Photo of the Day

A newborn dolphin named Doerrte swims with its mother Delphi at the zoo in Duisburg, Germany, Monday, Oct. 17, 2011. The little bottlenose dolphin is one of three dolphin babies that were born at the same time last month at the zoo in the Ruhr valley. [AP Photo]

When I was a little kid, I went through a stage where I was absolutely obsessed with dolphins. I don't know what started it, and I'm not sure why it faded—or even when, exactly. But for awhile, I had all kinds of dolphin crap: Dolphin stuffed toys, dolphin figurines, dolphin socks, and so many dolphin stickers in my sticker-book.

All I've got left of that collection now is a tiny etched cube, picturing two dolphins leaping into the ocean air.

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This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.

Snide, sassy Siri has plenty to say:

By now, early adopters of the iPhone 4S, which has sold more than 4 million units since debuting on Friday, have no doubt taken Siri for a spin.

The voice-activated "personal assistant" is a talkative tool that helps schedule appointments, send and receive messages and perform any number of other routine tasks.

But for iPhone owners presented with the sci-fi dream of a computer that talks back in a robotic female voice, the temptation to test the app's more random -- and existential -- sides has been pretty overwhelming, too.

I don't need to tell you where this is going, do I?

Because I am the Most Humorless Feminist in all of Nofunnington, I just don't get the same whimsical pleasure from reading about dudes asking their female-voiced phone assistant to make them a sandwich as others do. (How disappointing for them that Hillary won't run in 2016.) Nor do I enjoy the alleged hilarity of getting Siri to acquiesce: "You are my daddy."

At the Tumblr Shit That Siri Says, you can find more great exchanges like:

User Alie: "What's your favorite sex position?"

Siri: "Alie, you're not supposed to ask your assistant such things."

User Alie: "What's your favorite sex toy?"

Siri: "Perhaps there's something I can do for you?"

User Alie: "Sure, let's fuck."

Siri: "I'll pretend I didn't hear that."

There is, of course, more where that came from. And if reading about dudes sexually harassing their iPhones grows tiresome, please enjoy the delightful evidence that Siri was programmed with fat hatred. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[H/T to Shaker Katherine for the CafeMom article.]

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Beyond Corporate Personhood

[Trigger warning for violence.]

So, basically, corporations are people when it's convenient for them—like having the right to free speech so they can donate massive amounts of money to political candidates—and want to not be people when it's convenient for them—like being immunized from civil accountability for human rights violations: "[A]s Judge Pierre Leval explains, if the Supreme Court upholds a Second Circuit decision holding that corporations have total immunity from a law holding the most atrocious human rights violators accountable to international norms, it would enable corporations to profit freely from some of the greatest acts of evil imaginable."

According to the rule my colleagues have created, one who earns profits by commercial exploitation of abuse of fundamental human rights can successfully shield those profits from victims' claims for compensation simply by taking the precaution of conducting the heinous operation in the corporate form. Without any support in either the precedents or the scholarship of international law, the majority take the position that corporations, and other juridical entities, are not subject to international law, and for that reason such violators of fundamental human rights are free to retain any profits so earned without liability to their victims. [...]

The new rule offers to unscrupulous businesses advantages of incorporation never before dreamed of. So long as they incorporate (or act in the form of a trust), businesses will now be free to trade in or exploit slaves, employ mercenary armies to do dirty work for despots, perform genocides or operate torture prisons for a despot's political opponents, or engage in piracy – all without civil liability to victims. By adopting the corporate form, such an enterprise could have hired itself out to operate Nazi extermination camps or the torture chambers of Argentina's dirty war, immune from civil liability to its victims. By protecting profits earned through abuse of fundamental human rights protected by international law, the rule my colleagues have created operates in opposition to the objective of international law to protect those rights.

To sum: If the Supreme Court of the United States upholds the lower court's ruling, corporations will be immune from laws intended to protect individual people from gross human rights abuses, and to deliver them civil justice when their rights are breached.

[H/T to Shaker Cami.]

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Film Corner!

Y'all know they're making an American Pie 4, right? Please tell me that you know they're making an American Pie 4 and that you're sooooooooo excited about it because you can hardly believe there was ever an American Pie 2, no less an American Pie 3 and now an American Pie 4, or even that it's named American Pie 4 when it's really like American Pie 92 because of all the made-for-TV and straight-to-DVD movies produced under the American Pie Presents label in a desperate bid to milk every last dime out of a shitty franchise as long as Eugene Levy would keep showing up to collect his paycheck and justify the tenuous connection to the original film which is best remembered for the scene of a dude fucking a pie even though it had some remarkably radical scenes of a teenage geekgirl who owned her own sexuality like whoa.

Anyway! The whole original gang is back, because, with the exception of Alyson Hannigan, they're pretty much not doing anything else. They are straighter and whiter and middle classier than ever! And if the trailer is any indication (it is), this film provides us with a lot to be suuuuuuuuper depressed about—although, for my money, the most grim is definitely that John Cho has been given the opportunity to return as a character named "MILF Guy #2." Great!

I don't even know what kind of warning(s) to put on this thing, or if any are even necessary, because it's mostly just gross and inappropriate and stupid. I dunno. The audio is not safe for work, and the content is terrible. Watch at your own risk.

[Paraphrase below.]
Wacky music. Photo on nightstand of Jason Biggs and Alyson Hannigan getting married, in case you're just tuning in or got hit in the head with plummeting space detritus and it wiped out your American Pie memory center.

The married couple—they're married, just FYI—are in their bedroom, which they share as husband and wife because they are married, and Alyson Hannigan in her bra tells Jason Biggs, who is lounging on their marital bed with his laptop, that she is going to take a bath. "Okay, babe," he tells her, without peeling his eyes away from the screen. "Go for it."

As soon as his wife, to whom he is married, starts running the water behind the closed bathroom door in the master bath, Jason Biggs switches the screen to porn. Of course. Because they are MARRIED and thus they are not DOING IT and he has to SNEAK PORN and JERK OFF IN SECRET no doy. R. Kelly's "Bump and Grind" plays—My mind is telling me no / But my body, my body's telling me yes / Baby, I don't wanna hurt nobody—as Jason Biggs pulls a tube sock out of the drawer next to the bed and squirts lube into it.

He masturbates into the sock, sweaty and grimacing, as a female voice emanates from the laptop: "Give it to me, daddy." Record scratch! "Daddy?" Jason Biggs lowers his laptop screen to see his young son standing at the foot of his bed. "Evan! What the fu— You're opening doors now?!" He desperately tries to shut down the porn site and then slams the laptop closed on his wiener. Hardy har. He throws the sock. It lands on his son's head. WHUT. He leaps out of bed: "Evan, don't touch that!"

Whooooooooooooooooooooooops I have barfed all over your trailer! And I am calling Child Protective Services.

Cut to pix of all the cast members with their characters' names, for the American Pie-impaired, set to James' Laid.

Cut back to Jason Biggs, who runs into the bathroom to discover his wife masturbating in the tub. "Michelle?" She gasps. The hand-held sprayer flies out of her hand and slithers around on the bathroom floor, spraying water everywhere. "Oh my god," they both say.

And I agree.

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Daily Dose of Cute

Quite some time ago, Shakers RedSonja and KarateMonkey, and their dog Buffy, gifted Dudley an indestructible(ish) chew-toy made from recycled firehose. Dudley, however, never has as much interest in the Hard Core Fire Hose as when Zelda decides to play with it. (Rinse and repeat and interchange names for every toy they have in their toybox.)

So when Zelda grabs the hose out of the toybox, often with the express purpose of enticing Dudley to wrestle for it...

...Dudley immediately decides he wants to play with it!


"Hey, that looks pretty fun!"


"Give it to me! It's mine!"


"No, it's mine!"


"I had it first!"


"AHHHHHHHHH! I WILL KEEL YOU!"


"Rrrrawwwrrr!"     "Rrrrawwwrrr!"     "I'm thirsty!"     "Me, too!"


Lap lap lap lap kissy kiss lap lap lap.


"Phbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt!"
The hose now lies abandoned in the middle of the living room floor, completely ignored by both of them.

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Millions of Dollars, He Makes

So now, according to Fox News Genius Sean Hannity, President Barack Obama was not merely born in Kenya, but grew up there.

Sure. That seems very likely and is a totally reasonable claim to make.

*boggles*

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Solving the problem of free-range black women…

Crossposted from AngryBlackBitch.com.

Y'all, it has been a month of Sundays since I last posted here!

Let’s jump right on in, shall we?

The Economist has an article up on the problem of unmarried black women.

Yes, I know…we sistahs are nothing if we aren’t a dangerous, hypersexual, unhealthy, emotional, and enraged mass of unmarried drama.

But worry not!

The Economist article has a solution to that unmarried part. And, since everyone knows that nothing settles a woman down like the guidance and leadership of a man through the sanctified institution of man-on-woman marriage, marrying black women off will likely address all of our other “problems” too!

Fuck the audacity of hope…let’s shoot for the audacity of being saved by a man!

Before you let those feathers get ruffled, please note that the editors at the Economist made a point of stating that they didn’t come up with the latest and greatest solution to the problem of free-range black women – wait for it…a “black male professor” wrote a something or other about it and HE is the one who “kicked up a storm”, so just chill that ass out and don’t blame the Economist for making sure that storm doesn’t die down.

Pause…sip coffee…continue.

Professor Ralph Richard Banks has a book out titled “Is Marriage for White People? How the African-American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone”.

In the book, Banks makes a point that others have made that black women are less likely to be married. Black women are less likely to marry someone who isn’t black and apparently our unmarried free-range status has a negative impact on society, so everyone and their lap dawg should encourage unmarried black women to seek out men regardless of race and get our stubborn difficult and in need of marriage asses married.

Pause...consider the issue several times…continue.

Allow me to retort.

The term “unmarried” assumes that the natural state of adult human beings is “married”.

The economic argument is that the lives of women are more stable and secure when married…my argument is that the only fix to economic instability for black women is equality - in education, hiring practices, and wages.

The theory that “unmarried” black women are a drag on society assumes that marriage is a solution, but I’m here to tell ya that marriage is it’s own worst marketer.

With a 50% failure rate…and assuming that Banks is right in asking whether marriage is for white people…why the hell isn’t anyone asking why white people can’t get the marriage thing right?

Divorce costs money…it takes a toll on families and has a huge negative impact on the lives of women…and yet Banks and those who enjoy chewing on the bone du jour of black women’s integrity aren’t turned on by exploring the impact that has on whether women consider marriage or on society at large.

I get it, though.

If a body starts an intellectual exploration with the assumption that marriage is the natural state of things and assumes that women who are not married should be married then that body’s intellectual exploration is narrowed to a conclusion that seeks to solve the problem of unmarriedness.

But Banks apparently has a heart. He doesn’t want sistahs seeking to solve our unmarriedness to marry down or have to share a man. His solution is for our own good…so we can have our own man to lead us out of the darkness of trying to live life on our own.

And never you mind that this shit would deny black women romance...that it reduces the union of marriage to a transaction…that is leverages black women’s agency to a hunt for a provider…that in assuming marriage is a solution it absolves society of the multitude of inequalities facing women…or that this exploration on top of the relentless study of black women as mothers, as reproductive vessels, as troubled and at risk and a drag on society and unhealthy and violent and irrational and difficult thus in need of taming…

…that this shit situates black women as the subject, our lives naked and on display, studied like the Hottentot Venus, and presented with the false choice of leveraging our womb and sexuality for the promise stability and safety.

Whew!

Well, shit…if that doesn’t get sistahs off our lazy asses and out there in the dating scene looking for a cure…um, err…a man, I don’t know what will.

Blink.

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Well, This Might Be a New Angle

[Note from Liss: This post originally ran in August 2010, and I just republished it to add a label at the bottom, but Blogger inexplicably republished it as a new post. Since the reason I was adding the label was because it's relevant to a post by Shark-fu coming up shortly, I'll just go ahead and leave it at the top of the page. Wevs.]

Did you know black women are in a crisis? A marriage crisis? Forty-two percent of us have never been married and that spells OMG!!! DOOM!!!

Seriously, how could you not have heard about it? It's been a hot topic for the past few years now (And here's a timeline from just the last few months!). Media outlets have been all over it. Scholars at Yale even did a study and Oprah got in on the hype.

Yesterday, Liss sent me an article that captured an argument that was new to me. It poses the question: Does the black church keep black women single? "A-ha," I thought (after I picked up my jaw) "yet another way to keep this largely manufactured crisis going."

Why am I so aggravated, you might ask, if all these articles are simply stating a true fact? I'm not bothered by someone saying 42% of black women have never been married. I am bothered by how the tone and content of these articles often play into old tropes of black women as undesirable and of black communities on the verge of collapse.

They're also plain old sexist for a number of reasons. For one thing, this is always a crisis for black women. As one of my colleagues pointed out when we did a presentation on this, the percentage of black men who have never been married is quite similar (43% maybe--I need to find the number she unearthed) but we never hear about the black man's marriage crisis. The "problem" is quite often cast as black women having the nerve to get educated/be successful. This crisis also presumes that women are incomplete without men and marriage, that nothing we've accomplished matters, that contentment and happiness cannot exist for single women.

The "marriage crisis" is also used to obscure systemic/institutional causes of larger problems like poverty and lack of equal access. As I wrote in my half-hearted review of CNN's "Black In America"

After watching parts and pieces of CNN's Black in America: What's Wrong With The Black Woman and Family last night, I was worried.

I mean, I'm single, educated, and a mother. I felt practically doomed.

But! CNN has the solution for the problem I didn't even know I was: marriage. Yep.

See, marrying would mean that I wouldn't be a single mom anymore. And, it would magically mean no more poverty for single moms! Never mind that

1) Many single moms (like me) have arrangements that work for us and our children. I am single because I'm not married, but I'm not raising my child alone.

2) We refuse to adequately address pay equity and the devaluation of women's work which contribute to the impoverishment of women and children.

3) We've stigmatized and rendered thoroughly inadequate any system of social provision.

4) Marrying a guy who does not work or who works in low-wage labor won't solve much of anything.

5) What about single moms who don't want to marry? Is that not a valid option when you're poor?

6) What about single moms who don't want a heterosexual marriage because they're lesbian or bisexual?

I'm also irritated because no matter how much we analyze, challenge, and try to debunk the crisis, the news organizations proceed willfully unaware with these stories.

The other major source of my irritation/aggravation? So often the solution to the marriage crisis is presented as black women's need to settle/compromise. Our standards are too high, apparently. In that sense, the argument that "the" black church "keeps black women single" is not new. From Debborah Cooper (the article is based on a discussion she began):

"Black women are interpreting the scriptures too literally. They want a man to which they are 'equally yoked' -- a man that goes to church five times a week and every Sunday just like they do," Cooper said in a recent interview.

"If they meet a black man that is not in church, they are automatically eliminated as a potential suitor. This is just limiting their dating pool."

Now, I can understand Cooper's critique on some other points--she writes, for example, about how black churches are structured around "traditional gender roles which make women submissive to and inferior to men." But if a woman has made up her mind that it is important to marry a man who shares her beliefs and values, why all the demands that she compromise? Is that unreasonable? Don't women other than black women have similar desires?

My jaw dropped again when Cooper suggested that church-going black women should give up their Sunday morning habits to "leave-and go where the boys go: tailgates, bars and clubs."

Cooper says she is trying to empower black women. But what is empowering about giving up something to which you are dedicated to linger around places you might find questionable or unpleasant in effort to "get" a man?

To me, this sounds like more of the blame-the-black-woman-for-this-imaginary-crisis. What do you think?
_______________________
I should really, really do another post on one magical solution that's been posited as the "crisis" has grown--interracial marriage. Of course, the issue is not interracial marriage itself, but the portrayal of it as an easy cure-all.

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The Walken Dead

[LOLLERSKATES!!! Via Miss Cellania. Transcript below.]
Male Voiceover [over scenes of characters parodying the survivors on the hit zombie show The Walking Dead and of stumbling zombies, one of whom says, "Wow!" in a Christopher Walken voice]: No one knows where they came from. No one knows why they're here. But they only want one thing.

Male Zombie, stumbling after a woman, in a Christopher Walken voice: I got a fever—and the only prescription is more cowbell! [woman screams]

Voiceover [over images of zombies talking like Walken]: Coming to TV this fall, it's a harrowing tale of survival you won't want to miss.

Male Survivor, on rooftop with other survivors: They say it's a virus—destroys every part of your brain except for basic motor functions. And also the part that stores Christopher Walken quotes.

Male Zombie, from the street below: You're a cantaloupe!

Male Zombie, stumbling after woman down the street: Five long years, he wore this watch—up his ass!

Voiceover: Watch as the last remnants of mankind fight for their humanity.

Male Survivor, sitting with another male survivor and a female survivor, all huddled against a wall: We just had a party!

Female Survivor: Everything was going fine!

Male Survivor: And then it happened!

[The video "flashes back" to the three of them at a party as a Walken-spouting zombie stumbles up to them.]

Male Zombie: Two little mice fell into a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned, but the second mouse—

[The video "flashes forward" back to the three of them sitting against the wall.]

Male Survivor: It was horrible—the strained conversation, the forced courtesy laughs! We're just lucky that none of us got bit, right, honey?

Female Survivor: I know. I mean, if we had, we'd all be [she starts turning into a zombie and begins speaking like Walken] wearing gold-plated diapers! [She leans in toward the two men and they scream before the video cuts to another scene.]

Male Zombie: Your son, fuckhead that he is, left his driver's license in the dead man's hand.

Male Survivor, to female survivor: They're getting weirder!

Male Zombie: I feel like a little boy who lost his first tooth, put it under his pillow, and is waiting for the tooth fairy to come.

Female Survivor: And more obscure!

Male Survivor: That's from The Rundown. Get your shit together.

Male Zombie: She tries to blackmail me, I'll drop her out a higher window!

Male Zombie: Boom!

Male Zombie: Sailor! Good man!

Male Zombie: I haven't killed anyone since 1984!

Voiceover [over more similar scenes and crescendoing music]: The battle for our planet has begun. [Quick montage of zombies chasing people and saying things like "two little mice" and "more cowbell." A male survivor screams "nooooooo!"] And the worst is still to come.

Male Zombie: Has anyone seen my triceratops? He's fantastic!

Female Survivor, to male survivor: Oh my god. They aren't even quoting anymore!

Voiceover: The Walken Dead. Coming this fall to American Walken Classics. All Walken. All the Time.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Morphine: "Cure for Pain"

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Quote of the Day

Clinton admires the architecture of Auberge de Castille, which houses the offices of
Malta's Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi in Valletta October 18, 2011. [Reuters Pictures]
"I'm very privileged to have had the opportunity to serve my country. I'm really old-fashioned; I feel I have made my contribution. I have done the best I can. But now I want to try some other things. I want to get back to writing and maybe some teaching, working on [behalf of] women and girls around the world."—Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in response to being asked (again) if she will run for president in 2016, following an emphatic "no."

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Shelby County Votes To Force Poor To Religious Group For Health Care

Yesterday the Shelby County Commissioners held their vote and by a vote of 9 - 4, opted to strip Planned Parenthood of Title X funding and give the money to Christ Community Health Service (CCHS).

The Shelby County Commission voted 9-4 today in favor of giving a contract to local nonprofit Christ Community Health Services to provide family-planning services to poor people.

[...]

Voting in favor of the Christ Community contract were newly sworn in commissioner Brent Taylor as well as James Harvey, Terry Roland, Mike Ritz, Chris Thomas, Justin Ford, Steve Mulroy, Heidi Shafer and Wyatt Bunker.

Voting against were Henri E. Brooks, Melvin Burgess, Walter Bailey and Sidney Chism.

Bailey had previously said that he would support Christ Community but voted against the contract. He said he was upset that the organization had said in a proposal that it would provide emergency contraception and now says it will provide that via a third party.

“What gives me grave concern is that Christ Community is not prepared by religious scruples where now religion is being pulled into the picture . . . being pulled into a position where they can’t provide emergency contraception,” Bailey said. “Emergency contraception was a key component of the (request for proposals.)”

Apparently CCHS will now refer a patient to "a third party" for emergency contraception. They are objecting to have to do so on "religious grounds". No word on who that third party will be. Also, CCHS will not refer or discuss abortion with clients, even though it is mandated as part of getting Title X money to provide objective and neutral information on ALL available options and to give a referral if requested.

Supporters of Planned Parenthood handed out pink T-shirts to supporters who came to the meeting, and they filled several rows in the auditorium today.

One of those was 24-year-old Mary Phillips, who said she’d gone to both Christ Community and Planned Parenthood — she held up a peach-colored plastic box that held birth control pills that she’d received from Planned Parenthood. She said Christ Community provides high-quality medical services, but that they sometimes come with a “sermon.”

She said that she had once been told: “If only my relationships with people and God were right, I would have fewer health problems.”

THIS IS NOT OK. People should NOT be subjected to being a captive audience in order to get the necessary, needed medical care they deserve. People deserve to be treated with dignity and being forced to hear moralistic lessons from a particular religion in order to get health care is NOT doing so.

Dr. Rick Donlon, a founding physician at Christ Community, said in September that staffers will not direct patients to abortion clinics or make formal referrals to providers who terminate pregnancies.

Commissioner Bailey pressed Christ Community CEO Burt Waller and Leatherwood, the group’s administrator, to explain those comments.

She said the organization already counsels patients with positive pregnancy tests about options such as adoption and abortion. She said that if a woman chooses an abortion, the clinic staff urge them to come back for care.

“We love on those individuals,” she said. “We do not judge those individuals.”

But not enough to provide those people with the health care they want and need.

CCHS is not going to provide all the health care services, or even information & referral, that they are supposed to do. The low income, un/under-insured of Shelby County are not being served by this, they are being harmed. Their rights and their dignity are being undermined by the Commission who is forcing them to be a captive audience to a religious organization. This is completely and utterly unacceptable.


[Related: Shelby County Undecided on Forcing Poor to Religious Organization For Care, Want Some Jesus With Your Birth Control?]

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Occupy Wall Street: News Round-Up

Thousands of demonstrators gather at Madrid's landmark Puerta del Sol as part of the United for Global Change movement against banking and finance in Madrid October 15, 2011. Demonstrators rallied on Saturday across the world to accuse bankers and politicians of wrecking economies. (Reuters/Susana Vera)

Photo from The Atlantic's image gallery, Occupy Wall Street Spreads Worldwide. The Guardian has another excellent gallery here. For the Most Adorable Occupy Wall Street Protester, go here. And for the Occupy My Life marriage proposal, go here.

In "What Are These Dirty Hippies Protesting, Anyway?" News: Bank of America Earnings Report: Bank Sees $6.2 Billion Profit.

Bank of America earned billions of dollars in profits last quarter, even as banking officials expressed concern recently about the effects of new regulations on their bottom line. The largest bank by assets reported third quarter gains of $6.2 billion.

...The increase in profits comes after Bank of America roiled customers by announcing that it will start charging customers $5 per month to use their debit cards for purchases in 2012. Shortly after the bank announced the fee, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan defended it, saying that the bank "has a right to make a profit."

Sure, because that's what everyone's complaining about: That the bank is making a profit at all, not that it's making a $6.2 billion profit quarterly, while there are millions of USians without income and/or healthcare and/or homes and/or food.

New York Times—Bloomberg Says 'Tent City' Goes Beyond Free Speech: "Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, speaking Monday as Occupy Wall Street protesters celebrated the passage of a month encamped in Zuccotti Park, said he was trying to strike a balance between protecting protesters' right to free speech and the needs of Lower Manhattan residents. 'The Constitution doesn't protect tents,' he said at a news conference in Queens. 'It protects speech and assembly.' The mayor expressed concern that those exercising a 'right to be silent' might be getting drowned out amid the din of the protests."

Think Progress—Poll: New York City Voters Overwhelmingly Support Occupy Wall Street: "Despite Mayor Michael Bloomberg's aversion to the protests, 67 percent of New York City voters agree with the views of Occupy Wall Street and say by an 87-10 percent margin that it's 'okay that they are protesting,' according to a new Quinnipiac poll out today. Even 52 percent of the city's Republican voters agree that protesters 'can stay as long as they wish,' as long as they obey the law."

The Hill—Left finds mojo in Wall Street protests: "Liberals who have felt scorned and overlooked by the White House say they are rejuvenated by the protests launched from Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, and hope that they provide Obama and liberal causes with new impetus and vigor. 'For those of us that have been taking those positions for a long time, it is a confidence booster, and I think that makes us a little more assertive,' said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC)."

USA Today—Occupy protesters seek to meet Obama: "We're waiting to see whether President Obama cites the anti-Wall Street protesters during his bus trip through North Carolina and Virginia. ... A group called Occupy Greensboro -- modeled after the Occupy Wall Street protests -- seeks a meeting with Obama and may picket the hotel where the president plans to spend the night, reports the Greensboro News & Record."

Mustang Bobby has a good piece about the naysayers.

Susie on the dipshit hypocrite Eric Cantor.

Armando (aka TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat) interviews his daughter about being a part of the protest.

And this is my favorite story of the day, via Animal New York—Jesse Jackson Occupies OWS Medical Tent, Saves it from Being Evicted by NYPD: "A little after 11:25PM, there was a big commotion on the south side of Zuccotti Park as someone mic checked that the NYPD was moving into to remove the 'medical tent' (tents are a violation of the park's rules.). Occupy Wall Street protesters immediately locked arms and vowed to protect it. Out of nowhere, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson swooped in and briefly spoke face to face with the NYPD as officers continued to amass on Cedar Street. A demonstrator asked him to join the 'human barricade' to which he immediately agreed. She took his hand and led him over to the tent, which he then proceeded to guard, locking arms with others who formed a circle around it. After a few tense minutes, the police dispersed and the crowd cheered. The tent will not be removed tonight."

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Open Thread

Hosted by Delirium Tremens Belgian Ale.

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Question of the Day

How old is your oldest friendship? This doesn't necessarily have to be a close friendship, but someone with whom you keep in touch.

I have a handful of friendships that are 20 years older or more, but my oldest friendship, at 32 years, is with A. We met in kindergarten and bonded over a shared love of Smurfs.

He and I grew up a couple of blocks apart on the same road, and, although we've both moved multiple times since, and I've lived as far away as Britain, we now live at opposite ends of that same road on which we grew up.

And now we bond over complaints about the state of the sidewalks, lol.

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Number of the Day

50%: The percentage of USians, according to the most recent Gallup poll, who "now say the use of marijuana should be made legal, up from 46% last year."

I guess those 50% just DON'T CARE that decriminalizing marijuana would really be devastating for our country's hardworking for-profit prison executives!

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Quote of the Day

[Trigger warning for homophobia and misogyny.]

"You can’t send me to talk to gay people without warning! Those people weird me out!" — Guy Fieri, to Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives creator David Page, after interviewing two restaurateurs he believed were gay.

Fieri also can't keep his eyes off any tits in the room and likes to make jokes about "cream."

[Via.]

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Photo of the Day

A woman holds a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. at a memorial dedication at the National Mall in Washington October 16, 2011. The memorial commemorates the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his contributions to world peace through non-violent social change. [Reuters Pictures]

I looked at a lot of blub-inducing pictures from the memorial dedication, including this one, which was the runner-up.

There has been controversy about the memorial, its dedication was delayed by both the August earthquake and hurricane Irene, and it took 10 years of fundraising and planning to make it happen. As I've said before, I don't believe that everything happens for a reason, but I do believe we can give reason to things that have happened—and I think it was entirely right that the dedication happened during the administration of our nation's first Black president, at a time of national unrest and yet-unrealized dreams.

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Olivia

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Brave Thinkers and Grave Risks

by Shaker RachelB

[Trigger warning for sexual violence, for state-sponsored violence, for domestic violence.]

Not long ago, I got a letter from my employer, a public research university, announcing that one of its physics professors had been named to The Atlantic's annual group of "Brave Thinkers".

According to The Atlantic, these are "people risking their reputations, fortunes, and lives in pursuit of big ideas." I read the physics prof's story and was impressed. Setting out to investigate the role of bias in climate change research, he discovered that the predominant findings in the field are…true. It isn't what he discovered (i.e., that climate change really exists) that was new: It is that he discovered it while funded by the Koch brothers' money. I'm not a scientist, but some of my best friends are, and it cheers me to see a scientist publish results because they are correct, not because they are what the company funding the study wanted. So who else is a "Brave Thinker" this year?

Dr. Hawa Abdi is on the list: A medical professional and human rights worker, she is trying to make a safe space for refugees within Somalia, and her policy forbidding domestic violence within that space makes it clear that she is specifically looking out for women within the settlement. Isabel Castillo is on the list, too: She is an advocate for her fellow undocumented immigrants, at the risk of her own deportation. Also on the list: An Egyptian citizen deeply involved in social networking, Wael Ghonim founded a Facebook group called "We are all Khaled Said"; while that Facebook group began to assemble in Tahrir Square, he was jailed for and interrogated for nearly two weeks. Reporter Lydia Cacho Ribeiro is on the list, too—she who did not stop covering violence against women even after a retaliatory rape and assault she was lucky to survive.

Another person on the list: Former State Department employee P.J. Crowley. Fair enough; I suspect his resignation from the Obama administration, after he called Bradley Manning's treatment "ridiculous, counterproductive, and stupid," was not voluntary. Crowley spent 30 years in public service (variously in the Air Force and think tanks), garnering a lot of respect along the way. I greatly admire the way he used the leverage of his privilege and position. But I feel simultaneously compelled to point out that speaking out against Manning's abuse was not the career-ending gesture that The Atlantic seems to think it is; he has already been hired for a joint academic post shared by three colleges.

At this point, I had a certain song from Sesame Street uneasily stuck in my head.

Now, I don't mean any disrespect for Prof. Muller's project, which drew me to The Atlantic in the first place. Not only do I like science that rests on actual evidence, I have some empathy for Prof. Muller. I am a very risk-averse person, and I can understand why bearing "bad news" feels risky. I get nervous making phone calls to public officials about issues that matter to me. I feel really uncomfortable when people think ill of me, especially if they're people on whom I depend for my research budget. But I don't treat the risk of disapproval and the risk of—oh, I don't know—dying as if they're the same thing; how can The Atlantic in good conscience elide that difference?

Reading a little further, I discovered that there are some names on the list that I just can't fathom, because the "risk" in their proposals looks to me as risk that other people will bear. Peter Thiel, Paypal founder and professional libertarian, is proposing that students avoid college and start businesses (a proposition that seems far riskier to those students than to him), for one. And Peter Mosk, a former police officer, argues that it would be more humane to substitute actual judicial violence (e.g. flogging) for the state-sponsored violence we use now (e.g. confinement).

(A point on which I disagree with Atlantic staffwriters: I don't think that "A little corporal punishment never hurt anybody" is actually all that rare or edgy a sentiment. Would that it were. Witness a conversation on policing in my city or some statistics on child abuse worldwide (pdf), and anyone can see that it's not.)

The brave thinkers who have risked (or continue to risk) death or physical harm are overwhelmingly women and/or people of color. Their white counterparts on the list mostly risk losing money, credibility, or elected office. (I mean, really, Atlantic? A football coach who—gasp!—talks in public belongs on a list with human rights activists?) What's going on here? There are a number of factors at work here, some of which I've identified below, and I encourage you to tease out additional factors in comments:

First, perhaps the magazine's "bar" for perceiving risk is higher when the person taking the risk is a woman and/or POC. Just as women and/or POC have to be more impressive than their white male peers in order to get an interview, let alone a job, no less advance at that job, maybe The Atlantic ignores the risks that women and/or POC take until they're Peace Prize-level accomplishments.

USian society demands that women and/or POC to sacrifice themselves on behalf of others in ways that we do not demand of white men. Think for a moment of all the action movies where the token POC dies, heroically and tragically, usually in the first part of the film. Also, think of all the movies where a character of color is present as an instrument of enlightenment for a white person. And recall the very durable Cult of True Womanhood trope, which may have been officially over in the 19th century but which makes a pop cultural return (pdf) every time women get too learned or uppity.

Fiction is not life, but fiction reflects and comments on life, and this sort of fiction reflects a society that persists in treating men and women of color as if they are on this earth to serve white people, while treating women of color and white women as if it's their responsibility to tend men who are quite capable of taking care of themselves.

(Incidentally, the Cult of True Womanhood is pretty racist and classist, too: While staying home to take care of a dude and kids was supposed to be the pinnacle of womanly achievement, the CTW essentially heightened social distinctions between women who could afford to stay home and women who could not—i.e., the women who were providing underpaid household labor for the "True Women," whose household role had become supervisory.)

Another set of factors: The fields in which the white male "brave thinkers" work—diplomatic bureaucracy, professional sports, the hard sciences, the financial sector—are fields that don't carry with them the expectations of physical heroism that human rights activism does. But they are also fields in which women and/or POC have continually been underrepresented. For instance, to take big but sustainable financial risks in a capitalist economy, you have to have a fair bit of money to start with. (This seems to apply doubly if you're going to be taking risks with other people's money and long-term earning potential, as I would argue Mr. Thiel is.) And given long-standing barriers to POC's ownership of property in the United States—along with a host of systemic barriers to high-paying or high-status employment—very wealthy people, who can lose significant sums of money without losing their ability to feed and house themselves, tend to be white.

Furthermore, many of the risks the women and/or POC on this list have faced are risks common to women and/or POC, even those of us who are not working in a region at war. Even those of us who are not writing about cartels. Even those of us who are not on the scene as needed witnesses to state-sponsored violence. Women of color and white women are both likelier than men to be victims of rape or sexual assault. Women and men of color are likelier than white women and men to be victims of other violent crimes. Women and men of color are far likelier to suffer police violence (statistics vary from one place to another, but here's what New York City looked like in the mid 1990s, to be arrested, or to be incarcerated for infractions for which their white peers are exonerated. And incarcerated people are at heightened risk for rape.

Even as women and/or POC disproportionately bear those risks—rape, assault, police brutality, and incarceration—in the United States, The Atlantic's coverage falsely suggests that those are risks specific to developing nations. They're certainly not risks in the United States. Except that they are.

Treating misogynist and racist violence as if it is something that happens elsewhere is all kinds of problematic. It leads to colonialist foreign policy. It increases rancor against immigrants—because if violence against women is a problem limited to developing nations (recall, for example, then-First Lady Laura Bush justifying war in Afghanistan as "a fight for the rights and dignity of women," certainly preventing immigration from countries that condone or ignore the abuse of women and/or POC will keep abuse of women and/or POC from spreading to the United States. (So nobody gets to immigrate! Truly, that will be awesome. NOT.) It leads to undeserved smugness among USians, especially privileged white men-who-matter who have relatively little risk of being the victim of a violent crime and who are often sheltered from having to think about violence. (Such shelter does not necessarily extend to "men who don't matter"—men who are on the QUILTBAG spectrum, neurodiverse men, and/or men with mental illnesses are at greater risk of violence than their heterosexual, cis, and neurotypical peers.) And it leads to the dangerous conclusion that we don't need any human-rights movement in the United States.

And the brave activists I know—well, they know that just isn't so.

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