[This started out as a comment in response to Shaker schumannhertz, and it got really long, so.]
In the comments thread of my earlier "Be Nice" piece, Shaker schumannhertz noted that zie knows" a lot of guys who [THINK they] understand the difference between the nice guy and the not-so-nice guy. The problem is: They think they're in the former category when they're in the latter." And that's a really common assertion (so I'm certainly not intending to negatively single out Shaker schumannhertz here, who just happened to be the person who left the comment this time); it's absolutely something I would have said myself once upon a time—but I wouldn't say that anymore.
In fact, I think that dismantling the idea that men can't intuit internalized prejudice against women is an important part of feminist thought.
(And I happen to know quite a few men who agree with me—men who find the notion that men lack this particular self-awareness incredibly demeaning.)
I genuinely don't believe that men don't understand the difference between "the nice guy and the not-so-nice guy." After nearly seven years of doing this, and dealing with dudes ranging from totes clueless to totally enlightened, and genuinely naive to genuinely nasty with a serious agenda, I think a man who doesn't, on some level, intuitively understand the difference between treating a woman as less than and treating her as a person, his equal, is a virtual unicorn.
It's not that I assume bad faith: It's just that my every experience, with myself and with other people, prescribes an expectation of awareness.
And then there's this: If 99% of the man who professed cluelessness in defense of their misogyny were actually just clueless, 99% of the "garsh, misogyny?!" conversations would dénouement with a grateful thank you for feminist enlightenment, instead of snarling flounces punctuated with accusations of man-hating and grievances about unwelcoming tones.
One of the rare points on which anti-feminists and I agree is that I'm not fucking special. There is nothing about me that makes me uniquely capable of intuiting the difference between my own humanizing and dehumanizing behavior toward other people. I may have the language to put that feeling into words, but I didn't need to have the language to have the feeling, to have the unarticulated knowledge of prejudice within myself.
One doesn't need to be actively trying to examine privilege to be aware of internalized bias.
I mean, hell, we've all got memories of learning about racial prejudice; we can all share stories of hearing a relative or friend or schoolmate introduce us to some piece of racial prejudice against another race (or our own).
Most of us, when we think about it, have memories of learning about sex prejudice, too. It's just that those sorts of discussions are rarer, especially in terms of men discussing the memorable events of their patriarchal indoctrination, because we take as read that men are from Mars and women are from Venus or whatever.
We use the "conventional wisdom" of intrinsic difference and unnavigable separateness to create a space in which men can tell the lie that they are unaware of their bias toward women.
And it absolutely infuriates me, because it is SUCH BULLSHIT.
When a man comes in here giving me this blinking, wide-eyed, oh-em-gee I just can't figure out how to treat women so as not to be creepy, because it's soooooo confusing, I just want to barf nine thousand times.
And if men want to get pissed at someone for my exasperation with this rubbish, then they can direct their ire at the men for whom the honesty about knowing is more important than the fraudulence of not knowing in defense of continued misogyny.
I'm just done with playing that game. I just don't have the patience for it, anymore. I refuse to indulge it, because it's horseshit. I am a human being, and I am a privileged human being, and I know how to recognize the presence of bias within myself, and so does That Guy.
All I got anymore for That Guy is this: Don't tell me you don't fucking know. Don't try to claim, with a straight fucking face, that you don't know the difference between treating a woman as an individual person and treating her as part of some ladyperson monolith whose contours are drawn in demeaning narratives by seething oppressors. Don't even feign that infuriating haplessness in which you profess to be unacquainted with the cavernous divide between treating women as your equal and treating them like garbage.
You want me to trust you're an intelligent and decent guy who believes me to be his equal for whom he has some modicum of respect? Then you can start by jettisoning the aw-shucks routine and give me the respect of truth. Tell me you do indeed know that you view women differently, treat women differently, hold women to different standards than you do men.
Then we can have an honest goddamn conversation about how to fix that.
But I'm not having one more dishonest conversation about your supposed cluelessness. Not anymore. Because we both know it's just the sad-ass anthem of the Dude Who Doesn't Want to Fix It.
To the dudes who do, I give you the gift of expecting more, which, although it may not feel that way, is an act of generosity and good faith. I am a better person than I once was because people gave me the gift of expecting more of me, of setting a higher standard and encouraging me to reach for it, of challenging me not to settle into the well-tread grooves of my socialization, of admonishing me to reject the vast and varied prejudices and myths with which I'd been indoctrinated, of urging me expect more of myself and persuading me to believe I could be the change I want to see.
Not perfection. Just more.
Perfection is an unattainable goal and an unreasonable expectation. More, on the other hand, is eminently reasonable.
And it is a kindness, extended by someone who wants to be your equal.
In Which I Utterly Refuse to Credit as Ignorance What Is Manifest Dishonesty
Number of the Day
$1.3 billion: The estimated amount of money US taxpayers lost in the government bailout of Chrysler, after the government "sold its remaining 6% stake in the company to Italian automaker Fiat, wrapping up the 2009 auto bailouts that were part of TARP. Fiat paid the Treasury a total of $560 million for the remaining shares, as well as rights to shares held by the United Auto Workers retiree trust."
The treasury calls it a "major accomplishment," even though the losses would have been "significantly reduced" if the government had not closed out early and recovered interest accrued on the loans over the six years remaining in the original payment plan.
I'm no economist, but taking a $1.3 billion bath to sell off shares to a foreign corporation doesn't strike me as the best long-term deal for US taxpayers/workers.
I remember at the time of the bailouts, there were a bunch of dirty hippies asking whether it was really "Main Street" who was being bailed out, as was promised, even though the money wa going to "Wall Street." I believe we have our answer.
Feminism 101: Helpful Hints for Dudes, Part 6
Following is a primer for men who are genuinely interested in learning about how to be a more feminist-friendly dude. Most of the information in this piece is, as always, generally applicable in terms of being decent to the people around you, but this has been written to be most accessible for men in keeping with the objective of the series, which is responding to commonly emailed questions from privileged men (here, generally meaning straight cis men) seeking advice on how to interact with the women in their lives.
In the wake of the Elevator Incident, and throughout all the ensuing discussion, and in many of the emails I received in response to my post, there ran a thread of desperate concern, tinged with the usual belligerent exasperation, about how (straight) men are ever supposed to figure out how to interact with women in a way that won't be regarded as rude, sexist, and/or creepy.
Many people who have weighed in at various feminist, atheist, skeptic, and/or scientific blogs have taken up the challenge of addressing those concerns, with recommendations on how to approach women, guidelines for conferences, and prescriptions for social or institutional change. I'm not inclined to replicate those efforts.
I will, however, take a moment to answer a question that I feel was being asked implicitly in many of these discussions, and was asked explicitly of me by a male emailer, writing to me to express his frustrations on this subject: "What is it exactly that you want men to do?"
I want men to be nice to women.
Here, I will not insert any caveats about how what I really want is for all people to be nice to each other, or that I acknowledge that there are men who are nice to women, or women who are not nice to men, or whatever acquiescence would allegedly inoculate me against the accusation that I am a shrill, horrible cunt. The demands of chronic obfuscators have nothing to do with the question that was asked of me, which I intend to answer without indulging tangents and distractions.
The question that was asked of me is this: What is it exactly that you want men to do?
More precisely, I was asked what it is that I want (straight) men to do, so that they might avoid being charged with rudeness, misogyny, or creepiness. Implicit in the question is the charge that there is no answer, the assertion that there is no way that (straight) men can publicly interact with women in a way that will not be negatively construed.
Especially by women who are hysterical. Women who are psychos. Women who are over-reactionary. Women who are man-haters. Women who think all men are perverts. Women who are looking for things to get mad about. Feminists.
But, of course, there is an answer. Men can be nice to women.
There are, surely, people who will read that and snort derisively and feel compelled to make arguments about how "nice" is a relative term and is thus meaningless, in terms of trying to help a man know how to interact with a woman.
And, just as surely, people like myself, who are not invested in the idea that (straight) men can't possibly know how to interact with women without a high risk of offending them, will call bullshit in retort.
You see, one thing I have observed over and over (and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, and over some more) during my thirty-seven years on this rock, is that there are men who treat women like people, and men who treat women like not-men.
Men who treat women like people—that is to say, in the same way they treat other men—generally tend to have no problem being nice to women. They are pleasant in their interactions with women; they are respectful during their interactions with women; they hold friendly and engaging and fun and challenging and sometimes contentious conversations with women; if they are straight men, they acknowledge appropriate boundaries in terms of romantic behavior (i.e. they don't treat a work environment like it's a singles bar just because a female person is in it); they don't ogle or grope women; they regard women as their equals, and are capable of acknowledging women's different experiences from their own without using that as the basis for treating women like a different species.
Men who treat women like people treat them as individual people, who are deserving of their decency unless and until an individual woman gives them a reason to be guarded, or avoidant, or angry, or whatever—in which case, those feelings are directed at the individual woman who piqued their ire, not at "women."
They are, in short, nice.
On the other hand, there are men who treat women like not-men. Women are regarded as a separate class of human altogether (or, in some cases, non-human), a monolithic variation which exists not in complement to men, but in service to them. Men who treat women like not-men, if they are straight, view women as the sex class, and ergo do not draw any delineation between spheres of work and play, but view a woman in a professional space as an interloper, whose purpose as a sexual object and potential sex partner supersedes her role as a working person in her chosen vocation.
Men who treat women like not-men have problems viewing women just as co-workers, as bosses, as friends, as teachers, as equals, because they see them as humans with a (sex/reproductive) service role, which is not how they see other men.
And because they see women as fundamentally different from men, they imagine that there must be a whole set of unique rules to interacting with women. They cannot conceive that there is, simply, a set of rules to engage all other humans politely and respectfully and productively—and that the boundary between "man" and "woman" is not nearly as important as the boundary between, say, "work" and "speed-dating event."
(Which is not to say it's inherently awful or wrong to meet someone at work. There is a difference—and a not remotely difficult to discern difference, at that—between happening to meet someone at work in whom you become romantically interested, and treating the women who share your place of employment as a captive audience for your random sexual overtures.)
Men who treat women like not-men are incapable of acknowledging women's different experiences from their own without using that as the basis for treating women like a different species. They use any woman's failure to please as a strike against the entirety of womankind, and they annihilate the individuality of a woman beneath the crushing weight of their own biases about women, and then accuse women of being all the same.
They treat a woman's personhood and her womanhood as mutually exclusive constructs, while treating manhood and personhood as synonymous, and then they wonder how it is that women can complain of different treatment, of lesser treatment.
They are, in short, not nice.
There's nothing decent or kind about treating women as though they are alien beings whose primary use is in service to your needs. Unless, of course, a woman is not attractive to you, in which case she has no use at all.
It isn't just terrible men who treat women this way. It's lots and lots and lots of men, who consider themselves to be decent and kind, and who are hardly considered monsters by the women who know them. I'm sure the man who asked me what it is, exactly, I'd like men to do is not an awful fellow. He's probably just a guy who's been told his whole life that it's okay to treat women differently and never questioned if maybe that wasn't actually the best thing to do, if you really do fancy yourself an egalitarian sort of bloke.
And thus is my advice to him, and to all the men who are wondering what it is they're supposed to do to make us bitches happy: Be nice.
If you really think about it, and if you're really honest with yourself, you know what that means.
Airship Captains Get to See the Most Gobsmacking Scuttlebutt!
Mere moments ago, as I peered through my monocle over my niece Eugenie's shoulder at her portable folding Babbage-engine device so as to assure her Ladylike electrovirtual comportment, I espied the following clarion call issued to this very community:
Two people are angry at each other over politics. I don't understand why this is a big deal or why Feminist Flag Ship One is mobilizing against him.Feminist Flag Ship One!? My whiskers—usually smoothed to a fair sleek brilliance with neatsfoot oil—are suddenly a-bristle! Bruce, faithful yeoman that he remains, has been taking the waters at Banff with some young friends in his physical-fitness club, so my own airship has of late been docked.
How could I have known of this latest Scourge upon the fair skies of freedom?
Is it true? Has the weaker sex taken to the skies in dirigibles, even as they foolishly chain themselves to lamp-posts in protest of some imagined slight, like that dreadful harridan Dorothy Parker? What could be more irresponsible than to attempt to man an airship whilst chained to a lamp-post? Yet more evidence, surely, that the Fair Sex is most prudently kept at home, darning hosiery?
This poor Gentleman Mr. West surely stands no chance, now that Feminist Flagship One is mobilized against him!
The Skies Are not Safe, Gentlemen!
More Recommended Reading
The "We've Got You Covered" Birth Control Blog Carnival care of the National Women's Law Center and Planned Parenthood. There is so much good reading here. SO MUCH!
Texting! With Liss and Deeky!
Liss: My electricity just went out.
Deeky: Of course.
Liss: The power company is all durrrrrrrrrrrrrr we don't know when we'll get it back on. Sorry! So I can't get any work done AGAIN and the house is heating up fast.
Deeky: Yuck.
Liss: They're like, you'll get an automated call when it's back on. I'm like, I don't need a call when it's BACK ON. I'll know when the fucking lights come back on!
Liss: What I want to know is how long I can expect to sit here with my thumb up my ass in this sweltering hotbox! Fucking assholes!
Deeky: LOLOLOL!!!
Texas Defunds Planned Parenthood
Last Thursday I posted about how Ohio has written a Medicaid work-around for defunding Planned Parenthood. Well that little strategy was copied (almost word-for-word, I suspect a lobby writing this and giving it to congressepeople) in recently signed Texas legislation. Rick Perry signed, late Tuesday, SB 7 (various format download), which is a huge piece of legislation overhauling health care access/payments/etc within the state of Texas. Buried in that is distribution for family planning services (pages 90 & 91 in .pdf format):
SECTIONA1.19. (a) Subchapter A, Chapter 531, Government Code,is amended by adding Section531.0025 to read as follows:As I noted in the Ohio post, Planned Parenthood is not a "federally qualified health center". Here are Texas' numbers (via Guttmacher):
Sec.A531.0025. RESTRICTIONS ON AWARDS TO FAMILY PLANNING SERVICE PROVIDERS.
(a)Notwithstanding any other law, money appropriated to the Department of State Health Services for the purpose of providing family planning services must be awarded:
(1) to eligible entities in the following order of descending priority:
(A) public entities that provide family planning services, including state, county, and local community health clinics and federally qualified health centers;
(B) nonpublic entities that provide comprehensive primary and preventive care services in addition to family planning services; and
(C) nonpublic entities that provide family planning services but do not provide comprehensive primary and preventive care services; or
(2)as otherwise directed by the legislature in the General Appropriations Act.
(b)Notwithstanding Subsection (a), the Department of State Health Services shall, in compliance with federal law, ensure distribution of funds for family planning services in a manner that does not severely limit or eliminate access to those services in any region of the state.
(b) Section 32.024, Human Resources Code, is amended by adding Subsection (c-1) to read as follows:
(c-1) The department shall ensure that money spent for purposes of the demonstration project for women’s health care services under former Section 32.0248, Human Resources Code, or a similar successor program is not used to perform or promote elective abortions, or to contract with entities that perform or promote elective abortions or affiliate with entities that perform or promote elective abortions.
•In 2006, 158 family planning centers in Texas received support from Title X. They included:They want to take away funding for all of the clinics and over 78K+ people will lose their health care center. How many people are employed that will lose their jobs because PP in Texas has to close clinics? Rick Perry, by the way, is toying with the idea of a presidential run.
Health department clinics: 32
Community health centers: 16
Planned Parenthood clinics: 31
Hospital outpatient clinics: 24
Other independent clinics: 55
•These centers provided contraceptive care to the following numbers of clients:
Health department clinics: 29,020
Community health centers: 12,480
Planned Parenthood clinics: 78,490
Hospital outpatient clinics: 41,170
Other independent clinics: 59,080
***
In somewhat related news, this is a week of heightened harassment for people who work helping women:
...Operation Save America has about 300 people from throughout the country picketing this week at various sites of clinics, physician offices and homes of people with connections to providing abortion services.Yes, that's right. They're outside people's homes with signs and bullshit just like they do at clinics.
March 10th was National Abortion Provider Appreciation Day but this week seems like a particularly good week to say thanks, again, to those who work every day to provide health care services to women in the face of threats of violence and continual harassment at their work places--and at their homes. To the doctors, the nurse practitioners, the midwives, the nurses, the medical assistants, the office staff and administrators, and the volunteers: Thank You.
Quote of the Day
"There are certain ways that we speak in the military, and I guess I have not learned the DC-insider talk that maybe some of these people are used to."—Republican Congressman Allen West (Florida), refusing to apologize for his wildly inappropriate email in which he called Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz "the most vile, unprofessional, and despicable member of the US House of Representatives" and "not a lady," among other things, and blaming his disrespectful and unprofessional behavior on having a military background.
Support the troops!
Film Corner! Review of Delhi Belly
by Shaker Aparna
[Trigger warning for rape culture, violence, misogyny, classism, fat hatred.]
So there's this Bollywood movie, Delhi Belly, which is fast becoming a cult phenomenon all over India. It's also playing in limited theaters in the US, where it's also very popular: On a recent weekday, we couldn't get tickets to two different shows at a Manhattan theater.
But, eventually, we scheduled a baby sitter and everything, and went to the AMC right in the middle of Times Square to see the movie, which was supposed to be a 'bold' movie, one made for the 'youth of India', supposedly an 'original, edgy, hilarious' movie, a movie that's collecting fabulous reviews and even better revenues.
Maybe, pushing thirty, I'm no longer the 'youth of India' or of anywhere else, because 'original, edgy and hilarious' doesn't really seem to mean what it used to.
So anyway, the movie is about three men, one or two in committed relationships, all three miserable in their lives. They're caught up in a typical undercover-transaction-gone-wrong situation, of which there are twenty movies made every year (so it's very original, yes), and end up getting a shit-load (hahahahaha! Oh wait, I didn't explain the part of the movie's toilet humor. But it's c-o-m-i-n-g!!) of stolen money, and they end up doing the right thing anyway with said stolen money. Along the way, the lead hero finds the woman of his dreams, and they blow through six frames a second of the most generous definition of humor that can exist.
And this is just one of about, oh, seven Hangover-inspired Bollywood movies (or virtual remakes) releasing this year. True Fact. For some reason, that pinnacle of Hollywood comedy seems to have really inspired Indian filmmakers. It must be those awesome characters in The Hangover—man about to be married to a hot but controlling girlfriend gets into a crazy situation that tests his manhood and he realizes and escapes the girl's clutches just in time, moving on to a far better, hotter, more compliant prospect; man in a bad job blows off his boss and asserts control; man objectifying every woman around is just a poor Galifianakis who can hardly be blamed for his normal maleness, because he can't get any, poor guy.
Part of what worries me about the reception of this film is it's not about whether or not some persons found the movie funny; it is about the unanimity of opinion in the editorials and the review columns, the unquestioning acceptance that this is 'edgy' humor, that this is "modern" and what India's Youth wants. Toilet jokes? It says something about our nation, but not exactly what you think it says. And even someone brought up on British sitcoms knows the toilet humor plays out in the first hour, then you need something else to keep it funny.
Not to worry, for with the main course of toilet humor, we also have rape jokes, fat jokes, lesbians-are-just-women-who-haven't-found-the-right-man (oh, yes, they did go there. Yes. The movie's very edgy and modern, you see!), slut-shaming, gender essentialism, any-guy-in-a-committed-and-respectful-relationship-is-a-sucker, and other such wonderful sources of Genuine Humor.
Since this is a 'heist gone wrong' genre movie, the stolen money (diamonds hidden in a Matryoshka doll—how original indeed) ends up with the typical deserving-but-clueless character. And who is this poor lucky sap? None other than a man who cheats on his wife (but of course, only because she is fat and because she 'henpecks' him). I mean, what else is the poor guy going to do—NOT go to a sex-worker? Oh, and even there he ends up with someone who incidentally is equally fat as his wife, hahaha, the poor guy is so incurably 'sweet' even the whores take advantage of him. Of course, if he only could've stood up for himself he could've gotten a better deal—a thin, pretty woman for his cash. But it's all good, because he ends up with all the thirty stolen diamonds, because he's such a good guy and this is a feel-good movie.
The humor (for that is what I take issue with; the triteness of the story and the predictability of the plot is to be expected from a mainstream Hindi Bollywood movie, really—like any other mainstream movie) rides squarely on the backs of women and the poor. It's so fucking edgy to joke about rape, so original and funny when a pervert operating as a photojournalist—one of the three leads, that too—takes advantage of his occupation to surreptitiously take pictures of an interviewee's body as free porn 'for himself'. This totally doesn't actually happen every day.
A woman screaming and panting in mortal fear for her life is played for the cruelest laughs, especially because the camera helps you focus on nothing but her heaving, sweaty bosom. Oh, a whimpering woman! Being toyed with! How hilarious!
But no, seriously. To Aamir Khan & Kiran Rao, both of whom also helped create the lovely, Academy-award nominated Lagaan (nominated ten years ago for Best Foreign Film): You can do SO much better. You've actually worked together to create funny, heart-warming, touching movies that don't insult the audience, that don't demand I leave my brains and logic behind to have fun or to be part of a 'modern' movie.
For instance, not only is it illogical, it is also NOT hilarious when a spurned boyfriend—another one of the leads—fantasizes about beating/humiliating his ex-girlfriend or hopes that the girl is abused and ill-treated by her family, and it's played for audience laughs, especially when it is abundantly clear that said girl is going through an arranged marriage under pressure from the same family. And most hilarious of all (by which I mean embarrassingly out of touch) is that the main lead feels victimized and manipulated by being offered dowry. Oh, the shame of it, poor lad, being offered a free car and a free apartment by his fiancee's parents! The villains here are the parents, of course, not the poor guy who's just being sweet in accepting the gifts! For that situation to be played for laughs in a country and a context where there are still hundreds of women dying dowry deaths EVERY DAY seems not just like ignorance to privilege but like willful, deliberate cruelty.
Even the random sidewalk characters, in this case an old White (presumably American) couple visiting India for their wedding anniversary, bring in their own share of sexist stereotypes—the old man clearly being a henpecked, sex starved, but lovable old creep.
The lead, a young upcoming actor called Imran Khan, plays a man so beaten down by society, so unable to stand up (joke, joke!) for himself that he actually performs oral sex on his girlfriend. Poor sap. And still the ungrateful woman complains and complains about his facial hair, his one concession to manhood; doesn't she know how good she's got it? So he's such a loser, but by the end of the movie he's turned into a Real Man (TM), and kisses his new girl like he owns her, and punches a rival in the face! In the face! Yay! He's so DUDEly now! And this is very, very modern, of course. Very unlike all those boring old Hindi movies where they had a macho hero punching rivals and kissing women. But this is different.
It's sad, because, off-screen, Imran Khan seems like a really nice person, the rare Bollywood actor who seems to respect the women in his life and has a strong personal core, separate from the glamorous world of his occupation, a very normal, not especially privileged childhood. He's seen his parents' marriage break-up, and that points to a grounded family that's dealt with issues in a realistic way, unlike Imran's contemporaries (one of whose parents have felt compelled to stick together despite very public instances of domestic abuse by his father against his mother). It's sad that such a guy like Imran feels he needs to be an assholey dude, a misogynist to make it in the Hindi film industry.
But yes, that's what you get when a whole industry looks to The Hangover for inspiration, and the entire world is willing to pretend that age-old oppressions exploited for laughs is "cutting edge."
Recommended Reading
[Trigger warning for sexual harassment, assault, violence, and rape culture.]
For background on "the Elevator Incident," which has precipitated all sorts of discussion about misogyny and rape culture within the atheist, skeptic, and/or scientific community/ies, go here.
First, read Jennifer Ouellette's "Is It Cold in Here?"
Then, read Zuska's "What Constitutes Blatant Sexism of the Most Egregious Sort?"
Finally, read Eric Michael Johnson's "The Science of Sexism: Primate Behavior and the Culture of Sexual Coercion." Shaker Erica passed on this last one, and she notes that the author "doesn't just make the comparison (apes use coersive sexual behavior and so do humans, surprise!) and leave it at that—he goes on to not only emphasize that 'biology is not destiny' but also to make case studies of primate societies that don't display that behavior (yay for bonobos, once again!). ... And he ends the whole thing with a call for societal change that left me embarrassingly teary-eyed at work. In particular, he stresses that, 'While specific policies that protect women from coercion and exploitation remain important, what we're ultimately after is social change'." It is a remarkable piece.
Open Thread & News Round-Up: Debt Negotiations
Here's the latest...
LA Times—White House may be open to short-term debt deal:
The White House signaled Wednesday that President Obama could accept a short-term deal to raise the debt ceiling, but only if it appeared lawmakers were close to an agreement on a significant deficit reduction plan.Meanwhile, House Republicans are insistent that Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid push a vote on the abysmal "Cut, Cap and Balance" bill that the House passed. Which is just a time-wasting bit of pointless brinkspersonship that pushes the country (and the global economy) closer to the fucking edge.
The hope of such a "grand bargain" was revived Tuesday by the so-called Gang of Six senators, who outlined a deal that would achieve nearly $4 trillion in deficit reduction in the next decade through spending cuts, entitlement reform and an overhaul of the tax code.
But Congress must act to raise the debt ceiling by Aug. 2, and the plan discussed in the Senate Tuesday was just a framework, not specific legislation that could take weeks to move through Congress.
Former Republican Senator Judd Gregg, who is now an analyst with Goldman Sacks (lulz), says: "My gut tells me that we'll need a weekend of drama—maybe a weekend of the government not paying its bills—politicians need drama to make something happen. As soon as social security checks don't go out, the politics will change. I suspect it'll take artificial drama to get closure past the House."
The "artificial drama" of people not getting money they need to live. Christ. These people's heads are so far up their asses I don't know they get any oxygen.
If you want to know how truly devoid of integrity, ethics, decency, maturity, and any sense of responsibility the GOP caucus has actually become, this is all you need to read: TPMDC—It Begins: Top Republicans Push Away from Gang of Six Plan.
As time goes on, and conservative interest groups and members of Congress rip into it, support among Republicans for the Gang of Six plan to reduce deficits will begin to wane. In fact, that's already happening.So, on the one hand, we have President Obama who values bipartisanship and the appearance of compromise above all else, and, on the other hand, we've got the Congressional Republicans, who will deliberately tank solutions just because Obama likes them. The more you want to play with me, the less I want to play with you. Our government is being run (or not run) by an infuriating collection of playground brats.
In a publicly released memo meant to undermine support for the Gang of Six plan in its current form, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) laments, "it increases revenues while failing to seriously address exploding federal spending on health care, which is the primary driver of our debt. There are also serious concerns that the proposal's substance on spending falls far short of what is needed to achieve the savings it claims."
Read the full memo here.
Not all of Ryan's complaints ring hollow. The plan legitimately does punt a lot of the spending cut questions to Congressional committees -- though under the threat of across the board cuts if those committees fail to report out more targeted reductions. And, whether you want plenty of new revenue, or no new revenue, the plan leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Members claim it would count, in budgeting terms, as a tax cut, because the Congressional Budget Office's baseline assumes that all of the Bush tax cuts will expire at the end of 2012.
Relative to current policy, though, it's supposed to draw in $1 trillion in new revenue -- surely a sticking point for House Republicans. But where do those revenues come from if the plan lowers top tax rates (or at least the top rates), eliminates the Alternative Minimum Tax (at a cost to the deficit of $1.7 trillion), and doesn't eliminate the most expensive loopholes and benefits in the tax code? That's left to Congress to decide
It's not just Ryan, though. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA) says he opposes the Gang of Six plan because it cuts too deeply into military spending.
And, perhaps most telling of all, a Senate GOP Leadership Aide told Politico, "Background guidance: The President killed any chance of its success by 1) Embracing it. 2) Hailing the fact that it increases taxes. 3) Saying it mirrors his own plan."
And even the Republicans' own base is getting irritated with this garbage: "Congressional Republicans are being so dogmatic and recalcitrant in their refusal to raise the debt ceiling...that wealthy donors are telling Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) to knock off the demagoguery and support tax increases."
While Cantor fiddles, the Federal Reserve "is actively preparing for the possibility that the United States could default," and Wall Street is "devising doomsday plans in case the clock runs out."
Discuss.
Question of the Day
What's the most embarrassing thing you've ever done while laughing?
This question was first run a few years ago, after a phone conversation I had with Paul the Spud, during which he confessed having laughed so hard while out with friends that he farted really loudly: "That may not seem like a big deal to you, but to me, it's the height of embarrassment."
As for me, I once swallowed my girlfriend's drool because we were both laughing so hard.
C and I were about 14 years old, and we were at Six Flags Great America, where we decided to take a ride on the Scrambler—a ride that's essentially a collection of small cars that whip around a central pole so fast, while also spinning in smaller circles, that they push the riders to the outside of the car.
Because I was bigger, I sat on the outside, and as soon as the ride started, C was fighting for dear life not to crush the everliving fuck out of me. And every time she'd manage to pull herself a bit away, the ride would change direction and throw her back on top of me. It just sent us into an absolute fit of howling laughter, and by about halfway through the brilliantly long ride, her mouth was just fixed wide open in a silent laugh, with drool streaming out the side. Which, like the rest of her, headed in my direction. My mouth being similarly frozen in a breathless, soundless laugh, I could do naught but welcome her Scrambler-induced spittle into my own gaping maw.
We recreated this event many times in years after.
Number of the Day
Four: The number of openly gay judicial candidates President Obama will have nominated to US District Court after his formal nomination of Michael Fitzgerald to the US District Court for the Central District of California.
Know what will be even more awesome? When the nomination of openly gay judicial candidates isn't even remarkable anymore.
An Observation
It occurs to me that there would be far fewer obnoxious thread derails on feminist blogs (and this concept applies to all social justice spheres and intersectionalities, with the appropriate adjustments in language) If there weren't so many people who misconstrue:
"If you don't [like/respect/admire/spend time with/consider your equal/appreciate/enjoy talking to/otherwise positively engage with] any women, then you've got a misogyny problem."
to mean:
"If you don't [like/respect/admire/spend time with/consider your equal/appreciate/enjoy talking to/otherwise positively engage with] every woman, then you've got a misogyny problem."
Sometimes, that is a mistake made out of defensiveness by people steeped in unexamined privilege, the sort of reactionary deflection that's the hallmark of careless listening caused by existential panic.
But sometimes—more times, I think—it's a deliberate misconstrual used by fauxgressives who always have an exceptional hatred to offer, in order that they may be assured it's still okay to hate that lady.
All of which is a long way of saying, I estimate we're going to be playing the "Just because I hate Sarah Palin/Michele Bachmann, doesn't mean I hate ALL WOMEN" Mad-Lib around here a lot in the coming months, with people whose engagement of anti-feminist narratives to demean "individual women" suggests otherwise.
Assvertising
Repeat offender in this series, Klondike, which is owned by Unilever, whose brands (which include Axe and Dove, among others) constitute probably something like a third of the entries in this series, is running an awesome new campaign called "5 Seconds to Glory," in which someone has to put up with some HORRIBLE SHIT for five seconds to get a Klondike bar, like listen to his wife:
A white dude in his 30s sits on his couch watching TV. "New Klondike Mint Chocolate Chip bars present 5 Seconds to Glory!" exclaims a male voiceover, as the dude's white wife comes in and sits next to him on the couch. "Mark verses Actually Listening to His Wife!" says the voiceover, as she begins to talk to Mark about painting their foyer yellow. He turns toward her and makes a face of stern concentration, as a countdown clock ticks down from 5. After 5 seconds, a bell dings and he jumps up and cheers. Confetti and balloons fall and two blond women in short skirts and go-go boots run out and hand him a Klondike bar, while his wife looks on, confused. Cue the "What would you do for a Klondike bar?" jingle.
Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes.
For what is probably the nine dozenth time in seven years, I will point out that this advert, in relying on the Patriarchal (and heterocentrist) narratives about women being boring and talkative and men being inattentive and poor listeners, insults not merely women, but men, too. The ad team who designed it was comprised almost exclusively of men (the team included one woman).
It is feminists, of course, who have the terrible reputation as man-haters, but it isn't we who consider all men babies, dopes, dogs, and potential rapists. The holders of those views are the women and men who embrace, perpetuate, and trade on the narratives of the Patriarchy—which itself, after all, takes a rather unpleasantly dim view of most people.
[H/T to Deeky.]
And a Great Cheer Arose Across the Land
Larry Summers has FINALLY broken his legendary silence about the Winklevoss twins. It turns out they are assholes.
I don't know what I love more about that article: The fact that some dipshit thinking a pair of twin dipshits are assholes is considered news at all, or the fact that it's only considered news worthy of CNN's Money section.
(If you have no idea what this post is about: 1. You probably have not seen The Social Network. 2. You are lucky.)
