The UK's Phone-Hacking Scandal, and Why You Should Care About It (Plus Teaspooning)

So, as you may—or may not, for reasons that will become evident—have heard, there is an exploding phone hacking scandal in Britain, comprehensive coverage of which by the Guardian can be found here. The broadest gist is that a British tabloid hired a private investigator to hack into the voicemail boxes of famous or otherwise newsworthy people—and, in at least one particularly awful case, the voicemails of a murdered girl were deleted. More on that in a moment.

Although this happened in Britain (and only in Britain so far as we know), it's also an important story for the US and elsewhere, too, because the tabloid at the center of the story is the News of the World, which is owned by the UK subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, the same company that owns Fox in the US.

Shaker Richard Gadsden, who's a UK-based Shaker, put together a great summary of the phone-hacking scandal and its history, which I am publishing with his permission. First, some background:

Mobile phones (cellphones) have voicemail. You can access the voicemail from any other phone by dialing the call centre and putting in the phone number of the mailbox you want and the PIN. Unless the user has positively selected a PIN when they set up the phone, the PIN defaults to 0000 or 1111, depending on the network. Most people only ever call their voicemail from their own phone, and they don't need the PIN to get in from their own phone, so they never find out that the PIN even exists.

A Private Investigator, called Glenn Mulcaire, discovered that he could listen to the voicemails left for well-known people by calling into the call centre and putting in the right PIN. (It is believed that a number of other PIs were doing the same for other newspapers, but this has never been proven.)

He started selling the recordings he took of the voicemails to the News of the World, a tabloid newspaper here in the UK, owned by News International (the UK subsidiary of News Corp, which is the Murdoch media empire, including Fox in the US, and Sky here in the UK).

This originally came out in 2006, when it was found that he'd gained access to the voicemails of members of the Royal family; there was a police investigation at the time, Mulcaire and Clive Goodman (royal editor of the NoW at the time) were arrested and served time in prison. The editor at the time, Andy Coulson was sacked.

Fast forward three years, and Andy Coulson, after having become Director of Communications for the Conservative party, is now Director of Communications for the Prime Minister. The story might have died altogether, were it not for the fact that a 2009 Guardian investigation uncovered evidence of police malfeasance.

Back to Richard:

In 2009, the Guardian discovered that the police had ignored evidence collected from Mulcaire that lots of other people had been "phone-hacked", had not informed hundreds of other victims (including senior politicians and journalists at other newspapers). This became a political scandal, especially because [of Andy Coulson's prominent position in the Prime Minister's office]. There was a Select Committee enquiry, and a number of out-of-court settlements between NoW and alleged phone-hacking victims.

One of the reasons that the story continued in 2010 was that [the actress] Sienna Miller refused any out-of-court settlement with a confidentiality clause and insisted on extensive discovery in the courts; the other main reason was that the New York Times investigated it and found more connections between Andy Coulson as (then) editor and the scandal, which resulted in him resigning as Director of Communications on 21 January 2011.

The police have now restarted their investigation - it seems that they deliberately down-played the investigation originally because they have a close relationship with the NI papers that they didn't want to damage - but they started arresting people in bunches (at which point Sienna Miller accepted an out-of-court settlement as it looked like the facts were coming out anyway).

Again, the story may have effectively died here, as a shady tabloid unethically digging into celebrities' private lives is terrible, but sadly not particularly shocking. And, the wheels of justice seemed to be turning.

But the phone-hacking was even worse than it originally appeared.

On Monday, the Guardian published a heartbreaking update on the scandal in which it was revealed that the News of the World's private investigator, the aforementioned Glenn Mulcaire, had, in 2002, hacked into the voicemail of a missing 13-year-old girl named Milly Dowler, who had been, it was later discovered, murdered by a man named Levi Bellfield, who was convicted and sentenced to life last month for murdering Milly.

Mulcaire did not stop at merely listening to the messages on Milly's phone, though. From the Guardian's Monday piece:

As her friends and parents called and left messages imploring Milly to get in touch with them, the News of the World was listening and recording their every private word.

But the journalists at the News of the World then encountered a problem. Milly's voicemail box filled up and would accept no more messages. Apparently thirsty for more information from more voicemails, the paper intervened – and deleted the messages that had been left in the first few days after her disappearance. According to one source, this had a devastating effect: when her friends and family called again and discovered that her voicemail had been cleared, they concluded that this must have been done by Milly herself and, therefore, that she must still be alive. But she was not. The interference created false hope and extra agony for those who were misled by it.

The Dowler family then granted an exclusive interview to the News of the World in which they talked about their hope, quite unaware that it had been falsely kindled by the newspaper's own intervention.

Truly contemptible, just an absolute abdication of even the merest traces of decency.

Naturally, the deletion of the voicemails not only gave Milly's family false hope; it also interfered with the police investigation.

Back to Richard:

This has now broken the story from the media pages onto the front pages of the newspapers, and much higher up the public consciousness.

In rapid succession, a number of other high-profile victims of crime have been found in the Mulcaire files - the victims of the Soham murders (another pair of young abducted girls) and some of the 7/7 victims too.

It's just beyond the beyond. I spent last night reading a ton of coverage of the phone-hacking, and it just left me feeling light-headed with revulsion and what I can only describe as dismay, though the word seems insufficient, at the entitlement, the callousness, the chilling lack of empathy which led to these actions.

And I fear that we have yet seen only the tip of this decidedly grim iceberg.



What we can do in response, however, is lift our teaspoons. Richard notes that advertisers have started pulling their ads from News of the World, and suggests: "One useful teaspoon would be to write to those advertisers and ask them to pull advertising from all News Corp owned media world-wide. Ford, as the first advertiser to pull out of NotW, would be a good one to start with, as they are big sponsors of Sky TV in the UK and of a number of Fox TV properties over there. Hitting the entire Murdoch empire, rather than just one newspaper (which they could just close down and then relaunch under a new name) would achieve far more in driving to some kind of responsible journalism."

For US Shakers, here's a list of Fox News sponsors here, for a start.

And here is a sample letter, which you are free to borrow in whole or in part:

Dear Fox News Advertiser,

I am writing to inform you that I will not purchase your products as long as you continue to advertise on Fox News.

As you are certainly aware, Fox News is a property of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, the UK subsidiary of which is deeply embroiled in a phone-hacking scandal in which his employees engaged in profoundly unethical ways, and, in least one case, possibly criminal ways, by interfering with a police investigation of a missing teenage girl. Nonetheless, Murdoch continues to stand behind those employees.

Your advertising dollars are supporting irresponsible, unethical, and dangerous journalism, abroad and very likely at home, too.

I urge you to stop advertising on Fox News immediately.

Sincerely,
[Name]

Please feel welcome and encouraged to leave in comments other ideas for teaspooning and/or additional advertisers in global Murdoch properties for contact.

My thanks to Richard for his valuable contributions to this piece.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Professor Elemental: "Fighting Trousers"

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Two Facts

1. Someone is still paying Jonah Goldberg to write a garbage column.

2. Jonah Goldberg uses this week's garbage column to write some shambling deposit of tommyrot in which he mendaciously deconstructs an NPR piece about the ubiquity of the phrase, "That's racist!" which the younger set uses as an absurdery to mock racial sensitivity, in order to assert that conservatives are like kids, man: They don't get all sensitive about racial stuff.

Goldberg's right that (many) conservatives are like (many) kids, in the sense that neither one has a particular sensitivity toward covert racism. Thing is, kids have the excuse of youth and inexperience: White kids also have privilege making them insensitive to race; and some kids of color experience something similar to what I did growing up as a girl in a feminist age—the promise of equality that makes social justice seem quaint and antiquated until you run headlong into evidence of the promise unfulfilled.

Conservatives like Goldberg, however, who fancy themselves beyond the tedium of racial sensitivity, do not have the excuse of youth and inexperience. They're just assholes.

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Number of the Day

$18.25 Million: The amount of money raised by Mitt Romney for his presidential bid in the last quarter.

While Romney, whose team now has $12.6 million cash left on hand, is in a strong position, the latest numbers were somewhat below expectations. At this point in 2007, Romney had collected $23 million despite being less established as a top tier candidate. But he's essentially competing against himself at this point: none of his rivals are expected to even crack the $10 million barrier.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, who has not reported her fundraising numbers yet, has been his closest rival in straw polls, but is not expected to best $18m.

As a result of the several awesome SCOTUS decisions on campaign financing since the last election, 2/3 of Romney's fundraising has come from a single super-PAC, "Restore Our Future, which can collect unlimited corporate donations and raised $12 million this quarter."

So, quite literally, corporations are buying the Republican nomination. And, at this point, they're putting their money on Mitt.

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The Reciprocal Property of Granderson

Occasional CNN.com non-contributor LZ Granderson is [TW: corporal punishment] fed up with children's obnoxious, juvenile, and self-centered outbursts, and presumably vice versa.

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Open Thread

Hosted by an ascot. (And Michael Caine.)

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Question of the Day

From the same day last year: What's your favorite food cooked outside, be it via an imu or lovo or hāngi or clambake or other earth oven, a tandoor, a grill or barbecue pit, a spit, a solar cooker, a kettle boil, a skewer over a campfire, or some other method altogether?

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Number of the Day

One: The number of countries in the rest of the developed world who have a lower corporate tax rate than the US. That one is Iceland.

During negotiations regarding raising the nation's debt limit, congressional Republicans have defended tax loopholes for corporations, claiming that America has a high corporate tax rate that is stifling economic growth and job creation. But the Center for Tax Justice (CTJ) has crunched the most recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Office of Management and Budget, and the Census Bureau, and finds that "the U.S. is already one of the least taxed countries [pdf] for corporations in the developed world."

As a share of GDP, the U.S. had the second lowest tax rate, behind only Iceland. This statistic flips on its head the often-repeated Republican charge that America has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world (which is only true on paper). In 2009, U.S. corporate taxes had fallen to only 1.3 percent of GDP, from 4 percent in 1965.

Conservatives love to point out that other OECD countries have lowered their corporate tax rates in recent years, but they conveniently ignore [pdf] that "these countries have also closed corporate tax loopholes while the U.S. has expanded them."

Of course.

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Quote of the Day

"I am a feminist, because skeptics and atheists made me one."—Rebecca Watson, continuing this discussion at her place. Please note that the post contains discussion of various aspects of the rape culture, as well as violent imagery, which may be triggering.

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Educate the People—But Not So Much That Corporations Can't Still Exploit Them, OBVIOUSLY

by Shaker BrianWS

When I attended the Clinton Global Initiative with Liss, there was on particular portion of the conference that stood out to me, and that was a panel discussion on education that we attended Wednesday afternoon. There were five people on the panel, on four of whom I'm going to focus for this post—Stephanie A. Burns, Chairman of Dow Corning Corporation, James Heckman, University of Chicago economics professor (and Nobel Prize winner!), Kaya Henderson, D. C. Public Schools chancellor, and Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., president and CEO of TIAA-CREF .

The theme that the panel was interested in discussing was how we need to improve education, because education improves the ability to get a job, and folks getting jobs helps drive the economy. Fine. Fair enough, in theory.

And those who don't believe that America is quickly becoming (has already become?) a corporatocracy would have almost certainly heard the panelists to be saying that very thing: Education is good. Jobs are good.

But that's not what I heard.

After more than an hour, I was left wondering: Who is education meant to benefit, and whose interests is educational reform meant to serve in this country?

Burns, speaking from the point of view of the chief of a major corporation, insisted that yes, education is important, because manufacturing and other jobs are not what they were twenty years ago, so one needs an education—and a specific kind of education, at that—in order to get a job at Dow Corning. If you get an education, then you can work to serve a corporation so that they can make even more money, and of course they promise to give you a little bit of that cash for showing up for work—so see, it's good for you too! It really is all about the children, we promise! America's future! For serious! Pinky swear!

Even when Burns begins to talk about the education initiatives that Dow Corning has created, there is seemingly no pretense at all, and I'll paraphrase, that she's really saying, "We have created these programs for inner-city kids in Detroit to teach them these skills...these skills that they will need to know when they work for us."

Yet when Henderson spoke, from her point of view as someone on the ground, actually educating kids in the U.S., perhaps the end result sounded the same, but it was discussed in a much different way. Henderson spoke of "interventions" with kids of varying ages, and how those allowed these children to excel, to become more educated, become more enriched and prosperous. She spoke passionately about how education serves to benefit those being educated, while reciting a great list of programs introduced in the D. C. Public School system that have been designed to do just that (and have done so, successfully, I may add). There was something in the way she spoke that struck me as incredibly genuine—the ways in which having more accessible, and progressive, and productive education programs will wind up empowering those involved to be able to improve their lives.

The thing is, perhaps the end result is the same if you don't care to make the distinction. Perhaps the D. C. Public Schools will turn out an educated person who will use that education to go work for Dow Corning. They'll get paid. They'll have a job. They'll spend money. Economy improves. Rejoice! But from Henderson's worldview, the goal is to have that person paving their own path, armed with their education and opportunities. From Burns' worldview, the goal is to have the same person get paid by having a job, and spending money to the point the economy improves, but it must FIRST be run through a corporation like hers. The benefit must FIRST be that this education has served a major company, improved their profits, and then the trickle-down effect might leave it looking the same in the very end.

But the distinction between those two views, even if on paper, the end-game is the same for the person with the job, is that public policy is shaped almost exclusively by the idea that Burns' view is the right one, because we all know, we've all been told, that corporations have our best interests in mind. That's why we keep giving them tax breaks, because they'll create jobs, right? We should be focusing our education plans on how to make our children capable of working for Dow Corning, not on being capable of say, starting their own business, or working for themselves, or anything else that comes from being empowered by education.

Burns and Henderson weren't alone, however, as the panel seemed to divide into two "teams." Burns was joined by Heckman in the corporatists' corner, while Ferguson seemed to align himself with Henderson's view, from the educators' corner.

One of the most interesting (where interesting = RAGE!) exchanges in the entire discussion came when the panelists were tossing about ideas on how to ensure success from a young age, and Ferguson (a black man) noted the glaringly obvious, that we "can't ignore race." This opened up the door for Heckman (the only white male on the stage, natch) to pontificate at length about not "using race as an excuse." Shakers, there was some serious 'splaining going on. I didn't have a stopwatch, but it was curious that the up to that point reserved Heckman came to life and came out swinging the moment Ferguson brought up race. It appeared that this was one of his favorite things to talk about (or that he just liked hearing himself talk?), as he essentially hijacked the conversation for five minutes to do his best to deny that race has anything to do with educational success and opportunities.

Ferguson and Henderson both had very reasonable (and obvious) responses to his 'splaining, which was depressingly unsurprising as the only two people of color on the entire panel. Ferguson attempted to note that talking about race and the institutional privileges conferred upon white people was not an "excuse," but an acknowledgment of a society and a culture that unfairly values and privileges whiteness, and that children of color are at an inherent disadvantage in the education system from the day they begin. It's not an "excuse" to simply acknowledge that not everyone is given the same opportunity for success from the beginning, but rather an honest assessment of a society that confers unfair advantages on white children.

Ferguson's and Henderon's incredibly obvious rebuttals sent Mr. Mansplainer off into another lengthy discussion with himself, but I'm going to be honest, Shakers, there was a point where I just fucking turned him off—because he was saying all the things we've heard a million times before, making sure that the people of color on the panel (who might…just might have some firsthand knowledge, eh?) knew that they were wrong and knew that they were making excuses for under performance by children of color in the education system, all while aligning himself with a corporatist view that is by default prone to not giving a shit about inequities in the system, as long as they get their workers.

Apparently they give out Nobel prizes for being an asshole?

That's a tension that is evident in every discussion of how to improve education, how to right this country, how to create a more fair playing field where the corporations don't decide what's good for us, but where we decide what is good for us (ya know, for the people, by the people, or whatever that shit they once said was), and where if what is good for us is working for a corporation, then we do that—not where the only way for us to be successful or to have ANY chance of having a reasonable standard of living is by serving a corporation that has been catered to at every level of government with financial breaks, windfalls, and other various forms of political heavy petting.

Strange how that works. One group—those making millions (billions? Bieberillions?) of dollars think education is important because at the end of the day, it benefits them. The other group—those slogging away, educating children, doing the so-called "dirty work" on the ground think education is important because it empowers the individual receiving the education to have some control over hir life's destiny.

And the latter group has no help in our fledgling corporatocracy. It really is about education. It really is about our children. It really is about our future. BUT, it's only really about those three things insofar as they serve to benefit a corporation first, and the chairman of a major corporation didn't even really go out of her way to pretend it wasn't.

Kaya Henderson, on the other hand, is an extraordinary woman. She moved me on so many occasions yesterday. Her ideas, her acknowledgment that not everyone is born with the same advantages, that some people start on first base and some start on third base, was refreshing. Her vision for improving education, and her stories of how they have already begun to do so in D.C., were inspiring. From my best guess after seeing her speak, I would imagine that the trunk of her car is filled with giant bags full of nothing but teaspoons, and she is wielding them on a daily basis.

And it depresses the shit out of me that I know she and those fighting the same battles are so far up against it in this country that we're living in today. But she's the kind of person doing what is right out there.

She is the America I know still exists, struggling underneath a suffocating pile of gilded bootstraps. And if we ever get this country back, it's going to be because of honest, determined, inspiring people like her—not some corporation who gave us our freedom back like a fucking tax break.

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Daily Dose of Cute

Potter, Lord Fluffy of the Ottoman Empire.

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Sure

[Trigger warning for sexual harassment and assault.]

So, the Chicago Sun-Times published an article about how Jennifer Aniston is playing a boss who sexually harasses and assaults her employee in the new "dark comedy" Horrible Bosses.

The article details the harassment and assaults she commits in the film; it is accompanied by a still image from the film of Aniston as the Horrible Boss groping her employee, played by Charlie Day.

Naturally, it makes no mention of how fucked-up it is for all of this to be played for laughs, although is it discussed at length how Aniston lobbied to wear "a brown wig with a row of bangs" instead of sporting her "trademark streaky blonde" hair, because: "There was just no way I could [play that role] and not look somewhat different."

The headline of this article is: "Jennifer Aniston takes risk, turns hair dark for 'Horrible Bosses'."

Sure.

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No bail money? No abortion.

Yamhill County, Oregon, is a a beautiful place in terms of scenery. It's home to many of Oregon's wineries and stunning forestry. The Visitor's Association says:

Yamhill Valley is authentic Oregon. A place where the good life is cultivated every day. Where world-class wineries dot the verdant rolling hills, and roadside farm stands intersect with bicycle brigades. Where historic main streets meet urban-style bistros. Where imagination still takes flight and you're never too old to stay and play.

I actually live relatively close to Yamhill County--if I have to drive to Salem (Oregon's capitol), I spend the vast majority of the time driving though Yamhill County. Truly, it is a lovely place.

Picturesque, however, doesn't necessarily mean much. This little slice of "authentic Oregon" currently has a woman in jail awaiting trial. The woman, Bridget Burkholder, needs an abortion. The county is refusing to provide transportation--which it does do for medical care. The county has, essentially, said that if she can come up with the $6500 bail, she's more than free to go get an abortion.

Bridget Burkholder, a 23-year-old Portland resident, is awaiting trial on arson, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct charges after she allegedly damaged a McMinnville motel room in what authorities feared was preparation to set herself on fire.

[...]

At a Thursday hearing, Hanson [Abraham, defense attorney] told Circuit Judge John Collins that his client was running out of time. He asked Collins to grant her a conditional release so she could make an appointment scheduled for the following morning.

However, such a release would be unsupervised. After hearing from both Burkholder and the jail's licensed social worker, Patricia Brown, Collins denied the release.

Collins said Sheriff Jack Crabtree had the legal authority to have her escorted to Salem and back for her clinic visit. He said he had no authority to order a medical furlough himself, but said, "I believe the sheriff does, whether the inmate is under pre-trial or sentenced status."

Sheriff Crabtree is outright refusing to do so without a court order. At Ms. Burkholder's hearing, Ms. Brown (the social worker) said that Ms. Burkholder was doing well with psychiatric treatment, though she may still pose a risk to herself and other people. Also at the hearing the prosecutor, Michael Videtich, had this to say:

"Also, this isn't a scenario where there is a medical emergency. I understand that there is a timeline, but it's not an emergency. This is an elective procedure she has a right to have. But she can post bail."

But, no, she cannot just post bail: she does not have the money to do so. Also Mr. Videtich? Abortion is not an "elective procedure" akin to, say, eyelash tinting. All medical procedures are technically "elective", that makes them no less necessary. This is, in fact, an emergency. Simply because she is not about to die right now makes it no less urgent. I see your false equivalence and call your bullshit.

All Ms. Burkholder is requesting is transportation. She does not want the county to pay for the abortion. She does not want someone from the county to be her support person. Still, Sheriff Crabtree is unmoved and refusing: he is waiting for a court order and that's final.

That may seem outrageous--and it is. It's not surprising, though, because way back in 1997 two county commissioners--Tom Bunn and Rob Johnstone--passed Ordinance 634 (.pdf) which says (in part):

THE YAMHILL COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS ORDAINS AS FOLLOWS:

Section 1.

(a) No person shall, while serving as agent for Yamhill County, facilitate by any means the performance of an abortion, other than to the extent required by state and federal law.

(b) No person shall be required to perform, assist, or facilitate the performance of an abortion. The refusal to perform, assist, or facilitate the performance of, or provide abortion services, shall not constitute grounds for civil or criminal liability, disciplinary action or discriminatory treatment.

(c) This ordinance shall in now be construed as limiting a person's choice in facilitating an abortion when not acting as an agent of Yamhill County. However, under no circumstances shall county resources be used.

The News Register article notes that at those commissioners's directives, the county's health departments stopped providing family planning and assistance (though they never offered abortion services)--and stopped doing so for a decade.

Meanwhile, time is ticking down for Ms. Burkholder.

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This is a real thing in the world.

The Princess Bible. Via Tami, who's got the pink version here.
I particularly love how it's a children's bible, but it's for "princesses of all ages." Why, hello again, infantilization of women! It's been at least five whole minutes since you've darkened my psychological doorstep!

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Cheeky Monkey

Cheese!Oh, hai!

The primate went to investigate the equipment before becoming fascinated with his own reflection in the lens.

And it wasn't long before the crested black macaque hijacked the camera and started snapping away sending award-winning photographer David Slater bananas.

David, 46, said: "One of them must have accidentally knocked the camera and set it off because the sound caused a bit of a frenzy.

"At first there was a lot of grimacing with their teeth showing because it was probably the first time they had ever seen a reflection.

"They were quite mischievous jumping all over my equipment, and it looked like they were already posing for the camera when one hit the button.

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Must-Read: "BMW Layoffs Exemplify the Evisceration of the Middle Class"

BMW layoffs exemplify the evisceration of the middle class:

Every working American should be dismayed by — and afraid of — what BMW is doing.

These employees exemplified the best qualities of the American worker. They devoted their working lives to BMW, at a time when it was building and solidifying its U.S. beachhead. Their wages, with benefits, paid for a reasonable middle-class lifestyle if they managed it carefully. Throw in the job security they were encouraged to expect, and they had the confidence to make sacrifices and investments that contributed to the economy for the long term, like college education for the kids, an addition on the house, a new baby. Then one day they were handed a mass pink slip, effective in a matter of weeks.

The Corporation rules all. Just go read the whole thing.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Mr. B the Gentleman Rhymer: "Straight Out of Surrey"

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Well, This Is Pretty Much the Best Headline Ever

Joey Chestnut eats 62 hotdogs for 5th title in row.

It's not just that the fates blessed Joey Chestnut with the splendorous talent of being a champion eater; it's that he's also been gifted with what is certainly the most magical name imaginable for a full-tilt hotdog-eating machine.

The only thing that could make me love that headline more is hearing it called out by a newsie on a Brooklyn sidewalk in 1922.

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Two Facts

1. In case you haven't heard, the Republicans are trying to hold the economy hostage again, in order to get what they want, which is to further ruin the ailing economy with their resoundingly discredited fiscal policies. Steve Benen is spot-on here: "The hostage strategy itself—Republicans will crash the economy on purpose unless Democrats give them what they want—is so offensive, it deserves to be a genuine national scandal. Indeed, it's often hard to believe policymakers who claim to be patriots are deliberately putting us all at risk this way."

2. The Republicans have run so wildly off the rails that even David Brooks is concerned. Noting the Democrats have capitulated on nearly everything the Republican Party wants, he writes:

If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred million dollars of revenue increases.

...But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That's because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

He goes on to observe that, among their other failings, the "members of this movement have no sense of moral decency." Of course they don't, but David Brooks didn't notice or care until their void of ethics stands to affect his pocketbook. Which is why he's still the worst, even though he's right that the Republican Party stinks.

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The Point, You Are Proving It

[Trigger warning for misogyny, rape culture, violent imagery, anti-Islamism.]

Rebecca Watson of the skeptics blog Skepchick recently posted a video in which she speaks, in part, about being on a panel in an atheist conference in Dublin during which she spoke about misogyny in the atheist movement. The video, with transcript for the relevant section, is at the bottom of the post. (If the video does not automatically start playing at 2:20, skip ahead.) She then describes how the discussion continued at the hotel bar late into the night, and how a man who purported to be interested in what she was saying followed her into the hotel elevator and propositioned her. Missing the point award.

PZ Myers wrote a post in which the video was mentioned, largely making another point about naming people with whom one disagrees, but acquiescing that perhaps hitting on women and backing off when they signal disinterest possibly is not enough: "Maybe we should also recognize that applying unwanted pressure, no matter how politely phrased, is inappropriate behavior. Maybe we should recognize that when we interact with equals there are different, expected patterns of behavior that many men casually disregard when meeting with women, and it is those subtle signs that let them know what you think of them that really righteously pisses feminist women off."

I almost can't conceive of a more innocuous, virtually noncommittal ("maybe") expression of support for the idea that it's pretty gross to creepily pursue a woman who has said she is going to bed in order to invite her back to your hotel room to further discuss an idea she had introduced in a professional capacity, no less when the idea is not sexualizing women.

And yet, totally predictably, the thread erupted in a hideous gushing explosion of misogyny, anti-feminism, and rape apologia, not only proving Rebecca Watson's point, but illustrating precisely why it is that, despite being an atheist and online activist, I don't touch movement atheism with a 10-foot pole. Were it a place merely hostile to feminist women and outspoken survivors of sexual assault, well, so is the rest of the world. Of course, the rest of the world doesn't passionately advocate against ignorance, only to feign it when asked to examine its privilege.

Anyway, among the many comments in the thread was one left by the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins, who had also sat on the panel at which Rebecca Watson spoke about misogyny in the atheist movement. Given Dawkins' history of doing things like making anti-Muslim rape jokes and reckoning that a child is "arguably" better off repeatedly raped than raised religious, his comment (which Myers has confirmed is indeed the real Dawkins) is not surprising, but it is nonetheless appalling.

Dear Muslima

Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don't tell me yet again, I know you aren't allowed to drive a car, and you can't leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you'll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.

Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep"chick", and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn't lay a finger on her, but even so . . .

And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.

Richard

Ah, the old there are more Important Things to worry about chestnut. I always love when a man decides what the Important Things feminists should be worried about are for us feminist women. I also love the idea that "Muslim women" and "American women" are mutually exclusive groups, and the idea that there no American women, Muslim or otherwise, whose lives are controlled and whose bodies are violated with impunity. And I love the mendacious misrepresentation of Rebecca Watson's experience—being innocently invited to coffee, as opposed to followed into an elevator at 4am after announcing her intention to go to bed and asked back to a man's room "for coffee" immediately following her public request to not be sexually objectified—and the profoundly disingenuous implication that because Watson had the unmitigated temerity to mention this incident, she is either equating it with other women's suffering or somehow arguing that her experience is more important than other women's.

I love those things almost as much as I love the embedded premise that the marginalization of women is a series of unrelated injustices that exist in competition with one another for attention and concern, as opposed to a spectrum of injustices on which exists both women being creeped on in elevators by strangers and female genital cutting.

That is a silencing mechanism.

The implication is that women with relative privilege have no reason or right to "complain" as long as there are women who are experiencing something worse somewhere in the world—a truly despicable position given that it creates a justification for continued brutalization of women across the globe. Feminist scolds like Dawkins, who fancy themselves enlightened, recoil with horror at the suggestion that they support the violent oppression of women, and yet they nonetheless reference it at every opportunity they have in order to defend their lack of concern about injustices done to relatively privileged women in their own communities.

The abject suffering of the world's most vulnerable women is thus used as rhetorical weapon to silence feminists—and feminism is treated as some sort of finite resource that is meant to be kept under glass, broken only in case of a "real" and "serious" emergency, as determined by men who want to silence feminists.

Men who police feminism and feminists, and judge the worthiness of feminist complaints on a sliding scale, don't recognize oppressive acts as interwoven strands of the same rope, and they don't respect the reality that most feminists can multi-task: I can write about a sexist t-shirt being sold to little girls at Wev-Mart, and I write about the rape epidemic in DR Congo in the same day. And do, frequently.

Commenters in the thread made variations on the same argument I am making now, reasonably concluding that Dawkins was arguing that "since worse things are happening somewhere else, we have no right to try to fix things closer to home." But Dawkins left a second comment, insisting that was not his meaning:

No I wasn't making that argument. Here's the argument I was making. The man in the elevator didn't physically touch her, didn't attempt to bar her way out of the elevator, didn't even use foul language at her. He spoke some words to her. Just words. She no doubt replied with words. That was that. Words. Only words, and apparently quite polite words at that.

If she felt his behaviour was creepy, that was her privilege, just as it was the Catholics' privilege to feel offended and hurt when PZ nailed the cracker. PZ didn't physically strike any Catholics. All he did was nail a wafer, and he was absolutely right to do so because the heightened value of the wafer was a fantasy in the minds of the offended Catholics. Similarly, Rebecca's feeling that the man's proposition was 'creepy' was her own interpretation of his behaviour, presumably not his. She was probably offended to about the same extent as I am offended if a man gets into an elevator with me chewing gum. But he does me no physical damage and I simply grin and bear it until either I or he gets out of the elevator. It would be different if he physically attacked me.

Muslim women suffer physically from misogyny, their lives are substantially damaged by religiously inspired misogyny. Not just words, real deeds, painful, physical deeds, physical privations, legally sanctioned demeanings. The equivalent would be if PZ had nailed not a cracker but a Catholic. Then they'd have had good reason to complain.

Richard

Again, he implies that "Muslim women" and "American women" are mutually exclusive groups; again, he implies that American women do not "suffer physically from misogyny," nor are their lives "substantially damaged by religiously inspired misogyny." Certainly, Dawkins and I would disagree on what constitutes "substantial damage," as I suspect his definition would start just beyond what any relatively privileged woman had ever suffered, but suffice it to say I disagree with his contention. As, I imagine, would the many American women who have been sexually abused by religious leaders, without justice. Just for a start.

Of course, I don't guess this is the sort of stuff that really matters to a man so privileged that he can, with a straight fucking face, assert an equivalency between being followed to an elevator and propositioned by a strange man and having to share an elevator with someone who is chewing gum. Yiiiiiiikes.

PZ Myers followed up with another post, attempting to inject some perspective back into the conversation, to no avail. Dawkins continued to insist that Watson had nothing to complain about in the first place:

I sarcastically compared Rebecca's plight with that of women in Muslim countries or families dominated by Muslim men. Somebody made the worthwhile point (reiterated here by PZ) that it is no defence of something slightly bad to point to something worse. We should fight all bad things, the slightly bad as well as the very bad. Fair enough. But my point is that the 'slightly bad thing' suffered by Rebecca was not even slightly bad, it was zero bad. A man asked her back to his room for coffee. She said no. End of story.

But not everybody sees it as end of story. OK, let's ask why not? The main reason seems to be that an elevator is a confined space from which there is no escape. This point has been made again and again in this thread, and the other one.

No escape? I am now really puzzled. Here's how you escape from an elevator. You press any one of the buttons conveniently provided. The elevator will obligingly stop at a floor, the door will open and you will no longer be in a confined space but in a well-lit corridor in a crowded hotel in the centre of Dublin.

Spoken like someone who does not understand what it's like to live as a woman in this world and has never even bothered to try.

Eventually, Myers appended this to his post: "[Rebecca Watson] asked for some simple common courtesy, and for that she gets pilloried. Sorry, people, but that sends a very clear signal to women that calm requests for respect will be met with jeers by a significant subset of the atheist community."

And 'round and 'round we go.

[H/T to Shaker Insomniax, who hat-tips Jen.]

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And I was on a panel with AronRa and Richard Dawkins [which] was on 'communicating atheism.' They sort of left it open for us to talk about whatever we wanted, really, within that realm. I was going to talk about blogging and podcasting, but, um, a few hours prior to that panel, there was another panel on women atheist activists, and I disagreed with a lot of what happened on that panel, uh, particularly with something that Paula Kirby had said.

Paula Kirby doesn't have a problem with sexism in the atheism community, and, because of that, she assumes that there is no sexism, um, so I thought that I would, during my panel, discuss what it's like to communicate atheism as me, um, as a woman, but from a different perspective from Paula. I don't assume that every woman will have the same experience that I've had, but I think it's worthwhile to publicize the fact that some women will go through this, and, um, that way we can warn women, ahead of time, as to what they might expect, give them the tools they need to fight back, and also give them the support structure they need to, uh, to keep going in the face of blatant misogyny.

So, I was interested in the response to my sort of rambling on that panel, um, which, like this video, was unscripted and rambling, for which I apologize. [grins] But the response was really fascinating. The response at the conference itself was wonderful, um, there were a ton of great feminists there, male and female, and also just open-minded people who had maybe never considered the, um, the way that women are treated in this community, but were interested in learning more.

So, thank you to everyone who was at that conference who, uh, engaged in those discussions outside of that panel, um, you were all fantastic; I loved talking to you guys—um, all of you except for the one man who, um, didn't really grasp, I think, what I was saying on the panel…? Because, um, at the bar later that night—actually, at four in the morning—um, we were at the hotel bar, 4am, I said, you know, "I've had enough, guys, I'm exhausted, going to bed," uh, so I walked to the elevator, and a man got on the elevator with me, and said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting, and I would like to talk more; would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee?"

Um. Just a word to the wise here, guys: Uhhhh, don't do that. Um, you know. [laughs] Uh, I don't really know how else to explain how this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I'll just sort of lay it out that I was a single woman, you know, in a foreign country, at 4am, in a hotel elevator with you, just you, and—don't invite me back to your hotel room, right after I've finished talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner.

So, yeah. But everybody else seemed to really get it.

Whoooooooooooooooops, Richard Dawkins! Almost everyone else.

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Shut Up!