[Trigger warning for violence.]
"Yesterday, in an apparent attempt to rally their caucus, the Republicans played a clip from a cops-and-robbers movie called The Town. In the scene they chose to inspire their House freshmen, one of the crooks gives a pep talk to the other, right before they both put on hockey masks, bludgeon two men with sticks, and shoot a man in the leg. Literally, in the movie, the protagonists say people are going to get hurt, but they go ahead and do it anyway. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your House Republican majority."—Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), criticizing House Republican leadership for using violent rhetoric (AGAIN) to inspire Republican representatives to legislative action.
That would be the same House of Representatives from which Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is still on medical leave after being shot by a violent asshole who did not grow up in a void.
Quote of the Day
Nope
Telling people to "smile" and/or "laugh" is not, in fact, nice.
Telling people how to behave is an assertion of ownership; it is disdainful of individual agency, a failure to acknowledge boundaries and autonomy.
That auditing other people's emotions could be considered "nice" is absurd. But par for the course in a culture that is contemptuous of consent.
[H/T to Shaker Sophiefair.]
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by friendship.
Recommended Reading:
Congratulations to Fannie and Hammerpants! Much love and happiness to you!
Amy: A Victory in the War Against Profiteering
Aunt B: Help Me Understand This
Mary: Where have all the startups gone?
Andy: Italy's Parliament Rejects Anti-Homophobia Bill
Copyranter: Florida Paper Names Its Women's Section "Skirt!"
Melissa: Toronto Film Festival Lineup Roll Out: The Women
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Rep. Bobby Franklin Dies
Shaker ElphieLives emails, which I am sharing with her permission:
GA State Rep Bobby Franklin has passed away from natural causes. Since he was featured a couple of times earlier this year, I thought that I would pass this on. I do not celebrate his passing, and feel great sympathy his wife and children. I am, however, relieved that I will no longer have to hear about the horrible anti woman legislation that he was constantly introducing. I also understand the wish to not speak ill of the dead, but it is sickening to hear him described as kind, gentle, and principled. I would avoid the comments on these articles, ajc.com comment sections are frequently cesspools of nastiness.I can't really add much to that. My condolences to those who loved him.
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Trigger warning for misogyny, racism, body policing, heterocentrism, gender essentialism, rape culture.]
Holy Shit: 10 Things Men Find Unattractive.
Don't let the genericism of the title fool you: This is no standard-issue entry in the Worst Thing series, which has featured a number of "Listen Up, Ladies"-type pieces. This piece is uniquely awful in its extraordinarily detailed criticism of women who fail to conform with the author's ("men's") expectations.
The author, nativenotes, a Black man ostensibly directing his "advice" primarily at Black women (but finding the most receptive audience, I imagine, among other men), polices women literally from our heads ("Can we talk about that funky smelling weave with the tracks showing because that's not a good look. Or my natural sisters—who think dry and flaky is the new it do. We ain't feeling you neither.") to our toes ("Chipped nail polish and ashy feet will not be flying either. Talk to the little Asian women and tip them well so you no longer scratch my legs in bed. Thanks.")
The little Asian woman?! Yiiiiiiiiiiikes.
Naturally, everything in between is policed, too, from clothing choices to directions on how to trim our pubic hair.
I was particularly fond of #4: Angry for No Damn Reason. "Some of y'all are taking this feminism thing too far—you're lashing out at men every chance you get and we're tired of it."
You know, I would suggest that if Mr. Nativenotes has found himself on the receiving end of a lot of female anger, he might consider that there may, in fact, be a reason—like, say, writing horseshit articles in which he proudly puts on full display his unrepentant misogyny.
Meanwhile, I imagine there are quite a few men who are none too pleased with his assertion to be speaking for all men, not merely for the heterocentrism and the implication that men are, by nature, misogynist bullies, but also for opening the piece with a disturbing sop to narratives of male sexual aggression and lack of self-control:
Let the record reflect that just because men find said issues unattractive that does not mean we will not attempt to sleep with you. The two are not mutually exclusive; this is a very real disclaimer.Whoa.
My favorite part by a country mile, however, is his friendly closing to all the ladies who have just been given the gift of his sage advice:
Peace and love ladies, I think you're beautiful. I hope you enjoy your weekend and in no way was I trying to offend but a dose of keeping it real is always healthy.Just LOL. I'm not offended; I'm contemptuous.
[H/T to Shaker Amy.]
The Global Echo of Violent Misogyny
by David Futrelle
[Trigger warning for violence, terrorism, eliminationism, misogyny, racism, Islamophobia.]
We all know that Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who killed dozens of people in attacks last Friday, was motivated by a toxic mélange of far-right ideology largely revolving around his intense hatred of Islam. The 1500-page "manifesto" he posted to the internet – a grab-bag of his own writing and material cut and pasted from assorted right-wing sites and even the Unabomber's manifesto – crackles with denunciations of Muslims, "Marxists" and the assorted other bogeymen that haunt right-wing dreams.
But what has yet to be fully appreciated is the degree to which he was also motivated by a deep hatred of women.
I've spent much of the past year seeking out and exposing (and often simply mocking) online misogyny for my blog Man Boobz. I find much of it in what some have taken to calling the "manosphere" – a loose collection of interlinked sites devoted to Men's Rights Activism, pickup artistry, and a strange separatist movement of sorts called Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW). The overwhelming majority of these sites – the most popular of which include The Spearhead, A Voice for Men, In Mala Fide and MGTOWforums.com (to which I won't be providing direct links, but they're easy enough to find, if you're so inclined)– are steeped in misogyny (and in some cases racism). I've become very familiar with their standard misogynist "arguments" and rhetorical tropes.
After a blog reader alerted me to the misogyny in Breivik's manifesto, I read through those sections of the sprawling work that dealt specifically with feminism. I was struck again and again by how utterly familiar it all sounded. Much of it could have been taken word-for-word from the manosphere blogs I read every day. (Not to mention from some of the misogynist trolls who regularly comment on my site.) The ideology is the same, the language is the same, even the specific obsessions are the same – from no-fault divorce to the evils of "Sex and the City."
Here's one typical passage, which appears to have been written by Breivik himself:
It's the destructive and suicidal "Sex and the City" lifestyle (modern feminism, sexual revolution) which we are taught to revere as the truth. In that setting, men are not men anymore, but metro sexual and emotional beings that are there to serve the purpose as a never-criticising soul mate to the new age feminist woman goddess. The perfect matriarchy has now been fulfilled …
Breivik goes on to rant about STDs and no-fault divorce, before moving on to another favorite obsession of manosphere misogynists, the supposed sexual "capital" of manipulative women:
Isolated, "sex and the city lifestyle" is relatively harmless, but if you glorify it and ram it down the throat of mainstream society like we see today it becomes a lethal and destructive societal force as we are witnessing which eventually leads to a complete breakdown of moral/ethics, the nuclear family model and a sustainable fertility rate which again is leading us to the extinction of Europeans.
Females have a significantly higher proportion of erotic capital than males due to biological differences (men have significantly more prevalent sexual urges than females and are thus easily manipulated). The female manipulation of males has been institutionalised during the last decades and is a partial cause of the feminisation of men in Europe. This highly underestimated factor has contributed to the creation and rise of the matriarchal systems which are now dominating Western European countries.
Obsessed with the purported danger that Islam will outbreed the West, Breivik offers an assortment of creepy solutions to increase the fertility of Western whites. (It's not altogether clear to me if these are all his own views, but they certainly are consistent with what he says elsewhere in the manifesto.) After suggesting limiting contraception and banning abortion, Breivik offers this idea:
Discourage women in general to strive for full time careers. This will involve certain sexist and discriminating policies but should increase the fertility rate by up to 0,1-0,2 points.
That last "side effect" does not seem to be much of a problem for Breivik.
Women should not be encouraged by society/media to take anything above a bachelor's degree but should not be prevented from taking a master or PhD. Males on the other hand should obviously continue to be encouraged to take higher education – bachelor, master and PhD. …
Womens "new role" should be actively illustrated and glorified through series, movies and commercials. …
The end result for implementing the above reforms would be an increase in the fertility rate up from 1,5 to approximately 2,1-2,4 which would be sustainable.
However, this will also involve significant restrictions in women's rights and media rights.
Large chunks of the manifesto consist of cut-and-pasted blog posts from an anonymous far-right Norwegian blogger known as Fjordman. (See my post here for an extensive number of quotes from Fjordman that Breivik included in his manifesto.) Like Breivik's own writings, many of Fjordman's writings could be lifted virtually word for word from "manosphere" blogs.
One internet prankster conducted a little experiment that proved pretty clearly just how unexceptional this sort of rhetoric is in the manosphere, posting an assortment of misogynist quotes from Breivik's manifesto (all of them taken originally from Fjordman) to Reddit's Men's Rights forum – without identifying them as being from Breivik.
Despite – or perhaps because of – the blatant misogyny, the post initially received numerous upvotes and some positive comments ("Nice post man") from the regulars. Once it was revealed that the quotes had come from Breivik's manifesto, the downvotes and critical comments began to stack up. (I wrote about the incident here.)
But Reddit's Men's Rights subreddit is actually one of the most moderate and least misogynistic Men's Rights hangout online. Others in the manosphere have stepped up to defend Breivik's manifesto (if not his actions) plainly and explicitly, in full knowledge of just whose ideas they are endorsing.
On In Mala Fide, blogger Ferdinand Bardamu praises Breivik's "lucidity," and blames his murderous actions on the evils of a too-liberal society:
[A]nother madman with a sensible manifesto. Another completely rational, intelligent man driven to murderous insanity. And once again, society has zero introspection in regards to its profound ability to turn thoughtful men into lunatic butchers.
He's not being sarcastic here. He continues:
That makes HOW many rage killers in the past five years alone? And not just transparent headcases like Jared Loughner or George Sodini, but ordinary men like Pekka-Eric Auvinen or Joe Stack who simply weren't going to take it anymore. No one bothers to ask WHY all these men suddenly decide to pick up a gun and start shooting people – they're all written off as crazies. Or the rage killings are blamed on overly permissive gun laws …
That final reference to "ethnic self-hatred" seems to be Bardamu's euphemistic way of complaining that not enough white people are white supremacists.
Here's an idea – sick societies produce sick individuals who do sick things. Anders Breivin [sic] murdered nearly a hundred teens (not children, TEENS – they were at a summer camp for young adults) and must pay the price, but the blood of those teens is ultimately on the hands of the society that spat him forth. He is the bastard son of a masochistic, degenerate, rootless world that pisses on its traditions and heritage to elevate perversity, mindless consumerism and ethnic self-hatred to the highest of virtues.
Meanwhile, Chuck of Gucci Little Piggy offers what appears to be a somewhat more restrained, if ultimately more puzzling, defense of Breivik's manifesto – or at least that portion of the manifesto that Breivik borrowed from the writings of far-right blogger Fjordman.
After first complaining, incorrectly, that feminists are "try[ing] to blame Breivik on MRAs" (he cites me and Hugo Schwyzer as examples), Chuck goes on to endorse Breivik's (and Fjordman's) notion that feminism "grease[s]the wheels to allow Islam into his country," as Chuck summarizes the argument. The rest of Chuck's post elaborates on, and endorses, Breivik's/Fjordman's theories, arguing that feminism's "emasculation of Western men has taken the organic policing mechanism out of the hands of men in society" and thus rendered Western society helpless before the Islamic cultural invaders. (More on Bardamu and Gucci Little Piggy's arguments here.)
But the strangest response I've seen so far to the massacre in Norway comes from Sofiastry, an antifeminist blog that seems to be broadly sympathetic to the "alt" (that is, the "intellectually" racist) right. Apparently taking her cue from Bardamu, Sofia offers an appreciation of sorts for Breivik's repellant manifesto:
[A]lthough his actions were cruel beyond belief, and committed by a delusional, psychopath driven by his delusions of political grandeur, there is lucidity and sense in much of what he writes. He never seemed to explicitly advocated [sic] for a genocide of Muslims within Europe, but superficially claimed that he just wanted to sustain European culture.
So, let's weigh Breivik's pros and cons here. CON: He murdered dozens of people in cold blood, motivated by a hateful ideology. PRO: He didn't explicitly call for actual genocide?
And then it just gets, well, weird:
I feel that Breivik is being tried for more than his cruelty within the feminist community. The fact that he belongs to the privileged group of the white male makes him hate-worthy along with every other privileged white male who might sympathize with his ideology, even if they don't happen to be psychotic. Breivik exemplifies White Men, even though Osama Bin Laden to the very same liberal ideologues did not represent Every Muslim.
Yep, that's right. She thinks we hate Breivik … because he's a white dude.
It's another symptom of our culture that feels it is OK to hold white men to higher standards of political correctness, self-flagellation and martyrdom whilst simultaneously relentlessly berating and mocking them on a cultural level.
I can't speak for every feminist, but for me, it's more the murdering, and the misogyny, and the racism. But mostly the murdering. (For more on Sofia, see here.)
Despite the many undeniable similarities between Breivik's repellent misogyny and misogynist beliefs that are widespread in the "manosphere," some MRAs profess to be shocked –shocked! – that anyone would connect the dots. MRA bloviator Bernard Chapin, for example, responded to my first piece on Breivik with an angry, incoherent ten minute YouTube diatribe expressing his outrage that I would possibly suggest any connection between MRA thought and a "psychopath" like Breivik. It's a classic case of someone protesting too much. The connections are clear to anyone willing to see them.
No, Breivik is not an MRA. No, he didn't take his marching orders from The Spearhead or In Mala Fide. But he is steeped in the same kind of hatred that is prevalent on those sites, and many of his repugnant beliefs about feminism and women in general are virtually identical to beliefs widespread in the misogynistic manosphere – a fact that a few in the manosphere are already willing to acknowledge out loud, as we saw above.
No, not every misogynist is going to pick up a gun. But ideas do have consequences. Vile, hateful ideas have vile, hateful consequences.
PS: For more on Breivik's misogyny, see Michelle Goldberg's Norway Killer's Hatred of Women in TheDailyBeast.
Open Thread & News Round-Up: Debt Negotiations
Here's the latest...
Politico—CBO: John Boehner's debt bill comes up short: "New cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office could pose a problem for Speaker John Boehner as he tries to rally conservative support for his two-step plan to raise the federal debt ceiling and avert default next week. ... The first installment of $900 billion is contingent on enacting 10 year caps on annual appropriations which the leadership had hoped would save well over $1 trillion. But CBO late Tuesday came back with a report showing the legislation would reduce deficits by $850 billion when measured against the agency’s most current projections for spending."
AP—House GOP to rework budget plan after new estimate: "A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner says House Republican leaders are working to rewrite their deficit-reduction plan after receiving an estimate that it won't cut spending as much as advertised."
CNN—Conservative groups come out against Boehner proposal: "As House Speaker John Boehner and the House Republican leadership continues to build support for its proposal to raise the debt ceiling, several influential tea party and conservative groups Tuesday voiced opposition to it. ... Many of these conservative groups and members only would support increasing the ceiling if it is accompanied by larger spending cuts as well as enactment of a balanced budget amendment while some others flatly oppose any hike."
The Hill—Cantor tells House to 'stop whining' about Boehner debt-ceiling plan: "Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on Tuesday bluntly told House Republicans to stop 'grumbling and whining' about Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) new proposal for a limited debt-limit increase."
Greg Sargent in the WaPo—Dems plot the endgame in debt limit fight: "Here's the game plan, as seen by Senate Dem aides: The next move is to sit tight and wait for the House to vote on Boehner's proposal. The idea is that with mounting conservative opposition, it could very well be defeated. If the Boehner plan goes down in the House, that would represent a serious blow to Boehner's leadership, weakening his hand in negotiations."
So that's where the debt negotiations, such as they are, stand. Meanwhile, Paul Krugman observes that this entire debacle exposes the "true moral failure" of "the cult of balance, of centrism."
We have a crisis in which the right is making [unreasonable] demands, while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending over backward to be accommodating — offering plans that are all spending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right of public opinion.At TPM, Josh Marshall makes a similar observation: "It's been said many times. But it's never enough: the conventions of journalistic 'objectivity', as currently defined, frequently make journalists violate their biggest duty, which is honesty with readers. The top headline running now on CNN reads: 'They're all talking, but no one is compromising, at least publicly. Democratic and GOP leaders appear unwilling to bend on proposals to raise the debt ceiling.' By any reasonable measure, this is simply false, even painfully so."
So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship.
The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president — actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform — his only major change to government — was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else — including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment — is according to the conservative playbook.
...You have to ask, what would it take for these news organizations and pundits to actually break with the convention that both sides are equally at fault? ... And yes, I think this is a moral issue. The "both sides are at fault" people have to know better; if they refuse to say it, it's out of some combination of fear and ego, of being unwilling to sacrifice their treasured pose of being above the fray.
It's a terrible thing to watch, and our nation will pay the price.
Question of the Day
How have you lifted a teaspoon recently in a way that makes you proud?
Doesn't have to be a Big Thing, just an important teaspoon to you.
Photo of the Day
US Speaker of the House of Representative John Boehner speaks with a television crew at the Capitol in Washington on July 25, 2011 after delivering his response to President Barack Obama's address to the nation on the debt ceiling crisis. [Getty Images]Just the look on his face. Oy. Honestly.
[Commenting Guidelines: No, it is not all right to talk about Boehner's tan, or the fact that he's wearing make-up (having just given a televised address), or in any other way make fun of his appearance.]
Fun New Game: Guess the Breed!
So, I've gotten a bunch of emails from people who think Zelda might be something other than a mix of Rottie and Shar Pei. She's a Pittie mix! No, she's a Mini-Pin and a Mastiff! No, she's definitely a Chow mix!
Well, here's your big chance to weigh in, dog genealogists! What breed(s) do YOU think Zelda is?
Occasionally, she reminds me quite a bit of a Shiba Inu, especially when she's alert. When she's running, she has a sort of foxy quality that reminds of the Shiba Inus at the dog park, too. They do come in black-and-tan, so that could explain her markings, as well as her smaller size (38 pounds).
(For the record, there isn't a dog breed that I don't like as a rule, and I'm not remotely invested in what breeds she is, lol. I heart my mutt.)
Number of the Day
37%: The percentage of House votes Rep. Michele Bachmann has missed since launching her presidential bid, which is "significantly higher than the two other House members running for president."
For the record, that is the sort of issue worth raising about a candidate. As opposed to how much she's spent on hair and make-up.
OFFS
Michele Bachmann's $4,700 Hair and Makeup Bill: "Considering Rep. Michele Bachmann's crusade against government spending and her demand that America live within its means, you wouldn't figure her for a conspicuous spender. But after launching her bid for the White House, Bachmann has broken with her usual frugality and shelled out some serious cash on a stylist in what could be seen as her own John-Edwards'-$400-haircut moment. According to Bachmann's latest campaign finance filings, her campaign spent nearly $4,700 on hair and makeup in the weeks after she entered the presidential race on June 13."
Seriously, Mother Jones?
Do we really have to do this EVERY FUCKING ELECTION? Or just the elections in which women are candidates?
Ahem.
$5,000 is an eminently reasonable amount of money for a woman running for national office to spend on a professional makeover. That's the same amount of money spent on just the clothes on an episode of What Not to Wear.
Do I think it's bullshit that Michele Bachmann, or any female candidate, should have to spend five grand in order to be considered presentable by the unfathomably rigid standards of our youth-, fashion-, and appearance-obsessed culture? Yes. Is that a commentary on Michele Bachmann? No.
That's a commentary on what a profoundly misogynist and body-policing garbage culture it is in which we live.
Holding an individual woman responsible for her conformance to standards created by a systemic oppression is bullshit. And that is not how feminism works.
STOP MAKING ME DEFEND MICHELE BACHMANN.
The Return of Fred Thompson
You know you totally missed him. (Especially if your name is Deeky W. Gashlycrumb.) So you are obviously very happy to hear that our dear Fred Thompson, star of screen and senate, has returned (by which I mean I just happened to notice something that he wrote today).
Behold: An Open Letter to the House GOP, a missive about the ongoing debt negotiations which has the actual subhead "Accept the victory and move on," starts out with, "You won, and so did the country," and is signed:
Sincerely,Niiiiiiice.
Your friend,
Fred Thompson
Double closing, single signature. The hallmark of a fancy man who really knows what he's talking about.
Daily Dose of Cute
Above: Last night while we watched Man vs. Wild, Zelda snuggled up on one side of me with her head on my left side, and Matilda snuggled up on the other side of me with her head on my right leg. Piles of cuteness!
Dog Park TONGUES!!!!!!!eleventy!!!1! are below the fold (on most browsers).
Film Corner!
Below, the trailer for the new Justin Timberlake vehicle, In Time, which, as you will soon discover, is a very clever pun. (No it's not. Clever, I mean. It is definitely a pun.) The writer and director of this movie is Andrew Niccol, who wrote and directed some films I liked very much (Gattaca; The Truman Show) but also came up with the story for The Terminal, that garbage film in which Tom Hanks plays a Latka Gravas who lives at the airport, so it could really go either way.
Anyhoo, IMDb informs me that In Time is about a future in which "people stop aging at 25 and must work to buy themselves more time, but when a young man finds himself with more time than he can imagine he must run from the corrupt police force to save his life." Meanwhile, the trailer informs me it is also about a future in which women retain the timeless choice between dude prop or dude trophy.
Once again, I will observe the bitter hilarity of a mind that can conceive of a concept in which a digital life clock counts down on every person's arm, but can't conceive of a concept in which women, and men of color, aren't marginalized supporting cast for a graduate of the Mickey Mouse Club.
To the trailer!
Text Onscreen: "In the late 21st Century, time has replaced money as the unit of currency." ("Time is money!"—My Dad, telling me to get busy dusting the living room if I want my $2 allowance, 1984.) More Text Onscreen: "At 25 years old, aging stops, and each person is given one more year to live." ("What is this shit?"—My Dad, if and when he sees this trailer, 2011.) More Text Onscreen: "Unless you replenish your clock, you die." I originally read this as "Unless you replenish your COCK," which I'm pretty sure is a concept developed by S. Freud.
Cue the action thriller music. Justin Timberlake's clock is ticking down. He wants more time. He is OUTRAGED that it costs four minutes for a cup of coffee when yesterday it cost three. He doesn't get paid as much time at work as he expected; he met the quota but OH SHIT the quota has gone up since last week.
He and his friend Roseanne Conner's Son-in-Law meet a dude at a bar who has a CENTURY in his clock. Everyone oohs and ahhs at the guy with the huge clock. Some other asshole wants the guy's clock. Justin Timberlake helps the white dude with the huge clock escape the white dude with the smaller clock through the bathroom window. No, I am not making this up.
They go back to the dude with the huge clock's apartment, where he tells Justin Timberlake that he is 105 years old, but he's had enough. He exposits some stuff about how there wouldn't be room for everyone if everyone had a clock as big as his: "How else could there be men with a million years, while most live day-to-day?"
I realize the clock is supposed to be a metaphor for money/power/influence, but the absence of women in this trailer, combined with the fact that the acquisition and exhibition of wealth in a patriarchal system is itself often a metaphorical dick-measuring contest, is severely undermining my appreciation of the profound existential and justice commentary to which I'm supposed to be paying attention, because all I can think is that this film should not have been called In Time but In My Pants.
Anyway!
Justin Timberlake tells the dude with the huge clock that he "sure as hell wouldn't waste it" if he had a huge clock, so, after Justin Timberlake falls asleep, the dude gives his huge clock to him. Justin Timberlake wakes up to find himself with a huge clock, and a message scrawled in the grime on the window of the loft: "Don't waste my time." MORE PUNS PLEASE!
Blah blah blah now people, namely Cillian Murphy, are after Justin Timberlake's huge clock. JT is meanwhile using his new huge clock to get access to fancy limos and dress-up parties in "New Greenwich." I think he sleeps with a call girl, but only realizes it when he sees that there's less time on his huge clock…? He gets introduced to some very clock-rich white dude's mother-in-law, wife, and daughter, who all look the same age and very much alike.
Eww.
Cillian Murphy shows up to nab JT. It's not clear why, exactly, Cillian Murphy wants to get him, except, I guess, for how we're supposed to infer that the government (or WHOEVER) always wants to crush any threat to their power, but if there are truly white dudes running around with million-year clocks, is a hundred-year clock really that threatening? I'm sure all will become clear IN TIME!
Justin Timberlake punches people and gets his huge clock the heck out of there by taking lookalike daughter played by Amanda Seyfried hostage. She wants to go home, but he won't let her, because she's his insurance policy blah blah blah. This kidnapping is obviously justified because he has a feeling they'll find him guilty whether they can prove it or not. Not only am I convinced, so is she! Cue the running while holding hands and the making out!
Montagery. A collection of random but suuuuuuuuuuuper trite quotes: "If you can buy loyalty, you can buy their trail." "For you to be immortal, many must die." "No one should be immortal, if even one person has to die." "How can you live with yourself watching people die right next to you?" "You don't watch; you close your eyes." "I'm going to make them pay; I'm going to take them for everything they've got."
Ah, okay. This is a treatise on privilege and is, in fact, just a retelling of Robin Hood. JT breaks into a time-bank (lulz) and steals a bunch of time, which he and Amanda Seyfried then hand out to people. "Take the time! It's free!"
More montagery. Evil white dudes with huge clocks say things about time getting into the wrong hands and upsetting the system. To underline that point, we get a scene of a poor black mother turning time over in her hands. Oof your racist symbolism.
THANK HEAVENS THAT NICE WHITE BOY WITH THE HUGE CLOCK IS GONNA SAVE EVERYONE.
"His crime," says someone who cares in voiceover, "wasn't taking time; it was giving it away."
Okay, player.
This is How Things Usually Work
Owing to personal events, I'm spending the next two weeks trapped without a car in the middle of a city of 150,000 people. Yesterday I borrowed a neighbor's car, and mindful of my checking account, drove to the supermarket and attempted to buy enough food to survive should a James Cameron movie suddenly break out.
Today was this week's opportunity fresh veggies. On my way to the farmers' market, I braved streets that largely serve as on-ramps for the two highways that bisect downtown Syracuse. I crossed at lights that didn't have pedestrian signals, stepping onto uneven sidewalk ramps. Because I'm currently able-bodied, young, athletic, and it's not winter (people here don't really shovel sidewalks), I was able to make the trip in about twenty minutes. As an added bonus, I didn't get sent to jail after watching my child get hit by a car.
After walking through a stretch of my route where the sidewalk inexplicably gave way to dirt, I encountered the site where a group of environmental consultants and entrepreneurs is rehabilitating a long-abandoned building, complete with a row of shiny new charging stations for electric cars.
In fairness, Syracuse isn't unaware of the difficulty of getting around town sans cars. The city recently released a master plan of hypothetical bike routes. It was also involved in recent discussions about the future of one of our two interstates.
However, the charging stations were the first sign of the newer, greener Syracuse that I keep hearing about.
In reality, during these times of austerity, it's gotten harder to get around town. There are fewer, more expensive buses. Sidewalks are going unrepaired and yes, unshoveled.
So it's with bitter irony that I welcome these new charging stations. I'm not particularly impressed by a future in which some of the cars I'll be dodging will presumably be powered by the local nuclear plant.
This is what tends to happen. Too often, the solutions to environmental problems tend to reinforce a broken status quo.
In the case of Syracuse's newest electrical outlets, I believe most of them will be used to charge vehicles for a community car sharing service. I can certainly think of worse uses.
However, I'm not entirely sure how some people are supposed to get to the nearest car share location. I'm also not sure how some folks are going to pay to rent these wonderful green cars.
Don't get me wrong, I actually think a green car share program is a great idea, and a welcome initiative. However, I'm frustrated and unsurprised that the movers and shakers in my city have the capital to invest in putting more cars on the road, while efforts to improve things for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders flounder.
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning for violence and terrorism.]
"On Sunday, the New York Times headlined 'As Horrors Emerged, Norway Charges Christian extremist'. A number of other news organizations like the LA Times and Reuters also played up the Christian angle. But Breivik is not a Christian. That's impossible. No one believing in Jesus commits mass murder."—Bill O'Reilly, employing the No True Scotsman fallacy in order to assert that Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik isn't a Christian because he did a supposedly un-Christian thing.
What REAL Christians do, I guess, is sexually harass people, victim-blame child survivors of sexual violence, offer up people and places he doesn't like to violence, and participate in a terrorist campaign.
Not that it's news that O'Reilly is a spectacular hypocrite with all the integrity of a Fox News presenter, but wow.
[Related Reading: On "Real" Christians and Christian Privilege.]
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
The Del Rubio Triplets: "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead (Medley)"
Milly Del Rubio, the last surviving Del Rubio Triplet (and great niece of First Lady Edith Bolling Wilson!), passed away last week from respiratory failure. RIP Milly.
