; it is celebrated on other days in other countries.
Open Thread
Hosted by a steampunk ring.
This week's open threads have been brought to you by steampunk jewelry.
Iguana Be My Neighbor?
[Trigger warning for large reptiles.]
One of the cool things about living where I do is that I get some interesting wildlife coming by to visit. I've shared pictures of ibises, storks, and peacocks, but this is the first time I've seen an iguana hanging out in my backyard. It did not seem to mind me coming up and taking some pictures, either.
As far as I know, they're harmless. In fact, the only time I've heard they're dangerous is during our cold snaps. They climb up in the trees, and when the temperature drops, so does their metabolism, so they lose their grip. If you're standing under them, I imagine they raise one right smart of a welt if they fall on you.
