"I should tell my story. I'm also unemployed."—Mitt Romney, at a campaign stop at a coffee shop in Tampa today, after "listening to a group of unemployed Floridians explain the challenges of looking for work."
Ho ho ho.
Hearing about an extremely privileged multimillionaire joke about being "unemployed" is almost as funny as it was watching him joke about being groped.
Quote of the Day
News from Shakes Manor
Iain is routinely exasperated by my indifference to "adult beverages," because I don't like coffee, most tea, beer, and most wine and hard liquor.
"They're acquired tastes!" he argues. I have heard many stories about how he acquired a taste for beer. Did you know in Scotland you have to walk uphill both ways to the pub?
He laughs when I try his beloved Cabernet Sauvignon for the ten millionth time and make a face. He gives me a look of mock scorn and abiding fondness. "It's an acquired taste," he tells me, again, as I rid my mouth of the taste with a swig of ice water.
I say if it doesn't taste good in the first place, I ain't gonna work at it.
Let the Sexism Begin!
So, the first emergent misogynist narrative of the 2012 election is not really a narrative as much as it is a habit: The inability of journalists to talk about candidate Michele Bachmann without comparing her to Sarah Palin.
To wit: Time's Mark Halperin, answering "Why Bachmann?"
With her impressive New Hampshire debate performance, Bachmann has gone from a conservative Sarah Palin—lite curiosity to a potential game changer. For two hours onstage with her GOP rivals, Bachmann appeared polished, serene and in command. Her smooth performance was partly the work of a top-shelf team of veteran advisers (manager Ed Rollins, pollster Ed Goeas, forensic coach Brett O’Donnell). They sanded down some of her rough edges but let Bachmann be Bachmann, complete with zinging anti-Obama applause lines and sunny-side-up conservatism.Emphasis mine.
Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin are both straight white Republican women with brown hair.
Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty are both straight white Republican Minnesotans with brown hair.
It's actually pretty interesting that a former governor and sitting congressmember from the same state and the same party are running against each other in the same election, but that rarely even gets a mention.
And, weirdly, what does get mentioned (if implicitly) over and over—that Bachmann and Palin are both women—really isn't interesting at all.
At least not to anyone who considers "women are individual human beings" to be settled fact.
Weiner Update
[Trigger warning for sexual harassment; rape culture.]
So, yesterday, one of the women with whom Rep. Anthony Weiner had exchanged emails, Ginger Lee, held a press conference during which she said that Weiner "repeatedly tried to turn the conversation into sexual banter."
Lee, from La Vergne, Tenn., said the pair exchanged about 100 emails between March and June, but said she never received photos from Weiner and never sent him any. She said she followed him on Twitter because she liked his stance on Planned Parenthood funding and health care, and that he repeatedly tried to turn the conversation into sexual banter.Please note that we are supposed to assume that Lee is an opportunistic liar because she is a former porn star and a stripper, and we're definitely not supposed to consider the possibility that Weiner figured she'd be axiomatically receptive to his sexual overtures because of her vocation—because, in a culture in which all women are assumed to exist in a perpetual state of consent unless they say no, women in sex work are assumed to not even have the right to say no.
"My package and I are not going to beg," Weiner emailed at one point, according to [Lee's attorney, Gloria Allred]. Another email said "I have wardrobe demands too -- I need to highlight my package."
"I did not reciprocate," Lee said Wednesday.
Anyway. This is, at minimum, more smoke around the Weiner didn't give a fuck about consent fire.
Reportedly, Weiner has started telling friends and colleagues that he plans to resign. And among the several regrets I had upon reading that news, despite my agreement with the decision, is this: That his resignation will go down as a man badgered out of Congress by enemies and prudes, and not as the fair consequences for a person who abused his position and ignored consent to harass women who believed in him.
UPDATE: Weiner has scheduled a press conference in New York for 2pm ET. He has reportedly informed House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi of his decision to resign.
Question of the Day
What is your least favorite vegetable?
I vote for the beet.
For the record, Iain tells me I am wrong, and votes for Brussels sprouts.
Oscar Nooz
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has changed the rules for its "Best Picture" category, and it is very confusing/boring:
[The Academy] has added what it called "a new twist" to its best picture category. At the upcoming 84th Academy Awards, there may not be 10 movies nominated for best picture. Instead, new voting rules could result in a anywhere from five to 10 nominees in the category.Blah blah yawn. The totally wrong picture is still going to win every year, though, right...? Okay then.
Although the best picture Oscar race was expanded from five to 10 pictures just two years ago, the Academy board of governors voted Tuesday night to introduce a new procedure, which it said would add "a new element of surprise," since the number of movies that make the cut won't be revealed until the best picture nominees are revealed at the nominations announcement Jan. 24.
In order to ensure a nomination, a picture will have to collect enough first-place votes on the nomination ballots to amount to five percent of the ballots cast.
Film Corner!
[Trigger warning for self-harm.]
Clearly, I have been remiss, Shakers. The Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 trailer has been out for almost two weeks, and I have failed to feature this masterpiece of magnificent filmmaking at Film Corner! until now. I apologize for this grave oversight.
When last we left our inexplicably important heroine Bella, a brooding white teenage girl played by Rod Stewart, she had made her choice between Edward Sparklecorpse and Jacob Dogbreath. SPOILER ALERT! She chose Edward Sparklecorpse, because he was totes going to kill himself if she didn't choose him, and no doy all healthy relationships start with emotional blackmail and threatened self-harm.
Also! Because it's very obvious that a 200-year-old man would have tons in common with a teenage girl, and because a 200-year-old man would definitely be certain that a teenage girl who had a crush on him should give up everything, including her very mortality, to be with him, and that she absolutely has FOR SURE the perspective and life experience to make that sort of permanent and irreversible decision, Edward Sparklecorpse has agreed to change Bella Broodypouts into a vampire, too—but only if she marries him.
I know what you're thinking, but, listen, ultimatums are just the way this undead cat rolls. It's ROMANTIC. Especially when you remember that this is all a super-creepy abstinence metaphor.
Which brings us to the next installment in our saga:
A lady in a dress and high heels walks through a stone corridor, holding a silver tray on which rests an envelope. She gives it to Tony Blair. He opens it and smiles in a way that suggests he has just received news that his fantasy baseball team is totally winning this week and absolutely CRUSHING that dude in accounting who thinks he's so smart. Cut to Bella Broodypouts' dad, sitting at his kitchen table, looking miserable while looking at whatever was in the same envelope he got. Cut to Bella Broodypouts' mom at home in her tropical paradise of absentee motherhood, looking happy about whatever was in that envelope.
Cut to Jacob Dogbreath storming out of his house into the rain. "Jake!" yells his dad (?) as Jacob Dogbreath tosses the envelope onto the ground, takes off his shirt, and runs, which is his magical turn-into-a-CGI-dog maneuver. He growls angrily. His dad (?) picks up the envelope and we are FINALLY made privy to its mysterious contents. OMG IT'S A WEDDING INVITATION!
What—did you think it was going to be an invite to the opening of James Franco's Museum of Non-Visible Art or something? You're so weird.
Swelling dramatic music. Montage of weddingy scenes: A floral-drenched arbor. A veil. An eager 200-year-old undead man trapped in an emo prince body standing at the altar waiting for his teenage bride. (Seriously: Gross.) More montagery. Edward Sparklecorpse says, in voiceover, "No measure of time with you would be long enough." How about eternity? Is eternity long enough? Good lord. I love Iain to pieces, but the thought of spending, like, thousands of years together makes me want to throw up. Twilight: Barfing Dawn. That would be the name of our movie.
"But we'll start with forever," Edward Sparklecorpse says. Really? Is that supposed to be romantic? Maybe when I was 17 and might as well have had teddy bear stuffing and candy hearts where my emotional center should be, I would have thought that was romantic. But now I am 37, and I know that promising forever is kind of facile and sad and indicative of not understanding how difficult even the best relationships really are. I would expect a 200-year-old man to know that he is making a terrible and stupid promise!
They do it. It's so intense he breaks the wall, or something. Jacob Dogbreath looks mad. There is fighting between Edward Sparklecorpse and someone else. Could be Dogbreath. I can't really tell. Who cares.
Uh-oh! Bella Broodypouts-Sparklecorpse is looking at her belly in the mirror. You know what that means! "That's impossible," she whispers. She and Edward Sparklecorpse look very surprised! And kind of scared! Whooooooooooops! I'm sure it'll be fine.
ROMANCE!
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by your donations!
Recommended Reading:
Richard: 'Sexual Charisma' and 2012 Presidential Politics: TNR Edition
Fannie: Two Marriage-Related Victories
Susie: How Bad Is the Economy? Even Cable Companies Are Feeling It
Atrios: Maybe Somebody Should Do Something
Monica: The African Flava In The 2011 Women's World Cup
Andy: Lunar Eclipse!
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
While You Were Living Elsewhere (Or Not)
In case you missed it (and even if you didn't), yesterday Wisconsin's Supreme Court overturned Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi's decision to void the state's new law curtailing public employees' rights.
The law charges government employees for their pensions, doubles workers' contributions to their health insurance premiums, limits collective bargaining to an annual discussion about what fraction of a cost-of-living increase workers might see in their wages, makes unions hold annual recertification elections, and prohibits them from deducting dues from members' paychecks. It will go into effect on June 29, although more litigation is inevitable.
After an excruciating close election this April, conservatives held a four-to-three majority of Wisconsin's state court. Thanks, Citizens United!
Personally, I thought that the one slim chance of getting this law overturned was Judge Sumi's decision. She did not rule on the basis of whether it was constitution to destroy public workers' unions, something I wager most conservatives favor.
Rather, Sumi ruled that the Wisconsin legislature passed the law illegally, given that um, [video opens at link] holy shit [transcript here] did they ever break the open meetings law. Indeed, the Republicans were so brazen, Democrats didn't even have a chance to read, much less debate, the legislation under consideration.
But, whatever. Four State Supreme Court justices ruled that this sort of behavior was totally legal. I'm not clear what their rationale was. Justice Prosser appeared to argue that because at least one of the lawmakers was a lawyer, the process was therefore legal. Alrighty, then. I never really liked representative democracy anyway.
Via someone on the Internet pretending to be Bob LaFollette.
ETA: Speaking of end times, there's a column at Forbes.com that does a much better job of making my point. H/t TiernaFeminista is the comments.
Bi-Monthly Reminder & Thank-You
This is, for those who have requested it, your bi-monthly reminder* to donate to Shakesville and/or to make sure to renew subscriptions that have lapsed.
Managing Shakesville as a safe space requires, in addition to the time of our volunteer mods, my full-time commitment, and my salary is drawn exclusively from donations.** I cannot afford to do this full-time for free, but, even if I could, fundraising is also one of the most feminist acts I do here. I ask to be paid for my work because progressive feminist advocacy has value.
Over the past couple of months, when widely-linked discussions of contentious subjects have bought in droves of new and frequently disruptive commenters, the fierceness of our vigilance and the value of what it provides has been even more evident than usual. People commented how very much like magic it is to enjoy threads free of apologia, bigotry, and hateful/triggering material.
But it is not magic. It is hard and unrelenting work.
And, as we move into yet another presidential election season (can it really be that time already?!), I hope you will consider the value of a space that guarantees all candidates will be discussed on the basis of their policies and not their sex, race, sexuality, or appearance.
I hope you will also consider the value of whatever else you appreciate at Shakesville, whether it's political news, Film Corner!, the community in Open Threads, video transcripts, the blogarounds, Butch Pornstache, the Daily Dose of Cute, your blogmistress' penchant for inventing new words, or anything else you enjoy.
So. Here is your reminder to support this space if you appreciate what happens here.
You can donate once by clicking the button in the righthand sidebar, or set up a monthly subscription here. We first made the Subscribe to Shakesville page available in March, which means many of the subscriptions are running out and have to be renewed if you want to keep your subscription active.
Let me reiterate, once again, that I don't want anyone to feel obliged to contribute financially, especially if money is tight. Aside from valuing feminist work, the other goal of fundraising is so Iain and I don't have to struggle on behalf of the blog, and I don't want anyone else to struggle themselves in exchange. There is a big enough readership that neither should have to happen.
I also want say thank you, so very much, to each of you who donates or has donated, whether monthly or as a one-off. I am profoundly grateful—and I don't take a single cent for granted. I've not the words to express the depth of my appreciation, besides these: This community couldn't exist without that support, truly. Thank you.
My thanks as well to everyone who contributes to the space in other ways, whether as a regular contributor, a guest contributor, a moderator, a transcriber, or as someone who takes the time to send me the occasional note of support and encouragement. This community couldn't exist without you, either.
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* I know there are people who resent these reminders, but there are also people who appreciate them, so I've now taken to doing them every other month, in the hopes that will make a good compromise.
** I do not raise funds by required subscription, i.e. locking content behind a pay wall, as I want Shakesville to be accessible as possible irrespective of one's financial situation. And I do not raise funds via ads, for reasons explained here. This morning, for example, because of my post criticizing body policing and fat hatred, I was served [TW for body policing and fat hatred] these content-generated ads on my Blogger dashboard.
[Please Note: I am not seeking suggestions on how to raise revenue; I am asking for donations in exchange for the work of providing valued content in as safe and accessible a space as possible.]
Obama Sued Over Libya Mission
When what was promised to be a limited intervention has instead turned out to be a protracted mission costing $750 million and counting, blowback was inevitable. That Obama informed Congress after joining the mission, rather than seeking authorization, made it even more so—and now lawmakers of both parties are suing the executive over the US' involvement in Libya.
A bipartisan group of House members will file a lawsuit Wednesday challenging U.S. participation in the Libya military mission.Yes, Boehner et. al. are enormous hypocrites for having not had similar concerns during Bush's flagrant disregard of compliance with the War Powers Resolution, but that makes them wrong then, not now.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is set to defend U.S. military involvement in Libya to Congress, according to the White House.
The administration will provide a report to address a June 3 House resolution that raised questions about the president's goal in Libya, how he hopes to achieve that goal, why he has not sought congressional authorization for involving U.S. troops abroad and how much the conflict will ultimately cost, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a letter to Obama on Tuesday that the administration could be in violation of the War Powers Resolution if it fails to get congressional authorization by Sunday, which he notes will be the 90th day since the mission began.
The lawsuit, which will be formally announced at a Washington news conference, will cite the War Powers Resolution as well as the role of Congress in protecting taxpayers' money, said Rep. Walter Jones, R-North Carolina, one of the 10 legislators filing it.
A statement by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, an anti-war liberal who is leading the litigation effort with Jones, said the lawsuit will "challenge the executive branch's circumvention of Congress and its use of international organizations such as the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to authorize the use of military force abroad, in violation of the Constitution."
"With regard to the war in Libya, we believe that the law was violated. We have asked the courts to move to protect the American people from the results of these illegal policies," Kucinich said in his statement.
...The White House has said it was complying with the War Powers Resolution through frequent briefings on the Libya mission.
Boehner's letter contested that assertion.
"Since the mission began, the administration has provided tactical operational briefings to the House of Representatives, but the White House has systematically avoided requesting a formal authorization for its action," Boehner's letter said. "It has simultaneously sought, however, to portray that its actions are consistent with the War Powers Resolution. The combination of these actions has left many members of Congress, as well as the American people, frustrated by the lack of clarity over the administration's strategic policies, by a refusal to acknowledge and respect the role of the Congress, and by a refusal to comply with the basic tenets of the War Powers Resolution."
I despised contempt shown for a long-established system of checks and balances over war activities during the Bush administration, and I despite it now.
Formal authorization, rigorous oversight, and as much transparency as possible should be requisite elements of any defense mission in a representative democracy.
Huh? Mitt Romney Pretends to Get His Ass Grabbed
At a campaign stop in New Hampshire, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney was posting for a photo-op with several female waitresses at a diner, and decided to "tease" them by pretending one of them had grabbed his ass:
Romney says, "Let's see if I can get my arms around everybody," as he lines up with several female waitresses for a photo-op. "Aw, come on—much closer, much closer," he says, squeezing them toward him. Then he exclaims, "Oh!" and jumps forward, as if he's been goosed. He looks at one of the waitresses, who points to another and says, "That was her!"I guess it's funny to pretend that a woman in a job with a high rate of sexual harassment has grabbed your ass, if you're a privileged dipfuck.
The video cuts to Romney walking down the street later. A reporter asks him if one of them really grabbed him. He grins and chuckles. "No, no, no. That was just teasing 'em." He laughs and then says it really did happen at some other place during his campaign four years ago. Whut?
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning for misogyny, gender essentialism, violent imagery.]
The trends toward non-marriage and toward same-sex marriage are a direct attack on fathers. The bond between a child and his mother is an obvious fact of nature, but marriage is the relationship that establishes the link between a child and his father.—Phyllis Schlafly, in the World Net Daily, singing the same tune for 40 years and counting: "Feminists, Gays, and Jews—oh my!"
There are many causes for the dramatic reduction in marriage, starting with unilateral divorce, which spread across the United States in the 1960s and '70s, putting government on the side of marriage breakup. Then came the legalizing of abortion, diminishing the custom of shotgun marriages, which in earlier years was often the response to surprise pregnancies.
The feminist notion that women should be independent of men, followed by affirmative-action/female quotas in employment, tended to carry out the goal stated by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that the concept of husband-breadwinner and wife-homemaker "must be eliminated." These feminist ideas and practices demean marriage by discriminating against men and also against fulltime homemakers.
I always love a good Phyllis Schlafly column, because Phyllis Schlafly is my constant, but rarely am I treated to such a delightful surprise as an argument for shotgun weddings in the year two thousand and fucking eleven.
Overheard
As the high school cross-country team (or track team, whichever one continues to train during the summer) ran by outside our house: "Everyone's butt stinks sometimes, dude!"
I would love to know if that was an expression of reassurance, or an exclamation of self-defense.
Camp Runamok
[Trigger Warning for Christian supremacy.]
Looking for a fun thing for your kids to do this summer? This does not sound like the place.
TAMPA — Here's another option now that the kids are out of school: a weeklong seminar about our nation's founding principles, courtesy of the Tampa 912 Project.So Mr. Lukens doesn't know anything about the public school curriculum, but he assumes its filled with evil political correctness, like the revisionist history about Paul Revere and how the Founding Fathers believed in the separation of church and state. What could be wrong with that?
The organization, which falls under the tea party umbrella, hopes to introduce kids ages 8 to 12 to principles that include "America is good," "I believe in God," and "I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable."
Organized by conservative writer Jeff Lukens and staffed by volunteers from the 912 Project, Tampa Liberty School will meet every morning July 11-15 in borrowed space at the Paideia Christian school in Temple Terrace.
"We want to impart to our children what our nation is about, and what they may or may not be told," Lukens said.
He said he was not familiar with public school curriculum, but, "I do know they have a lot of political correctness. We are a faithful people, and when you talk about natural law, you have to talk about God. When you take that out of the discussion, you miss the whole thing."
So what are these freedom-loving little campers going to learn this summer?
One example at Liberty: Children will win hard, wrapped candies to use as currency for a store, symbolizing the gold standard. On the second day, the "banker" will issue paper money instead. Over time, students will realize their paper money buys less and less, while the candies retain their value.And the way to learn about individual freedom is through indoctrination. Works every time.
"Some of the kids will fall for it," Lukens said. "Others kids will wise up."
Another example: Starting in an austere room where they are made to sit quietly, symbolizing Europe, the children will pass through an obstacle course to arrive at a brightly decorated party room (the New World).
Red-white-and-blue confetti will be thrown. But afterward the kids will have to clean up the confetti, learning that with freedom comes responsibility.
Still another example: Children will blow bubbles from a single container of soapy solution, and then pop each other's bubbles with squirt guns in an arrangement that mimics socialism. They are to count how many bubbles they pop. Then they will work with individual bottles of solution and pop their own bubbles.
"What they will find out is that you can do a lot more with individual freedom," Lukens said.
Isn't it ironic that they feel the need to call it "Liberty"?
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof. HT to SFDB.
Wow
[Trigger warning for racism; misogyny; ableism; violence.]
I have seen some despicable political ads in my life, many of which we've discussed in this space over the last seven years, but nothing that even approaches this attack ad against Democratic Congressional candidate from California Janice Hahn, created by Republican operative Ladd Ehlinger, Jr. and his new political action committee Turn Right USA.
TPM's Evan McMorris-Santoro aptly describes the ad as "Willie Horton on steroids. The 90-second clip accuses Hahn of being too cozy with gang criminals in the past, a charge she's faced for a while and her campaign says has been thoroughly debunked."
Although the ad features black actors as the gang members with whom Hahn, represented as a stripper offering cash out of her panties to gangters, is supposedly too cozy, McMorris-Santoro also notes: "2005 statistics from the LAPD reported that the vast majority of L.A.'s gang population is made up of predominately Latino gangs."
These fucking racists can't even do their racism right.
And though the racism and misogyny in this video is extreme, it's the implied violence at its end which is even more chilling.
As words in a vampiric red font litter the screen around a picture of Hahn, highlighting words from the voiceover, a male voiceover says, "In an insane effort to reduce gang violence, Janice Hahn hired hardcore gang members with taxpayer money to be 'gang intervention specialists.' She even helped them get out of jail, so they could rape and kill again." Hahn's eyes go red. Across the bottom of the screen, a line of text reads: "Visit http://HahnsHomeboyz.org for more info!"
A grainy piece of footage from what looks to be a police interrogation video shows a black man saying, "I started working with Janice Hahn, ya know what I'm saying."
A white woman with short blonde hair (like Hahn) wearing a black bikini walks onscreen with her back to the camera and grabs a stripper pole, as two black men holding rifles start to rap-sing, "Give me your cash, bitch, so we can shoot up the streets." Cut to a close-up of the stripper's butt, on which is emblazoned a mugshot of a tattooed man; in the background "Janice Hahn Hates Guns [Hearts] Gangs" is "graffitied" onto a cinderblock wall.
The men rap-sing "Give me your cash, bitch, so we can shoot up the streets / Give me your cash, ho, so we can buy some more heat" over and over, while mugshots of men we are meant to assume are gang members are superimposed over the butt of the woman dancing at the stripper pole, and black-and-white images of white gangsters like Al Capone and famous criminals like Charles Manson float around the screen.
The stripper waves her ass in the air, and the rappers pull dollars out of her waistband. A video of Hahn is superimposed over the stripper's genital area, implying Hahn is a cunt, in which Hahn is saying, "It does take a different kind of person to be able to speak the language."
"Congress has enough gangsters," says the male voiceover, as the same bloody words appear on the screen, surrounded by a Photoshopped image of Nancy Pelosi appearing to get a facelift, an image of Harry Reid, an image of Charlie Rangel sleeping on the beach, an image of Anthony Weiner, an image of Chuck Shumer, and finally Weiner's infamous grey-briefs crotch shot.
The stripper spins around and a headshot of Janice Hahn has been superimposed over her head. "Janice Hahn: Bad for Los Angeles. Bad for America," says the male voiceover, as the camera zooms in on the reddened devil eyes of Hahn's image.
The image then switches to a semi-automatic rifle, accompanied by the sound of a rifle shooting. The image lights up, implying the pictured rifle is firing. "Let's keep her out of Congress, homies," says the voiceover, which, coupled with the image, clearly exhorts violence against Hahn, even as the voiceover continues, "Donate now!"
On the final screen, as the rifle continues to "fire," words onscreen read: "Paid for by Turn Right USA. Definitely NOT authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. So suck it, McCain-Feingold."
